Tag: Thursday Linkfest

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Cure

A friend of mine just posted this on facebook. Due to overwhelming nostalgia and flashbacks to teenage angst, I, of course, am immediately posting it here. ‘Cause, honestly, I don’t care how long it’s been since you last listened to the cure, it’s still too damn long. And now I go back to the edits and line-proofs, in the hopes I get them done in time to not piss off editors. Catch you on the morrow, peeps. Don’t let the Monday get you down.

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

Another week where the list is far less complete than I’d like, but such is life these days… Okay, did you know Angela Slatter has a blog now? No? Well, now you do. Do yourself a favour and go read it, for Angela is a phenomenal writer and a sayer of useful things – I recommend starting with her posts on dialogue or the Clarion South experience. So Friday of last week I put forth some ideas about SF and Gender in response to debates that’ve raged across the Australian SF community of late. Most of the discussion seemed to occur over in the comments of my livejournal, but it also spawned a response from Ben Payne (which generates some interesting discussion on its own). Scienceagogo on Biodeversity Regions as Hotspots for War (Courtesy of Chris Green) Chris Green takes my standard screed on the awesomeness of being rejected and turns it into a yearly writing goal. The Conjecture website has been updates after

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

Over-tired, very busy, and generally lazy this week. This is not so much a weeks worth of interesting links (which I’ve started doing as I go along) as stuff I remembered with half-hearted accuracy sometime this morning. Via the ever-entertaining villainous_mog – photographs of Japanese Factories at night (as VM puts it: they look straight out of Final Fantasy 7.) Tansy Raynor Roberts on writing time, with much on the notion of draft-speed. Clarion peep Ben Francisco has posted his latest article at Fantasy, grading last years big comic-book company crossovers. (In the interest of self-confession, I must admit that my primary response was “thank god I don’t read comics” anymore, even though that’s something of a misnomer – it was big crossovers that drove me towards the discreet stories of the graphic-novel format). Speaking of Clarion Peeps, both Lyn Battersby and Daniel Braum have posted their thoughts on the 2007 experience at tutor Lee Battersby’s blog. Kate Eltham has

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

To kick it off, some members of WA fandom are putting to together a fanzine, Hope, to raise funds for the Bushfire victims in Victoria. A bunch of talented folks have already volunteered work, so much so that there will now be more than one issue. Worth keeping an eye on, all up. With all the doom and gloom surrounding small press publishing, there is at least a glimmer of hope that the recently deceased Realms of Fantasy may come back courtesy of a buy-out of the magazine/brand. Until then, a farewell by the RoF Sushmaster that includes a list of the accepted stories we won’t get a chance to see (With commiserations to my friend Ben Francisco, who unfortunately has a very fine story caught on that list). Something Positive on the tendency among American reviewers to associate the stop-motion film Coraline with Tim Burton. Speaking of webcomics, XKCD addresses an issue that does actually bother me. My old friend Villainous_mog, now

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

Jay Lake says sensible things about writers and psychotic dedication. ASIF has posted their recommended reading list for 2008, with much love thrown in the direction of the ever-awesome Angela Slatter. The 2007 Clarion Blog Nostalgia Extravaganza continues over at Lee Battersby’s site, with entries by clarion peeps Michael Greenhut and Helen Venn. A photo-series on dead Asian themeparks. (snurched from Elizabeth Bear’s livejournal). Gen Con Australia and  my former/sometimes current boss Hooly talks candidly about the 2009 convention (I am, for the record, involved in the con this year, but at a greatly reduced capacity – hence he’s only an intermittent boss these days) If you’re in Brisbane and an aspiring writer-type trying to figure out what happens next, I’d recommend signing up for Marianne de Pierres workshop at Sunnybank library. It’s free and I can say from experience that Marianne’s workshops tend to be both informative and eye-opening. And for the more artistic types – Small Beer Press is holding

Smart Advice from Smart People

Thursday Linkfest

Yesterday was busy and thus thesis-less, plus I got very little sleep thanks to some very unfomfortable shoulder pain, so odds are I’ll be saying little of interest today. Instead, I’ll entertain you with links to stuff that I’ve found interesting over the last week (or so): My good friend Chris Slee reflects on the Edisonade (aka the pre-history of Science Fiction) and what was the best thing *before* sliced bread. The ever-stylish Ben Francisco cherry-picks the SFnal highlights of the authors@google youtube series and gathers them together in a single handy post (although he’s missing Neil Gaiman in the line-up). If you’ve not seen these, particularly the John Scalzi, I recommend going and taking a look. The Aurealis Awards are announced and the results posted on their website. Cat Sparks has posted photographs of the night, in which a bunch of writer-types have scrubbed up pretty well (and I show up looking marginally less shabby than usual in the vast flicker