goblinbox

In which I recap my madcap, whirlwind, SUPERfun trip to the cit-ay!

By 8:30 Friday morning I was in Sheila‘s van, heading west. Her awesome daughters let me ride shotgun, which was supercool of them. The ride was lovely – watching the land change from desert to rain forest is beautiful every single time I see it – and the company was lovely.

I was at the Hollywood TC before one in the afternoon. I called Dave. He told me to start walking down 39th and he’d come and get me.

I can’t tell you exactly how long, but it’s been a loooooooong time since I last saw Dave. We were in the MHCC jazz program together in the late 80′s. We had beers, and his neighbor (who also happens to be his bass player) set up an ad hoc wireless network for me so I could get online.

Adie came and picked me up after she got off work, and we went to her house, where I was attacked by terriers!. (Hah!) I put my bag in the guest room, changed my clothes, and after a bit we wandered over to Alberta for dinner at The Hilt. (Falafel! Hummus! Mojitos!)

My friend Leila dropped in and had a little nosh with us. It was a wonderful visit. After she took off we walked home, watched some TV, and were in bed by 10:30. Read the rest of this entry »

In which publishers and sellers alike seem to be on the verge of losing their minds.

First off, let me just say that I’ve been reading ebooks since 1994. They’re not new. This whole ebook thing has been coming for a long, long time, and I can’t figure out why the big book publishers can’t figure out how to monetize ebooks without acting like morons.

Second off, I’ve been buying ebooks for a long time too, and I’ve read a lot of ebooks on a lot of platforms. Those are my creds as an ebook reader, so I kinda know what I’m talking about here, from a customer’s point of view. Seriously, I only know one person who has been reading ebooks as long as I have (this means you, NLW).

Third off, what the fuck is going on over at Amazon? They’ve pulled literally every Macmillan title due to some kind of “pricing dispute.” Apparently, Macmillan, after learning that the Apple ebook store will let them charge more than $9.99 per title, has decided that Amazon should do the same. Since Amazon sells virtually all of its ebooks at the $9.99 pricepoint, they pulled the Macmillan titles! (My beloved Tor is a Macmillan imprint, BTW.) It’s a freakin’ mess, and you know who’s getting hurt?

The authors. Because their BOOKS AREN’T SELLING.

A lot of treeware publishers are doing a terrible job embracing the ebook format. They’re running around carrying on about DRM and sounding like idiot RIAA executives from the 90′s. It’s a mess. They should all go read Eric Flint’s brilliant argument for loss leaders and against DRM, written a decade ago, posted at the Baen Free Library.

Here are some truths:

1. DRM DOES NOT PROTECT YOUR CONTENT! EVER!
2. PIRACY IS NOT THAT BIG OF A GODDAMNED PROBLEM!
3. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR AUTHORS IS EXPOSURE!

1. I have never given anyone an ebook that I have purchased. NEVER. Not once. (Well, maybe once or twice, but if so I don’t remember it.) But if I wanted to give someone an ebook, the file format wouldn’t matter – any secure format can be broken. Back when the iTunes store was still selling music with DRM, all you had to do to break it was burn your songs to disc and then rip them back into your library! Duh! I have software on my computer right now that will break DRM on music, video, and certain ebook formats. Why? Because sometimes I want to use my content on hardware other than the hardware the seller wants me to use it on. Since I PAID FOR IT, I feel completely fine about breaking the DRM for my own ends, just as I feel fine tearing a blank page out of a treeware book to write a note on.

2. I’ve read absurd projections by some publishers; they claim they would lose a huge amount of money if they distributed new book releases in non-secure ebook format. WTF, over? They sound just like the record companies. I can’t believe these people didn’t pay attention to electronic formats in the music industry! Where the hell were they? Yes, some content gets pirated, but so what? It’s free advertisement! A truly heartening percentage of the ebook reading public is made up of moral people who will, if they can, pay for things they’ve enjoyed. Piracy does not “lose” you money. You can’t lose money you never had in the first place.

