7 Jun 2012

Venus Video Montage

posted in: astronomy, science, science fiction, space, videos | 0

Mars shouldn’t get all the glory. I used to travel to both planets regularly in my head, via the great stories I read. One of my favorites, when I was about twelve, was the Tom Corbett Space Cadet book, Revolt on Venus.

Venus just made the last transit across the face of the sun that will be visible from Earth this century. Here’s a lovely montage of video images in various wavelengths taken and edited together by NASA. Who says NASA has no poetry in its soul? You can make it full screen for best effect.

View on youtube

And just for fun, here’s a time-lapse shot from the last transit, in 2004, showing the International Space Station and Venus making a transit across the face of the sun, almost as if in formation.

7 Jun 2012

Ray Bradbury, SF Master (1920 – 2012)

posted in: authors, farewells, public affairs, publishing, science fiction, short stories, tributes | 0

Ray Bradbury, the last of the Big Four in science fiction, died today. Over the years we’ve lost Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and now Ray Bradbury. We’ve lost many other great writers, of course, but few would argue with placing those four at the top in their influence on the literature, and influence on young writers. It’s like the passing of a Great Age in Middle Earth.

Bradbury was a master of the short form, and probably the first acknowledged science fiction writer to gain the respect of the mainstream literary world. (Probably because he was at heart really a fantasist more than an SF writer. He was also a remarkable stylist.) Did your high school literature book have any science fiction In it at all? If it did, it was probably by Ray Bradbury. “The Pedestrian,” maybe. Or “The Veldt.”

He wrote for the screen, as well. I’d been a fan of his fiction for many years before I discovered that he’d written the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston-directed adaptation of Moby Dick, with Gregory Peck and Richard Basehart.

I was one of probably thousands of young writers who found both encouragement and frustration in reading his work. (My favorites: The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes.) The encouragement is from the delight in reading his visions. The frustration is from the illusion he cast that it was all so easy. He really made storytelling look simple. And that is a mark of a master. I never knew him personally, though I saw him a few times at Nebula Awards events. The last time, I think, was when I saw him accept his SFWA Grandmaster Award in… you know, I don’t remember the year or the city, but I can see him inching his way up to the stage, with the assistance of his son, as though it were yesterday. Edit: I also remember that he had a sense of humor about his infirmity. When he finally got to the microphone, his words were, “Do you ever have the feeling that everyone’s watching you?”

There’s a fine remembrance at the Washington Post, and all kinds of interesting details on his Wikipedia page. 

Godspeed, Ray Bradbury!

4 Jun 2012

We’re Doomed!

posted in: astronomy, science, space | 0

Scientists have confirmed: the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is on a collision course with our own Milky Way galaxy. When the centers of the two galaxies collide, or even shear past each other if it’s a near-miss, there’s going to be an awful lot of cosmic smacking around happening. Eventually the two galaxies will probably merge, turning two beautiful spirals into a huge elliptical blob. It’s hard to say what will happen in our corner of the action, about two-thirds of the way out from our galactic center. It’s possible that it’ll just be a mind-blowing light show. But I’m not counting on it.
This could happen in the next four billion years. We’ve still got time to pack. But we’re fools if we don’t get working on that star drive right now.
Here‘s an artist’s conception of what it might look like, mid-tango. See it bigger at Astronomy Picture of the Day. And see what the stages of the collision might look like here, where you can also read more about it.
Seems to me there should be a good science fiction story in this. Probably more than one.
2 Jun 2012

Audiobooks!

posted in: audiobook, personal news, publishing, science fiction | 0

Great news from my agent —nine of my novels are being signed to become audiobooks! I am excited. I’ve been wishing for this ever since I became hooked on listening to audiobooks myself. This package does not include my Chaos Chronicles book, and won’t affect our homebrew full-cast audio production of Neptune Crossing (still in the “we hope to get started again realsoonnow” stage). It does include most of the Star Rigger books and several of my standalone novels. Nothing’s ever final until the contracts are signed, of course, so I should probably hold off on more specific details until things are official.

