I love the internet, but it does tend to show me thinbgs which I then feel I need to buy. Point in case, this excellent T-shirt design from Diesel Sweeties:

I shall be wearing that with pride when I got to review live shows in future!

…it appears that I may be forced to rename this blog as Slidingly Engaging Fastener City Tourist Board.

It’s just doesn’t scan as well, damn it.

These days, you know you’ve made it in the sf blogosphere when you get lampooned by Steve Wilson at ‘My Elves are Different’. It would appear that my moment has arrived.

However, lest you fear the balloon of my ego swelling from such attention, Shaun at Neverscapes wields the sharp pin of justice by mentioning a quote from one of my lager-fueled rants at Eastercon. I’d totally forgotten saying that. I wish that I hadn’t been reminded of it either. *sigh*

As a writer of minimal craft and even less native talent, I often wonder what the components of a good story are - and, of course, what the components of a marketable story are. Thanks to Andrew Wheeler, I now know what to put into my first novel-length effort:

“If there’s a book out there that can be honestly sold by a cover of a mostly-naked woman riding a dragon while a spaceship explodes in the background, I’d love to see it. (I bet I could sell a whole lot of them.)”

[Yes, I know, it's just a bit of humour.]

gwot1 Originally uploaded ‘in the wild’ by brucesflickr.

You can always rely on Bruce Sterling to spot and photograph items of surreal interest - and this is no exception. I wonder if there’s any plans for a ’stupid draconian security measures’ expansion pack?

Luc Reid has a few more of these, but this was my favourite:

“Q: How many magical realist writers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None: the light bulb just changes, for no apparent reason, into a baby. The baby is calling your name. It’s still snowing.”

XKCD have the occasional dull or incomprehensible strip, but they make up for it with winners like this one:

Inferno-krusher, clockpunk, The New Comprehensible; new subgenres and literary manifestos seem to be the thing this year. Warren Ellis has unearthed yet another one for us. Heliumpunk is:

“A future or near-future setting where anachronistic and obsolete technology is given a new lease on life, not just because it is cool, but for plausible reasons within the setting.”

Hmmm. It’s too sensible to really catch on, IMHO.

First Cosmic Variance, now lowly Velcro City - will no one save us from these marching plebian imbeciles?

When I read that Scalzi was running as write-in candidate for the SFWA presidency, I must confess to having emitted a wry chuckle. I’ve nothing against the SFWA, but they do give the outward impression of being the last bastion of science fiction writers who’ve completely ignored the technological changes of the last few decades, and I felt sure the Scalzi candidacy would get some conversation going.

As it did.

But it would appear that a few other candidates are rearing their heads, some serious (at least, I assume so, it seems too sane to be a you-know-what), some not quite so. Anyone spotted any others? That VanderMeer round-up seems pretty conclusive. I have to admit that, from the point of view of a UK quasi-critic with no vested interest, this promises to be one hell of a side-show - but snark and date-related shenanigans aside, we could see some serious changes if the votes fall in unexpected ways. I can’t help but think of that scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’…

“Nah, we’re Judean People’s Front.”

“SPLITTERS!”

In related news, it would appear that the genre scene has granted me a title of my own, albeit one of minimal power and influence. But, hey; you want something re-named, you drop me an email.

Any fellow Eastercon goers fancy staging some sort of Velvet Revolution against the BSFA incumbents? Just askin’.