Archives for October 2010

So I was out walking just now, and out of nowhere a guy who looks kind of like an affable handyman calls out to me. I was lost in thought, and what he said came through to me as something along the lines of, “Hey, did you hear about the blond couple who were found frozen dead in a river near here?” “No,” I said, shocked. “Yeah,” he said. “They went to see ‘Closed for the Winter.'” Obviously this was supposed to me some sort of joke, so I chuckled politely/awkwardly. As he walked away he said, “Hey, I’m trying here. Work with me.”

So I just googled it, and it turns out the set-up is supposed to be: “Did you hear about the dumb blonde couple that were found frozen to death in their car at a drive-in movie theater?” So maybe the guy actually said “theater,” not “river,” but he definitely didn’t say anything about “drive-in,” which is kind of an important detail.

Finished a new 4,600 word story, “A Day at the Beach.” This is a major rewrite of a story I wrote back in middle school. I was at some sort of extracurricular program, and they had us do a meditation/guided visualization sort of thing, and the preliminaries involved you imagining yourself in various relaxing situations, including walking along a beach. That gave me a really cool idea, and I instantly disregarded the exercise and spent the remaining time working out most of the details of my story. At the end of the session, one of the New Age-y women who was leading the exercise approached me and was like, “It didn’t seem like you were paying attention,” and I shrugged and said, “Oh yeah, I came up with a story idea, so I did that instead,” thus demonstrating the attitude that has endeared me to so many instructors over the years — my simply taking it for granted that the lesson plan is so far below me intellectually that the teacher must concur that it would be a waste of my time for me to actually pay attention to it. I’m always kind of taken aback when they get all offended. Don’t they realize how inane they are? Anyway, I wrote the story and thought it was great. It was never published, but every once in a while I’ll describe the concept to someone, and it reliably evokes a “Wow, that sounds awesome” sort of reaction. I just dug the story out, and along with it was a sixteen-year-old rejection letter I’d forgotten about from Merlyn’s Pen. I read the rejection letter, then read the story, and yup, the rejection letter pretty much hit the nail on the head in terms of what was wrong with the story, so I used that letter as the foundation for writing my new version.

So this morning I sent Amazon an email asking if they could add The Way of the Wizard to my Author Central profile, so that people would see it if they search for my books. Amazon wanted a link that verified that I was actually in the book, so I sent them this link to the table of contents. A few hours later I get an email saying that they were able to confirm that I wrote a book called Game, Set, Match, and that I would be showing up soon as one of the authors. Obviously I immediately pressed the “No, this did not solve my problem” button, and explained that I wanted to be added to the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard, and sent the link again, and said that I’d never even heard of any book called Game, Set, Match. Well, a few hours later and I’m now listed as one of the authors of Game, Set, Match. I honestly had no hand in writing this book, so all I can tell you about it is that apparently “you’ll want to wait until your significant other is around to read the love scenes. If you love steamy, this book definitely delivers.”

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be interviewing Jennifer Oullette, author of the books Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics and The Physics of the Buffyverse. Her latest book is called The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. So if anyone has any questions they’d like us to ask her, feel free to suggest them. When we contacted her (just now), she replied, “I’ve actually started listening to your podcast since you moved to io9. It’s great and I’d be honored to be a guest.” Wow. Even more testament to the mojo of io9.

Wow, I knew io9 was popular, but I guess I didn’t realize how popular. In the last ten months, Episode 1 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy has gotten the most page views of any episode, with just over 5,000, and also a handful of comments. Episode 22, our first to appear on io9, has already gotten 16,000+ page views and almost 100 comments in less than 48 hours. (And a fair number of those comments are even about something other than my annoying chuckle.) I mean, I’m sure it helps that it’s George R. R. Martin (who even linked to us from his blog), but still, what a difference.

Here’s the table of contents for the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard. Check out my story in the #2 slot, right after George R. R. Martin. Not too shabby.

