Linky McLinkerson
Posted on September 22, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 31 Comments
Want some links to pursue? Sure you do. Here are some links I thought would be interesting/people have recently begged me to pimp/I’ve been paid big money for:
* The megafabulous Justine Larbalestier — who finished the third book in her series just before I finished mine — has an interesting interview with author John Greene on the subject of lying. Apparently Mr. Greene and Ms. Larbalestier both are in the practice of telling untruths. Shocked, shocked I am! Here’s a telling quote from Mr. Greene:
I’ve always felt that lying can be perfectly noble: Say, for instance, that Sarah (my wife) got into a duel, and her opponent cut off her nose (as happened to the astronomer Tycho Brahe). Okay, so if a half-conscious and noseless Sarah said to me, “Am I losing a lot of blood?” And I would say, “No,” because I’d want her to stay calm and wait for help to arrive. That’s an ethical lie, I think.
I wonder what people said to Tycho Brahe. He walked around with a brass nose. “No, Tycho, you can hardly tell you have a metal honker.” Poor Tycho. He smelled terrible.
* This is cool: Debut author Joe Schrieber’s book Chasing the Dead comes out next week and got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly (“You’re not going anywhere until you devour every one of its tension-filled pages” — nice!), but Schrieber isn’t happy just to give you a book — he’s also created an affiliated blog, also known as Chasing the Dead.
What’s cool about the blog is that it’s an entirely separate but related story, told in blog form, featuring a school teacher researching some terrible events in several New England towns, who gradually discovers (of course) that some weird and terrible things are going on. I’ve skimmed through the blog and it’s totally get-you-sucked-in-able, and that’s a good thing. Here’s the first entry — work your way forward from there. This is a very neat idea and I’ll be reading to see how it pans out.
* My friend Doselle Young suggests that I pimp Seriocity, which is the blog of television writer Kay Reindl, and you know what? He’s right, because in addition to being funny as hell in person (Kay and I totally bonded over Canadian hard rock bands of the 80s at Worldcon — Hey! Kay! Triumph 4evah!!), she’s got a really interesting blog full of wit and interestingbles. Doselle in particular wants to point out this entry on music and telvision and life and stuff. And he’s right again! It’s a great entry. Doselle, how does it feel to be right all the time?
* Jason Sizemore, the editor of sf magazine Apex Digest, has run into a bit of a financial scrape and is looking for new subscribers. Here’s the whole story; check it out and see if it convinces you to drop a Jackson for a year’s subscription. This is a paying story market, so SF writers, the story market you save may be your own.
* Apparently I’m not the only science fiction writer trying to make people jump around like monkeys in the hopes of snagging a book. David Louis Edelman is giving away five copies of his faboo debut Infoquake, just because he’s that way. I’d accuse him of stealing my idea, but he actually posted his contest before I did. So, um. Yeah. Anyway, it’s a fine, fine book, so why not try to get it for free?
* Look! A scholarly examination of Bacon Cat. Terrifying, it is.
Those are my links for you today. And now, I declare the comment thread to be a link-pimp: If there’s something you want folks to read or see out there on the crazy tubes, go ahead and drop a URL or link into a comment. Please do tell us what the link is first; blind links aren’t cool. Also, if you put more than one link in a post, it’ll likely be held for moderation. Don’t worry, I’ll be springing those comments on a regular basis.
Yes, you may pimp your own links, but, you know. Try to share the love, too.
Because Minnesota needs all the pimping it can get as the long frigid black expanse that is a northern winter rapidly approaches, I give you — Big Pimpin’ MN, ’06! Come see why people live in this godforsaken tundra!
Do you want to know the cool kids of MN? Do you want to know the low down on the best pizza, the best drinks, the best way to ignore the wind chill? Just go to Vita.mn!
Looking to see if Minnesotans can do art? Or maybe just looking for long loving shots of Minneapolis and some entertaining episodic drama/comedy? Check out Chasing Windmills. At the very least, you’ll get to see fine examples of lovely women from the great white North acting all dramatic and such.
Want to know the latest in MN politics/food/city life/crime? Check out MNSpeak. That way you can learn the Minnesotans are just as opinionated and argumentative as the rest of the country. We just wear thicker clothes and eat hotdish.
My wonderful husband has his first book of short stories out, one of which happens to be “The Maid”. Why should you care? Stephen King picked it as one of the five stories he chose to win his On Writing short story challenge. It’s really, really good. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my wonderful husband. :) Check it out!
http://www.lulu.com/content/366769
(Yes, it’s Lulu, but that’s because it’s coming out from a small, small press)
Besides helping out Apex Digest by buying a subscription, you can also enter
a raffle to win one of dozens of fabulous prizes.
If you are interested in daschunds, knitting, rock and roll, and the Mariners you should check out the best daschund, knitting, rock and roll and the Mariners blog on the web. http://sissyvette.blogspot.com/
“Poor Tycho. He smelled terrible.”
If you never wrote another word, I’d revere you for that.
O.K., Well think highly of you.
Er…..I laughed.
If you are a fan of David Weber or Elizabeth Moon, you might want to check out The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack Campbell. It’s a really tense military SF novel, with both great fleet tactics and interesting characters.
I wrote a review of it here.
“the cat/bacon mashup arena”
I love this world!
To all those Whatever punk rockers out there, Yellow Arrow has put up a walking guide to the Washington D.C punk scene here .
Haven’t tried it yet (I live in the area) but it looks interesting.
