Wednesday, June 12, 2002

SciFan database still growing
We just topped 7,000 writers and 34,000 books listed in our database. The cleaning process seems never to end, so my apologies go to the people who sent us corrections and updates that I didn't handle yet. I'll try to get back on top of things by the summer, so I should eventually take into account everything that was sent to me (all the spam we get doesn't help.) Anyway, please keep sending information, it's not handled in real time but it's not lost either.
1:57 AM (link)

Monday, June 10, 2002

Neil Gaiman's Journal: please acknowledge the body of knowledge
"Beryl Bainbridge has announced that she will be writing a time travel novel which will move into the future, and clarified that it won't be science fiction, in case anyone was worried. Normally what this means (or what it meant back when I was a book reviewer in the early 80s) is that the author has an SF idea, has read no SF so doesn't know that that idea was explored pretty thoroughly in 1953, and then plonks the idea down on the page rather dully, while doing interviews in which the author denies the book is SF. [...] I wound up wishing that the writers in question would understand that there was a body of knowledge to be learned, and a craft. It's odd. No-one would think they'd come up independently with the idea of a novel set in the past then deny that it was a historical novel."
8:42 AM (link)

Thursday, June 06, 2002

Checking It Twice
"Cate Paterson faced a familiar publishing problem: Her work was locked out of the bestseller lists. As fiction editor at Pan MacMillan in Australia, Paterson frequently published fantasy titles [...] Though the books would sell very well, often in the range of 30,000 to 40,000 copies, they'd never be reported in Australia's bestseller lists, since major newspapers there, like their counterparts in the United States, compiled their lists based not on actual sales figures, but on a poll of a small selection of favored, elite bookstores. And they didn't pay attention to sf bookstores, where Paterson's fantasy titles sold in high volume. [...] "Mainstream adult fantasy titles," Paterson complains, "would never have made it onto one of those old snooty, snobbish bestseller lists." [...] Now the American market is poised to experience the same uneasy revolution."

Looks like technology is going to help drive into irrelevance the gatekeepers who think they know what's best for us, and disguise their editorial choices as "bestseller lists."
2:15 AM (link)

Wednesday, June 05, 2002

Jack Vance is restless to continue building one Big Planet after another
An interview with Jack Vance, who's probably my favorite author. The first Q&A exchange will give you the general tone:

"[Q] Back when you were a kid, did you ever imagine the world would be like it is today?

Vance: I don't want to insult you so quick in the interview, but that's a question which doesn't have any sensible answer, really, 'cause as a kid, I want to say, everybody speculates about all kinds of worlds that they're going to grow into. But I hardly thought about it. I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast. I knew space travel was imminent, but I didn't do too much speculating."
10:05 AM (link)