Paul Raven @ 12-06-2008
The SF Signal gang have been running another of their ‘Mind Meld’ pieces. This time they asked a bunch of genre notables which up-and-coming writers they thought would be the next generation of sf’s big hitters. Here’s the final list, based on frequency of mentions:
- Paolo Bacigalupi (4 mentions)
- Darryl Gregory (4)
- Benjamin Rosenbaum (3 mentions)
- Cory Doctorow (3)
- Jay Lake (3)
- David Moles (3)
- Chris Roberson (3)
- Vandana Singh (3)
- Elizabeth Bear (2 mentions)
- Alan DeNiro (2)
- Alex Irvine (2)
- Ted Kosmatka (2)
- Paul Melko (2)
- Naomi Novik (2)
- Tim Pratt (2)
- Jason Stoddard (2)
- Karen Traviss (2)
- Scott Westerfeld (2)
We’re pleased to see two Futurismic alumni in that list - Jay Lake and Jason Stoddard. No mention of Tobias Buckell, though, which seems surprising to me - and not just because he used to blog here, either.
There’s also a lively discussion thread going on, with plenty of other writers pitching in with their suggestions and refutations. What about you guys - who would Futurismic’s readers add to (or remove from) that list?
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Tomas Martin @ 26-01-2008
Diane Turnshek, who runs the Alpha Workshop for young writers, sent me details on this year’s workshop, which will be held in Pittsburgh this July. I had the great pleasure of attending the first two years of the workshop, in 2002 and 2003. Alpha taught me a huge amount about the craft and business of writing and led me to my first few fiction sales. If you write science fiction, fantasy or horror and are between the age of 14 and 19 this is the best possible way to learn more about how to improve your work as well as have a lot of fun meeting other like-minded people.
Alpha uses a similar structure to the Clarion and Odyssey writers’ workshops but over ten days rather than six weeks. The teens accepted to the workshop will have their submission story critiqued as well as writing a completely new story with the help of the staff and guest writers. At the end of the final week everyone is encouraged to submit their story to market before heading over to the Pittsburgh SF convention, Confluence for a final weekend of fun.
The ALPHA SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14-19) will be held at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg Campus July 16-25, 2008
in conjunction with Pittsburgh’s science fiction convention, Confluence, July 25-27th. Twenty talented young writers will be selected to attend the workshop on the strength of their submission stories. Four guest authors and ten staff members will be present during the ten-day residency workshop to teach genre writing. Mike
Arnzen, Timothy Zahn, Chris McKitterick and Tamora Pierce are our guest authors for 2008 (our seventh year). Workshop fee: $950.00 For more information, see:
http://alpha.spellcaster.org/
Past graduates have been published in Realms Of Fantasy, Aberrant Dreams, Boys Life, Fantasy Magazine and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, as well as placing in awards like Writers Of The Future and The Dell Award for Undergraduates. So if you know any young writer with an ambition to be published, let them know about Alpha and help create a new generation of genre writers.
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Tomas Martin @ 21-12-2007
Tomas Martin @ 15-12-2007
Google has announced a new wikipedia-like project, entitled ‘knol’. Short for knowledge, the project aims to have an encyclopedia type experience but with more emphasis on the author, rather than anonymous multiple contributors. There will not be editorial contributions from Google, but authors including ads will get revenue.
An example knol has been put up on the Google blog. Google says that the emphasis will be on large numbers of posts, ranked by users and views to encourage quality. Peer review seems to encourage good writers to become better rated and more successful. Added to the potential to earn money, this endeavour could provide a good potential way to create a freelance online writer business model. It looks like Knol will be less comprehensive/consistent across the entire volume of data than Wikipedia, but with better quality at the top end. It’s a similar model to Mahalo, only with the backing of perhaps the biggest internet company out there.
[via boing boing, image is the example of a Google Knol]
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Paul Raven @ 10-12-2007
The title says it all; Sir Arthur C Clarke, living legend of science fiction, turns 90 on 16th December 2007 - that’s this coming Sunday. The Astronomical Association of Sri Lanka (where Clarke has been resident for many years) have set up a special blog where you can leave a message for the man himself. [Via SpaceElevatorBlog]
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Paul Raven @ 22-11-2007
The WGA writers’ strike rolls on, pitting the justifiable desire of creatives to be paid a fair deal for the fruits of their labour against the same sort of grasping tactics that are causing the music industry to eat itself like a cancer. [Image by NoHoDamon]
While I’m supportive of the writers’ position on this issue, I’m intrigued by the outsider opinions. Techdirt points us to an LA Times article discussing the rise of alternative financing models in the movie industry, and suggests that if the big studios stick to their guns they will actually hasten their own demise by creating an environment where smart and talented writers can bypass the traditional system and take their scripts straight to the market, funding their productions using a venture capital process similar to that used by technology startups.
Now, I’m not an economist or a script-writer (and nor do I play either of them on television), but I find the underlying logic of this idea appealing - it seems to be a business model that fits the internet age. But then TechDirt, as fascinating a read as it is, is very much biased toward the independent operator/startup philosophy (as demonstrated by its previous coverage of the WGA strike). Perhaps this idea places too much of a burden on the writer - whose job is, after all, to write. But then again, it’s an accepted truism that novelists must self-market if they hope to be successful, even with the support of a publisher.
I guess only time will tell. But from my personal point of view, a significant lessening of the corporate homogeneity of Hollywood could only be a good thing - it might result in a movie industry that produces more than one film every year that I can actually be bothered to go and see.
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Paul Raven @ 12-09-2007
OK, ladies and gents - Futurismic is looking for a few good bloggers.
What we need from you is enthusiasm for the sort of topics we cover here (science fictional near-future phenomena and technogeekery with a slant toward the plausible), a commitment to doing at least one post per weekday (or more if you like), and some sort of writing experience, be it as a blogger or anything else.
What can we offer you in return? The chance for your writing to reach a wider audience, and to share your enthusiasm for science fiction literature and the ideas it deals with. What we can’t offer you is money - the only people who have ever made money from Futurismic are the authors of the short stories we publish, because that’s what the site is all about. The Futurismic team do it for the love - no matter how much our families and loved ones may rue us for it sometimes!
Still interested? Good! Drop me (Paul Raven) an email to the address hyperlinked in my name on the staff page. Put ‘Futurismic blogger enquiry’ in the title so as not to get caught in my spam traps, and send me the following:
- A short paragraph about yourself and your relationship to science fiction
- Links to your own blog, or other writing of yours available online
- A couple of samples of the sort of post you’d contribute to Futurismic - we’re happy for you to have your own voice, indeed we’d prefer you to, but we like to keep things fairly short and snappy. If you follow the site regularly, you should know what I mean.
I’ll read them through, and get back to you as soon as I possibly can. Looking forward to hearing from you! [Awesome Futuristic City image borrowed from P1X3L]
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Paul Raven @ 12-07-2007
The science fiction genre is full of authors who, with a few exceptions, understand the value of giving content away for free as a marketing ploy (and we love them for it, too). The same attitude is less prevalent in the world of ‘proper’ literature, but the literary cachet of Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, combined with her enthusiastic adoption of a new publishing paradigm may change that fact. A recluse in real life, Ms Jelinek feels more able to communicate with people online, describing the internet as “the most wonderful thing there is. It connects people. Everyone can have input.” As an experiment into using the internet to raise an author’s profile, I’d say it’s been a success - Nobel Prize or no, I’d never heard of her before now. I wonder if the story’s any good?
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