7 Jan 2009

You Can Have My New Sony Reader…

posted in: ebooks, personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

When you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Just like Charlton Heston and his guns. People, I love my new Reader. I love the built-in light, I love the 150 or so books I have on it right now, with room for about a thousand more. I love the way you can organize them, to make titles easy to find. I love the way, with the help of a program called Calibre, I can import books in other formats and convert them for reading on the Sony, and even share them with Allysen, who is discovering that she loves reading on her new iPod Touch. I’ve actually been getting a lot more reading done since adopting my PRS-700.

I’ve named it Plato.

Most of what it’s filled with now is free ebooks, either from the general sources like Gutenberg.org, Manybooks.net, and Feedbooks.com—or from the free offerings of Tor, Baen, and other publishers. I’ve bought a couple of ebooks, including the Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (but, ironically, his iconic and groundbreaking story about the net, “True Names,” does not seem to be available in ebook form).

I’m slowly returning the world of productive work, following the holidays. I’ve signed up my novels The Infinity Link and Seas of Ernathe for the ereads program, which already features five of my novels, so they’ll be available in electronic format before too long. (Also, The Rapture Effect and Dragon Rigger should be available very soon.) Right now I’m proofing The Infinity Link, actually reading it for the first time in many years. It was my first BIG book, published in 1984, and I’m pleased to say I’m enjoying it.

Hope you’re all having a great beginning of 2009!

“You’ll never make much money writing books like that. But the very best people will come to your funeral.” —said to Edgar Pangborn, as told by D.G. Compton

30 Dec 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

posted in: Uncategorized | 0

Also, Happy Hanukah, Solstice, Kwanzaa, and any other celebrations I might have missed.

Wow, I’ve really fallen off the radar this time, haven’t I? It’s been an incredibly busy December, and we had family here for Christmas week, and basically I just haven’t been doing things like keeping up with my blog. So, apologies to all of you! But best wishes indeed for the season.

The highlight of my Christmas was having my daughter home from college (before heading off this morning for an international trip with a group from school), and my brother and his girlfriend visiting for most of a week. It was terrific all around.

The highlight in material terms (toys!) was an exceedingly generous gift from a family member of an ebook reader—a Sony Reader (PRS-700, the new one with the built-in light)—which I have been enjoying hugely and have been filling up with everything from classics to favorite SF from when I was a kid (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet!), to freebies from Tor Books and the Baen Free Library. I’ve got close to a hundred books on it now, and have barely scratched the available memory. Thanks, Chuck and Youngmee!

Another highlight was an odd counterpoint: my wife handed me another blast from my past—three Tom Swift, Jr. books that her aunt had given to her for me, including Tom Swift and his Diving Seacopter, an absolute favorite from a certain age in my youth. And, to round the story out, DARPA is actually hoping to build a craft just like it—yes, an airplane that can go underwater! Talk about science fiction (once in a while) predicting the future!

I hope you’re all having a great holiday season. I’ll leave you with this thought from Charles Lindbergh.

“By day, or on a cloudless night, a pilot may drink the wine of the gods, but it has an earthly taste; he’s a god of the earth, like one of the Grecian deities who lives on worldly mountains and descended for intercourse with men. But at night, over a stratus layer, all sense of the planet may disappear. You know that down below, beneath that heavenly blanket is the earth, factual and hard. But it’s an intellectual knowledge; it’s a knowledge tucked away in the mind; not a feeling that penetrates the body. And if at times you renounce experience and mind’s heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space.” — Charles A. Lindbergh

5 Dec 2008

Nice Plug on Sci Fi Wire

posted in: personal news, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

Sunborn got some nice exposure today on Sci Fi Wire, with an article/interview by John Joseph Adams. It came out rather more techie-sounding than I would have liked; but as it consists almost entirely of quotes from my own email response to his questions, I guess I’m the one to blame for that. Seems to have caused only a modest bump in traffic to my website, so maybe that’s why.

“We all know that only about 5% of our advertising works. The problem is, we don’t know which 5%.” —Some wise person in the publishing industry

27 Nov 2008

To New York, ish, Twice This Week

posted in: ebooks, personal news, science fiction | 0

This last Monday was the date of the annual SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Editorial Reception, where SFWA hosts a big gathering for members, editors, artists, and friends, to generally schmooze and reconnect. I hadn’t been to one in years, so I decided at the last minute to go down, just for the day. I treated myself to Amtrak’s Acela for the ride down. Great train. Then I hoofed it from Penn Station to the Tor Books offices, tipping my hat to the Empire State Building on the way. (I make it sound like I know where I was going. Yeah, me and my Google map.)

