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Posts Tagged ‘linkage’

I do love a good title

Congratulations to my friend Von Carr, whose short story “Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain” placed second in the Intergalactic Medicine Show readers’ awards. You can read the whole thing at that link; it’s a humorous post-apocalypses* tale featuring a heavily armed nun as the main character. What more need be said?

(All of the winning stories are available until April, I think, if you want to see what else won.)

*Yes, I meant that to be plural. To quote the story: “In the old days people had — maybe — worried about one apocalypse. At most, two. Global Warming and an ice age. Vampires and zombies. Nobody had expected all of the apocalypses to happen at once.”

another month at SF Novelists

Man, I’m having a much harder time remembering to think up topics for my SF Novelists posts (and get them written on time) now that I’ve stopped doing the “writing women” series. Anyway, this month I muse on ensemble casts, and why I like them.

As usual, comment over there; no reg required, though if you’re a first-time commenter I’ll have to fish it out of the moderation queue.

more fiction!

It’s just raining stories of mine around here, ain’t it?

Erin Underwood of Underwords has put together a free fiction sampler for 2011, and it includes some stories from Clockwork Phoenix 3, including “The Gospel of Nachash.” So if you’re interested in me, um, fanficcing the Bible? . . . in full-blown King James Version style . . . with sekrit ingredients thrown in . . . then go check it out. And if you’re not, check the sampler out anyway, because I am only one of twenty-seven authors bundled into it, and there’s sure to be somebody else you enjoy.

a holiday treat for you

Looking for something to read while you hang out with or avoid family? Author Stephanie Burgis has put together a project called December Lights, with various authors providing free reprints of short stories. And not your gloom-and-doom short stories, either, with grim amoral heroes and inexorable zombie apocalypses, but little bits of light for this season of darkness*.

My contribution to the project is “Lost Soul,” one of my Nine Lands stories. The full list is here, and there’s more to come before the month is out. Enjoy!

*Unless you’re in the southern hemisphere. But you guys could still use more light, right?

just in time

I almost didn’t get this month’s installment written in time — only finished it a few hours before the thing went live — but my posting streak at SF Novelists is unbroken. That’s right, folks, it’s the sixteenth of the month, and that means I’m blogging over there, this time on the topic of responses, reviews, criticism, and critique. Comment over there, no account needed, but if you’re a first-time commenter I’ll have to fish your reply out of the moderation queue before it will be visible.

Inception in Real Time

From gollumgollum, an awesome video:

Not worth watching if you haven’t seen the movie; most of it won’t make sense, and the bits that do make sense will be spoilers. But if you’ve seen Inception? Watch this video. It beautifully illustrates the time-dilation aspect of the film. (And the vidder did an excellent job editing the “Mombasa” track onto the footage, too.)

three cool links for your Friday

Unless you’re on the other side of the planet from me, in which case I think it isn’t Friday for you anymore.

The Justice League of America, Magnificent Seven-style — Superman and Wonder Woman and so on translated into Japanese film idioms.

The most awesome Fallout LARP ever — played on an abandoned base near St. Petersburg, Russia, which makes a fabulous atmosphere for a post-apocalyptic game. The costumes are even more fabulous, and the lengths they went to for setting up challenges . . . jaw-dropping. Just page down to look at the pictures, and know that your own LARP group? Is not this cool. (Unless you’re a member of Albion.)

How cats drink — “‘Three and a half years ago, I was watching Cutta Cutta lap over breakfast,’ Dr. Stocker said. Naturally, he wondered what hydrodynamic problems the cat might be solving.” The answer is pretty amazing.

two good causes

The Carl Brandon Society is fundraising for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, which helps send writers of color to the Clarion workshops. It’s a prize drawing; you can purchase tickets for the chance to win an e-reader (one of two Nooks, one of two Kobos, or an Alex eReader). This goes through midnight Eastern on November 22nd, so you’ve got just a few days left to enter.

