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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
I’m happily ensconced in Calgary ahead of the World Fantasy Convention. It officially begins tomorrow but given that Kate and I already ran into our first fellow attendee in the hotel lift this morning, it’s good enough as on now.
I’ll post the results of the World Fantasy Awards at some stage on Sunday, so feel free to check back here if you’re interested but if you’re keen to get the results as fast as possible, check out SF Awards Watch, which is doing its best to live-blog the awards as they’re presented. They’re also currently taking votes on which work people think will win the award for best novel.
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Art and commerce don’t always have to collide. We’re staying in the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco. It’s decked out with heaps of art and each room is designed by an up-and-coming artist. This is the picture on the wall in front of our bed.
Our hotel bedroom wall
Friday, October 24th, 2008
Tomorrow, Kate and I venture off into the vast unknown that is the northern hemisphere. The bags are packed (well, mine is) the iPod is charged and the books are selected.
There’s a lot to look forward to on this trip - the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, catching up with buddies at the bar in Calgary, visiting San Franciso and Washington. But I’m most excited by the fact we arrive in New York the night before the presidential election. I love elections (and not just because it’s part of my job to help win them) but there’s such a vibrancy to them. In Brisbane we’ve got a polling booth across the road from us and it’s a great feeling to be able to simply walk out the door and vote.
Come the night of November 4 I’m looking forward to finding the right kind of bar in New York, sitting down and watching the results roll in. It could be interesting if it’s a close result because we’re booked in to have breakfast with a publisher the next morning, and I’m kinda figuring that pulling an all-nighter probably isn’t the done thing. But I’m getting the feeling it won’t be a close thing.
It’s been an interesting campaign. From a political sense it was interesting to watch McCain throw the dice again and again (choosing Palin, halting his campaign to deal with the economic crisis, and raisng the stakes by going super-negative) and lose but I’m just as interested to see the wash-up of the internet and the effect it had on the election.
Lots of people are rushing to say us inter-webbed masses have already won the election for Obama but I’m not sure whether they are confusing cause and effect. I genuinely don’t know. I think the impact is wide but I’m not sure how deep. And I think it could also be a result of Republican ineptitude. Anyway, I’m looking forward to talking about it in the US.
In the meantime, let me leave you with two intersting pieces of information pertinent to the changing face of elections The first is the information people googled during the VP debate. Read some analysis of it here.
The second is the fact You Tube wasn’t even around during the 2004 presidential election, which is a shame because it it was we may have seen more gems like this:
Here’s betting the number of views on YouTube increase tenfold in the next 24 hours.
UPDATE: YouTube received a takedown notice for the video. You can see it here instead.
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
Last month I headed to Bribie Island for an extended weekend of writing, relaxing, chatting with friends and a few drinks. I took three print books with me and loaded a few files onto my first generation iPod touch to test it out as an e-book reader.
I was using the excellent stanza reader and had downloaded George Orwell’s “Why I Write”, War of the Worlds, Cory Doctorow’s “Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future” and a few other bits and pieces.
Stanza is deceptively easy to use. Put the iPod on its side and you get a landscape reading screen. To “turn” the page you simply tap the right or left side of the screen, depending on whether you want to go forward or back. To change the font size you put two fingers on the screen and pinch or push apart your fingers depending on whether you want it bigger or smaller. Unlike the iPod’s photo interface this was a bit buggy but it wasn’t too much of an annoyance given it’s something you really only have to do once and then forget (adjusted for declining eyesight over the years, of course).
I read a bit of the Orwell book and then got stuck into the Doctorow essays. These were a great choice - engaging and relatively short. Coming in at 115 grams, my iPod weighs about a third of a standard paperback (350 grams or 12 ounces), so holding it is no problem. You can turn the brightness right up if you’re outdoors or turn it down, which was my preference, indoors. That saved on battery power and made reading the screen pretty easy on the eye.
