Tuesday April 24, 2007
You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Pages!
Yesterday was International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. What’s that, you ask? Briefly, it is the upshot of a generational war going on in and around the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America—the organization that gives out the Nebula Awards. A few weeks ago, SFWA VP Howard V. Hendrix issued a manifesto of sorts, decrying the “increasing sublimation of the private space of consciousness into public netspace” and the conversion of “the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.” He also doesn’t like ebooks—especially free ones—which he believes are “undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.” The response from the sf and fantasy world was swift and loud—and, I suspect, a preview of things to come as digital publishing continues its inevitable advance. Sci-fi writers have been the early adopters of ebooks—probably because their readers are more wired than readers of other genres—and these issues are sure to present themselves again and again. Still, anyone who wants to protect the “the noble calling of Writer” from the internet—or even anyone prone to capitalizing “Writer”—is surely tilting at windmills.
Which brings us to International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. Founded by Locus Award finalist Jo Walton, IPTD was a day when writers were asked to post their stuff on online, and many of them did—as you can see here and here. (I, of course, threw my ebook into the mix.) Lots of stuff to comb through there for ebook fans. (One of the side effects of ebook reading is that you end up reading a lot of modern sf alongside the public domain classics. Right now, I’m reading Sherwood Anderson and John Scalzi—who also designed the IPTD logo.) And the combing is an issue, which is why the future of publishing (as a business) lies in its traditional curatorial and gatekeeping functions. The cost of distribution will continue to approach zero, but selective editing will continue to have value. I’m still surprised that a top-shelf journal—like Zoetrope or The Paris Review—hasn’t begun distributing a promotional ebook edition. The risks are negligible. Ebook penetration is so low that it would hardly cut against paid, hard-copy subscriptions, and—hey—they might even attract some newer, younger fans. Who will be the first?
Posted by jim at 05:27 PM ||
Thursday April 19, 2007
Reaching for The Stars
I saw a presentation of rock and roll ephemera by video collector Russell Scholl this weekend—he often shows his stuff at Barbes, although Carrie and Charles hosted this affair (thanks, guys)—and I meant to ask him if the Carpenters had ever made a video for their bizarre and beautiful cover of the extraterrestrial anthem “Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft.” I forgot to ask, but then Boing Boing promptly pointed me to the video on YouTube. It’s really great.
To recall, the song—which was originally written and recorded by the Canadian band Klaatu—is based on text written by Albert K. Bender, founder of World Contact Day. The idea was that if we all thought the same thing hard enough—and directed it to the passing occupants of interplanetary craft—we might be able to make contact with aliens. I wrote about this a little a few years ago after I saw Paul Tough give a performance/lecture on the topic at a presentation of John Hodgman’s Little Gray Book Lectures in Philadelphia. That lecture is available here, although registration is required.
Posted by jim at 08:56 AM ||
Wednesday April 18, 2007
Seinfeld on Awards
Earlier this month, HBO presented Jerry Seinfeld with something called The Comedian Award, which is just about as dopey as it sounds. Know who else thinks it’s dopey? Seinfeld. In his acceptance speech (or is it an anti-acceptance speech?), he brilliantly mocks the whole idea of awards and awards shows. The video quality is bad, but it’s worth it.
Posted by jim at 08:05 AM ||
Tuesday April 17, 2007
A Word to the Wild
I was updating my clips and was reminded how much I enjoyed talking to Flash pioneer Josh Davis for the February issue of Creativity. (Here is the article as a pdf.) Davis works from his home out on Long Island and is known for wild, experimental stuff—some of it for clients like Motorola, a lot of it for himself. He sent in a nice, casual picture for the article (as you can see) and had a good piece of advice for anyone who wants to do what he does—in any field. Here it is:
“Sometimes I’ll get emails from people who ask, ‘How do you get to do all this cool stuff?’ Then I’ll look at their website and it’s very normal. I tell my students all the time: The type of work you make is the type of work people will hire you to do. If you do really crazy shit, people are going to hire you to do really crazy shit. It’s that simple.”
Posted by jim at 10:32 AM ||
Monday April 16, 2007
The New Phone Books Are Here!
You can now shoot my free ebook, Single, to your Java-enabled phone via wattpad.com. It’s a neat site. Check it out. The ebook, which includes two stories that previously appeared in the Land-Grant College Review and One Story, also remains available in every other format at manybooks.net.
[UPDATE: As Matt notes in comments, manybooks.net also offers a phone version of Single—as it does for all of its books—here.]
Posted by jim at 12:51 PM ||
Friday April 13, 2007
Breakfast of Champions
I shared a cigarette with Kurt Vonnegut once. Actually, he had his own and I had mine, but we were standing near each other outside Bachelor Hall, which houses the English Department at Miami University in Ohio. He was alone before we got there—me and some friends I was leaving for a debate tournament with. He was taking a break from one of those intimate seminars visiting writers give in the morning when they’re about to give a much bigger (and more lucrative) talk in the evening. I wasn’t in the seminar (it was for aspiring writers and I wasn’t one) and we were headed to an out of town tournament, like I said. We were going to miss the big talk, so we asked him if we could smoke with him and he said sure.
He looked very craggy even then, in 1989, although I spotted him once in Midtown more than 10 years later and he didn’t appear to have gotten any craggier. He just got craggy relatively young and held steady, I guess.
He asked us what we were doing, we told him, and he told us he had a friend who’d coached a debate team and made all his debaters dress like Boy Scouts, since Boy Scouts aren’t allowed to lie. This story probably wasn’t true, but it was funny, and it lasted about as long as a cigarette.
One of my favorite things that Vonnegut wrote relatively late is this 1995 item from Inc. Technology (it also appeared in Harper’s). It’s about the author’s relationship to technology, but I’ve never forgotten how it ends: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
Posted by jim at 05:34 PM ||
Wednesday April 11, 2007
The Tale of the Tube
Freelance art director and illustrator Matt Vescovo—he did MTV’s “Watch & Learn” campaign from a few years ago—has launched a new Instructoart series on YouTube called the “Man vs. Inanimate Object Championships.” The first match pits Man against the dreaded Nearly Empty Toothpaste Tube. Place your bets.
Housekeeping note: As regulars might notice, I finally got around to tweaking my css so that YouTube embeds don’t look quite as crappy on my blog as they do everywhere else—so now I can link to online videos without fear. Hope I have succeeded, although I’ll try not to overdo it. Despite the online video revolution, I remain firmly committed to words.
Posted by jim at 06:05 PM ||
Porn of Plenty
Blogger pal and frequent back-channel interlocutor Freelancefred has come up with an idea for a) saving the world and b) putting Joe Francis out of business, while c) preserving the nation’s vital supply of amateur soft-core porn. The idea—detailed in this video proposal—is to make Girls Gone Wild-style videos and give the money back to the models/exploitees, who can then donate it to charity, rather than to Joe Francis. With coeds on spring break and Mr. Francis in the hoosegow, the time for this idea seems to have arrived. Learn more at NoJoeGirls.com.
Posted by jim at 10:12 AM ||