3. And, as they say so well over at Baen, loss leaders WORK. If you have a trilogy, give the first book away for free in ebook format. It’s cheap because all you have to do is format it once and host it; there are no manufacturing costs involved. You’ll find (if the book doesn’t suck) that the entire trilogy’s sales will increase: win/win for publisher and author.

Hey big publishers, the electronics are coming! You gotta get ready! It used to be a sub-market of weirdos like me with rare hardware, but now we’ve got the Kindle and the iPad and by the end of this decade the ebook format is going to be ubiquitous. You need to figure this out tout de suite. You are going to have to embrace the ebook format. You are going to have to take a smaller cut on electronic books, and you are going to have to change your product release cycle to quit holding ebook versions for ten months and then overcharging for them.

We, your audience, know perfectly well that the cost of producing a treeware book is SIGNIFICANTLY LARGER than the cost of releasing an ebook, and it pisses us off when you set ebook price points at hardcover levels. (I didn’t buy the a particular Guy Gavriel Kay book for over five years because it was nearly thirty bucks. THIRTY BUCKS FOR AN EBOOK? I waited until it came down to proper ebook range before I bought it.) It also pisses us off when we learn that between you and the ebook vendor, authors are making pennies off of ebooks – that’s why we buy them, when we can, directly from the author’s website, or from ebook sellers who are known to pay higher percentages.

With the paper, printing, and shipping out of the equation, all a publisher does is select, edit, and promote. That pretty much makes you an agent, which lowers your take pretty significantly. Which is okay, because the book market is huge. Readers tend to read a lot, and ebook readers will continue to make it easier and easier to read (and buy) a lot of content.

You have got to change.

Please, do it more gracefully than the music industry did, mmm’kay? You need to get ebooks to market alongside the treeware versions, and yes, you have to charge less for them. You have to select industry-standard formats; don’t bring yet another format to the table because there are already dozens. Forget about stupid DRM, too, because it DOESN’T DO ANYTHING BUT ANNOY EVERYONE. Design and implement appropriate sales tracking, so that you can see for yourself that ebooks can actually increase treeware sales. (Look at Cory Doctorow! He releases all his books in ebook format… for free! And he’s a success. Go figure!)

Believe me. This doesn’t have to be scary, and you don’t have to look stupid. Mellow out, there, big fellas. It’ll be okay.

In which I had a great time on New Year’s Eve at Pub 21 with the band.

Load-in was at 4:30, but I was late because I had to take a paper copy of my resume (and cover letter and references) to WorkSource to apply for a job.

WTF? Why wouldn’t they let me email it to them? Not only did I have to drive over there in the snow to deliver three pieces of paper, but they scanned the documents to send – one assumes electronically – to the employer; somehow they couldn’t use the DOC and PDF format copies I’d helpfully brought along on a thumb drive, and they wouldn’t let me email the items in the first place! The mind boggles. It’s like it’s still 2002 at WorkSource or something.

Anyway.

We finished setup and did a sound check and still had three hours left before the gig. The weather was crap – snow and freezing rain – and the streets were treacherously icy in a pickup with no weight in the bed.

I went home and changed my pants (it turned out there was a hole in them) and read Makers in the interim.

The gig was a blast. People started dancing during the second song of the first set, and danced most of the night. The substitute bass player – the regular guy had another gig – did a fantastic job. (So fantastic, in fact, that I gave him a big ol’ bossy lecture about how “you only regret the things you didn’t do” and why he should move to a city and actually play for a living.)

Bob gave me a couple of glasses of wine for free because I was in the band. I gave out a bunch of business cards so people could get free downloads. My friend Sheila came and I danced about twelve bars with her and Shelley. Rob sold a bunch of the Kings’ latest CD.

Since I never make New Year’s resolutions, I made none this year. Yay! I’ve already averted much fail by simply doing nothing.

Speaking of doing nothing, I was supposed to be back over at the venue at one o’clock the next day for load-out, but The Curse^™ had arrived and I slept all damn day instead. I suck. I’m lucky anybody ever hires me.

Today, I need to find a job to apply for (ideally via email, fer chrissakes) and I’m going to read a bunch of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother on my Kindle.

by Oscar Wilde

“My dear boy,” said Lord Henry, smiling, “anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”

In which I’ve decided, in an effort to keep my mind from rotting in my head, to read, or in most cases re-read, the following works. This list is incomplete.

