Making Light

John Scalzi is right

2009-07-03T21:37:27Z

Although really, my first reaction to the news that F&SF will be running a writing workshop was to think to myself, okay, that's another step down the road to being a literary magazine oriented primarily to aspiring writers. Which is arguably a direction in which the "big three" science fiction magazines have been going for a while. Twenty and thirty years ago, I knew lots of people who read the SF magazines without aspiring to write for them. These days, in my own sphere of social awareness, I know only a few such people, most of whom are readers of Analog. (A magazine which, more than the others, still appears to be published to an identifiable group of actual human beings who simply read it because they like it.)

John raises the question of whether F&SF will be paying the lucky workshoppers whose stories are selected, largely because Gordon Van Gelder's editorial doesn't actually say anything about this. My own guess would be that Gordon intends to do so, but John's not wrong to note that this is nothing but a guess. Gordon's bigger mistake, I think, was to so firmly play up the "you might get published in F&SF" angle. Yes, workshop instructors sometimes do wind up ushering particularly good student stories into professional print--Greg van Eekhout made his first sale to me, for Starlight 3, after I read the story as one of his Viable Paradise instructors; and a decade earlier, Ted Chiang's award-winning "Tower of Babylon" famously started out as his Clarion submission story. But these are unusual events; neither Clarion nor Viable Paradise promise that your workshop stories will be considered for professional publication, nor do they even (as Gordon is definitely doing) imply that they might be. My guess is that if the F&SF workshop goes forward as planned, Gordon and instructor Gardner Dozois will find it harder than they expect to run an effective workshop when a significant number of the students are having their brains scrambled by the notion that they're locked in a competition with their fellow students over those semi-promised thrice-yearly chances to be published in F&SF oh my god lights flashing bells ringing hosts of angels from on high I could pass out from the excitement and also throw up. (Yes, I have met aspiring SF writers.) I could be wrong about this, but I fear I'm not.

And while we're agreeing with John Scalzi, let's also note that yes, honestly, the attitudes of the "big three" toward electronic submission really have, over the last decade, gone from "practical response to unsolved problems of electronic mail and text" to "old man yelling at clouds." I mean, sure, it's their business and they can do as they like--refuse to read email, or for that matter demand that aspiring writers wear plaid pants. But as John points out, here in 2009, in most of the business world, electronic document transmittal has been routine for well over a decade; file formats, version control, and electronic workflow are basically boring issues with multiple solutions--about as challenging as setting up a household budget spreadsheet, and about as cutting-edge. I mean, dudes, just get a GMail account, if it's that hard. Get three.

Yes, it's true that Tor still requires printed manuscripts from people submitting unsolicited material. And if it were entirely up to me I'd change that. I already do the overwhelming majority of my work on screen and online. Certainly if I were currently in charge of a short fiction venue with a wide-open submission policy, I wouldn't just be allowing electronic submissions, I'd be requiring them.

Elf Help, a Parlor Bookstore Game

2009-06-30T21:10:52Z

Oh, dear. The tough economic times have hit the chain bookstore where you work, and the orders have come down from Head Office: cut the SF&F department (possibly Horror as well).

Your store manager is a fan, however, and she's made a stealthy swap. She stopped buying Self-Help books instead, changed a few shelf labels, and kept the entire SF&F section.

Unfortunately, people keep coming into the bookstore looking for self-help books, and all you have are genre. To cover for your manager, you're going to have to find SF&F (and Horror, if desired) books to help these poor folk who are looking for guidance on their personal problems.

For instance, when that driven woman comes in looking for help raising her Indigo Child, suggest a copy of Ender's Game.
And that gentleman who's having height issues will no doubt benefit from a copy of The Warrior's Apprentice, yes?
No doubt that bloke still dealing with the loss of his parents at an early age will find The Graveyard Book of great use.

Have I mentioned that your job is at stake here?*

* Yes, The Princess Bride would make a great study of different management styles.

