The Fredösphere

Today I address you, gentle reader, in my role as an aspiring but, for now, frustrated science fiction writer.  First, I direct you to this wonderful bit from Nielsen Hayden, a slush pile reader.  You'd think such an avenging angel would derive sufficient spiteful satisfaction from writing all those rejection letters, but no:  upon discovering a website exists for disgruntled and rejected authors, the angel turns demonic:

What I find weirdest about their take on rejection is that it's all completely personal. I don't just mean the rejection itself, which they're bound to take personally, being writers and all. They take things personally which have nothing whatsoever to do with them [. . .]

and then he tears the authors to shreds.  For example, to the person who was insulted because the rejection came typed on a half-sheet of paper:

Right. I can just see the staff at Prominent Science Fiction Magazine doing the slush, with all their different-size rejection notes stacked up in a little row in front of them. If your story really sucks, you get a rejection note that's mimeographed on a sheet of paper the size of a large postage stamp. If you've got strong writing but defective storytelling skills, you get a half sheet. Acceptances come on foolscap. And so on.

Great stuff.  Read and savor the whole thing.  Thanks to the ever-fascinating John C. Wright for the link.  John has his own list of authorial boo-boos, and his commenters (why can't I seem to attract dozens of clever, literate commenters?  No offense, Steve) riff at length on his "empirical storm troopers."  Not to be missed.

By the way, since I know you're dying to ask me, I have sufficient experience as a writer to have attained Nielson Hayden's level 9 (Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book) which is something I'm pretty proud of.  Sadly, the final level (Buy the book) is level 14.  Five more to go, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize each level is 20 times harder to attain than its predecessor.

Other fun links:  a 13-year-old boy tries out a music-playing gadget called a Walkman and finds it inadequate.  Don finds an animation to accompany the Hoedown from Rodeo.  And finally, Jalopnik has fun with a rendering of a gorgeous but hopeless Bugatti concept car:

[. . .] French industrial designer Bruno Delussu's rendering of a modern Bugatti Type 57 is so far removed from reality that the mind is free to conceive of anything. Say, a France removed by tractor beams from the way of an imminent Nazi invasion. Then allowed to grow in isolation for decades, acquiring high technology on the border of magic, to come up with this thing. A modern take on the Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic, powered probably by ion cannons instead of the original's clockwork straight-eight.

Not to mention that this princess has a chassis clearance so minimal, she would crash if she hit a rock the size of a pea.

Labels: Design, Fiction, Futurism, sci-fi, VideoClip