Those registered for Rennovation, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, or those who attended (or supported) last year’s AussieCon get to vote for the Hugos. Last year, my pal Will McIntosh was nominated for a Hugo for best short story. After giving him the excellent exposure my blog affords, Will went on and WON BEST SHORT STORY! And he’s not the only author to whom this blog has brought great success. Kij Johnson and I needed to only discuss doing an interview and viola! She takes home a Nebula Award.

This year, I expect equally great outcomes.

Your Mission:

Last year I signed up to be a supporting member of AussieCon because my fellow Seattleite and friend Tim McDaniel wrote a story with a really long title that’s so good, I was obligated to pay to be a supporting member so I could nominate his story this year.  Now I need you to help me lock down his nomination and continue the streak of making the Hugos right. (If we let the Hugos go wrong, then I need to screw with a time machine to correct history and I don’t want to deal with that hassle. Try finding a time machine rental on short notice!) So if you’re eligible or know someone who is, get to the Hugo voting page and:

• cast your vote for Best Short Story, Tim McDaniel’s “They Laughed at Me in Vienna…” first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (April/May 2010), and
• for Best Editor, Short Form, vote for Eric T. Reynolds. Eric has been busy editing great science fiction like Ruins Terra, (the book cover on the right side of this web page). The man has been working his shirt off (like Shatner) to put together great fiction for you to read.

If you’ve been thinking about going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, then hop to it and then vote.  Help make the Hugos right.  March 26th this month is the deadline. Go here to vote.

Friend them on FaceBook, I know the trees have.

Bit Storm, a story about an AI that wanted a cat and an engineer that wanted to get work done, has already been bit storming in the email boxes of Daily Science Fiction’s subscribers. (Go to their site and subscribe for free.) On Jan 14th, it’ll also be available on their Internet site.  (Hand-crafted electrons and glue stick. A very small glue stick.)

If you’ve read Bit Storm, leave a comment about it on their wall.

'09 Star Trek 11

Hal and I were talking science fiction over beers one night, and for some reason Hal started listing a number of well thought out reasons why I shouldn’t have enjoyed the latest Trek. Before you could read this recounting, I used a high-tech, Xindi web technology to protected Hal Dace‘s identity from the hordes of people fooled into believing Star Trek 11 was a great movie.

Hal, you’re insane! The last movie was fantastic! Rebellious young Kirk, space battles, and another cool looking Enterprise. What more could a Trek fan want?

A Trek fan you may be, but a Trekkie you’re not. I’ve owned a Spock costume, both Enterprise sets of blueprints, the original ST Concordance, an action figure Spock, The Stare Fleet Technical Manual, The Physics of Star Trek, several “making of” books. I’ve studied the Star Trek canon and Trek 11 broke it often.

Shatner warned me about people like you! But since you’re buying the beer, let’s hear it: why is Star Trek 11 a fall from the garden?

The biggest reason for TOS’s (The Original Series of Star Trek which started in 1966) success was bringing together four elements: character-lead drama, intelligent analysis of scientific ideas, adventure, and a very positive approach to the future. It’s not easy, is rarely achieved, and Gene Roddenberry insured TNG (Star Trek–The Next Generation) kept to this rigorous formula. With Roddenberry gone, there has been greater experimentation.

Come on man! Paramount Pictures is based in California; there’s going to be more experimentation than a co-ed dormitory.

The most notable drifts have come with the darker dramas of DS9 (Deep Space 9) & Enterprise. I accepted it because all other elements were consistent with TOS values. In any future history there’ll be bright and dark stories.

DS 9 is a rough reflection of the Palestine-Israel conflict: suicide bombings in crowded markets, the Bajoran faith driving Bajoran policies. Enterprise turned into a “post 911 story” where an organization that seemed to have no home world attacked Earth.

In TOS, the Federation always took the high road. In DS9 and Enterprise, the Federation did a lot of things in the gray to sometimes even black. Star Trek 11 went too far in allowing our future to appear dark and there are too many inconsistencies. The tagline was, “This is not your Dad’s Star Trek.”

