I’m not quite old enough to qualify, and don’t need it in any case, but I thought I’d pass this around.
Originally shared by Kat Richardson
If you’re a Spec Fic writer, fifty years old or older, and just getting started in your career, take a look at this:
#SLF #SpecFic #writer #sfwriters
So, on the one hand, readership of SF/fantasy short stories through the traditional magazines seems to be declining year on year, in general.
On the other hand, there are still plenty around. I counted more than 100 pro and semipro markets for SFF last time I checked.
On the gripping hand (we are talking about SFF here), there’s a revival in people reading short fiction, snatching moments when they’re waiting in line or waiting to pick up the kids from school to read on their phone, tablet, or ereader. Amazon have a special section of their ebook store based on how long it will take you to read something.
Maybe (I thought last night) we need an app that will connect SFF (and maybe other?) readers with stories.
Sign up the magazines, which act as curators of content, and maybe some of the anthologies, too. Allow authors to put their own stories in directly, if they’ve previously sold the story to at least a semipro market and the rights have reverted.
Enable the users to choose what to read by magazine/antho, or by author, or by editor, or by length, or by (user-generated) tag, or a combination.
Charge a small monthly subscription, and track which stories people read, and pay the source magazine/anthology/author proportionately (kind of the Kindle Unlimited model).
Yes?
Well, this theory would help to explain why I dislike post-apocalyptic stories and much prefer utopias. Plenty of flaws left in it, but some interesting ideas.
(Via Deb Chachra.)
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/
With the payment I received yesterday, I’ve now passed $500 in total earnings from short stories. But I’ve also already earned 40% as much this year, with that one payment, as I earned in the whole of last year.
Getting up into the pro rates really makes a difference.
AI as a service. Of course, we should have known that one was coming.
Originally shared by Kevin Kelly
You can buy AI on the cloud. Google is selling image recognition for 60 cents per thousand. This is the first example of selling commodity AI on the grid.
Wrote about 6000 words of a short story on Friday, and finished off the last 700-odd this morning. It’s about a princess cursed to turn into a wolf at night, and features an older female protagonist.
Not sure where I’ll send it once it’s been revised. It’s maybe not literary enough for Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It could be another one for Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, perhaps.
Lots of interesting information in this survey. There are very few groups left in the US that contain a majority who are opposed to same-sex marriage; who are opposed to legal protections against discrimination for LGBT people; or who favour allowing a small business to refuse service to same-sex couples on the grounds of religious belief. Unsurprisingly, if you are old, white, male, conservative, Protestant, Republican and live in the Deep South, you’re more likely to hold these views, but even then it’s far from a lock.
(Side note: it always amuses me that US statistics lump Pacific Island people in with Asians. I live in Auckland, which has more Pacific Island citizens than any other city in the world, and the idea of considering them as the same demographic as Asian people is just bizarre.)
Originally shared by Will Shetterly
“majorities of black Protestants (54%), Hispanic Protestants (59%), Mormons (66%), white evangelical Protestants (67%), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (72%) oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. Muslims are divided in their opinions over same-sex marriage (41% favor, 45% oppose).”
Microsoft are interviewing disabled people to figure out how to make products easier to use for everyone. “They are finding the expertise and ingenuity that arises naturally, when people are forced to live a life differently from most.”
I can attest to this. My wife can’t reach above her head or down to the ground, and I have a friend who only has the use of one hand. They’re very ingenious in finding alternative ways to do things, because the alternative is not to get those things done.
Originally shared by Brie “Beau” Sheldon
Really interesting! Via private share
Different writers punctuate very differently, within the general rules of punctuation. This post shows the differences in a few ways, the most attractive being the heatmaps at the bottom.
Originally shared by Walter Roberson
#dataporn
https://medium.com/@neuroecology/punctuation-in-novels-8f316d542ec4#.lzqis01y6
Found this Harvard seminar about the Internet of Things, and it turned out to be a bit different from what I expected – more opinionated, for a start. The lecturer is James Whittaker (medium.com/@docjamesw), and part of what he’s talking about – though he doesn’t use the specific terms – is the kind of situationally-aware computing that Google is working on right now.
One of his speculations gave me an idea for an SF story involving a woman whose living comes from being a taste-setter. A step beyond a blogger; companies give her clothes and accessories because they want other people to see her wearing them and buy them (which generates affiliate income for her), and venues like restaurants and nightclubs pay her to come and be seen in them. She’s an aspiration model. All of this is guided by subtle interactions with machines; a self-driving car turns up at her door and she gets into it and goes to where it takes her.
But what happens when the machines start guiding her away from a man she’s met because being seen with him would lower her aspiration value – and she wants to be with him?
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/course/seminars-internet-things-video/id1069443090?i=359205504&mt=2