Monthly Archives: February 2009

What’s “The Scalzi Rule”?

At the Potlach science fiction convention, they’re having a panel about “The Scalzi Rule” — which was a bit of a surprise to me, since I didn’t know there was a “Scalzi Rule,” and if there is one, what it might possibly be. As it turns out, it relates to this, regarding audience participation at […]

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The Big Idea: Daniel Fox

To wrap up this Week O’ Big Ideas, here’s Daniel Fox with Dragon in Chains. They say travel broadens the mind, but for Fox it did rather more than that: It gave him an idea and an inspiration to write about the place to which he’d traveled, one that in this case has paid off […]

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Nebula Award Nominees, 2009

It’s that time again. Here are this year’s nominees for the Nebula Awards, one of the two big awards in SF (the other, of course, being the Hugo): Novels Little Brother – Doctorow, Cory (Tor, Apr08) Powers – Le Guin, Ursula K. (Harcourt, Sep07) Cauldron – McDevitt, Jack (Ace, Nov07) Brasyl – McDonald, Ian (Pyr, […]

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The Panic About Kindle’s Text to Speech: Still Silly

This article attempts to explain why my and some other authors’ sanguine attitude toward the new Kindle’s Text-to-Speech capability is misguided (or more, “right response, incorrect reasoning”); in essence the argument is that we’re only looking at how computerized voice reading sounds now, as opposed to how it will sound in the future, when it’ll […]

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Comrades! The Cake Ration Has Been Increased to 20 Grams!

Presented for your oooohing and aaaahing, the cake my daughter made, and, clearly, decorated, last night. It is helpfully subtitled so that you may know your appropriate response to it. Feel free to respond thusly at your leisure. Your leisure begins NOW. Also, the first person who comments “the cake is a lie!” or some […]

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Perfect Timing

Delightfully apropos to yesterday’s entry on authors (and the entry on pissy fans a couple days before that), Patrick Rothfuss updates all and sundry on the status of his second novel. Also, Justine Larbalestier refutes one of my assertions in yesterday’s entry, for which she will no doubt be punished by our robot overlords.

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The Big Idea: Brian Evenson

On the list of “two great tastes that go together,” the genres “detective mystery” and “religious fiction” might not be on the top of your list of things to combine — but then, you’re probably not Brian Evenson, whose latest novel Last Days does just that, bringing a former detective together with a very odd […]

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10 Things to Remember About Authors

Because it appears someone needs to say these things out loud, some thoughts, for the consideration of readers, about authors, particularly novelists. Warning: This is long. 1. Authors aren’t machines: Which is to say, we do not reliably and through a purely mechanical process extrude Novel-Length Textual Product with Extra Added Plot and Character Flavors™ […]

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Why One Keeps Archives

Because seven years after I wrote it, “I Hate Your Politics” is at the moment the most visited part of the site. And in fact this does not surprise me at all; on any given day “Being Poor” or my writing advice to teens is probably in the top ten of entries visited here, and […]

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Why Star Wars in 3D?

In this week’s AMC column, I crawl into the brain of George Lucas (I know: eeeeew) and find out just why it is he intends to re-release the Star Wars films, this time in 3D. No, it’s not just for the money. It involves David O. Selznick. And Scarlett O’Hara. No, seriously. You’ll just have […]

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The Big Idea: Paul Melko

Our informal Week ‘O Big Ideas continues today with an appearance by Paul Melko, member of the Ohio SF/F Cabal (motto: “There’s more of us than you think”), whose latest multiverse-hopping book The Walls of the Universe is getting the sort of starred reviews (“With imagination and sympathy, Melko makes the journey genuinely exciting” — […]

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The Speech Comment Thread

Here you go. Have fun talking about it. My thoughts, briefly: Good speech, done well. But then, I’m a sucker for a president who says, in essence, “You know all that crap everyone else kept putting off? Yeah, now we’ll be dealing with it.” Jesus Christ amen, man. I wouldn’t complain if I got to […]

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Charlie Stross Offers You a Frosty Tumbler Full of Ice-Cold Perspective

Relating specifically to the trouble authors have with multi-volume epic series, and the finishing thereof. Will you quaff this heady elixr? If you’re one of those pulling a long face about GRRM being “late” on his next book, you should. And everyone else will get a nice POV on a specific writing issue. Go now.

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The Big Idea: Catherynne Valente

Today begins a very busy week of Big Ideas here at Whatever — I’ll be dropping in a new Big Idea every day between now and Friday, because, you know what, I don’t think you’re reading quite enough these days, do you? Yeah, see, that’s what I thought. And to start us off, here’s one […]

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Pissy Fans

My attention has been drawn to George RR Martin’s recent posting on his LiveJournal, in which he notes that some of his fans have begun to get testy that Dance With Dragons, the next installment of his fantasy series, is not already on their table to be read, and that they think he’s spending too […]

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Various and Sundry, 2/23/09

Bits and pieces and things and stuff: * First, a picture of me and the bride whom I married this weekend (to someone else, to be clear), Emily Weise-King: Emily and I have known each other for the better part of a decade; she and I were part of that first generation of bloggers (“online […]

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