My own love affair with audiobooks started when I discovered you can download them for free from the public library and listen to them on your favorite MP3 player (a Zune, in my case). I love listening to books while walking the dog, which I do for at least an hour every day. I’ve been listening to a lot of books outside my own genre, books I’d never find time to sit down and read, even as ebooks carried in my pocket. I started with Robert Parker mysteries, and moved on to some thrillers. I’ve learned that the voice of the narrator makes an enormous difference even with a good book. (With a bad book, it just makes it harder to decide when to give up.) In some cases, I’ve stumbled onto some fine listening simply by looking for other books read by a narrator I like. Here are some of my recent favorites:

  • The Jack Reacher series, featuring a retired MP turned wanderer, by Lee Child (read by Dick Hill)
  • Cold Choice, a well-crafted and realistic submarine thriller by Larry Bond (read by Dick Hill)
  • The Myron Bolitar series, featuring a pro sports agent who sidelines as a detective, by Harlan Coben (read by Jonathan Marosz) [The last couple in the series were narrated by other readers, including the author. Not even in the same universe.]
  • Leviathan, Behemoth, and Goliath—a young adult, alternate history, SF series by Scott Westerfeld (read by Alan Cumming) [This one the library only carried on CD.]
  • Ender’s Game, the SF classic, by Orson Scott Card (read by Stefan Rudnicki, with Gabrielle De Cuir and David Birney, Scott Brick, Jason Cole, Harlan Ellison, Christian Noble, Don Schlossman, M.E. Willis and Orson Scott Card) [Ditto, on CD.]

What are your favorites?

1 Jun 2012

Book View Café Grand Reopening

posted in: ebooks, personal news, publishing | 0

I’ve just joined Book View Café, which is an authors’ cooperative filled with great authors helping each other to republish their backlists and get excellent books back into print, via ebook. Members include Ursula K. LeGuin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Linda Nagata, Judith Tarr, Pati Nagle, Patricia Rice, and lots more. It’s a little like Backlist eBooks, which I also belong to, but is a lot more hands-on with the actual publishing, with its own bookstore and members actually volunteering cooperative-style, to help build the books, design covers, etc. My own books will start appearing there over the coming months, with my official “launch” on June 19 to feature the first of my forthcoming short story collections.

These hard-working people have just completely redesigned the bookstore, and today marks the official grand opening. Complete with a contest to give away some free books! Here’s the announcement…

Book View Café is celebrating the opening of our new, completely-redesigned bookstore by giving our readers a chance to win the book of their choice free. Just take a look around the store anytime up until midnight, June 8, and choose the book you’d like—all the books that are eligible for the giveaway are marked with a gold star. Then come back here and leave a comment with the name and author of the book and why you want it (we may use that comment for publicity purposes). You can also leave comments on any of the author blogs listed on the promotions page. When the promotion ends, winners will be chosen, and free books passed out! Check out the celebration here!

It’s a great bookstore, so do stop by and browse. All ebooks in the store are DRM-free and available in multiple formats for Kindle, Nook, and pretty much all other ebook devices.

27 May 2012

When Mining Asteroids, Don’t Forget Your Trusty Dog

posted in: astronomy, ebooks, publishing, short stories, space | 0

The recent arrival of the privately designed-and-built Dragon space capsule at the International Space Station dovetails nicely with another recent event: the announcement of a privately funded initiative called Planetary Resources, Inc., to seek out and mine near-Earth asteroids.

Both dovetail nicely with my own initiative: the release of my short story “Dog Star” as a standalone ebook. The dovetailing has to do with the fact that “Dog Star” is about a young asteroid miner who finds himself grounded on just such as asteroid, just him and his disabled ship… and his trusty “smartmutt,” an enhanced border collie named Sam. Dogs who can discuss astrophysics with you while thinking about digging on an asteroid aren’t a dime a dozen even in this future. Sam has to prove his mettle while helping his human dig his way out of this life-threatening jam.

This is a reprint of a story that first appeared as part of an online science-oriented anthology of stories called Diamonds in the Sky, which was funded by the National Science Foundation to help further the cause of science education, particularly in astronomy. (This new release has a couple of minor corrections from the text as it was released in the anthology.)

