Lots of links for you today. You will find everything from ebooks to time travel amongst the gems below. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:
1) Gollancz announces SF Gateway: Thousands of out of print classics available online at a new site developed by
Gollancz.
2) Monica Valentinelli Goes Offline: Monica experiments with going offline from social media for 100 days and has came to some interesting conclusions.
3) iO9 Lists the Biggest Winners and Losers from this Year’s Comic Con: Whether you follow comics or not, there is no denying the impact Comic Con has on the genre industry.
4) Knox Robinson Looking for Manuscripts: Writers take note: Knox Robinson Publishing is now accepting medieval fantasy manuscripts.
5) Slaughterhouse Five Banned in Missouri: Matt Staggs at Suvudu brought to my attention this epic display of stupidity. I hereby heap mountains of shame upon this Missouri school board.
6) Science Bursts Time Travel Bubble: Well, this appears to be the end of any sort of real scientific basis for time travel. A group of party-pooping scientists have released a study that seals the deal on the possibility of time travel.
I’m excited about the Gollancz ebook thing!
Monica Valentinelli’s experiment was interesting. I appreciated that she didn’t make assumptions about what her online presence was doing for her career/brand, but that she attempted to test it. Her tests weren’t completely valid because she doesn’t have a proper control (sorry, I can’t help talking like this — it’s what I do all day), but still it looks like her lack of a presence didn’t negatively impact her career, which is really what she wants to know. She has some good points, too, about how online “friends” are not necessarily her readers or the people who buy her books. Very good point.
Those of us who’ve read a lot of SF time travel novels have probably already come to the conclusion that time travel is impossible. There are too many paradoxes. (Or is that paradoxen?) First off, if humans ever figured out how to travel back in time, why is there no record of any time traveler coming back to tell us so? Where are they???
RE: Slaughterhouse Five, I will admit up front that I have still not read the entire Judeo-Christian bible, but can anyone tell me where it supports and encourages willful ignorance?
I have Slaughterhouse Five in my library and will encourage my teenagers to read it. However, if that school board, which is made up of the parents in that community, prefer to not spend their taxes on books with profanity in them, that’s fine with me. They’ve decided what works in their school library. It doesn’t mean that their kids won’t read that book — just that the individual parents will make that decision in their homes. Very reasonable. Very American.