“How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story”

John Scalzi has posted a shareware short story on his blog, Whatever.

It's “How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story” and it's quite funny. Shareware means that one can pay whatever (that word again;-)) one feels it's worth and Scalzi has given Paypal and Amazon links. He's donating half (aftter the cost or funds transfer) to the Lupus Foundation of America, so I felt comfortable overpaying a bit for a short. I thought it was quite amusing and pulpishly charming. Check it out.

Free electronics recycling...how cool!

I was bumming through my Reader and in Scalzi's comments I found the most wondrous site: a free recyling program through Costco for electronics. There is also a trade-in valuation, but really, for me, the most important thing is to find a place which will take items such as old computer monitors and recycle them for free. Thank you Costco, and thank you David for posting this on Whatever. I have paid to recycle these in the past, and also kept them in perma-storage because I could not think what to do with them to keep the toxic heavy metal components out of the waste stream.
This is for the US, but I think it's a wonderful resource to share with everyone, so spread the word!

Reading online, or on the screen.

I've actually been reading quite a bit recently, although it's not showing up in my "Good Reads" widget. That's because I have been reading e-books, and I'm not quite certain how to put them up. First I read Rollback by Robert Sawyer. Now I have just finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi, which is a reread prior to reading his The Last Colony. As you might guess, I am reading my way through the 2008 Hugo nominees preparatory to the vote this summer. All the nominees (except The Yiddish Policemen's Union) have been released in e-form to the members of Denvention III, the voting body for the 2008 Hugos.

What this has shown me is that I don't really enjoy reading books on screen. It's not that my screen isn't great: I have the option of a 17" or a 13", both with good clarity. It's that I like to walk around with my book, cook with my book, carry my book downstairs while waiting for the girls, have my book in my backpack for public transport or queuing. I have Mobireader for my Palm and I used to use it while commuting, when the laptop and work literature made carrying hardcovers painful, but now, I just want to hold the book in my hands.

In the past, if I like the book after the first 50 pages, I would just order it from Amazon and have it tomorrow morning. But here, where it can take weeks for me to get English language books (if they are even a bit abstruse, or not yet published in the UK) I am just reading online. And it's annoying.

So, what does it take for an author to get a new reader?

Without the children, I have been taking the opportunity to actually attend panels. I find the British style of science fiction convention very different from the American. In many ways, it is closer to the roots of fandom, and at least as I see it at Eastercon I like it very much.

Some differences:

• The British form is generally smaller. This was apparently the largest since Seacon (a Worldcon) in 1987 at around 1300 people.


• The organizing committee had a great deal of empathy for attendees, arranging a great con rate at the hotel, including a buffet breakfast in the room rate, arranging a prix-fixe buffet dinner.


• British people absolutely drink beer. This is actually a huge diference, which the Brits will probably have trouble understanding: Americans generally don't drink. So American conventions tend to have a general function room, open 24 hours a day, with free munchies, coffee, tea and soda, where fans gather. Here, there was a general atrium where convention priced bheer and cider (and also OJ and water, which my poor tummy appreciated) was sold and where, like the Champs Elysee, the entire convention passed by.


• The tag line was "a convention run by fans for fans" and it really was. This was, even at this size, the coziest and friendliest convention I've been to in years. What with my stomach ailment I spent a lot of time sleeping but even so, I loved the atrium where everyone, from veriest neo to adored pro hung out, drank, and was accessible. I wil definitely go to more British cons.

The title refers to a post a while back that John Scalzi made (and I'm not sure in which of his zillions of posts) where he talked about how an author gets a fan. There was some discussion of hand selling, or through blogs (and Diana Peterfreund had some things to say somewhere in her blog as well, I think) and through personal referral as being the best way. To that I need to add: listening to a good speaker.

The German is not much of a reader, but after listening to Charlie Stross' Guest of Honour speech, he dragged me downstairs to the Dealer's Room and bought two of his books. Stross was so funny, so dry and amusing, so absolutely in control of what he was saying and so erudite with it that it was no wonder that the German was enthralled. I wanted to buy several books as well. And, interestingly enough, it was after hearing Scalzi (different reference here), another funny and intelligent speaker at a panel at a Worldcon some years ago, that I started reading his books and recommending them.

We again braved the frigid environment of the Commonwealth room (the largest meeting room) to hear Neil Gaiman's Guest of Honour speech. Now, interestingly enough, I had liked Gaiman's work back in the Miracleman days, but didn't like his collaboration with Pratchett and had stopped reading him. Here's a link to his journal of Eastercon.
He was so wonderfully amusing and then, later on, so wonderful at reading a chapter from his new book, that I am certain that I will be buying that new book. I had already picked up a copy of Stardust (mainly because I was sad not to be able to see the movie until it comes out on DVD) and I cleverly left it in Berlin rather than bringing it with me to have it signed. But the convention kindly passed out a poster that we could use at the mass GOH signing and I was able to have that signed instead.

We also went to see Tanith Lee (another GOH) speak at two separate panels. She was one of my earliest favorites, back in my salad days, and it was a pleasure to meet others who are great fans of hers and to hear her speak. I actually discovered that she had put out a 'sequel' to one of my favorite of her books: The Silver Metal Lover which is now followed by Metallic Lover 24 years later.

An amusing incident that took place at the con: while the German and I were standing in the (long) line to have our posters signed by all the Guests of Honour, I was reading one of the (few) newsletters and noticed that there had been a case of chickenpox in the childcare facility (another sign that the convention was run well and even though I did not bring the children, a real sign that British fandom is 1. more family friendly and 2. more likely to have membership expand naturally).

I exclaimed aloud at how grateful I was that the girls had been left with the in-laws and how terrible it was that the other children had been exposed when the couple in front of us turned around and said "She's in quarantine with Grandma now, we didn't know." What are the odds that I castigate someone at a convention with 1300+ people and they are standing next to me at the time? Anyway, we all chatted for a bit and I simply said that since Thing2 is too young to have been vaccinated, and the German has not had it, I was truly glad not to have had the girls exposed. Turns out that in the UK they don't vaccinate against Varicella. I'll need to be making certain that the girls are adequately and promptly vaccinated on the CDC schedule here, I can tell.

The other thing was that even with my stomach ailments, I had the best ordinary food that I have had since we left the States. I mean, we don't eat out so much here in Berlin, and we have not been able to find a 'regular'. But just around the corner from the hotel was The Pheasant. We had a meal a day there and the one day that we had the convention buffet dinner we groaned with disappointment that we weren't eating there. We expressed our gratitude to the owner and told him that Berlin was crying out for another restaurant like his and that if he came, we would eat ther 5 times a week. The salads were so wonderful, the masalas, the quiche, the cider, the ploughman's... why isn't there anything like that here?