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August 25, 2009 Links and Plugs
Bibliophile Stalker — I didn't realize that The Apex Book of World SF is getting released next week. One of the questions on my mind is what can I do to promote it? For all the talks within the genre of multiculturalism, well, here's a publisher willing to back it up with their money. Whether it's a success or not depends on whether the reading public is willing to pay for it. On a lighter note, the We Have Thumbs podcast features the voices behind Goblin Fruit in their latest podcast. Go listen! Interviews David Pucik interviews David Gaider. Peter William interviews Pat's Fantasy ...

SF Tidbits for 8/25/09
SF Signal — ... Artfare...this time by Dave Rapoza. Nnedi Okorafor was not impressed with District 9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring comes to life at the world-famous Radio City Music Hall for two performances only, on Friday, October 9th and Saturday, October 10th. Real Science: Space.com looks at The Enduring Mystery of Saturn's Rings Lists: @Tor.com: Mindblowing SF by Women and People of Color. @Strange Horizons" James Schellenberg's Top ...

Links and Things
Enter the Octopus — Readers Digest files for bankruptcy Meth ring used comic books to launder money A Call For Understanding Between Man And Chimp ‘The Magicians’ – Lev Grossman’s doing a live chat on Wednesday The Writing Heart of a Baboon Wikipedia to Limit Changes to ...

Links for 25th August 2009
Velcro City Tourist Board — Fresh from the clogged tubes of teh intarwubs… Schools of robofish may police water pollution "The main drawback of traditional robots is that they have way too many parts and are very complex," said mechanical engineer Pablo Alvarado of MIT, who helped design the fish. "Traditional robots may work in the lab, but if you take them into a regular environment, like the ocean, they wouldn't last more than a half hour." Alvarado and colleagues wanted to try a simpler approach to robot design. Instead of patching together multiple mechanical parts, they built each fish using a single piece of ...

A list of PoC/Female "Mindblowing SF" stories and a complaint about the gender/race discussions
OF Blog of the Fallen — Two interesting and somewhat-related blog posts I've read recently. The first is by Shaun Duke and it pretty much is an essay decrying the tone and tenor of the recent debates surrounding females and people of color being underrepresented in recent SF/F anthologies. Although I can understand his point of view to an extent, I disagree with its main thrust in that I believe that agitprop is often necessary to sway public opinion. It might be messy and might irritate some, but it sure beats shutting one's trap and not speaking up. But there's another facet that I think can be addressed with another link than by spending paragraphs laying out ...

Hugo Awards: Shaped that way for a reason
Jim C. Hines — “If in the written fiction categories, no selected nominee has a female author or co-author, the highest nominee with a female author or co-author shall also be listed.” This is a proposed amendment to the Hugo Awards introduced at a Worldcon business meeting earlier this month.  The amendment was immediately nuked from orbit.  (It was the only way to be sure.) Today I came across a post by Yonmei, talking about why she proposed the amendment.  Two of the points she makes: “Books by women are less likely to be reviewed by than books by men (this applies even to Locus – in fact, it was ...

August 27, 2009 Links and Plugs
Bibliophile Stalker — I might have mentioned yesterday that Jon Armstrong of If You're Just Joining Us interviews Jeff VanderMeer. You should all go listen to it because I did the opening (aside from the podcast being a really, really cool show and Jeff VanderMeer is boar-charging awesome). =) Linked to it the other day but worth repeating: K Tempest Bradford on Making Lists: Mindblowing SF by Women and People of Color. 9/1 is Outer Alliance Pride Day (it's also ‘Support our ‘Zines Day’). Oh, and have some Goblin Fruit. P.S. Urgent: If you're an author (especially female), here's a Disturbing Email ...

Pissed off at Comcast
The Crotchety Old Fan — Well, yesterday was a wash. My personal weekly schedule sucks, to put it bluntly.  One day a week I work a (’real’) job from 3 pm till 10 pm. Three more days of the week I’m up at 3 am to see Karen off to work (make lunch, wish her well, etc., etc., yawn…); then there’s the three day weekend (Fri - Sun) during which the day usually begins at around 4 am and ends whenever, repeat. My default setting is something like 11 am to 2 am during the winter and as little as 3 hours of sleep a “night” during the longer months. Which clashes terribly with my actual schedule right now, and the result is ...