I’m in the Spokane Airport getting ready to fly back to LA.The continuing forest fires have turned the outside air into something that smells like Pompeii and looks like Mordor.
I will have a lot of catching up to do when I get home. Plenty of photos to post. I might even post the Hugo results….
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GOD STALK!
Safe travels!
Thanks for all your coverage!
Since the other most recent thread is still in a fierce and active debate, I’ll drop this here: Today’s Kindle special in SFF is Indexing by Seanan McGuire, on sale for $1.99 if anyone is interested. I have it in my TBR, moved up since I read and liked Feed (written as Mira Grant) so much.
Air quality in Spokane is “Unhealthy” or “New York Style” today, 151-200 (aka chunky) on the particle meter. I’m glad this soup dissipates by the time it gets to Minnesota.
+1 for Indexing, it’s a very clever and entertaining take on the idea.
Have a good journey Mike. I suspect any round up of the post-Hugo reaction will take about a week’s worth of posts!
Safe travels, Mike!
Safe travels.
Hope you have a nice trip, Mike!
Thanks so much, Mike. More than kinda wish I had gone.
Have a comfortable trip home, Mike!
Meanwhile, can I start the rumour now that the forest fires are part of VD’s unsuccessful attempt to burn the Hugos down?
Hope you had a wonderful time. Good traveling Not sure where your home base is but it must have better air quality.
Meanwhile, can I start the rumour now that the forest fires are part of VD’s unsuccessful attempt to burn the Hugos down?
And he’d have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling fen…
Next trip the US booked, to one of my favourite conferences where SF and futurism collide – and with Cory Doctorow and Ramez Naam both speaking.
Wait, the Hugos were awarded this week, I gotta look that up!
It was a pleasure to meet you, Mike (and the other posters who were there was well), at the File 770 meetup and elsewhere at the con.
is this the second book in a series? Do I need the first book? (it appears to be inexpensive as well … but I’m a little confused by the whole serial thing …)
Indexing: Reflections is the second book (not sure what the deal is with that). The one on sale is just called Indexing. Here is a link (not an affiliate link).
The special offer Indexing is the first in series. Though it looks like the second in series, Indexing Reflections is also US$1.99. The second has a notice about it being a Serial, so it may just be the first one or two parts available now. I do not know if that price gets you the entire series of Book 2, or just what has been released so far.
I read the first, and liked it. Not quite as much as I liked McGuire-as-Grant’s Newsflesh, but still very good. My TBR has Indexing Reflections on it, but several others are ahead of it thanks to multiple recommendations from a certain wretched hive of scum and villainy and the recently revealed should-have-been-nominees.
GOD STALK: I like!
*goes to check cautiously on how many there are*
And now I have “leaving on a jet plane” earworming through my head.
@Rrede: Delighted to hear we did not steer you wrong on GOD STALK!.
I’ve mentioned Kindle book deals here a few times, as I get notifications of them through email and several blogs, and pass along the ones I think folks here might want to know about. If that is cool, I’ll keep doing so, though not in any organized or official fashion. More like, hey, I think some folks on File770 were talking about this book or author, bet some of them would want to know if there was a deal on it.
I won’t ever include affiliate links.
Is that cool?
Thanks for the heads-up on Indexing, I went and snagged it.
So, the Hugo awards, huh? How’d that go? *ducks*
My favorite McGuire books are the InCryptid series. Witty urban fantasy is fun stuff. If the Indexing series is like thay, I’ll have to check it out.
Safe travels Mike.
Please do. I’m on pins and needles.
Dear Mike: My comment is so far down the train of comments that probably nobody will read it. But after lurking about for months reading other people’s postings, I just have to wonder if the writers, editors, publishers, and fans of any other genre fiction would put as much heart, soul, rage, and spleen into either attacking or defending where their genre has been or is going as we just have witnessed involving the SF /choose one/ (literary world?) (publishing industry?) (collective cultural delusion?). Can you picture something like this happening involving romance novel awards? Crime fiction awards? Maybe it did, but I never heard about it. This dispute involving those who are members of Our Thing even jumped over into the mundane media to some extent, which must signify something. Let’s hope this is a positive event somehow that leads to more readers, bigger sales, bigger advances, and more paper digest-sized magazines on the racks. Yes, let’s bring back modern pulp magazines if someone wants to buy them, and also magazines full of the most far out transgressive stuff that would make Kay Tarrant, John Campbell’s blue-nosed secretary, faint upon reading the first few pages. There’s a magazine called ASIMOV’S; could there be a magazine called DELANY’S someday? I await developments with hope. .
@Sanford Meschkow
In fact, something rather like this is happening right now, with Kate Breslin’s For Such a Time
This upcoming book looks pretty cool.
It’s a robot private eye story, set in some alternate version of the 1960s.
What will this subgenre be called–noirpunk? midcenturymodernpunk?
Either way, I like detective stories, I like noir, I like robots. I’m there!
@cmm
I don’t have an issue with amazon links, but if you could make clear you mean Amazon US that’d be handy – there’s no guarantee .co.uk (or where ever else) are mirroring the US deal.
@Sanford Meschkow
Oh, this isn’t “far down the train of comments”. We’re still on the first page here, and we can break 1000 comments when sufficiently enthused.
Oh gosh, good point, Mark. I will be sure to do so.
we can break 1000 comments when sufficiently enthused.
