Chrononautic Log

January 31, 2004

As of this morning: 66 contributors, 383,000 words.

Best yet: the cover letter advertising “I have followed the guidelines”, attached to a manuscript full of single-spaced Helvetica. To be fair, the writer’s probably talking about abbreviated guidelines published in some market newsletter, but still, it made me laugh.

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January 29, 2004

What I need is the literary equivalent of these:

WALLY WOOD’S 22 PANELS THAT ALWAYS WORK

or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!

(Via BoingBoing.)

Comments (3)

Honest.

I must hear some version of this spiel once a month, generally from some self-consciously leftie male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two desperate to prove his authenticity, present his down-with-the-people, fuck-the-Man bona fides. This despite the fact that Ikea was explicitly founded on the premise of providing well-designed furniture to the masses at affordable prices — a premise that the company still largely delivers on. (If I have a quibble, it’s with quality, not price.)

You know what? I’m done with it. If your life is mediocre, I promise you, Ingvar Kamprad didn't make it that way. You did. And if you’re so desperate for your own soixante-huit moment that you can sit there with a straight face and tell me that you’re being oppressed by flat-packable pine furniture with goofy pseudo-Scandinavian names, I’d advise you to spend a few days working with child slaves in the Sudan, or something.

And Starbucks:

. . . I am also old enough to remember the swill that Americans drank and were pleased to call “coffee” before Howard Schultz swept down out of his damp PNW redoubt and clusterbombed us with franchises. It tasted like soggy cardboard, it was served in chipped diner porcelain that itself generally tasted of soap, and most importantly, with a very few exceptions, it was all you could get anywhere.

 . . .The dynamic at work in both cases is one many of us might recognize from bad relationships: when a deeply wounded person suffering from low self-esteem finally fights back against the various agents of their distress, very often it’s the closest, most sympathetic soft target they lash out at first, in defiance of all logic (or justice).

(Adam Greenfield, via BoingBoing.)

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January 28, 2004

I should be at practice, I should be writing, I should be coming up with answers to questions four and five — I should be doing a lot of things, but instead, I’m telling you: If you’re eligible to nominate for the Hugos, for “Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form,” nominate Gollum’s MTV acceptance speech.

You know it’s the right thing to do.

Comments (2)

January 23, 2004

January 20, 2003 - January 19, 2004. Observations on

• art: 87.
• politics: 47.
• life: 37.
• madness: 26.
• economics: 17.
• science: 19.
• this weblog: 14.
• history: 10.
• religion: 7.
• nature: 3.
• voodoo: 1.

Time flies when you’re having fun.

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As of last night, 43 submissions, 245,000 words. Less peeved by the continued appearance of Times New Roman (which seems to be approaching the status of an “alternative” standard MS format, despite its inferior readability, probably on account of having pretty close to the same word count as Courier when spaced widely enough) than by the one or two people who have not only used non-standard formatting but neglected to provide a word count.

Just to be clear, none of these MSS are going to be read, let alone accepted or rejected, until late February. And everything that gets in by the deadline (February 16th) will be on an equal footing. (For that matter, if it’s postmarked February 16th and gets in by Thursday the 19th, it’ll probably still make it.) So if you haven’t submitted anything to us yet, there’s still plenty of time.

Comments (2)

January 21, 2004

From the ever-trenchant Nick Mamatas, starting with American Idol and moving on to vanity publishing.:

Why not just say that they aren’t ready for a high-level competition and to keep practicing? Well, the answer is easy: because they have already failed. These people have failed to look reality square in the face and take the measure of their own talents and skills. In any job with a star system (only a few people earn lots of money/status; hundreds of thousands of others make nothing or almost nothing), knowing one’s level and endeavoring to improve is not optional. It has to be the first thing you do.

Amen.

If you want to depress yourself, cross-reference this with recent research on incompetence and inflated self-assessments.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

(Courtesy of Making Light.)

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January 20, 2004

As of Friday morning when I last had time to check the PO box (plus one e-sub from overseas, received Saturday): Twenty-nine submissions, 149,000 words. New depths of failure to observe the manuscript formatting guidelines.

I note in passing that “Courier”, at least on my TiBook running OS X 10.3, appears to be much darker than “Courier New”. It also has rather different metrics. Maybe next time I’ll go e-subs only, and reformat everything . . .

Comments (9)

January 15, 2004

No, really.

Itinerary:

• Day 1 — Depart your Hometown to Moscow.
• Day 2 — Arrive in Moscow. Transfer to Hotel Russia. Sightseeing Moscow. Overnight in Hotel Russia front of St. Basil's.
• Day 3 — Sightseeing Moscow in morning. Afternoon flight to Murmansk. Board Yamal Icebreaker. Overnight aboard Yamal.
• Days 4-7 — Enroute to North Pole
• Day 8 — Spend day at the North Pole
• Days 9-11 — Enroute to Inner Continent
• Days 12-14 — Travel up Hiddekel River to City of Jehu.
• Days 15-16 — Monorail trip to City of Eden to visit Palace of the King of the Inner World
• Days 17-18 — Monorail trip back to City of Jehu
• Days 19-23 — Enroute from City of Jehu back to Murmansk.
• Day 24 — Flight Murmansk to Moscow. Connecting flight back to your hometown.

