Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower’s base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine’s pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries.

The Guardian: “The Dying Fall” by JG Ballard

(via Bruce Sterling)

The novelist JG Ballard, who conjured up a bleak vision of modern life in a series of powerful novels and short stories published over more than 50 years, died today after a long battle with cancer.

His agent, Margaret Hanbury, said tonight that it was “with great sadness” that the 78-year-old author passed away yesterday morning after years of ill health.

Hanbury, who worked with Ballard for more than 25 years, said he was a “brilliant, powerful” novelist. “JG Ballard has been a giant on the world literary scene for more than 50 years. Following his early novels of the 60s and 70s, his work then reached a wider audience with the publication of Empire of the Sun in 1984 which won several prizes and was made in to a film by Steven Spielberg.

Guardian: Crash author JG Ballard, ‘a giant on the world literary scene’, dies aged 78

Shanda Literature, which controls over 90% of China’s online-reading market, rakes in an estimated revenue of 100 million yuan ($15 million) per year. Running three popular online-novel websites, Shanda boasts a total readership of 25 million and is growing at 10 million per year, according the company. “The Chinese people need a platform to express their creativity,” said Hou Xiaoqiang, founding CEO of Shanda Literature. “I think our online-literature sites can partly cater to that need.”

Full Story: Time

(via Tomorrow Museum

Missed this, it was originally posted on Lovecraft’s birthday:

“Race prejudice is a gift of nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

“Now the trickiest catch in the Negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The Black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists… But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the Negro were the White man’s equal.”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

“Of course they can’t let Niggers use the beach at a Southern resort - can you imagine sensitive persons bathing near a pack of greasy chimpanzees? The only thing that makes life endurable where Blacks abound is the Jim Crow principle, and I wish they’d apply it in New York both to Niggers and to the more Asiatic types of puffy, rat-faced Jews!”
- H. P. Lovecraft, Letters

[...]

None of these texts are unpublished, or difficult to find, or unclear. H. P. Lovecraft was a racist. But his fame and influence is unaffected by his bigotry. This suggests that when someone is accused of bigotry this accusation may be an attack on that person, not on their ideas or behavior. Because others are given a free ride while being just as racist. Some are chosen to be branded a racist and are never forgiven. Others are forgiven. Amnesty doesn’t seem to be based on the actual ideas or behavior of the accused.

Full Story: OVO

There are several more instances at the link.

This timeline constitutes only a couple hours of Internet based research. I’ve read none of the novels or short stories mentioned here, and only few of the comics (I’ve seen the many episodes of the cartoons mentioned, and the movie Scanners). Any corrections, additions, or additional information would be much appreciated - please add comments below. Updates and corrections will be noted in the comments.

Continue reading

“Taking a hint from the text comparison methods used to detect plagiarism in books, college papers and computer programs, University of California, Berkeley, researchers have developed an improved method for comparing whole genome sequences. With nearly a thousand genomes partly or fully sequenced, scientists are jumping on comparative genomics as a way to construct evolutionary trees, trace disease susceptibility in populations, and even track down people’s ancestry.

To date, the most common techniques have relied on comparing a limited number of highly conserved genes - no more than a couple dozen - in organisms that have all these genes in common. The new method can be used to compare even distantly related organisms or organisms with genomes of vastly different sizes and diversity, and can compare the entire genome, not just a selected small fraction of the gene-containing portion known to code for proteins, which in the human genome is only 1 percent of the DNA.

The technique produces groupings of organisms largely consistent with current groupings, but with some interesting discrepancies, according to Sung-Hou Kim, professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley and faculty researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. However, the relative positions of the groups in the family tree - that is, how recently these groups evolved - are quite different from those based on conventional gene alignment methods.The computational results have surprised scientists in being able to classify some bacteria and viruses that until now were enigmatic. The technique, which employs feature frequency profiles (FFP), is described in a paper to appear this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

(via UC Berkley News. Thanks Josh!)

