Tag Archives: Fiction

Publishing and piracy: more Mamatas

How timely! An SF Signal Mind Meld post on “the future of publishing”… featuring a rather dystopic but all-too-plausible worst-case-scenario from Cheryl Morgan, and another serving of brutal truth from Nick Mamatas:

Piracy will always be with us, and in the end it’ll just be figured into the cost of doing business; ebook prices will come down to a more reasonable level and piracy will be a problem along the lines of shoplifting. Writers will be more likely to license World English rights rather than territorial rights for their books to make them more widely available to readers who pirate out of fannish desperation.

I also anticipate at least one of the major publishers crumbling back into its component imprints, which will actually be a good thing–indeed, it’ll be the thing that will allow ebooks to come down to the $3-5 price range. There’s a lot of whining about how print costs are only 10% of the cover price of a book, so ebooks prices can only sink so low, but the plain fact is that publisher overhead, specifically in the forms of Manhattan real estate and payouts to distributors with giant warehouses, are both utterly superfluous and easily eliminated. The major houses are pigs and some of them are going to die.

[…]

It won’t be bad, unless you’re one of the few people making money right now with mindless hackwork. If you are the 2010s will be your decade to suffer as the rest of us have suffered these past thirty years.

Ouch. Compare and contrast to Gordon Van Gelder’s “I dunno” shrug, which – while honest – smacks more than a little of an ostrich impersonation; F&SF, I’d remind you, still doesn’t accept electronic submissions.

Inspiration: Essential Magic or a Load of Hooey?

Ah, Sweet Panic!

panic!Cartoonist Bill Watterson cranked out one brilliant Calvin and Hobbes comic strip after another for about ten years. Even if (bizarrely) you aren’t a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, it’s clear Watterson knew how to create art that spoke to a lot of people in a clever, funny, and meaningful way. Here’s a conversation his two main characters  had about inspiration.

HOBBES: Do you have an idea for your project yet?

CALVIN: No, I’m waiting for inspiration. You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.

HOBBES: What mood is that?

CALVIN: Last-minute panic.

Continue reading Inspiration: Essential Magic or a Load of Hooey?

Holiday time

OK, folks; for those of you who haven’t already done the same or similar, yours truly is trundling off to do the family thing for a few days, so Futurismic will be going into a short hibernation as a result. I’ll probably be popping in briefly between Xmas and New Year’s, but please don’t be surprised if content is minimal – I have some work projects to finish up, for a start, and I could do with a bit of brain-downtime. Hell, I think we all could, AMIRITEZ?

So have a great holiday, of whatever denominational flavour (or lack thereof) you prefer. But just before I go, here’s a note in my inbox from from new UK indie publisher called Fingerpress:

[We]  recently published Smallworld by Hugo-nominated author Dominic Green. The book’s available in paperback, and also can be downloaded under a Creative Commons license from here: http://genres.fingerpress.co.uk/smallworld.html

And the blurb from that page reads as follows:

Mount Ararat, a world the size of an asteroid yet with Earth-standard gravity, plays host to a strangely confident family whose children are protected by the Devil, a mechanical killing machine, from such passers-by as Mr von Trapp (an escapee from a penal colony), the Made (manufactured humans being hunted by the State), and the super-rich clients of a gravitational health spa established at Mount Ararat’s South Pole.

But as more and more visitors to the tiny rock are dispatched with cold efficiency by the faster-than-sight robot, the children (and their secretive parents) start to wonder who put the robot there, and who – or what – is really in need of protection.

Sounds like it has a Robert Sheckley kind of vibe to it… so if you fancy a free read, go download it, why don’t you?

Happy holidays, folks, and thanks for reading. 🙂

Stuff worth reading

So, did you read Lori Ann White’s “World In Progress” yet? Well, you should do; not only is it Futurismic‘s last bit of fiction for the foreseeable future, but it’s also very excellent. Sure, I’m a little biased in that opinion… but indulge me, here, why don’t you? When have I steered you wrong before*? Personal redemption in a weird but all-too-believable near-future… try telling me you don’t need some of that in your life right now. Go on.

And once you’re done reading Lori’s story (no, no, carry on – it’s OK, I’ll wait), here’s another recommended read: Paolo Bacigalupi’s multi-award-winning The Windup Girl. I meant to write a review of this excellent novel back in late spring, but never quite got around to it… so in lieu of said review (and in light of many others), just take my word for it that if you’re interested in the sort of future-thinking we do here at Futurismic, you really should read this book. And those canny beggars at Orbit have just released a paperback version into the UK market in time for The Winter Festival Which Shall Remain Unnamed… so British readers, you have no excuse. Buy it for a friend, buy it for yourself… but just buy it, OK?

OK.

[ * Actually, don’t answer that. Just read the story; make a publisher happy, and make an author’s day. ]

NEW FICTION: WORLD IN PROGRESS by Lori Ann White

Well, here we are: the last piece of Futurismic fiction for a while. But talk about ending on a high note! When Chris sent across Lori Ann White‘s “World In Progress” for me to look at, it felt as if she’d been carefully following the stuff I blog about here day after day, picking out some of my favourite riffs, memes and ideas, and rendering them down into one wonderful – and very human – story. It’s a super piece, and I’m proud to be publishing it; scroll down, read on, and find out why. 🙂

World In Progress

by Lori Ann White

And in The Far Corner, Wearing a
Too-Tight Jock Strap and a Crown of Thorns–

CLOSE UP on a face.  Calm, pale, waves of black hair brushed back from a broad forehead.  Retro Guy.  Grade A, 100% Pure Professional Athlete.  No drugs, no mods, no tweaks, no prods.  Just like the old farts ordered.

He’s staring at the wall above the mirror through eyes blue as an Artic bay.  Pan to the wall, to the framed honest-to-god newsprint, photo of a thick-necked thug in too-tight jacket.  He’s small, like Retro Guy, like they all used to be, but the smug grin and his squinty eyes radiate “big guy” waves.  He’s got one arm around a sad brunette.

The caption: “Bruisin’ Brawler Gene O’Connor: ‘No God-Damned Upgrades!  My Boy Will be a Real Boxer, Just Like His Old Man.'”

The camera pans back to Retro Guy’s face.

“Hey, Old Man,” he whispers.  “This fight’s for you.” Continue reading NEW FICTION: WORLD IN PROGRESS by Lori Ann White