China’s amazing first manned mission did not go off as perfectly as it seemed. They almost lost the craft on the way down.
Multi-user Google Earth with avatars – this is Unype
Much as I love Second Life, I’m not so infatuated that I can’t see that Linden Lab are wide open to someone overtaking them with a smaller, lower-spec application with a similar feature set. And while it’s still in Beta (isn’t everything these days?), Unype’s ability to use your Skype account and Google Earth to create a multi-user avatar populated virtual world looks like it has the potential to become a serious contender. Granted, it doesn’t have SL’s content creation features or the bells and whistles … but the lower barriers for entry may render that irrelevant. [Clickable Culture]
Artificial life – the race is on
Craig Venter had better watch out – he’s got some competition. Experts in the field predict we’ll see the first successful attempts at creating “wet artificial lifeforms” within three to ten years.
Winning Mars – free science fiction novel from Jason Stoddard
As already noted at T3Aspace and reported by Gareth L. Powell, Jason Stoddard has decided to release an entire unpublished novel for free under a Creative Commons licence. Winning Mars is an expansion of the novella by the same name that appeared in Interzone #196.
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Jason and I are friends, that he helped me out by building my concrete compound of doom in Second Life for me (and made a fine job of it too), and that I may have started this habit by convincing him to release his short story “Fermi Packet” in a similar fashion.
But in case you’re thinking that means you should take my recommendation with a pinch of salt, bear in mind that as well as being published in Interzone (more than once), he’s also sold short stories to us here at Futurismic, as well as Talebones, Darker Matter and Strange Horizons, among others.
What I’m trying to say is that this guy writes great science fiction, and that Winning Mars will be well worth your time. At this price (you know, like, free), how could it not be? All he asks is that you let him know what you though of it after you’ve read it, positive or negative.
So, what are you waiting for? Download the PDF of Winning Mars now, while stocks last!
[Cross-posted to VCTB]
Career advice for writers, by writers
My feed reader is full of useful advice for writers once again, so I thought I’d share the wealth:
Jeff Vandermeer’s Evil Monkey delivers the second short sharp installment of his Guide to Creative Writing:
“Alas, market predictions aren’t like assholes, because everyone has two or three, and they usually serve little purpose.”
Luc Reid tries to nail down what it is that makes certain stories rise from “good, but not quite what we’re looking for” to “sold”:
“So what makes a story rise above its fellows, inspire love, stand out? The intuitive response would be that it does the things we talked about better. The characters are stronger, the plot is more compelling, the description is more vivid. But usually standing out is going to mean something else, and it’s going to differ from writer to writer and sometimes from story to story. The stories that rise above are not just more competent than the stories that don’t, although more competent is always better.”
Moving beyond the writing itself and into the territory of promotional work, Charlie Stross explains the dos and don’ts of public readings with his usual dry humour:
“The water jug isn’t an optional extra. I usually take the precaution of bringing along a drink of some sort, simply because my throat dries out after ten or fifteen minutes of speaking and if I’m scheduled late in a day of readings, the folks providing supporting facilities such as jugs of water tend to be getting a bit erratic themselves.”
And finally, David Louis Edelman has some advice on how to self-promote with ethical integrity:
“3. Avoid glaring sins of omission. This is a difficult guideline to follow, because it’s very subjective. Don’t use ellipses to claim that your book is “an absolutely terrific… thriller” when the actual review states that your book is “an absolutely terrific example of what not to do when writing a thriller.” Don’t try to sell to a group of Vietnam vets by claiming that your book has a Vietnam vet in it, while conveniently forgetting to mention that said character gets run over by a truck on page 4.”
Ah! The intarwebs: helping aspiring writers (to avoid writing by supplying them enough advice from genuine writers that they can convince themselves reading it is a more valuable way to spend their time than actually writing) since 1997!
[Cross-posted to VCTB]