Info Dump

Matt from Enter the Octopus wants me to let you all know about the Shared Worlds summer camp.? In pursuit of input for the camp activities, Michael Moorecock, Ursula LeGuin, China Mieville, Elizabeth Hand and Nalo Hopkinson were asked: “What’s your pick for the top real-life science fiction or fantasy city”?

This is an interesting summer project that encourages teens to put their creativity on -

Now in its second year, Shared Worlds is a two-week unique summer camp for teens ages 13 to 18, held at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This year the camp runs from July 19 to August 2, with registration still open to the end of June. Creative and fun, Shared Worlds emphasizes writing fiction, game development, and creating art?all in a safe and structured environment with award-winning faculty. Participants in this ?teen think tank? meet like-minded students and learn how to work together and be proactive on their own.?The first week, the students form teams and create their own worlds; the second week, they create in them. Faculty for 2009 will include Holly Black, co-creator of the Spiderwick Chronicles, Hugo Nominee Tobias Buckell, White Wolf game developer Will Hindmarch, World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, Weird Tales fiction editor Ann VanderMeer, and more.

You can find out more HERE

SFSignal did a Mindmeld previously on this subject

The List That Shall Not Be Named sends along a link to keeping up on Iran via Twitter – a Twit-List if you will – very Pythonish.? These are folks who’ve received some degree of reliability, so if you really want to be up to date, go HERE

Cheryl discovers Motion Comix at the Bristol comics con (man – it is SUCH an unfair advantage that she lives over there!!! lol): ZZIZZLCOMIX takes actual comics and adds motion and voice over and now has a bunch of samples up on their site HERE.? I checked one out.? Technically – very interesting, but for me it may take some getting used to – I found the restriction placed on my view of the comic to be a bit disconcerting.? On the other hand, it may be the PERFECT way to broadcast comics to cell phones (and besides, something tells me the current gen doesn’t really care all that much about seeing the whole picture all at once.? And yes, that was a throw-away comment designed to incense the next gen into mouth-frothing apoplexy…)

Cheryl also mentions that the current issue of Clarkesworld (of which she is a member of the editorial staff – full disclosure and all that rot) features a Chesley Award nominee on the cover.? Well, actually it is a piece of art created by the Chesley nominee – kind of tough to ship one whole artist out with each issue (not to mention the cloning problems) and get the frack off my magazine – you’ll wrinkle the cover dammit! gets in the way of appreciating the work itself.

What are the Chesleys?? No, they are not a new type of cheese snack, they are the sf/f/h awards for artistic renderings, named for Bonestell – the guy who used science to show us all how to depict things that we’d never seen.? And the guy who’s imaginings in magazine and book showed us what our future in space was going to look like.? No links – go do your own searching.

Speaking of art – if you’ve been reading the comments, James Killian Spratt has graced this blog with his presence.? James is a sculptor of no mean talent (actually it looks like a very nice talent) who first came to my attention on the ERBdom website, where they have a presentation of his comic treatment of ERB’s A Princess of Mars.

I have often (both here and elsewhere in public – but we won’t talk about the meltdowns -) complained about the treatment that story receives in Hollywood.? I am STILL asking the question – why can’t they just leave the story alone and put it, as written, up on the screen?

I get namby-pamby answers about length, and technical difficulty, and the inherent problems with translating words into pikchurs, but all of them fail.? There’s no reason to screw with an original story other than ego, of this I am convinced.? After all, words into pikchurs is what we all do in our heads whenever we read…

Anyway.? If you can accept the leap that words to non-moving pikchurs is a close cousin to words into moving pikchurs, then you will have to accept Spratt’s comic as PROOF that you can successfully change a story’s medium without messing with the story.? So, if you aren’t afraid to have to admit that Hollywood (more often than not) sucks – go take a look at the comic HERE on ERBzine.

If you’d rather retain your Hollywood illusions, just go take a look at his sculptures here

Finally:? I received an email the other day that 365Tomorrows, the flash fiction website, has accepted another of my tongue-in-cheek ‘UFO’ stories for publication.

I sent it in to them back in December and it was apparently lost in the ‘for further consideration’ pile for a bit.? I’ve asked but have not gotten an andwer yet as to what day the story will be headlined, but I’ll mention it here when it does appear.? The title of the story is ROUGH TRADE.? The subject is a rather prosaic explanation of UFO phenoms.

Speaking of flash fiction.? I have no idea why something I write in thirty minutes or less, with follow-on editing restricted to spelling and grammar checks, gets published, and something that I spend hours, days, weeks and months on, hasn’t yet been accepted.

I’m also mystified that both pieces have featured a UFO theme (a subject I am personally and firmly on the side of – total skeptic) and have been accepted, while other subjects have not.

Of course it could be me – I certainly wouldn’t want to imply that the editors who have accepted my work are not that discriminating…

Maybe the answer is the devil-may-care approach to the writing – but good god, there’s no way I could maintain that degree of emotional involvement with the work over the course of writing a true short story, let alone a novel.? For one thing, I don’t have enough uninterrupted time to get that emotionally deep.? And for another – I’ve already had one heart attack, thank you very much.

Hmmm, stuff for me to think about…