Sneak peek: an excerpt from "What Goes Around"

"Am I...yeah, I am. I don't even have to ask." Bob felt like he was speaking aloud, although he had no mouth to move, no ears to hear with, no body at all.

YEP, YOU ARE. TOUGH BREAK.

"Yaaah!" In his own mind's eye, Bob jumped.

WHAT, YOU'RE SURPRISED TO FIND ME HERE TOO? The booming voice came from everywhere, and nowhere.

"Well – I wasn't sure. I'd hoped so. But it can be tough for us mortals to believe, what with all the wars going on, and science constantly disproving the Bible."

SURE, BOB. WHATEVER EASES YOUR CONSCIENCE.

"I'm not just making excuses!"

YES YOU ARE. DON'T FORGET WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO.

"Sorry."

GOOD. NOW, ARE YOU READY?

"Ready? Ready for what?"

IT'S TIME TO DECIDE, BOB.

He gulped, or tried to. "Oh dear. That little bit at the end...I'm not really like that...right? I mean, the rest of my life, I've been a much better person. I was a good provider for my family. I loved my parents, my wife, my children!"

THAT'S TRUE. BUT YOU LOST A LOT OF POINTS WITH THAT LAST MANEUVER. HE'S DEAD, YOU KNOW. IN FACT, WE JUST FINISHED CHATTING.

"Oh, Hell! Erp. I mean – crap, I don't know what I mean."

I DO.

Oh no. This was going to be bad.

WHAT YOU'RE WONDERING NOW IS: "IS IT ENOUGH TO TIP ME OVER THE BALANCE? TO SEND ME TO BURN IN ETERNAL TORMENT?"

That was precisely what he was wondering. "Well? Is it?"

I'M AFRAID IT DOESN'T QUITE WORK LIKE THAT. IT'S MORE OF A DHARMIC THING, REALLY.

"Reincarnation? But that's not in the good book!"

AT WHAT POINT DID I SAY THE BIBLE WAS ACCURATE?

"Well, in the Bible...oh. Crap. I'm gonna come back as a worm, aren't I?"

WORMS ARE SO CLICHÉ. I THINK WE'LL TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT THIS TIME...

Sneak peek: an excerpt from "Human Suffrage"

Regardless of who wins, the 2016 elections will finally bring an end to the so-called "third and fourth Bush terms in office." McCain will be out, and a popularity rating below 15%, it seems unlikely that the Republicans will be able to gain a foothold in this year's election. Henry probably doesn't even need to head to the polls today, but generations before him would turn in their graves if he did not.

He takes an early lunch break and strolls down to City Hall, only a few blocks from his firm's office. The RFID chip in his wrist clears him for fastlane entry; he proceeds to the executive lane where two armed guards perform a quick strip search, and is on his way to the voting booths in less than ten minutes.

Henry presses his wrist against the booth's entry terminal. "Henry Langston Hughes, African/Caucasian, 62. History of blood pressure, diabetes. Registered Democrat. Sixth district." The machine pauses, considering the information it has just listed. It consults with the central server in Green, Ohio. "Your vote is not needed. Thank you for your time."

Henry blanches. "What!?"

"Your demographic has been accurately sampled to the required degree of statistical accuracy. No more data is required. Your vote is not needed. Thank you for your time."

Sneak peek: an excerpt from "Clowning Around"

Pogo kept his ears open while he strolled, listening for the sound of any feet but his own echoing from the sidewalk behind him.

"One missed throw" he muttered. "One simple mistake and they stick me with guard duty for the week. Lucky I don't plan a car bomb on them myself, they are." Blast, he was in a foul mood. He kept moving. A little exercise would clear his mind.

His ears perked up as the characteristic slap of a rubber shoe sounded on the walk, less than a block behind. Pogo didn't break his stride. Keep it cool, he reflected, reaching into his shirt pocket for a banana. Don't change pace; if you bolt, he'll pounce.

The banana was just what he needed. He finished downing the sweet fruit, barely overripe, as a van rounded the corner at full speed. Glancing askance at the mirror of a parked car, he double-checked his aim and casually tossed the banana peel over his left shoulder. Perfect.

His pursuer didn't have time to react. The peel landed just as his shoe came down, sending his foot skidding out from under him. He lurched sideways into the street an instant before the van reached the same location; there was a screeching of tires followed by a dull thump, and a mop of curly orange hair flew up onto the hood.

Comics: Improving

50 Extroverts, One Stage, 60 Seconds Each

Oh, that every night could be 60 Seconds Max.

The plan: get a whole bunch of Seattle actors, dancers, and comedians. Let each have the stage for, at most, 60 seconds.

Also, give them lots of free beer.

Here is a little bit of my little stint...the leader that got cut of is the flight attendant announcing "The captain has now turned off the rational investing sign. You may move freely about the financial market..."



Full original text (I cut it heavily to reach 60 seconds):

FLIGHT 101
BY JON PECK

(CON MAN in the middle seat of a plane, reading the Wall St Journal or financial section of local paper, big stock graph on front)

ANNOUNCER
(*ding*)
The captain has now turned off the rational investing sign. You may move freely about the financial market.

