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.

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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?

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Mushroom

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

Here are some more photos I took while in Rhode Island, starting with this funky mushroom. There’s a whole set of RI goodness.

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Check out Lou Anders’s excellent “Three Laws of Editing” (modeled on Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics). As someone in the comment thread points out, it might be better to call it the “Three Laws of Publishing,” since it has to do with acquisitions, not actual editing, but still, check it out. Be sure to check out the comments for Paul Cornell’s comment, which is pretty damn funny.

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By now you all have probably heard about the new Star Trek project, in which the TOS episodes will be remastered, with spiffed special effects (like Lucas did with Star Wars, but not quite; think of it as a Lucas-lite overhaul). I know a lot of people will probably be up in arms about this, but I’m cool with it so far. Sounds like they’re not going to monkey with it too much, and if it brings new life to the franchise, then good on them. (I reserve the right to change my opinion after seeing the remasters, of course.)

But while this sounds like a big project that’s going to get people talking…it’s not being broadcast on regular network TV–it’s going to be syndicated (as the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were). So, it’s not exactly expected to be a big hit, I guess. But that’s fine, so long as I can watch it. So where do I watch it? Um…a little help here, Star Trek people. Why in the hell isn’t the TOS Remastered station list available somewhere on StarTrek.com? Oh, and if you go examine the list, you’ll see further evidence of just how small potatoes everyone thinks this is going to be ratings-wise: in the New York area, it’ll be airing on Monday mornings at 3:05 AM.

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In February of last year, I stated it was a goal of mine to get myself quoted in Ansible. I’d hoped to achieve that in the 2005 calendar year, as it was a resolution sort of goal, but mission finally accomplished. I’m quoted in the just-published September 2006 issue, which you can read here.

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There’s been some talk on the Emerald City blog about someone taking over Hugo Recommendations for Cheryl once she closes the doors of EC. John Klima, meanwhile, has set up a SF/F Best Editor Wiki to help folks determine who edited what come Hugo voting time.

Might not the best option be a combination of these two ideas? What I think would be ideal is if someone setup a wiki devoted to Hugo eligible works. I know I’ve found it difficult in the past to recall all of what’s been published in a given year, and if I had an easy reference that would make things much simpler. This would be especially useful when it comes to the Dramatic Presentation categories, which I always find difficult to fill out.

A lot of people have been bemoaning the lack of Hugo voting — if you look at the vote tallies, it’s quite appalling to see how few of Worldcon’s some-6,000 attendees actually vote (it’s in the low hundreds in each category) — if this Hugo wiki was setup, and then linked to on the Worldcon/Hugo voting website, perhaps it would encourage more people to participate? Perhaps the current system is just too much work for most fans?

Thoughts? Ideas?

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In case you missed it, SCIFI.com is airing a series of Battlestar Galactica webisodes — 10 short, web-only episodes, which take place between the end of season two and the start of season three. The series of webisodes is called “The Resistance,” and seems as though it will be detailing the human resistance against Cylon-occupied New Caprica. The first episode is streamable right now. New episodes will appear every Tuesday and Thursday at midnight (EST), leading up to the season premiere on October 6.

The first episode is three and a half minutes long, with a thirty second sneak peak at Season Three at the end. At just three and a half minutes, it is itself not much more than a teaser, but it’s good to see some new BSG action at long last.

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As John Scalzi noted on his blog, it’s worth noting and celebrating that Robert Charles Wilson won the Hugo Award for Spin, which was an award not only well-deserved for the novel in question, but long-overdue when it comes to that writer’s career.   

Here’s what I wrote about Spin, when I read it back in June of last year:

Spin is a superb novel full of Big Ideas, but those Big Ideas don’t come at the expense of rich character development as is so often the case with books of this sort.  Wilson has a real knack for creating characters one can empathize with and can really grow to care about.  The family relationship depicted here, between the narrator, Tyler Dupree, and his childhood friends Jason (the genius) and Diane (his first, unrequited love), is the real driving force of this novel, and is what makes it such a compelling page-turner.  The prose is clean and fluid, and Wilson expertly paces the book, keeping the reader engaged and anxious to find out what comes next.  This can be tricky in a novel that spans several subjective years (and billions of relativistic years), but Wilson pulls it off marvelously. 

Spin is exactly the sort of novel that I think we need to see more of, one that infuses the reader with that gosh-wow sense of wonder that many writers seem to have forgotten is the reason we all fell in love with the genre in the first place. 

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Speaking of the Hugos, I was informed of a wonderful game you can play called Hugo Golf. The idea is to take your program booklet and rank each category in the order you think the nominees will fall. So, for novel, say, you might (as I did) rank your ballot like this:

Learning the World by Ken MacLeod – 5

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin – 3

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – 4

Accelerando by Charles Stross – 2

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson – 1

(Note: this was not necessarily my preference for the books; that’s just how I thought the voting would turn out.)

At the end of the award ceremony, you tally up your score, based on how many you got right. So if you ranked Spin 1, then that’s good, and you only add one point to your score (a lower score is better, this being golf). If, however, the Ken MacLeod had one, I would have done very badly in this category, because I would have had to add 5 to my score. You grok?

I didn’t do terribly well. I got a 33, which is far too high for my taste. I did well in some categories, but got hosed in others. For instance, I really got nailed on pro artist, which I was sure was going to John Picacio, and had to take a 5 for Giancola’s win. Likewise on Best Pro Editor — I had to take a 5 for Hartwell; I figured that the book editor wouldn’t win, and it was just a matter of guessing the right short fiction editor (I thought Ellen would win, as a sort of SCI FICTION thank-you).

Of all categories though, I have to say my biggest surprise was that “Magic for Beginners” didn’t win. I was sure it was going to, and thought it had momentarily, because Robert Silverberg, who was presenting, said “Oh, she isn’t here,” and since Kelly was the only one not there (Gordon would have accepted for her), I thought it was going to her. But Silverberg was just continuing the schtick that he and Connie Willis had been doing throughout the ceremony. I should have known though — Connie Willis is a Hugo magnet. I don’t think it was the best novella of the year, but I read the story and liked it quite a bit.

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