Kaolin Fire writes to tell me about a new magazine:

Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine publishes 200 pages of literary and genre fiction, poetry, articles, and art, and features contributors from around the world. GUD (pron. “good”) pays semi-pro rates for content and pays royalties on the profits of the sales of the magazine, effectively making the contributors shareholders for that issue.

GUD is available for purchase in print and electronic (PDF) format. It is published twice yearly, although we expect to go to four issues a year in our second year of publication. The initial print run for Issue 0 was 200 copies (and the second run is 200 copies as well), and we are investigating distributorship for the magazine within the US and abroad. We expect our circulation to grow as word gets out.

Check it out at www.gudmagazine.com.

Read More

I just learned about this new audiobook-type project called AudioFilk.com. Here’s what I was told about it:

We’ve just launched a new Audiobook-esque type site called AudioFlik.com. It’s pretty much what you’d get if you combined an audiobook, radio drama, and film soundtrack. We deliver the content weekly to subscribers of each program, but since you’re a self-professed Sci Fi hound, I wanted to offer to put you on our comp list for our first production which is a Sci Fi dealio entitled ARCTIC INVASION.

Basically we send out a new “Chapter” each week, but instead of special apps or unique programs, we just send it out via our nifty system that uses old fashioned email for distribution. At any rate, check out the site and let me know if you’re into it. The first chapters is available below.

Site: AudioFlik.com
Current production site: ArcticInvasion.com
Free Chapter:
http://www.audioflik.com/ArcticInvasion_free.html

Anyone heard of that, or listened to it yet? Any thoughts?

Read More

Anthologies & Collections

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

In my previous post, I showed off my F&SF collection. Here, you’ll see the rest of my Shrine to Short Fiction. When I reorganized my books (which I did in part, because [a] they weren’t organized at all, and [b], I needed to remove them anyway so I could secure the bookcases together), I decided that I wanted to keep all the short fiction repositories separate, so that when I’m looking for a specific short story, I’ll have a better chance of actually finding it.

Pictured there on the bookcases are all of my anthologies and collections in hardcover or trade paperback. On the floor there are all of my mass market books of short fiction. I had to order more of the 2-shelf bookcases, so I’m waiting on those to arrive, at which point I’ll put the mass markets on top of that 5-shelfer there which currently has audiobooks piled on top of it.

For those curious, if you go to the Flickr page of this photo and view the original hi-res size, you should be able to zoom in closely enough to read most of the titles.

Read More

F&SF: 1949 – Present

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

I don’t remember if I blogged about this previously or not, but last year I bought a complete run of F&SF from a long-time fan, who no longer had the room to store his collection. It took me a while to get around to it, but I finally got them all unpacked. Behold. That’s all of them.

Well, except for the November 1983 issue. That appears to be the only one I’m missing. Anyone have one they wouldn’t mind parting with?

Also pictured here are my new 5-shelf bookcases, on top of which you can see I’ve stacked smaller 2-shelf bookcases. The 5-shelfers are all screwed together for stability, as are the 2-shelfers, but I need to attach the 2-shelfers to the 5-shelfers with shims or something (as suggested in the comments to a previous post).

In addition to F&SF issues, you’ll also see some other stuff on the shelves. For instance, there’s a complete run of F&SF‘s sister publiation, Venture, which didn’t last very long (it had two brief runs in the 50s and 60s), and a few F&SF anthologies. Below that are some misc. short fiction magazines and graphic novels.

Read More

Oh well, it seems the restoration of comments was a futile endeavor. Whenever they’re active, I get so much comment spam that it’s a burden to my server.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what I can use instead? When I had the comments linked to the Rumor Mill, it seemed like no one wanted to comment there. Or perhaps no one would have commented anyway…

Read More

The comments on my blog have been re-activated. Huzzah! Well, maybe. We’ll see how it goes. If you want to avoid comment moderation, try signing up with TypeKey. That’ll make sure your comment gets posted right away.

Read More

Dear Vast Network of Contacts:

Do any of you have connections at Irving Plaza in New York, or at Ticketmaster, or are otherwise able to procure highly-sought-after concert tickets? My Mom is an insane (insane!) Chris Daughtry fan, and she desperately wants to go see him in concert. Tix to the Irving Plaza show go on sale on Wednesday at noon, and Mother is concerned about not being able to get tix in the mad rush (someone at Irving Plaza wished her a skeptical “Good Luck” when she called to find out more information about the show). So I just want to make sure she gets the tix, because she’ll be terribly disappointed if she doesn’t get to see him. Anyone got any connections, or failing that, advice? I’ve never actually tried to get concert tix to an event that was likely to sell out before.

Incidentally, the Ticketmaster website was driving me fucking insane the other day, because it has this rule about too many page views per IP address or something, and it was only letting me view like three or four pages. Turns out this is not as stupid as it seemed; the reason it was shutting me out is because of the Google Accelerator program, which is supposed to speed up your web browsing. Because of the way it works (something about pre-fetching pages, I think?), it causes the server of the sites you visit to be hit more often, or something like that. So if you use Google Accelerator, be aware that that might happen on some websites. When it does, you can turn it off, or you can go into the preferences, where you can add certain websites to the “do not accelerate” list. Wikipedia is another one that needs to be added (well, if you want to be able to edit pages, anyway–if you just want to view, it’s fine, I think).

Read More

Speaking of Locus… their annual Locus Award poll is now online. Ballots must be completed by April 15 (just like your taxes!).

Read More