Blógünder Schlock

The folks at Star Pirates have been itching to get me to design ads for them for over a year now. Unfortunately for them I’ve been too busy to pay much attention to advertising — which is kind of strange, because you’d expect a good mercenary like me to be taking to that particular revenue stream like a fish takes to water, but I digress — so they had to go stand in line for slots via Project Wonderful.

By way of thanks to them for their persistence (and apology to them for not being able to follow through) here is linkage: Go play Star Pirates! There’s a “Tagon Toughs” fleet out there for you to join, even. Their imagined future is a bit darker than mine, but the game is still a thematic fit with Schlock Mercenary. That’s why I’m letting them use some of my stuff in their ads.

While we’re on the subject of me not being able to follow through… Sandra’s sister Nancy has invented the salvation of short speculative fiction. I promised her some artwork, but have yet to deliver.

So what is this miracle project? It is Anthology Builder, and it lets you assemble a print collection of short fiction, selecting stories from among hundreds of reprints from popular magazines. Then you pick cover art, drop coin, and your customized anthology is printed on-demand and sent to you in the mail.

How will this save short fiction? Let’s describe the problem, first: Most short fiction is published in magazines with a very limited circulation and shelf-life. Once published, those stories rarely see reprints in anthologies because the market is a too small to support more than a few runs of mass-market paperbacks. The result is that authors have little incentive to write short stories, so they don’t. The art form stagnates.

Enter Anthology Builder: Print-on-demand (POD) technology makes it possible for extremely small print runs to turn a profit, in turn making it possible for these short stories to be marketed to the niche that loves them. This means that authors get residual royalties for work that is technically out-of-print, and that incents them to create similar work. The art form again blooms.

(On an only-slightly nepotistic note: Anthology Builder now has three Sandra Tayler stories in it.)

Anyway, Nancy asked me if I’d like to contribute cover art for Anthology Builder, and even though this is something I’d get paid for I still haven’t managed to submit something. Too busy making comics, I guess.

Today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. This is the day when celebrants post works for free online, originally in reaction to a kerfluffle of sorts over at the SFWA in 2007.

I don’t have a list of this year’s participants, and it’s possible the movement has lost steam over the last 48 months given the fact that lately every day is Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. When can you NOT find great writing and art freely provided online by professional writers and artists? I recently read three fantastic non-fiction essays over at Baen’s Universe. I donated, but I didn’t have to.

At any rate, my participation in the event today is nothing new. It’s just another daily installment of Schlock Mercenary. I suppose I could opine and ramble about what this means, and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Am I destroying the economy, or am I rebuilding it? Or am I somehow doing both, serving as an agent of the democratized remodeling of the world of publishing?

I don’t know. And regardless of my current thoughts on the matter I’m sure the historians and the economists will settle the matter over drinks in a decade or two.

Yesterday we got the advance copies of The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance along with six advance copies of the slipcase, Schlock Mercenary Munitions Canister I. I took the Munitions Canister (slipcase) with me to the Keep where it was unanimously received as attractive and (once handled) “really STURDY.” When I put the “Not a Step” sign on the top of the design I thought I was being silly. Now, however… I think that box might just work as a step-stool.

But it’s clearly labeled to prevent you from doing that.

Boxes and books are on their way to Schlock HQ, and are due to arrive in about four weeks. The launch party is at CONduit in Salt Lake City, and the shipping party is going to be about a week later. If you’ve pre-ordered, you should receive your package in early June. If you haven’t pre-ordered it’s not too late! We can still make at least 100 boxed sets of books before we run out of Under New Management.

The single most imporant part of my lecture is the source material I used. Research on this subject is both ongoing and controversial. I hand-picked sources that supported my own opinions on the matter (so much for objectivity!) but those sources then presented information that changed my mind on more than a few things (see? He CAN be taught!)

So here’s the infodump. (more…)

Voting is open for the 2009 Hugo Awards, the World Science Fiction Society’s annual bestowal of honor, and the most prestigious awards in Science Fiction.

