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My April Reads, 2013

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Book StackMay has arrived, and that means a quick look back at all the short fiction I read in April. It was a slow month for me, but I managed to get some reading done. Clarkesworld Magazine continues to bring it,  and the enjoyable The Human Division finally wrapped up its serialized run. I also got a head start on the Hugo ballot by reading some of the nominated short stories.

Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 79 contained six fiction pieces in this issue, double the usual number!

  • Annex by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (4/2/13)
  • No Portraits on the Sky by Kali Wallace (4/2/13)
  • Melt With You by Emily C. Skaftun (4/2/13)
  • Spar (Making Bacon Version) by Kij Johnson (4/1/13)
  • Guest of Honor by Robert Reed (4/3/13)
  • Finisterra by David Moles (4/4/13)

The last two episodes of John Scalzi’s experiment in serialization, The Human Division, were published last month.

  • The Gentle Art Of Cracking Heads (4/2/13)
  • Earth Below, Sky Above (4/9/13)

The Hugo Award nominations were announced on March 30. I started tracking down the short fiction even before the Hugo Voter’s Packet was released so that I could finish my Hugo reading at a more leisurely pace than last year.

Short Story:

  • Immersion by Aliette de Bodard (4/29/13)
  • Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson (4/30/13)

First of May [NSFW]

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Internet bard Jonathan Coulton has had this tribute to Spring in his repertoire for about a decade now. The history of this very Not Safe For Work ditty can be found on the “JoCopedia,” a wiki of all things Jonathan Coulton. In fact, you can even download the song for free at Jonathan Coulton’s music store.

I found the following performance of First of May on YouTube. It was taped in 2006, and I first linked to it on my Posterous site on May 1, 2011. Enjoy!

(Shout out to Andrew!)

R.I.P. Posterous (2008-2013)

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Posterous was a 2Katerine Hepburn skateboarding008 start-up that attempted to make it easier to share photos and other media with your social networks. I signed on in 2010 and used it to save pictures and YouTube videos that I encountered in my travels around the web. It was a nice little service, but I stopped being an active user after about a year.

The site was bought by Twitter just over a year ago, and is shuttering the site as of today, April 30th, “in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter.” Former users have until May 31st to download their content from Posterous. I’ve taken care of that, so expect some of that older content to work its way onto these pages soon.

As an example of some of the things I posted on my Posterous site, please enjoy this picture of Katherine Hepburn on a skateboard. I originally found this on The Mary Sue, and I’m led to believe the original photo came from Hepburn’s autobiography, Me : Stories of My Life.

 

My March Reads, 2013

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Book StackNo April Fooling going on here! This is all the short fiction I read in March. My Clarkesworld Magazine subscription continues to pay off with issue 78, The Human Division by John Scalzi is almost finished its serialization, and with the help of my local library, I managed to track down the missing prose from the e-book edition of Brave New Worlds.

Clarkesworld issue number 78 was released, which included the following pieces:

  • The Weight of a Blessing by Aliette de Bodard (3/3/13)
  • The Last Survivor of the Great Sexbot Revolution by A.C. Wise (3/3/13)
  • 86, 87, 88, 89 by Genevieve Valentine (3/4/13)

The serialization of John Scalzi’s The Human Division is starting to wind up, and I completed the following episodes as they were released:

  • The Human Division  #8: The Sound of Rebellion (3/5/13)
  • The Human Division  #9: The Observers (3/12/13)
  • The Human Division  #10: This Must Be the Place (3/19/13)
  • The Human Division  #11: A Problem of Proportion (3/26/13)

From Brave New Worlds (First Edition) edited by John Joseph Adams

  • Billennium by J. G. Ballard (3/27/13)
  • The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury (3/27/13)
  • The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
  • Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

As I mentioned last month, the four stories listed above were not available in the e-book edition due to rights restrictions. Fortunately, my library card works just fine and I was able to obtain the print edition of this anthology from my local branch, enabling me to finally finish the remaining stories.

That’s about it for the month of March. I didn’t tackle much short fiction this time around, mostly thanks to a computer upgrade that went awry and some other offline intrusions. There’s a lot to look forward to in April, especially since the Hugo nominees will have been announced by the time this post goes live. Until next time!

Hugo Nominees Announced

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The Hugo AwardThe nominees for the 2013 Hugo Awards were announced yesterday by LoneStarCon3. I was planning to post the complete list of nominees here, but enough websites are doing that, so I’ll just mention a few of my thoughts here and let you get back to the rest of the internet.

