There Are Doors - Okay, Portals
Man, this Tor.com project sure sounds exciting. Free eBooks. The best internet writers on things "of interest to SF and fantasy readers, such as medieval siege engines, the Van Allen Belt, hoisin sauce, XKCD, and the novels of Georgette Heyer." Heck, they’ve got Bruce Baugh. Bruce was even a co-blogger of mine a couple of times and places over the last few years. Wouldn’t it be something if we we could be co-bloggers again someday? Whenever? That would be a hell of a fine thing, even if details were not immediately available.
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Comment by mds —
March 11, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
Talk about crying Wolfe in a post title…
Seriously, though, you even managed to make it an explicitly SF reference. Keep up the good work, and remember to send my cut.
(Is it slightly worrisome that Mrs. Nielsen Hayden is becoming the Evil Overlord of a growing Internet Empire? Nah.)
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
March 12, 2008 @ 7:30 am
Just think, folks, somewhere out there is a person who thinks Jim is clever and aspires to be that subtle. Won’t you give generously to their needs so that they don’t become dependent on the government for clues?
Comment by Flippanter —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
Reading Making Light and other stuff about the fandom sphere tends to make me feel rather empty, sort of the way people who fantasize about being The Last Man on Earth might feel if they were actually to find themselves alone on the big blue marble.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
Why cause, Flippanter?
Comment by Flippanter —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
I don’t have a good idea, Jim. It might be because everyone seems to be having a good time, online and in-person, in fandom, and I don’t think I’m really capable of participating, my instinctive reaction to gatherings and organizations being craven flight.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 12, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
“…It might be because everyone seems to be having a good time, online and in-person, in fandom,”
Don’t worry: it isn’t always that way.
Comment by mds —
March 12, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
I know the feeling. Two years in a row, I’ve said to myself, “Maybe this year I’ll go to Boskone*.” Then I think about what a wallflower I am (no, really), and how everybody already seems to know everybody, and how they have all their rituals and inside jokes, to where there has to be an instruction sheet about behavior at one’s first convention. It’s like the Freemasons, except with a more relaxed dress code, better music, and cooler guests.
[Looks over shoulder]
Not that I’d know anything about either group, of course.
*(The convention, not the high council of the Eich for whom Helmuth spoke. See? You’d think I’d blend in effortlessly.)
Comment by Flippanter —
March 12, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
Then I think about what a wallflower I am (no, really), and how everybody already seems to know everybody, and how they have all their rituals and inside jokes….
I sympathize, mds, but together with the lack of recondite knowledge, I guess I don’t think my enthusiasm engine revs high enough to participate. When I check the latest to-do at Making Light or John Scalzi’s website, I often think, “Well, that book sounds kind of interesting/that quote is okay, I guess/that author seems nice enough,” but the “Squee!” and “I don’t like it, I love it; I’ll buy a hundred copies and force my Congressman to get a tattoo of the cover” comments always leave me wondering what I’m missing about Firefly, China Mieville, Joss Whedon, Steven Brust, etc., or what’s so poisonously contemptible about Robert Jordan or whomever.
Comment by kishnevi —
March 12, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
I did have a momentary pause when I noticed the top age category was “30+”. Obviously anyone born in 1979 or earlier is an old fogey. I was in college then, so does that make me a superold fogey?
Of course, the ultimate E-library seems to be here:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Everything from the annals of the Kings of Assyria to recent Pentagon publications.
Comment by Avram —
March 13, 2008 @ 1:09 am
Flippanter, I feel the same way sometimes, and I’m one of the bloggers over at Making Light.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
March 13, 2008 @ 4:51 am
Flippanter, for what it’s worth, I’m already planning one of my early posts to be on precisely that problem, since it’s one I live with too - how do shy, unconfident people ever get anywhere in a social hobby? I will have some things I’ve found working for me, and advice that hasn’t worked for me but has for others. Consider this incentive.
Comment by Flippanter —
March 13, 2008 @ 11:09 am
Sounds interesting, Bruce — I’ll keep an eye out for it.