I was exhausted of the usual Star Trek stories. The movie before this one started with finding Data’s head, like a TV episode. I went to see the cool effects and the Borg but didn’t greatly care about the characters because they’d finish the movie with their dignity intact and no great character change (except for killing Spock). I liked what Federation did in the beginning although the writing was too derivative of TOS episodes. When it was clear Star Trek 11 was going the direction of Federation but sexed up, I hoped I’d see something that didn’t boil down to a 1960′s TOS episode.

Yes. Initially, I liked the idea of showing TOS characters at Star Fleet Academy. I didn’t even mind too much the idea of a permanent change to the original timeline. However, the producers made too many random changes to the original characters, values, and details, suggesting a simple lack of care and attention required by Trekkies. Leaving behind the Trekkies was a major mistake that will be regretted with time.

That sounded like a threat! Shatner was right about you guys! ‘Emo’ Spock worked for me. I was in love with Uhura as a kid so seeing a hot looking Uhura again was most excellent. Kirk womanizing, again! This was revelatory because until this movie, I thought Kirk was getting the chicks because of the captain’s uniform. The movie teasers got me excited, like that scene of cornfields and then in the distance, a starship construction yard. I wasn’t let down like some Trek movies did when I finally saw it on the big screen.

Yes, it’s easy to enjoy the glittery MTV-like Star Trek movie, dumbed down for your consumption. And you’ve just struck upon number 10 on my list: starships are never built on Earth, not to mention Iowa.

Ouch! OK, you have at least ten reasons. What one thing would you tell the producers of Star Trek 12 that they must do to be lauded by Trekkies? Remember, the film still has to be interesting enough to make money.

Don’t make the story about good guys and bad guys. Make it about exploration of a new planet that has strange life that raises ethical questions. Allow the adventure to build slowly until completely out of the blue the whole universe is threatened and Kirk & Spock save it. It’s not easy, but then it shouldn’t be, should it?

Hal, Hal, when did your work pull out your heart and replace it with a critic’s cold, calculating movie caliper?

Lancer, it comes with the territory. Star Trek 11 was just lazy movie making. Here are 55 points about why I feel this way:

