Ken Liu went from university to a software engineering job at Microsoft, then to some startups, then to Harvard Law, where he got a JD and went into practice as a litigation consultant on tech cases -- all the while, writing and selling sf stories. Read the rest
Perfect topic, perfect name:
ASSET magazine is a professional quality, full-color publication which compliments, promotes, and presents the Miniature Donkey in a favorable light and gives them credibility as an alternative livestock.
The National Miniature Donkey Association is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989. The Association's goals are to protect and promote the Miniature Donkey breed, and to provide an educational forum for owners and breeders on donkey care and management.
Super excited to have received my first magazine from https://t.co/qHtzp37c0Y
The “in-house, members-only publication of the National Miniature Donkey Association (NMDA).” pic.twitter.com/pS7Yc3mQl9
— Moxie Marlinspike (@moxie) November 22, 2019
The National Miniature Donkey Association also maintains a guide to breeding miniature donkeys, where I learned that "The Miniature Donkey is a compact, well-proportioned animal with a sweet, sociable disposition." Read the rest
"Vital: The Future of Healthcare" is a crowdfunded anthology of short science fiction stories about the future of health care, with contributions from top writers like James Patrick Kelly, Seanan McGuire, Annalee Newitz, Paolo Bacigalupi and Caroline M. Yoachim (they're also open to submissions!). Read the rest
Josh O'Neill writes, "We're doing a box set edition of Dracula in which we reconstitute the novel into the primary source documents from which it's drawn: Mina's diary, Lucy's letters, Dailygraph newspaper clippings, even an actual phonograph record from Dr. Seward. It comes in a suitcase. Or a wooden casket or stone crypt, depending on the edition." Read the rest
Elly Blue has kickstarted a series of successful feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies; her latest is Dragon Bike: Fantastical feminist bicycle stories, for which she is seeking $6,000 ($10 gets you an ebook, $13 gets you a printed book, $15 gets you a book and a poster). Read the rest
For many years, we've brought you the delightful arts and crafts of Anthony "Tonky" Clune: beautiful felt housewares, giant wall-stickers, a short film about thrifting, cool reflective cycling safety badges and more. Read the rest
Sara from MIT Sloan Management Review writes, "The entire site is free today through Thursday. To help you make progress on the problems you’re facing right now, they’ve unlocked their site for 72 hours. Every article, research report, and webinar is free to access." Read the rest
(Thanks Robbo!) Read the rest
Aestetix writes, "On Tuesday, October 8th, for the very first time ever, the new issue of 2600 will be released digitally in non-DRM PDF format. We know there are many of you who have been unable to secure copies of 2600 in recent years. With high distribution costs and a declining bookstore landscape, it's become much harder to publish a paper magazine and get it to all the places our readers are. This digital version can help solve that problem once and for all - and help restore the funding we need to survive." Read the rest
Gollancz, a venerable British science fiction publisher (now a division of Hachette) has announced its BAME SFF Award, with a top prize of £4,000 for science fiction written by over-18 BAME ("Black, Asian, minority ethnic) writers. Read the rest
My latest Locus Magazine column is DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable. Read the rest
On the Under the Knife show, Dr Lindsey Fitzharris elucidates the weird history of "anthropodermic bibliopegy," the weird practice of binding books in human skin, including the doctor who bound case histories in the skins of his dead patients, and the murderer who asked to have his biography bound in his skin and presented to the lawman who caught him after his execution. Other common ways to procure human skins for the practice included grave-robbing (Andrea wrote about the Burke and Hare editions back in 2016). (Thanks, Allen) Read the rest
After Deadspin's Laura Wagner published an incredible, brave, detailed look at how her new private equity masters -- Jim Spanfeller/Great Hill Partners -- were running Gawker now that they'd acquired it from Univision, the company (now called "G/O Media") struck back. Read the rest
Samuel R "Chip" Delany is a science fiction pioneer: a brilliant literary stylist with dazzling ideas who was one of the field's first openly queer writers, and one of the first Black writers accepted into the field. He is one of the fathers of afrofuturism. Read the rest
25 years after its founding, eight years after its last print edition, and two years after a near-death experience that was averted at the last minute by a bailout from the VPN company Private Internet Access, Linux Journal has laid off all employees, has no operating funds, and only plans to have its website online for a few weeks, or "hopefully longer for archival purposes if we can make it happen." Read the rest
Yesterday, I wrote about science publishing profiteer Elsevier's legal threats against Citationsy, in which the company claimed that the mere act of linking to Sci-Hub (an illegal open-access portal) was itself illegal. Read the rest
Murray Hunter writes, "I'm a digital rights activist in South Africa - I've written and illustrated a silly, subversive kid's book about the Big Data industry, and a squiggly, wiggly robot sent out to track and profile all the babies. It's not an 'eat your vegetables' kind of book: all I wanted to do was tell a story that could delight young kids (ages 3-5) while also inviting them to imagine for the first time a secret and hidden world of data collection. I don't think it's been done yet, and - well, why not? I've just launched a crowdfunding campaign to publish it in hardcover and thought it might pique the interest of a few happy mutants. Read the rest
