{"id":1782,"date":"2011-01-12T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T01:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1782"},"modified":"2011-01-12T17:43:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T01:43:16","slug":"1782","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=1782","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t know you cared. But since you do…"},"content":{"rendered":"

So: doctor first thing Thursday morning, although whatever’s eating my legs seems to be dying on its own (despite the fact that the pus is back). So you guys can stop worrying\/mocking me\/tossing your cookies.<\/p>\n

The readings went over really well last night (and I’m told the video will be online before too long), to a packed house in a cozy crimson venue right out of Eastern Promises<\/em>. Even better, ChiZine paid for all my Coronas. \u00a0 There’s a whole sheaf of pictures from the evening over here<\/a>, nicely arranged in slideshow format.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But that’s not really what I want to talk to you about tonight. \u00a0what I want to talk about is, um, a bit delicate. I’m not especially good at the whole self-promotion thing \u2014 not because I don’t crave success and glory (I do), but because I don’t want to appear<\/em> to crave it so, well, cravenly. We’ve already got enough self-aggrandising tub-thumpers in these parts; there are some web sites out there I can’t visit without cringing.<\/p>\n

But some of you may have noticed something TheEchoInside<\/strong> stuck into the last post’s comment stream \u2014 something about a poll over at Tor.com in which readers weigh in on The Best Fantasy\/SF Book of the Decade<\/a>. (I notice that most people vote for multiple books, but that seems to be okay.) I have not a hope in Hades of ever winning such a People’s-Choicean accolade (that’s pretty clearly going to Scalzi), and I am in fact kind of surprised to even be in the running. But as of the last tally<\/a> Blindsight<\/em>‘s sitting just below the cut at #12 (I was at #11 a day ago, but has since slipped a notch). And I gotta say, it’d be pretty nice to break into the top ten, at least.<\/p>\n

Of course, by applying this self-serving nudge I’m contaminating the results; \u00a0some votes might accrue out of pity or guilt rather than an honest assessment of literary quality. On the other hand, I’m led to believe that a bunch of other<\/em> candidates are leaning on their<\/em> readers to skew the count, so the poll’s contaminated anyway. All such polls are. \u00a0 Normally it wouldn’t matter. \u00a0 Normally I wouldn’t embarrass myself like this regardless. \u00a0 It’s not as though you get a Porsche \u00a0for making the finals.<\/p>\n

But the thing is, this particular poll is being run by Tor. And the sailing between Tor and myself has not always been, shall we say, glassy smooth. Some of you may remember the difficulties I had with them over, over \u2014 oh, right: a novel called Blindsight<\/em>. Difficulties sufficient to inspire me to give it away for free under a Creative Commons license barely two months after publication, since there was no other way to get the damn thing out to readers who couldn’t find it in bookstores.<\/p>\n

And there it\u00a0is, just this close<\/em> to breaking into the top ten novels of the decade as decided by Tor readers. And really, wouldn’t that be sweet?<\/p>\n

So I’m going to break my usual rule here and point out that anyone who wants to put in a good word for Blindsight<\/em> over there has until 11:59pm Friday to do so. \u00a0But if any of you are so inclined, don’t do it for the usual reasons. Don’t do it for me.<\/p>\n

Do it for whoever wrote Blindsight<\/em> off as DOA before it even got out the gate. Do it with your middle finger.<\/p>\n

Now I’m going to go and check out this latest paper<\/a> by Bem. I gotta say, the idea that pornography enhances precognition is one of those glorious things that both makes perfect sense in hindsight, and which you’d never think of in a million years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So: doctor first thing Thursday morning, although whatever’s eating my legs seems to be dying on its own (despite the fact that the pus is back). So you guys can stop worrying\/mocking me\/tossing your cookies. The readings went over really well last night (and I’m told the video will be online before too long), to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-public-interface"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}