[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Chris McKitterick's LiveJournal:
- The time to devote to all of the things necessary to assemble and promote a project of this magnitude. Trying to duplicate Doctorow's project will not succeed (beyond the success he's already enjoyed in the form of PW support, pre-sale of the expensive and unique copy, and massive support from friends) unless you build a powerful and attractive online presence to draw potential buyers. And blog and speak and write about it to spread the word.
- Generous and talented friends willing to donate their creativity to your project. Doctorow wouldn't be able to do this without help from a diverse talent pool who are working for free. This is an intriguing model, essentially creatives forming a creative union that each will likely be able to call upon for their own future projects. Small-scale socialism. I think more of us should do such, as well as help promote one another (as
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
xjenavivex has been doing). This kind of cross-promotion only helps everyone involved. To me, this is one of the most interesting aspects of Doctorow's project - and I hope to discover later that he's doing the same for those who helped him. - The network bandwidth necessary to deliver massive volumes of electronic files, including ebooks, podcasts, and whatever else you create for your fans. Doctorow has a powerful tool to deliver his content: Boing Boing.
- An established name and reader base. Note how Doctorow is able to promote his new novel on his website, which "attracts more than 5 million unique visitors to its site each month, and has over 600,000 RSS subscribers," according to Federated Media Publishing. So he'll be able to use this tool to deliver bandwidth-heavy downloads without incurring a new expense. Most of us won't have to worry about this too much, but the goal is to get so many downloads that we want to worry about bandwidth!
- Enough wealthy or dedicated fans to purchase special-edition volumes. One special copy of Doctorow's book will cost $10,000 (already sold). That's a true - and wealthy - fan. About a year ago, Kevin Kelly wrote a definitive article about "1,000 True Fans" and how they can support an artist. He defines a "true fan" as someone who will "purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work... each will spend one day's wages [or $100] per year in support of what you do."
- And the time and patience to do all this while trying to work on your next piece.
| Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | |
| 3:39 pm | ...and thanks for all the kind words  ...about little Hammie-Boy. Last night (rather, early this morning) when I got home from the office, out of habit I walked over to the gaming bookshelf where his little house used to perch. He loved to come out at night and roll around in this Ball of Speed Magnification™. I was so tired that I thought I heard him scuttling around in his nest. Instead of his cage, though, stands a candle burning in remembrance of him. That was both warm and sad-making. Thank you for your well-wishes last week. The sympathy is much appreciated. It's nice to know that y'all don't think I'm a weirdo for falling for a short-lived guy like Hefner. Weird for lots of other reasons, sure, but hamsters are people too. Especially little guys like him, so kind and full of personality. Chris |
| 3:16 pm | SF study guide  This was a fun but exhausting project: I just finished the "Science Fiction" entry for the Research Guide to American Literature: Post War Literature, 1945-1970, co-authored with James Gunn. Fun because I got to do lots of research on this fascinating period in SF's history, going through a bunch of wonderful resource texts here in the Center's SF Research Library. Exhausting because the deadline was much too short, especially considering all the other stuff going on at work lately. Now I want to write more material like this.... But it's done, edited by Jim, revised by me (mostly to cut 1000 words, ugh), and off to the editor, John Cusatis. Woohoo! Should be a really neat resource for teaching that period of American lit. Chris |
| Friday, November 20th, 2009 | |
| 3:11 am | RIP Hammie-Boy Living with hamsters as pets guarantees frequent tragedy. As recently as Sunday, little Hefner was healthy and full of beans. On Tuesday night, he showed signs of serious illness, with a belly full of scabs and infection. I brought him to the vet on Wednesday, where the kind Dr. Gibbs gave him a shot of cortisone to slow the growth of (suspected) cancer and a shot of antibiotics to kill the secondary infection from his chewing on the growths. She said that if he responded well to those, she could compound him treatment to give him another week or two. Then he had a healthy and relatively energetic night and day today. Wouldn't you rather go when you felt well than suffer for a week or two? So we fed him his favorite foods - blueberries and nuts - and cuddled the little boy, then brought him over to the vet.  The nurses at the front desk didn't even check us in, saw the teary eyes and brought us straight to an exam room. After some time alone with the sleepy Hammie-Boy, Dr. Gibbs took him to the euthanization room, and a few minutes later he returned asleep but not breathing in his ball. She said that he was full of tumors when she felt him after the procedure, so we had made the best decision. I dug a hole in the rodent cemetery in the back yard and buried him in his favorite toy, his ball, with a pint of blueberries. Hefner was the gentlest, most easy-going, but most curious hamster I've ever known. He would run in his ball for hours. He let little kids squeeze him and wouldn't bite. He would sleep in your lap. He loved peoples' shoes. He took food so carefully from your hand that he'd sometimes drop it. He invented the litter box for himself so he wouldn't have to sleep in a mess. He was the best hamster ever. We get so attached to our little friends. I'm not sure I want to keep doing this every few years. Perhaps a bit of a break before another little Rodent-American. Chris |
| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | |
| 12:10 pm | Astro-Porn of the Day: HUGE fireball during last night's Leonids Holy sky-on-fire, Batman! Here's a little video taken by the University of Utah's observatory on Frisco Peak, presumably an automated camera. Watch how this fireball changes night into day: Apparently, it was visible all over the western USA, with people reporting sightings across Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. I'm so envious! Skies in Kansas were cloudy last night... but it's clear today. Although this happened during the Leonids, this fireball was not a Leonid meteor. Scientists suspect a small asteroid that exploded when it hit Earth's atmosphere, releasing the equivalent of a kiloton of TNT. That's some serious interplanetary warfare, folks. Imagine if it had exploded a little lower in the atmosphere, especially over a city? We are tiny creatures who dwell on the surface of a small planet that's hurtling through the cosmos along with billions of other objects. Once in a while, we collide. Often we get to watch a pretty meteor shower, sometimes we have the thrill of a fireball, and once in a while - frequently in terms of the life of the Earth - we experience ecosystem-destroying asteroid impacts. This one sits right between those last two. Here's the aftermath, still visible in the morning sky:  Click the image to see the story. EDIT: Lots more videos on this Utah news site. Astro-porn indeed! Chris |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | |
| 11:36 pm | |
| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | |
| 7:54 pm | Contortionism circa 1944 This music video from 1944 shows perhaps the most amazing contortion performance I've ever seen. Meet the Ross Sisters in "Solid Potato Salad": Thanks to roya_spirit for the tip!Chris |
| 4:07 pm | Paul Di Filippo and Sheila Finch Join Campbell Award Jury Paul Di Filippo and Sheila Finch have accepted appointment to the jury for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best SF novel of the year. In 2009, Paul A. Carter retired from the jury after having bravely served for many years, almost since the Award's inception. Sheila Finch is the author of seven science fiction novels and numerous short stories that have appeared in Amazing, Asimov’s, Fantasy Book, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and many anthologies. A collection of the "Lingster" stories recently appeared as The Guild of Xenolinguists. Sheila taught creative writing at El Camino College for thirty years and at workshops around California. She also writes non-fiction about teaching creative writing and science fiction, most recently, a series of short essays on the field that appear online at the SFWA website. Her work has won several awards, including the Nebula Award for Best Novella, the San Diego Book Award for Juvenile Fiction, and the Compton-Crook Award for Best First Novel. Paul Di Filippo sold his first story in 1977, and his second in 1985. Since then, he has accumulated over 150 periodical credits, and had twenty-five books published. He has two more due out in 2010. He reviews for a number of venues, including The Barnes & Noble Review. He has lived with his partner Deborah Newton for 34 years in Providence, Rhode Island, currently with a calico cat named Penny Century and a chocolate cocker spaniel named Brownie. The Campbell Award is one of the major annual awards for science fiction and is presented by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. The first Campbell Award was presented at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. Since then the Award has been presented in various parts of the world: at California State University at Fullerton; at St. John's College, Oxford; at the World SF Writers Conference in Dublin; in Stockholm; at the World SF meeting in Dublin again; the University of Kansas; and in a joint event with the Science Fiction Research Association in Kansas City in 2007. The current jury consists of Gregory Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and T.A. Shippey. ___ The original news release is on the Center for the Study of Science Fiction's news page. Best, Chris |
| Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | |
| 2:16 pm | What I'm doing; what I want to be doing. What I'm doing; what I want to be doing: 1) Grading papers, dealing with work-related things, scootering to work in the rain. 2) Revising my novel, working on song lyrics for a short album, writing the script for an indie movie, writing a new story, starting the next novel. Guess which is which? Bursting with creativity but must fulfill crazy-busy Day Jobbe duties even though the top-level administration is considering cutting my position. Why, exactly, am I fighting for this? Feh on being a grown-up. Chris |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 | |
| 7:18 pm | Hadley Rille book signing tomorrow...