1. They’re too arrogant to provide a subtitle.
2. A woman is sucked into space and sound effects fade, denoting the silence of space. The rest of the film sticks with the tradition of sound effects in space. This is annoying.
3. It feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek which, in my opinion, accounts for its unearned success (it’s been dumbed down). It is important to remember that one of the reasons kids in the 70s made fun of their Trekkie fellow students is because the Trekkies were nerds. Star Trek is supposed to be for nerds because it’s more intelligent than Star Wars. Most people who never liked Star Trek always pointed out that they didn’t want intelligent drama, just soap operas. Well, now they’ve got what they wanted and the true Trekkies have been left behind.
4. The Corvette scene directly contradicts Roddenberry’s vision of a future Earth as paradise; a place where parents are consistently loving, even step-parents, and that teenage rebellion has become rather rare due to the universal acceptance of the precept of personal achievement. A policeman would never appear dystopian. There are no canyons in Iowa. The scene is a cheap trick to wow the audience, and Kirk was never depicted as rebellious in nature (i.e. – they’ve changed the basic nature of his character which is simply unacceptable).
5. Sorry, I just don’t believe Vulcan children bully one another.
6. Spocks’s accents are completely inconsistent. It should be mid-Atlantic.
7. Uhura is from the United States of Africa and speaks Swahili. There really should have been at least the smallest reference to this. I personally found the dropping of the romance between Spock and Chapel to be very sad. The romance with Uhura is illogical! Vulcans only engage in romantic activities during the Pon farr. How could they drop this most basic of Star Trek elements?
8. In the TOS episode The Menagerie it is made clear Kirk only barely knew Pike.
9. Starships then never had more than a crew of 430.
10. Spaceships are never built on Earth, not to mention Iowa.
11. There’s no reason why Star Fleet would have any major facilities in Iowa (just because Kirk grew up there?).
12. It is too contrived that McCoy would refer to his bones.
13. Nero is depicted like an avenging human. Romulans, even disturbed ones, simply don’t act like this.
14. Nero’s dialog never rises above cheap exposition.
15. Orions do not join Star Fleet.
16. Why would McCoy be at the navigation station? No other version of ST ever made basic mistakes like this.
17. The Kobayashi Maru tests character and therefore can only be taken once. When a person already knows it’s a no-win scenario it is pointless to test a person again. Kirk would never have been allowed to take the test twice. In The Wrath of Khan the suggestion is that somehow Kirk knew the purpose of the test before taking it the first time, which makes sense. This doesn’t.
18. Spock refers to the Kobayashi Maru as, “a lesson”. Clearly it is not a lesson, it is a test.
19. Star Fleet Academy would never punish Kirk for the Kobayashi Maru incident, let alone put him up for trial in front of his classmates. Hopelessly stupid storytelling.
20. The constant fake lens flares are annoying.
21. Uhura bullying Spock to get on the Enterprise is ridiculous. This is the military. Things just don’t happen like that.
22. The depiction of how Kirk gets on the Enterprise is ridiculous.
23. San Francisco is ugly, like it’s supposed to be a dystopian future.
24. Why does Vulcan need help? Vulcan is more advanced than Earth and has many more ships. Furthermore, the Neutral Zone is mentioned as if everyone knows what it is. At this time in future history very few people knew about the Neutral Zone and the Romulans were a very mysterious species. For once some exposition would have been appropriate.
25. It takes longer than a few minutes to get to Vulcan. The dialog suggests it takes only a few minutes.
26. If they knew that going to Vulcan was a trap, why did they walk into it?
27. Why are torpedoes loaded manually on the Enterprise?
28. Romulans always speak very formally, just like Vulcans. Neither do so in this story.
29. Humans are depicted falling from orbit to just a couple of miles above Vulcan’s surface. Why don’t they burn up like meteors?
30. Sword fighting between the Romulan & Sulu is silly.
31. The drill idea is preposterous. The vast majority of the interior of any planet is made of liquid. A drill would simply have no effect.
32. Why didn’t anyone shoot at the red matter torpedo as it headed towards the drill hole? Also, Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed an event as dark as the destruction of Vulcan to occur.
33. It is too contrived that Kirk’s parachute should break.
34. They wouldn’t fall on the transporter pad just because they were falling when energized.
35. Why is it that Chekov can catch falling crewmen but not falling mothers?
36. Captains don’t verbally record their logs in front of the crew.
37. It’s unmotivated and contrived that Uhura would suddenly kiss Spock and he would hug and kiss back.This is the most obscene contradiction with the real ST universe. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, knows Spock doesn’t show emotion.
38. Nero’s character is too monstrous without proper explanation. He’s not even a two-dimensional character and ST has always been excellent at providing proper motivation for its villains. This is simply not good enough.
39. Nero’s ship’s so powerful, his torturing of Pike serves no purpose. Gratuitous nonsense.
40. Why would Spock ask a communications officer (Uhura) which direction a ship is headed?
41. The talk of an alternate reality is completely unnecessary exposition. They would never have this conversation. Science fiction characters should only ever worry about changing the past. It should never occur to them that their future has been changed while in the middle of a conflict. They might briefly reflect on it when it’s all over, but it has no bearing on the conflict itself and so would never be mentioned.
42. Spock twice uses the word “destiny”. This concept is simple superstition and Spock would never use this word.
43. Spock was emotional in expelling Kirk; the brig would have been fine.
44. It’s inconsistent that Nero’s ship was able to destroy several Star Fleet ships in just a few seconds, but George Kirk’s ship (the Kelvin) was never destroyed and was able to protect shuttlecraft and ram Nero’s ship. Nero would easily have killed everyone on the Kelvin and hence no Jim Kirk, hence no story. In other words, Nero’s ship’s abilities change with the requirements of the writers; this is the definition of a contrivance and is the second biggest crime of the producers of this movie.
45. Spock asks, “You are not the captain?” Since he is not aware of the precise circumstances of the new timeline, his assumption that a 21 year-old would be captain is preposterous.
46. Why would a powerful empire like Romulus need Spock’s help to survive a nova? Novas are always predictable at least thousands of years in advance. The Romulans would have been well prepared, again, rendering the whole story implausible.
47. Scott’s materialization and trek through large transparent piping in the engineering section seems more appropriate to Willy Wonka.
48. Spock would never say fear is necessary for command, because fear is an emotion.
49. Scott says he’s beaming them to an unoccupied section of Nero’s ship. There is no acceptable explanation for why he failed. They have sensors. Star Fleet characters always know whether there are people about when using the transporter. Again, totally contrived.
50. The fist fight between Nero & Kirk is unmotivated and Romulans just don’t act like that.
51. I don’t like old Spock telling young Spock to put aside logic. Spock is logical and he should stay logical.
52. Why is McCoy always on the bridge?
53. Spock’s called a commander, but his rank at this time of the future history was lieutenant.
54. Again with the preposterous drilling of a planet, this time Earth.
55. Apparently black holes are taken for granted as being transportation hubs through both space and time. As we know, this is not true (notwithstanding string theory, which is unproven and extremely unlikely). Real Star Trek always provides at least a bare minimum of technobabble to explain why known physics have been circumvented for the sake of story. The producers of this film couldn’t be bothered. Lazy.

