They are currently tallying the Hugo Awards and the results will be announced on April 4.
Unfortunately, they received a record number of nominations this year. That makes it harder to squeak in with just a few votes. I was hoping for just the opposite. I figured with a far distant locale and the high cost of mailing ballots that fewer people would vote. I received my Hugo Nominations Ballot last week, but that was long after the voting stopped. (I voted online.)
I expect to see Australian writers and magazines make a good showing at the Hugo this year. The Aussies are great spec-fic fans and Aussiecon4 is going to be quite a party. Air fair and hotel for a Euro or Nortamericano is upwards to $2,000 and out of many people’s price range, so the Aussies will rule.
I had just started to doze off last night when Larry called and told me that Rick Estrin and the Night Cats were down at the Turning Point. I roused myself up and went down to see them. If they come to your town, don’t miss them. They are great.
This is the first time I’ve posted a video directly to Facebook.
I made a fan page for the JT30 microphone. I did it in order to learn how to make a fan page. Since social networking is the next big thing, I thought I had better get some skills.
I did not try to promote the page at all and I didn’t even think about it until I went to check on it and the page had six fans. I click a few days later and it had nine fans. The thing was growing all by itself.
I went to the page and made a “badge” and placed that on my JT30 website. Within the week I had 20 fans. I invited all of my harmonica friends to join (10 or so) and four of them signed up.
Today I have 29 fans and it looks like the page will continue to grow organically and geometrically.
I asked several big name harp players to sign up, but none of them did. They were eager to get me as a friend, but not so willing to return the favor. The all use JT30 microphones, though and many have bought stuff from me.
I closed giveaway #2 last night and I’ll post the winners. There were only 5 entries. I will try this one more time.
I have selected the Earthsea Trilogy, A Princess of Mars, and a Gray Mouser Book for the next contest. This is for the Once Upon A Time Challenge, so a few lucky people can get started on their goals.
I’ll have to take pictures of the books, but as soon as I do I’ll put the entry form here.
If I don’t get better results, it will be the last giveaway.
Leigh Brackett wrote some 200 Science Fiction Stories and is in my top 10 favorite writers. I prefer the bronze bra space operas of the 1940s, but she wrote some good serious stuff (the Big Sleep script – you know; Bogey and Bacall!). George Lucas liked her work, too, and gave her the project of writing the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back.
Read this review of the first script and enjoy. It seems way better than the later scripts. It’s too bad Brackett died shortly after writing this.
One of the things the the readers of the post complain about is that there are few markets for Spanish Language SF stories. I think this is just wrong. Spanish language internet is huge and I would be writing in Spanish if I could. If I spoke Spanish I would start an eZine today and I bet it would take off.
Here are a few that I’ve found, but there should be more:
Axxón: Monthly Argentine ezine of Science Fiction featuring fiction from around the world.
Alfa Erídiani: SF ezine which published a special supplement devoted to Cuban Science Fiction
Disparo en red: Homegrown Cuban site run by the Espiral Writers’ Workshop.
Químicamente impuro “Chemically impure”: a Spanish-language blog of ultrashort (40-149 words) stories, typically sf, horror, or fantasy.
Breves no tan breves: “Not so short shorts”: QI’s sister site, for stories between 150 and 1000 words.
Guaicán Literario — An exhaustive Spanish-language site for information on Cuban SF.
I’ve had an automated install for the Awstats package for a while. I cleaned it up today to make it user friendly and made it available for download. It works only for 1and1 linux hosting with the business or developer package.
The instructions for doing this by hand are so difficult as to make it impossible. I had to automate it because I could never get it right twice in a row.
Now I am happily installing awstats on the 20 or so websites that I have hosted at 1and1. It takes about 3 minutes for each install.
I woke up this morning with a sinus headache and I had to sit through two intense meetings already. The headache is from allergies to the the pollen from trees that are starting to bloom. The good news is that the bees are finding these trees and bringing home lots of pollen and nectar.
Here is a video of the Martha hive. You can watch the girls going home with baskets full of yellow pollen.
One benefit of the honey from local bees is that they have small amounts of the allergens that have passed through the bee’s digestive process. These fragments of allergens act to help the body build resistance to the pollen, but don’t induce an noticeable allergic reaction. At least that is what many people claim. I tend to be skeptical, but I will be having toast and honey for breakfast every morning after I harvest the honey. If it helps with my allergies, I won’t complain.
MagCloud (an HP Service) has an interesting alternative to using LuLu or one of the other book publishers. It is a print-on-demand magazine publisher.
There are two advantages, as far as I can tell. If you are publishing smaller number of pages with lots of color graphics this would be cheaper than a paperback book. It has a larger form factor than a book so the same number of words can go on fewer pages.
At 20 cents a page it is still not cheap, but a 20 page eZine would be produced for $4. Most internet magazines would fit into this size.
It costs you next nothing. If you are an eZine publisher it would make sense to try it out.
I am thinking about producing a beekeeping magazine about my hives using text from my blog and filling it with pictures.
I am also thinking about publishing my short stories as a small magazine, but I would need an artist.
Science Fiction Giveaway #2 is three great hard SF books. I learned from the last giveaway that my readers want hard SF. The three books below are in excellent condition and are very collectible.
Even if you won last time you can put your bid in for one of these books. I will ship the books out at my expense in the week after the contest closes.
I will announce the winners of the last contest tomorrow. Everyone who enters gets something. I will pick some good books from my collection for the runner ups. I can’t guarantee that I’ll do that again, especially if I get a good response this time.
Next time will be three fantasy books, probably by Andre Norton, Fritz Leiber and/or L. Sprague de Camp.
A nice 1961 edition of one of the great books of the Golden Age. It is the story of a telepathic mutant living among humans. Van Vogt’s Slan simply changed the face of Science Fiction. It was one of John W. Campbell, Jr.’s first purchases at Astounding Stories, and set the tone for the Golden Age. Wonderful Cover.
This is a collection of 8 short stories by one of the best writers in SF. These are great SF stories. Harry Harrison is known for books like The Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld, but in these stories he really pushes the limit of Hard Science Fiction.
This 1965 first paperback printing of the two part Orphans of the Sky is classic Heinlein. It is the story of a generational ship traveling between the stars for hundreds of years that has forgotten its mission. I have read and re-read this book and I think it is one of the Grand Master of Science Fiction’s best.
Leigh Brackett wrote some 200 Science Fiction Stories and is in my top 10 favorite writers. I prefer the bronze bra space operas of the 1940s, but she wrote some good serious stuff (the Big Sleep script – you know; Bogey and Bacall!). George Lucas liked her work, too, and gave her the project of writing the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back.