“Sir Terry Pratchett has been trialling a revolutionary new device that claims to slow, and even reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s. The award-winning author, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2007, is one of the first patients in the UK to try the anti-dementia helmet. The device sends intense bursts of light at a particular wavelength the a patient’s skull.

The helmet’s designer, Dr Gordon Dougal is convinced the device could transform the lives of thousands of people with Alzheimer’s, which currently affects 700,000 people in the UK. The Discworld author, who has donated over £500,000 to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, first contacted Dr Dougal about his invention last year. The County Durham-based GP said: ‘When Sir Terry’s people contacted me I was very happy to help. We made another prototype helmet and he has had that since last August.’

A custom-built helmet was made from a cast of Mr Pratchett’s head. It was then attached to the back of an armchair at the writer’s home in order that he could use it for the recommended six minutes each day. Mr Pratchett’s progress was assessed by a computer, which showed a small, but measurable, improvement in his condition after three months. More importantly, said Dr Dougal, the computer could find no signs of further deterioration during this period.”

(via The Daily Mail)

The author Terry Pratchett - whose novels have sold millions of copies worldwide - has been made a knight in the New Year Honours list.

The writer, 60, who is best known for his hugely popular Discworld series of comic fantasy novels, received the honour for services to literature.

Sir Terry announced in December 2007 that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

He has since campaigned to raise awareness of the condition.

Full Story: BBC

(Thanks Cap’n Marrrrk!)

“Book View Cafe is a new approach to publishing made possible by the Internet. While most of the fiction on the site is free, authors will also be offering expanded work, additional content, print versions, or subscriptions for a fee. Our authors are all professionals with publishing credits in the print world. The Internet is giving us an opportunity to make their out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work to you. We love feedback on how we are doing.

Every day, new content available nowhere else will be served up on Book View Cafe: short stories, flash fiction, poetry, episodes of serialized novels, and maybe even a podcast now and then. The content will be archived and available after the posting date by visiting the author’s bookshelf.

Author’s bookshelves are accessed by using the pulldown menu at the top of the first page of the site. Current authors are:

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Brenda Clough
Katie Daniel
Laura Anne Gilman
Christie Golden
Anne Harris
Sylvia Kelso
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Sue Lange
Ursula K. Le Guin
Rebecca Lickiss
Vonda N. McIntyre
Nancy Jane Moore
Pati Nagle
Darcy Pattison
Irene Radford
Madeleine Robins
Amy Sterling
Jennifer Stevenson
Susan Wright
Sarah Zettel

Our blog is updated daily with posts from the member authors. Subject matter is up to the authors. There are no rules, guidelines, or speed limits.

Some of our authors will be providing additional work for sale. When this premium content becomes available, you can be sure we will be making announcements.  E-mail us if you’d like to be included on our mailing list and receive all the Book View Cafe news you can use. Although there is material for sale the site, Book View Cafe itself is not a profit-making organization. This is a cooperative effort between the authors. Book View Cafe welcomes donations to help pay for the site, site management, and upgrade efforts. We also welcome comments on what you’d like to see here or what we could do to improve your viewing pleasure: bookviewcafe@gmail.com”

(Book View Cafe)

“Science fiction is all about the future, but what does the future hold for science fiction?

These days, science can be stranger than science fiction, and mainstream literature is increasingly futuristic and speculative. So are the genre’s days numbered? We asked six leading writers for their thoughts on the future of science fiction, including Margaret Atwood, William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Plus, we review the latest sci-fi novels, highlight the writers to watch and reveal the results our poll of your all-time favourite sci-fi films and books.”

(via New Scientist. h/t: Futurismic)

“The special Halloween double issue of Rue Morgue magazine included a number of interesting features, as usual, but one which caught my eye was a description of a new documentary on titled Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (Wyrdstuff Productions, 2008). This fim was directed and produced by Frank Woodward, and after getting in touch he graciously and enthusiastically talked about this production.

TheoFantastique: Frank, thanks for making this great documentary, and for allowing me to screen it for this interview. How did you come to develop a personal fascination with Lovecraft and how did it lead to this documentary coming about?

