{"id":5113,"date":"2014-09-04T12:32:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T20:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2014-09-04T17:04:01","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T01:04:01","slug":"mote-turbation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5113","title":{"rendered":"Mote-turbation."},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, so many things I want to rattle on about with you people. The potential critical relevance of leaky cell membranes<\/a> down in deep-sea vents, back when life was just getting started (and the resonance that might have for a certain fictional doomsday bug which will be trapped in such vents for another few decades because of the osmotic consequences of having inordinately leaky membranes<\/i>).\u00a0 The latest news in telepathy through technology<\/a> (overhyped, IMO\u2014 in the same way the last big “breakthrough”<\/a> was\u2014 but we’re getting there, we’re getting there).\u00a0 The ongoing tale of Patrick McLaw, school-teacher, who was disappeared<\/a>, held at an undisclosed location, \u00a0and forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation because of a couple of dystopian SF novels he self-pubbed on Amazon\u2014 no, wait, it wasn’t those books at all, it was a four-page letter<\/a> that some thought might be a “cry for help”\u2014 no, no, it was really<\/i> those books and<\/em> the letter and<\/em> the fact that he’d built a scale model of a high school<\/a> that might have tewwowist implications (nothing said at first about McLaw’s background in architecture, or the fact that he’d also<\/i> built models of a cruise ship and a house).\u00a0 Oh, and while we haven’t actually got around to charging<\/i> him with anything, we’re also investigating allegations that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old-boy in Delmarva <\/a><\/i>\u2026<\/p>\n

Riiight. When \u00a0they start yanking the gay-pedophile-won’t-someone-think-of-the-children<\/i> routine out of their asses (never mind that 16 is the age of consent in Maryland)\u2014 more tellingly, when they don’t even lead<\/em> with that, but only bring it up after days of being held up to global outrage and ridicule\u2014 you can probably tune out with a high degree of confidence that once again, the assholes are just making it up as they go along. Is it any wonder that over the course of my recent reddit AMA, the comment that won by far the greatest number of upvotes was my suggestion to a resident of Fergusen that maybe we<\/i> should start randomly killing cops<\/i> for a change? (I should do a post on that too, now that I think of it\u2026)<\/p>\n

All this and more, all infinitely more worthy of attention than what I’m actually here to talk about. Because I have this new book out, and the sink\/swim window is only a few weeks, and we’re already into week two and I haven’t done any of the essays or quizzes or promo interviews I told everyone I’d get around to once August was out of the way. Hell, I’m still working on the fucking website (Gallery’s looking good, btw; soon, now), and answering e-mail (backlog holding steady around 80), and hitting the refresh button every five minutes over at Amazon while wondering why I’ve only got a dozen reviews up there while Scalzi has 57 for a book that came out the same day. (Wondering rhetorically, mind you; there’s no need for any of you to wade in and helpfully point out any of the two or three dozen reasons why The Scalz kicks my ass at selling books.)<\/p>\n

All of which is just a long-winded way of saying that while the world continues to wobble from impacts that turn my own trivial concerns to dust motes, it’s my job for the next little while to be small-minded and mercenary and to nurture those fucking motes until either Echopraxia<\/i> succeeds or I throw in the towel. If it’s any consolation, I do it grudgingly.<\/p>\n

Today’s nugget of self-promotion comes via Clarkesworld, which has been kind enough to reprint “Giants”, from the Sunflowers<\/i> cycle.\u00a0 While “Giants” came out earlier this year, chances are you never read that first release because the publishers pooched the roll-out, buried the title, and didn’t get around to paying their authors our contracted pittance until months later.<\/p>\n

Clarkesworld, in contrast, rocks.\u00a0 And people read them. \u00a0So if you missed “Giants” last time around, now’s your chance.<\/p>\n

It’s even free<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, so many things I want to rattle on about with you people. The potential critical relevance of leaky cell membranes down in deep-sea vents, back when life was just getting started (and the resonance that might have for a certain fictional doomsday bug which will be trapped in such vents for another few decades […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113","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=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5121,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions\/5121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}