Reading…

There’s a lot of good free reading out there on the web.  Lots of people, especially the good folk at SF Signal, provide links to a lot of it.  Two stood out for me today.  Some years back I spent a very pleasant afternoon at Charles Brown’s house, chatting with Robert Jordan and his wife Harriet.  Jordan was funny, humble, and truly gentlemanly that day, where he spent some time talking about the final Wheel of Time book that he was about to write.  Tor.com have just posted the first chapter of that novel, as envisaged by Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson.  You can read it here.

At the same time, the incredibly awesome Scott Lynch (who has a story in Swords and Dark Magic!) is giving his readers something to tide them over till his next book – a new novel you can read online for free!!!  It’s called Queen of the Iron Sands, a pulp SF adventure set on Mars.  I should totally ask him to write me a Mars story!

What else? I read Holly Black’s terrific “The Coldest Girl in Cold Town” the other day, and followed it with Pat Cadigan’s story in Poe. Someone somewhere should do a collection of her short stuff.  Speaking of shorts, btw, I’m finally getting to work on The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson.  I’ve been dawdling and delaying because of deadlines, but I’m delighted to finally be moving this one forward.

It’s the second day of September here in cold and rainy Perth, Western Australia.  It is, nominally at least, Spring. Nothing’s springing outside though, and I’m doing my best to pay NO ATTENTION at all to how late we are in the year.   Yesterday Terry Dowling and I delivered Hard Luck Diggings, the fourth volume of Jack Vance’s work that we’ve co-edited, to Bill Shafer at Subterranean Press. It’s basically a collection of Vance’s earlier works, some a bit rougher round the edges and some not often collected.  It was fun to do, and there’s some possibility we made do another.

Delivering that book, however, hasn’t made much of a dent in the ‘to do’ list, which still includes delivering Swords and Dark Magic (the book that was Conquering Swords) and Legends of Australian Fantasy to two very patient publishers, completing that special issue of Subterranean Online , signing off on the ToCs for The Best of Fritz Leiber and Wings of Fire, following up Life on Mars and Engineering Infinity, and getting started (!) on the Robinson and Haldeman books. Busy busy. And it’s time to get some Locus editing done, with the year in review coming up in the background like a freight train, and to continue (hah!) reading for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 4.  Oh, and there’s the steampunk book. Need to find a replacement lead writer for it. Yay!

Still, you know, that paragraph tells you how things are going here.  Yes, it’s 7am on a cold, rainy Wednesday morning.  Yes, I’m at the office getting ready for work on the day job.  Yes, the house needs organised and the car needs replaced. Yes, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. But. But. I’m working. Things are good. I need to back the pace off a little (which I’ve said I’d do before) so that I can enjoy it more, but when I get to think about it I enjoy what I’m doing.   Shortly, when I get my head clear, I’m going to send out those invites for Eclipse Four and if neither of the two proposals I have in development sell, I might just leave post-Easter next year as only having that book and the year’s best to do. It might be a good survival mechanism.  We’ll see.

Ebooks v. Pbooks: It’s not either/or

I bought a Sony Reader last year. It’s not a perfect device, in truth. The screen could be bigger, the software could be more intuitive, it could have backlighting, and it could even incorporate other functionality like holding all of my portable music etc, but it’s mostly been a good and faithful device.

So, how have I used this new piece of hardware? Well, I’ve not bought an e-book, even though I’ve had it for a year. I can’t imagine that I’ll ever want to do that, though it could happen.  No. I use my reader to read manuscripts of magazines, anthologies, collections and such that I need to read for the ‘year’s best’, or to preview novels that are going to be reviewed for Locus. It’s light and flexible and the screen is quite readable. It also doesn’t strain my eyes the way a computer monitor does.

I’ve used the Reader on planes, in airports, in cafes, restaurants and wherever. In fact, mostly I use it when I’m away from home. When I look back, I used to get on to planes with an absurd amount of carry-on. I’d have CD players, cds, headphones, magazines, printed manuscripts and at least three or four books.  My carry-on was *heavy*. Now it’s not. I’ve got an iPod, a pair of noise reducing headphones, and the Reader.  What else could I need?

Now, I’ve seen some folk around and about declaring that the arrival of eBook readers is the death of the printed book, or some such. I just don’t see what ever happening. I have a Reader, but I love printed books. Lovelovelove them. I recently started buying the Subterranean editions of the Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg just because they’re so damned handsome.  Same for their Powers’ books. And, damn it, if Subterranean were doing the complete Heinlein library instead of the Virginia Edition people I’d be buying those too.

My own feeling is that eBooks and printed books do not make some kind of either/or equation. You can have both. Last year I bought a brand new valve amplifier and accompanying high end cd player, and am currently lusting after speakers to make the system complete. There’s nothing like being in a room with a great sound system playing wonderful music. But.  I have an iPod. It goes everywhere with me. Wouldn’t be without it. It’s my portable music fix. I want BOTH.  And it’s the same with eBooks and printed books. I want both.  Actually, what I’d love is if print book publishers gave away the eBook with the print edition. That would be cool.

Oh, and a last note. I’m jonesing to see what the Apple tablet iPod is like. It could be the answer.