Shakespeare
Sonnets (in progress)

Oscar Wilde
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (done)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (done)
The Portrait of Mr. W.H. (done)
An Ideal Husband
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (done)

Plato
The Republic

Xenophon
Anabasis
The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates

The awesome part about reading public domain works is that I can download them (using Stanza on my iThing) from Project Gutenberg for free!

In which I’m in a slump and need your input.

As y’all know, I read voraciously. So much so that I’ve already read most of it. All the Asimov. All the Bear. All the Robin Hobb. All the Vonnegut, all the Eric Flint, the Egan, the Guy Gavriel Kay. And all of a bunch of other shit, too.

In the last year I’ve discovered Jay Lake and some new Naomi Novik, but mostly I’ve just been re-reading sci-fi ebooks I bought years ago because I don’t know what to look for and apparently I’m too lazy to go surf around and see what’s hot.

I need to learn about new authors in sci-fi and in GOOD fantasy – clever, interesting worlds, not “magic” for its own sake – and modern fiction and engaging science and, what the hell, good erotica too.

Tell me what you’re reading, my babies! Please!

In which I respond here because I’m no longer in college.

I’m reading one of the late Philip K. Dick‘s final three works: a wild tour of drugs, insanity, and longing called VALIS.

While the characters – so far at least – are so engaging that it’s worth reading, there’s a great deal of vocabulary. Some of it is off-putting, because I already possess a reasonably massive vocabulary, with as solid a relationship with modern English’s predecessors as a product of public schooling can reasonably expect to have, but on some pages there will be three or four – or even more – words I need to look up. Is this communication, or is it masturbation? Who was he writing for? (And will I ever be one of them?)

It doesn’t escape me that the more words one has, the more topics one can think about… I mean to say, can we think about something without having first fashioned words to describe it? I don’t think we can. So: esoteric topics require their own jargon. Fine.

Anyway. Point is, athiests: always pissed off because [1] they can’t force themselves to experience God the same way they can force material things to interact; [2] the existence of suffering in the world upsets them so much that no clear thinking can be done about God or love after the topic of pain is introduced; [3] they require physical, dimensional proof of a force that possesses neither characteristic directly (but only indirectly, as a side-effect); and, [4] if they’re thinky, they tend to go on and on obfuscating and defining and defending and thrashing about and making the entire thing so fucking achingly complicated that no one has the energy to enter into meaningful dialog with them. Which they take to mean they’re right. Read the rest of this entry »

In which I use my powers for evil good.

You know I’m a whore for the hard sci-fi, right? Totally devour the stuff. By the metric ton. It’s a big part of my free time, the sci-fi is, so I’m gonna talk about it. If you don’t read sci-fi, you can safely skip this whole entry.

I just finished a Greg Bear novel called Psychlone and it utterly sucked, and so did the last new Bear, Quantico, and, I mean, well, damn. Because I used to love Bear. Infinity Concerto was so wonderful I’ve read it thrice (I rarely re-read, plus I don’t even like fantasy). I loved Eon and Darwin’s Radio and Slant, and he just used to write such good sci-fi.

But Psychlone? Ugh. IMO the premise was weak, the characters didn’t even like themselves, and the denouement failed to satisfy. It was a terrible disappointment. It’s well-crafted and expertly written, of course, but it just didn’t work for me. I don’t think the author himself even knew quite what it was he was trying to convey, because I certainly couldn’t tell and I’m deep. (Snort.) A scientific basis for demons? Okay, fine, but please. Just… please. Finish defining your universe before you start breaking it.

So the Bear novel broke my heart and to cheer myself up I broke into the William Barton I’d bought recently and was hoarding. It’s called Acts of Conscience and I’ve devoured half of it in 24 hours… and oh, yeah, yeah, it’s good. I love Barton. Looooove him.

So I went surfing for more information, because I’ve decided I’m going to read the rest of Barton’s backlist. This year. All of it. Because that’s just how I roll when I find a yummy new-to-me author.