Two things

2009-06-30T18:40:50Z

One! We're aware that all comments were going straight to the moderation queue for a while today. Something is wonky about our spam filters. It's been happening to everyone. We think we've fixed it for the moment.

Two! Some people have complained about ML moderators silently deleting their own posts. This happens occasionally, usually when one of us gets sufficiently torqued to say something we then immediately regret. I realize many of you are astonished, but it happens, even to the shimmering disembodied beings of pure dispassionate rationality that moderate Making Light. And unlike the rest of you, we don't have anyone to come along and lovingly tell us we're currently being the butthead; we have to do that for ourselves. (Lengthy, tearful self-pity scene excised here.)

Anyway, just to be clear, in the rare cases where this happens in the future, we won't do it invisibly--we'll leave the comment and its comment number in place, merely replacing its text with something appropriate like "[self-deleted by moderator]".

In other news, there are enormous jets of water vapor and ice shooting out of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Also, here's a free amusing toy.

Two smart things amidst the global Michael Jackson mediagasm

2009-06-29T12:43:45Z

From Robert Rossney, the best single piece I've read about Jackson's life.

Meanwhile, a few hours after Jackson's death, Amanda Palmer covers "Billie Jean."

Sometimes Violence Is the Answer

2009-06-28T14:13:02Z

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the raid on the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York City.

At 1:20 on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a standard tactic at the time against gay bars. This time, instead of lining up quietly and showing ID (with men in drag and women who weren't wearing at least three pieces of feminine apparel being arrested, for in those days cross-dressing was illegal), the patrons of the bar refused; a crowd gathered, turned violent, and the police had to be rescued by their Tactical Police Force.

Rioting continued for several days.

One year later, on 28 June 1970, America's first Gay Pride march took place. Within two years there were open gay rights groups in pretty-much every major city.

In December 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM.

Ten years before the Stonewall Riots, homosexual acts, even between consenting adults in private homes, were illegal in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. (It became fifty states when Hawaii joined the Union in August of '59, back down to forty-nine when Illinois decriminalized sodomy in '61.) In those days homosexuals could be imprisoned for life in mental institutions. In seven states they could be castrated.

Now, things are different.

Time makes strange bedfellows of us all

2009-06-27T04:43:06Z

Via Arthur Hlavaty, I see that a British appeals court has ruled that a London Orthodox Jewish school that gave admissions priority to Jewish students is engaging in a forbidden “test of ethnicity” if it uses the traditional Orthodox definition of Jewishness — matrilineal descent. (The school has a PDF FAQ about the decision.)

But that’s not what prompted me to post. What got me typing was, while searching for more details, discovering this angry editorial criticizing the decision — from the British National Party, aka the British Fascists, who have apparently been courting the Jewish vote, perhaps inspired by Pat Buchanan’s famous success with Jewish voters in Florida. Welcome to the 21st century.

Peeling the onion

2009-06-25T04:58:35Z

Has it occurred to anyone else that maybe a whole bunch of right-wing Republican moralists are engaged in some sort of weird nefarious covert political plot, and the adultery stories are a cover? ’Cause at this point, I think it’s either that or the orbital mind-control lasers.

So, any guesses as to what the plot is?

Page Rank

2009-06-25T02:55:33Z

So, anyway, here's a cute little button that shows Making Light's current Google Page Rank. Scores range from 0 (the worst) to 10 (the best).

Here's Google's explanation of what Page Rank means:

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

That Google page leads off to other fascinating discussions of How To Make A Good Webpage (or at least avoid making a bad one), such as this:

Little or no original content
One of the most important steps in improving your site's ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.
However, some webmasters attempt to improve their page's ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other auto-generated pages that don't add any value to users. Examples include:

Thin affiliate sites: These sites collect pay-per-click (PPC) revenue by sending visitors to the sites of affiliate programs, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user. These sites usually have no original content and may be cookie-cutter sites or templates with no unique content.
Doorway pages: Pages created just for search engines
Auto-generated content: Content generated programatically. Often this will consist of random paragraphs of text that make no sense to the reader but that may contain search keywords.
Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

...And so on.

