Vaguely relevant to my recent post on Andrew Burt’s analysis that relationships elevate standard SF books into stand-out SF books, some guy over here bemoans moronic relationship drama in space. And how this means boys won’t be scientists anymore. Ah yes, men are the rational, logical ones in the oh-so-over-it gender wars, as his post eloquently demonstrates. Candy at Smart Bitches says more.
Completely out of the blue (for me, anyway), Australia is getting the Kindle. And paying more for it and for the Kindle-format books. And Google has another go at books, by planning the launch of an ebook store.
Nick Cave’s new book, The Death of Bunny Munro is out as an iPhone/Touch application, published by Enhanced Editions, for $29.99. Usually there is just no way an electronic version of a book is worth hardback price (not when they so easily be lost due to format changes or computer crashes; plus DRM issues), but here the publishers have actually put some thought into it: the edition includes the ebook; an audiobook synchronised to the text and read by Nick Cave, with an original soundtrack; and videos of him reading the book. In other words, it incorporates multimedia without being overly gimmicky about it.
Let’s play Google bomb with Scott Baio (aka Charles in Charge, to my generation), who is acting like a chachbag.
John Scalzi is pretty scathing about the “oh noes, gurlz are in my sci-fi!” post too link. As he points outs, sci-fi was founded on girl cooties to start with, so the whiners should shut their mouths.
Nick Cave also narrates a lovely animated poem called The Cat Piano, if you can find it online (I can’t seem to get a link to it right now).
Thanks for that link, nicely put by John Scalzi.
What I find funniest about that blog post (which I feel bad linking to now, as per John’s logic) is that the guy is basically complaining that TV shows don’t cater to his tastes anymore.
As in, TV executives and marketers worked out that women not only have their own money to spend but also usually control family budgets, and that therefore they should pitch some TV towards women to get them to watch ads (also, men are off playing games on the internet, so they’re certainly not watching ads).
So the guy is bemoaning the fact that advertisers aren’t so interested in his demographic anymore. He should be happy.
ETA: and for someone citing his love of hard science, he seems to have forgotten that, as they say, the plural of anecdote is not data.
Oh, and the Cat Piano
Scalzi is only upset because this is dangerous to his bottom line. However, by positioning himself as a feminist scifi author, he stands to lose out eventually.
We’ve got another post up on this subject that explores this aspect of the issue.
Yes, I can see how deciding to be inclusive towards all readers of SF, not just macho manly men, will cause writers to “lose out”. Snigger.
ETA: also – “dangerous to his bottom line”? Are you really suggesting that by announcing that you dislike a certain sub-genre, you will cause fans of that sub-genre to wake up and realise that they should stop liking it in case some random stranger on the internet thinks less of them? Lively discussion of these issues can only help his bottom line.