The verdict? As an e-book reader, the iPod touch mostly works. It’s light and puts very little strain on the eye thanks to its good brightness control and the crispness of the text. I think it was lucky I was reading non fiction that had no dialogue and infrequent paragraph breaks. The page in the photo has 109 words on it but a dialogue heavy page of Lee Battersby’s“Alchymical Romance” has just over 80 words. To put it in context - that’s about three paragraphs of a well written newspaper article and I think I’d get annoyed having to tap the screen every 10 seconds or so. But maybe that’s me.
Unlike some people I’m not ready to declare the iPod (or any smart phone) theconvergence device. I think we’ll end up converging on two types of devices that share similar functions but mych different sizes. But more on that another time. As an ultraportable e-book reader, it works.
Friday, October 17th, 2008
The endgame of my stint as a World Fantasy Award judge is approaching rapidly. In a little over a week I’ll be jetting off overseas and in a little over a week the winners will be announced in Calgary, Canada.
After I’m back I’m going to review each of the winners and maybe do a category by category rundow. But until then a reminder of the life achievement winners and shortlisted nominees.
LIFE ACHIEVEMENT
Leo & Diane Dillon
Patricia McKillip
NOVEL
Fangland, John Marks (Penguin)
The Gospel of the Knife, Will Shetterly (Tor)
The Servants, Michael Marshall Smith (Earthling Publications)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)
NOVELLA
“Cold Snap”, Kim Newman (The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club)
Illyria, Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing)
“The Master Miller’s Tale”, Ian R. MacLeod (F&SF May 2007)
The Mermaids, Robert Edric (PS Publishing)
“Stars Seen through Stone”, Lucius Shepard (F&SF Jul 2007)
SHORT STORY
“The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics”, Daniel Abraham (Logorrhea)
“The Church on the Island”, Simon Kurt Unsworth (At Ease with the Dead, Ash-Tree Press)
“Damned If You Don’t”, Robert Shearman (Tiny Deaths)
“The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change”, Kij Johnson (The Coyote Road)
“Singing of Mount Abora”, Theodora Goss (Logorrhea)
ANTHOLOGY
The Coyote Road, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (Viking)
Five Strokes to Midnight, Gary A. Braunbeck & Hank Schwaeble, eds. (Haunted Pelican Press)
Inferno, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)
Logorrhea, John Klima, ed. (Bantam Spectra)
Wizards, Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Berkley)
COLLECTION
Dagger Key and Other Stories, Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing)
Hart & Boot & Other Stories, Tim Pratt (Night Shade Books)
Plots and Misadventures, Stephen Gallagher (Subterranean Press)
Portable Childhoods, Ellen Klages (Tachyon Publications)
The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, Kim Newman (MonkeyBrain Books)
Tiny Deaths, Robert Shearman (Comma Press)
ARTIST
Ruan Jia
Mikko Kinnunen
Stephan Martiniere
Edward Miller
John Picacio
SPECIAL AWARD, PROFESSIONAL
Allison Baker & Chris Roberson (for MonkeyBrain Books)
Alan Beatts & Jude Feldman (for Borderlands Books)
Peter Crowther (for PS Publishing)
Jeremy Lassen & Jason Williams (for Night Shade Books)
Shawna McCarthy (for Realms of Fantasy)
Gordon Van Gelder (for F&SF)
SPECIAL AWARD, NON-PROFESSIONAL
G. S. Evans & Alice Whittenburg (for Cafe Irreal),
John Klima (for Electric Velocipede)
Rosalie Parker & Raymond Russell (for Tartarus Press)
Midori Snyder & Terri Windling (for Endicott Studios Website)
Stephen Jones (for Travellers in Darkness: The Souvenir Book of the World Horror Convention 2007)
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
Well, I’ve moved over from Livejournal to a dedicated website, which will hopefully see me expand my online presence. I’m aiming to get a few good posts under my belt before heading to the northern hemisphere for the 2008 World Tour next week.
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