We have promised; now we have delivered.
I am as proud as anything to see the first piece of new original fiction go up at Futurismic - it’s been a long time coming, but I think it’s been worth the wait.
It’s a great story, too - I certainly think so. A study in the development of narrative voice, with just the right blend of tragedy and triumph.
Go read “Uxo, Bomb Dog” by Eliot Fintushel and tell me what you think.
In lieu of anything more substantial for the time being*, anyone wanting to know where I’m coming from with my plans for Futurismic would do well to read Chris Anderson’s piece at Wired about the economics of free:
“From the consumer’s perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of “free” is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.
This difference between cheap and free is what venture capitalist Josh Kopelman calls the “penny gap.” People think demand is elastic and that volume falls in a straight line as price rises, but the truth is that zero is one market and any other price is another. In many cases, that’s the difference between a great market and none at all.
The huge psychological gap between “almost zero” and “zero” is why micropayments failed. It’s why Google doesn’t show up on your credit card. It’s why modern Web companies don’t charge their users anything. And it’s why Yahoo gives away disk drive space. The question of infinite storage was not if but when. The winners made their stuff free first.”
Actually, I think everyone should read that article whether they’re interested in Futurismic or not. But it explains why Futurismic will never have a pay-wall, for a start.
And it’s probably too much to hope for, but I hope lots of musicians who up till now have been chasing after a record label to sign them up and make them famous will take note of this bit:
“On a busy corner in São Paulo, Brazil, street vendors pitch the latest “tecnobrega” CDs, including one by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That’s OK, because selling discs isn’t Calypso’s main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet.
The vendors generate literal street cred in each town Calypso visits, and its omnipresence in the urban soundscape means that it gets huge crowds to its rave/dj/concert events. Free music is just publicity for a far more lucrative tour business. Nobody thinks of this as piracy.”
OK, back to the grindstone - this week is one of those crunch points where everything peaks at once. Which makes it all the more frustrating that I appear to have picked up some kind of minor illness from PicoCon**. Selah.
[** It's OK, Farah, I forgive you - I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather catch an illness from. 
]
Digging in the crates this week, I’m afraid. Here’s the awning frame at the front of South Parade Pier …
I’ve not gotten round to doing any photography, as you may have guessed - I’ve been too busy with other more urgent concerns.
It’s a shame, as the weather has been bright and sunny up until this morning. Selah.
Well, I got all the overhanging deadlines for other people out of the way as promised, and with a few lingering exceptions (mostly situations wherein I’ve been offered albums or interviews I couldn’t get on my own), the decks have been cleared.
So now it’s a case of gradually ramping up to a steady turnover at The Dreaded Press - which, given the amount of stuff I’m getting sent through already, shouldn’t prove difficult.
No literary scribbling this week, to my shame.
I did, however, discover that I’ve been accepted for the SFF Masterclass for the second year running. Which is super news; now all I have to do is work out how I’ll be able to afford it!
I’m pretty sure I can claim it as essential career development and training, so at least I can write it off against tax …
That said, the day I’m earning enough outside my day-job to warrant me actually paying any tax on it will be a happy day indeed.
After last week’s revelation (and thank you all for the good wishes, both public and private - it’s excellent to know that people believe in me), it should be obvious that Futurismic has been chewing up large chunks of my time this week.
Most of it is the sort of tedious web-admin stuff that no amount of pre-planning can make easier, involving as it does wrestling with the support systems of web hosts and registrars. It’s been … interesting, let’s say.
I meant to post some of my thoughts and plans right here over the course of the week, but time has not permitted; this weekend may see them surface.
But the good news is that we’re on track for the 3rd March relaunch - so watch this space. Or rather, watch that space!
While on the subject of web hosting and domain registration*, I’m currently waiting on the transferral of control of this domain to the registrar that holds and hosts all my other sites.
As I’m moving away from UK2 (who are a notoriously grasping bunch of shysters that I won’t honour with a link), this has cost me a lot of time and money, and caused me no amount of frustration so far**.
Thankfully, as with many such processes, Google was far more helpful than the company themselves (not to mention damning). The web is still very much a frontier town - it pays to ask around before you go into business with someone.
I believe the process is in action now, but if VCTB disappears for a few days, at least you’ll know what happened. Fingers crossed, everything will work out fine.
Only the one incoming title this week, the result of me exercising my editorial privileges as Reviews Kaizer at Interzone:
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol. 2 - ed. George Mann
Literally fresh from the press, no less - they’d just received the ARCs when I requested it. Cheers, George! 
I think I may well end up bouncing in and out of it over the next few weeks as a way of breaking up the Wolfe omnibus - not because I’m finding it boring (which I’m most certainly not) but because it’s bombarding me with so much imagery and so many set pieces to absorb that I’m finding it hard to concentrate on reality***.
With the sheer amount of BUSY I’ve had this week****, I’ve totally failed to say how nice it was to meet some of the gang at TTAcon last Saturday (and to put some faces to the names and email addresses at long last), as well as briefly meeting Pat Cadigan and Ellen Datlow and catching up with my great friend Liz.