Enter the confusion: there were problems, people. Where the hell is the info on this guy? Not highly indexed, that’s for certain: I found a bio on Librarything combining this Barton’s work with the work of two other writers of the same name, a domain name with no content (!!!), and a google hit six pages deep about a SQL programmer who writes sci-fi and may or may not be the author I’m stalking looking for.

How in the hell, I ask you, is a devoted reader supposed to stalk learn about an author what ain’t hardly on the Innartubez whatsoevar? Christ. Man’s been published since the 70′s and there’s hardly a pinch of info on him! His wikipedia entry is comprised of fewer than one hundred words, there appears to be a 14-year hole in his release schedule, and I had to update his Librarything page myself for fuck’s sake!

I ran searches in three different engines, mined the isfdb, read the blurb in the back of the book I’ve got and triangulated the author’s town of residence with the registration on the domain name, and… hah. Gotcha.

And I emailed him.

Which is a big deal for me, ’cause I’m shy about my sci-fi authors. Once I emailed Sarah Zettel, though, and she emailed me back. But as a rule I avoid the boards where the writers hang out, and don’t send fan mail. (No comments from the peanut gallery on my use of the word ‘shy,’ now. The fact that I’d've walked up to Miles Davis and asked to borrow a dollar without batting an eyelash simply means that I’m not afraid of musicians. Writers are entirely different. Probably ’cause I ain’t one of them.)

Now ‘scuse me plz while I go read.

In which I had no idea what time it was.

Yesterday I got my new gadget, my eBookwise ebook reader.

It’s so cute! And so far I’m giving it a total thumbs up (although I already have a list of things I want in the next OS update, like: font face changeability, categories, and an ‘undo’ function for markups). Both of my favorite ebook vendors (Fictionwise and Baen) offer books in the proper format for it, so I’ve been able to pack the thing full of stuff to read. Besides Rocket eBook formatted files, it’ll display HTML, .doc, and text files too.

Instead of having a local book-managing application (though there is one available for about $15), the device syncs with an online bookshelf at ebookwise.com. You can buy content from there or upload your own. The reader device has a built-in modem for direct dial-up connectivity, or a USB port so you can use your computer’s connection to the Internet.

There’s no way to organize books into reading lists or categories, which would get extremely unwieldy if there were like 200 books on it, but I think the idea is to keep the bulk of one’s library online and only current books on the reader itself.

It’s a little heavy at a tad over a pound, but that’s not the device itself but because the batteries are huge. It ran for 15 hours on a 3-hour charge, so that little bit of extra weight is worth it. The screen is backlit, glare-free and easy to read. The device is juuuust a tiny bit too big to fit into my coat pocket, but it came with its own cover so it doesn’t get banged up in my bag.

There’s a rotate screen option so I can be left-handed, but then of course the stylus ends up on the bottom and all the icons on the case are upside down. But at least there is a left-handed option.

The only glitch is that the 64Mb expansion card failed after about 2 hours. I got the device, registered it, connected it to my computer via USB and put books on it, then put it away. During my lunch hour I reconnected it to download a couple of books I’d just bought, but the device froze so I disconnected it and stuck a paper clip in the reset divot per the manual. Since then, the device hasn’t recognized the memory card. (I have an open trouble ticket with the OEM; they sent me some instructions with all kinds of groovy ‘hold this while pressing this’ voodoo I’ll have to try when I get home.)

Naturally I stayed up late last night reading, and I woke up early this morning for no apparent reason. When I saw my new toy lying beside the bed naturally I picked it up and started reading rather than going back to sleep. Unfortunately, I’d set its clock wrong, so when I thought it was 9:30 this morning, it was actually 10:30… when I went to connect the ebook reader to my laptop and was downloading more books (I’ve been rereading old sci-fi shorts), was startled by the time: it was 11:23 already! EGAD! The bus comes at 11:35 and it’s 2-1/2 blocks away!

I brushed my hair, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and made it to the bus on time.

Because I? Am superfast. Like, once or twice a year. Just to prove that I can.

Update: The fix I got from the OEM worked – I had to reformat the card and now it’s all good. Yay!

In which I make book recommendations.

