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
A new angle 
A musical ... a sci-fi comedy musical ... released on the
web? I admit, I was grossly derelict
in my blogging duties by not telling you to go watch Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog while it was available for free download. (The DVDs will be on sale soon, with--wait for it!--a sung commentary track. Geniuses.)
In an 
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
