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Abigail Blakeway Edelman and Benjamin Blakeway Edelman

November 2, 2008 @ 9:17 am

The babies have arrived.

Abigail Blakeway Edelman, born October 31st at 8:02 am, 6 pounds 5 ounces.

Benjamin Blakeway Edelman, born October 31st at 8:04 am, 6 pounds 2 ounces.

Mom and babies are healthy, Dad’s a little frazzled but ecstatically happy.

My Capclave 2008 Schedule

October 17, 2008 @ 9:58 am

If you’re going to be attending this year’s Capclave in Washington, DC (okay, technically it’s in Rockville, MD), here’s my schedule for the weekend. I’m not going to be doing an excessive amount of drinking and carousing around this year, so catch me at my reading or one of my panels if you can.

Friday, October 17

• 5:00 pm — LibraryThing (Montrose)

Saturday, October 18

• 12:00 pm — Reading from MultiReal (Twinbrook)
• 2:00 pm — Signing
• 10:00 pm — Best & Worst Ideas (Montrose)

Sunday, October 19

• 1:00 pm — Election 2208: Politics and Economics of the Future (Plaza II)
• 2:00 pm — Sequelitis (Montrose)

The Purpose and Utility of Author Blogging

October 16, 2008 @ 3:16 pm

Authors generally come in two varieties:

1. Authors for whom writing comes easily and naturally
2. Authors for whom writing takes a tremendous amount of effort and concentration

Which flavor am I? Well, here’s a clue: it’s taken me about five minutes to get this far in this blog piece already. I’ve rewritten the first sentence three or four times, backspacing before I even got to the colon. In this paragraph alone, I started off with “which camp do I fall in” before realizing that the camping metaphor clashes with the “two varieties” metaphor in the first paragraph above. (And now, here I am, re-reading through the article again two days after I started because I didn’t have time to finish it earlier.)

I’m slow. I’m not going to say that I agonize over my words, because that implies a degree of discomfort and displeasure in the process. But I certainly concentrate intensely on my words. They don’t just come gushing out. (Just changed “flowing” to “gushing.”)

And so when I find myself falling into a prolonged silence on my blog like the current two-month silence, it’s hard to get going again.

It’s especially difficult (changed from “hard”) when what I really should be concentrating on is finishing up the first draft of Geosynchon, the third book in the Jump 225 trilogy. I don’t do this writing thing full-time, and it’s difficult to find the time to blog. It’s about to become all the more difficult because I’m about to become a first-time parent. I have no idea how I’m going to find the time to write when I’ve got two squealing (changed from “screaming”) babies, and a bunch of bills that are overdue because I’ve forgotten to pay them, and a burning desire to occasionally have a, you know, life.

So how do I continue blogging on a regular or semi-regular basis?

It doesn’t help that I don’t approach blogging the way most bloggers approach blogging. Unlike, say, a newspaper column, the whole point of publishing a blog is that it’s immediate and unfiltered. Here’s what I’m thinking today! Just saw Sarah Palin say something stupid on TV, boom, here’s my take on it! What did I think yesterday or last week or last month? Who cares? It’s all now, now, now!

I’ve always resisted the impulse to publish that kind of blog, just like I’ve always resisted the impulse to write those kinds of book. Not that there’s anything wrong with the stream-of-consciousness technique; it’s just not me. I don’t want people to know what I’m thinking on a minute-by-minute basis. I don’t want to showcase my snapshot reactions to the latest flap in the news. Why? Because my off-the-cuff (changed from “snapshot”) reactions are just like everyone else’s. They’re tinged by raw emotion. They’re based on incomplete information. They’re predictable. They can get me into trouble.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s the digested, reasoned, thought-through, considered response that matters. It’s the book that I’ve slaved over and over in draft after draft, carefully layering in plot and metaphor and theme like a pastry chef making phyllo dough. (Just stopped to look up “phyllo” on Wikipedia to make sure I wasn’t misremembering what phyllo is.)

I don’t resent the filter of editing, re-writing, re-thinking, and revising. I need that filter.

So if you’re planning on following my blog, you’re not going to get throwaways (with the exception of the occasional piece of self-promotion and/or book news) (just inserted that). You’re only going to get articles that have been well-thought-out and carefully crafted. You’re only going to get me writing about subjects I care about.

The downside of this approach is that if I don’t have the time or inclination to ponder upon any particular subject, I’m not going to publish anything. I’m not going to fall back on a summary of my day or an interesting song lyric I’ve heard on the radio. Again, perfectly valid methods of blogging. Just not my method.