In the past, the publisher’s offices were always a gathering place for writers prior to events like this, and I expected to be joining a crowd. Nope. I was the only one there, and all the Tor people were actually working. (!!) But my publicist Sam Cutler took me around to meet all the publicity people, and I waved to all the editors I knew (my own editor not being in town), then I browsed the bookshelves, plucking down books to read. While thumbing through a book, I heard a mutter from the room next door about problems with Mobipocket Creator. Having spent a good deal of time on ebook creation, I poked my head in, and thus met Pablo Defendini, maven of Tor.com, and also the guy who’s doing his level best to get Tor ebooks up and running. Great guy, great conversation, and eventually I grabbed some dinner with him and some of the other Tor.com people, as well as Irene Gallo, Tor’s art director, all good folk. Then we all went off to the SFWA thing, where I indeed reconnected with some old friends, and even ran into my agent, Richard Curtis!

Coming home on the 3 a.m. train out of Penn Station wasn’t quite as much fun (actually, waiting for the 3 a.m. train in Penn Station wasn’t as much fun), but hey. A good trip.

Today, I turned around and drove to pick up my daughter and a couple of friends from college, a ways up the river from NYC, then turned around again and brought them home. Could have been a lot worse; the poor souls on the Mass Pike westbound toward New York as I was coming back east were in for a long time on the road!

Safe travels for the holidays, everyone (if you travel, which you probably will, if you’re in the U.S.)!

27 Nov 2008

The Page 69 Test – Sunborn

posted in: blogging, personal news, science fiction, Sunborn | 0

I was asked by Marshal Zeringue, the owner of a blog called “The Page 69 Test” to write an entry for Sunborn. The inspiration for the blog comes from the “page 69 test” that you can use when you’re browsing a book in a store: open to page 69, and see if you like what you read. Some people use the “page 11 test.” Some the “first and last page” test.

If you’d like to see what I wrote, check out The Page 69 Test: Sunborn.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

22 Nov 2008

Writer, Like Dragon

posted in: personal news, Sunborn, writing | 0

Most working writers are like dragons: they know down to the nickel what’s in their hoard. Maybe not their hoard of gold on hand—because usually what they have on hand is a shortage of gold—but for sure they know when the gold is expected. They know who owes them what, and when it’s supposed to come, and (if they’re honest) how many months late it will probably actually come. It’s a survival trait. When food is scarce, you keep a watch on the supply trains.

Except this time.

Our budget has been pretty tight around here of late, and our contingency actions included borrowing some cash. (If you read the papers, you’d think that was impossible. And yet, though GM can’t get a loan, the credit card companies continue to offer no-interest balance transfers, even to people who demonstrably are unlikely to leave the debt in one place long enough for it to kick up to the higher rate.) Well, we determined to keep a trusting attitude about it all, and even decided that we needed to be more conscious about giving away a proper tithe of the money that does come in. Giving back to God, paying forward, call it what you will.

Today I opened an envelope from my agent—and what did I behold? A check. A substantial check. It seemed that, most undragonlike, I had forgotten that there was an on-publication check owed me for Sunborn! I had forgotten! (All of my other contracts have called for payment on signing and on acceptance, but this particular one was structured differently from all the others.) I had forgotten! Whoo-whoooo!

I did three things right away. I thanked God, I called my wife, and I took that sucker right to the bank.

“God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.” —Mark Twain

19 Nov 2008

Aliens Smoking Dope Over Saturn!

posted in: quirky, science, space | 0

I’ve written before about the giant hex socket in the north pole of Saturn, set there uncounted millennia ago by aliens, for purposes unconfirmed. But now…what are those guys up to?

Rhetorical question. You can see what they’re up to. They’re blowing smoke rings over the poles!

You cannot tell me that’s tobacco smoke. Noway. And aurora? Please! Don’t think I’ve forgotten about them buzzing the Saturn neighborhood in flying saucers!


Scientists will keep trying to explain it away with fables about moons, and rocks, and erosion, and auroras, and strange turbulent attractors…

Feh! We won’t be fooled!

14 Nov 2008

Fomalhaut b — Extrasolar Planet in Visible Light

posted in: science, space | 0

Yowza! NASA has released images of the first planet outside our solar system that we’ve directly observed and photographed. Readers, may I introduce Fomalhaut b…

NASA, ESA, et al.

It’s a planet probably three times the size of Jupiter. The full image is kind of squished here, but you can see it big at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This is the result of years of painstaking work. Read more about it at Science NASA.

“When I consider the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you have set in place…” —Psalm 8

10 Nov 2008

Fan of John Williams Movie Scores?

posted in: quirky, science fiction | 0

Okay, I thought I was the world’s biggest fan of the music from Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters, and all the other films John Williams has scored. But I think I must relinquish that title to this fellow here (but see note below):

Here’s a link to the video at scifiwire, in case it doesn’t display correctly for you.

[Later note]

Well…as Josh pointed out, it turns out that guy did a really clever job of lip syncing a song actually created by a group called Moosebutter. You can hear (or buy) the song here on their website. Scroll down, and you can see a video of their live performance of the number.

It would have been really nice if the fellow above had credited his source.

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