CON MAN
(puts down the paper; excited, twitchy)
Flyin' the friendly skies, eh? Gotta love it up here, looking down on it all. Gosh, everybody looks so small!!
(leans over his seatmate to peer out window)
(turns face to seatmate, too close, really seeing him for the first time. Grabs tie.)
Hey buddy, you look like the type who'd be interested in making a dime or two! Got a little nest egg you'd like to grow? Wanna double it? Triple it? I'm the guy who can take you there!
(backs off a bit to smooth out seatmate's tie)
(hurriedly, manic)
It's not my first time, you know. Nope. I've been doing this for years – I always fly steerage, too. I do. I love it back here. There are always such interesting people to talk to. And such good listeners, too. You wanna hear my pitch? Of course you do!
(stands; dreamy faraway look)
You see, the whole trick is not to sell the widgets...nobody makes any real money there. We're after widget derivatives. Secondary widgets. Tertiary widgets.
(glances back to seatmate)
I'm talking seven figures in the first year, buddy! It's gonna be you and me, flyin' first class all the way! And we'll get Don LaFontaine, or maybe Matt Wright to do the ad:
(focus toward audience; booming voice)
In a world where everything is virtual, your customers demand something LESS than reality. MegaDerivativeCo is here to satisfy that illusion, with the cutting edge tools your business needs...
(rumbling noise / metal flexing. CON MAN rocks unsteadily as the plain hits turbulence)

ANNOUNCER
(*ding*)
The captain has informed us that the market is now crashing. Do not be alarmed. Return to your seats and attach your oxygen mask directly to your wallet. If you have a venture capitalist with you, attach your own mask first before attending to him.

CON MAN
(still standing)
Oh, nevermind that, it's just a minor market adjustment, we'll be back on track in no time...

(sounds of grinding metal; CON MAN is thrown face-first to the ground as plane crashes, cash exploding from his pockets onto audience)

(BLACKOUT)

Election results? We got em!

And starting us off...Dixville Notch, NH with Obama=16, McCain=6

PS NaNoWriMo: 4500 words

Build the Debate you Always Wanted

Google Labs has come out with a great new feature called "In Quotes"

http://labs.google.com/inquotes/

Pick two people (say, Obama and MCain) and a topic (eg, Iraq or the economy); then read what each has to say on the issue. Build your own head-to-head debate!  For extra fun, pick the same candidate, but two different years: see if/how his tune has changed...

P.S.  Today's little bit of joy: spellchecking this post and getting to click "ignore all" on McCain

P.P.S.  NaNoWriMo count: 3500 words

NaNoWriMo begins!

NaNoWriMo starts in five 0 minutes. My objective: 25 stories, appx 2000 words apiece, written over the next 30 days. I'll try to draw what I can from the topics posted thus far at TakeOneDaily -- and I invite any other authors who dare to join me!

So, please pardon my delinquency if very little gets posted over the month of November. TakeOneDaily will resume in full force following the storm which is National Novel Writing Month.

All the best,
Jon Peck

Happy Birthday to Me; Vote Smart!

I've done my civic duty (thanks to vote-by-mail); will you? Incidentally, today is also my birthday, and I have just one wish: that you'll make the right choice on election day. Click on the images below to learn more...

Keeping your Cool: do you want a man with this temper leading our country?

War: Iraq has cost each US taxpayer over $16,000. McCain will keep it going for "the next 100 years" and start attacking Iran.

The Economy: McCain's version of "Joe the Plumber" is a blatant lie; in fact, Obama's plan would give Joe more money!

Healthcare: The McCain healthcare plan leaves seniors and children without adequate care, and his "credit" actually ends up costing most families more than they are paying now, since it encourages employers to stop providing insurance.

Bush's "Third Term": McCain has always been an avid Bush supporter, though lately he has been trying to hide that connection because it is so very inconvenient:

Let the Cartooning Begin

My first cartooning class was today; I can (sorta) draw faces now...some of them are almost recognizable. Note: the better-looking ones are not my own concept; I'm mimicking someone else.

The Problem with America's Educational System

Jorge Cham (PhD Comics) hit the nail on the head today.

Education is widely regarded as a predictor of economic success, both on an individual and a national scale. Simply put: if you go to college, you earn more; if a lot of your nation's populous gets educated, your country doesn't fall to shambles.

Unfortunately, the cost of a college degree keeps rising faster than inflation.

Wouldn't it be nice if your favorite American university could give another 30 students full tuition each year? Or afford to hire another 10-15 professors?

It's possible. Of course, we may need to reprioritize a bit: click here.

(P.S. consider asking your own Alma Mater why they pay Bob the Coach ten times as much as the tenured professors)

Dreams come true? If you happen to be a marketer, yes.

How is a writer to keep up?  Last Wednesday, as I'm preparing to (fail to) fall into REM, I have a vivid little hallucination: a friend of mine is standing in front of me; I lift an iPhone so that it obscures my view of him, but instead the phone's viewscreen forms a virtual "window", allowing me to see his digitally augmented self, complete with goofy purple foam coat and Dr. Seuss-style hat.