Also, Pat Rothfuss is again running his Worldbuilders event, raising money for Heifer International. Among the items on offer are a whole lot of signed books, including a pair of In Ashes Lie and A Star Shall Fall, signed by yours truly. There are so many prizes, though, that Pat’s still in the process of posting them all; check out that first link for a list, and for information on how to participate.

Writing Fight Scenes: Introduction

This month’s SF Novelists post is a bit different, because it’s the launching point for a series I’ll be doing over here on LJ for the next indeterminate amount of time.

At Sirens this past month, I did a workshop on writing fight scenes, and promised those who weren’t able to attend that I’d be posting the material online. That begins today, and will be continuing for a while. Check out the aforementioned post for sort of an anecdote-cum-mission statement, then head behind the cut for a bit more about me and why I’m interested in this subject, plus an outline of how I’m going to approach this.

I’ve always loved fight scenes.

for those who haven’t seen it

I was mentioning James Frey’s latest atrocity to a few friends last night, and promised I would point them at the details, so here they are, by way of Scalzi’s blog.

Holy abusive contracts, Batman. It appears that Frey’s crass, opportunistic exploitation knows neither bounds nor shame. I can only hope the public outcry will go far enough to scare people away from signing up to be his factory drones — but sadly, I doubt it will.

China Mieville is not your Facebook friend

When we say “identity theft,” we usually mean something having to do with credit cards and the like. But at least when that happens, you can notify the various powers that be, and they’ll do something about it.

Not so with Facebook. China Miéville has notified them several times of at least one person (possibly more) impersonating him on Facebook, and so far has gotten jack in the way of reply. Are his life savings being wiped out by this? No, of course not. But if you think this couldn’t hurt him, think again. As a writer, he’s a public figure, albeit a minor one; his ability to work depends partly upon his reputation. If the impersonator wanted to, they could tarnish that reputation, by sending messages or joining groups or otherwise doing things that would reflect badly on him. Even if they don’t, they are in a fashion acting in his name, without his permission. Which is not something anybody should be allowed to do.

But Facebook doesn’t care. As Deanna reports, their old system was that you had to be a Facebook user in the first place to complain about somebody impersonating you on the service; at least they’ve made the small step of changing that. But in general, their policy is still abysmal. No system of verification; no grievance process worth the name. Your ex could create a profile, pretend to be you, “like” a bunch of groups that make you look like a terrible person, and then when you apply for a job your prospective employer finds that profile and decides they don’t want to hire somebody who’s a fan of “Immigrants Go Home.” And there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.

How obvious does Facebook have to make it that they don’t give a shit about anybody — their users included — before people will stop using the service?

I canceled my account a while ago, when they went one round too many of “we’re going to share info you thought was private! And you have to jump through hoops to stop us!” I tried not to proselytize too much back then, because I don’t want to piss off people who are content to keep their Facebook accounts, but Jesus H. The flash games just aren’t worth it, especially when the company is mining data about you and selling it to advertisers. As for getting in touch with old friends . . . there are other ways to be findable online. Seeing random updates about how somebody I haven’t seen since graduation didn’t get enough sleep last night is, again, not worth it to me. There are other ways to get in touch if you want to have a real conversation, and the more I see of Facebook’s evil, the harder time I have understanding why anybody else should play along.

BCS shout-out

Popping in briefly from Sirens (so far: it’s fabulous) to say that it’s the second anniversary of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which they’re celebrating with a double issue. (And some really lovely artwork, too.)

Anybody who’s read this journal for a while knows my love for BCS. They publish my kind of fantasy, the kind that has richly developed or evocative secondary worlds, ranging in style and content from the American frontier to Mesoamerica to Enlightenment France to India to Japan. And they do podcasts, too. From my personal experience, I can say the editor, Scott Andrews, is great to work with, and I’d go on with the praise but I haven’t eaten yet and I should probably fix that before I fall over.

