If you enjoy the books of David Weber, particularly the Honor Harrington series, here is a gaming site you will wan to visit: The Honorverse.
By the title of this entry, you have probably guessed that MacLeod won the Clarke Award this year, for his book Song of Time. Pretty impressive, since his competition included Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson, Sheri S. Tepper and Mark Wernham. The Clarke Award was presented last night at the Sci-Fi London 8 Film Festival, and presenting an award for a best book at a film festival is not as unusual as it sounds. This film fest has grown into one of the best SciFi Cons in the UK, and even has its own awards show for best short film made specifically for the event.
Building and singing… the world does both. Here are two excellent examples.
Scalzi, Hayden, and Bucknell took part in a panel, recorded and now online, called A Study in Online Community Building, all about how to create the future of publishing in an online world. I expect you will enjoy this, but I hope you will learn from it as well. I certainly learned a bit, and thanks to Brenda Cooper for the link. And then the Stand By Me World Cover, courtesy of Zadi and by way of Gizmodo. Thanks, gang!
Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.
This weekend saw the presentation of the 2009 Nebula Awards, and some great writers won. Not hard to do when you consider most of the nominees were great writers, of course. That group included Ursula K. Le Guin, Catherine Asaro, John Kessel, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman for best novel, novella, novelette, and short story, in that order. Wall-E got best script, Ysabeau S. Wilce took home the Andre Norton Award, Harry Harrison won the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, and Joss Whedon got the Ray Bradbury Award (and accepted on video). My favorite first-person account of the event comes from Amy Sterling Casil, herself no stranger to quality writing.
You could never tell it from visiting this site (Media files like Movies, TV, and Radio making for so much better sound bytes and out-takes), but I read a lot. And I just read a quote that I agree with on both a real-world, professional level as well as a SciFi Fan level. The quote was given by a Tech in response to a situation he could not believe, because not even a Bean-Counter could possibly be that stupid. To whit:
Didn’t they know that the only Unhackable Computer was is one that’s running a secure Operating System, welded inside a steel safe, buried under a ton of concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of armored divisions, and SWITCHED OFF????
Thanks to Charles Stross for that quote, from his story The Concrete Jungle, pub in 2004 in the book the Atrocity Archives.
After watching the Smashing Pumpkins Steampunk song yesterday, I had to track down the original 1902 French movie that inspired the video segment. Based on the 1865 story From The Earth To The Moon by Jules Verne, it was cutting-edge film making, with never-before seen special effects and production values. You can download the book to read on your computer or portable device, or read it online. You can also listen to the story online or download it for your portable media player (or burn it to CD) thanks to the good folks at Librivox. They remade the movie in 1958, but the original is the best. You can download your own copy for your permanent collection or just watch it online at Archive.Org.