My first thought is that I won’t have to read as many novels this year before I turn my ballot in. I’ve already ready three of the five nominees for Best Novel; I read Redshirts by John Scalzi last year, and both Mira Grant’s Blackout and Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon earlier this year. That means I’ll only have to read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by by Lois McMaster Bujold to finish the novel category.

Last year I had only read one book that was nominated prior to the announcement, James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes. On top of that I hadn’t read any of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series before, so that when the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, was nominated, I went back to read the rest of the series just so I knew what was going on in book five!

I’ve only read two pieces of shorter fiction on the list, the novella Fade To White by Catherynne M. Valente and the short story Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson. Both appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine after I began my subscription in August. I was surprised that only three short stories were nominated this year due to the 5% rule of the WSFS Constitution (PDF). I imagine that only means there were no real standout stories last year.

I really don’t have much more to say about the rest of the nominees at the moment. I’ll be reading I can until the Voter’s Packet is released, then go from there.

Link-O-Matic #3

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Russian tourists climb the Great Pyramid and take pictures.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina: The Library of Alexandria V2.0

Netflix + JMS + Wachowskis = New Sci-Fi Series, “Sense8″

Stephen King Flow Chart

Computer Chronicles Week on Mental Floss:

How To Buy A New Computer (1993)

What The Internet Looked Like In 1995

The Best Video Game Consoles (1990)

What Portable Computers Were Like in 1987

How To Use Email (1997)

Mobile Tech Update, March 2013

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Droid 4Here’s a quick look at my mobile arsenal these days. It’s not state of the art, but it’s what gets me through the day.

Mobile Phone: I’ve been carrying a Motorola Droid 4 since February of last year. I started out with a Droid 3 the previous October, but when the specs for the D4 started surfacing, I decided to juggle some upgrade dates and pull the trigger. It started out running the version of Android called Gingerbread, and was eventually upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich and then, just a week or two ago, to Jelly Bean.

I’ve been a big fan of the slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the D3 and D4, and both phones have served me well. I haven’t decided which route I’m going to go when I’m ready to upgrade again; the Android landscape has matured immensely since I first picked up the D3.

MP3 Player: This is the role that my Droid 3 inherited once I upgraded my phone to the D4. I also managed to drop the D3 from my plan with Verizon at the same time. Since I work in a factory with no Wi-Fi coverage, I loaded a 32 GB microSD card with a good portion of my music library and crank it up during the workday.

Without a cell or data plan for the D3, I keep it in airplane mode when on and turn it off when I’m not using it. When I need to charge it, I let it access my home Wi-Fi to check for app updates and whatnot. It may be overkill for what I’m using it for, but at least it’s not going to waste.

Tablet: 2012 was a breakout year for the 7-inch tablet. At CES last January, Asus announced the small tablet that morphed into the Nexus 7 design that Google introduced at its I/O Developer’s Conference in June. The buzz was intense; everyone wanted this tablet when it went on sale that July, including me.

Instead, I picked up a refurbished Acer A100 7-inch tablet in April. I fell in love with the form factor in spite of several issues I had with the Acer hardware. It was the perfect size for watching videos, playing games, and reading e-books, and it also had a port for microSD cards to make it a cinch to load up all kinds of content.

I finally picked up a Nexus 7 once the 32 GB models were announced late last year. The increased storage was important since the Nexus 7 doesn’t provide a microSD slot, and it’s so much better in so many ways when compared to the Acer tablet. I’ve been having a great time using it and heartily recommend it to everyone who is looking for a small tablet.

EBook Reader: I’ve officially owned my Nook Simple Touch longer than I did my original Barnes & Noble Nook, and I still use it all the time. It’s a great little device and hasn’t failed me yet. Barnes & Noble, however, seems to be going through some difficult times these days, and its Nook business seems a little precarious. Just in case things go badly for Barnes & Noble, I’ve made it a habit to download and backup all of my e-books to my computer. I’ve also made sure that I’ll be able to transfer my books to any other device if I have to.

External Battery: With all these gadgets, I always try to keep an external battery with me, charged and ready, just in case. The one I use is a NewTrent iCarrier IMP120D. It’s a 12000 mAh charger with two USB ports, and I was lucky enough to grab it on sale for about $55. In normal use, I can charge my phone about 5 times before I need to recharge the unit. It’s a lifesaver!

That’s all the mobile tech I’m using these days. I hope to write another update on the rest of my gadget collection sometime soon. Until then!