Frank Woodward: I first became aware of Lovecraft like most people, I expect. It was the Call of Cthulhu role playing game, mainly the monsters within. I’ve always been a monster fan and who could resist the tentacled beasties in CoC. That led to my reading some of the major stories… Call of Cthulhu, Pickman’s Model, Rats In The Walls. I have to admit, though, that my Lovecraftian knowledge was basic.

The desire to make a documentary was a more recent one. I occasionally produce DVD extras for Anchor Bay. There was discussion of doing a short bio of Lovecraft for the Re-Animator special edition. It didn’t happen for various reasons. By the time that decision was made, however, I had done quite a bit of research on the man. In some way I experienced what many of the people who’ve seen the documentary experienced. I was reminded how much I enjoyed Lovecraft’s work and wanted to throw myself headlong into learning more. Making this documentary was almost like a college course. I think that’s how all documentaries should be made. They should be a journey of discovery. The desire to learn all you can is why you bother making the film in the first place.”

(via TheoFantastique)

While I still consider myself an anarchist, over the years I’ve somewhat narrowed (or perhaps broadened) it to Reborn-Yet-Again,Taoist Dirt-Pagan, bioregionalista anarchy. I think I’ve also come to understand that freedom resides in being equal to your needs, self-determinism requires self-reliance, and that the “self”  is the worst idea of Western Civilization (or at least doesn’t excite my imagination as much as the pantheist notion of an extended, constellated identity, as suggested by genetics, ecology, and a kiss. (Besides, for a pantheist, the Messiah comes every day.)) Clever critters that we humans are, we’ve invented weapons of mass destruction to protect ourselves against mass destruction, and I don’t want anyone to have the power to unleash such powers; thus, I favor radical decentralization of power, with bioregions replacing nation-states. I’m the first and loudest to praise the vision expressed in our constitution, but I think America has become too large and complex to be governed by less than a thousand people, with one of them-the president-having inordinate power. I’d rather see the United States evolve into the United Bioregions, but united only on the basis of mutual aid and dispute resolution. I have this recurring fantasy that America realizes it’s the dominant power on earth and does something that would take boldness, imagination, and soul-announce it is unilaterally disarming its weapons of mass destruction, even its weapons of medium destruction, and limiting weapons to those for personal defense (handguns, long guns, and bazookas-just because I always wanted one).

Full Story: Arthur

I’m a little late with this one. R.I.P. Michael Crichton.

“Science Not Fiction was saddened to learn of the death of Michael Crichton yesterday. His 1969 novel, The Andromeda Strain, alone would have been enough to make him a science fiction legend, but he turned out string of taut technothrillers, even equalling The Andromeda Strain’s iconic status with 1990’s Jurassic Park.

His greatest strength was in his ability to imbue his novels with a sense of authenticity; The Andromeda Strain was littered with realistic screenshots and computer printouts and came with a detailed (and entirely fictional) bibliography. Jurassic Park has become the cultural point of reference for discussions about biotechnology, cloning and genetic engineering. If Crichton had a weakness, it was his fondness for the theme which repeats over and over in his novels: technological hubris. Some advanced technology is confidently promoted by scientists as progress toward a better world. Unexpected side effects or interactions that the scientists overlooked in their dash to the future manifest themselves, and things get pretty messy from that point on (and to be fair, usually a really fun read.) But each time, it is implied that anyone who is not an overreaching scientist or an idiot would have known to leave well enough alone.”

(via Discover Magazine. h/t: The Daily Grail)

Do you have a gruesomely macabre vision of total annihilation? Do you lose sleep over the ominous intricacies of plausible eschatologies intimated in the sub-text of evening network newscasts? Do you spend an inordinate amount of leisure time watching RoboCop on VHS cassette? Then consider entering the Apocalypse Fiction Contest sponsored by Furtive Labors Publishing.
Contest rules

(1) Submissions must be original, previously unpublished works of fiction of less than 500 words. Entries must be science fiction, fantasy or horror and incorporate the theme of apocalypse in some way.

(2) Submissions must be received by Nov. 30, 2008. E-mail submissions to editor@furtivelabors.com.

