Author Archives: Editor

Authors Guild Attacks Reading Out Loud

by Editor

In what amounts to a shocking display of callous disregard for handicapped readers, The Authors Guild threatened to sue Amazon.com over its text-to-audio feature built into the Kindle 2.0 ebook reader.  It then negotiated with Amazon to allow authors to disable the feature for their books.

Apparently, the Guild and its member authors (who really need to have their names listed in public) have decided that the Kindle feature violates some mysterious copyright related to audio book rights.  So the logic they use seems to suggest that if I worked in my garage to invent an optical reader that would read my own books aloud to me as I passed it over the pages, I would be somehow violating an author’s copyright.  This is absurd.

The Reading Rights Coalition organized a protest in New York City a couple days ago to urge authors to allow everyone access to ebooks.

Read this amazing double-talk response to the protests from the Guild in which it pretends to have concern for handicapped readers.  They keep insisting that a device that reads a book out loud is an audio book.  No, dear Authors Guild, it is not.  It is a device that reads books out loud.  Like I do when I read to my wife.  What if a very life-like robot walked around reading a book to itself out loud.  Would that be an ‘audio book?’  Publishing companies are free to produce their own audio books and sell them and make contracts for them.  But they cannot tell people not to build machines that read.  Forget it.

The Authors Guild is mounting an attack on handicapped readers all over the world and should be made to look like the dinosaur it really is.  Which authors are a part of this assault on the blind?  Candlelight Stories wants the list.  We’ll happily publish it.  We’ll call the list, ‘Authors Who Don’t Want Blind People to Read.’

Bob Dylan Walks with Ghosts

by Editor

Bill Flanagan at Times Online has an interview with Bob Dylan.  They talk about Dylan’s impressions of Barack Obama’s writing in Dreams of My Father.  It seems that Dylan considers the president to be a pretty good writer, capable of making readers think and feel at the same time.  He thinks Obama says some ‘profoundly outrageous things.’  I always enjoy the slightly argumentative way Bob Dylan answers questions.  So often, when an interviewer thinks something is obvious, Dylan says, ‘not exactly,’ and goes on to carefully explain how the interviewer is wrong.

Dylan talks about ghosts in the American South:

It must be the Southern air. It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some weird web – some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest.

Then this:

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Anyone who talks that way is definitely going to be able to sell me some music.  I will be all ears and I will walk around for months trying to find those ghosts.  If he says they’re there, then they are.

Is Poetry Dead Just In Time for National Poetry Month?

by Editor

Well goodness!  Newsweek as seen fit, just as National Poetry Month was about to begin, to announce the possibility that poetry has completely and totally kicked the proverbial country bucket.  Could this really be?  If no one is reading poetry, can it still be a living thing? Apparently, the National Endowment for the Arts released a report titled Reading on the Rise.  Sounds optimistic.  But they mean fiction.  Not poetry.  Readership for poetry has declined to its lowest point in 16 years.  Everybody is worried.  Nobody knows what to do.  I suggest doing nothing.  Enjoy National Poetry Month because it’s kind of fun to see unpopular poets stand up and try to be famous.  Read some popular poems if you haven’t already and just remember that poetry really is very hard to understand.  I think that’s the key to the whole thing.  It’s a huge pain to read.  There’s all these words sometimes rhyming, sometimes not.  I can never tell what the poet is talking about and I get annoyed.  It’s not like Twilight at all.  Although some really good poems do have vampires in them.

But then, perhaps a week later – maybe a year.  I’ll be walking along looking for a good plate of hotwings, and I’ll stop and think to myself, ‘Oh right!  That’s what that lady meant by that weird line in her poem.  Very cool.’

That’s why I like poetry.  It hits you when it hits you and that’s all that matters.

The painting is by poet/painter, Carl Spitzweg. It’s called The Poor Poet.  It’s from 1835 and appears to show one of these poets taking the easy way out as he concocts a nearly indecipherable verse.  That umbrella is either magically floating or it’s caught in some serious cobwebs.

Ebooks are a Gradual Change for Publishing

by Editor

At the Conversational Reading blog, Scott Esposito writes a post called ‘Why EBooks will Change How the Industry Functions.’  He’s writing about his reaction to another blogger who wrote a post about ‘Why Ebooks Must Fail.’  I like Esposito’s common sense approach to the subject of ebooks and his confidence that the publishing industry will gradually adapt to them and incorporate them in its business model:

…as I’ve come to understand the ebook format better and better, I’ve come to believe that it represents more than just a different way of reading. I’m beginning to see that it represents new modes of relations between authors, publishers, and readers, new concepts of books as a commodity, and new concepts of copyright.

I agree.  After all, it’s just words.  It really doesn’t matter how you get them into your head.  I enjoy reading some books off my iPod.  Other books I prefer to read in hardback.  Detective novels I always prefer as paperbacks.  Deciding that the book publishing industry is doomed because of ebooks is just ridiculous. 

