A high point in a lifetime of reading

I stayed up until three am this morning to finish a book. I had begun to think that I was too old for that sort of thing to ever happen again.  I’m very happy to be wrong.

I stayed up for all the best reasons one stays up to finish a book: because I wanted to know what happened, because I was continually interested in what was happening right at that moment; because I was having too good a time to let it stop.  

It restores your faith in Wonderful Things.

The book is called Nation, by Terry Pratchett.

You should be reading this.
You should be reading this.

This isn’t a Discworld novel. It’s not a comedy; it’s not a pun-filled romp.  This is simply a fine, fine author writing what I personally believe to be his best book. 

This is a book you stand alongside The Princess Bride, waiting impatiently for the day you can share it with your children.  If you know me, you know what kind of praise that comparison carries.

Find it. Read it.

Wizards of the Coast takes a… novel approach to dealing with PDF piracy

Angry Bear is angry.And by “novel”, I mean to say “utterly stupid and short-sighted.”

Earlier this evening RPGNow, Paizo, and DriveThruRPG pulled all of their Wizards of the Coast PDF products (where both new and much much much older products were available) at WotC’s request.  The ability to purchase them ended at noon – the ability to download products that you’ve already bought ended at midnight.

According to Wizards of the Coast, this was done to prevent piracy.  (In a followup statement, they clarified that they believe this… because they are luddite morons.)

“We have [taken these actions] to stop the illegal activities […], and to deter future unauthorized and unlawful file-sharing.”

I love the vast understatement from one gaming site today:

“I predict an increase in piracy of Wizards products.”

REALLY?

Let me take this one step further.  I guarantee – not ‘predict’, but guaran-goddamn-tee that every single PDF of WotC products made available after midnight tonight will be a pirated copy.

Just… think about it for a second; you’ll see exactly what I mean.

See… before today? Sure, some people were sharing PDFs like that on file-sharing sites, and there was pirating going on. Sure, yes.

Was it because the PDFs were made available by WotC and sold online?

No.  You’ve been able to get PDFs of ANY game book — hell, any book at all — even ones that have never had electronic versions available, ever since scanner technology became remotely mainstream (early 90s), because people have time, and geeks have desire for the electronic versions.

Until today, at least most of the people who wanted electronic versions of their game book were getting the PDFs the easy way: google search, got to RPGNow, click, click, download.  No torrent software. No worrying if you picked up a virus with your latest PDF. Easy.

Now, the only way to get the electronic version of a WotC product is to get it from a pirate site.

I can either not get it at all (sucks for me, and WotC gets no money), or I get it from a torrent site (hassle for me, and WotC gets no money).

The pirating people? This has no fucking affect on them what. so. ever.

Well, no; that’s not entirely true.

This move by WotC, ostensibly meant to fight piracy, will actually ensure that more people will come to their site to download ALL the PDFs they want (for games, for novels… whatever — I mean, as long as they’re THERE for the DnD stuff, they might as well look around and see what else is out there, right?…).

It’s not just stupid and short-sighted.  It doesn’t just ensure the piracy of their work by 100% of those that want PDFs of DnD material; it actually hurts all the other companies in the industry as well.

My BSG review Reaction to the Reviewers

Rather than post a review, I’m just going to address some of the complaints that people have brought up with the show.

  • Robots are BAD. BSG warned us!
    Yeah… you’re missing the point, which is that the mistakes of the 12 colonies (in terms of letting our technology get ahead of society – our heads getting ahead of our hearts) are mistakes we’re making today. Yeah, the shots of robots as they exist today was heavy-handed, but how can you NOT see the comparisons? I thought the runway-walking robot was the most eerily reminiscent of the Cylon skin-jobs, and honestly if I’d worked on the show for this long, I’d see connections everywhere also.