Other reviews of the movie:

Hal’s not the only one. Others have decried the movie and the criticism does seem to stem from the more Star Fleet Academy bumper sticker crowd, IE the far-out (sounds better than calling them the far left/right):

http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2009/05/star-trek-one-trekkies-thoughts-film-review/

The comments connected with the Star Trek 11 trailer are grassroots movie reviews: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcFLgkCKi1Q

I invite the readers to add comments and more review links. Commenting on this blog site is free of hoop-jumping–no activation email nonsense. Enter your contact email in the form below along with your comment and then blamo! Trekkies that agree or disagree and Trek fans that agree or disagree, this blog loves angry letters or “yeah, that’s so right on!!” responses. The comment field is right below. Have at it!

Check out Alexander Veer’s writeup about how the movie The Day After changed everything in a powerful wave of activist science fiction.

Frankly, Lucas Films has made it an organizational mess.  It took me a few hours of IMDB, Wikipedia, and Google research to figure out what there was to watch and in what order to watch them.  Here is my rescription for catching up in four steps.

Step 1, watch the live action movies

The first two movies are the setup for the cartoons. Their names are: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith.  If you are a very orderly person, you may opt to not watch episode 3 until you do steps 2-4.  But I’m not very orderly so I recommend  watching the live action movies first, and because sometimes it’s nice to know where a character is headed, and then watch that character at an earlier time and see how he struggles along that path.

Step 2, Go for an Adult Swim

Lucas wanted you to have something to do after watching Episode 2 Attack of the Clones in 2002, until he released Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith. So he gave you cartoon shorts. They were released in 2003, 2004, 2005 as teasers (sometimes on TV, sometimes in the theater).  Notice the “Adult Swim” rough and minimal style of animation on the front cover.  This series of shorts (also called the “micro” series) was later combined to make a large narrative about what Anni had been up to between Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. I enjoyed watching it very much. It’s an example of doing narrative with sparse dialog and lots of showing.
 

Step 3, Star Wars: Clone Wars movie

Notice the distinctive difference in animation on the movie poster versus the “Adult Swim” style.  This movie was used to kick off the TV series in Step 4.

Step 4, Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series

This TV series ran immediately after the animated movie and is still running today (crica 2010). The animation style is the same as that of the movie.  As of now, only two seasons are out in blu-ray.

Now go to Amazon or NetFlicks and find ways to enjoy the Star Wars experience! (Sorry, JarJar Binks is still included.)

The Singularity, a theory that says that since technological advancement has been doubling for the past centuries, we’ll reach a point where the change will become so rapid, that society will become wildly unpredictable. This point is called The Singularity.