Best, Chris |
| 12:09 pm | Astro-Porn of the Day: Water on the Moon! NASA just released news that they're positively identified water on the Moon from last month's LCROSS mission, where they crashed a rocket and payload into the Cabeus crater near the Moon's South Pole. Here's the plume:  Click the image to see the story. That water hasn't seen the light of the Sun for billions of years. Does this mean we can live on the Moon? Well, that's taking it a bit far, but it does mean that it's more realistic to consider establishing colonies on the Moon: As the Fremen tell us, water is life. Chris |
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | |
| 11:29 am | Planning for the Future: The Job Edition. I'm preparing to meet with the Department Chair in a few hours, where we'll do strategic planning about how to keep my position. Tomorrow, she and the Associate Dean meet about this. Some time soon, I'll give my presentation to the Dean. No pressure. On the ego-boosting side, I got a couple of job offers last week, one that pays more than twice as much as teaching. Tempting, yes, but I love this teaching gig, and the students need the tech-writing classes I teach (and appreciate the SF and fiction-writing courses I teach). It drives me crazy that the powers-that-be at KU have (historically, anyway) displayed no understanding of the importance of writing in the professions. KU stands alone among our peer schools with no official technical-communication program. Shame on us. I've done all I personally can to get the program approved, but those at the Dean's level and above are terrified of commitment to a new program, so they're sitting on the proposal. And now they're considering eliminating my position. Let's examine that proposition for a moment: Just about every Engineering program requires the first tech-writing course I teach, as do a number of science, design, business, and other programs. The English Department voted to make my position a permanent hire (that is, tenured). A couple of GTAs teach it occasionally, but they're done this year. If I'm not here, we'll likely have zero people teaching the course. This, despite demand that could support at least three full-timers teaching the tech-comm courses. This is not a position to cut in order to save money. Oddly, I've come to realize that I wouldn't feel sorry for myself if I do lose my day-job: I would see it as an opportunity to dive head-first into my fiction-writing career for at least as long as the unemployment insurance holds out. See, I have a novel coming out in early 2010 and one more ready to sell right away. I have two previous novels I want to revise and publish. A young-adult SF series I'm dying to write. Three more adult novels. Tons of stories. Even a tech-writing textbook that I plan to give away online. In that light, why do I care about keeping my position? Why am I fighting for it? Well, I love teaching. But I could easily teach part-time or just on occasion. No, it comes down to my loyalty to James Gunn and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. It would kill me to see his legacy wither. I refuse to let that happen. In a perfect world, a wealthy science-fiction fan would donate funds to set up a sustainable Center. It would be truly perfect if we could have our own, independent facility with rooms for residential students to occupy for extended stays, but all we would really require is funding sufficient to support a permanent SF position at KU. The facilities to run ongoing programs - monthly seminars, credit courses, non-resident workshops, speakers, and so forth - are free or cheap to use here. We have our own offices, one of which is big enough to house our massive SF research lending-library. KU has a couple of fine libraries on site with large SF collections, plus museums and so forth. Lawrence has a fantastic downtown with restaurants and shopping and movies and music and everything else visitors need to blow off steam. With an endowed SF Professorship, KU could not cut that position. Grad students could come here just to study SF. We could have guest authors and scholars stay for a full semester at a time, if they wished. And Jim Gunn's legacy would be secure. But even if we can't secure such, and even if I lose my day-job, I'll continue to serve the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. I'll fight to keep our programs housed here, where our endowment lives, where our book collections live. I'll fight to keep the office that also serves as our lending library. So off I go to prep for a meeting to save my job. It's comforting to realize that I won't feel sad if I end up losing that job. Chris |
| 10:58 am | Astro-Porn of the Day: Leonid Meteor Shower on the 17th Hot on the heels of August's Perseids and last month's Orionids comes what promises to be the mack-daddy of showers this year: The Leonids. It's scheduled to peak on the evening of the 17th - and by "peak" they really mean it: 500 meteors per hour! Also, a former student just let me know that he saw the most-dramatic fireball he's ever seen last night, nearly a week before the peak. According to NASA, the peak will fall between 21:34 and 21:44 Universal Time. Unfortunately, that's afternoon here in the Central US (those of you living in Asia will have the best show). Fortunately, because this will be such a massive storm, we should get a good show even hours after the peak, when darkness falls.  