Monthly Archives: September 2008

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Dreaming about Sarah Palin

palinWe live in such a media-saturated age it’s rather surprising that we don’t have shared dreams more often. Because it’s Friday afternoon where I am, here’s a link to a Slate.com’s Your Dreams (and Nightmares) About Sarah Palin: She hands you a $20 bill. She marries you. She tells you to kill all the animals in the zoo. She’s your barista.

It’s a highly nonscientific (a-scientific?) survey of dreams readers have had since — Sweet Gene Vincent, was it only a week ago?  (Disclaimer: I have not had a dream about Sarah Palin.) My favorite from the Slate article (hardly the most Freudian of the batch, either):

“In my dream, I was with a group of people watching the election results on television. However, pundits weren’t announcing the results. Both candidates and their VP picks were sitting on two couches in a room full of journalists/pundits. McCain and Palin were on one couch, and Obama was on his couch with his VP pick, but it wasn’t Joe Biden, it was a woman in an emerald-green ball gown. In a way she resembled Doris Kearns Goodwin. What stood out to me is how insignificant McCain appeared. All attention, a spotlight even, was on Palin. It was like McCain was a sad old man on a park bench, and Palin was just soaking up all of the energy in the room. She seemed to be a magnet for all of the energy in the room—a bit like a Dementor from Harry Potter. Obama and his Doris Kearns Goodwin look-alike VP were also relatively insignificant, but not as much as McCain. Obama smiled graciously the entire time. At some point, Tim Russert‘s disembodied head appeared through a doorway in the room where I was, and I started to cry. Tim didn’t say anything, he just floated there observing the group. One of the journalists/pundits in the room was overheard whispering, ‘It’s McCain!’ It wasn’t an official announcement, but he let it slip, and it was true—McCain won the election.

“But McCain just sat there not moving. Palin stood up and started queen-waving. Obama got up to shake her hand—graciously—and Doris Kearns Goodwin sat on her couch, as I was sitting on my dream-couch, crying.”

[Sarah Palin in Kuwait by asecondhandconjecture]

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Friday Free Fiction for 12th September

Here it is folks – two week’s worth of free science fiction from around the web. I hope you’re hungry!

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At ManyBooks.net:

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Over at FeedBooks, the Futurismic back-catalogue is nearly complete:

And a few old classics from elsewhere:

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The last ever Oddlands Magazine:

Short Fiction

Poetry

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Clarkesworld Magazine:

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Byzarium:

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Subterranean Press has another installment of “Kilimanjaro” by Mike Resnick. And another little bonus at Subterranean – Scalzi fans who don’t read the Whatever (for, ahem, whatever reason) should schlepp on over and check out “Denise Jones, Super Booker“.

(Those who do read the Whatever doubtless knew that already… and knew that Scalzi sold it within thirteen (13!) minutes of finishing it.)

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Apex Online:

A Jay Lake story, originally published in Interzone – “The American Dead”

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John Klima – who blogs for Tor and edits the rather super print zine Electric Velocipede – has had a story published. I’ll let him explain:

A select few of you know that I do write, despite my protestations that I am just an editor. And even fewer of you know that I sold a story to Diet Soap, the wonderfully eclectic magazine put out by Doug Lain.

My story, which was initially submitted under a pseudonym, was accepted for the online edition of Diet Soap. Doug has created a new feature, “How to Write Stories About Writers” of which I am the first offering.

There are two parts:

I hope you enjoy them both.

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A heads-up from Paul McAuley:

I’ve just discovered that the online magazine Fanzine has published a short story by Scott Bradfield. I’ve been a big fan every since I read some of his early short stories in Interzone, back in the Paleolithic: smartly-written absurdist parables, goofy and sweet, but always with a sting in the tale. Kind of like the films of Preston Sturges.

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Those nice people at Orbit Books have got another excerpt from their roster for you to read; this time it’s from Halting State, the latest sf novel from Charlie Stross.

For what it’s worth, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I reckon you’ll get a good sense of whether it’ll be your thing by checking out a sample of its idiosyncracies… put it this way, if you’re into RPGs, virtual worlds or old-school text-adventure dungeon games, I reckon you’ll love it.

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Two slices of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory, numbers 22 and 23

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Here are some free samples from John Joseph Adams‘ new zombie fiction anthology, The Living Dead (how does he manage such a prodigious output?):

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The mysterious Minister Faust, who has been blogging over at Jeff VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days this week, offers an excerpt from his book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad.

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An email from Shira Lipkin:

Hello! I’m doing a collaboration with Kythryne Aisling of Wyrding Studios, posting short fiction every weekday this month based on reader prompts and Kythryne’s jewelry. The fiction is free; there’s a PayPal button, but no payment is required, so Free Ficton Friday fans might be interested. 🙂

Thanks, Shira – good luck!

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Tor.com has another piece of fresh fiction from a genre notable: “The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder” by Elizabeth Bear.

