News: November 2007 Archives

Adam Rakunas has posted a business plan for his and Jason Stoddard's "new SF magazine idea".

Niall and Jonathan have already responded.

Here's what I think.

Make stuff free. Use Google Ads. Etc.
It's the obvious thing to do isn't it? Well, it was. Until everyone realised that making money like this is really hard unless you're BoingBoing or can launch multiple niche blogs like Gawker. In software circles there's a debate going on at the moment, with some companies such as 37Signals charging for software and doing okay (see the post Fleeing Free), whilst others believe in open source, and others believe in charging for consultancy on open source products, and yet others giving stuff away and hoping for Google Ad, tipjar money. There is no definitive conclusion, beyond saying that some people do okay with free, some people do okay with charging. My feeling is that if you have massive page hits you can do ads, otherwise you'd be better of charging. If the magazine is good enough quality why would people not pay for it?

You Can Lose Money Too
One thing that often gets lost in these "moving to digital" discussions is that it still costs money. Say you get Dugg or Slashdotted or BoingBoinged... your bandwidth spikes, your website crumples, no one clicks any ads, stays all of ten seconds on the site and then at the end of the month you have to cough up for half a Terrabyte of bandwidth costs. Yes, you can lose money running a website. (And yes, hardening your website to load is the easiest part these days when you can throw multiple EC2 images at it, but it still costs.)

The audience
Being inclusive and including gamers, slashdot readers and people who watch Doctor Who is very easy to say, but difficult to do. PORTAL (cough!). Everyone wanted to be a portal. Of course. Who's achieved it? (I had this conversation briefly with Brian and Ariel Darren at Alt.Fiction.) So, on this point I agree with Jonathan that everything will fragment. In effect you'll just end up with 5 different websites, and then when the fiction part makes no money you have to decided whether to keep it running... Haven't we been here before? Oh, yes, Sci Fiction.

The other stuff
Well, if you can get $1M to give away, why not? User voting, might as well. All the other obvious stuff, might as well.

This all sounds a bit negative. What I'm trying to say is that there's no silver bullet for a business to succeed, and being on the web doesn't change that.

Iain Banks was interviewed by Farah Mendlesohn at the BSFA meeting last night and I made a lightning raid into London to see it.

First up she interviewed both Iain Banks and Iain M Banks, and in fact one of Farah's first questions was how Iain saw the division between his books if not by genre.

As a reader I found Banks highly entertaining, and as a writer I found him immensley inspiring. Entertaining because he rambles off at tangents with anecdotes and rants. It's the sort of stuff you could sit in a pub, with a pint, and listen to all night. Inspiring, to me, because a lot of his answers were very straightforward, very simple in that he obviously doesn't analyse his work too much. He said things like (and I paraphrase because I can't remember exactly):

• I don't know, I just write it, it's up to you to analyse it.
• I just write what I think is cool.
• I try to write original ideas.
• A lot of it is wish-fulfilment.
• I just throw complexity at stories.
  

They are the sort of answers that reassure me! (Of course it should be noted that he does have a degree in English Literature so maybe it's a case of all the technical stuff is bedded so deep he doesn't have to think about it?). I also liked his discusison about how everyone reads a different novel, maybe it's obvious but sometimes it seems to be forgotten.

Other snippets:

• Matter is meant to read like the first part in a trilogy. There are no parts two and three!
• The Algebraist had three months of brainstoming (worldbuilding!) before he started on the plot.
• He thought Brasyl was amazing.

Very enjoyable.

He also read some of chapter 5 of Matter and then signed books, annoyingly I hadn't taken any of mine. Should have taken the proof copy of Matter. Grrr.

Also said a quick meatspace hello to Niall and Paul, saw Paul's post-it festooned copy of Matter (which made me feel very unorganised) and caught up with Robin, before finally getting the bus home just before it turned into a pumpkin.

The Watchmen movie blog now actually has some content, photos of the set. [Via Jed Hartman]

I have also heard that Dave Gibbons is acting as a consultant to the film, including being on set to answer questions.