    If you think the last four minutes of the show with the robot montage was heavy-handed and lame, then stop the frakking episode when Hera’s looking up into the sky right after Adama talks to Laura. *pats you onna head*

  • I’m pissed that Starbuck just disappeared.
    What, exactly, did you expect? We know she died on the Cylon Earth. We know she came back, sans resurrection. We know she’s not a cylon. We know that at the very least Cylons (and Baltar) can ‘project’, perceive, and share realistic imaginings, at least some of which originate from something outside themselves. What’s LEFT besides some kind of paranormal group perception of Starbuck’s spirit? Nothing, that’s what.  With all the other choices eliminated (albeit only because the fans guessed at them and thus eliminated them as options due to the creator’s pathological aversion to ever doing anything the viewers predicted), what we saw was the only option really left.

    And don’t tell me that Kara “should” have been the daughter of the missing 7th Cylon model, Daniel. Yeah, it would have been nice, but if she’s half-cylon, then Hera is no big deal, and the whole damned show is about Hera and the union of the two species, so that. isn’t. an. option.

  • I’m pissed Starbuck and Lee didn’t up together.
    How much would it have robbed Kara’s farewell to Sam if she’d then walked off into the sunset with Lee? Utterly. It was enough for me to see that Lee wanted it, and that Kara was Done. Completely. Done. Sam will see her on the other side, and he won’t have long to wait.
  • I’ll buy the Head Six and Gaius being angels, but I don’t love it.
    The problem with ALWAYS writing something that the fans don’t expect, EVERY TIME, and then having to EXPLAIN it later, is that sometimes you paint yourself into a corner and are left with only one explanation — the one no one really expected, because they didn’t really like it.

    With that said, one of the things Battlestar did in the final season is invent a new myth of the origin of humanity. That’s a huge, epic thing, and it behooves such a grand and spiritual topic to include… you know… spirits. Call it heavy-handed, or deus ex machina, but it’s a creation myth; such things don’t run toward the subtle.

  • I never wanted BSG to end in OUR world.
    Then you haven’t been paying attention, because the writers have said for TWO YEARS that the fleet would reach Earth. Suck it up.
  • They couldn’t even kill off the ship in a satisfactory way.
    A) The fleet wanted a fresh start. B) They wanted to leave no trace to find later. Sun-diving is the only viable solution. Also, Galactica sailing into the heart of our Sun is, in my opinion, one of the finest sendoffs such a storied ship could ever have; like a viking warrior being sent to out to sea on a burning funeral barge.
  • Cavil’s death was useless. Cavil did the math. The fleet has Hera + one of the Final Five just died = the Cylons are never going to get Resurrection. Also, reproduction is right out because a) the three remaining ‘enemy’ models are pretty much incable of love and b) they’re all guys.  They’re dead; Cavil’s just the first one to realize it.
  • Too unbelievable to me how everyone so easily disavows technology once they find Earth.
    How about you get hunted across 100,000 light years of space by your own technological creations and then see if you wouldn’t rather go back to farming in a small agrarian village on a simple, untainted world. Pretty believable to me.
  • It pissed me off that they abandoned the Daniel storyline; Model #7.
    Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that one — that was something I would have liked to see them explore and do something with. Having it not be Kara’s dad was – I understand why they didn’t, as I said, but you know… don’t mention him if you’re not doing something with him.
  • NOBODY died, except for those already dying a couple bad guys.
    You didn’t get enough death over the last five years? Really? After De and the Mutiny? Really?
  • Adama never wants to see his son again? After all that, he’ll just leave Lee?
    Again, yeah… you got me there. That was kinda… yeah. Then again, Lee wants to explore, and Bill wants to build his cabin and be with the memory of his wife-that-wasn’t. Not like they’d see each other much anyway. Still, to really be circle-of-life-y, it should have been Lee leaving the Old Man.
  • Everything is just… God’s plan?
    I’ve always liked the more realistic, gritty side of BSG, not so much the mystical stuff. I can buy that objection, but the fact of the matter is, LONG before the end of the show we’ve had prophecies coming true, and mystic clues providing a path, and visions shared between multiple people — I mean, everyone LOVES that the vision of the Opera House finally came true… how the hell is that going to happen without some kind of supernatural element? The ‘divine influence’ thing wasn’t the huge leap that everyone makes it out to be. It simply wasn’t. Sometimes Astronomically Impossible things happen – and as Baltar says in the final episode: “Why not call it God or Gods or Divince Influence Beyond Our Understanding?” Sure. Okay. Good enough for me.
  • We saw what happened to the characters, but it felt like nothing was left to ponder about their personal journeys.
    Umm. That’s cuz the journey was over. They’re done. Duh.
  • I can’t believe Baltar and Six got away with being (wholly or partly, knowingly or unknowingly) responsible for genocide on Old Caprica.
    Yeah… our last administration just got away with eight years of war crimes — the president? Not only scot-free, but with a seven million dollar book deal out of it. Almost all those largely responsible for the current financial crisis will likely end up on well-appointed private islands when it’s all said and done. Baltar retires to farming. How is that unrealistic? Don’t talk to me about ‘what the story requires’; art imitates life, and in THIS life, leaders responsible for bad things usually do not come to bad ends. Besides, punishing Baltar wasn’t the point of the story.