Gretchen, the student who has been working with me, helped get “Dog Star” up for sale on the last day of her interning stint. (Thanks, Gretchen!) It’s now free at Smashwords, and you can also get it in the Kindle and Nook stores.

Kindle | Nook | Smashwords (free!)

“Dog Star” will also appear in my forthcoming short story collection, Reality and Other Fictions, which is rapidly moving toward completion. I hope to make an announcement about that in the next few weeks. It will contain about half my published stories, including a couple not released as standalone ebooks. The other half will follow in Going Alien, soon after.

23 May 2012

The Dragons Return!

posted in: ebooks, science fiction, short stories | 0

My short story “Though All the Mountains Lie Between” was the spark that led to two novels, Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. Those books have been back in ebook form for a while now, and I even gathered them into a low-cost set, Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus. But the short story—originally published in The Science Fiction Times and the anthology Dragons of Darkness, edited by Orson Scott Card—has been out of circulation for many years. With Gretchen’s help, I’ve now amended that situation. Give it up for “Though All the Mountains Lie Between” the ebook!

It’s available in the usual suspect places, and will eventually migrate to even more stores. Just $.99 at Kindle and Nook, and free at Smashwords! It includes a preview chapter of Dragon Space.

21 May 2012

Guest Post: Gretchen on Interning

posted in: blogging, ebooks, guest posts, personal news, publishing | 0

I invited Gretchen, who’s been helping me as an intern for the last two weeks, to write up a post about what it’s been like for her. Gretchen is a high school student with an interest in publishing. Working for me, she’s gotten a look at a side of publishing she probably never knew existed. Take it, Gretchen…

When I began my internship with Jeff, I didn’t really know what to expect. Completing a three-week internship is a requirement to graduate at my high school, and I just jumped straight from my exam week to my internship without wondering too much what it would be like. I soon found out. The first thing I learned—of which I was very appreciative—was that I didn’t have to get up at way-too-early-o’clock in the morning every day to begin work; I got to start at a much more reasonable hour in the afternoon, unlike most of my classmates.

The next thing I learned was that publishing eBooks really isn’t at all like I thought it was going to be. There is much more of a focus on little, seemingly insignificant formatting details than I had thought there would be (of course, those “tiny details” end up more like “huge problems” if you ignore them). Conversely, the actual conversion of documents into eBook formats and the process of putting them up for sale online seemed much easier than I thought it would be.

Even though some things haven’t been what I’d imagined, working with Jeff and learning more about publishing in general has been extremely interesting. I have a clearer idea of what publishing is about now—which will be helpful for me if I decide to go into the publishing business—but even beyond that, I’ve just had a lot of fun learning from Jeff and reading his stories.

And with Gretchen’s help, I’ve gotten three stories into ebook form (the third going up today), and several more in the pipeline! 
 

21 May 2012

Tor/Forge Books to Go DRM-free!

posted in: ebooks, publishing | 0

This one slipped by me when it was first announced, almost a month ago. Tor Books, my publisher, has announced that all of their ebooks will be going DRM-free. (DRM is the digital right management—or copy protection—that on most books from major publishers locks purchased books to a single type of reading device.) Here’s the announcement in part:

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

This is great news for ebook readers everywhere, whether they use Kindles, Nooks, iPads, Androids, Sony Readers, or anything else. Baen Books has for years been the only big SF publisher that has eschewed DRM, and it has served them and their readers well. Tor’s move may represent a break from the practice of the parent company, Macmillan U.S.; it may also be the first crack in the wall of the Big Six publishers, whose ebook publishing practices have been fairly anti-consumer for some time now. Instead of treating their customers as criminals who can’t be trusted with the books they’ve paid for, Tor/Forge will now be treating them as, well, valued customers.

No word yet on whether this signals a change in Macmillan’s policy of not selling ebooks to libraries, or whether customers who previously purchased DRM-restricted Tor/Forge books will be able to replace them with DRM-free editions.

My own policy has always been, if you’ve bought one of my books with DRM and it’s causing you any problems in reading it on the device of your choice, just let me know. I’ll personally replace it with a DRM-free copy.

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