Books
Many of you know that I write science fiction. I've been writing science fiction since the summer of 2006, when I wrote my first novel - it was designed to be the first in a series of three. I subsequently wrote the second (which is mostly complete) and started the third about a year and a half ago. Over the entire time I've been writing, it has been a struggle to figure out what to do with it. On one hand, it would be nice to have the recognition that published authors get. And it also would be nice to have been through that vetting process - people know that what's on the other end is more likely to be good than bad. On the other hand, I'm not looking to make any money off of my writing, I just want people to hear the stories. And as a long time advocate of open content, the idea of moving down the standard publishing route seemed hypocritical - I just couldn't stomach the idea of standard copyright for my work. The idea of telling agents and publishers, at the same time as I was looking to be published as a new, unproven author, that "oh, and by the way, I will demand that all of my work be Creative Commons licensed" seemed a recipe for failure. I know Cory Doctorow did it, but he seems a hard act to follow. Also at the same time, there is a sea change happening in the way that creative work gets distributed - there's disintermediation happening all around - artists sharing and selling their work directly to their audiences, instead of through the standard mediators that used to control distribution. So since I'm pretty much on the technical cutting edge in everything I do, it seemed pretty natural to me to be the same way in this realm as well. And I've also gotten really enamored of the idea of podcasting the novel in episodes. So that is what I am going to do. The episodes will run about every two weeks, starting sometime in late September (once I get a new microphone, and iron out all the kinks.) All episodes will be licensed with a Creative Commons license (I haven't chosen one yet.) I'll also include small amounts of CC-licensed music in the podcast. At some point, if there seems to be interest, I'll put the text up as well in varied formats (probably text, pdf and .mobi,) also CC-licensed. I hope all five of you who listen like it.
Here's a new SF books meme, which, I think, is better than the last meme, which had no women authors. This is a longer list, and has some women in it.
I got this from Lou Anders. This is the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.
One of the things I look at, on occasion, is the search terms people use to find my blog. They can be entertaining, or sometimes just plain wierd. So here are a few:
I finished book one on my long list of summer reading. It was A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren.
A somewhat serendipitous occurance (two mentions of the same essay, "Uses of the Erotic" by Audre Lorde in a 24 hour span of time, one of which was in my Christian Worship class, in discussions of the history of Queer Theory and Theology - a whole different topic to write on sometime) sent me back to her collection of essays, called Sister Outsider which was published more than 20 years ago.
Bruce Wilson, on Talk to Action, has an interesting, and I think quite useful discussion of the issues relating to the ways in which the secular left and religious left talk to each other, and the broader community, and the language that gets used.
Octavia Butler, one of my favorite Science Fiction writers, and one of a tiny number of African-American Science Fiction writers, died this weekend.
OK, we have a new meme running now, a list of Science Fiction books by women. Yay!
Bold the ones you read and liked, strike out the ones you didn't like, and italicize the ones you haven't read yet but want to.
Given my status as a long time science fiction fan, I couldn't resist this. It's a meme going around in the Linuxchix Live community. Bold what you've read, strike out what you don't like, italicize what you'd like to read but haven't yet...
