books

Tuesday various

  • Last night, several local television stations ran a five-minute test of their digital signal, in anticipation of the February 17th switch from analog. My own television, which is the only one in the house not hooked up to cable, and which I use primarily as a platform for watching DVDs, failed the test. All I got was a test pattern, color bars. I’m not too concerned about it, frankly, since I don’t really use the set, but now the Obama team wants to give me more time now to worry about it. Maybe he just wants the time to put the finishing touches on his own restaurant review show. (I’m assuming any restaurant that serves Yes Pecan ice cream gets four stars.)
  • Speaking of bad food, however: Paula Deen wants to kill you. Whereas her colleague at the Food Network just tried to kill the holidays. [via]
  • I don’t know about joining the book club, but I’m up for the challenge of reading all of Gene Wolfe’s “Solar Cycle” novels this year. Especially since I’ve already read The Shadow of the Tortuer, really liked it, and own a copy of The Claw of the Conciliator, the second book in the series. The only “downside” is that Wolfe’s writing can be a little dense and does require some very close reading because of that. It might distract me from reading anything else for awhile. But still, I’m sorely tempted.
  • Speaking of Gene Wolfe, an interesting quote via Chris McLaren from a recent interview:

    The purely commercial writer writes for the editor. The purely artistic writer writes for himself or herself. I write for the reader. As long as the editor buys it, I don’t much care what he thinks of it. If it’s a good solid story, that’s enough for me. But if the reader doesn’t like it, it’s a failure.

    Smart man, that.

  • No optician needed. Self-adjusting eyeglasses:

    The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

    This obviously won’t work for all vision problems (like my own, astigmatism), but in developing countries, where getting any type of affordable corrective lenses can prove difficult, this sounds like a really good idea. [via]

Whither Year’s Best?

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror is no more. I’m just stunned by this. I knew things were bad in the world of publishing, but YBFH has always felt like an unshakable institution to me. As I’ve mentioned before, the volume has been essential reading every year, for twenty-plus years, and it offered valuable exposure to great work by accomplished and new writers alike. I was thrilled beyond belief when Kaleidotrope merited even a brief mention in the 2007 fantasy summation, and I’m very sorry to see it end. I hope to continuing sending issues to Gavin Grant for reviews in Xerography Debt, and to Ellen Datlow for consideration in her new horror anthology — presuming I can attract more decent horror stories to the zine — but it won’t be quite the same. There are a lot of other great best-of-year series out there, but they’re not quite the same either.

I’m hoping this won’t be the final end for YBFH.

Sunday various

  • Once again, the predictive powers of science fiction prove to be faulty. Well color me unsurprised. That’s not what science fiction is for. [via]
  • Scott Westerfeld shares this interesting (if not necessarily recent) article on toxoplasma, a terrifying yet often fascinating parasite. While tens of millions of Americans carry the parasite — own a cat? Your chances of being one of them just went up — most will never know it. It’s only pregnant women or people with compromised immune systems who are at any genuine serious risk from disease. But it’s the parasite’s ability to actually alter behavior in its hosts — rats and possibly humans — that makes it interesting. The parasite needs to end up in a cat’s stomach to reproduce, so it encourages behavior that will lead to the host being eaten by cats. The real question, as Westerfeld wonders, is what happens when the cats stop playing along?
  • And as if toxoplasmosis wasn’t enough to worry about, there’s also the threat of radioactive jewlery on eBay. [via]
  • Infomerical: The Series? Well that’s one way of ensuring viewers watch the advertisements. Still, I don’t know about you, but I could do with a little less Billy Mays on television. [via]
  • And speaking of television, I’m very dubious about AMC’s remake of The Prisoner, but at least it gives me an excuse to finally watch the original series.

Bad book buying?

Is buying books online immoral?

This seems a little ridiculous to me. It’s true that as used book sales rise, sales of new (and more expensive) copies are likely to decline. But if I go online and buy a used copy of a book, that’s not cheating the author. I’m not in an immoral quandary. If I decided not to buy the book at all, would anyone claim that I was taking money out of the author or publisher’s pocket? If I read my library’s copy instead of buying my own? How is this argument any less specious?

Unless I’m missing something, online book resellers bought the book from the publisher — if not directly, then at least from whomever first bought it. Even if the book is a castoff or all but free at a yard sale, at some point, money did exchange hands. No matter how low the re-sale price is now, and no matter that the author and publisher are cut out from a share of the re-sell profits, the book was bought and paid for. The author will receive whatever percentage of the original sale the publisher’s contract allows.

If some of the books sold online are review or gratis copies, and that’s taking a significant bite out of the earnings on a book, then the publishers should limit the number of free books they send out. They should try to limit the number to people who will actually review or endorse the book, and hold on to their copies rather than turn around and re-sell them.

The right of resale has existed for a very long time, even before the internet came along to make the process quicker and easier. I buy the argument that the internet has changed bookselling and publishing, often drastically cutting into profits. Small brick and mortar bookshops have been hard hit, and book sales overall have declined. As someone who works in publishing, I have a vested interest in getting people to buy more new books. But buying used books is not the problem. It may very well be a symptom of a larger problem — why are more people buying used books instead of new? — but it’s the larger problem that ought to be fixed.