The very next morning, a friend emails me an article entitled Augmented Reality Makes Commercial Headway, complete with a picture of a customer holding up a iPaq to view the video overlay on top of an otherwise flat advertisement.

This is not a new idea, though the actual implementation is.  The best recent vision of augmented reality that I can think of is Vinge's Rainbow's End, an excellent novel about the future of information, sociopolitical control, and a library's transformation into a walking colossus.  In Rainbow's End, overlays are a constant and highly important addition to reality; they allow in-groups to recognize each other and enemy tribes, convey realtime information about objects near and far, and add the design element to surroundings that are otherwise mundane.

What makes Vinge's world endearing is not simply the extent to which the technology has developed and pervaded (indeed, this could be quite scary if applied wrongly); rather, we become absorbed because the power to create these augmented realities is in the hands of the people.  Various factions struggle for power in his novel, but each faction has a set of real-world citizens that we can identify with.  Even his most powerful military leaders are individuals, and whether we love or hate them, we can see them.

My fear for the real world, though, is that like so much of the first world, power will remain in the hands of faceless corporations.  Go on: scowl, snort your coffee, mutter whatever you like about "those hippie radicals" -- then stop and think for a minute.  How many times have you called up you cell phone provider and been put on hold, only to be connected via VoIP to a talking head in another country?  When did you last speak, face-to-face, with someone who actually had the power to change the policies of the telecom company he worked for?

When we consider technologies, such as augmented reality, which rely heavily on networks, marketing, and mass processing, we must remember that the majority of the power is already invested in the corporate and political infrastructure of only a few large companies.  These companies have necessarily self-interested policies; their practices are geared toward expansion and profit.  Even at the highest levels, it is difficult for an individual to consider any other motive; a manager can always be fired by a superior; a CEO can be removed by the board or the stockholders; the stockholders have, by definition, only profit in mind.  That's why they (we!) own stock.

So, we can expect the first widespread (aka not toy-project) developments in augmented reality to be commercially driven, and we are beginning to see just that.  Soon we'll have ad-blockers on our iPhones just to keep them from interrupting our driving directions with a video streaming from the Citgo sign we just passed.

The real question then becomes whether the YouTubers, the Bloggers, the creative individuals of the world will step up to the plate.  Creating interesting and useful augmentations of reality takes time and effort.  Why are half the videos on YouTube created by bored teenagers?  Because they're bored!  The rest of us have fallen into the corporate routine; our creative energy sapped by the 9-to-5, we stumble home and collapse in front of the idiot box.

But this time, if we creative and talented adults slack off, there will be a much bigger price to pay than an Interweb full of videos showcasing "mah c00l3st Mario-Kart gamez evar", interleaved with 30-second spots promoting Diet Coke and Viagra -- because augmented reality won't be something we can put back in the box, or avoid by browsing only to the websites we like.  Augmentation will invade the"real world" in an unavoidable way very soon.

Consider, for example: someday GPS will become so pervasive that the department of public works will no longer maintain street signs; without digital input, you'll be lost.  If the company which provides the GPS service decides to inject advertisements ("take the next right, and consider stopping for a Big Mac before continuing"), every single person on the road will be at their exploitive mercy.

Once critical information about the things around us is only available through digital channels, the common man will be irrevocably immersed in a world he cannot filter or avoid.

That isn't a world I want to live in, and it scares me even more that I won't be able to opt-out.

Neil Gaiman in Seattle

Part 1

Like all things in the city of mist and caffeine, I hear about it in a cafe, half an hour before the event: Gaiman is in town.  Speaking.  Signing.  Promoting The Graveyard Book.  And what better location?  The Methodist Church, full of wooden arches and candelabras and neon signs loudly proclaiming "EXIT" in green gothic script.

Still dripping from the brisk, rainy bike ride, I arrive at the church to join 850 of his best fans, and we are ushered in to pick up pre-signed copies of his latest novel (for which I am glad -- as much as I'd like to head to the meet-and-greet after, I'm sure the wee hours of the morning would arrive before my turn at the front of the line rolled around).  As we shuffle into our pews, rock music flows into the aisles, but is soon replaced by a rendition of Dance Macabre on...banjo?

After a short introduction, the man of the hour ascends to the pulpit.  His first order of business: reminding himself not to swear in church.

Gaiman's rhetorical style could almost be described as "cautious" -- except that he is clearly at ease with the crowd, cracking a joke or two, relating experiences from his last visit to Seattle.  He is in no way timid; he is simply well-controlled, taking the time to consider each statement carefully and adjust his delivery for maximum effect.  This capacity becomes even more apparent as he begins to read from his latest work, The Graveyard Book.  He will be reading chapter four from the book, which is incidentally the longest chapter.  Neil shakes off his exhaustion and proceeds to delight the audience: from this one author emerges a whole cast of characters, each with a specific intonation, pacing, accent, and facial expressions.  Even playing the 500-year-old ghost of a witch, he is completely believable.   Observing such a performance, one cannot help but realize that Gaiman doesn't merely write his characters; he feels them, in much the style of a method actor or a devoted parent reading bedtime stories to his children.

