Hey, it’s hump day – you should probably reward yourself for surviving to the half-way point of the week. So why not celebrate with some new fiction to read?
Brenda Cooper, who writes the Today’s Tomorrows column here at Futurismic, has a story in the latest issue of the excellent Clarkesworld online zine; it’s called “My father’s Singularity”, and you should go and read it. If you’re too busy (yeah, right), there’s an audio option as well, so no excuses.
Wow, that rolled around fast – remember me plugging Prime Books’ experiment in web-based short story genre fiction publishing, Lightspeed Magazine?
Well, it’s here – the Lightspeed site is live (and has a very contemporary and readable look, if you ask me), there’s fiction and non-fiction to read already, and there’s plenty more scheduled to come. So why not pop over there and see what’s on offer?
Of course, it goes without saying that we’d appreciate it if you’d pop back later today for this month’s new piece of Futurismic fiction… you won’t want to miss it, I assure you. 🙂
I’m a day late on this one (damn my interminable email inbox), but better late than never. The genre blogging scene is full of people whose energy and devotion to their projects consistently puts me to shame, and there can be no greater exemplar of that than the tireless Charles Tan – who, in addition to a full-time dayjob, routinely battles with a sketchy internet connection as he runs an assortment of other gigs, most of which I fully suspect don’t earn the man a dime. That’s dedication, people.
The latest of Charles’ projects is the Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009 anthology, whose title is probably self-explanatory and which follows on from 2008’s Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler. All the stories are free to read online, and downloadable as PDF or EPUB files… so bang goes your accessibility excuse for not reading any non-Western spec fic, eh? Here’s the TOC:
Go read. Now!
Well, this looks interesting, even if we’ve not got a whole lot of hard facts to go on: The Mongoliad. There’s nothing at that link but a splash image (at least for now), so like everyone else I’m going to clip from The Mongoliad‘s Facebook page:
The Mongoliad is a rip-roaring adventure tale set 1241, a pivotal year in history, when Europe thought that the Mongol Horde was about to completely destroy their world. The Mongoliad is also the beginning of an experiment in storytelling, technology, and community-driven creativity.
Our story begins with a serial novel of sorts, which we will release over the course of about a year. Neal Stephenson created the world in which The Mongoliad is set, and presides benevolently over it. Our first set of stories is being written by Neal, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and a number of other authors; we’re also working closely with artists, fight choreographers & other martial artists, programmers, film-makers, game designers, and a bunch of other folks to produce an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative, and extra-narrative stuff which we think brings the story to life in ways that are pleasingly unique, and which can’t be done in any single medium.
Very shortly, once The Mongoliad has developed some mass and momentum, we will be asking fans to join us in creating the rest of the world and telling new stories in it. That’s where the real experiment part comes in. We are building some pretty cool tech to make that easy and fun, and we hope lots of you will use it.
Primarily web-based; custom apps for assorted mobile platforms. Nothing that hasn’t been tried (or at least suggested) before, but to my knowledge this is the first web-published shared-world project to come from some really big name authors. There have been others (like the Continuous Coast project, which appears to have ground to a halt if the forums are anything to judge by), but bold experiments like this are always going to have need of the visibility (and, one assumes, investment) that comes with a recognised author if they want to attract a critical mass of attention.
Completely absent thus far (at least after a cursory search) is any information on how The Mongoliad will be monetized, if at all; I suspect that may not be finalised yet, and that they’ve done this teaser launch in order to feel out what aspects the punters are most interested in. Also a lack of detail on how the fan-created content (or the original content, for that matter) will be licensed – I’d love to see it announced as a Creative Commons project, but I rather suspect it won’t be quite that wide open.
So, let’s give them some market research, hmm? Let’s assume The Mongoliad comes as a non-free app: are the listed contributors big enough names that you’d consider paying for a serial novel by them? If so, where’s your price point?
Hey, writer-types – remember when we plugged the soon-to-open Lightspeed Magazine, a new online science fiction magazine curated by the inestimable John Joseph Adams?
Well, Lightspeed won’t be publishing anything until June 2010, but for the fictioneers among you (especially those who find Futurismic‘s pickiness on topics and sub-genres restrictive!) it’s worth noting that they’re already open to story submissions. To quote from the Lightspeed submission guidelines:
Lightspeed is seeking original science fiction stories of 1000-7500 words. Stories of 5000 words or less are preferred. We pay 5¢/word for original fiction, on acceptance. To see which rights we’re seeking, please view our contract template for original fiction.
All types of science fiction are welcome, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject should be considered off-limits, and we encourage writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.
We believe that the science fiction genre’s diversity is its greatest strength, and we wish that viewpoint to be reflected in our story content and our submission queues; we welcome submissions from writers of every race, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation.
There are further details on that page, along with a link to their online submissions form. So why not give your latest masterpiece one final edit and send it off? Good luck!