Lois McMaster Bujold's Blog, page 67
October 6, 2013
A Reader's Companion to A Civil Campaign free online
It's been a while since I mentioned this bit of arcane fun...
http://www.dendarii.com/accc.html
Due to, among other things, the complexity of its multiple authorings, it's not something that can be commercially published, so it is given away instead.
Ta, L.
http://www.dendarii.com/accc.html
Due to, among other things, the complexity of its multiple authorings, it's not something that can be commercially published, so it is given away instead.
Ta, L.
September 24, 2013
LMB at Baltimore Book Festival this weekend 9/27 - 9/29
http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/...
http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/...
Finalizing my schedule:
FRIDAY, 9/27/2013
6:00-7:00 pm Signing at SFWA tent
SATURDAY, 9/28/2013
12:00 pm: The Baltimore Science Fiction Society Reading Series. I will read last, at about 1:00 pm
2:00-3:00 pm Interview with Catherine Asaro at Literary Salon pavilion.
3:00 pm Signing at Literary tent.
6:30-7:30 SFWA Reception.
(Sunday, I go home, but you won't need to; still lots of stuff on offer.)
Ta, L.
http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/...
Finalizing my schedule:
FRIDAY, 9/27/2013
6:00-7:00 pm Signing at SFWA tent
SATURDAY, 9/28/2013
12:00 pm: The Baltimore Science Fiction Society Reading Series. I will read last, at about 1:00 pm
2:00-3:00 pm Interview with Catherine Asaro at Literary Salon pavilion.
3:00 pm Signing at Literary tent.
6:30-7:30 SFWA Reception.
(Sunday, I go home, but you won't need to; still lots of stuff on offer.)
Ta, L.
September 20, 2013
SIDELINES again
Some new people may have drifted in since I last mentioned this, my 2013 nonfiction e-book:
It was my secret hope that this would obviate further requests for me to talk/write about writing, since it contains pretty much all I have to say on the subject; I could just point mutely. I'm not sure this plan is going to work out, but there you go.
Available from iPad/iTunes, Nook, and Amazon Kindle stores.
Reviews encouraged, since it's not going to get much other promotion.
Ta, L.
It was my secret hope that this would obviate further requests for me to talk/write about writing, since it contains pretty much all I have to say on the subject; I could just point mutely. I'm not sure this plan is going to work out, but there you go.
Available from iPad/iTunes, Nook, and Amazon Kindle stores.
Reviews encouraged, since it's not going to get much other promotion.
Ta, L.
September 15, 2013
Blackstone Audio note - CVA MP3 on-sale
A sharp-eyed fan notes to me:
"I just happened to notice, while perusing the "overstock sale" listing at
Blackstone that CVA (MP3 CD format) is available for $12.95.
http://www.blackstoneaudio.com/docs/c... "
(This .pdf was slow to load for me, but contained lots of information once it arrived.)
This is the (old-fashioned already?!) physical media, not the much more popular e-file download sold through Downpour.com
http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch...
Downpour.com is the revamped direct-download-sales arm of Blackstone Audiobooks; they seem to have separated this out from their physical media sales, which are mainly to libraries these days, and still under the old Blackstone name. I have no idea what behind-the-scenes corporate shuffle prompted all of this rebranding, but good luck to 'em. (Direct downloads are the overwhelming majority of my audiobook sales.)
Ta, L.
"I just happened to notice, while perusing the "overstock sale" listing at
Blackstone that CVA (MP3 CD format) is available for $12.95.
http://www.blackstoneaudio.com/docs/c... "
(This .pdf was slow to load for me, but contained lots of information once it arrived.)
This is the (old-fashioned already?!) physical media, not the much more popular e-file download sold through Downpour.com
http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch...
Downpour.com is the revamped direct-download-sales arm of Blackstone Audiobooks; they seem to have separated this out from their physical media sales, which are mainly to libraries these days, and still under the old Blackstone name. I have no idea what behind-the-scenes corporate shuffle prompted all of this rebranding, but good luck to 'em. (Direct downloads are the overwhelming majority of my audiobook sales.)
Ta, L.
September 13, 2013
Classics of Science Fiction -- the real deal...
Because I live under a rock, I missed this when it launched, but anyone interested in the history of the field (or just wild reading experiences) should take note: my old buddy Ron Miller has been editing a series of really early SF for Baen e-reprint. The list so far is here:
http://www.baenebooks.com/s-307-ron-m...
I see Baen also offers some bargain bundles of same.
I read (by Ron's recommendation, if I recall correctly) John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds back in college, where I had to check out the sole copy from the OSU library's rare books room, with oaths of fealty. In many cases, these books will not only bend your mind with visions of the future, but also with glimpses into our past, quite as alien.
There is far more to the fields of fantasy and science fiction writing, going back farther, than the short list of 3 or 4 authors' names that everyone hears. (Nobody writes in a vacuum, despite the way it seems from how books are taught in schools.)
Ta, L.
http://www.baenebooks.com/s-307-ron-m...