(3) Submissions will be judged by Furtive Labors editors. Winning stories will be published on our website. The author of the first-place story will receive $20 and a gift bag of Furtive Labors literature.

(4) Winners will be notified by Dec. 10, 2008.

WARNING: Writing about apocalypse may cause confusion, anxiety, paranoia, sensory distortions, “flashbacks”  and chronic recurring auditory and visual hallucinations. The writer may feel detached from his physical environment and at times stare blankly, paralyzed to the point of being unable to move or speak. A writer’s sense of identity, memory and environment may fall apart. Convulsions can occur, followed by loss of consciousness and a “flat-lined”  or near-death experience. A small number of writers have reported dreams involving sexual experiences with the devil, as well as physical symptoms such as head sores, pallor, lethargy, toothache, mouth cankers, bad breath, swollen breasts, short-windedness, flatulence, jaundice, dropsy, gout, bladder infections, kidney stones and infestation with lice or fleas. A cascade of piping hot jissom is a common side effect. This contest is intended for adults with healthy immune systems. To avoid a potentially serious complication, tell your doctor if your immune system isn’t normal because of jock itch, yeast infection, gonorrhea, chlamydia, genital warts, syphilis, herpes or a My Little Pony doll permanently lodged in your rectum.

Furtive Labors

“With Hollywood hitting up comic books for blockbusters, a new comics publisher is looking to India for ideas. “The world is increasingly realizing that India is a source for creativity and great ideas, not just a back office to execute them more cheaply,” said Gotham Chopra, part of the management team at Los Angeles-based Liquid Comics.

One of the first projects for the publisher will be bringing its Ramayan 3392 AD (pictured) - a colorful, 21st-century re-imagining of Indian literary epic the Ramayana - to movie theaters. Liquid has teamed up with Mandalay Pictures and 300 producer Mark Canton for the film, which has a planned release date of 2011. Liquid sprang from the ashes of Virgin Comics, a shuttered enterprise from Richard Branson and the Chopra family that was meant to hammer the dense narratives of India and Asia into graphic novels for the American mainstream and beyond. Chopak and other members of the Liquid management team undertook the buyout of Virgin Comics to continue the quest at the new company.

Chopra talked with Wired.com about Liquid’s birth, a new wave of Indian comics artists and the challenge of bringing an ancient Sanskrit epic to the silver screen.”

(via Wired)

“He was known as the king of the Yosemite lifers, that proud band of rock climbers, tightrope walkers and seekers who made camp on the margins of the law, sleeping under the black oaks and sequoias and California stars. On his shoulders he carried an 80-pound constellation of canvas stowage, books and sweatpants, bottled water and mushy food, a sleeping bag and a reserve sleeping bag meant for some encountered companion of the road. To the government, he was Charles Victor Tucker III, scourge of Yosemite National Park, fixture of the lodge cafeteria. To acquaintances, he was Chuck, harmless and stoned jester of the mountains. And to climbers the world over he remains Chongo, the Monkey Man, named for the sticky soles he had once fashioned from Mexican rubber. ‘I learned a lot from Chongo,’ said Ivo Ninov, 32, an accomplished guide from Bulgaria, ‘because he was the father of big wall climbing.’

But the fullness of Chongo’s legacy would appear only through his disappearance from rock climbing, a passage from sylvan to urban wilds that has made him a stranger to his sport and an outcast from his home, now reduced to sleeping under a tractor-trailer. Along the way, he would find a new kind of homelessness, and a new sense of mission. Even among outliers, Chongo, 57, had always diverged. In a time of corporate sponsorships, he lived on charity, scavenging and bartering handmade wares. In a time of brand-name gear, he rigged worthy contraptions from found parts. In a time of speed-climbing records, he gained renown for his comically deliberate ascents. Once, he stretched an assault on El Capitan across two weeks, including three days spent pausing to consider some half-forgotten existential puzzle.

Dumb jokes congealed around his legend, for he projected a familiar and comforting sort of weirdness. Around a campfire or a cafeteria table, tourists and weekend warriors could find in Chongo a certain box to cross off, the obligatory aging hippie recounting unintentionally hilarious misadventures, denouncing the prison-industrial complex and rhapsodizing on junk science.”