All of which keeps me hoping that the film will live up to the comic.

Iain Banks is being interviewed by Farah Mendlesohn tonight, at the monthly BSFA meeting (and as part of the promotion for his new book Matter). Details are here. It's open to all and takes place indLecture Theatre 1 Physics, Imperial College, London (that's just behind the Royal Albert Hall). The times says 6pm to 10pm, but I'm guessing that the actual interview won't start until 7 -7.30. Can anyone confirm that?

I'm going, should be fun. Say hello if you see me.

I'm just giving in and making this a day of Doctor Who news....

Billie Piper is now confirmed to be appearing in the three 2009 Doctor Who specials.

And there was much rejoicing...

BBC Radio 2 is broadcasting an interview with Kylie Minogue, the interviewer being David Tennant. The programme is on Tuesday 27 November 2007, 2230 - 2330. (That's tonight.)

However, no Doctor Who gossip in this airing, it's purely the music...

A revised version of this programme, "Re-X-amining Kylie" - featuring additional material about "Doctor Who" - will be broadcast on Radio 2 following the BBC One broadcast of "Voyage of the Damned".

So, that's sometime after Christmas.

There are all sorts of rumours surrounding the casting for the three Doctor Who specials to be shown in 2009. Although, when you follow the rumours to the sources all they really say is that the producers would really love to get Ben Kingsley, Tom Cruise, Bradd Pitt or Angelina Jolie.

Well, of course they would. But bet they won't. Rickey Gervais maybe, Brad Pitt, no.

Doctor Who casting rumours seems to be very trendy in the tabloids these last few years. Perhaps it sells paper? Perhaps they can't be bothered to write some real content.

Whereas me, I just blog about people making up rumours about Doctor Who...

The Sarah Jane Adventures has been getting (relatively) high ratings. Outpost Gallifrey has the details:

"The second part of Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? is the highest rated programme to have been shown on CBBC since its launch, with an official audience of 633,000 viewers. In the list of top rated programmes on cbbc this year, The Sarah Jane Adventures holds the first six positions, with the 7th position being taken by MI High, with 388,000 viewers."

So, considering that not everyone has Digital TV in the UK yet, and the episode was first shown in the children's channel, which is digital only, I reckon that's pretty good. Enough for another series I'd venture.

I like the Cloverfield trailer. Very cool. 21st century city attacked by monster(s) stuff.
The question is can that style be kept up for a whole movie, and will it have a good story?
Good hype generation though.

Some people want to "Save Heroes", which is the sort of thing that happens nowadays when everyone has discovered that blogging is easy and anyone can do it. Anyway, much more entertaining is the discussion that enused on Torque Control.

Personally I'm shallow, and I would like to dictate the following requirements to that Tim Kring bloke:

• Kill off all the characters except Hiro and the other cool one which I won't mention due to UK spoiler issues. Let's face it, they're all dull and whiny except these two.
• Fill the rest of the series with an intense time-travelling sword fight between Hiro and the other character.
  

Tada!

All too easy.

Is this the future of books?

It's Amazon's ebook reader! It has a barmy keyboard on the bottom so that it looks like a BT phone from 1987! It can bookmark pages! It can remember where you got to! You can buy books from Amazon!

Ah. That's the point then.

It uses the magical Amazon wireless Whispernet! (None of that archaic wifi.) You can read blogs! Automatically! No need to get up and use a dictionary, there's one built in! You can highlight text!

Apparently everyone likes it. Including Neil Gaiman! He says it "changes everything"!

The actual display looks okay, but I'd like to see it first-hand before I decide whether it's any cop. However seeing as Amazon's celebrity endorsements include Neil Gaiman and Guy Kawasaki I doubt they'll be sending me a freebie to review ;-)

Oh, and it costs $399, which is about 5p.

UPDATE
Joel at Boing Boing Gadgets has some details beyond the marketing hype.

