| http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/xmas-roundup-with-some-good-links-and.html posted by Neil
How the hell did it get to be December the 18th? Ohhh. All the links I meant to post. Arghh.
For a start, I want to repost this little true thing I wrote, from last year's Independent: it's about being an eight year old Jewish kid who really wanted a Christmas tree...http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.htmlI wanted to tell you that you can still get the signed prints of "Before You Read This" I did with Todd Klein -- it's a poem I wrote that Todd lettered -- at Todd's website (along with Todd's other unique signed prints -- collaborations with Alex Ross, Alan Moore and J.H. Williams). http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=6525. (If you're hesitating, order: they're really cheap, and the second printing will be gone soon.) Also, for signed things and rare stuff, you can Do Good while last minute shopping by heading over to the CBLDF shop website. Here's the page with stuff related to me on it.) I just got my author's copies of "A Hundred Words To Talk of Death", the poem I wrote that Jim Lee illustrated and Todd Klein lettered. (Someone wrote to me on Twitter pointing out that it is two syllables short, and unable to figure out why. I will leave that as a problem for you to solve.) It's beautiful -- the same size and quality as the print of "The Day The Saucers Came". It's glorious. (Thinks: I can take a photo to show people.)
I didn't used to think of Jim Lee as a glorious and subtle pencil artist, but he really is, and this is wonderful. (You can order them from here, and read about Kitty's adventures in shipping them out over at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/, with bonus pictures right now of my Very Late Guy Fawkes Part of last month.)  Here is a photo of an author who needs a shave holding a print of "One Hundred Words" poem.
Kitty herself is heading off on tour with Lady Gaga early next year, and Maddy is going to see them in Chicago (where, about eight years ago, I first met Kitty, on the road with Tori) ( Who will be interviewed tonight on ABC -- Tori that is, not Kitty or Maddy).
Amanda and I have been having something that isn't quite an argument about Lady Gaga for a few weeks. We have really rubbish arguments, because they normally resolve into the discovery that we weren't arguing at all, just saying the same thing from two different points of view. Amanda posted a ukulele video-song-blog she'd written late last night from her Boston flat when she was probably meant to be practising her New Year's Eve Tchaikovsky, and I discovered that our latest argument wasn't an argument and we were talking about the same things again. It's art. You make it.
I don't think I will ever write songs and post them on YouTube instead of blogging. I'm in awe of someone who can. It's a good song, too, not just a funny and wise end-of-an-argument, even if she has to stop and scroll down at the last verse. Also, she said "aluminium".
And finally, in keeping with the not-exactly-Christmassy-but-sort-of theme of this blog...
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| http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2009/12/working-in-spaceship-yards-for-real.html 
On Tuesday I gave a talk at Strathclyde University's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory's seminar series. Professor Colin McInnes (who I'd met at Satellite 2, and whose talk there was recently summarised in an article in The Herald) and Dr Malcolm Macdonald had invited me, and they showed me around the labs and took me out for a few drinks, a meal and a very stimulating conversation afterwards - for all of which, much thanks.
You can see the seminar here - there's an opening sample on the page, and buttons for streaming or downloading if you want to see and hear the whole talk and discussion. Here's the (slightly tongue in cheek) abstract:"The Imaginary Engine: notes for a research proposal on the 1990s private space space opera boom in science fiction".
Abstract: The relationship between scientific-technological advance and science fiction has often been assumed and celebrated but seldom rigorously examined. A possible theoretical framework for doing this has emerged in the discipline of Science and Technology Studies (STS): 'the political economy of promise'. Usually applied in the context of biotechnology, this framework looks at the ways in which the 'promise' of new technologies or scientific breakthroughs is used to mobilise resources – of labour, capital, research grants, political credibility, public acceptance – in the real world. Imaginary representations of promising developments play an integral part in this process, acting as (almost literally) 'fictitious capital' in the boom phase of an economic cycle.
It is suggested that science fiction, by treating future possibilities as actualities, may function as an even more literal fictitious capital. In the second half of the 1990s, rapid technological development in, and the ever-widening application of, information technology and the consequent dot-com boom was accompanied by a surge of technological optimism – albeit combined, often, with social pessimism – in science fiction. One such area of optimism concerned the near prospect of large-scale private space exploration and settlement. Records of this period exist in the archives of numerous newsgroups and semi-public mailing lists such as alt.space, sci.space, and the Extropians email list. A mapping of discussion on these lists with influential works of written SF of that period and with speculative investment in a number of fields is outlined and further research proposed. Though my delivery, as usual, gives the impression that I am painfully dredging words from the vast shallows of my mind, and the camera and mic are unforgiving of my tics (fiddling with my glasses, clicking my pen, pushing up my sleeves), I had the benefit of an involved and SF-savvy audience whose questions and comments contributed a great deal.