For Varenya, who asked what she could read that might prove to be as engaging as McCaffrey’s dragon books, I recommend

• Temeraire: In the Service of the King, a yummy trilogy by Naomi Novik,

…or one (or all!) of these Robin Hobbs trilogies:

• the Farseer trilogy,
• the Tawny Man trilogy (this one’s my favorite, I’ve read it through twice),
• or the Liveship Traders trilogy.

For Deboka, who wanted a list of ten books from me, here are (in no particular order) ten books (mostly sci-fi, a little fantasy, and a couple on philosophy/religion) I happen to love (which may or may not appeal to her in any way) that I think were good reads:

1. Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay
2. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Otherland, by Tad Williams
4. Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master, by Irina Tweedie
5. Distress, by Greg Egan
6. The Myth of Male Power, by Warren Farrell
7. Eon, by Greg Bear
8. The Smoke Ring, by Larry Niven
9. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
10. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, by Ramakrishna

If anyone should want to know what I’ve been reading lately, they could look here or here.

In which there’s a totally half-assed review of a book I’m still reading!

I’m currently reading Alpha Centauri, which came in one of the boxes of books my mom sent.

“From a grossly overpopulated Earth in 2239 A.D., an exploratory colonization mission to Alpha Centauri finds Mies Cochrane carrying an autovirus inside him that, after sexual intercourse, halts conception – the perfect birth control. The explorers discover the remains of an ancient civilization and a way to see what caused their extinction through the eyes of the last, long-dead inhabitant. The authors make a strong statement about overpopulation, solutions to it, and humanity’s purpose for existing. This thought-provoking book, a mix of sexually explicit passages and scientific exposition, is recommended for adult sf collections.”

Mies is not only carrying permanent birth control in his testicles but is a rapidly destabilizing schizophrenic as well. Another character is a voluntary neuter, and a third is a voluntary hermaphrodite. The sex is freakin’ awesome weird, and if there’s anything sci-fi needs it’s more awesome weird sex! I mean, seriously. What could possibly be better?

All the reviewers at Amazon hated Alpha Centauri because, apparently, the sentence fragments and gratuitous sex irritated them. I’d like to reply that not only is the science superfantastic, but the sentence fragments — usually used when we’re sharing a character’s thoughts — are not distracting but impactful, and if a person’s paying attention to the story arc at all the sex isn’t gratuitous. The destabilizing schizo is infecting other characters with permanent infertility when he sleeps with them; they’re an 11-member crew stuck light years away from a dying earth in a system with no habitable planets – the sex is not only part of the human condition but PART OF THE PLOT. The surgical alterations various characters have undergone help us to examine human sexuality in interesting, story-moving ways. When we find out that Doc really believes men are incapable of love and only say the word in order to get laid, we begin to understand why he chose to spend 20 or 30 years as a neuter, free of his sexual imperatives.

Sci-fi isn’t actually supposed to bore one to sleep.

In other news, BabyGirl has her own blog.

A list of predominantly hard sci-fi books for your reading pleasure. I’ll loan you the ones I have, as soon as I can find them.

Click book covers to go to Amazon.

Lucifer’s Hammer ~ This is the one I told you about Tuesday. Oh YUM. A dinosaur-killer strikes the earth; hilarity ensues.

Darwin’s Radio ~ I have the second book, Darwin’s Children, in paperback. You’ll have to buy this first one.

Ilium ~ I have both this and the sequel Olympos in hardcover. Combines hard sci-fi and the classics you wish you were reading.

Code of the Lifemaker ~ I can’t remember why I liked this book so much, only that I did.

An Oblique Approach ~ This is not hard sci-fi, it’s military sci-fi/alternate history. IT’S FUCKING AMAZING; I’ve read the entire series twice. (I think I only have these in ebook format, though.)

The Boat of A Million Years ~ Solid hard sci-fi. I think I have it in hardcover.

Wheelers ~ This was a great read. Neat alien lifeforms. I used to have it in paperback; I’ll look around.

~+~+~+~
For free sci-fi in ebook format: the Baen Free Library.
For sci-fi that’s not free, in ebook format: Fictionwise and Mobipocket.