If you happen to pick up a copy of The Graveyard Book, don't let the first chapter throw you; the initial few pages might feel a little slow as he brings us into the world.  Be assured that, once you have arrived inside the universe of a boy who has "spent his whole life talking to dead people", you will not wish to leave quickly.  Gaiman presents us with a fresh take on gallows humor: his characters are strange but practical, and the graveyard operates like a small village, in which each resident has their own role to play and history to bring into the mix.  As with most good fiction, the plot derives from conflict and coincidences between the players, the clash and concordance of their objectives...but Neil takes things a step further: his creations behave in unexpected ways; when we expect them to dodge right, they suddenly appear behind us; where we anticipate a cliche, we find a wedge of gruyere with a dab of strawberry jelly on the side.

Gaiman assembles his Graveyard stories with cinematographic knack, zooming in on one pair of characters as they exchange a few important words (or blows), panning back for a paragraph or two, then taking us back to a tight shot from the protagonist's point-of-view.  Listening to Gaiman speak, one cannot help but visualize the storyboard -- and speculate as to whether he already has one drawn up to pitch at Paramount.

Finally, to our dismay, he reaches the end of the chapter.  Enthusiastic applause follows, but in the instant between his last word and the first clap of hands, a warm glow of satisfaction spreads across Neil's face.  He is pleased, not as much by the fact that we have received him so well, but more by the act of reading itself.  In this brief moment, it is clear why Mr. Gaiman is so prolific: he simply loves to create, to bring his creatures out into the world where they can feel the sun upon their faces and be seen by all.

Part 2

After a brief intermission, during which approximately half of the audience goes back to reading their signed copies of Graveyard, we are treated to a sneak peek of Coraline.  If you've ever read a Gaiman novel and visualized it in the ghostly style of The Nightmare Before Christmas, then Coraline is the movie you've been waiting for.  Henry Selick has been working on this feature for the last couple years, and hopes to complete the remaining 2.5 minutes of shooting before the release date of February 2009.  Stop-motion filming takes time, y'know.

Coraline will be released in full-color 3D (and is the first major stop-motion film to do so), but no funny glasses for us: a technician hooks a DVD player up to a standard home projector, downs the lights, and...we wait patiently as things are unplugged, replugged, and rebooted.  I resist the urge to fire up BitTorrent and see if someone in Chicago ignored Gaiman's plea to please-not-bootleg-the-preview (and no, I won't be providing a link to any postage-stamp cell-phone videos, thank you very much). 

Selick's style is always characteristic, but if all you've seen is Nightmare Before Christmas, don't be deceived: he has range.  Coraline retains the classic stitched-doll feel of his 1993 work, but doesn't utilize the dim lighting effects (X-Files, anyone?).  It looks much peppier than you might expect.  In fact, the bright lights make his characters seem all the more ghoulish: in 2D, they practically jump out of the screen -- the full stereoscopic version is going to inject nightmares directly into the minds of smaller children.

Part 3

Neil has had a chance to parse through our comment cards during the intermission and movie, and now returns to the stage for Q&A.  He makes it a point to start out with an off-the-wall query regarding his favorite  dinosaur or somesuch, and in answering, reveals his amazing ability to weave fantasy tales on the fly (this is not, incidentally, the most unusual question he has been asked while speaking: "Have you ever belched so hard it hurt?" beats it by a leg).  But even when the questions are predictable ("which story is your favorite?"), his answers take an unusual turn ("that's like asking which child you love most...even the crippled ones...we love you anyway").  Here is a quick list of some choice tidbits:

• The banjo rendition of Dance Macabre was volunteered by Bela Fleck after the performer read on Gaiman's blog about the desire for such a piece, and is featured on the unabridged audiobook.
• Neil handwrites, then types; this forces him to generate at least two drafts, and to decide which parts to cut instead of simply cutting-and-pasting the useless passages into another segment of the storyline.
• His advice on how to become a good writer: "you should read as much as you can; you should write as much as you can."
• He once nearly got a foreign publisher jailed by contributing a story to Outrageous Tales from the Old Testament; apparently it was so full of gore and mayhem that the publisher was only able to escape prosecution by showing that the plot was derived directly from the Bible, Book of Judges.
• Aside from being an author, Gaiman is a beekeeper; he once turned down an interview because it would have fallen on the day he had planned on "harvesting my honey...which is not, as it seems, a romantic thing."
• His favorite banned books include Huckleberry Finn and Where's Waldo (author's note: it's Banned Books Week, so go read something naughty!)
• Asked how many books he has written, Gaiman quips "I don't know; I really should count...people keep asking."
• He is a big fan of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which does lovely useful things like remind uptight small-town cops that the First Amendment is a constitutional guarantee.
• He is currently working on a script for an upcoming Anansi Boys movie!!!
• On occasion, Gaiman really does drink Laphroaig, which to him "smells like a mummy in a peat bog" (having repeatedly tasted the stuff myself, I feel it necessary to add that said mummy has been skillfully smoked over every wildfire to burn through California and delicately bathed in the volcanic ash surrounding Mount St. Helens before being towed, waist-deep in seawater, back to his country of origin behind a diesel-powered cruise ship.  It's OK, but Caol Ila is better.)
• Responding to a (okay, my) question on the differences between writing succinct dialogue for graphic novels and elaborate passages for novels, he notes that "a comic is rather like an iceberg: most of it is beneath the surface.  So you're still writing long elaborate descriptions, they're just not going to be for the reader.  They're for the artist."
• He is not disturbed by the differences between Stardust the book and Stardust the movie, nor will he be bothered by alterations as Coraline is produced.  In much the same way that he collaborates with artists on his graphic novels, Neil prefers to write the text, then give the filmmaker the artistic freedom required to adapt the work into their own vision.
• Neil will be Guest of Honor at WorldCon, August 2009, in Montreal
• His next published work will be an illustrated version of Blueberry Girl, a poem which Tori Amos asked him to write for her then-unborn daughter, Tash.