In the Lost Lands — George R.R. Martin
Family Tree — David Barr Kirtley
John Uskglass and the Cambrian Charcoal Burner — Susanna Clarke
Wizard’s Apprentice — Delia Sherman
The Sorcerer Minus — Jeffrey Ford
Life So Dear Or Peace So Sweet — C. C. Finlay
Card Sharp — Rajan Khanna
So Deep That the Bottom Could Not Be Seen — Genevieve Valentine
The Go-Slow — Nnedi Okorafor
Too Fatal a Poison — Krista Hoeppner Leahy
Jamaica — Orson Scott Card
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — Robert Silverberg
The Secret of Calling Rabbits — Wendy N. Wagner
The Wizards of Perfil — Kelly Link
How to Sell the Ponti Bridge — Neil Gaiman
The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories — Christie Yant
Winter Solstice — Mike Resnick
The Trader and the Slave — Cinda Williams Chima
Cerile and the Journeyer — Adam-Troy Castro
Counting the Shapes — Yoon Ha Lee
Endgame — Lev Grossman
Street Wizard — Simon R. Green
Mommy Issues of the Dead — T. A. Pratt
One Click Banishment — Jeremiah Tolbert
The Ereshkigal Working — Jonathan L. Howard
Feeding the Feral Children — David Farland
The Orange-Tree Sacrifice — Vylar Kaftan
Love is the Spell That Casts Out Fear — Desirina Boskovich
El Regalo — Peter S. Beagle
The Word of Unbinding — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria — John R. Fultz
The Secret of the Blue Star — Marion Zimmer Bradley

Here’s a funny web comic by Aaron Diaz: Caveman Science Fiction.

Episode 22 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, featuring our interview with George R. R. Martin, is now available through iTunes. Note that this is a new, different feed from our old one. Future episodes will show up on this one.

Episode 157 of Tony C. Smith’s StarShipSofa podcast features a short Q&A with me and John Joseph Adams about us relaunching Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy over at io9. The Q&A begins at 10:36 into the episode.

Here’s a new interview with John Joseph Adams at Redstone Science Fiction.

Here’s the final cover design for the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard, which includes my story “Family Tree”:

The Marion Zimmer Bradley story is “The Secret of the Blue Star,” from Thieves’ World #1. It’s one of my childhood favorites, and one I suggested for inclusion, and it’s very cool to see my story collected alongside it. George R. R. Martin’s “In the Lost Lands,” a staggeringly dark fairy tale, is also a must-read.

Lots of my friends have been linking to the results of the recent survey by the Pew Forum that showed that as a group atheists know more about religion than religious people do.

Of course, these days I know WAY more about religion than most people, but for a long time I was at a distinct disadvantage, having parents who weren’t religious and never took me to church. I remember once as a kid I was on a bicycle trip and a woman said to me that I had to listen to my mother because “even Jesus had to obey Mary,” and I said (not joking) “Mary who?” There was also the time I got the NES game Ghosts & Goblins for my birthday, and I was reading from the instructions booklet to my friends, and I mispronounced “Satan” as “satin,” and everyone made fun of me. Until they explained it to me, I had just assumed that “Satan” was a made-up video game monster, like “Gannon.” I also got mocked by my college roommate once for my unorthodox pronunciation of “Pontius Pilate.”

Of course, unlike me, most atheists used to be religious. Through my involvement with organized skepticism, I’ve heard the stories of probably 70-80 people about why they gave up on religion, and I’ve heard the same basic story over and over again, but I’ve never heard anyone comment on one particular pattern, so I thought I’d note it in passing. Basically it’s this: You have two siblings, Sibling A and Sibling B. Sibling A is dutiful and Sibling B is feckless. As teenagers, Sibling A goes to church, studies the Bible, and plans to become a minister, nun, religious scholar, etc., whereas Sibling B thinks religion is a joke and spends all their time drinking, having sex, and doing drugs. Sibling A spends so much time on serious study of the Bible that the contradictions, historical inaccuracies, immoral teachings, etc., eventually become too much for them, and after a years-long period of agonized soul searching they give up on religion and become an atheist. In the meantime, Sibling B has made a total mess of their life — various addictions, lousy job, unplanned out-of-wedlock children, etc. — and turns to religion to get themself straightened out. Sibling B becomes some variety of hard-core fundamentalist, raises their children that way, and constantly hectors everyone they know, including Sibling A, to get right with God, in spite of the fact that Sibling B has still not bothered to learn the first thing about what the Bible actually says. Anyway, anyone else noticed that pattern? I’ve seriously heard some variation on that story dozens of times now.