(via The New York Times)

(Homeless Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics)

“When author Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with dementia, he was shocked to discover doctors could do little to help. For despite the fact that the condition affects more than 700,000 Britons (a million by 2025), research into its causes and treatment has been chronically under-funded. Patients and their families also have to cope with the stigma and ignorance surrounding dementia, as a report published today by the Alzheimer’s Society has revealed. In the belief that the only way to change this is to talk openly about the disease, here Terry Pratchett describes his own experiences.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1million for research into the disease, as I have done. Why did I do it? I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer’s as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease.

I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer’s it’s the best form of Alzheimer’s to have. This is a moot point, but what it does do, while gradually robbing you of memory, visual acuity and other things you didn’t know you had until you miss them, is leave you more or less as fluent and coherent as you always have been.”

(via The Daily Mail)

“Watch Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book on a 9-city video tour. At each stop on the tour, Neil will read one chapter from The Graveyard Book. Beginning on October 1st, we will post the video readings daily. By the end of the tour, on October 9th, you will be able to watch the master storyteller himself read The Graveyard Book in its entirety right here.”

(via Mouse Circus)

“As I searched Amazon.com for reading materials related to the fantastic to add to my wishlist the description of Monster Theory: Reading Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1996) struck me as intriguing: ‘Explores concepts of monstrosity in Western civilization from Beowulf to Jurassic Park.’We live in a time of monsters. Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argue the essays in this wide-ranging and fascinating collection that asks the question, What happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture?

‘In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.’

Monster Theory is edited by Jeffrey J. Cohen who is associate professor of English and human sciences at George Washington University. Dr. Cohen agreed to discuss the collection of essays that make up this book, and in particular his contribution to the volume.”

(via TheoFantastique)

“I’ve always been both a metalhead and a total fantasy geek-possibly the two most powerful formative influences on my teen years were Metallica and J.R.R. Tolkien. There exists a deep and occult connection between heavy metal and fantasy fiction, one that surfaces both obliquely-Spiked wristbands! Album covers that could double as Wheel of Time book jackets! Fire!-and overtly, as in the legacy of metal songs explicitly inspired by fantastical literary sources.

After the jump, check out a few of my favorite heavy metal songs inspired by fantasy novels. And I know I’ve forgotten a few, so add them in the comments!

Iron Maiden - ‘To Tame a Land’

Pretty much the entire Iron Maiden catalogue of powerfully narrative songs could be considered part of the classic fantasy canon. But special mention has to be made of ‘To Tame a Land,’ off Piece of Mind, based on the Dune novels. And they’re really not kidding with these Dune references, which are serious and deep-this is Bruce Dickinson singing, as a fan, to other fans:

It is a land that’s rich in spice
The sandriders and the ‘mice’
That they call the Muad’Dib.

He is the Kwisatz Haderach.
He is born of Caladan
And will take the Gom Jabbar.”

(via Suvudu. h/t: SF Signal)

Last week I linked to the results of a Disinfo readers poll on their favorite books. A few people commented that they’d like to see what Technoccult reader’s favorite books are. I wasn’t as disappointed with the results of the Disinfo survey as some people were, but my curiosity is sufficiently piqued.

This will be an informal survey, vote by commenting here. Vote for ONE fiction and ONE non-fiction.

Here are my favorites:

Let me preface by saying these are my favorites, not necessarily the books I think are actually “the best.”

Fiction: Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami. It wasn’t hard to decide that my favorite novel was something by Murakami. The hard part was deciding which one. I keep changing my mind, but I’m going to go with Dance, Dance, Dance for now. It was the last Murakami novel that I read (I’ve read them all, including Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973), which seems fitting as it is the final in the quadrilogy of the Rat (though many consider it to be a separate novel from the trilogy of the rat). It feels like a fitting “end” point. I wouldn’t recommend anyone read it without at least reading Wild Sheep Chase first, so this isn’t exactly a recommendation. It’s just, y’know, my favorite.