Watch this space for photos and, if I can obtain permission, a brief snippet of Gaiman reading from Blueberry Girl.  Until then...

- Jon Peck

Buy Less Crap, Local or Otherwise

I'd like to say that this post was inspired by Scott Adams. But it wasn't. It was inspired by all the dingi (how DO you pluralize "dingus"? "dinguses" has too many syllables...) who responded to his Buy Some Local Crap Tax post.

Okay, not everyone who replied is a dingus; there are some genuinely good ideas on how to "fix" the economy, at least in the short term -- and there's the problem.  Every time someone talks about tax cuts, or stimulating the economy, they are only proposing a short-term fix, because they are missing the real reason that any economy crashes: we spend our money on crap.

Don't get me wrong.  I like spending my money on crap.  Especially gadgets and coffee.  But time is money, so I realize that whenever I spend cash on something I don't need, I'm robbing myself of time.  Doubly so if I spend it on something that wastes my time (56-inch HD TVs come to mind -- no, I don't own one).

I could go on ranting for hours, so lets get right down to basics.  There is only ONE class of "real" jobs in the world:  the primary producers of our economy, farmers and such.  People who convert natural resources -- specifically, sunlight, since that's where all our energy (nuclear excepted) ultimately comes from or came from -- into the stuff that keeps out bodies running.  Scientific note: land and water are just catalysts; but for this reason we might lump "water purification" and similar positions into the same category.  Oh, ok, we need places to live in too...so lets throw a few builders into the mix.  Waste management too.

Got that all?  Okay, then we have an economy that should last for a while, so long as there aren't any major catastrophes and the sun keeps shining.  Of course, when a disease comes along we'll need doctors...and if we use horses and tools to farm, a blacksmith would be nice...if machines, machinists...and so on.  You get the idea.  So far, we are more-or-less OK.

Now the problems begin.  Retail.  Marketing.  Cheap plastic toys which get thrown out after 2 months of use.  At first, these influences seem innocuous.  But over time, more and more of our workforce is devoted to jobs that do nothing.  They are working just to make/help people buy more stuff.  The are wasting their own time to make others waste their time.

By the time we've reached this point, other villages/states/countries are looking our way, thinking "Hey, cheap plastic crap!  We want some!"  Or, worse yet, we have so many people living in one space, producing nothing useful, that we start running out of food and land and water, and start thinking we should go find some more.  Either way, people start building swords, then guns, then warplanes, and we're running off to other countries to take their crap.  We spend billions of gallons of oil just getting across the ocean to blow other folks up so we can take their oil.

If you're still with me at this point, you either don't think I'm crazy (foolish, foolish reader), or you do but find my insanity to be the compelling, manic kind, not the boring, lithium-induced variety.  If you fall into the latter group, take a minute to ask yourself: how many people do you know who actually produce or provide something important on a regular basis?  Do you spend your afternoons growing organic tomatoes which you'll trade for pasta at the local market?  Or do you, like me, browse YouTube at the nearest internet cafe -- burning electricity on a resource-intensive piece of plastic and silicon produced in China, while sipping coffee shipped 8000 miles across three continents and one ocean?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not implying that we should all drop our retail jobs, give up computers, and go farm the land.  But I am suggesting -- nay, stating -- that unless you are an ag worker or a plumber or a sanitation engineer, you have a responsibility to live a little more simply and waste a little less.  Not out of some hippie-yuppie compulsion, but for the sake of our economy.   Every time you throw away an iPod because it's not the latest and best model, every time you drive to the corner store instead of walking your lazy butt the half-mile, every time you buy a Power Rangers figurine instead of reading to your child, you hurt the economy.  You make the whole nation a little less efficient, putting more cash into stuff which creates waste, spending your hard-earned time to waste your time, trickling your income up into the pockets of CEOs and marketers.

Scott has it half-right: DO buy local.  But DON'T buy crap.

DO spend more money on fresh, local, organic produce than you do on your monthly cable bill and gasoline combined.

DON'T drive when you can walk.

DON'T watch advertisements: the mute button is your friend (if you can manage, don't watch TV at all).

DON'T buy anything "disposable"; that word is just a synonym for "wasteful".

DO recycle and reuse: give up tupperware, rinse out that glass salsa jar and put your leftovers in it instead.

DO carefully consider every purchase you make: do you need it, will you throw it out, does it waste your time and money?

