As if blathering about myself on twitter, facebook, and here were not enough, I can now be found over at the Toronto Public Library as well.  This is all to the good:  I will continue to post updates here about schedule changes (if any) and generally promote the program whenever I can.  Over at TPL, I'll have the opportunity to talk more about the process of writing as such, and about my experiences as writer in residence.  I will not be talking anywhere about the individual writers who've come to me with their work; our discussions are between us and confidentiality is extremely important to me.  But I'll let you know how I'm getting on, how the process gets refined, and any insights and learning that I've come to during my time with TPL.

I meet a lot of people who have been away from science fiction for a few years--or even a few decades--and wonder where to start reading it again.  One of the best ways to get reacquainted with the best in the field is to check out Locus Magazine's annual reading list.  Locus is a multi-award winning SF/F industry magazine that carries all the latest scuttlebutt, reviews, etc.  Their readers are some of the most savvy and well-rounded in the business, so when they pool their resources to compile a list of recommended titles, you know it'll be good.

Which, of course, makes the fact that every one of my novels has made this list truly puzzling.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you--especially since The Sunless Countries has made this year's list!

On January 29, 2010, Amazon.com removed all my books from sale on their online store.  I wasn't singled out for persecution; all of my peers who publish at Tor Books, and indeed all authors associated with MacMillan Publishing, had their Amazon.com pages killed.  (You can still see the pages, but you can't buy anything.)

Up until yesterday, I linked from this website to Amazon, as a matter of convenience for fans who might want to buy my books after browsing these pages.  Granted the sheer arbitrariness, pettiness, and anticompetitive nature of the sudden price war between Amazon and MacMillan, I have removed all purchasing links to Amazon from my site, and will not be re-linking even if they restore the frozen pages.

This type of action holds authors and readers hostage to a commercial war between publishing giants.  It puts a lie to the idea that we can choose where to buy books in a free marketplace, because this kind of strong-arm tactic is likely just the beginning.  Things are turning nasty in the book world, and it's authors and readers who stand to lose the most.

Due to the last-minute dogpile of publicity about my writer in residence tenure, it may look as though you'll have to scramble to participate.  After all, the program starts in just a few days.  

Not to worry.  I'll be accepting manuscripts for critique and discussion for the next several months.  Obviously, if you hand me something on the last day of my appointment, I may not be able to give you the time you deserve, so the sooner the better.  But don't panic if you're not ready this week.  

I'll continue to post information and links about how to join the program, and I'll also be blogging about it all over at the TPL website (link and more details forthcoming).

Now, the workshops are a little more time-constrained.  The sooner you tell TPL if you want to attend those, the easier our organization of the events will be.  But I'm not expecting to have gone through a reading/critiquing cycle with you before the workshops.  We may not get to meet at all before they happen, but they're different from the one-on-one meetings, so that's fine.

Does this all make sense?  If you've got any questions, don't hesitate to contact the library, or me at karl(at)kschroeder.com

Toronto Public Library has put up its web page detailing my writer in residence tenure this spring.  That means I can reveal the details here too; I'll give you some here, but I'll also be placing the events into my calendar, which you can access at any time through the "Events" menu item on the left of the site's window (or the "upcoming events" box on the right).

Here's how to participate

Submit your manuscript for an opportunity to have a one-on-one evaluation with me or attend the writer-in-residencereadings and workshops.

• Manuscripts should be sent via email to Karl Schroeder, writer in residence at the Merril Collection.
• All manuscripts should include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address.
• Manuscripts should be 5,000 words in length. I will read only the first 5,000 words of longer submissions and base his comments on that word length.
• After your manuscript has been read, the Merril Collection staff will contact you and book an appointment for you to discuss your writing.
• I'lll will need 1 –2 weeks lead time in order to read submissions before an appointment is booked.
• The library reserves the right to limit the number of manuscripts accepted.
• Toronto Public Library is not responsible for returning manuscripts. Please submit a COPY of your work.