The BBC radio adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys is online until Saturday. Starring (amongst others) Lenny Henry and Matt Lucas.

Via Neil Gaiman

Entertainment Weekly has four new posters for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, although SFSignal has them on one page which is much less annoying. I think they're okay. The first one looks like "I, Robot", which is bad, second and fourth ones have that (original) Terminator feell to them, and the third, upper torso poster is quite cool but reminds me of Aliens.

The show is due to be shown in the UK on Virgin 1 in 2008 sometime.

David Marusek has said on his blog that he has finished the "Reader's Draft" of his second novel, the follow up to the very cool Counting Heads. And he's been working hard on it, between 30 and 40 hours a week on it for the last several months. Although he dictated it using software, which is surely cheating? (But I'd still like a go with that software.)

Episode 8 of Heroes Season 2 officially pushed it's BDO Woah rating to 25%, although to be honest, much of the Woah was derived from the plot twist revealed in Episode 7.

Meanwhile BBC3 have just show the Woah++ Episode 20 from Season 1, "Five Years Gone", and it's on BBC2 next Wednesday.

Interestingly I have anecdotal evidence that Heroes is being watched on the BBC by all sorts of people that would not normally watch a SF show. Which is nice.

I love choosing which book to read next. Sometimes I know exactly what I feel like. Sometimes I peruse my bookshelf reading blurbs and stroking covers. Sometimes I have a structured queue. Sometimes that queue gets smashed into little pieces.

I was going to read Altered Carbon next, because I really should have read it by now and it's been sitting on my shelf staring at me provocatively. But then The Jennifer Morgue was sitting right next to it taunting me with the promises of fun and monsters and crazy multidimensional maths. So I was going to read that. Then Orbit sent me True Colors, and I hadn't read a Star Wars book in years, so I thought I'd read that. In fact there is a bonus short story at the end of the novel, so I did read that, and liked it, the full novel was next. Then some Manga arrived from Yen Press, and one of the books had "zombie" in the title, which meant that I had to read that. Quick read I thought. But after the one Manga book I felt I should read the others. (There's a review coming when I type it up). And then after that interesting excursion I was back to my original list, but now confused.

Then, today, the post arrived. It contained a proof copy of Matter, courtesy of the very nice people at Orbit.

STOP EVERYTHING!

The front cover of the proof says, "The Culture Is Back. February 2008. Nothing Else Matters."

Yes.

Correct.

The latest Doctor Who rumour is that Lily Allen is in talks to become the Doctor's assistant. As with all Doctor Who rumours it could be completely made up, it was in The Sun originally.

The Children In Need Doctor Who special, to be shown on Friday as part of Children In Need, is called Time Crash, stars David Tennant and Peter Davison, and is written by Steven Moffat.

Need further incentives?

The BBC website team is treating the special like a full blown episode of Doctor Who, including "a mini episode guide, including galleries, a fact file and full credits." And, not only will you be able to watch it online for seven days after its broadcast (if you have a UK IP address) but there will also be a behind-the-scenes featurette from the Doctor Who Confidential team.

"Cult British science fiction TV series The Champions is to be re-made for the big screen."

...from the BBC.

Not more unoriginal remakes I hear you cry. But wait, the writer and director is to be Guillermo del Toro, which suddenly makes everything sound much more hopeful.

Here's the setup:

The Champions were agents whose lives were saved by an advanced civilisation when their plane crashed in the Himalayas. The civilization also bestowed them with superhuman abilities, including the ability to communicate over long distances by mental telepathy and the ability to foresee events.

The news is that the producers of the new Star Trek film are looking extras. Here's their requirements:

• extremely large heads and foreheads
• wide or close-set eyes
• over or undersized ears and/or nose
• facial deformities
• pronounced cheekbones
• ultra perfect or ultra plain-looking people

"Everyone must be thin, athletic, fit; wardrobe will be form-fitting. All hair lengths on males and females welcome,"

Surely however, if you aren't weird and you aren't perfect then you're plain? So that just about covers everyone.

