Symphony of Science — “We Are All Connected”
Bonus: “A Glorious Dawn and Know Your Meme on this whole Autotune thing.
Month: November 2009
And they say romance is dead
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought Harlequin’s proposed self-publishing imprint was a very bad idea. John Scalzi writes:
This is basically a skeezy, cynical and horribly demeaning thing Harlequin is doing, padding its bottom line by suckering a bunch of folks who don’t know better into thinking that paying for publication is a legitimate path into the publishing world. In a stroke, they’ve become the sort of scumbag publisher that writer’s organizations warn their members (and their aspiring members) about. But apparently the folks at Harlequin thought that the response would be different with them, because, after all, they’re Harlequin, and they’re too big to fail.
He also reports, encouragingly, however, on the reaction of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) (as well as the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), who have all announced sanctions against Harlequin in response.
Harlequin, of course, has responded with mock surprise, indignation, and a promise of nothing better than a change in the imprint scam’s name.
Why can’t more Harlequins be like this?
Random 10 11/20
Amazingly, there was only one guess last week, so I’m keeping it up for the time being. Feel free to take a look at the remaining nine, In the meantime, here are this week’s lyrics:
- “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen, guessed by Clayton
I got stiffness in my bones - “I’m That Kind of Girl” by Patty Loveless
I get the feelin’ that he’s never read Romeo and Juliet - “I’m Sticking With You” by the Velvet Underground
You held up a stage coach in the rain - “Bus Bus” by Amy Ray
Do you remember younger days? - “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” by Bowling for Soup, guessed by Tom
Her name is Nona, she’s a rocker with a nose ring - “Really Love You” by Paul McCartney, guessed by Kim
I need your love like a bear needs a break - “Duet for Emmylou and the Grievous Angel” by Rah Rah, guessed by Tammy
It is fashionable to be single in big cities, but not in small towns - “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles, guessed by Clayton
Or should I say, she once had me - “Committed to Parkview” by Porter Wagoner
And she talks about her songs and the star that she should be - “Frank Sinatra” by Cake, guessed by Remi
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record
As always, good luck!
Thursday various
- Following up on these 200 creepy stories about Calgary, Meredith has been posting similar stories for Washington, DC. I particularly like #4.
- Ooh! Ray Bradbury is developing a new television miniseries!
- This whole Harlequin Horizons “self-publishing imprint” business strikes me as deeply weird. It’s like, “We won’t buy your novel…but here’s how you can pay us to print it!” [via]
- “[T]here is ‘no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed.'” Uh oh. [via]
- And finally, a really excellent interview with Cormac McCarthy. [via]:
Well, I don’t know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that’s the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don’t care whether it’s art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don’t think so.
The whole wide whorl
I’m currently reading Return to the Whorl, the concluding volume of Gene Wolfe’s fascinating (albeit sometimes difficult) Book of the Short Sun — the concluding volume, in fact, of his so-called “Solar Cycle.” This evening, while waiting for my train home, I came across this passage, which, in typical Wolfe fashion, appears to have many different layers of meaning — not least of all as an interesting description of the process of writing:
I should go back and line out my mistake, I suppose, but I hate lining things out — it gives the page such an ugly appearance. Besides, to line out is to accept responsibility for the correctness of all that is let stand. To correct that or any other error would be to invite you to ask me (when you read this, as I hope you soon will) why I failed to correct some other. And I cannot correct all or even most of them without tearing the whole account to shreds and starting again. My new account, moreover, would be bound to be worse than this, since I could not prevent myself from attributing to myself knowledge an opinions I did not have at the time the events I recorded occurred. No, there really are such things as honest mistakes; this account is full of them, and I intend to leave it that way.