Cory Doctorow is asking people to spread the word about the upcoming Clarion application deadline.  You can help out by posting an ad like this one on your website:

We’re looking for websites that are willing to help us run the campaign by donating some space to host one of these badges (they’re in two standard sizes, 150×150 and 150×58) in a prominent place between now and the application deadline on April 1. Even if you can only run it for part of the time, or in rotation, we’d appreciate your help.

 For more information, see Cory’s post.

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On Thursday, a few friends and I took a trip to Mars for dinner.  It was me, Eugene Myers, Matt Kressel, E!, and Andrea Kail.  While we were there, we made friends with this guy:

This is the bar where the three-breasted women hang out:

It was quite a trip.  And I have to say, Earth cuisine just doesn’t seem as palatable after enjoying those wonderful, exotic Martian dishes.   

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In the blogosphere lately, I’ve come across a number of posts discussing agents: how to get them, what to look out for, etc. Here are some links:

1. Teresa Nielsen Hayden
2. John Scalzi
   
3. Writer Beware
   

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Does anyone have any experience using a sort of “book holder” thing like the one seen here? As I was googling, I came across several different varieties, but I’d love to get some user testimonials if anyone has used things like this before.

Basically, it’s important to me that the holder won’t ruin the book, and that it’ll be easy to turn the pages. I want to get something like this to make it easier to read while riding my exercise bike. I’ve got a table that I can set stuff on and still ride, but I still have to hold the book open. My table actually works great for reading manuscripts since the pages can lay flat (and the table angle can be adjusted), but for books it’s not so great. I figure a holder might be the answer.

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Lou Anders has announced a new contest related to Mike Resnick’s forthcoming novel, Starship: Pirate.

Now, if you’ll excuse a tiny spoiler, in Starship: Pirate, one of the characters introduces the crew of the Teddy R. to a wildly popular, presumably alien game called “bilsang,” said to be as “a game that makes chess and toprench look like kid’s games.” Mike describes some of the aspects of the game, but leaves the actual rules up to the reader’s imagination.

Now, because I thought it was a pretty nifty idea last time, we are running some fairly extensive appendices in the back of each of the Starship books. And when I came to the passage about bilsang, I thought, what a good appendix a set of bilsang rules would make.

So, that brings us to the contest.

We’re looking for some brilliant, talented gamers with time on their hands to have a go at creating the rules of bilsang. …

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