------

PS larrythelabrat's comment (link below) prompted me to add the following:

DO allow yourself to buy things that are worth the time and money you put into them: books, music, art you like.  We all need to have some fun in our lives!  Simply DON'T buy things that give back less than you pay for them.  $1.25 for a bottle of water which is just redistributed municipal water?  Use a mug or a drinking fountain -- it's free and equally healthy.  $4 in gas to drive to work?  Bike for free (and get in shape too) or spend half that much on the bus, where you can get some reading done instead of swearing at other drivers.

My First Comic

Late next month, I'll begin a short course in cartooning at UW's Experimental College -- and it won't be a minute too early, because my current level of "talent" is despicable. Are you ready to shield your eyes? :

Google Chrome: conveying technical ideas with doodles

Google has finally built a browser.  This is great news if you happen to own GOOG stock -- and mixed news if you happen to be a web developer.  [WARNING: non-geeks, skip directly to paragraph 2]  On the up-side, we'll finally have an environment with all the perks we're after: multi-threaded, process-isolated, open-sourced.  On the downside, unless everyone adopts it (and not everyone will, since it will never be distributed as Vista's default browser) we'll now have to write our programs to perform reliably in radically different environments...a single-threaded version for IE and a multi-threaded version for Chrome, etc (frameworks like jQuery may ease some of that pain).  *Sigh* just when we thought web environments were beginning to standardize.

But I'm not here today to geek out about all the pros and cons of Chrome.  I'm actually more interested in a little-advertised side effect of the project: cartooning as a means to convey technical data.

When Google made the browser available at http://www.google.com/chrome/, they also included a 39-panel comic...err, "graphic novel"..."visual explanation" drawn by experimental cartoonist Scott McCloud; read it here: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/.

McCloud's doodle manages to convey complex concepts, like process isolation and multithreading, with a minimum of words and only a few panels of graphics.  Those of us who have taught a software development course (or simply tried to explain our jobs to non-developers) will recognize Scott's graphics as a more evolved form of our own back-of-the-napkin sketches.  He has taken those core visuals, stripped out the cruft, and nestled them into a semi-storyline (or, at least, series of situations) which the layman can relate to*.

This strikes me as an indispensable skill, and also as an excellent example to aspiring writers.  Take any description of a complex concept, distill it down to a few short sentences, and add visuals.  If you are a cartoonist...just a add color and a dose of dry wit; you're done.   If you're writing prose, describe the visuals you've just created; you'll end up with something entirely different from -- and possibly much more entertaining than -- your original description.

From now on, I'm going to make sure that all my software consulting teams have at least one cartoonist on hand.  I'm also tempted to say that I'll learn to draw something more than stick figures...but why bother?  It's working out fine for Randall.

Ciao,
JP

* don't start with me; I'll end my sentences with prepositions if I want to.

SFF Liberalism: the Next Generation

As the stadium lights dim on the 2008 DNC, I find myself pondering the new definition of "liberalism", wondering what ethical challenges the next generation of Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors will tackle.  After all -- and maybe I've been living on the Left Coast for too long -- that is our task as SFF authors, and it seems like all the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked.  Want to stick a poker in the side of religion?  Break out Stranger in a Strange Land.  Racial tension on your mind?  Re-watch the original Star Trek episodes, or crack open any novel with half-elves or alien crossbreeds.  Interested in creating a universe where sex with anyone or anything is A-OK?  I hardly need to give examples (and definitely don't view my pie-chart regarding Gravity's Rainbow).

So, what's next?

Can we construct a plotline in which biodiesel plays a critical role in saving the world, and have it still read more like a thriller than a documentary?  Probably; for fodder, read about how biodiesel is four times more efficient than ethanol, and then pit the conservative pro-corn-subsidy statesmen against a few (starving) radical activists.  Place the novel in 2030, put the radicals on bikes and the statesmen in gas-guzzling flying cars...might come off a bit cheesy, but there is headway to be made.  Don't forget to refute the Niven/Pournelle/Flynn Fallen Angels scenario.

Next up: universal healthcare.  Our protagonist is a pregnant teenager (better be first-trimester or we'll have to be overly cautious with the action scenes) whose mother has just died from an expensive form of cancer; strike that: make up a new disease which is highly curable but costly to combat.  Worse yet, the disease is hereditary...transmitted at birth.  If she doesn't make it to Canada -- whoops, looks like BlueMed CrossCo bought Canada in 2018 and commercialized the healthcare system -- if she doesn't make it to Cuba before the child is born, both she and the child are doomed to join the US Army, the last bastion of affordable healthcare.

Hit me with 'em, I'm listening.  Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

That's about right

I cannot tell you how many times this has happened to me (no really, I can't; the confidentiality agreement hasn't expired yet): http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080812

Mozilla Labs: in a land where data is free to roam...

Before you go any further, check out this new video (released by Adaptive Path), showcasing the Mozilla Labs concept browser, Aurora.

Cool, right?  A little messy, perhaps; a bit heavy on the Mac bubble-interface style; but a nifty concept.  Technologically speaking, we could build this next week...well, maybe next year, given a few hundred well-trained monkeys.