I see Baen also offers some bargain bundles of same.
I read (by Ron's recommendation, if I recall correctly) John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds back in college, where I had to check out the sole copy from the OSU library's rare books room, with oaths of fealty. In many cases, these books will not only bend your mind with visions of the future, but also with glimpses into our past, quite as alien.
There is far more to the fields of fantasy and science fiction writing, going back farther, than the short list of 3 or 4 authors' names that everyone hears. (Nobody writes in a vacuum, despite the way it seems from how books are taught in schools.)
Ta, L.
September 10, 2013
Starship SofaCon video podcast is up
It seems I have a whole concatenation of interviews to report at once, which is going to make some of them seem awfully repetitive, I suspect. But we did this a bit earlier in the summer...
http://sofacon.org/sofacon-2013/
My first venture into video podcasting, right from my own home office. No airplanes, yay! I was able to have a couple of practice sessions in advance with Tony and Amy to work out the worst bugs.
I have not actually listened to the whole thing yet myself, though I did a quick review of my own schtick. I do want to listen to Amy's "history of SF" section soon, and the Forbidden Planet section if they finally managed to make contact with South Africa.
I am not sure if it is actually any more useful, if one only has talking heads, to add the visuals atop the audio, but I imagine the form will be developed as it goes along. Anyway, a good experience.
Ta, L.
http://sofacon.org/sofacon-2013/
My first venture into video podcasting, right from my own home office. No airplanes, yay! I was able to have a couple of practice sessions in advance with Tony and Amy to work out the worst bugs.
I have not actually listened to the whole thing yet myself, though I did a quick review of my own schtick. I do want to listen to Amy's "history of SF" section soon, and the Forbidden Planet section if they finally managed to make contact with South Africa.
I am not sure if it is actually any more useful, if one only has talking heads, to add the visuals atop the audio, but I imagine the form will be developed as it goes along. Anyway, a good experience.
Ta, L.
September 8, 2013
best WorldCon photo
Someone with a camera can induce people to do almost anything. It's quite a superpower. I suppose it ought to be used only for good, but what the heck.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/09/08...
I'd bet on Seanan, too.
:-), L.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/09/08...
I'd bet on Seanan, too.
:-), L.
Baen podcast interviews LMB - part 1
Lots of interviews this year. This one was done the week before WorldCon by telephone (which is why I sound down in a well, and Hank can't be heard at all) with Tony Daniels, a Baen editor. I don't recall meeting Tony before this, but I did get to know him a bit in San Antonio, so now I have a face to go with the voice. (Which I did not, yet, at the time we recorded this.)
We ran long, so the interview has been cut into two parts. The second section will be along this coming week, I believe.
http://baen.com/podcast/podcast.asp
Each of these is an education in how to do it better next time. My career has been on-the-job training from the beginning.
Ta, L.
We ran long, so the interview has been cut into two parts. The second section will be along this coming week, I believe.
http://baen.com/podcast/podcast.asp
Each of these is an education in how to do it better next time. My career has been on-the-job training from the beginning.
Ta, L.
September 6, 2013
Science Fiction: Platonic Ideal or Rorschach Blot?
A poster in a prior thread inquired: "Sorry to bring this up if you're purposefully ignoring it, but any comment on the Cook BS?"
I am somewhat bemused by how very many people have felt it necessary to bring this to my attention this week. Go figure.
This refers to a guest post earlier this week at the Amazing Stories website, by, apparently, an aging academic much devoted to science fiction as he sees it. The original post was, shall we say, rather carelessly written and marred by status posturing, which unfortunately obscured what I suspect the man was trying to say, and sent the subsequent net conversation reeling off to other concerns. I'll take one pass at getting things back on track in a more interesting direction, after which you are all on your own.
Since I came in as a reader a bit over fifty years ago, the debate over "What is science fiction?" (or "real" science fiction, or "hard" science fiction, or "important" science fiction, or pick the valorizing modifier of your choice) has formed and reformed without, as nearly as I can tell, getting any forwarder. Each decade seems to have had its own version of the barbarians at the gates – the New Wave in the late 60s and early 70s, Cyberpunk in the 80s, the rise of fantasy since Tolkien, and so on. (Some reader older than me will have to tell us what the 50s and 40s and 30s were kvetching about, but I guarantee there was something.) Boiled down, it was as if each camp in the arguments believed that there existed some Platonic Ideal of SF (suspiciously matching the promoter's own tastes), toward which all works and all authors ought convergently to aspire.
There have always seemed to be mixed up in it issues of generational control and perceived status, which naturally heightens emotions. In theory there is a difference between arguing about the status of science fiction, and using science fiction as a platform to jockey for status, although in practice, alas, the two slop over into each other pretty uncontrollably.
I see the field a bit differently.