The BBC have released some interesting details about a one of drama entitled Being Human, due to be shown next year on BBC 3. It's a twenty something flatshare drama, I hear you groan, but wait! The flatmates are a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. Presumably, being BBC 3, it will have an element of humour. Here's some excerpts from the press release:

Mitchell (Flanagan) and George (Tovey) are two 20-something lads who, like any of their peers, would love to hit the town, pull girls and spend evenings down the pub.

Mitchell is a hospital cleaner, good looking, laid back and a hit with the ladies. Oh, and he's a blood sucking vampire.

Mitchell's friend George works in the same hospital as a porter. He's an awkward but loveable geek who was befriended by Mitchell two years ago. George was heartbroken after he had to move away from the love of his life; he had to leave before she discovered that at every full moon, he sprouts a snout, grows a very hairy back and transforms into a werewolf.

Having had enough of sleeping in hostels and temporary accommodation, Mitchell and George decide to get a flat together where they can indulge in their love of beer, pizza and watching TV. They just want to have a go at being normal – being human. Annie (Riseborough) is their uninvited lodger. When the guys moved into their new creepy abode they were not expecting to share it with a ghost with a confidence crisis.

Rudy Rucker has released his novel Postsingular as a download with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative License.

Cool. Rudy Rucker is one of those authors that I've been meaning to read but haven't got around to, now I have no excuse.

[Via SFSignal]

My story Alone is online today in Every Day Fiction!

Some news on Ain't It Cool News about a film called The Box...

"...based on the great Richard Matheson short story BUTTON, BUTTON about a button that when pressed will give the presser a certain amount of life-changing money, but will also kill someone somewhere in the world."

Sounds interesting.
After I Am Legend will Hollywood be plundering more of Matheson's stories?

Via Dave

Everybody is rejoicing, Joss Whedon has got the go ahead for seven episodes of a new TV series called Dollhouse, starring Eliza Dushku. Here's an interview with Joss and Eliza about it. The idea sounds like something I've read (more than once), but the point is that Whedon always executes with style and class. I mean Vampires had been done to death hadn't they? And Buffy was still super cool and groovy. Here's the summary:

"Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse."

Excited yet?

Ansible 244, November 2007

Crave has a list of the top ten evil computers (with clips), the full list is below. [Via Dave]. You can't really disagree with HAL 9000 can you? Although my personal favourite is Quuueeeeeg.

1. HAL 9000
   2001: A Space Odyssey

2. Proteus IV
   Demon Seed

3. Nomad
   Star Trek: The Changeling

4. The Ultimate Computer
   Superman III

5. Max
   The Thirteenth Floor

6. GLaDOS
   Portal

7. MODOK
   Marvel Comics

8. Queeg 500
   Red Dwarf: 'Queeg'

9. Skynet
   The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

10. BOSS
    Doctor Who: The Green Death

The official Star Wars site has 20 terrifying Star Wars moments. Number one is The Evil Cave On Dagobah. Cue jokes about Jar Jar Binks and Ewoks...

The UK SciFi Channel has posted an interview with filmmaker Kevin Smith who created the classic indie film Clerks. (I also liked Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, they're not classics, but fun.)

Some interesting bits about indie filmmakers and also his involvement with Heroes:Origins (which sadly looks like it's been postponed until next year).

Here's some extra excerpts from the interview not posted on the blog.

Firstly about superheroes...

Oh, oh, it looks and sounds (via Paul's venomous Facebook status update) like Futurismic is having "issues" (== hacked?).

Get well soon.

And dear hackers, please hack something that deserves it, like, I don't know, multi national corporations, or defence sites or something. Surely that would be more fun anyway?

Doctor Who won a National TV Award last night, for Most Popular Drama and David Tennant won Most Popular Actor.

The National TV Awards are probably the largest audience voted TV awards in the UK (although anyone who says they'd prefer one to a BAFTA is obviously lying).