Having been a roaring success in audiobook form and in its first print incarnation from Subterranean Press, METAtropolis is returning this summer in a new edition from Tor Books.  I don't have too many details yet, but I'll post cover art here when I get it; the publication date, however, is July 30th.

Centauri Dreams is one of my favourite sites for discussions on the mechanics and romance of interstellar travel.  They've just done an article discussing my concept of the interstellar cycler, which I used as the basis for the Cycler Compact civilization in 2002's Permanence.  

I've written more extensively about cyclers here, and after Permanence, haven't gone back to the idea for a while.  I'm glad other people are still worrying away at the ideas, because as with all proposals for interstellar travel, the devil's in the details.  Surprisingly, the more you look at the idea, the easier some aspects of it become; for instance, in the description of the concept over at orbitalvector.com, they elaborate on an idea attributed to Jeremy Totten, whereby cyclers can reproduce slowly by the accumulation of donated resources from waystation stars.   There are many variations on the idea, some of which I've explored (eg. if cyclers can reproduce through resource accumulation, they can also be initially built that way), and other people continue to find more.

The big question--for me--is whether I'll ever write another Cycler Compact novel.  I hope I can, but that plan suffers from the fact that I am constantly coming up with other new ideas, and the burning need to get those written down means cyclers keep ending up on the bottom of the priority list. But you never know; if inspiration hits, I'll be happy to return to that universe.

Tor Books has been very happy with my Virga books, so much so that they've decided to release a new, omnibus edition of the first two.  Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce will appear together in one volume, entitled Virga:  Cities of the Air.  This book will hit the stores on July 6, 2010, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon.

Yes, there is in fact already an omnibus edition of these books--it's Virga 1.2, from the Science Fiction Book Club (advertised in the right-hand sidebar of this page, with cover art by Dave Seeley).  That edition is only available to book club members, though; the new omnibus will be from Tor and will be in bookstores everywhere (and, presumably, in ebook form too).  We hope to have further omnibus editions to round out the series.

Russ Allbery has reviewed most of my novels on his site, and he's always provided an extremely good litmus test of how well I'm doing.  (Except of course for his giddy and utterly approving review of Lady of Mazes, which if not entirely objective was at least a great piece of ego-boo for me.)  As well as praising the strengths, he finds the weaknesses in my work with unerring precision and for this reason I always await his reviews with great anticipation.

What he has to say about The Sunless Countries is extremely positive, and his criticisms are fair.  I can learn from a reviewer like this:

 The Eternists are a bit over the top, though. Schroeder paints the politicians as manipulative, self-serving slime, and since the protagonist is an academic, the conflict follows stock fault lines and seems pat and cliched. He makes it work within the book, but the obvious analogies outside the book are too easy and a bit distracting.

Yeah, okay.  I'll try to do better.  On the other hand, this is his overall assessment:

The Virga series still falls a bit short of Schroeder's other work for me, but this is the most intellectually interesting entry. He moves away from steampunk set pieces and into more analysis of the nature of government and the perils and alliances of high technology. It's one of the better books in the series, although it still trails Queen of Candesce.

Fair enough, and thanks once again for a well-measured review.

Just a reminder that, if you're anywhere close to Toronto this winter, you can take advantage of my tenure as writer in residence at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculation--Toronto's public library devoted to SF&F.  I'll be reviewing and thinking about manuscripts provided by members of the public, and hope to discuss people's work with them in the safe and supportive environment of a public library dedicated to the art and fun of SF&F.

In order to sign up for the programme, you'll need to contact the library rather than me.  For more information, contact the library directly at 416-393-7748.

Passed on for your consideration, an excellent analysis of the latest propaganda piece to hit the climate debate:  the so-called "Story of Cap-and-Trade" video on YouTube.  Now, triangulate that with this recent study by the Center for Public Integrity.  