Once The Singularity hits, your favorite TV show will finish its entire season BEFORE you’ve seen the first episode. This is upsetting because the last episode will be in a new HD format of a 1080googleP, and although it was amazing, it’ll be a commercial disaster because no one knew about it in time to watch its ten second season. (It jumped the shark in the ninth second.)

So before the disaster that is The Singularity, enjoy your leisurely Internet age of daily magazines such as Daily Science Fiction. Visit their website and subscribe, for free, and receive science fiction short stories. The eZine has just started up and will be releasing stories to their subscribers late this Summer/Fall.

One of the stories they’ll send you is a story I wrote called Bit Storm, which received honorable mention in The Writers of the Future contest. Diff makes a living setting up and maintaining an AI for a financial company. He makes the acquaintance of a greifer who goes by Slick Devil who challenges Diff to prove him wrong, that war is a natural and necessary in society and the skilled survive to prey on the weak. Although Diff tries to steer clear, Slick Devil involves him in a disastrous Halloween stunt that risks people’s lives.

As I’m sure there will be stories about life during and post Singularity, it would be irresponsible not to subscribe to Daily Science Fiction. You owe it to yourself to learn as much as possible before The Singularity is upon us. (People addicted to iPhones and PvZ is just a coming herald.)

Subscribe soon, before Daily Science Fiction becomes Hourly Science Fiction or, shudder, Quantum Science Fiction.

Dear reader, unlike my usual ‘speculative posts,’ Will really is my pal, and he really did get nominated for these very cool awards.  Yes! Really!  I’ve got pictures!  William McIntosh and I worked with each other at the Clarion Writer’s Workshop in 2003.

Editorial: Will forgot to send me a new photo for the interview.  The only photos I have of him are from our Clarion 2003 class.

Sean Melican, William McIntosh, Ben Kuo, Lister, Jamie Kress

REDACTED due to witness protection program, Matt Fitz, Tammy Inman, Jonathan Laden

Douglas Texter, Cathy Morrison, Tom Doyle, Joel Schnack, Lancer Kind

Jamie Kress, Robert Canipe, Ryan Butkus, Douglas Texter, Cathy Morrison

And yes, we occasionaly fed Mr. Waldrop for a job well done.

I couldn’t find a picture of Kyle Phegley, the man behind the camera, so I did a Bing image search for Kyle and found this.  Bing says it’s him:

Kyle Phegley?

But pictures of tired writers who have been writing and critiquing into the wee hours of the night, and then forced to get up early to give critiques (thank you Mr. Waldrop, Nalo Hopkinson, Richard Paul Russo, Scott Edelman, Kelly Link, James Patrick Kelly, Maureen F. McHugh) don’t make good interview pictures.  But Bing’s image search does!

Here’s what searching for McIntosh comes up with:

Which I can only assume are: Will’s cousins, the next two are Will after he uploaded himself into some hardware (a sacrifice necessary to reach the level of story research needed to get a Hugo and Nebula nomination for his short story Bridesicle, about a woman who was stored in a Cyro-freezer).  The beefcake is a photo of Will before he uploaded himself into hardware.  And the last photo, I guess, is Will’s kid sister.

Hey Will!  This is your pal, Lancer Kind.

Lancer?  Lancer?  What a strange name.  I think I remember some unfortunate person going by that once.  I think it was a workshop…

Yes!  You’ve got it bosom buddy!

Will, what gives?  You’re an award hog!  You have not only been nominated for a Hugo,but also a Nebula!

Yes, can you believe that?  I got the call two months ago (Feb 2010) from the Nebulas, for work published in 2009.  And now the Hugo!

To how many of the major publications have you sold short stories?

Bridesicle is the fourth and all of them to Asimov’s.  There are about seven short story markets I’d call majors now: Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Tor, and Strange Horizons.

I feel loyalty to Sheila since she was the first of the majors to buy something.  I always send anything new to her first.  I’ll meet her for the first time at the Nebulas.

This year, the World Science Fiction (World Con) convention is in Melbourne, Australia, September 2-6.  Per Word Con tradition, it has local name given by the holders of the convention.  It’s name is AussieCon4.  Since the award ceremony happens during the convention, are you attending AussieCon4 to sit in the audience, wringing your hands, to see if you win?

