This is what happens when you get a bunch of literary types together.

(PS, the original link that triggered it all is amusing.)

DuoCenti: The Murloc’s Family

This late in the evening, Mrgurlargl was the only one still awake. The others were curled around the campfire, full of wine and food and sleeping soundly. He couldn’t sleep, though, he was too proud, too excited to sleep.

“Die murloc filth!” Loldude247’s assault was swift. His sword sang death even as his shouts roused the sleeping family.

Stumbled across this when checking out trackbacks. Of course, it reminds me of this.

Tor.com, the new website for Tor Books, has launched officially. And they’re offering up for free download the bunches of books that they were giving away to newsletter subscribers in their run-up to launch.

Among the books you can grab in DRM-free formats: Old Man’s War, Spin, Farthing, Crystal Rain, and much more. Plus a zillion gorgeous wallpapers from cover art.

Oh, and they cover games a bit too.

• Number of users in Habbo Hotel worldwide: 20,000,000
• “Hottest” book in the US last year according to Time Magazine: 1,500,000+. (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
• Best-selling graphic novel in the US last year: 80,000. (Naruto)
• Digital sales of a hit song: 2,100,000 (Leona Lewis, “Bleeding Love”)
• Average downloads of a downloadable Rock Band track: 100,000
• Viewers of the #1 show on US TV (including DVR): 28,800,000 (American Idol)
• Viewers of the #150 show on US TV: 2,400,000 (Gossip Girl)
• Users of World of Warcraft in North America: 2,500,000
• Monthly uniques for Gaia Online: 2,000,000+
• Total number of movie tickets sold in the US in one year: 1,400,000,000
• Estimated tickets sold to the new Indiana Jones movie in five weeks: 42,290,849 (using 2007 average US ticket price and grosses to date).

Just some figures that caught my eye while browsing a few different publications…

I got an email about this recently, but haven’t seen it myself. Apparently Game Informer picked the top ten books on gaming, and A Theory of Fun is on the list at #9. Perfect timing of course, given that it’s out of print and I get three inquiries a week on how to get ahold of a copy. Working on it…

David Kushner, author of the excellent Masters of Doom (which I have the galleys of somewhere around here, and which came in at #1) managed to type in the full list. I’ll have to see if I can find a copy of the article.

Edit: here’s the article.

In the wake of Little Brother coming out, John Scalzi has written a post about Why YA fiction. As regular blog readers know, I’ve been banging this drum for quite a while, citing folks like Scott Westerfeld and Tamora Pierce as authors that shouldn’t be neglected just because their books get shelved elsewhere in the store.

I have a friend with access to BookScan, which tracks book sales through stores and retail outlets, who at my request checked the aggregate bestseller list sales of adult fantasy and science fiction against the sale of YA fantasy and SF. Without mentioning specific numbers or titles, my friend says that last week, the top 50 YA SF/F bestsellers outsold the top 100 adult SF/F bestsellers (adult SF and F are separate lists) by two to one. So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 adult SF/F titles. The bestselling YA fantasy book last week (not a Harry Potter book) outsold the bestselling adult fantasy book by nearly four to one; the bestselling YA science fiction title sold three copies for every two copies of the chart-topping adult SF title.

So, as a reminder: one of the World Fantasy Awards finalists was what I’d call a YA title, Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword. One of the blockbuster movies this year was Jumper, which I haven’t seen, but which was based on a phenomenal series by Steven Gould. One of the grittiest police procedurals of recent times was Pierce’s Terrier (sequel is out now, I believe). Beautifully written literate fantasy is represented well by stuff like The New Policeman, all of Jeanne duPrau’s books (such as City of Ember, also recently optioned for a movie), or the astonishing Fly by Night.

And of course, in a year that has taken people like Lloyd Alexander and Madeleine L’Engle from us, don’t forget the favorite writers who are still with us. Charles de Lint is writing good juvies lately: Dingo most recently, and The Blue Girl before that. Susan Cooper, whose stunning The Dark Is Rising sequence was recently filmed to mixed results, is still writing, and I just read Victory which was quite good, and King of Shadows which was fantastic.

Making Light has a post about Cory’s new book, promising to send advance reader copies to bloggers who talk about the book. All the copies are gone, of course, since we live on Internet time.

But I’ve been lucky enough to have read it at various stages of development over the last year. So I don’t need a copy. Connections have their privileges!

And the bottom line is, go buy Little Brother when it goes on sale in twelve days. It’s aimed at teens. Don’t let that stop you. It’s not a space opera, a military SF novel, not a Singularity sort of thing, and there are no elves. Don’t let that stop you either. Because it’s urgent, and real, and you will learn something from it.

It’s a book about a kid whose town (San Francisco) gets attacked by terrorists, and who finds it then slipping into a sort of Homeland Security nightmare. A kid who fights back with the tech he has to hand — videogame consoles and ARGs and friend networks. And also a lot of guts.

It’s a story not only about paranoia and freedom, but also about security and insecurity. The hacks described are real; there’s an afterword with real-world resources.

I am looking forward to reading it again, between proper covers instead of on loose sheets of paper.

2008 Hugo Nomination List

I’ve read 3 of the 5, have a fourth but haven’t opened it the cover yet, and better get cracking on the ones I haven’t, I suppose! Particularly glad to see Halting State on the list, for the relevance to this blog — way to go, Charlie! And Scalzi will feel left out if I don’t congratulate him personally too.

For me, Arthur C. Clarke was never defined by hard science; he was defined by the unknowable. Whatever lay on the other side of the monolith. The agenda of the aliens in Childhood’s End. And of course, what was for me his most resonant work, Rendezvous with Rama. These are not stories that offer understanding — they offer, instead, mysteries a bit too big to fit into one book, one story.

Sure, he may have invented the communications satellite, but what he may be best remembered for in the end is an aphorism: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As we live in an increasingly magic world, it’s good to remember that there are always horizons — that any sufficiently familiar magic is merely technology — and that there are always  new magic just over the horizon, barreling towards us and presenting new mysteries to attempt to resolve.

Julian Dibbell’s My Tiny Life remains, to this day, the best book written about what it is like to live immersed in a virtual world. The fact that the world in question in text-based, and the events described happened over a decade ago, is completely irrelevant. You cannot call yourself knowledgeable about virtual worlds unless you have read this book.

Unfortunately, it’s been out of print for years. I am lucky — I have two copies, one a galley proof and one a real copy, first edition and everything. They get checke dout of our little office lending library and read by Areae employees. But for most people, it’s just hard to find.

Until now, because Julian has made it available via Lulu for a very reasonable price in printed form, and as a free PDF for download. Go get it. Read it. Enjoy.