One could look at that set of pages as a contemplation on original sin. Or one could compare it with the ideals set up for moderation and community that Miss Teresa has expounded.

Domestic Terrorism

2009-06-23T16:05:37Z

The terrorist threat in America remains the same as it has always been.

The typical America terrorist is a white right-winger. Not just James W. Von Brunn, not just Scott Roeder, now along come Shawna Forde of Buena Vista, Arizona; Jason Eugene Bush of Kingman, Arizona; and Albert Robert Gaxiola of Tucson, Arizona.

These folks are from the Minutemen American Defense, a splinter group from the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. After they got kicked out of the main group for being even crazier than the average Minuteman, they apparently financed their freelance border patrols with armed robbery, home invasion, and murder.

The story just popped up at CNN.under the headline Rogue Minutemen leader held in fatal home invasion.

Raul Flores thought federal agents had barged with guns drawn into his home in Arivaca, Arizona, in the middle of the night.
The woman and two men wore uniforms and identified themselves as U.S. Marshals. They claimed the house was surrounded. They said they were looking for an escaped prisoner, Flores' wife told a 911 dispatcher.
But there was no backup waiting outside, and no fugitive. The marshals were imposters.
They had targeted Flores because they suspected he was a drug trafficker and they wanted to rob and kill him, according to the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
As the intruders searched his home, Flores asked one of the men why his handgun was taped. The man responded by shooting and killing Flores.
"Someone just came in and shot my daughter and husband," Flores' wife frantically told 911. She tells the police operator that she was shot and left for dead with her husband, Raul Flores, 29, and daughter Brisenia, 9, who were both shot in the head.

When Guns Are Outlawed

2009-06-23T15:20:04Z

[Note: This is not the place for the Gun Control Argument, nor for the What Would You Carry? dick-measuring contest.]

I read on CNN under the scary headline "People on terrorist watch list allowed to buy guns" that

From February 2004 to February 2009, 963 background checks using the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System "resulted in valid matches with terrorist watch list records; of these matches, approximately 90 percent were allowed to proceed because the checks revealed no prohibiting information," the GAO report says. About 10 percent were denied.
"Under current law, there is no basis to automatically prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives because they appear on the terrorist watch list," wrote the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues, Eileen R. Larence.
"Rather, there must be a disqualifying factor (i.e., prohibiting information) pursuant to federal or state law, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigration status."

That is to say, to be denied the right to buy a firearm you had to be crazy or a criminal. I'm good with that.

However, that isn't good enough for Senator Frank Lautenberg, (D-New Jersey):

In a statement Monday, Lautenberg said, "this new report is proof positive that known and suspected terrorists are exploiting a major loophole in our law, threatening our families and our communities. This 'terror gap' has been open too long, and our national security demands that we shut it down."
The statement said Lautenberg is introducing legislation that would give the U.S. attorney general "authority to stop the sale of guns or explosives to terrorists."

Which is pure moonshine. It's proof positive that the Terrorist Watch List is fatally flawed. 865 individuals (per the story) got their firearms and yet there have been no terrorist attacks with them.

First, we already know that nothing whatever is required to get onto that list: whim, error, and accident seem to be as important as any other source for a name to go on the list. There is no judicial oversight or review.

Second, there is no mechanism for an individual to be informed that he/she is on the list.

Third, there is no mechanism for an individual who discovers he/she is on the list to challenge it.

If there are known terrorists out there, why haven't they been arrested and tried? If convicted, then the current mechanisms click in and everything's fine. If someone is merely suspected ... well, I suspect Lautenberg of being a terrorist. Let's put his name on the secret list.