But one think keeps bugging me: though it pains me to say so, data is virtually never free.  Open up your browser and take a look at you top-ten favorites "free" sites which provide new information (be it news, humor, or simply weather data) on a daily basis.  How many of them have Google adbars? Pop-ups or flash overlays?  If they don't, do they have teaser stories which lure you into a subscription option, or are they financially backed by a hardcopy version of the paper/magazine?

The facts are simple: while the act of distributing information keeps getting cheaper (I pay less for webhosting now than I did a decade ago), the cost of acquiring new information doesn't.  Somewhere, somehow, somebody is paying for that data to be generated: CNN is using subscription or advertising revenue to fly reporters across the country, a independent blogger (ahem) is slacking off at his job to write a story, or the federal government is building a new weather station in Alaska.

Furthermore, Mozilla's vision of the future not only demands that large volumes of new and interesting data be provided freely by a variety of sources, but that these sources all use standardized, interoperable formats.  Granted, some of this interoperability will be spurred by the widespread use of open-source tools (it is a lot easier to install WordPress than to build a content management system from scratch, and with that decision comes the guarantee that your data can be more easily "scraped": extracted from your website and put into another format)...but profit-dependant organizations (PS "not-for-profit" does not mean "not profit-dependant") will always have an incentive to make it difficult to extract their data.

In the scenario Mozilla presents, data is dissociated from its source and mashed-up with other data from other sources.  In the final mashup view, there are no ads, and no highly visible indicators as to where the data came from.  This leads to two effects: providers of legitimate data start losing money, and thus eventually stop producing usable info; simultaneously, providers of untrustworthy data (spammers and other organizations with a personal agenda) gain more leverage.  Take this to its worst possible outcome, and we find ourselves in a world where most information is hearsay or opinion, facts cannot be trusted, and all the legitimate news sources are dead.

Of course, it does not have to go this way -- if we start providing the right incentives before the technology gets away from us.  Some of this is simple good practice: always provide attribution and links to your source data; fact-check before you post; pay for subscriptions to the info-sources you trust (or at least click on their ads).  But there are more complex, community wide problems to be handled too: is there an effective technological solution to spam, since the law has failed us?  How do we balance the financial incentives for data-provision against the end-users bias toward the cheapest possible source?  Should copyright exist on the Internet, or is it sufficient to cite your sources (and display their advertising stream with their data)?

Sadly, most of these questions cannot be directly resolved by us technophiles, but at the very least, lets get the discussion rolling...

Your rent just went up

If you, like me, prefer the clatter, clang, and steam of an active coffeshop when you write...

And if, unlike me, you're unfortunate enough to live in one of those East (or Middle) Coast towns where $tarbucks is the only caffeine source...

Your rent just went up.

The coffee behemoth is purchasing the company which makes the Clover, a nifty little $11,000 gadget that brews individual cups of coffee at precise temperatures and steeping times. For the true coffee-lover, this is huge: the stuff is delicious. Well before this announcement, I had the pleasure of imbibing the brew at a local indie (aka non-Starbucks) shop. It is definitively the best cuppa that has ever passed my lips.

But make no mistake -- Seattle's best-hated chain is not purchasing the Clover on altruistic gourmet grounds. They're making a concious business decision to price out us campers...the folks who wander in at 10 AM and buy the cheapest possible beverage (drip, drip, and more drip refills) for the next four hours while they work on the next novel. Apparently scrapping the free WiFi wasn't sufficient; they also need a reason to charge upwards of $4 per hit for everything on the menu.

Thus, I still find myself working on the porch of my favorite non-chain coffee shop, whose $0.25 refills of filter-brewed drip remain mellow (if mundane) even after an hour in the carafe. If I want a hint of chocolate in my cup, I can pull out the jar of Ghirardelli powder from my pack...and toss the extra $3.75 in my barista's tip jar.

The Aarne-Thompson Classification System

In 1910, Antti Aarne developed a motif-oriented, enumerated classification system for folk tales; Stith Thompson translated and expanded this system, releasing it in 1961 as the Aarne-Thompson Classification System.

I think this has great mashup potential; consider:
- set "Contest between Man and Ogre (1060-1114)" in post-apocalyptic North America
- format "Enchanted Wife (400-459)" for sitcom; film in B&W
- perhaps "The Obstinate Wife Learns to Obey (900-909)" starring Eva Gabor?

Oh, nevermind. It's been done.

Windows Live Writer

Micro$oft does some things poorly, and some things well.  Historically, HTML editing has been one of their weak spots: just view the source code of any Word document after you've selected "Save As > Web Page" and you'll see what I mean.  Third-party integration is another weak spot...from what I've seen (admittedly, from the outside) they tend to force others to adapt to their APIs, not the other way around (JScript, anyone?).

So it comes to me as a surprise that I'm actually recommending an MS tool that does both: writes HTML (XHTML even), and conforms to a third-party API.  In fact, I'm using said tool at this very instant.