This year there is an additional category, a one-time-only Award for “Best Graphic Story,” and after a careful perusal of the rules it appears that Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic is eligible for nomination.

But is it worthy? I invite you to re-read it! And for your convenience, here is Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic as a PDF. It is a 35mb download, but it should be much more convenient than re-reading the archives on the web. Feel free to pass it around, too.

In order to nominate works for the Hugos you must have an Attending membership to either Denvention or Anticipation (WorldCon 66 from ‘08 or WorldCon 67 in ‘09), or a Supporting membership. The details are here. Obligatory Ethical Note: I feel confident that my web presence and active fanbase will NOT result in ballot-stuffing, since the right to nominate costs a minimum of $50. My purpose in this exercise is to ensure that those who can vote know what’s eligible, and have the opportunity to easily review it.

Now… as long as you’re nominating things for Hugos, you should know that you can nominate up to five works for each category. There are other works equally worthy if not far worthier of the “Best Graphic Story” Hugo, and at the tippity-brass-top of that list is Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones. The Foglio’s are friends of mine, yes, but their work trancends that. Girl Genius is one of the few things on the web or in print that I look at and say to myself “Wow… I wish I could do that.”

I just got word that Robert Asprin passed away yesterday. The full text of the article on the SFWA website can be found here.

Asprin was a great writer, and I count his comedic works (especially the Phule’s Company series) among my strongest influences. I loved the Myth Adventures series with Aahz and Skeeve, and Phil Foglio recently sent me the graphic novel he and Asprin collaborated on.

I’m especially saddened because his writing career had lapsed for years, and it’s only recently that he was rebounding from that long, rough patch.

Goodbye, Robert. We’ll surely miss you.

I’ve known for weeks now that there is a petition demanding that Uwe Boll stop making movies (like Bloodrayne, of which you may recall my review.) I’ve also known that Boll himself has said that he will indeed stop if enough signatures are collected.

Most of you probably know this already too, but apparently until I post the news, you’ll keep emailing me, so I’m caving in.

And now my thoughts on the matter: My dad used to warn me about sucker bets. “I bet you I can make that cat play the piano,” was the example he often used, followed up with the statement: “Never take this bet unless you really WANT to see the cat play the piano.” He never explained how it would be done, or how the weasel-words would cheat the sucker out of his wager. He just laid it out as a truth.

Uwe Boll has proven to be a masterful manipulator of publicity AND a masterful filmmaker. In the case of publicity, he’s turned negative news into name recognition, and in the case of films, he’s taken fine (Oscar-winning, even) talent and churned out deplorable tax-shelters. I don’t LIKE what he does, but I have to give the man credit: he’s got me convinced that the cat can play the piano.

What will happen if there are a million signatures on that petition? I suspect that Boll will either weasel a way into demonstrating that there are NOT one million or more signatories (and I’m sure there are enough of us signing several times to make the case for him) or he will find a way to take this list of “one million people hate me” to the bank for some marketing endeavor or another. Or, worst case, the petition will top out at around half a million, and it’s like we ALL went boxing against Boll and got our noses bloodied.

Maybe he was speaking rashly. Maybe your signature really will end his torturtous treatment of our favorite video games. But where Boll is concerned, I’m always ready to expect the worst.

I’ve been tempted to rent “In The Name of the King,” just to see how bad the film is, but I realized that if I do, Boll wins AGAIN. I’m not even allowing myself the privilege of enjoying the bad reviews, because that’s just another kind of cat playing the piano.

I just got word that Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

He is the science fiction writer I think most of us want to be — the one who dreams of something that is both wondrous and practical, and which is made into reality into his own lifetime.

In the 40’s he suggested that humans would walk on the moon by the year 2000. While working for the RAF during World War II, he predicted the network of communications satellites we have today. Geostationary orbit is called the Clarke orbit, and the Clarke Belt is that band of space almost 36,000 kilometers above equatorial sea-level where such orbits are found.

