10) 1000 True Fans in Action
The economy hit writers just like it did everyone else. Many reached out directly to their fans for support, but didn’t just ask for handouts. I supported Tim Pratt’s Bone Shop (now available in print and for kindle) and read one of my favorite stories of the year in Catherine M. Valente’s Omikuji, Reading Borjes in Buenos Aires.
9) The First One is Free
This year publishers started using the growing popularity of ebooks to promote novel series by giving the first book away for free (or in the case of orbit, $1). I read my first Sean Williams and Karl Schroder due to these promotions and they will both definitely get my patronage in the future.
8) Noir and Speculative Fiction
I wrote this post in July. Here’s a list of all the speculative fiction books with noir elements I read this year:
- Woken Furies by Richard K Morgan
- Necropath by Eric Brown
- Quarantine by Greg Egan
- The City and The City by China Miéville
- Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
- Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
- Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
7) Ontology: Google vs Yahoo
This article by Clay Shirky solidified some of my ideas for TagShadow. Relax and learn to trust the crowd.
6) The Semiprozine Hugo
Learning about the history of this Hugo Category and it’s possible demise opened my eyes to many new sources of speculative fiction. It also gave a neat look at the inner workings of this Award and Awards in general.
5) Book Websites
I was approached by flashlight worthy books to write some lists and I ran into Merecal interacting on the Amazon Associates forum while I was working on the TagShadow Prototype. Both recreate and distill functionality that already exists on Amazon, but they do it with style and I highly recommend them.
4) Sofanauts
Sofanauts has become my new favorite science fiction news podcast. As a round table it voices a wide set of views on the topics discussed.
3) Assaulting All my Senses
I have a long commute and thus the web and print zines that have an audio component drew my attention more than others this year. I’ve enjoyed the audio versions of Clarkesworld stories and Transmissions from Beyond the podcast associated with Interzone, Black Static and CrimeWave (not to be confused with CrimeWav, another favorite podcast of mine). An episode of Sofanauts also clued me in that all stories on Tor.com have an associated audio production, which I need to delve into.
2) Zing
This post on Magic District by John Brown, author of Servant of a Dark God led me to write this series of posts:
1) Erin
Every moment of every day I grew closer and more in love with her and I know I can accomplish ANYTHING with her by my side. That’s important, but she’s on this list, because she inspires me with her elegant blog posts, whether she’s posting about religion, food or language. She read the Twilight Series so I didn’t have to. More than anything, she makes me think, asking the questions and offering the insights that both keep my mind active and focus it.
Posted in misc Tagged: Catherynne Valente, China Mieville, Clay Shirky, ebooks, Eric Brown, Glen Cook, Greg Egan, Jeff Vandermeer, John Brown, Karl Schroder, Richard Morgan, Sean Williams, Tim Pratt