The metaphor of emergent properties was not available fifty years ago, as chaos and fractal theory had not yet been developed enough to trickle out to the public discourse. What I think is actually happening is that each writer (and reader and critic) is supplying their own bright thread to a growing tapestry that we shorthand "the SF field", and when people squint at it as a whole, they see some picture emerge. No single thread is the picture, though it could not exist without all of its threads, any more than a painting is some measured amount of canvas and pigment and glue; if you reduced a painting to its elements, the image would disappear. That image is an emergent property, no less real for not being material. (Some people think human consciousness itself is something like this.)
People being what they are, I think it is also probable that everyone perceives a different picture from this tapestry (thank you, Dr. Rorschach), just the way every person reading the same book constructs a different reading experience in their head.
Happily, I am not responsible for the entire tapestry (no one person could be), only my own thread, which I spin as well as I am able. This is, I suspect, a much more relaxing view than that held by the urgent cat-herders attempting to impose their own visions of SF perfectibility on the masses.
My view is not, actually, intrinsically opposed to Platonic ideals, plural, which should be free to joust it out in the marketplace of ideas; just to the restrictive notion of A Single Best Platonic Ideal whose manifest destiny it is to consume all the others. That tends not to work out well, as anyone who has observed a pond taken over by duckweed can attest. It plays hell with the ecosystem.
(Publishing fads, although they have duckweed-like properties, tend to be self-limiting and go away on their own, so I try not to waste energy worrying too much about them.)
(I also observe, reading this over, that we are once more in the old "prescriptive versus descriptive" territories with these views. Hm.)
I have more on these notions, and how they play with various genres, in some of the pieces (including my 2008 WorldCon Guest of Honor speech) in Sidelines: Talks and Essays, my 2013 e-collection available from the usual suspects. But I think this is long enough, now.
So. What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?
Ta, L.
I am somewhat bemused by how very many people have felt it necessary to bring this to my attention this week. Go figure.
This refers to a guest post earlier this week at the Amazing Stories website, by, apparently, an aging academic much devoted to science fiction as he sees it. The original post was, shall we say, rather carelessly written and marred by status posturing, which unfortunately obscured what I suspect the man was trying to say, and sent the subsequent net conversation reeling off to other concerns. I'll take one pass at getting things back on track in a more interesting direction, after which you are all on your own.
Since I came in as a reader a bit over fifty years ago, the debate over "What is science fiction?" (or "real" science fiction, or "hard" science fiction, or "important" science fiction, or pick the valorizing modifier of your choice) has formed and reformed without, as nearly as I can tell, getting any forwarder. Each decade seems to have had its own version of the barbarians at the gates – the New Wave in the late 60s and early 70s, Cyberpunk in the 80s, the rise of fantasy since Tolkien, and so on. (Some reader older than me will have to tell us what the 50s and 40s and 30s were kvetching about, but I guarantee there was something.) Boiled down, it was as if each camp in the arguments believed that there existed some Platonic Ideal of SF (suspiciously matching the promoter's own tastes), toward which all works and all authors ought convergently to aspire.
There have always seemed to be mixed up in it issues of generational control and perceived status, which naturally heightens emotions. In theory there is a difference between arguing about the status of science fiction, and using science fiction as a platform to jockey for status, although in practice, alas, the two slop over into each other pretty uncontrollably.
I see the field a bit differently.
The metaphor of emergent properties was not available fifty years ago, as chaos and fractal theory had not yet been developed enough to trickle out to the public discourse. What I think is actually happening is that each writer (and reader and critic) is supplying their own bright thread to a growing tapestry that we shorthand "the SF field", and when people squint at it as a whole, they see some picture emerge. No single thread is the picture, though it could not exist without all of its threads, any more than a painting is some measured amount of canvas and pigment and glue; if you reduced a painting to its elements, the image would disappear. That image is an emergent property, no less real for not being material. (Some people think human consciousness itself is something like this.)
People being what they are, I think it is also probable that everyone perceives a different picture from this tapestry (thank you, Dr. Rorschach), just the way every person reading the same book constructs a different reading experience in their head.
Happily, I am not responsible for the entire tapestry (no one person could be), only my own thread, which I spin as well as I am able. This is, I suspect, a much more relaxing view than that held by the urgent cat-herders attempting to impose their own visions of SF perfectibility on the masses.
My view is not, actually, intrinsically opposed to Platonic ideals, plural, which should be free to joust it out in the marketplace of ideas; just to the restrictive notion of A Single Best Platonic Ideal whose manifest destiny it is to consume all the others. That tends not to work out well, as anyone who has observed a pond taken over by duckweed can attest. It plays hell with the ecosystem.
(Publishing fads, although they have duckweed-like properties, tend to be self-limiting and go away on their own, so I try not to waste energy worrying too much about them.)
(I also observe, reading this over, that we are once more in the old "prescriptive versus descriptive" territories with these views. Hm.)
I have more on these notions, and how they play with various genres, in some of the pieces (including my 2008 WorldCon Guest of Honor speech) in Sidelines: Talks and Essays, my 2013 e-collection available from the usual suspects. But I think this is long enough, now.
So. What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?
Ta, L.