Sometimes I’ll take too long to ponder over a particular topic (changed from “a particular subject”, changed from “something”), and my meanderings on that topic will become outdated before I’ve even clicked the “Publish” button. These blog articles get saved onto my hard drive where they gather digital dust, unread. Thus, you probably will never read the 752-word-and-counting blog piece I’ve been writing about “The Bizarro Election” featuring my insights on Sarah Palin — because by the time I’m finished with it, the poor woman will (deleted “hopefully”) be on her way back to Alaska where she’ll become a 2018 trivia question for Jeopardy contestants.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying:

1. No, I’m not dead;
2. No, I don’t even have the excuse of being a first-time parent yet;
3. Yes, I do intend to resume blogging on a regular basis; but
4. Yes, you’ll probably (just inserted “probably”) have to be patient.

If you’re interested in reading what I’ve got to say about stuff and you don’t want to be bothered to check back on my blog page to see if I’ve published anything new, I invite you to sign up to subscribe by email (bottom of left column), or use the site RSS feeds.

Thanks, y’all.

*

(Now that I’ve finished the article, I’ve got to go back and re-read to make sure I’ve made a coherent point. I’ve got to make sure the title I’ve given the piece accurately reflects what’s in it, because I’ve been known to meander off course into totally different subjects.)

(And finally, I feel obligated to go hunt around for some pictures — generally of the humorous or ironic variety — to make the article visually interesting. So here I go… Okay, the Rodin Thinker statue is an obvious one, and it’s already in the blog media library. And for the second I’ll use one of my favorite sketches of a dude scribbling at a desk while smoking a pipe. Artist unknown, or at least I’m too lazy to look it up. Just have to do some quick image manipulation so the images fit onto the page… there.)

(Now, the final step. Save the article, and preview it. Re-read for last-minute typos and harebrained sentences that I’m going to regret later. Do last-minute tightening of the language. Make sure the pictures don’t create any funky link breaks… Done.)

(Don’t forget to add meta information for the search engines and the archive pages.)

(And finally… is this whole meta thing of the parenthetical asides too cutesy and John Barthish? Should I delete all these parenthetical comments about process? Hmm. Maybe. But I’m the kind of writer who likes to live life on the edge.)

(Have all of these parenthetical comments made this blog piece too long? Do I need another picture to fill up the space? No. Dude, stop. Just click the fucking “Publish” button already.)

(Publish.)

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist Interview

August 27, 2008 @ 5:37 pm

Patrick St-Denis has just posted an interview with me on his popular Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist blog. Subjects covered include Infoquake, MultiReal, Lou Anders and Pyr, my strengths as a storyteller, the John W. Campbell Award, cover art, websites and interactivity with readers, the trend of high-quality British SF, and whether SF will ever get proper literary recognition by snooty academics cowering up in their white towers.

But the best part of the whole thing is that Pat has seen fit, unprompted, to post this neat little Photoshopped poster that puts the full force and weight of Uncle Sam behind getting you to read Infoquake and MultiReal. And really, ain’t that how it should be?

Brief excerpt from the interview:

What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller?
I feel like I’m very good at the worldbuilding aspect of things. Really, structure in general. The trilogy has layers and layers of metaphor in it, and I’m really quite proud of the way it all works together as an organic whole. My tendency is to wander off into history and background and structure, and sometimes I have to curb that impulse. If I had written The Lord of the Rings, it would have been three whole books of the Council of Elrond, and nobody would have read it.

Were there any perceived conventions of the science fiction genre which you wanted to twist or break when you set out to write Infoquake and its sequel?

Yes, I wanted to avoid the typical mindless action set-pieces that you find in a lot of bad SF, and bad novels in general. I really wanted to write an exciting novel about business. A lot of authors just use the business aspect as window dressing, and then quickly throw their characters into the same car chases and murder mysteries and gunfights. I wanted to write books that really are about the workplace, where the excitement revolves around product demos and marketing meetings and government hearings and that kind of thing. So that’s what I’ve tried to do.

Ten Things Computers Should All Do Flawlessly, But Generally Don’t

August 25, 2008 @ 10:04 am

I’ve been using computers since the mid ’80s. I remember tackling CP/M and Peachtree word processing back in the day, and I remember upgrading my computer to MS-DOS 3.3. I went to college in 1989 with a no-name PC clone sporting an 8086 processor that ran at something like 4 MHz. It had an amber monitor that would have looked at home in that VW Bus they drove around in Scooby-Doo.

