Charles Stross's Blog, page 120
February 23, 2010
Common Misconceptions About Publishing: #1
I'm back home, I'm over the jet lag (for now), and I'm looking for something to write about.
It struck me, reading the comments on my various postings about the Amazon v. Macmillan spat in January, that many people don't have the first clue about how the publishing business works — or even what it is. Publishing is a recondite, bizarre, and downright strange industry which is utterly unlike anything a rational person would design to achieve the same purpose (which I will loosely define for...
February 22, 2010
Interview
Here's an interview the Tech4Thought folks recorded with me at Boskone a couple of weeks ago. (Also of interest: they interviewed Vernor Vinge at more or less the same time.)
In other news: The Hugo Award nominations close on March 13th. If you're eligible to nominate (i.e. if you were an attending member of last year's worldcon, or are a supporting or attending member of this year's worldcon), I encourage you to go and nominate; not enough folks do so.
In case you were wondering, this year I...
February 20, 2010
International travel redux
International air travel — as a user experience — sucks. I should know; I'm just back home in Scotland after a nearly two week trip to the USA, and I'm off to Japan in April. (My carbon footprint, let me show you: the domestic/automobile side of it is positively hair-shirt green in its miniscule dimensions, but the air travel part is bloated.)
Right now, I'm jet-lagged. Which is annoying, because I'm supposed to be writing a novel: but while I'm kinda-sorta back on local time, past...
February 18, 2010
En route
As you probably guessed from the silence, I'm still away from home: in New York right now, flying back across the North Undrinkable tonight, and probably jet-lagged for the next two or three days. You wouldn't want to see me blogging while jet-lagged: it's kind of like blogging while drunk, only not as (unintentionally) amusing.
(I'm in New York for meetings with my agent and editors, plus general purpose sightseeing and maybe just a smidgeon of research for future fiction.)
Normal service...
February 14, 2010
What I did this weekend
Hi: this is Charlie checking in again. I'm in a hotel in Boston, winding down from Boskone. Among other things I participated in a number of panel discussions, including this one: a reappraisal of the Singularity in SF. The moderator was Alastair Reynolds; the other panelists were Vernor Vinge and Karl Schroeder.
My attempt at using a voice recorder was an abject failure — I manged to leave it on pause the whole time — but all is not lost, thanks to Mike Johnson, who video'd the whole thing...
February 11, 2010
I am not a futurist.
Being a science fiction writer means fielding a lot of questions about what the future is going to be like. It also means disappointing a lot of people when I tell them, "I don't know."
Not only do I not know, I don't even pretend to know. I mean, I can extrapolate from trends; I can guesstimate, I can figure out what cool toys I might love and give them to my made-up friends. I can research and see what the current state of technology is, and what's on the design board--but honestly, I'm not ...
February 8, 2010
The future of web publishing, part seventeen million and six.
...this is that post about the future of web publishing that I promised Charlie I would write.
As many of you probably already know, I am a writer. I write science fiction, fantasy, mystery, young adult, nonfiction (notably book reviews and criticism--which are actually two different things), short stories, novels, poetry--basically, anything that will sit still long enough for me to slap a keyboard on top of it.
As of the end of this month, I have published sixteen novels, a handful of...
This is not that post about the future of web publishing I was going to write.
Greetings! As Charlie mentioned in the exceedingly cute robot post, I am Elizabeth Bear, and I will be helping keep this space active while he's visiting my native New England. I told him I was going to blog on publishing and futurism and futuristic publishing...
<.< **looks shifty** >.>
...but by now he's safely over the North Atlantic, and we can party.
Just remember the kick the empties under the couch before he lands.
...Okay, no, I really am going to behave. But the publishing post is...
February 6, 2010
When the machines dance
"Hexapodia is the key insight." (You've probably seen that video already, but I couldn't resist sharing. Just in case.)
In about 48 hours I'm off to Boston and New York for a week and a half. Needless to say I won't be blogging much (although I'm hoping to record and podcat the panel I'm on at Boskone — a retrospective appraisal of the Singularity in SF with Al Reynolds and Vernor Vinge).
But surprise! The blog won't be left to the tumbleweed.
Because I travel too damn much, I've decided to...
February 5, 2010
Amazonfail round-up
In my most recent posting on this topic I noted "Amazon surrender", and cited a New York Times article as saying that Amazon had agreed to re-list the Macmillan titles they'd dropped.
As of this morning, five days later, my own Tor books are still not available from Amazon. I'm hearing lots of reports from other Tor authors, too.
Amazon lied.
They lied about other things, too; in their press release they lied like a rug about Macmillan's negotiating position, mischaracterising it in the worst p...
