Links for 16-03-2007
Record shops RIP, Mamatas slays Spartans, Doctorow and screen-reading…
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1 – Why I ditched the Porsches and passport
“It’s the morning after the night before and – against the odds – Iain Banks is feeling decidedly chipper.” So am I, as this interview says the next IMB sf novel is set in the Culture universe! w00t!
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2 – Five Things That Don’t Happen When You Become a Published Author
“Just a few random observances of what my life as a published author has been like compared to what I had expected or hoped for.” Dave Edelman tells it how it is.
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3 – Do we still need record shops?
“Last month, I went into a record store in Japan. It felt like a museum. I’ll always love vinyl, but how much longer can they last?” Alan McGee can see the future coming round the corner.
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4 – The 300
“The 300 is the story of the battle of Thermopylae, as relayed to the world by the patron saint of pidgeon chests, Frank Miller. As such, it is a total mess.” Give Nick Mamatas a movie reviews column!
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“No one is controlling any of this. The Simulacrum is just an emergent property of a lot of complex activity, competing motivations corporate, political, economic & individual.” M. John Harrison understands *everything*.
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6 – Left-Libertarian Space Opera
“MacLeod isn’t pushing One Big Answer here; on the contrary, each entry in the series subtly deconstructs the central assumptions of the previous one.” Ooh, looky – I found a new blog!
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7 – SXSW Rant, death of “blogs,” etc etc
“I see that commentators on my latest SXSW speech, in which I boldly predict that “blogs” won’t last long, are not quite taking my point.” Captain Sterling clarifies.
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8 – New Marketing 101 for Science Fiction Publications and Writers, Session 3
Jason Stoddard has the lever. Now find yourself a firm place to stand.
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9 – Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge
A new category this year – the fan fiction category. The times, they are a-changin’.
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10 – Semiconductor 2.0 – printed semiconductor factory opens
“With its environmentally friendly production process, the OFAB can produce printed electronic devices quickly and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional silicon-based semiconductor fab.”
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11 – Cory Doctorow: You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen
“A super-sharp, super-portable screen would be used to read all day long, but most of us won’t spend most of our time reading anything recognizable as a book on them.”
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12 – yBook – a freeware ebook reader
“I wrote this ebook reading software to provide a ‘paper book’ experience on the computer screen: For a start, you get two pages side-by-side instead of just one page in the middle of the screen.” Via Lifehacker.
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“Got that? We’re talking about mapping continents on planets around other stars, using equipment that could be within our capabilities soon.”