At first I wasn’t sure, but then how many chances do you get to go to World Science Fiction Convention as a Hugo nominee?  The answer for me may be only one.  So I feel I have to go.  I just can’t miss out on going to the Hugo awards.  But the travel (from Georgia, USA) is brutal and I can’t linger there when my wife is home with our young twins.

Will you hire someone to warm your seat, like the VIPs do at the Oscars?

(laughs, you can tell by the VUE meter.)  Well it really is our Oscars.  You dream about being nominated.  I still can’t believe it’s happened.

How can I skip it?  I just have to go. I hope I know people there.  Scott Edelman will probably be there.

(discussion ensues about how Mr. Edelman seems to be at all the World SF Cons)  Hopefully this blog will help you meet more people.  Especially if I use your pre-uploaded photo:

Are you going to talk on some panels?

The people at World SF Con have asked and I’ll make a final decision if I’ll be there this week.  If so, I’ll likely do what ever Hugo nominees do.

Talking to important people in the bar. 

(laughs) I still feel like I’m someone who should be sitting in the audience listening to the writers.

You’re too modest!  STOP IT!    You need a panel to talk about your fascination with frozen people.   How many votes did you get for the Nebulas?

I got nineteen in the Nebulas.  The top vote getter was 22.  They haven’t reported the Hugo votes yet.

How many people did you have to sleep with to get those votes?

Heh.  I’ll tell you, that’s why it’s so surprising.  With the kids coming, I was too busy to send out many stories in ’09.  One day, someone on the Codex site said to me, ‘Hey you’ve got a lot of votes’  When there was only a day left, I was emailing my friends–’Hey I’m close!  I’m right there!’

It never even occurred to me that could happen.  With the kids coming, I didn’t get to work much and I only published two stories that year.  I never even dreamed it until someone on Codex mentioned that I was on the voting.

Since we went to Clarion together, I’ve always used used you as a yardstick for my own career.  In 2006 you had accumulated a number of sales and I hadn’t sold much.  So I talked with you about what you were doing and then compared that to what I was doing.  The biggest difference was that you maintained discipline about keeping your stories circulating through the markets.  I’d forget to do that because, at the time, I had only two hours a day to write, so I was a loath to spend any of that time on marketing.  After our conversation, I had the realization why what I was doing wasn’t working.  I made it my New Year’s resolution to write less and that really helped.

So now I have to ask myself the question: How the hell do I get a Neb. or Hugo?  It sounds like one needs to publish in a big distribution magazine and get some buzz as you did.

Yes.  The nominees tend to come from the magazines with the largest readerships whether they are in print or online.  People can’t vote for you unless they’ve read it.  Any of the big ones.  The big four, though I think it’s safe to say the big seven or eight.

Rachel Swirsky had blogged what she was voting and she had picked Bridesicle for best short story.  I think that created a lot of buzz.  She was on the ballot for best Novelette.

How’s your cover letter going to look now?  How about you open with: I’m a Hugo nominee, so you bitches better publish my story.

(Laughs) Some publications just aren’t a good fit for me, even if the story is a great story.  Gorden Van Gelder probably saw my first fifty stories and didn’t buy any of them, though I certainly don’t hold any ill will against him.

My feeling is that F&SF and Gordon really values style–people who are great with words and images–and that’s not me.  Sheila really values a good story and focuses less on the turn of a phrase.  That’s my feeling and that’s how I’ve always distinguished those the two magazines.

Who do you write like?

I write like other people who are very straight forward.  I just tell the story.  I don’t consciously try to create clever ways of saying things.  Perhaps I write like Robert Reed.  He’s always in the ‘Years Best’ anthology because he always creates such great stories.

What was your inspiration for Bridesicle?

I usually just get ideas and they show up as as ideas will, and I just jot them down.  I first wrote the whole story from the perspective a guy who is visiting this cryogenic dating site.  He’s a loser and doesn’t have the money to help any of them, but he wants the attention of a woman, but can’t get it other than from these frozen women.  I wrote the whole thing and then put it out for some of my writing friends to read.  Mary Robinette Kowal said, ‘I think your missing it.  I think you need to write this from the point of view of the woman.’

