The Gospel According to St. Peter
Oooh, lookey here: Extrapolation doesn't embargo. So, for any who actually want to read even more of my opinions, a pdf of Szeman and Whiteman's whole damn interview is available here, at Imre Szeman's web page out of McMaster University. It's a rifters-heavy piece, but it also goes into my childhood plagiarism, the inadvisability of letting scientists write science fiction, and the reasons for my arms-length distance from the Canadian Science-Fiction Community. (Hint: air quotes around that last word).Go. Read. Wallow. Even if boingboing and Icanhascheezeburger are vastly more infortaining.
Labels: public interface
posted by Peter Watts at
9:06 PM
7 Comments:
Good read, took my mind off my job for twenty minutes or so.
So just when are you going to write/publish another book? I know your tone at the end of the interview is pretty negative on the subject, but that was before the notoriety of Blindsight, no? Surely its success (of one type or another) is adequate motivation?
Nice interview. I caught the downbeat mood on future projects, too. I just wanted to say I've always found your work very compelling. Very inspiring. One of the reasons that lead to me starting my own dramatic work.
www()royalcolornetwork()com
If it makes you feel any better I recommend your books to anyone who even expresses a passing interest in SF.
I'm thinking of investing in pom-poms.
Generally when people use the word 'community' they're simultaneously creeping one hand around your arse to find your wallet.
Jeff said:
So just when are you going to write/publish another book? I know your tone at the end of the interview is pretty negative on the subject, but that was before the notoriety of Blindsight, no? Surely its success (of one type or another) is adequate motivation?
Actually, the notoriety of Blindsight got me even more disgruntled, especially some of the skewed and self-serving reactions thereto. (For example, check out the comments following this boingboing post: PNH talks about all the happy things that went my way after Tor "let" me go Creative Commons, conveniently failing to mention that Tor not only flatly refused to allow a CC option in Blindsight's original contract, but that they even tried to add a special clause that would have forbidden me from posting excerpts of more than 1700 words on my own website! At the same time, Tor was linking to other author excerpts of 10,000 words and more, and Cory Doctorow's novels were all leaving the gate as CC releases with Tor's blessing. But once Blindsight actually took off, oh, lookey here; we're all one big happy supportive family. Right.)
Anyway, I am, finally, working up some new outlines. Four of them, in fact. Two I'm pretty damned excited about ("Dumbspeech" and "Squidnet"), and the other two ("Gerbils" and "Vampires")I might be once I've sat down and worked out some more details. Never fear, though. There's more stuff coming down the pike. In fact, I even plan on refreshing the "In Progress" page before too long.
Royal Color Network said...
One of the reasons that lead to me starting my own dramatic work.
Jesus, you did all that stuff? Animations, sound, design, the whole thing? I am hugely impressed. (That coffee animation is a special favorite — took my breath away.)
I mean sure, you seem to work for a lot of evil empires, but what evocative evil work you do. Who are you, who are so learned in the ways of graphidynamics?
Glad you like the work, Peter - at least you give me evil with a small "e". Haha.
This is the way that I look at it - 500 years ago, if you were a commercial artist, you had two possible clients: making propaganda for the Catholic Church, or making propaganda for your local bloodthirsty ruler.
Now, we just try to get people to buy a cup of coffee.
I work as part of a team on the larger projects. Our industry is organized in a similar way to the visual effects folks.
The interesting thing, to me, is that no one that I work with has gotten into doing dramatic work. So I'm teaming up with some friends in independent film and science fiction to try and do something a little different. It's looking like it could be exciting.
And, again, Peter, thanks for inspiring me to get started.
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