    The fact of the matter is, the Fleet DID recriminations and trials already. It didn’t work, and the reason it didn’t was this: by the end of the journey, everyone had done horrible things. Everyone. There is no one left but Hera who could – in clear conscience – cast the first stone at ANYONE else.

    When the crew was spying on the natives of Earth, and Adama was joking with Baltar, there was a sense of relief, you know? “Thank god I don’t have to give a frak what you’ve done in the past, anymore. It’s done. We’re all going to go our seperate ways. It’s done. We’re done. No more stress. No more pain. It’s done.”

    Clean slate.

    Garden of Eden.

In the end, the show was what it was: a piece of artistic creation by someone who is not me. As such, there is no way it would scratch every single itch I had, or do everything as I would have done. That’s what art is: one person’s expression, take it or leave it. Nine tenths of the time, the art of Battlestar’s story was entirely worth taking it for what it was.

To all those people nerd-raging about how Ron Moore betrayed you or “Ron Moore is dead to me”, get a grip; you just got five years of great story and enjoyment out of someone else’s work. You didn’t even pay for it; it was free. And don’t talk to me about the time invested in viewing; compared to the time involved in creation, multiplied hundreds of times over for each of the people involved in the show, the time you spent with your ass on a couch hooting and hollering and teaching yourself to say ‘frak’ instead of ‘fuck’ is utterly insignificant.

The crew and cast took a five-year-long present and gift-wrapped with a big bow on top, and people are bitching that they would have wrapped it up differently?

Okay…

Get out there and create something; something even half so vast and complex, then bring it to a close.

It’s your frakking turn.

“My safeword is ‘apples’.” – Why you should be watching Castle.

Yeah, I know it’s the kiss of death when I’m interested in a new show, but here it goes.

Reasons to watch Castle:

  1. “… starring Nathan Fillion.” You know what? I’ve been watching Fillion in a lot of different stuff for awhile now, and in the first episode of Castle I saw some stuff from him that he hasn’t used in previous work. He’s smart, he’s quick, and he’s funny. (Kate adds: ‘adorable!’)
  2. The cop partner. To paraphrase one of the finest compliments I’ve ever heard: “She keeps up.” There’s a lot to keep up with when Fillion’s on the screen, and she handles herself really well. There’s a scene where Castle ‘reads her’ and talks about her past, and the subtle way her face goes from cocksure to hurt over the course of 20 seconds. She’s good.
  3. The Bright Daughter. The writer has a smart, bookish daughter. Huge surprise, right? Well, no, but the pleasant part of the non-surprise is how well the actress playing her pulls of the sharp “almost-equals, who’s taking care of whom” repartee.
  4. The writer’s dream gig. Are you kidding me? The titular character has a gorgeous apartment with room for his daughter and his (boozing, aging-cougar) mother (awwwww), he has signing parties that look like music biz album releases, and he’s got the mayor of NYC on speed dial. These things NEVER happen in real life, so writers and wannabe writers? G’head and watch the show and vicariously live the-dream-that-never-is.
  5. The tension. Yeah yeah. Sexual tension between the two leads. That’s been done. The far more interesting bit (to me) is the fact that Castle’s publisher rep is his ex-wife. Ouch. In the real world, there’s no reason those two would have to work together (and many reasons not to – don’t marry your agent, people), so why do they?
  6. The dialog is snappy and smart. I laughed many times. Reincorporation is funny.
  7. 11 million viewers for the first episode. Compare that to the (steadily dropping) 3.4 million viewers that Dollhouse is clinging to after four episodes, and you’ll see a snappy, funny show with people you like… that might actually survive to a second season.
  8. The show is pro-reading. Seriously. This seems obvious, since the titular character is an author, but it goes beyond that. I counted no less than a half-dozen pro-reading references in the show, some of them quite overt, some pretty subtle. I like it – it might be the thing I liked the most about the show.