It's hysterically funny that some people think climate scientists are involved in a conspiracy to trump up global warming; if they are, they're doing so for free and at risk of their careers and reputations.  One can only admire evil conspirators who work so selflessly for... what kind of gain, exactly?  On the other hand, the motives of the people with the fossil fuel money are very clear, as is the paper trail that leads from them to many of the same lobbying agencies that the tobacco companies used to try to keep us smoking.  But... nah... it couldn't be them that're lying... could it?

(Oh, and if you're confused about who to believe, how about Scientific American?  They have an excellent article on which climate-change denial arguments are bogus, and why.)  An excerpt:

Claim 5: Climatologists conspire to hide the truth about global warming by locking away their data. Their so-called "consensus" on global warming is scientifically irrelevant because science isn't settled by popularity.

It is virtually impossible to disprove accusations of giant global conspiracies to those already convinced of them (can anyone prove that the Freemasons and the Roswell aliens aren't involved, too?). Let it therefore be noted that the magnitude of this hypothetical conspiracy would need to encompass many thousands of uncontroversial publications and respected scientists from around the world, stretching back through Arrhenius and Tyndall for almost 150 years. (See this feature on “Carbon Dioxide and Climate,” by Gilbert N. Plass, from Scientific American in July 1959.) It is also one so powerful that it has co-opted the official positions of dozens of scientific organizations including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics and the American Meteorological Society.

This story is far from over.  The latest analysis of the tiny specks of magnetite found deep inside the Martian meteorite ALH 84001 appear to have ruled out nonbiological explanations for their origin.  This on the heels of an August paper that showed that the rock had originally come from an area of Mars that was warm and bathed in liquid water.

What does all this mean?  Nothing conclusive.  The evidence is definitely tipped in the direction of life, though; for instance, there's methane on Mars, but no obvious geological mechanism that could produce it.  (Since methane can only survive for a few years under Martian conditions, it must be continuously replenished from some source.)  There's now known to be an enormous amount of water right under the surface in the Northern hemisphere, which increasingly looks like it was the location of an ocean at one time. And in the past couple of years we've seen direct photographic evidence of subsurface water in the form of fresh gulleys in crater walls.

All of this could have been learned in a matter of weeks or months, thirty years ago, had NASA gone to Mars after Apollo.  As it is, I may be dead and gone before this particular controversy is resolved.  But at least there's progress.

Just when I thought life couldn't get any stranger, MacMillan starts releasing my books as iPhone apps!  This is very cool.  Since they apparently don't have the licensing rights to sell the app into Canada, I can't confirm its presence in the iTunes Store; however, you can find my latest Virga novel, The Sunless Countries, at appshopper.com.

Not only that, but The Year's Best Science Fiction: 26th Annual Collection is also available; it contains my popular Virga story, The Hero.  

And here's what they'll look like in your iPod or iPhone:

I basically wrote Lady of Mazes for Europe.  I thought that of all people, Europeans would understand what I was getting at when I talked about a world of customizable realities and a technology of cultural preservation.  Canadians too, I hasten to add; I was lamenting aloud about the death of the counterculture to a Quebecois friend of mine, and he said, "The counterculture isn't dead.  It's other countries."  (This statement will make perfect sense to the Quebecois, and to Europeans and pretty well anybody in the world--except Anglos and particularly mainstream Americans--because everywhere in the world must constantly compare their own cultural productions to those of America.  It's not a bad thing, necessarily; it's just something we're all aware of all the time.)

So I'm delighted that thanks to the staff at the Factory of Ideas, and the hard work of my translator, Virginia Sanmartín López, Lady of Mazes is now available in Spanish, from a variety of booksellers including casadellibro.com and IberLibro.com.  It's also getting good reviews--for instance this one in Literatura Prospectiva and this one by LiteRatos.  (Both reviews acknowledge that it's a difficult read, and that, of course, was the case for many people with the English edition, too.  I refused to dumb down this book.)

One thing that particularly delights me, for no reason, is that the round-trip translation through Google of Lady of Mazes, to La Senora de los Laberintos and back to English, is The Lady of the Labyrinth.  Which, perhaps even better than my original, indicates just who it is I'm alluding to here. 