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Thanks to SF Signal for rounding up a lot of stuff that I’d have doubtless otherwise missed by being away from the RSS coalface:

      • “Larisa Miusov” by Lucius Shepard, parts one, two, and three.
      • An excerpt from The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines
      • Revolution SF has “Wonder” by J.R. and “Flowers for Melody” by Mikal Trimm
      • SpaceWesterns: “West of the Texas Nebula” by Dan Devine and Lyn Perry.
      • Reflection’s Edge #39 features fiction from Matthew Kressel, Claude Lalumière, Margaret Yang, Chad Bank, and Brian Haycock.
      • Ray Gun Revival #46 has a gorgeous looking new issue featuring fiction by Jonathon Mast, Justin R. Macumber, T.M. Hunter, Jonathan J. Schlosser, and Alice M. Roelke. The issue also features continuing serials by M. Keaton, Keanan Brand, L. S. King, Johne Cook, and Sean T. M. Stiennon, as well as art by Christian Hecker and reviews.
      • SFX has “The Stinker” by Colin Harvey.
      • And finally, Munseys has “The Judas Valley” by Gerald Vance (1956).

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      And a special mention – Futurismic‘s very own hard-working fiction editor Chris East got a story published at COSMOS Magazine – “Frame of Mind“. Yay, Chris! 😀

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      Last week’s Friday Flash pieces:

      And here are the early ones from this week; I’m afraid another sojourn away from the computer this evening may mean I miss a few, but I’ll roll ’em on into next week’s round-up if so.

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      Non-fiction bonus: Sir Cory of Doctorow has a collection of his essays coming out, and naturally you can get an electronic version for nada:

      Tachyon Books and I are launching my latest book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, my very first collection of essays. In it are 28 essays about everything from copyright and DRM to the layout of phone-keypads, the fallacy of the semantic web, the nature of futurism, the necessity of privacy in a digital world, the reason to love Wikipedia, the miracle of fanfic, and many other subjects.

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      Phew! Amazing how it all piles up in just a couple of weeks, eh? Keep your tip-offs coming in, though, and they’ll make it into next week’s selection – deadline 1800 GMT!

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      Why do people vote Republican?

      12 Comments

      nixonPsychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the question on The Edge, with eight responses from the Reality Club. This self-described liberal suggests:

      Democrats would do well to read Durkheim and think about the quasi-religious importance of the criminal justice system. The miracle of turning individuals into groups can only be performed by groups that impose costs on cheaters and slackers. You can do this the authoritarian way (with strict rules and harsh penalties) or you can do it using the fairness/reciprocity foundation by stressing personal responsibility and the beneficence of the nation towards those who “work hard and play by the rules.” But if you don’t do it at all—if you seem to tolerate or enable cheaters and slackers — then you are committing a kind of sacrilege.

      Afterwards, Howard Gardner wonders why left-wing societies have lower crime rates and more stable marriages; Michael Shermer decries what he calls liberal bias in academia; James Fowler wonders why people vote at all; Alison Gopnik asks what about the children; Roger Schank gets the last word:

      Republicans do not try to change voter’s beliefs. They go with them. Democrats appeal to reason. Big mistake.

      [Nixon by Rockwell; story tip: Eric Alterman]

      Update: In light of stuff like this, at least one of the U.S. Presidential candidates has a website to register to vote or to confirm registration.  I haven’t found it on the other guy’s site, but I’m probably just overlooking it. [Thanks again, Todd]

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      Ohio earthworks: Not a fort but a 2,000-year-old water project

      ohio-riverThings aren’t always what they seem. More than 200 years ago, General (and future U.S. President) William Henry Harrison decided that a structure at the confluence of the Ohio and Miami Rivers was a fort. Now University of Cincinnati archaeologists and anthropologists say it’s really an irrigation system built by the Shawnee to deal with long-term drought.

      Two points stand out: one is that the engineering expertise required to conceive of such a massive irrigation system must have been far greater than what history has traditionally assigned to Native American groups from that time in history, and the second is that the cultural priority of engaging in such a massive undertaking as building these earthworks by hand was done by this culture not because of military motivations but for a more civil cause.

      The builders were probably women, too.

      [Photo: Ohio River, Chris Breeze]

      Blog

      Writers – remix Rosenbaum’s Ant King and win the book

      Benjamin Rosenbaum - The Ant King and Other StoriesVia Kathryn Cramer at Tor comes news that Benjamin Rosenbaum has decided not merely to release his new Small Beer Press collection of short stories, The Ant King and Other Stories, as a free Creative Commons-licensed download, but also to openly invite people to create derivative works for the chance to win a signed copy of the physical book.

      Here are the rules:

      1. Create a derivative work of any story in The Ant King and Other Stories
      2. Place it under the same license (you do this just by including a declaration to that effect on the work in its published form)
      3. Post a link to the work (or some kind of recording or representation of the work, like a youtube video if it’s a live performance, or a picture of it if it’s, like, a vase or something) in the comments to this blog entry.
      4. Derivative works can be translations, plays, movies, radio plays, audiobooks, flashmob happenings, horticultural installations, visual artworks, slash fanfic epics, robot operas, sequels, webcomics, ASCII art, text adventure games, roleplaying campaigns, knitting projects, handmade shoes, or anything else you feel like.
      5. On March 3, 2009 (that gives you six months), I will send signed (and extensively doodled-upon) hardcover copies of The Ant King and Other Stories to the creators of the three derivative works that I like the best.
      6. Obviously, other than what’s covered in the CC license, you retain all rights to your works, so if you’ve made, you know, House-Beyond-Your-Sky-themed coasters, you get to sell them or put drinks on them to keep rings off your coffee table or whatever. And if you want to actually sell the rights to reproduce the derivative work commercially, I will in all probability tell you that you can, unless you’re, like, a Hollywood studio. 🙂

      Could be quite a fun project, no?