Windows Live Writer is a small-footprint (under 10mb) utility which allows users to post directly to their blog.  "What's the big deal?" you ask -- and right you are to do so, since most blogspaces have fairly decent WYSIWYG editors, spellcheck, and the like.  Well, since you asked, here is a quick feature list:

• offline editing: no more trying (and failing) to cut-and-paste formatted text written while you were offline; edit in WLW on the road, then click "publish" when you're online again
• posts to all your favorites: Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, TypePad, Movable Type...
• multiple profiles: add each blog you edit as a separate account
• all the WYSIWIG HTML tools you'd expect: hotkeys and buttons to create lists, tables bold/italic/underline, links, etc; and the hotkeys are the ones you're used to from Word (CTRL-B for bold, CTRL-K for link, and so on)
• realtime spellchecking: yep, with the squiggly red line under your misspelled words (and if you hate that, you can turn it off).  What's that?  "Spellcheck" isn't in the dictionary?  No problem...just right-click, add to dictionary, done
• insertion of images and videos (from your computer or the web): plus tools for varying borders, tone control, watermarking, and more
• drafts: automatically saved every few minutes
• templated insertion: set up HTML snippets, insert them wherever you like by selecting from a drop-down
• automatic hyperlinking: do you always link the word "google" to "http://www.google.com/search?as_q=google&num=100&lr=lang_en"?  Add it to your link glossary, and WLW lets you pick it from a list instead of retyping the URL each time

If these features interest you, grab it from http://get.live.com/writer/overview -- but don't forget to uncheck "Live Search" and "MSN Home" (shudder) when you run the installer!

Bad News for Print-on-Demand...and Beyond

"Don't be evil"

Google has been using this motto since 2001, and while they may have made a few missteps, most of us seem to support Brin and Page's long term vision, and applaud the company as it strides bravely into new markets.

If only every megalith adopted this slogan, I wouldn't feel a burning need to boycott Amazon.

As early as March of 2008, the online bookseller began threatening to remove authors' books from its shelves. Their crime: using Print-on-Demand (POD) services from other vendors.

You may not think much of POD right now; it has a bad rep, being mostly associated with vanity self-publishing services. But POD is the unavoidable wave of the future, in much the way that online MP3s sales were the much-doubted future of music. Whoever controls the POD market will, effectively, control all book publishing...and Amazon's track record on this is not-so-good: they charge authors an up-font fee in the hundreds of dollars even when they aren't providing any design or promotion. Yes, you heard me right: Amazon does nothing, authors pay up front, and the megalith still takes 75% of the profit on every copy sold.

For authors, that means reduced profits. For readers, that means higher book prices, with less of the money going to the authors you love, and more going to the corporate machinery of Amazon. This effect will not be restricted to Print-on-Demand; once Amazon gains a monopoly in the POD market, they will be able to leverage this advantage to force authors with mainstream publishers to move to their POD service. In a decade, Amazon could control all book publishing, in every market. Imagine the beauty of a single publisher-retailer for all books: zero competition, therefore no quality-control and no price-control.

So, even if you don't believe in Print-on-Demand, you may want to seriously consider boycotting Amazon, or at the very least signing the petition on your way out...

Cheers,
JP

PS a personal plug: while I don't self-publish, I do endorse LULU as, essentially, a low-cost professionally-bound copy service (just don't get an ISBN or make your project public). If you want to give your first readers a perfect-bound softcover instead of a stapled pile of 8x10 pages, it will cost you about $6-10 per copy to get them printed, bound, and shipped. Personally, I'm willing to spend a few bucks to make sure that my galleys get carried around in my reviewers' pockets, not lost in a pile of other papers on their desks.

PPS read more at O'Reilly and The PI

The Elements of Style

The 1999 revision of Strunk's indispensable book "The Elements of Style" is now available for free online: http://www.bartleby.com/141/ ...read carefully, because you're only allowed to break the rules [that] you know :-)

Resources for Authors

NorWesCon 31 was a blast! Originally, I had signed up b/c the Foglios were attending -- but as soon as I arrived, the realization dawned on me that there was no better place for an SF/F author to spend his weekend. For three days straight, I attended panel after panel with names like "Is the Short Story Dead?" and "Breaking in through Small Press". When not absorbing Dan Simmons' advice on "How to Make an Editor Cry", I ripped out my vocal chords screaming Rocky Horror callbacks and catcalling at the Fetish Fannish Fashion Show. My notes:

Useful websites about markets & publishers:

http://www.duotrope.com/ (absolutely THE best way to quickly find markets; includes a submission tracker)
http://www.agentquery.com/
http://www.sfwa.org/
http://www.ralan.com/
http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/
http://www.locusmag.com/ (esp Links & Publishers)
http://www.absolutewrite.com/
http://www.tangentonline.com/
http://www.literarymarketplace.com/
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/
http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/

For creating bound hardcopies (or self-publishing, if so desired):

http://www.lulu.com
https://www.lightningsource.com/

Some mags to submit SF/F shorts to:

http://www.thefirstline.com/
http://www.talebones.com/
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/
http://www.everydayfiction.com/
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
http://www.strangehorizons.com/
http://abyssandapex.com/
http://www.rofmagazine.com/
http://www.raygunrevival.com/
http://pulp.net/
http://www.weirdtales.net/

Small publishers:

http://www.nightshadebooks.com/

SF/F Communities:

http://www.sff.net/

Books worth reading/referencing:

The 10% Solution by Ken Rand
Writer's Market 2008 (of course)