As reported in Science Daily, some biologists writing in the Journal of ' Biology are warning that travel to Mars and other planets may not be a good idea because "spaceflight weakens the immune system" and "harmful bacteria proliferate under spaceflight conditions."

One has to wonder what these people mean by "spaceflight conditions."  Almost certainly, what they mean is zero gravity.  Certainly, the Russians discovered all sorts of nasty bugs growing in their air conditioning during the Mir missions, and it's been known for decades that sealed living environments do breed bacteria.  Also, cosmic rays and other forms of radiation encountered in space are mutagenic.

But really, people, think!  This doesn't mean that space flight is intrinsically dangerous.  It means that badly shielded tin-can environments that aren't spun for gravity are a bad idea.  And that is quite a different conclusion.

Prolonged exposure to zero gravity weakens the immune system, so don't expose astronauts to prolonged zero gravity.  Invest in some research into how to spin the spacecraft.  Then spin the spacecraft.

Secondly, shield the damn things.  The only reason why radiation is considered an issue is because it's expensive to transport heavy shielding into orbit.  One solution would be to use lunar water; simply put bags of the stuff around the ship.  That makes it heavier and hence requires more fuel... but now the problem can be seen for what it is, a simple problem of launch costs.  

Spaceflight is not bad for our health.  Cut-rate spaceflight that avoids the obvious solutions is.

I just got the following promotional e-mail from Amazon.ca:

Dear Amazon.ca Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Karl Schroeder, you might like to know that Nature's Heir will be released on November 1, 2009.  You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

This book does not exist!

Nature's Heir was the original title to the third Virga book, which is now, of course, Pirate Sun.  There is no such book as Nature's Heir, and I don't know where your money is going to go if you pre-order it.  I'm in touch with my publisher and distributor to try to sort this mess out, but in the meantime, spread the news, and don't order the book.

I'm still not able to embed just any arbitrary video, but YouTube comes in just fine (unless you use certain flavours of Internet Explorer [but who would?]):

I've also added a static page for this and other videos I've done.  It's at www.kschroeder.com/about/video.  Check it out, because it also links to spots I've done for TVO's The Agenda and Michigan's Cult Pop videocast.

Very surprised to discover that I'm going to be on Steve Paiken's show The Agenda tonight, starting at 8p.m. Eastern time on TV Ontario.  Each of his shows has its own web page; this one is here.

I'll be doing a panel discussion with the likes of Chris Hadfield (Canadian astronaut) and Donna Shirley (who led the team that built the Sojourner); the subject will be space colonization.  Threat or Menace?  I'll be introducing a somewhat contrarian view, but I hope the conversation will rise above the usual "should we do it?" debate to something a bit more interesting.

This invitation had come weeks ago, but I didn't think I was going to be able to do it; things have opened up at the last minute, so here we go!  Wish me luck, and tune in if you get the chance.

Few ideas have been so thoroughly misused as Garrett Hardin's notion of the tragedy of the commons.  Hardin's idea was that "multiple individuals acting independently and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest will ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen" (to quote Wikipedia).  There are some historical cases of this happening (i.e. the Boston commons).  There are, however, many more cases where it did not; and the idea is often used to try to justify the privatization of public goods.

I've found when I travel to the United States that the tragedy of the commons is a popular idea there, despite the fact that the historical evidence for it is equivocal, at best.  Commons were a widespread feature of European life for centuries, and mismanagement of them was extremely rare.  Now, New Scientist reports on a new study that shows that forests that are managed locally (i.e. as a commons) sequester more carbon than institutionally, governmentally or privately managed forests. 

One significant comment in the article was the following:

They argue that their findings contradict a long-standing environmental idea, called the "tragedy of the commons", which says that natural resources left to communal control get trashed. In fact, says Agrawal, "communities are perfectly capable of managing their resources sustainably".

This really comes as no surprise.  But it needs to be reinforced, particularly for people who've drunk the koolaid of the notion that public goods either can't exist or can't be managed efficiently.