So instead let me just nudge you in the direction of the site, encouraging you to read, and to support BCS if you enjoy what you find. Bringing you this kind of fiction ain’t cheap, and while they’re a non-profit, they do need money to function. So if you like what they’re doing, and want to see it go on for another two years or more, think about helping out.

Back to Sirens I go . . . .

thoughts on steampunk

If you’re interested in steampunk, Nader Elhefnawy has a well-thought-out article on it up on the SFWA site.

I particularly like the way he acknowledges the role of nostalgia without automatically dismissing nostalgia as something that must always be inherently bad. Yes, the steampunk vision of the past conveniently overlooks the less-attractive parts of the period, but the flip side of that coin is that it valorizes the attractive, selecting out qualities we may be losing/have lost in this day and age and trying to resurrect them. Plus, Elhefnawy puts the current era in context with the past in a way I found very eye-opening, characterizing this as the post-apocalypse of the Victorians, with WWI as the apocalypse.

Interesting stuff. I recommend reading it.

Clearing the Slate: usernames

Continuing my effort to clear out my Firefox tabs and my brain, let’s talk about usernames.

yuki_onna posted about this a little while ago, and I have to say I’m on her side. But first, let’s talk about the original poster’s argument.

I feel like pretty much everything he says can be turned around from a positive into a negative. True, on Facebook you don’t have the problem of signing up only to find your customary username has already been taken. Instead you have the problem of signing up with a name that’s maybe shared by 7,142 other people. An improvement, or only a differently annoying issue? Also, he says you don’t have to use your real name, just a name — but hang on, isn’t that essentially the username thing all over again, except without the restriction that it must be unique? And maybe a requirement that your chosen name has to come in two parts (e.g. Pony McRainbow). If you can still use a made-up name, you still have the problem he describes, of realizing belatedly that somebody you know in person and somebody you know online are actually, y’know, the same person.

But that has an easy fix. If you want your legal name associated with your pseud, put it in your profile or wherever. If you want to keep them separate, you can.

Which is part of Cat’s point. Facebook wants you to use your real name (and other real information) so you can be more effectively tracked: pinned down, advertised to, your information sold to third-party vendors, linked up with things you never intended to touch. Oh, so you’re the Melanie Dunn whose grocery purchases swing erratically between Hostess snack cakes and green vegetables (better sell you some diet aids!), who’s a registered Democratic voter in Kansas (do your neighbors know?), whose medical history shows a procedure at a particular doctor’s office three years ago (and we can guess what that was). So when you go posting on your blog about how you think bigots should get over the whole Islamic community center thing, rest assured people will have an easy time connecting that with your weight and your political activities and the fact that maybe you had an abortion. Aren’t you glad they know who you are?

False names, whether unique usernames or non-unique pseudonyms, can protect people.

But you know, even if that were taken out of the equation, I’d still like usernames, and my reason is the other part of Cat’s point. Choosing a username is an act of identity creation — one we don’t often get to do in modern American society, or (so far as I’m aware) in other high-tech nations. Your parents pick your name, without any input from you, and changing it is a legal hassle. Nicknames are generally assigned by those around you, though you can try to show up to college or your job in a new city and sell people on the idea that while your name is William, usually you go by Bear. We have very few opportunities to choose something that reflects who and what we are, or want to be — or we did, until usernames came along and gave us a whole new field to play in.

The fantasy writer in me can’t help but think about the mystical power of names, and how the process of choice invests them once more with a whiff of that power. They have meaning. How is that not cool?

Is the meaning sometimes stupid? Of course. You may get to a point where you’re embarrassed to be known as shake_that_bootay. But unlike Aschlyee, who’s embarrassed by her parents’ enthusiastic leap onto the bandwagon of “let’s find a totally new way to spell this name!,” you can put it behind you pretty easily. You can escape your party-hard high school years, major in Classics, get involved in radical politics, and rename yourself alecto_reborn. Then, when you’re tired of being a Fury, go into the business world, and settle down as dahlia_blue.

There have been times and places in the world where that sort of change was normal and expected, where having six names by the time you died was nothing unusual. (Read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms if you don’t believe me.) We’ve reinvented a form of that here, and I for one like it.