It is Repose in the Light: A Film by Jennifer MacMillan

by Editor | 2 Comments

It is repose in the light, neither fever nor languor,
on a bed or on a meadow.

It is the friend neither violent nor weak. The friend.

It is the beloved neither tormenting nor tormented. The beloved.

Air and the world not sought. Life.

— Rimbaud, “Vigils”

This film is by Jennifer MacMillan who runs the Invisible Cinema blog where she posts about experimental film and her own poetic interests and observations. She makes many wonderful short films that are the highlight of her blog. She made this one to accompany a poem by Arthur Rimbaud.  Beautiful and thought-provoking.

Night Zero: Online Zombie Photo Comic Book (not for very young readers)

by Editor | 2 Comments

Night Zero is a photo comic book aimed at older readers.  It’s set in the months following a deadly viral outbreak.  It follows the lives of survivors in Seattle, Washington who barricade themselves against the terrors of the outside world and try to build a future for themselves.  The novel is riveting and beautifully designed.

 

 

The collaborative team of artists shoots the photos on location with a full cast and crew, then uses high dynamic range photography and a process called tonemapping to give the comic a style that is both photography and illustration.  The effect really catches the eye and draws the reader in immediately.  I found myself turning pages quickly and not wanting the story to end.  It’s a very violent, gory zombie story that is not for the very young or the very squeamish.  That’s what a good zombie story should be.  The two lead characters are vivid and exciting.  The actresses who play them are doing a wonderful job and I will continue to follow the adventures of these two in their zombie world!

This thing is just fantastic.  You can get all the episodes here.

Raumpatrouille: 1966 German Sci-Fi Television

by Editor

This is a clip from a 1966 German science fiction show called Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol).  It shows an emergency liftoff of the Orion 7 ship from an undersea base.  This show looks like it must have been a real wonder to behold back in the 60s.  Frankly, it still is.  I love all equipment design and glowing lights in the effects.

Playmobil Ancient Egypt Adventure Animation

by Editor | 5 Comments

German toymaker, Playmobil, has a new Egypt play-set out that has been one of the highlights of the 2009 Toy Fair in New York City.  It includes a giant pyramid with secret traps, treasure chamber, tombs and removable walls.  But what is really great about this whole thing is that the company has produced a series of animated films based on the play-set’s characters.  It’s a wonderful adventure in a fanciful ancient Egypt.  You’ve got to see this.  Here’s part 2 of the film.  Here’s part 3.

Film Crew Turns Homeless Man Invisible

by Editor

In Düsseldorf, Germany, a film crew equipped a homeless street vendor with a camera and projector outfit that made him nearly invisible to the passers by.  It’s a really nice little film and the effect is much more effective than I thought it would be.

International Space Station Fly Around

by Editor

Here’s a video taken from Space Shuttle mission 119 as it flew around the International Space Station.  The video has been sped up.  It’s an incredible view of the earth turning below the space station which can be seen in great detail.

Roald Dahl’s Writing Hut Virtual Tour

by Editor

This makes me laugh every time I see it.  It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on the web related to a famous writer.  So, it would seem that the great children’s author, Roald Dahl, wrote all of his books, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, and Danny the Champion of the World, in a tiny, dilapidated, filthy old shack in his backyard.  Here’s a picture of his ratty worn-out armchair.  Imagine what went on in this tiny room!  His brain was exploding with all those stories and fantastic characters and he was probably fighting the drafts and killing bugs the whole time.  I can totally understand what he must have loved about his little ‘writing hut.’  It was probably his perfect little creative world.

You can look all around Mr. Dahl’s hut with the online virtual tour at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center web site.

Workspace and Desk Photos for Inspiration

by Editor

Here’s a flickr set of workspaces without computers.  I like all the pencils and brushes in jars.  Messy art studios are always fascinating and inspiring.  This set of pictures covers everything from art studios to garages full of tools.

Here’s another set of pictures of bloggers’ desks.  Ever wonder how the person you’re reading works or what their view is like while they come up with those brilliant posts?  Here’s your answer.

Star Trek Movie Trailer

by Editor

The last few Star Trek movies have been uniformly awful. But this new one looks very promising. I think it was a great idea to go back and redo the original show’s characters as they venture forth on their first mission together. The main hitch would be if the movie misses the sly humor that made the original characters so interesting. But this looks like the first really fresh take on the old series in many years. Great trailer.

Sci-Fi Podcast of Nebula-Nominated Short Stories

by Editor

Amazing science fiction podcast site, StarShipSofa, is offering all the 2008 Nebula Award short story nominees for free download.

The world of sci-fi periodical publishing seems to be moving in the direction of excellent online podcasts.  This is a prime example of the movement.  I’ve enjoyed many short science-fiction podcasts over the past several years.  This one is a real standout.