Weekly Links 20090111
Writing
The David Gemmel Legend Award will be presented for the very first time in 2009 for the best Fantasy novel of 2008. The award will be given to a work written in the ‘spirit’ of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy. I’ve been a David Gemmel fan for a long time.
Bain Books is having a short story contest. The theme is to ‘Write a short story of no more than 8,000 words, that shows the near future (no more than about 50-60 years out) of manned space exploration.’
Jane Lindskold define what she thinks Hard Fantasy is. An older article by Marie Brennan can be found here.
New York Times-bestselling urban fantasy author Carrie Vaughn has posted an excellent three-part essay about urban fantasy:
- Part One: The Formula
- Part Two: When Things Go Wrong (Pay careful attention to Item #5!)
- Part Three: Deconstructing Urban Fantasy
The Fantasy Magazine blog has a feature on Taboos in Speculative Fiction.
Computers
The WolFire Games blog has an article on why you should support Mac and Linux when writing software.
Your Money or Your Life, a comic about programmers.
Google used its booth at Macworld this year to show off some of the things it was working on with Apple, particularly for the iPhone. But the coolest thing at their booth didn’t have much to do with Apple at all: A hacked Nintendo Wii Balance Board (from the game Wii Fit) used to control Google Earth.
Misc
This is a timelapse map showing the spread of WalMart across the US. Scary stuff.
Science
I’ve taken a recent interest in Quantum Mechanics and found this video on you tube with Robert Anton Wilson describing Quantum Physics in layman terms.
Blog
And last, but certainly not least, a t-shirt that makes fun of those of us that blog for only a small handfull of people.
