This week’s big genre fiction news is undoubtedly the long-promised launch of the new-look Tor.com – a publisher’s website that is also a social network, free fiction repository, group-blog and webzine all in one. Go take a look around and see what you can find.
As Charlie Stross points out, it’s been a long time coming – not just for Tor but for big publishing houses in general, who have been slow to adapt to the post-print internet paradigm.
Of course, not everyone is all positive. Genre fiction’s gadfly-in-chief, Futurismic columnist Jonathan McCalmont, wonders if Tor.com is too little (or rather too much) too late:
“I put it to you that this community (which has been admirably quick in adapting to new technologies) is as connected as it can possibly get and that this connection is (aside from a few existing forums) nicely decentralised and organic.
In fact, I put it to you that [the genre fiction] community is getting dangerously close to the saturation point.
Gadfly in chief? that’s impressive! I must have missed the memo. I’m assuming there’s a sash and maybe a hat that goes with the post 😉
Saturation point? I struggle to find info about upcoming genre books to the point that I have to browse online bookstores to get an idea. If there’s an entire community out there talking and promoting this stuff it’s not doing a very good job if I haven’t managed to stumble across it. I’m never off the net 🙂
How about a post pulling together all the good places to go for genre news and reviews? I’d certainly find it helpful.
Jonathan – er, we might be able to get you a plastic thing with your name on it? Or an old ‘Prefect’ badge with your new title tippexed on…
Flub – you surprise me, sir, but I guess it’s an easy mistake to make. There’s no one unifying news source… I watch about 300 RSS feeds daily to keep an ear to the ground, and I know the SF Signal gang do a similar number. Maybe I’ll follow your suggestion and make a list of the essential sites… or, better still, crowdsource it!
To have a list of RSS feeds to watch you have to get the info from somewhere. I’m slowly accumulating a list of sites to read but you can’t guess them. You need to be told. Thanks for SF Signal though. I’ve just added that to GReader. 🙂
I’m often being surprised by release dates for books I should have known about well before hand. It’s annoying and the only media I have this problem in.