The Point at Which the Villain Begins the Monologue, Revealing His Dastardly Plan
Posted on March 11, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
Replace “villain” with “Patrick Nielsen Hayden,” “the monologue” with “blogging on Making Light” and “his dastardly plan” with “what’s up with the upcoming Tor.Com site,” and you’ve got some idea of what’s going on here.
For those of you confused by so many quotation marks, PNH is explaining why Tor is giving away so many free eBooks recently, and how you can be part of it.
Yes, you. Don’t look over your shoulder, man. We’re having a conversation, you and me. What I’m saying is that the plan for Tor.Com is pretty damn cool.
Yes, I’ve known about all this for a while.
Yes, I’m involved in a more than tangential way.
Bwa ha ha ha ha hah ha.
Hmmm, that last sentence was missing something. Oh yes:
“!!!”
There we go.
I just knew that something GOOD was going to happen, and I am glad to see that it is happening to a site that can string more than two words togeather and be able to paint a picture in my mind.
Alot like yours John.
Have a Good Day
At some point I trust someone will put this on the lower shelf for guys like me.
Yes I read it. I read the fan terms article too. I’m not sure just what a numbered fandom is or how the “focal point” fanzine fits in.
I’ve got ideas but I’m sure there will soon be a lot of people who are smarter than me going on about this at length.
I love it – if the readers don’t pay the publishing industry’s bills, maybe Times Warner (nice transition from Tor to Times Warner there – actually, it wasn’t an example of incluing) can at least have the ungrateful readers provide some useful data to monetize, along with doing a good amount of the test marketing themselves.
I could quote a Who song, but why bother?
Besides, in such a win/win world, why notice how the money flows?
Just one word here, people – Phorm. Read about it – I’m pretty sure that Times Warner knows their telephone number, which is convenient with all that AOL synergy just laying around, and none of that EU data privacy regulation hindering them in the U.S.
#2, stoolpigeon — “Lower shelf” notwithstanding, Whatever readers such as yourself are perfectly welcome to sign up for the beta phase by sending email to tor.betatest@gmail.com. I always thought of John’s blog as top-shelf, myself…
The “focal point fanzine” stuff was deep historical irony. Don’t tie yourself in knots trying to make sense of it.
not_scottbot:
You’re being a little incomprehensible, there. What are you actually attempting to say?
Stool Pigeon:
When you go and read Making Light, you become a Making Light reader, and thus able to apply for the beta test. Which is why I linked there. Of course, PNH has dropped the beta-test application e-mail link here in this thread, too. Use it! Use it, I say!
John, my secret decoder ring says that having gotten his ass and/or hat handed to him over at Slacktivist by people who actually value community more than trolling cleverness, not_scottbot is reestablishing his coolness by sneering at other efforts at community. In this case, since there’s a business aspect, that must of course be what it’s really all about and we are but pawns in the great game of life. Or Life, or Careers, or something.
Athena said he looks like Flanders, but perhaps he’s a different cartoon character. He just led us to the underpants gnomes so doesn’t make him Tweek?
“Aaah! Deadlines! Too much pressure!”
I think not_scottbot is saying it’s all part of a secret plot to get personal information about people so they can sell ads to them.
Strech:
Well, he doesn’t have sign up. That’s pretty simple.
As I so eloquently said over on Making Light:
Cool.
P.S. In reference to the spreading infection from not_scottbot from Slactivist: Darn it, it’s like he’s starting to follow me around, from there to Making Light, to here. I swear, I didn’t think I was the contagious one!
John.
Must tell secrets.
Or the Bacon shall be cooked!
MMM… Have signed up at tor.betatest@gmail.com.
have also signed up at http://www.tor.com/
Just finished two books of yours (I received them from Amazon yesterday). Great reads. While some people compare you to Heinlein, I see your writing as much less right-wing than he ever was.
Of course, coming from outside the US, right-wing / left-wing are skewed differently to the US – Even Obama would be considered Right wing / centrist in My country :)
Ok, I wrote a 10,000 line Java program to implement the text-replacement algorithm you spelled out, above. Results here: http://clevermonkey.org/index.html?wl_mode=more&wl_eid=543