As a side note, Jetse mentions a conversation we had at the time regarding McDonald’s Brasyl; for the record, I don’t remember claiming Brasyl was an inferior novel to River Of Gods, but I’m sure I said that it wasn’t as immediate a story (as I put that very phrase in my recently submitted review). We’d both had a beer or two, though, which may explain the crossed wires*****.
Anyhow, go read Jetse’s analysis - because in addition to being an amiable Dutch man-mountain and beer-machine, he’s a damn good writer and an exceptionally clever fellow as well.
That aside, I’m going to keep FPB short this week and forgo the normal blathering, as I have a gig to attend this evening (EP launch party for local prog-hardcore gang Munroe Effect), and I have this week’s Free Fiction round-up yet to do for Futurismic …
And there’s The Friday Curry to be shoehorned in there somewhere, as well! So I’ll bid you a swift farewell, and wish you a good weekend.
Adios, amigos.
[ * That sound you can hear? That's my teeth grinding. ]
[ ** "Thank you for filling in this intensely obtuse web-page form that doesn't work in Firefox and has a tendency of clearing all fields when you attempt to submit it. Now please fax the DNA sequences for both your parents and at least one living uncle or aunt to the following number, along with the deeds to your home and a document that transfers possession of all your worldly goods to a three-legged armadillo named Napoleon, and we'll consider looking into your support query some time this week. Thank you for using UK2!" ]
[ *** So, no change there, then. ]
[ **** One of these days I'll go through past FPBs and count the number of times I've described myself as being ridiculously busy. I would do it now, but naturally I'm far too busy. ]
[ ***** Yeah, I had a few beers. It was a con, after all! I'm being frugal and healthy, but I'm not becoming a Puritan. ]
OK, ladies and gents; the cat is out of the bag.
Yours truly is now publisher and editor-in-chief of Futurismic.
This is a very big deal for me, and also more than a trifle scary. But I’ve been talking the talk about web publishing for a long time - so when the opportunity arose to take the wheel at Futurismic I figured it was high time I walked the walk as well.
I hope those of you who’ve been following Futurismic for a while will stay on-board - we’re going to start publishing fiction again next month, and non-fiction columns will follow shortly after that.
Those of you who don’t already follow Futurismic, I hope you’ll subscribe and come along for the ride.
Thanks for reading, folks.
Hey folks - just a heads-up for those of you who (inexplicably) don’t subscribe to Futurismic*.
One of my excellent blogging crew over there, Edward Willett, has a new novel out from DAW Books. It’s called Marseguro**, and he’s giving copies away - click on over there to take part. You’ve got until Sunday 17th February.
He’ll ship international, so no worries if you’re not Canadian. And hey, y’know - free books! Get to it.
[* How easy do I have to make it for you, huh? :)]
[** You can sample the first few chapters of Marseguro on Ed's website, if you like.]
It’s a strange thing, blogging - often a largely thankless task, a genuine labour of love (or of egotism, in the opinion of some who may not be entirely incorrect). But suffice to say that, except for the industry bigwigs and AdSense farmers, there’s little reward for running a blog.
Indeed, all you can hope for is recognition, a little bit of kudos - which is why I was incredibly chuffed to discover that Futurismic is listed among PC Magazine’s 100 Favourite Blogs, alongside major heavyweights like BoingBoing, Gawker and Lifehacker.
I’ve thought about quitting Futurismic a number of times in the last year or so; I was reaching a point where being the only person with the available time to struggle with the old broken Moveable Type installation, just to make sure there were a few fresh posts every day, felt like head-butting a brick wall - only without the consolation of an audience that head-butting a brick wall brings (in this town, at least).
But now I feel immensely glad I stuck with it, and that I recently hired in my new crew of bloggers. Futurismic will probably never pay me one red cent, and I never joined in the expectation that it would. I joined because I liked what it was trying to do … and making it onto that list means that other people have noticed it, and that they like it too.
Once we get the fiction and columns up and running again (which promises to be sooner rather than later), we’re going to kick some serious arse, right across this here blogosphere. I hope all of you will be watching us do it, too.
Yes indeed, after a weekend of hard graft and staring at screens for hours on end, we’ve managed to get Futurismic back on its feet, as promised.
If you were subscribed to the old feed, some neat trickery should ensure that the new one reaches you automagically. If you weren’t subscribed to Futurismic’s RSS feed before, maybe you should consider becoming so?
It’s not just a paying market for short sf stories, but a fast-paced blog delivering bite-sized chunks of news that connect to science fiction, as well as a soon-to-be-revived non-fiction section with regular columns on the more down-to-earth aspects of futurist speculation.
We’re still working on the site theme, however, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t look the same next time you click through.
Modern communication technologies such as the internet are providing new tools and channels for citizens to use in their interaction with governments - and vice versa. Is it time for citizens and governments alike to accept the changed landscape of politics, and begin opening up the ’source code’ of democracy to closer inspection?
Continue reading “Democracy 2.0 - Opening the Black Boxes of Government”
“Synthetic worlds are big business. And not just for their creators – there are a growing number of people and businesses making a living in the real world by working in simulated ones. Continue reading “The Potential Of Synthetic Worlds”
• Velcro City Tourist Board is proudly powered by
WordPress •