There was an interesting article recently on Huffington Post about weight loss. Now, the health/medicine stuff on HuffPo is often rife with pseudoscientific garbage, so I don’t take anything they say that seriously, but this article sounded plausible to me. First it said that unless you’re Michael Phelps, the amount you exercise basically has no effect on your weight, because, if you do the math, you’ll see that you have to do just an insane amount of exercise to burn off the amount of calories you gain by eating say, half a cookie. Losing weight is all about diet. That much I already believed. The next thing it said though, which had never really sunk in before, was that you can actually gain weight by exercising too much, because strenuous exercise makes you really hungry, and then you get back from your workout and eat way more than you would have otherwise. It said light exercise like walking can actually be better in this regard for losing weight.

We’re at T-minus 3 days and counting until our Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy relaunch. If you haven’t “liked” the show on Facebook yet, now would be a good time to get out there and starting liking.

Like these fine folks. Thomas Uke Costick says:

“GGG is one of my fav podcasts. Glad I saw this so I can update my reader. Looking fwd to the next podcast.”

And Leilani Cantu says:

“Can’t wait! I loved all the Tor episodes, and was extremely dismayed when they stopped coming. Hope to hear a lot more from you!”

Juhan writes:

“Seriously, I learned about so many new authors from your podcast … Awesome. Thanks! And you guys are pretty decent philosophers too, when it comes to … more difficult conundrums :D (like the consciousness transfer stuff, for example). I actually mean it. Seriously. I’m looking forward to more more debates on similar issues — fantasy and sci-fi are full of that stuff.

Also, it’s always good to hear that Roger Zelazny is still very much appreciated. Kudos to mentioning ‘The Keys to December’ on the terraforming episode!”

Thanks, Juhan! Glad you like the show. Actually my undergrad degree is in political philosophy, so I like to think I’m not bad at that stuff. And yeah, I’ve been known to maybe mention Roger Zelazny from time to time.

(The consciousness transfer stuff was in Episode 19.)

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be interviewing Catherynne Valente, so if anyone has any questions they’d like us to ask her, feel free to suggest them.

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast now has a new website:

geeksguideshow.com

We figured that with 21 episodes over at Tor.com and others appearing soon at io9, we might as well create a permanent archive with links to all the shows. That way, no matter where in the galaxy our crazy adventures take us in the future, there’ll always be a complete episode list that’s easily found.

Okay, it’s official! Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be relaunching on the mega-popular website io9. Watch for our long-awaited George R. R. Martin episode next Wednesday, October 6th!

Thanks so much to Annalee Newitz and all the folks over at io9 for making this possible.

This would also not be possible without the support of our first sponsor, Brilliance Audio, the nation’s largest independent publisher of audiobooks. The next few episodes of Geek’s Guide will feature short ads for featured Brilliance titles that we think may be of interest to our listeners. Special thanks to John Grace at Brilliance for setting this up for us.

Also, we’ve had a number of listeners ask if they could donate money to help keep the show going, and we’ve now got that set up. You can PayPal funds to us at geeksgalaxy@gmail.com. Producing the show is enormous fun but also an enormous time sink, and the amount of listener support we receive over the next few months will help determine to what extent we’re able to keep doing it.

And of course, if you haven’t listened to each and every one of our twenty-one existing episodes, they’re all still available over at Tor.com.