And that’s it. It’s a good show. Murder mystery/comedies are fun. Get it on the DVR and watch it.

Publishing is changing. Publishers? Well…

Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

So speaks Susan Piver in an article in which she implores publishers not to make all the same mistakes as the music biz.

What offed the music business—and what the publishing industry is facing—is a corporate structure built to churn out hits […]. Rather than developing artists, exploiting regional marketplaces, and building financial models that can support a mid-range list, both industries sold […] out to entertainment at the expense of art and expression. Both are in the business of selling many copies of a few items, not a few copies of many items—the kind of product that can be shot out of a cannon, dominate the retail market, and then basically disappear—because anything else is simply too complicated for a similarly bulked up corporate retail environment to track. The appearance of downloads and file sharing could almost be seen as a desperate measure on the part of consumers to listen and read in an un-mandated manner.

Figuring out how to change the way bookselling works — to adapt it to the way that consumers clearly want it to work — that is the thing that publishers need to work on. Not the best way to embed DRM in ebooks and audiobooks (hint: there is no best way – the very best DRM is stuff you’re borrowing from the music industry – stuff that was already hacked two days before it was ever released). Not teacup-sized storms over Kindle2 text-to-speech capability. Those are the sorts of things that the recording industry has gotten their privates in a twist over for the last decade, and look where it’s gotten them. More to the point; look where it hasn’t.

My guess is that in 2-5 years we’ll see a publishing industry that looks like the music business does today: Super-downsized major companies selling a product line aimed at an older demographic and a jillion new companies creating the next generation of publishers, retailers, and readers. Just like in the music business, some in publishing will be mourning the death of the business while others will be wildly excited because all they see is opportunity.

Personally, I don’t think it’s going to take that long; I think it’s happening right now. There are lots of ’boutique’ (read: “small, specialized”) literary agencies out there — the technology exists today that will allow the proliferation of boutique publishers (I emphasize ‘proliferation’, because they already exist in small numbers).

You know what has recently excited me as a reader and a creator?

  • I’m excited by The Brink, a website where JC Hutchins invites his readers to ‘get commited’ the Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital — to “inject yourself into the Personal Effects universe and become a patient”, to contribute artwork, video, and to appear on the official website for the book. JC gets it.
  • I’m excited by the Nerdfighters Ning, where John and Hank Green have assembled a group of like-minded people that publishers only understand via the label ‘fans’, who are so much more; who do and contribute so much more.
  • I’m excited when an author friend of mine says “I want to change my website into something where the readers can communicate with me and with each other more easily… where they can create. The website right now, and Facebook… everything we’re using right now, it’s getting in the way of that.”
  • I get excited when I can interface directly with the authors I read — both as a writer (which I am) and a reader (which I am) and a fanboy (which I totally am) and a person (which helps me remember that we both are). I send RPG recommendations to Wil, and a cool t-shirt recommendation to Mur, and condolences to Neil, and software suggestions to Alethea, and I steal and eat Maureen’s bacon sandwich, and exchange random bits of geeky nerdtrivia to Rob or Fred.
  • I get excited when I realize that I can’t always tell the creators from the fans, because they switch places.

And if one stops by to thank me for a link, and another sends me a private message with a link to Susan Piver’s article so that I can rant about the publishing industry when maybe it’s not very easy for them to do so, and a third wants to interview me about the flash-fiction I’m writing on Twitter, and a fourth sends me a “You can do eeet!” when I bitch about another round of revisions on Hidden Things

That’s a community; the place where writing started, and where it’s coming back to  – despite the ‘industry’s’ best/worst efforts.

I’m not prognosticating, guys. Look around; you can watch it happening.