S.C. Butler's Blog, page 5

Introducing the Peepoo

An ecologically sound version of the helicopter toilet. A great idea.

Blackout on Sackett Street

Woke to lights fizzing in the house at 5:30 this morning, even though they were off. Outside the neighbors' outside lights were flickering, and the streetlights too. (This is a brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.) I'm going through the fuse box trying to figure out what's going on (and why it's snap-crackle-popping at me), when red lights start flashing outside. Five fire trucks in the street. They start going house to house checking for CO levels. Three or four houses get evacuated (it a...

Sam-Who-Likes-Some-Things - Up

I loved this movie. A wonderful story, beautifully told. The writer in me was happy, the story lover in me was happy, even the movie lover in me was happy.

I don't know why it is, but the occasional Pixar movie these days seems to do a better job of portraying the human condition than any number of flicks with real actors. Perhaps it's because they're unafraid of sentiment. They feel no need for irony or wallowing in misery and despair, while at the same time they manage to find depths o...

How I Knew Nellie The Wonder Dog Didn't Want To Go For A Walk Today In 15 Inches Of Snow

First she took my shoe downstairs, and then she took another shoe. Normally this is a sign of great excitement, though I did have my suspicions. It was only when she stood up on her hind legs to grab her coat out of my hands and take it downstairs as well that I finally understood.

Nellie is having a snow day.

Odd Things Midlist Writers End Up Doing - Introducing Movies at the Rubin Museum of Art

Really. I shall be introducing the incredible, spectacular, momentous, staggering, and just plain jaw-breakingly awesome film, It Came From Outer Space, on Friday, March 5th, at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Come one, come all, for 50s American SF at its most 50s and American. (My first choice was that classic of British cinema, The Quatermass Experiment, where my 8th grade English teacher plays the scientist/sidekick, but the musem couldn't get a copy, so that was that.)

Sam-Who-Likes-Some-Things - Stew at St. Ann's Warehouse

This actually fell right in the middle between Likes-Some-Things and Likes-Nothing. Being such a positive guy, I decided to give Stew the benefit of the doubt. After all, I love his discs.

The last four songs of the show were what I really liked. Stew is a great singer, larger than life personality, and very funny. All this came through in the last four songs. The first two-thirds of the show, however, were a bit too overwrought for my taste. Stew drinking, Stew crawling across the...

This Applies to Book Publishing Every Bit as Much as it Does to Music

An op-ed piece in the NYTimes today about why record companies are a necessary evil. As are publishing companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20kulash.html?ref=opinion

Why I Love Our Whippet

Because she's lazy and fast, just like me. Or at least like I used to be.

Boskone?

Mostly I just ate myself to death. Chinese for lunch Saturday, Afghani food for dinner that night, came back to Brooklyn with good friends Melinda Snodgrass and Ian Tregillis (make sure to buy their books when they come out in April from Tor!) for Italian dinner, then dim sum and Chinese New Year on Monday.

Burp.

I think there was a con in there somewhere.

One Writer's Take on Amazonfail

There's been a lot of ranting back and forth lately about the Amazon/Macmillan fiasco of a couple of weeks back, and I thought I'd take a moment to make clear what I thought (and what I believe a lot of other authors thought) about the whole thing.

First of all, it wasn't about the pricing. Personally, I don't think either pricing model being proposed is the right one. I think ebooks should be priced like mass market paperbacks, mostly because I think mass market paperbacks are what ebooks a...