I was well impressed by the scale and scope of the engineering department, by the enthusiasm of the staff and the research students I met, and by the work of the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, which is collaborating with local space industry and other partners in numerous fields, including the exciting field of microspacecraft.
They're building spaceships on the Clyde! Who knew? As one of the builders points out, there are a lot of young people in Scotland who really need to know, and he's doing something about it. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/late-night-mystery-post.html posted by Neil
Hullo everyone. I took a week off from Blogging, then didn't have a second during the whirlwind of the last few days.
As a result of which I have dozens of open tabs and dozens of letters to the FAQ line that I've marked as things I should answer. I'm not going to try and do them all now (Maddy told me that I'm taking her to school at 6:30 am, as she's got her first period of Driver's Ed). But there are a few things I should say before I sleep...
The first one is to congratulate Henry Selick and all the Coraline team (and Laika, and Focus) on the wonderful way they are being recognised by Awards. Yesterday, for example, we learned that Coraline is nominated for a Golden Globe award.
There's a great website at http://awards.filminfocus.com/#/coraline/awards which is a bit out of date right now. My favourite of the recent awards is that the Alliance of Women Journalists gave Coraline their Best Animated Character award, although the biggest honour is Coraline being on the American Film Institute's list of the ten most important films released in 2009.
I went to Atlanta. It was foggy and thunderstormy and I signed for 1,050 people. (Here's the Atlanta paper blog on the event. And Little Shop of Stories said Thank You so very nicely.)
I went to Winnipeg. It was cold outside and I signed for 869 people. Here's the Winnipeg Newspaper article. Just behind me, in the grey shirt, is the wonderful Elyse Marshall, publicist from HarperChildren's, who looked after me on the Graveyard Book Tour and who can now run a huge signing in her sleep, which is great, because it means I don't have to worry about any details or disasters. I just do my job and sign and meet everyone.
(How bad can it get? Well, there was the time Terry Pratchett and I were signing in, er, I think it was Leeds, when the people who worked at the shop saw all the people who had turned up for the signing and got scared enough that they locked themselves in the staff room at the back, leaving Terry and me to climb onto tables and shout at people until they formed some kind of a line. The staff didn't come out again until the people had all gone.)
Strangest moment in Winnipeg was getting back to the hotel room at 1:30 am to notice that, beside my bed, a framed photo of my children had mysteriously appeared. I assumed that this was a cool thing the hotel had done. Elyse, on the other hand, was convinced it was the action of a crazed stalker, and insisted I deadbolt and security chain my hotel room, and was enormously relieved, a few hours later, when she knocked on my door and I removed the chain and was obviously still alive.
Before we left the hotel I took the photo out of the frame and left a thank-you note in its place.
Flew back to Minneapolis. I stopped off at DreamHaven on the way back from the airport this afternoon, and signed more stock for Greg (http://neilgaiman.net/). Theoretically enough to see him through Xmas.
Several people wrote asking me to express my outrage at HarperCollins joining several other publishers in delaying the release of books on the Kindle or e-book format to some months after the hardback comes out, as detailed at http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/11/harpercollins-now-also-thumbing-nose-at-e-book-industry-with-dig/ but after I read the article I couldn't manage any outrage at all, no more than I could manage for people who demand that paperback books come out at the same time as hardbacks. It seemed a legitimate way to publish, anyway.
And, for those of you who want to learn exactly how an author should not respond to an Amazon One-Star review, we present an author named Candace Sams, who begins by pretending she's not the author, just someone defending a good book, then, when outed as the author, claims she's part of a noble group standing up against an evil one-star reviewer, and then informs everyone on the Amazon Comments thread that she's reported them all to the FBI. The Amazon Thread is here. Teresa Nielsen Hayden comments on it at Making Light, here. (Via Cleolinda's twitter.)
And yes, it's a horrible car crash, and I post it here not because it's funny in an Oh God Make It Stop kind of way, but because, if any of you are ever tempted to respond to bad reviews or internet trolls etc, it's a salutary reminder of why some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning. (Also, if you're an American Games company, don't sue a British blogger in the Australian courts for a bad review.)
Oops. I have started blogging. I will stop now, and sleep for a little while.
...
Before I go: Sky has a website for the Ten Minute Tales series, which includes Statuesque, my film starring Bill Nighy (which goes out in the UK on Christmas Day) : http://sky1.sky.com/10-minute-tales. I wish I could have been at the screening in London on Sunday, more so when I saw my old friend Paterson Joseph stars in one of the films.
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