*Please note that if we are unable to find the Polar opening, we will be returning via the New Siberian Islands to visit skeleton remains of exotic animals thought to originate from Inner Earth.

I’m not optimistic about the Jehu-Eden Monorail, or for that matter about the Kingdom of the Inner World in general. I’ve read a bit about the Hollow Earth, and from what I’ve heard it’s mostly full of savages, prehistoric monsters and man-eating giant ants. Let’s hope they’re prepared.

(Courtesy of Jay Lake.)

Comments (4)

January 13, 2004

Back in November or so, someone who contacted me after reading one of my stories on Strange Horizons sent me a story (about androids and dysfunctional relationships, as I recall), which I agreed to give feedback on. I seem to have lost the story, the email, and the author’s name. If you’re the author, and you’re still interested in getting some feedback, could you send it to me again? Sorry about that.

Comments (2)

This post on John Savage’s Scrivener’s Error, is (at least on my browser) nearly impossible to read on account of inadequate leading, but once deciphered, it makes a useful point:

• If the publisher pays you, and the publisher owns the books, that’s traditional publishing.
• If you pay the publisher, and you own the books, that’s self-publishing.
• If you pay the publisher, and the publisher owns the books, that’s vanity publishing.

If the publisher pays you, and you own the books, good on ‘yer, mate — you’ve discovered Bizarro World.

(Courtesy of the Making Light sidebar.)

Comments (10)

January 11, 2004

I can’t stress this enough:

Times New Roman is not a monospace font.

(If you feel singled out, don’t — it’s not just you.)

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Update: Other than that, I should say, it’s looking pretty good. As of yesterday afternoon, twenty-three submissions, totalling just over 100,000 words.

Comments (18)

January 9, 2004

I don’t know what a Hades Palmetto Cationic Entry Fuse is, or does, but I’m not putting anything with a name like that anywhere near . . . er, the part of my body that the spammer who used that subject line seems to think could use one.

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Thanks to its reaching the Nebula preliminary ballot, Greg van Eekhout’s excellent “Will You Be An Astronaut?” is now available on the F&SF web site. This is one of the best stories I’ve read in quite some time; even if the Nebula voters don’t get around to reading it, you should.

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January 8, 2004

Apparently in 1998 the city of Woking installed a full-size Martian fighting machine to commemorate the 100th anniversary of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

Figure 1. The Woking Martian

No word yet on whether Grover’s Mill is planning anything for 2038, but the US Army has just doled out $2 million-plus in grants for the development of a gasoline-powered mechanical dog.

Figure 1. Boston Dynamics “Big Dog”

Fossil-fuel robots to fight over oilfields — I have to admit that in this twenty-first century, that’s starting to look like a very twenty-first-century idea.

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January 7, 2004

The snow turned to rain some time during the night. It’s now a balmy 32° sharp.

Also, before this started happening, I made it down the hill to check the Zeppelin P.O. box, and I guess neither snow nor rain nor ice nor sleet nor disabled articulated buses wrapped around light poles stay the Night Mail from the swift completion of its appointed rounds, because in the box were half a dozen manuscripts.

At least, manuscripts is what I assume they are.

Only one of them was from someone I’d heard of, and that from someone I’ve never met nor corresponded with. That bodes well, I think.

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January 6, 2004

Leaving the damp, mist-haunted shores of . . . New York, our hero returns to the Emerald City, where . . . it’s currently 25° and snowing.

It’s cool, though. It means I can feel smug about wearing my Minneapolis-rated rabbit-fur hat.

New York was a blast, and it’s just as well the Apple borrowed the Emerald City’s weather — less time bitching about frostbitten ears and toes, more time talking shop with Andy and with Deb, drinking with Brandon and Fran, relaxing in Dad’s living room . . . standing in line with several million screaming children in front of the American Museum of Natural History. Can’t win ’em all.

Wow, the guy across the street actually has an ice scraper. Do I feel underequipped.

(Then there’s this suggested list of winter supplies, just received from Andy:

• one can of windigo-repellent
• one blood-soaked parka (for luck)
• one set of German sand-goggles
• one can of black beans
• one book of short stories by Kawabata Yasunari
• one silk glove
• one bottle of absinthe
• one portable hand-held slide-projector of Manet’s winter impressions

Hmm. Wonder whether I can get all that at REI — and whether they deliver.)

Meanwhile, I’ve received two or three overseas electronic submissions for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, but as yet no paper slush in the P.O. box, just scam artists trying to sell me credit-card processing services. I’d get on y’all’s case about waiting to submit till the last minute, except that I’d probably be doing the same thing.

Comments (6)