We’ve lost a great mind, and a great man, but his contributions will live on.

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons passed away on Tuesday, March 4th. CNN has this listed under “cnn.com/technology” which perhaps illustrates the enormous impact this man had on the lives of the people currently on this planet’s cutting edge.

If you’re a computer programmer, or if you work in just about any other highly technical field, the odds are pretty good that you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons. It’s likely, in fact, that your brush with it was during your formative years, and that you (like me) count those experiences among the ones that most shaped your imagination.

CNN’s article was kind of dry. If you want a good tribute, check out Rich Burlew’s illustrated tribute over at Order of the Stick, and the gorgeous single-panel nod over at Penny Arcade.

As for me… I believe that Gary has gone to a place where his imagination can be writ large, and where mere dice and tables can’t describe the outcomes. That God who gave us all life, and who invites us to choose wisely as we write the stories of our lives must certainly smile when a universe-builder like Gary finally comes home. He’s probably got pencils and paper spread out already.

Back in December the editor at ComixTalk, Xaviar Xerexes, posted a call for questions” for Blank Label Comics (the webcomics powerhouse in whose machinery I am but a cog.) The questions led to an interview, and now that interview is live!

Go have a look! I think I may have said two funny things, as well as several very dry and potentially educational things. Fortunately, Xerexes spiced it up with pictures.

You can read the latest Schlock Mercenary (as well as the latest of each of the Blank Label Comics) at the new-and-improved Blank Label Comics home page.

Our initial page layout (credit: Maggie, David Willis, and Me) was pretty good, but Elizabeth Dean (espoused to Greg Dean of Real Life Comics) took one look at it and sprouted a patch of grey hairs. Then she got to work.

Less than six hours later she had a new layout mocked up. Twenty-four hours after that, Greg had made her design live.

I have never seen this woman touch a page design without turning it into gold. She is Queen WebMidas, with a golden touch. In this case the gold comes in desaturated cerulean shades highlighted with shining Blank Label Orange, but it is gold nonetheless. It is gorgeous… kind of like the tri-color Black Hills Gold, only without Indian Burial Grounds or Mount Rushmore.

So… go have a look. Read all of the Blank Label Comics in one handy place.

Now then… here are some answers to common questions:

Q: What will this do to ad revenue?
A: The same thing RSS feeds do. It will dilute ad revenue slightly, while expanding the reach of the comics and increasing page-views overall. Ultimately, it’s OUR problem, not yours. This page is for readers to enjoy. If you feel guilty enjoying it, you can buy some merchandise someday.

Q: Can I have an RSS feed for this new page?
A: Hmmm… No. The page updates every ten minutes, and updated content (especially blog entries) may appear at any time during the day. If you want to be up-to-the-minute on all that stuff, the best way is to subscribe to individual Blank Label Comics RSS feeds. This page is a once-a-day trawl spot for people who don’t want to bother with all those feeds.

Q: But Schlock Mercenary doesn’t have a feed.
A: Yet. I’m working on that. It’s a separate project.

Q: Why is Real Life on top?
A: Because for now we all wanted it there. The vertical orientation is perfect. Eventually we may auto-rotate the position of the strips, but that’s a version 2.0 task.

Q: Shouldn’t there be plugs for your merchandise, and store links, and forum links, and all that?
A: You’re absolutely right. There should be. That’s a version 1.1 task, and to hear Greg bubble enthusiastically about it, some of that may be in place before this blog entry gets posted.

Q: Do you have plans to add any other comics to the lineup here?
A: No, but the architecture is flexible enough that it would be easy to do. Six seems like the right number right now.

Q: What happened to the Blank Label Comics blog?
A: You can find it at www.blanklabelcomics.com/blog. Yes, this probably broke a lot of trackbacks and pings. Sorry! We’ll look at getting it incorporated into the main page at some future point.

Q: I have a bug to report!
A: Email it to me, or use the “contact” link at the top of the Blank Label Comics home page.