Marie Brennan's Blog, page 261

Now on Goodreads!

I've just set myself up on Goodreads, including a syndication of my LJ here. It's something I've meant to do for a while, and now I've got it up and rolling, so I'm pretty happy.

deathslogging to 50K

Remember back at the beginning of May, when I was stuck on the 15K treadmill? I had to replace some of Eliza's scenes, so I would put in a full day's work of writing, then paste it into place and discover my wordcount had essentially not changed.

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder, a little bit worse.

Dead Rick also needed a lot of scene replacements. (This is apparently my New Method of novel-writing. I want my Old Method back.) I could't really afford to stop dead on for...

not quite too late

You may recall hearing about Peter Watts (Canadian scientist and science fiction author) being beaten and arrested at the U.S. border. If not, well, go here for references that will tell you what happened.

My primary reason for that link, though, is the fundraiser Cat Sparks is setting up. One of Watts' short stories is up for a Hugo this year, and since (as a convicted felon) he can't attend future conventions on U.S. soil, it would be especially nice if he could attend WorldCon in Australi...

religion in SF linkage

I've had this open in a tab for long enough that I no longer remember who I got the link from, but: back in 2009, the blog Only a Game did a series of posts on religion in various science fiction texts. Not invented religions, but real-world faiths (though sometimes in future-adapted forms), and the ways in which books or TV shows or movies either represent the practice of faith, or grapple with the concepts behind those faiths.

The series starts here with an introduction (which as a second p...

music lists

arielstarshadow , a while ago -- where "a while" is "about six months" -- you mentioned you'd be interested in seeing my playlists for the Onyx Court books, the stuff I had on shuffle while writing, that the soundtracks got built out of. Well, since I recently found myself with occasion to mail those playlists to someone, I figured I might as well go ahead and put them up on my website. The Midnight playlists are here, and the Ashes playlists are here.

They're just .txt files, and moderately ...

TV musings: Bones

This show is a good example of the Netflix Effect: there are other things I'm more interested in watching, but they're not available as streaming video, and Bones is. Laziness being a mighty thing, I end up watching the one that is more easily available. (This has its limits; I've streamed things where I've watched an episode or two -- or in one case, five minutes -- and promptly given up. But if a show is decent, and also immediately available, it wins.)

Anyway, I wanted to talk a bit abou...

Manute Bol

I don't have a lot to say about this. I don't really follow the world of sports -- basketball or otherwise -- so I'd never heard of Manute Bol until that Slacktivist piece and another article, posted just a little while before he died. (Sadly, I lost the link for that one; it included more in the way of quotes from Bol, giving his feelings on basketball and the Sudan and the intersection of the two).

But I wanted to post this because I don't get the impression many people knew more than a pa...

game ideas I don't have time to run

Changelings (in the Changeling: The Dreaming sense) strike back against the Banality of the modern world by adapting to a mythology modern Americans are prepared to believe in:

They frame themselves as superheroes.

Wind Runner to fly, Flicker Flash to teleport, Quicksilver for super-speed . . . Skycraft to throw lightning, Pyretics to throw fire . . . the troll birthright for super-strength . . . you can't duplicate every power ever given to superheroes in the comics, but you don't have to. Yo...

short-notice research!

Apparently I need to Know Stuff about the early history of photography for the Victorian book. Any buffs out there who might know a good book I could read about it? I pretty much only care about nineteenth-century technology; later developments are less relevant for my purposes.

Hollywood Plays It Safe

A lot of people rant about the fact that all Hollywood seems to be putting out these days are sequels, adaptations, and remakes. While there's a grain of truth to that, I decided recently that I'm going to stop being angry at them for it -- for the simple reason that if I were in their shoes, I'd probably do the same.

Because making a movie is expensive. Sure, if your story is about hipster twentysomethings having relationship dysfunction, or a suburban family gathering for the holidays, the...