Wednesday, January 15, 2003

[NYT] Harry Potter, AWOL, Returns in June for No. 5
Ok, so Potter #5 is now available for pre-order with a specific publication date. But how to keep track of other fantasy and SF releases (there's more to fantasy than Harry Potter, right)? Did you know we feature 127 books just for January, while we already list 31 titles for June? Be assured we spend a lot of time tracking upcoming books well in advance, especially when they belong to series.
11:58 PM (link)

Saturday, January 11, 2003

[Wired] A Novelist Who Walks the Walk
"An award-winning science fiction writer and digital rights activist has persuaded the publisher of his first novel to make the book available free online for anyone to read, print or even republish on paper.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a science fiction tale that revolves around the employees of a dystopian Disney World sometime in the 22nd century, is writer Cory Doctorow's first published novel. The 31-year-old Canadian writer won the John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction writer at the 2000 Hugo convention. [...] "(Downloads) crossed the 10,000-download threshold at 8 a.m. this morning," Doctorow said Thursday, "which exceeds the initial print run for the book." Doctorow said he thinks the marketing buzz from those downloads will be worth more than any lost book sales."
3:54 PM (link)

What's on William Gibson's Bedside Table
A few books Gibson is currently reading, listed on his new weblog. I'd like to point to him he needs to add permanent links to each entry (post permalinks for the initiates,) but I didn't find a way to e-mail him on his site.
3:40 PM (link)

Thursday, January 09, 2003

Chain Bookstores Have Positive Effects Too
More from Nielsen Hayden: "I would say that sometimes it's important to ask ourselves what's more culturally important: the preservation of particular bookstores, or the widespread availability of books. Obviously, I don't want bookselling to be controlled by one or two behemoths, but as I've written before, people who focus on the loss of charming old independent shops in Cambridge or Berkeley or Greenwich Village have a tendency to forget how completely devoid of bookstores most of America was fifty years ago. The fact that all over the country, in the second-tier cities and suburban sprawls where most people live, you can find a decent selection of books in all sorts of highly specialized categories--well, that's a change."

Check out the comments from several writers as well.
3:39 AM (link)

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Publication Deal Signed Thanks to Website
Patrick Nielsen Hayden: "I really did make a publication offer, on behalf of Tor Books, to a writer named John Scalzi for a science fiction novel he had serialized on his web journal. And he very graciously accepted. It's called Old Man's War, and it can be best described as a Heinlein juvenile whose protagonist happens to be 75 years old. And I couldn't stop reading it. We'll publish it in hardcover in late 2003 or early 2004, and in paperback about a year after that.

Neither John or I are entirely sure that this is the very first instance of a novel being snapped up by a major publisher based on its being posted to the web, but whether it is or not, I'm very happy with the deal. Scalzi is in fact a professional writer, but primarily in nonfiction; this is his first novel sale."
1:56 AM (link)

Sunday, January 05, 2003

[Locusmag] Minor Futurism: Where SFF is Headed
"What we call "science fiction" will be a fragmented, niche-oriented market. There will be no coherent, overriding style that will guide what we consider to be "real science fiction". The modern marketplace has evolved over the course of the past decade, to the point where it's become a series of Hydra-like heads squiggling about in a tangled mass. They're all beneath the umbrella of science fiction, but there are no clear-cut delineations of segments. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it encourages the branching out of ideas to incorporate pieces from all aspects of literature. Nor is it a good thing, as a fragmented market leads to specialization, with less chance of any single author making an impact on the field... or sales."

We at SciFan always recognized the diversity within speculative fiction. We include in our database books from hard sf to dark fantasy, from fantastic horror to time travel romance. Our increasing focus on themes will translate in new ways you can use the site. A first step is the recent ability to sort new releases by theme. Expect new and interesting navigation options based on themes later this year.
2:31 AM (link)

Saturday, January 04, 2003

FAQ update
I've updated the section about SciFan to better reflect our goals and detail how our readers can help us improve the site.
5:23 AM (link)

Friday, January 03, 2003

Lessons in book promotion pay off for young self-published author
"World rights to Paolini's "Eragon" and its two unwritten sequels were sold recently to the youth division of one of the country's most prestigious houses, Alfred A. Knopf, in a deal reportedly worth more than $500,000."

Kudos to Christopher Paolini, who must be one of the youngest writers listed in our database, for signing this deal.
10:20 PM (link)

[Slashdot] Science Fact From Fiction
"The European Space Agency maintains an ongoing project called Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications (ITSF). Its goal is "to review past and present SF literature, artwork and films in order to identify and assess innovative technologies and concepts described which could be possibly developed further for space applications." While I had known about Clarke first envisioning the geostationary satellite, the site also lists some other interesting ideas first pitched in SF: planetary landers, rocket fins, and space stations assembled in orbit. Visitors to the site are encouraged to submit technologies from SF works, although they should look at the master keyword list to avoid duplication first."

Looks like a great source to enhance our theme lists!
6:04 AM (link)

Thursday, January 02, 2003

New and forthcoming section improved
Happy new year! SciFan is now officially four-year old (a previous embryo of the site existed on a Geocities page in late 1998, but SciFan.com was launched in January '99.) There are many things we hope we'll be able to add to the site this year. To get us started in high gears, I just changed our new & forthcoming listings which are quite faster, and now allow you to sort books by theme as well as title, writer, format and series. I hope you like the changes. I tried to hunt all the bugs, but please let me know if you get anything strange!
2:44 PM (link)