A lot has changed since then. But sometimes I wonder if the computing industry — all of it, from software to hardware to web services — really has the right priorities in mind. So here’s my list of the things that I hope to hell are working flawlessly by 2018. The frustrating thing is that every single one of these things can be done with today’s technology (except possibly for #7).

1. Automatic file syncing. It’s astounding how badly computers do this. Every operating system on every computer sucks at syncing files; it’s only a matter of degree. I should be able to turn on any device I own and access any file I own, and it should all happen transparently. I don’t want to have to think about where I put a particular file, or whether I can access it from my iPhone. My calendar events should automatically sync between my Blackberry, my desktop, my Google Calendar, and my websites. Perhaps the key is to have everything save to “the cloud” and sync locally for offline access; I don’t know. I just want it to work.
2. Automatic configuration syncing. The younger, hotter sister of automatic file syncing. Now that we’re all starting to use web applications for everything instead of sending files around, these web applications all need to be able to talk to each other. My bookmarks should follow me from machine to machine, and from browser to browser. Every time I configure my Firefox or my Windows Media Player just the way I like it, I shouldn’t have to go through the same painstaking customization process on every machine I touch.
3. Automatic backups. Macs now do this as a matter of course with Time Machine software. But Windows doesn’t. Well, let me qualify that — Windows will back up important system files as a matter of course, and create confusing “shadow copies” of documents in the background that you can roll back to. But it’s confusing as hell and inefficient to boot. What’s more, I want my computer to back up to an online storage facility, not some clunky piece of crap that’s hogging space on my desk.
4. Automatic upgrades. I’m not just talking about the operating system software here — I’m talking about every piece of software and hardware should automatically check for upgrades on a regular basis from a single, unified interface. And then give me the option to install or not install. Linux does this, and Microsoft has made efforts towards this with their Windows Update facility. But right now I have separate programs on my desktop working in the background to check for updates from Java, Logitech, Apple, Adobe, ESET, Mozilla, and Dell. And that doesn’t include all of the programs that check for updates when you fire them up.
5. Integrated security. This whole system of remembering a million different passwords in a million different places is unworkable. Not only that, but it’s not secure, because everyone on Earth except for Bruce Schneier either a) has their passwords written down on a Post-It note, b) uses ridiculously insecure passwords like their dog’s name, or c) has a handful of relatively secure passwords that they use over and over again, because we can only remember so many garbled strings of letters and numbers. I’m not a security expert, but it seems to me that biometric security would be a step up from where we are today.
6. Centralized identity management. Why do I have to constantly retype the same address information, the same email address, the same websites? Why is it that when I update my official bio to reflect a new book release, I have to log in to 4000 different websites and manually change my bios one by one? I understand the need to respect privacy — but if I want to share my information with a particular website, application, or company, shouldn’t I be able to do that with a click or two? We need trusted, universal services that can verify your identity wherever you are online.
7. Useful battery life. I am sick to death of power cords. If I never saw another power cord in my life, it would be too soon. But I could deal with power cords if they only led to docking stations that charged up my appliances enough to make them usable for an entire day. But right now, my laptop barely survives three or four hours untethered; my Blackberry struggles to get through the day with the WiFi switched on all the time. Fer the love o’ Christ, people, I need at least a day’s worth of juice for every machine I own. Please.
8. Everything wireless. I’ve got connecting cables for my BlackBerry and my iPod. The printer’s wired to the desktop, as are the quad speakers and the subwoofer. The keyboard and mouse aren’t wired anymore — but the wireless transmitter for the keyboard and mouse is wired. I want, at most, one power cable snaking from the back of my computer to the wall. Apple is leading the way on this one, as usual. But with Bluetooth moving onto more and more devices, we’re getting close to achieving this one on all platforms.
9. True, modular upgrades. For years, I’ve had the dream of having a single system that could be upgraded in a modular fashion. I’ll snap in the newest processor every couple of years. I’ll beef up my sound card on alternate years. I’ll upgrade the video card as circumstances warrant. But it seems that no matter how hard I try, I have to scrap everything and start from scratch after a few seasons. Is it really that difficult to future-proof hardware so I can upgrade my systems one piece at a time?
10. True plug and play. Let’s say it together: every piece of equipment I buy should be able to interface with every other piece of equipment I own. I should never be in the position of having to struggle to get photographs from the camera to the printer, or having to figure out whether the DVDs I burned on one computer can be read on another — much less have trouble networking my Linux, Mac, and Windows boxes together.

Agree? Disagree? And what have I missed?