Celebrate your username! Tell me the story of why you chose it, whether you’re tempted to change it, and if so, what to.

last of the series

I only just barely managed to get it written in time, but I do have an SF Novelists post this month: “Woman =/= Body,” which is the last (for now) in my series about stereotypes of female characterization.

Same drill as usual; comment over there, no registration needed, though if you’re new I’ll have to dig your first comment out of the moderation queue, so don’t be alarmed if it doesn’t appear immediately.

rounding up the week

More collated linky, and then maybe next week I’ll get around to posting about Ada Lovelace and her wings.

Another guest-blog: me at Tiffany Trent’s LJ, talking about researching in order to get things wrong.

More “And Blow Them at the Moon”: the giveaway is ended (Scott will be picking a winner soon), but if you’d like to listen to the story, the podcast version is now available. I enjoyed this recording immensely — like, meant to just check it out, but ended up listening to the whole thing — because Scott arranged for a British reader, who does a marvelous job with the accents. He even does a Cornish accent for the knockers! Or something I presume is a Cornish accent, anyway! (I have no idea what they sound like. Which is Reason #17 why he’s a better reader for the story than I am.)

Further reviews of A Star Shall Fall: Mark Yon at SFF World, which he sums up as “An ambitious tale and a pleasing triumph. Wonderful.” His comments make me very happy. Watch out for borderline spoilers near the end of the review, though. Locus also had a very good review, though it isn’t online, but this bit is pretty quotable:

There’s a sly brilliance to Brennan’s ongoing tales where the city of London moves through history . . . A Star Shall Fall has room enough for intellect and emotion, great issues as well as an array of individuals and personalities: self-mocking wit, bluntness, and ardor among others. As fear of the Dragon mounts, humans and fae come together in powerful scenes that both reflect and find ways to transcend the gap between beings with such very different experiences of Life and Time.

Finally, another public appearance for me: I’ll be down in SoCal on October 23rd for the SCIBA Author Feast and Trade Show (yes, it’s really called that). SCIBA is an independent booksellers’ association, so this is an industry event rather than a fan one, but if any of you will be there, be sure to say hi!

Er, that’s only four things. Uh. Here, have cats in an IKEA store.

I hope five things really do make a post

I hope that one of these days I will regenerate enough brain to post about a bunch of things piling up in my head: Ada Lovelace, Babbage’s childhood attempt to summon the devil, the manga I’ve been reading lately, etc. But that day is not today — not if I want to also get my writing done at a reasonable hour — so let’s just get on to the reminders and such.

First, something unrelated to A Star Shall Fall: if you missed it over the holiday weekend, I’m the most recent guest on Jim Hines’ “First Book Friday” series, talking about Doppelganger.

Second, tchernabyelo, you’re the winner of the birthday giveaway! Since you clearly don’t need to be introduced to the Lymond Chronicles, you can have your pick of either Fire and Hemlock, or Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, or (if you already know and/or have both of those books) something else entirely, which we can discuss in e-mail. Drop me a line at marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com with your mailing address and your preference.

Third, kinderjedi is the winner of the Sirens discussion giveaway. Same instructions as above, except that your prize is a signed copy of A Star Shall Fall.

Fourth, if you envy kinderjedi their win, you have a until the end of the day Wednesday (where I think “end of the day” is defined in a vaguely East Coast U.S. fashion) to leave a comment on the BCS forum thread for “And Blow Them at the Moon,” after which I will pick one commenter to receive a signed copy of the book.

And fifth, if you’re curious about the book itself, Kelly at Fantasy Literature recently reviewed it, so you can see what she has to say.

Oh! Sixth! (Which makes this TOTALLY a post, even if the five six things individually are not all that substantial.) I will be doing a reading and signing at Borderlands Books on September 25th. That’s in San Francisco, for those who are anything like local, and it starts at 3 p.m. I hope to see some of you there!