The Sunday business meeting thread is on its 23rd page.
well … bought em both … hope I don’t duplicate but for $1.99 it’s not a big deal if I did
Re: Indexing Reflections — is it DRM? Is it complete, or is she still writing it? (I recall that “Indexing” came out as something like a chapter a month…)
I like to archive my books on my computer, so I very much prefer nonDRM books.
Safe travels and thanks for everything.
I’d say “let’s do this again next year” but you know, not THIS per-se…
I doubt I can attend, but what conference is that Simon?
@Sanford: Can you picture something like this happening involving romance novel awards? Crime fiction awards?
Yes, and also literary awards — not in necessarily the same way (doubt there are too many straight white males bemoaning the takeover of romance by teh wimminz), but wanks, imbroglios, disagreements, all driven by passion?
Sure.
That’s fandom in a nutshell right there. I know something about the romance imbroglios (since I like some of the stuff that somtimes gets called “paranormal romance” and sometimes “urban fantasy” which itself has led to major conflict over meaning–and often seems to come down to who is writing what, she notes snarkily, i.e. irregular sort of “men write urban fantasy” and “girls write that icky paranormal romance.”). I don’t know about crime fiction, but I’d bet a nickel stuff happens there too.
Heck, I’ve heard rumors of some pretty amazing conflicts on Ravelry (knitting and crochet).
In terms of sff growing its audience…in book form……it’s such a small category or publishing, and I think for some reason (OTOH, the widespread popularity of sff in visual media is pretty amazing, plus games).
“more paper digest-sized magazines on the racks” also seems unlikely compred to online magazines.
The extent to which sf of all genres has been resistant to new technologies (John Scalzi’s muttering about markets refusing to accept anything but hard copy–he doesn’t own a printer, heh) is sort of….proof of something or other.
@Microtherion: is that romance link to the debate about the Holocaust novel? Because if so, I ain’t clicking….
@Cassy: Indexing is being published as a serial, so will be updated regularly. I’m not sure about the DRM issue, sorry.
I hope you like balrog jokes.
Mike Kerpan: My favorite McGuire books are the InCryptid series. Witty urban fantasy is fun stuff.
My favorite McGuires are the October Daye series. I’ve never been a big fan of myth-based fantasy or urban fantasy — or so I thought. McGuire’s research into faerie folklore and myth has been meticulous and she has expanded on it spectacularly in her worldbuilding. And Seanan has a Master Level command of wit and snark.
Mike, have a safe trip.
It was great to get to meet you, and spend time talking with you and the other denizens of this Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy.
I have the highest praise for Mike’s dedication to keeping us all updated here on File770. In sessions he was limited to doing so using a very small Kindle keyboard (!) and I walked past him still updating the blog in the hotel business center at 1:30am Sunday morning, as I was returning from post-Hugo celebrations to fall into bed.
I ran into Rick Moen repeatedly, but when I asked about Deirdre, it was always “Oh, she couldn’t come to this”, or “she’s got something else scheduled right now”, to the point where I became certain that she exists only as one of Rick’s imaginary alternate personalities. He did introduce to me a very congenial red-haired woman at the Sunday morning Business Meeting, claiming that she was Deirdre — but as she disappeared again immediately after that, I remain unconvinced that she was not merely an actress produced with the intent of misdirecting me away from the truth.
Sanford Meschkow: There was some fuss at the Edgars ten years ago when Domenic Stansberry’s The Confession, a serial-strangler novel with a very creepy narrator, won Best Paperback Original. Not really the full-on culture war thing that’s happened with the Hugos, though. Oh, and there was another short kerfuffle when Ian Rankin said that the most violent crime fiction nowadays was mostly being written by lesbians. I can’t think of much beyond that in mystery fiction, but maybe something slipped my notice.
@bravo
It’s Future In Review, the conference of the SNS mailing list. It’s a fascinating event: last year began with a keynote from the folk behind Planetary Resources…
@Sanford Meschkow:
Great comment!
JJ: I enjoyed meeting you, too, and am grateful for and awed by your liveblogging prowess.
I can vouch for Deirdre being there! I was able to say hi to her a couple times, including while we were all waiting til the hour when people would be allowed into the auditorium for the Hugo ceremony.
Jon Meltzer: I have discovered I DO like balrog jokes. Not something I previously knew about myself…
If the community will indulge me, there’s a song, the 2nd half of which sums up how I feel about writing, Worldcon, and File 770. It’s the finale from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights.” All you need to know is that the main character, Usnave, derisively refers to himself as a “streetlight” in the opening number and that Abuela, his aunt, has recently died.
The relevant part starts 3 mins in, but the whole thing’s terrific.
@JJ
SocialInjusticeWorrier: One of them was disguised…
I knew I’d heard that reference, but couldn’t remember where, so I had to Google it.
Now, of course, I WILL NEVER FORGET IT SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. [/snark]
I should imagine that Rick and Deirdre would be amused at being compared to Mulder and Scully.
Also, I’d just like to add that it’s nice to see Meredith and SocialInjusticeWorrier, and those others of you who’ve had temporary absences, again. (Also, Soon Lee, condolences.)
I knew for sure we’d become a community when I found myself thinking “Hey, where’s Meredith? hope she’s okay” and “Hmmm… haven’t heard from SIW in a while, may have to send the St Bernard”.