[Note: This is not the place for the Gun Control Argument, nor for the What Would You Carry? dick-measuring contest.]

Happy Solstice

2009-06-22T01:36:31Z

Today is the longest day (and shortest night) of the year.

Sunrise here was at 04:59:34. Sunset is ... now ... at 20:36:31 EDT.

Litchfield means "Graveyard"

2009-06-20T23:38:00Z

Via Skyfyre's LJ, (linked from the Friends, Relations, Cronies, and Colleagues portion of Making Light's Globally Useful blogroll), we find the account of the doings in Litchfield, New Hampshire, as related in the Union Leader:

LITCHFIELD – Schools Supt. Elaine F. Cutler is apologizing for the use of "inappropriate material in our schools" and said stories in a Campbell High School elective course will be immediately removed from the curriculum.
"Some of these stories contained explicit, vulgar and gratuitous language and school administrators have determined that these stories are not appropriate for a high school curriculum," Cutler said in a statement to news media this afternoon.
She said the Short Story course will be reviewed and revised over the summer by a team composed of the curriculum director, teachers and parent representatives according to school board policy. Administrative review will occur before the curriculum is initiated.

"First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards." -- Mark Twain.

Skyfyre has a long and detailed response of her own.

When a book list is made for a school, I don’t imagine that teachers go “I wonder how I can wreak havoc this semester! What kind of trouble can I cause and make my life as difficult as possible?” I imagine teachers ask themselves what their students can learn from the most. And, no, not to learn whatever the teachers own views are. I doubt teachers are actively trying to indoctrinate children into accepting homosexuality and I highly doubt that teachers are trying to impart the knowledge that drug use is not just good, it’s fun! What I think teachers are trying to teach is the ability to think and to read critically.
It’s irresponsible to try to keep children from controversial books. It’s not assigned to make children accept the issues at hand, but to let them know that the issues exist. It allows them to evaluate themselves and come up with their own views on it. Any parent that tries to stop that self-evaluation and personal growth that can come from a book is, I’m sorry, an idiot. All they’re doing is stopping their child from reaching their own decisions and their own potential. If you try to protect children from disagreeable subjects (“Oh, noes! Homosexuality and drug use exist! We cannot let our children know of these things!”) all you do is leave them woefully unprepared for the world outside their parents care. To do that, as [info]jenwrites said, does the student a great disservice. It also shows that the parent doesn’t trust their child to come up with the correct (or what they view as the correct) answer. Something that has always annoyed me is the distrust of the youth by the adults. I don’t agree with that distrust at all.

Notable in the Union Leader's story:

As [objecting parent] Johnson quoted from the short story "The Crack Cocaine Diet," there were gasps from the assembled parents and, at times, from members of the school board.

Skyfyre comments:

When I read that line, I took it as a big hint that none of them had actually read what was being protested.

You can read the beginning of "The Crack Cocaine Diet" here.

Revenge Drama

2009-06-20T20:26:45Z

Those who have been reading Girl Genius right the way along already know this. Those who have read sporadically may not. Those who have never read the comic near-certainly do not. But we are now in Part Three of the astounding adventure, Revenge of the Weasel Queen.

This is a mini-adventure that is providing a break in the action of the main story line.

Open thread 126

2009-06-20T14:04:57Z

Psalm 126, King James translation:

When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion,
we were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with singing:
then said they among the heathen,
The LORD hath done great things for them.

The LORD hath done great things for us;
whereof we are glad.

Turn again our captivity, O LORD,
as the streams in the south.

They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy.

He that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.

I don't know what to link to the last two lines. I don't know when we will know. Nothing is written.

Fun, Making Of Own

2009-06-16T22:21:19Z

Well, folks. Some filmmakers are in town. They're making a movie up in Pittsburg.

I can make some guesses about what happened to the people of Friar:

Froze to death? Sounds about right
Eaten by black flies. Hate when that happens.
Went to Coaticook to see the hootchie-kootchie show.