And you do what you always do when you get feedback that says, throw out the six thousand words you’ve written and start over.  And of course, you go: I don’t want to do that!  I want THIS story to be good.

And you let a little of time pass, and then go back and look at it while going through the stages of grief: death, denial, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance, realizing she’s right.  So I re-wrote the story from the beginning and that was Bridesicle.

What other stories have you done major re-writes to and had them turn out to be so successful?

I’m trying tor think about other stories where I have several versions on my hard drive.  I don’t know if other people make file versions.  I always feel if I’m going to re-write, I’m going to screw it up so I make a copy of the file.  The other three I published in Asimov, I did revisions but none were major.  One story, Midnight Blue, I wrote in two days and did ten minutes of revisions.  I wished they were all like that!

I sold one to Interzone called A Clown Escapes from Circus Town and that one had a version number of seven.  That one I kept doing over and over again.  I think every writer has a few of these where you think the idea is good, and you keep trying to write the story, but it’s bad every time.

I have one, about multiple personality disorder where it’s possible to induce the condition without trauma, and do it voluntarily.  A cult is started around this activity.  I’ve completely rewritten this story at least four times, and it’s still no good.  I remember the first time I did it, Joseph Murphy critiqued it and said, ‘you’ve taken an interesting idea and told it in the dullest, driest way possible.’  There are a few writers on Codex where if they tell me it’s no good, it’s no good.  Like Ian Creasy.

He’s like the best critiquer.  Just unbelievable good.  When he tells me it’s not any good, it’s not any good.  When I send him something, I just wait, hoping.  And when he’s finished I just ask, “Is it any good?  Am I going to be able to sell this?”

“Sadly, this didn’t work for me.”

I just say, “Dammit!”  He’s so perceptive.  I know he’s going to be right.  I can pretend he’s not going to be right, but he’s going to be right.

Are you working on any novels?

I’ve got two novels I finished last fall.  And right now, I’m working on a third.  I recently got an agent, Seth Fishmen, and he’s is shopping my novel Soft Apocalypse.  He’s a great guy and I’m excited to work with him.  I discovered him through Ted Cosmaka, a shooting star who just got a nomination in the Nebulas and signed a great contract with Del Rey.  Ted put in a good word with Seth.  I sent Seth Soft Apocalypse and he called me back in five days.

You got the phone call!  It actually does happen!

The other novel is a slipstream baseball novel.  It’s funny, this thing about baseball genre novels.  There are very few of them, but the ones that get out there are all successful.  So I decided to write one.  Like Shoeless Joe,  the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and Bishop’s Brittle Innings.

We’ve talked about your completed novels, do you have something that’s unfinished and in progress?

I’ve got a few short stories, but they are just sitting right now.  I’m spending a lot of time on a new novel about a terrorist attack in New York.  So many people die, it pokes a hole between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the dead come back and posses the living.  So you have much of New York fighting with a dead person for control of their body.  It’s about this cartoonist who draws a comic strip and he’s possessed by his grandfather who invented the strip and did not give him permission to continue it.  And Grandpa is seeking his dead wife who is possessing the body of another woman.

Oh dear!  Grandpa is going to ruin his grandson’s life, not to mention that New York is going to be in a bit of a mess.

Will, congratulations on the nomination!  You’re an elitist now!  Congratulations on crossing that divide!

Let’s wish him luck in the voting for Bridesicle and hope he brings home a nice Hugo and a Nebula!

2007 Hugo

Nebula

http://openhomelandsecurity.ideascale.com/a/dtd/31748-7043

My dad is a newly retired member of DHS.  Dad, I’ll work on you directly.

This older cover is my favorite.

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is a call to those that are keeping quiet and just waiting for things to blow over.  It’s a clarion to those waiting for our freedoms to come back.  And it’s an instruction book  for how to fight back rather than sit at home and complain about warrantless wiretapping.

