The Boosting the Signal Project

Anna’s new “Boosting the Signal” project features authors’ characters delivering confessionals about their goals in upcoming novels which feature them.

That’s pretty high concept and very meta. I like it.

It’s also partly a response to all the various repeated flaps around SFWA last year, and the petition-to-SFWA this year. That whole thing about starting your own amusement park? Yep.

Anyway, she’s just published the first list of guest appearances. It starts February 28th, with Anna Kashina. She mentioned being already booked through April; should be interesting to follow that as it unfolds.

On a not at all unrelated note, I floated something similar with musicians last year. Maybe I should try that again – I just need a snappy organising concept. Got any ideas?

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a bit lost in all the kerfluffle

Amongst the news that got somewhat overlooked during the petition-to-SFWA flap of the last two weeks:

• The INSTRUMENT OF MYSTERY! was identified!,

• The two-CD-long Destiny came out, with my first voice acting role, and,

• a genuinely nice desert lair went on the market. Any ground- or desert-oriented supervillains looking for a lovely redoubt?

Along the way, I fixed another guitar – I keep repairing instruments I don’t even know how to play XD – and a cool toy appeared! If you have a new enough browser, go play with it, it’s fun.

Finally, this is legitimately hilarious (h/t to Ben Deschamps):

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if one of the bottles should happen to fall

The skiffy net is all abuzz with Sean Fodera’s apology to Mary Robinette Kowal. He also seems to have caught up enough to know that you cannot sue the Internet, tho’ he still seems to think he as a good libel case against… people… who quote him… accurately. Well, baby steps.

Ms. Kowal has, in turn, issued her acceptance of his apology:

He’s also posted about women in SF, in a way that seems to me to be muchly ignoring the point of this entire petition adventure. Screencaps of both are at Radish Reviews, because SFF.net keeps buckling under the traffic rush.

Me? I’m less than convinced, not really by the apology itself – which seems fine – but by the context of the “I don’t hate women, I have a daughter! And women co-workers!” second post. Commenters at James Nicoll’s Livejournal blog are thinking similarly. But I’m in the enviable position of having superpowers, not the least of which is my innate and tremendous ability not to have to give a fuck. If Mary is happy, well, what else is needed?

Oh, I know. Some sort of settlement of this whole petition flap. Hopefully, Mr. Fodera is sincere, and – tokenism of his women-in-SF post aside – let’s also say well-intentioned. That leaves a whole lot of petition authors and signers who are not so far along.

This isn’t about one person. This is about a systemic problem.

Some people have been calling this apology a resolution to the entire affair; I find that overly optimistic, myself. But we’ll see.

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Previous posts on this topic are collected here.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come check out our music at:
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