links for 2007-10-10

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More on King & Short Fiction

In a LJ comment, in response to some of the discussions about Stephen King’s essay about short fiction that I linked to, J. T. Glover said:

I think it’s a little bizarre to suggest that Stephen King is unaware of F/SF/H short fiction markets. No, he doesn’t know about every last little one of them, but he has published in plenty of them, and I’ve read endorsements of some of them by him over the years. I would assume his non-mentioning of these markets is an… understated… comment on his part of their popularity among and importance to the general population of readers.

I agree that it’s a bit bizarre to suggest that; King certainly knows all about genre markets. He’s published in F&SF a number of times, and once (a few years ago) called it "the best fiction magazine in America." He also reprinted a story from F&SF in BASS (and listed four others on the 100 distinguished list), so obviously he’s aware of genre magazines.

Flipping through the back of BASS, where it lists the addresses for magazines publishing short stories (which I assume to be their "magazines received and considered" section), I did notice that while F&SF was listed, Asimov’s, Analog, and Realms of Fantasy were not. I didn’t comb through it looking for other genre magazines, but if F&SF is the only genre magazine BASS considered, that’s curious.

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Unmitigated love for the July 2007 issue of F&SF

On the F&SF message board, DannyLTK said:

The July 2007 issue of F&SF is the best of any SF magazines I have ever read. Not only did I not feel the urge to skip a story, every story in fact was hugely entertaining. I would like to say something like "Well done and keep doing this" but since this is a next-to-impossible feat, I’ll just settle for "Thanks for filling a few hours of my life with some white-hot reading frenzy".

Wow. Now that’s the kind of feedback we like to hear!

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links for 2007-10-09

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What I Watch on TV

SF Signal asks: What do you watch on TV?

Okay, well, I watch a lot of TV.

Here’s a list of shows that I regularly watch (in no particular order):

  • Survivor
  • The Amazing Race
  • Rescue Me
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Lost
  • Friday Night Lights
  • The Shield
  • The Colbert Report
  • The Daily Show
  • 30 Rock
  • The Office
  • Beauty and the Geek
  • Family Guy
  • The Simpsons
  • ER
  • Jericho
  • Engineering an Empire
  • Digging for the Truth
  • Ancient Discoveries
  • Lost Worlds
  • Robot Chicken
  • Mythbusters
  • Entourage
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm
  • The Wire
  • Big Love
  • Flight of the Conchords
  • John From Cincinnati
  • Extras
  • Brotherhood
  • Dexter
  • Weeds
  • Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
  • Oakland Raiders football
  • Orlando Magic basketball

Additionally, here are the new shows I’ve watched and am currently watching, but am unsure if they’ll remain in the rotation until I view more episodes:

  • Pushing Daisies
  • Chuck
  • Reaper
  • Journeyman

There’s also a few new shows that I’ve Tivoed but haven’t watched yet, so there might be yet even more to add to the big list. (Incidentally, all of this stuff is time-shifted–I record everything on one of my DVRs to watch when I want to, and skip past commercials.)

I’ve purposely not listed shows that are no longer on the air, though I didn’t intentionally exclude anything that’s not on right now (in other words, if it’s an active show, and I watch it, I listed it). It’s possible I’ve forgotten some. It’s hard to keep track with there being so many!

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A Customer Service Conversation

Me: So, I noticed that compared to the iPhone you guys are kind of screwing me on my cell phone’s data package. You guys are charging me like $45 more per month for essentially the same services.

CS: Ha ha! We own you for another year, motherfucker!

Me: Um, okay. Is there any way to cancel early?

CS: Cancel? Sure, but there’s an early termination fee.

Me: How much?

CS: One soul per line.

Me: I see. So basically, even though a new competitor has emerged into the marketplace with a superior product with more affordable service plans, you guys aren’t going to do anything to try and compete. You’re just going to continue screwing me for another year, even though you’re going to have no hope in hell of retaining me as a customer.

CS: Yep! Anything else I can help you with today?

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links for 2007-10-08

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And I don’t even have the excuse of being undead…

I’m still banging my head against the desk as a result of something very stupid I did earlier today. I was working on assembling my preliminary table of contents for the zombie anthology and inadvertently lost a bunch of data.

I’ve got a spreadsheet setup in Excel, which listed title, author, original publication, and word count. I wanted to add another column for year of publication, so I could see the range of the age of the stories on my shortlist. In doing so, I attempted to move a column as I added the new one…and somehow deleted the word count column…and didn’t notice until like an hour later, at which point it was way too late to undo that mistake.

ARGH! (Note that’s the cry of anguish, not the piratesque Arrr!) Of all the columns of data to lose, that’s absolutely the worst one. Any of the others would have been super easy to fix (except maybe for title), but word count…gah. That’s one of the most time-consuming sort of administrative activities associated with putting together a reprint anthology. I am not looking forward to starting over from scratch. And all indications are that there’s no way to recover that data from some autosaved file hidden on my hard drive somewhere.

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links for 2007-10-07

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Win Free Books!

F&SF regular Matthew Hughes is giving away 53 copies of his books. To win, all you have to do is blog about him and link back to his website. Here are the rules:

Write a blog post about my work, or post a review or a commentary on a bbs, webzine or Usenet newsgroup where books and/or short stories — not necessarily science fiction and fantasy — are discussed. Include a link to my web page.

You don’t have to be laudatory, although a scathing denunciation of my very existence may disqualify you from receiving a prize. You don’t need to write a thousand words, although I’d prefer more than a dozen. If you haven’t read my works, there are plenty of samples on this web page. Take fifteen minutes to read some of them, then write up your impressions.

Send me an e-mail at mhughes–at–mars.ark.com (substituting “@” for “–at–“. For the subject heading, put “53,” and in the body of the e-mail, include the URL for your post and a North American mailing address. I will verify the URL then send you a response to let you know that your entry has been received.

The first fifty-three people to send me qualifying e-mails will receive signed copies of one of my works. Most of them will get trade paperbacks of Majestrum or hardcovers of The Spiral Labyrinth, because Night Shade is about to send me several boxes of those titles. Ten or so will receive one of the Payseur & Schmidt limited-edition chapbooks of “The Farouche Assemblage,” a Luff Imbry novelette.

Three of the entries, drawn at random, will receive one of the limited editions of Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, or The Gist Hunter & Other Stories, my 2005 short story collection from Night Shade.

There may be a few weeks turn-around time before the books get sent out; I have to wait for them to arrive from Night Shade. But people have already begun to receive pre-ordered copies of The Spiral Labyrinth, so mine should be here soon.

Link

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