Little Brother is about how authority without limit turns into state sponsored terrorism.  It’s post 911 San Francisco and the Bay Bridge is blown up.  Homeland Security reacts by apprehending anyone they feel is a terrorist.  Without any due process, these people become victims of state sponsored oppression: interrogation, torture, and some shipped to other countries (rendition) where there is even less of a chance of rescue by people who value freedom and human life.

This is one of those books that every American near the voting age and of the voting age should read.  Anyone with an interest in computer science and surveillance will love this book.

When I was at my hometown of Fairfield, Montana,
a mother told me about her son Mike, who was a friend of mine.  Mike had gone to Iraq as a sergeant in the army and had recently returned home.  She sensed he had a lot to get off his chest but the only things he would talk of were the weather and family news.  But this wall around him was always disturbed by the information form the outside world: TV news, and newspapers.  Finally he summarized to mom his feelings about the war as this: he was ordered to do some bad things, things he couldn’t talk about.  And that was as far as he would go.

When I was in Redmond, Washington,
a woman who I used to work with was telling me about her Tyler who I hadn’t seen in years.  When I asked if he was going to be a computer guy like his dad, she said, her tone ringing with pride: ‘Oh no.  He only uses the computer to play games.  He enjoys playing the sniper game the most, and says he wants to kill terrorists when he grows up.’  Everyone else in the office went quite.  You see, the problem is that the government had been labeling too many people terrorists for the liberal Puget Sound Area’s taste.  American’s have been declared terrorists during the Bush administration, and they have been held without due process, and as the case with most all the prisoners held as enemy combatants, they were freed once the justice system decide to step in.  So when someone’s son says, “I want to kill terrorists,” we all wonder what kind of terrorist will be in that kid’s cross hairs–the ones that were unjustly held for years or the ones that actually did anything wrong.

I really hope people like Mike from Fairfield will get a chance to tell their story to the youth like Tyler who see the world through sniper sights of black and white.

As a work of activist science fiction, Little Brother meets the criteria I’ve developed through study of this area:

• it’s a story of fiction whose vision clearly portrays a problem in real life
• the characters take action in a way that any reader can understand, identify with, and execute
• it poses possible solutions to the problem
• it contains elements of science and its a story of fiction

That this is a work of activist science fiction from the ground up shouldn’t be a surprise as Cory Doctorow worked with other activists at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

I’m buying a few copies of this book for my high school’s library and hometown public library.

Little Brother is an important story for people to hear, and the more stories like this we share as a society, the more we can develop a group intelligence about such issues in society.  (An example of group intelligence: most everyone in America knows you should wear a seat belt, that smoking causes lung cancer, that you should drive on the right-hand side of the road.  How they act upon that information is another thing.)  And having a group intelligence increases the odds that as a culture, we develop superior mechanisms (the first ones will suck, but society evolves) for handling the problem, and the problem gets handled quickly.

So Mike, I hope you get this message.  I hope you will share your stories and experiences with others that go deeper than a sniper game.  I also ask you, the audience to post your stories somehow: write editorials, write blogs, post comments on this blog.  I invite you to tell me your post 911 story of activism or what you feel are important post 911 readings using the comment field below.

But now I understand: spinning any improvement as “new” (like a new feature), or anything that is New has to be an Improvement (like Vista over XP–er… OK.  Maybe an exception.) just makes me feel like I’ve spent a bunch of money on R&D and got twice as much Bang!

OK, now back to what is “New AND Improved!”  (Wow, I really love saying that!)

I’ve always felt that it’s important to have a good education and I’ve relied on YOU to ‘learn me a thing or two.’

I’ve made some adjustment to my website to make it more satisfying to tell me how I could be so wrong.  No more hiding your pearls of wisdom beneath a tiny ‘comments’ link.  Comments are now in the front row and in full font size, beneath each posting.

(But wait, there’s more: you’ll be associated with a cool Avatar.  Yes, that has been an existing feature, but that small detail can’t stop this marketing machine.)

Now you can REALLY let me have it!  Enjoy!

==>Lancer—