Aargh, my eye is getting worse rather than better. Now it's all... itchy. *whimper* I shall attempt to distract myself by offering up yet another batch of random links:
Scifipedia: An SF-themed wiki hosted by the Sci Fi Channel.
Cosmographica: A gallery of space art by Don Dixon, who's illustrated lots of magazines and book covers and such. Some very cool stuff.
Opening paragraphs of recent PODs that yielded an abbreviated read: This is from a blog whose author reads through self-published print-on-demand books at Amazon, sorts through the drek, and recommends the ones that are actually worth reading. Which is interesting in itself. This particular post, though, discusses what kind of openings cause said books to be abandoned instantly and with prejudice. Some of the examples are screamingly bad.
Numb3rs Blog: A mathematician explains and expands on the math featured in the show Numb3rs. Particularly interesting are things like the link to this article in which a different mathematician describes how the case in the pilot episode was based very, very closely on a real-life case that was solved essentially the same way.
Book Sale Finder: An online guide to "used book events." I'm still cursing the person who sent me this one. It's like giving an alcoholic a map to bars.
The Neddiad: Daniel Pinkwater -- who is in my opinion the best writer of kids' books that are equally fun for adults since Roald Dahl -- is putting his newest book up on the web chapter by chapter as he writes it. Chapter One is now online, and I'm debating whether the pleasure of getting to read it in advance for free is worth the pain of having to keep stopping and waiting for find out what happens next.
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I've read time and again that no one should ever post a story chapter by chapter on-line until they've already written the whole thing, to save any readers the possible frustration of having the writer quit (due to writer's block or any more serious setbacks) before reaching the conclusion [So says the guy who posted four chapters of an X-Men fanfic years ago and is still futzing with his research notes...]
ReplyDelete[WORD VERIFICATION: Uqrik - the name of the hammer Thor had custom-made in Tijuana...]
Heh, yeah, I've seen that happen to disastrous and frustrating effect with fan fiction stories... I'm inclined to trust Pinkwater to pull it off, though.
ReplyDeleteAs yet, Scifipedia seems to have less broad coverage of SF than the main Wikipedia. My searches on Richard Cowper and Dan Dare didn't turn up anything. Hopefully that will change given time.
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