Click the image to see the story. To eliminate as much sky-glow as possible, go north of your local city (toward the constellation Leo), so that the city's lights are behind you rather than between you and the show. Try to get dark-adapted as soon as you can after nightfall, so get out there at sunset! Chris |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 2:42 pm | Facebook and images I just discovered a sort of uncomfortable issue about images from Facebook. A student came to my office today, unable to get an image to display on her Web page. Also distrubing is that - for no reason I could identify in the HTML or CSS code - my browswer told me it was blocking an ActiveX control. We tried everything, and it should have worked. Then I got suspicious and made a screenshot of the image. That one showed up just fine. Turns out that if you save an image from Facebook, you might end up also saving ActiveX controls which prevent that image from appearing anywhere but on Facebook. I find that more than a little irritating. I mean, who owns that image: you or Facebook? Best, Chris |
| Friday, November 6th, 2009 | |
| 1:30 pm | Red-mark day for the Help Desk. Just got a hilarious call from the KU IT department. Well, it would be hilarious if it weren't so pitiful: On Monday, one of my students was unable to log in to his website via FTP to move some files up there for his class assignment. The Help Desk person responsible called me to ask about it. To give you an idea of her technical depth, here are some snippets from the conversation: "Do you know what problems he encountered?" she asked. "He was unable to log in to his FTP program" I answered. (Note that she already knew this, because she had stated it when I answered.) "How did he get permission to use FTP?" she asked. *blink-blink* "You need to use secure FTP to move files to a KU Web server," I said. "He was trying to upload files to his People site at KU." I mean, huh? What did these questions have to do with anything? It was about the simplest issue ever: Someone was unable to log in to a secure site. So of course the first thing Help Desk does is call the professor. Um? Your tax and tuition dollars at work, people. Chris |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | |
| 12:25 pm | Astro-Porn of the Day: Get Ready for the Northern Lights. If you live in Teh Northland, watch for Northern Lights tonight. Scientists are forecasting a lovely light-storm because of a huge coronal mass ejection blasted out of the sun from the sole sunspot on Halloween (how's that for scary?). Basically, we see a coronal mass ejection when the Sun belches billions of tons of plasma into space, sort of like a world-killing gas attack. But don't worry - unless you live in low-Solar-orbit, you're safe. When the huge cloud smashes into Earth's magnetic field, we'll be able to enjoy the pretty colors. Here's a cool movie from SOHO (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory):  Click the image to see the story. Unfortunately for sky-watchers (and fortunately for communications satellites), we'll only suffer a glancing blow, so this will be a mild show. Happy news for Sun-watchers: Another two sunspots are working their way to the surface of the Sun as we move out of the current sunspot minimum. Can't wait to start using my solar filter for some cool photography! Chris |
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
| 10:26 am | An embarrassing day to be American. Today, the results are in: Yesterday, the majority of voters in 31 states rejected same-sex marriage via referendums. Only five states recognize same-sex marriage, four of which are in New England and the other is good ol' Iowa. Anti-marriage-rights people used lies and fear to win: Gayness will be taught in elementary schools! Homos will break up het marriages! Our nation will burn in Hell if we allow gays to commit to one another! Children will be turned gay if their gay parents can get married! And you will burn in Hell if God sees you voting for The Homo Agenda! In Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, and many states in the USA before the Supreme Court's 1967 decision (Loving v. Virginia), inter-racial marriage was illegal. These nations learned better about human rights... or seemed to. So yesterday, 31 states joined many modern Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Authority, where women can be murdered by family members in "honor killings" for the crime of engaging in a relationship with a man of another tribe. Are we really so tribal and primitive that we legitimize state-sponsored discrimination because we don't like how someone loves another person? I still don't understand why the anti-marriage loons are so anti-gay. If someone wants to publicly commit to another person, why would someone who professes belief in Jesus (not anti-gay) (or Muhammed, "prophet of peace") try to stop them? A couple of weeks ago, I wrote, "It's time for change, people. Based on campaigns that fired us all up last fall... I'd say that the climate is right for this necessary change." I guess I was wrong. Seems we'll have to do this the Constitutional way. If the (granted, slim) majority of Americans in 31 states are anti-marriage for gays, we'll have to appeal to the founding laws of the land, which protect minorities from persecution and guarantee separation of church and state. Let's be honest: The only real argument that the anti-marriage types have is that gay marriage is "against God" (the Old-Testament God, anyway, because Jesus was not anti-gay), and the only reason the right to marry was defeated in all those states was that gays are a minority, like blacks in 1967 and minority tribes in the Middle East today. Therefore it's okay to tromp on their rights as Americans. How can so many legalize discrimination in this "land of the free"? I'm ashamed to be lumped in the same group with those who voted against love and commitment. Chris |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | |
| 11:52 am | XKCD Movie Narrative Charts. This is one of my favorite things ever:  Click the image to see the comic (and to blow it up to GINORMOUS full size). I want a wall-sized poster. WANT. But he does not have. Chris |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | |
| 11:12 pm | Whatta weekend! Spent Saturday cutting out stumps, leveling an 8x8-foot piece of ground in the back yard, constructing a foundation, and then building a shed with madmatmax. Afterwards, I quickly cleaned up and donned the most-relevant costume I could imagine: Handyman! Pretty much wore the gear I'd been wearing all day ;-) Click the image to Mac & Mel's Flickr page. Mel sez, "Every mad scientist needs someone to build the secret lab." Just about then, dozens of people started showing up for our Halloween Dance Party (on Friday, we moved a bunch of furniture to make most of the downstairs living area into a dance floor). Thanks to all who came over and shared your awesomeness, and thanks to chernobylred for throwing such a great party! It was great to see everyone. Oh, and for the first time in the six years I've lived in this house, a pair of little monsters came to the door looking for candy. As you can imagine, I hadn't planned for this eventuality, but thankfully I still had most of a bag of taffy. They got big ol' handfuls! I say we petition to get kids trick-or-treating again. I miss all the precious little costumes.Spent today getting a U-Haul truck for picking up a huge SF book & model & comic collection donated to the Center for the Study of Science Fiction and AboutSF. Many thanks to Nate (a.k.a. about_sf) for going over to Kansas City with me to load the collection... which turned out to be about five times as many as the donor had estimated (total is something like 500 boxes). We filled the hell out of that U-Haul truck and Nate's car, then called on Matt once again to help unload the books into the Center's now-seriously crammed space and the comics into temporary storage. You guys ROCK. The sorting and cataloging begins this week. We still need to return to fetch another 80 or so boxes of models and collectibles :-OAnd just minutes ago when I turned on teh intarwebs, I discovered that Kij Johnson has won the World Fantasy Award for 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (click to read this wonderful story online). Congratulations, Kij! Now I'm wiped out. Later! Chris |
| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | |
| 12:56 pm | Giving away books (or art) as a business model. By now, many of you have probably read Cory Doctorow's piece in Publisher's Weekly, where he lays out his current publishing experiment - first announced at the 2009 Campbell Conference (about which I wrote a guest editorial for Abyss & Apex, out now!). Each month (for a year) in PW, Doctorow will update us on the progress of this project. Michael Stackpole writes an incisive and insightful critique of Doctorow's project on his blog, and will follow up with a couple more articles over the next couple of days. If you're a writer pondering the future of publishing (or other artist pondering a similar future), Doctorow's personal experiment is quite interesting. However, don't dive head-first into trying to duplicate Doctorow's project for yourself without first reading Stackpole's analysis and determining if it'll work for you. Do you have: Chris |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | |
| 12:57 pm | Astro-Porn of the Day: Saturn, Lord of the Rings Earlier this month, astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered a vast ring around Saturn, already famous for its rings. For example, in March the Hubble Space Telescope snapped an amazing series of Saturn's moons transiting across the face of the planet:  Click the image to see the story and watch videos of this event. Little Enceladus and Dione cross from the left just above the rings, Mimas is on the right, and the huge moon near the top is Titan (and its shadow). Titan is larger than the planet Mercury, and its smoggy atmosphere is orange because of methane and nitrogen reacting in the sunshine. The reason we can see the moons in this shot is that Saturn's rotational axis is tilted, like ours, so its rings are tilted edge-on to us as they are every 15 years (they're at their fattest 7 years from now). Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites are in the same plane as its rings, those rings usually obscure our view of moon transits. To see them in motion, check out the videos. Speaking of rings, here's that shot I promised you:  Click the image to see the story. This newly discovered ring starts about 6 million kilometers out from Saturn and stretches to 12 million kilometers. How big is that? As wide as one billion Earths side-by-side. It's too dim to see from the surface of the Earth, but if you could, it would stretch across the sky twice the width of the Moon. Whoah. Mind you, Saturn itself is only a dot to the naked eye. Phoebe - one of Saturn's most-distant moons - orbits within this vast ring, and scientists theorize that the moon created it. Speaking of scale, here's a nice comparison shot between Saturn and Earth:  Click the image to read all about Saturn and its moons. Makes me think about ringworlds or Dyson spheres. This ginormous ring would be teeny and invisible compared to a ring around the Sun. Consider that for a moment. Best, Chris |
