© 2003-2006 David Moles

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Shining hope for the future

3 o'clock, July 17, 2003

Yes, I’m late. Plenty of crazy news to report — okay, I’m lying; plenty of stuff that I could probably work up into a log entry with a little spin doctoring — but between the day job and the heat wave (ducks to avoid well-deserved smack from Greg) I haven’t been up to doing it right.

Plus, I’ve rediscovered my enthusiasm for the space opera, and I’ve been spending most of my free time getting my detailed synopsis to cover the parts I haven’t written yet as well as the parts I have, so that when I get to those parts I won’t be able to get off the book — er, hook (Freudian slip there) — by saying “But the plot makes no sense!!!”

Anyway; Brandon’s been bitching about the poor organization of my bibliography, and I’ve got some reviews I want to excerpt, so look for an update to the official home page some time this weekend. Meanwhile, if you need something to read, go read this Laurel Wellman article about how San Francisco’s been typecast by Hollywood.

Even San Francisco-set science fiction tends toward the utopian side of the board; let us not forget that the city is home to Starfleet Academy, and by extension an entire universe populated by active people in stretchy garments who can obtain specialty coffee drinks of precisely the temperature and composition they desire merely by speaking a command. Clearly, the rest of the world needs to believe in a manifest destiny that involves the Northern California lifestyle, and perhaps it is not our role to deprive others of such shining hope for the future.

Oh, and if you’re in Seattle this weekend and you’re looking for something to do Saturday afternoon, drop by the Buddhist Temple Bon Odori festival. Me and my colleagues from Cascade Kendo Kai will be putting on a demonstration of Japanese swordfighting (a.k.a. “hitting people with sticks”, as Lara likes to call it) at 4 o’clock. Sharp.

Comments

It's true - your bib is, um, interestingly organized.

I recommend listing by word count. Or perhaps by the technology level displayed in the story, with alphabetizing by publisher's hometown for the next subdivision.

Anything, really, just so long as it's consistent.

—— Jon Hansen, 4:22 PM, Thursday, July 17, 2003

It’s inverse chronological order by date of sale, but I realize that may not actually help anybody. :)

Seriously, you’re a librarian and Brandon’s training to be a librarian — I’ll be happy to take advice from both of you on what to include there and how to organize it. (You listening, B?)

—— David Moles, 4:29 PM, Thursday, July 17, 2003

Well, you can use any system you like, as long as you're consistent about it and it can be determined from the info presented. That's really all they teach us in library school: consistency of galactic proportions. Date of sale would work nicely, as long as we could look at the list and see when each sale happened.

As it is, you can't go wrong with the classic major divisions of fiction/nonfiction/poetry/pop songs/graphic novels/miscellaneous, alphabetized by title within, and I bet that's what your bud wants.

The only question I ever really had about your bib was the use of the Roman numerals. Oh sure, they looked cool, but I kept expecting to be able to click on one and have it break down the story for me by theme, characters, setting, etc.

—— Jon Hansen, 5:43 PM, Thursday, July 17, 2003

I didn't like the Roman numerals either, nor the truncation of the pub links by the table border. I wanted the reviews to be added, and also a link to where I could get a copy of the pubs your stories have appeared in.

I think your new design looks better. I agree with Jon that in the future you'll need to think about meaningful subdivisions...of course those will become apparent after a few more sales.

—— brandon, 4:56 PM, Sunday, July 20, 2003