Chris Gerrib
Thanks, I’m a big fan of both and I’m in the unusal situation of being in the middle of a book I may not be able to finish (I think 3rd time in my life), and am going to the bookstore later today to rectify this deplorable condition.
Hm. Some time ago I mentioned the fake commercial for Soylent Green Baby Food I did for a science fiction convention. That was a year ago. This year? Cthulhu’s Clues. Caution, non-auto-loading Flash video! Safe for work, but very wrong nonetheless.
http://granades.com/2006/09/06/what-i-did-on-my-dragoncon-vacation/
That’s the self-pimpage. For the link love, have you been reading the Scientific Activist? You haven’t? Shame on you. Ph.D. student Nick Anthis discusses the things that happen at the intersection of science and politics. Hie thee hence to
http://www.scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/
Pimping, eh?
Well, if you would be so kind in the next round, please pimp the silk cased-and-covered, signed, numbered, limited, ultra-luxury edition of “Greetings from Lake Wu”.
As per our informal agreement at LACon, I will send you half a roll of Rolaids and not circulate the pictures of you in the official John W. Campbell fur shorts.
Oh, sure, the nose, it’s always about the nose. What does a rich Dane have to do to get some props for Jepp, the dwarf jester he kept under his banquet table?
The inaugural issue of Daikaijuzine, a new webzine of speculative fiction, has just been posted. Go check it out!
“Poor Tycho. He smelled terrible.”
Not pimpery, but a serious question: does the removal of the nose alter your ability to smell? And by how much?
It seems obvious at first blush that it should, but how much of our sense of smell involves receptors that are located inside the nose, as opposed to in the sinus cavities and other places interior to the skull?
Hitherbee Dragons:
http://imago.hitherby.com/
Odd, little gems of stories.
This guy is insanely funny and a regular on Metafilter. Jonson blog http://jonson.wordpress.com/.
I’ve had to clean off my monitor on more than one occassion from the mist of spewed coke that sprayed out of my big, fat head.
First the self-pimpery: I was at Dodger Stadium for that historic comeback last Monday evening and, yes, stayed all the way through. ;) Here’s my recounting of the amazing night:
11-10.
And for the linking, from REBAR, the folks who brought you PARK(ing) — turning a parking space into a nice park until the meter runs out — came yesterday’s PARK(ing) Day.
Dwight Brown:
“does the removal of the nose alter your ability to smell? And by how much?”
The organs that sense odors are in the Olfactory epithelium, which rests behind and above the nose in the nasal cavity, so it should still be possible to smell if your nose were removed. However, trauma to the nose may also affect the nasal cavity, so depending on how you lose your nose, you may have damage to your sense of smell.
Another funny author’s blog — Chris Dolley writes in his blog mostly about his life as an expat brit in France, but does it in a style that’ll have your sides splitting. Read sans drinkage, or expect to have to clean your monitor afterward.
http://chrisdolley.livejournal.com/
The also-sweet thing about CHASING THE DEAD is that it was the first aquisition of a talented young editor at Ballantine named Keith Clayton. He let me read that manuscript about eighteen months ago and – after it scared the crap out of me and kept me from sleeping for a week – I think I told about a hundred people how great it was. Anyway, just wanted to give props to Keith. :-)
Re: scholarly treatise:
He was kidding, right?
Re: link pimpage
See Cthulu eat little people
Damn:
http://www.dreamlandtoyworks.com
for the Cthulu thing
Hmm. The post full of links I posted earlier today hasn’t shown up. Have I been spam-filed?
I might have accidentally deleted it, Harry. I’ll check. Sorry if I did.
Update: Yeah, I must have deleted it. I suck.
Spider Robinson has finished a novel based upon an outline found in Robert A. Heinlein’s papers called Variable Star. You can read several chapters online.
And for the self-pimpage, a CafePress store where you can get t-shirts and other things with the rocket-ship-and-atom graphic used by libraries to label science fiction books.
La Gringa totally called it — in the big donut-box of editors, Keith Clayton’s the fresh one with all the sprinkles. Not only did he stick his neck waaay out for CHASING, he showed it to a bunch of people and freaked ’em all out. Then he told me what sucked about it and how to make it better. Clayton/Toner_Low in ’08.
You can search every last tube & you’ll be hard pressed to find a site as full of interestingness as Robin Miller (co-creator of Myst)’s Republic of Tinselman blog.
John, no biggie. Maybe I can reconstruct it tomorrow.
I am currently extremely enthused about The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow. I even convinced a customer to buy it today without even having finished it myself. And we don’t even have the book at my store! But he was buying Newton’s Principia Mathematica and The Last Witchfinder is narrated by said Principia and well, I just effervesced. He seemed excited and not frightened though! Yay!
Right, so, it’s a really really good book and I am amazed that something I can’t describe in such a way so that it sounds like it could work works So Very Well Indeed.
“Poor Tycho. He smelled terrible.”
I bet he smelled a lot worse after his bladder exploded (because he felt it would be rude to excuse himself from the banquet he was attending, evidently) and took 11 days to die.
Or so says Wikipedia.
I don’t know if I should thank you or curse you for your link to Chasing the Dead. I lost a lot of sleep checking it out, and now I am afraid of the dark, abandoned houses, and little kids.
Thanks also for the Seriocity link, I’ll be vistiing there more often.
Again thanks for putting Agent to the Stars on the internet, it was a fantastic read, and I found myself laughing out loud, inside an abandoned house, in the dark. Damn kids.