Non-fiction: Everything is Under Control by Robert Anton Wilson. This was the first Wilson book I read, when I was 18 and just starting to get into “this stuff.” I’m pretty sure I read every word of it, but it’s non-linear, hypertextual structure makes it hard to be sure. In this book Wilson introduces Discordia, Hakim Bey and the TAZ, the Church of the Subgenius, Crowley, chaos magic, and more conspiracy theories than I can name and ties them all together through his obsessive cross-referencing. It was absolutely essential to my “initiation.”

The results from Disinfo’s reader survey:

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
4. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy), J. R. R. Tolkien
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
7. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
8. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
9. The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
10. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn

Non-fiction:

1. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
2. A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
3. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
4. Cosmic Trigger (Series), Robert Anton Wilson
5. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
6. Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson
7. The Bible, Various Authors
8. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
9. God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens
10. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

Full Story: Disinfo Myspace

“Myth is commonly taken to be words, often in the form of a story. A myth is read or heard. It says something. Yet there is an approach to myth that deems this view of myth artificial. According to the myth and ritual, or myth-ritualist, theory, myth does not stand by itself but is tied to ritual. Myth is no just a statement but an action. The least compromising form of the theory maintains that all myths have accompanying rituals and all rituals accompanying myths. In tamer versions some myths may flourish without rituals or some rituals without myths. Alternately, myths and rituals may originally operate together but subsequently go their separate ways. Or myths and rituals may arise separately but subsequently coalesce. Whatever the tie between myth and ritual, the myth-ritualist theory differs from other theories of myth and from other theories of ritual in focusing on the tie.”

(via Mythic Passages/Mythic Imagination Institute)

Good article on the future of writing and publishing with Tim O’ Reilly, Stephen Abram, Douglas Rushkoff, and Frank Daniels:

“It’s a snowy February Monday in midtown Manhattan. Publishing magnate and tech guru Tim O’Reilly’s ‘Tools of Change’ conference has just opened at a Marriott off Broadway. The timing is fortunate; publishers HarperCollins and Random House have just announced that they will be offering more book content online and au gratis. The affable O’Reilly-who has been urging publishers to go digital since the early eighties-refuses to gloat (much). ‘They weren’t even trying to keep electronic copies [of manuscripts],’ recalls O’Reilly. ‘You look at these announcements today, they seem too little too late,… but it’s allowing them to start innovating, to become part of the technology process.’ ‘Twenty years ago, people wouldn’t have listened,’ says Sara Domville, president of F+W Publications book division. ‘They’ll listen now.’

As the publisher of an extremely popular series of computer manuals, O’Reilly is a bright star in a field of drab. Dubbed the ‘guru of the participation age’ by Steven Levy in a 2005 Wired profile and a ‘graying hippie’ with a ‘hostility toward traditional media’ by author Andrew Keen, O’Reilly makes millions of dollars promoting open source at his conferences and selling do-it-yourself know-how to anyone who browses the computer aisle at Barnes and Noble. His message to the world’s publishing elite exudes a Wizard of Oz simplicity: Give more product away on your Web site, thereby attracting more people to sell on something pricier than a book- like a bunch of books or a conference ticket. The approach works for him at least. Some 900 publishing execs from Simon and Schuster, Norton, etc., have paid $1,100 apiece (on average) to learn how to give content away.

‘I think I’m optimistic,’ said Sonia Nash of Random House, echoing the uncertainty of the attendees, editors, and publishers from around the world eager to find some reason to feel good about the future of what they sell.”

(via The Futurist)

“There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day that everything I was doing was right and things were happening as they should. It seemed like the memory of a voice and it came wrapped in its own brief little bubble of tranquillity. I’m not used to this.

As a fantasy writer I create fresh gods and philosophies almost with every new book (I’m rather pleased with Annoia, the goddess of Things That Get Stuck In Drawers, whose temple is hung about with the bent remains of bent egg whisks and spatulas. She actually appears to work in this world, too). But since contracting Alzheimer’s disease I have spent my long winter walks trying to work out what it is that I really, if anything, believe.”

(via The Daily Mail)