KGB 9/20/06
Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner read at the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series last night. Click the photo to see more from the photoset.
Note on Comments
Those of you who have commented recently may have noticed that I removed the URL box from the comments field. I did this to help combat spam; by making all comments that come with the URL field be held for moderator approval, I’m able to keep those spam comments from appearing on the site, while allowing everything else to appear. For some reason, even when the URL field is not present, spammers somehow *do* post a URL in that field. So, since regular commenters can no longer include their URL, the only stuff that should be held for moderation is spam.
VanderMeers Eye Pirate Book
SCI FI Wire just published a piece I wrote about Jeff VanderMeer’s forthcoming pirate anthology.
Child Looks At Stolen Life
SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Keith Donohue’s Quill Award nomination for his first novel, The Stolen Child.
Avast, ye mangy sea-dogs!
Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Why not celebrate by getting to work on a pirate story for the special pirate issue of Shimmer?
Camera Obscura: Jericho
Intergalactic Medicine Show just published the latest installment of “Camera Obscura,” in which I review the new CBS post-apocalyptic drama Jericho.
[Excerpt:] CBS is positioning the show as a family drama, not as science fiction. Or as a publicist pointed out to me, it is post-apocalyptic, but “based on events that could actually happen,” so not really science fiction. While that phraseology is mildly insulting to the science fiction fan, I think I know what CBS is trying to say. Jericho is attempting to be Alas, Babylon, not A Canticle for Leibowitz. What it might also be trying to say is: there’s nothing original here that hasn’t already been done in SF, but it might seem new and fresh to a mainstream audience.
Go read the whole review and tell me what you think!
Farthing Is Alternate WW II
Interview with Cory Doctorow
Science Fiction Weekly published my interview with Cory Doctorow today.
[Excerpt:] We’d been briefed, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on trusted computing by Microsoft, under an arrangement where they would give us a prepublication briefing and we would agree to a moratorium on commenting on it until they went live. But we would tell them what we thought of it so that when they went live they could have their responses ready, but we could have our critique ready. It was a little bit of nice detente. So after the moratorium ran out I published a story on called “0wnz0red” on Salon. It was up for the Nebula and so on. That story was a critique of trusted computing and was really well received. And I got an email from one of the of trusted computing people at Microsoft saying “How can I rebut a short story?” And I thought, “I found an avenue of attack for which they have no defense. I think I’ve got to pursue it.”
Go read it and tell me what you think!
More RI Photos
eBay Bans Black Metal?
Blabbermouth.net is reporting that eBay is allegedly banning the sale of black/extreme metal on their site, claiming that it “promote[s] or glorif[ies] hatred, violence, or racial intolerance.”
It appears (again allegedly) to be due to complaints filed by some Christian groups. The funny thing about that is that though there are Satanic extreme metal bands (black metal), there are also Christian extreme metal bands (formed no doubt to oppose the evil black metalers and to battle for the souls of headbangers). And of course plenty of extreme metal has nothing to do with Satan or Christianity, so this is bullshit. Extreme metal doesn’t “promote or glorify hatred, violence, or racial intolerance” any more than any other genre of media–there’s angry lyrics, sure, but there’s plenty of violent movies out there; do they “promote or glorify” violence? Will those be banned too?
[Update: There’s an online petition here that you can sign to protest the banning.]