Blog
For my old weblog material, visit www.kschroeder.com/archive
Jul 27, 2008
In my hot little hands...
Is the first printed copy of Pirate Sun. Huzzah!
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Jul 21, 2008
Tor.com is live!
After all that buildup, the reality doesn't disappoint. This is the definitive publisher's site
It's got short stories and (for a while) free ebooks. It's got some of the best fantasy/scifi art you can find. It's got John Scalzi...
The Tor.com website is now live.
This place is going to become a major hub, and it's not going to take long. With the kind of talent they've got blogging over there--and with the kind of talent they've got writing original short fiction--this site is gonna be flypaper for every SF and Fantasy fan out there. And deservedly so: Tor has lavished a tonne of care and ingenuity on this portal, and more importantly they've invited the readers to come in and play too. Tor.com isn't some arms-length advertising exercise, it's a social networking site for fans of cyberculture. Go check it out.
And while you're there, check out the jaw-dropping list of free novels and art you can download for a limited time.
Jul 19, 2008
"Green Shift" is mainstream policy
There's lots of FUD being spread about the Liberals' proposed carbon tax. Similar taxes have been used in other countries for years now, and they work
If the Conservatives had come up with the Green Shift policy, I would be voting Conservative. If the NDP had come up with it, I'd be voting NDP. In fact, in Canada it's the Green Party that first developed the idea of a revenue-neutral transition from taxing income to taxing waste. Who came up with it doesn't matter. What matters is that it happen, and soon.
The fact is that tax plans like this are not new. Germany has been employing a similar tax for ten years now, and Germany's record with green tech is stellar: 250,000 jobs directly relating to sustainable technologies is nothing to sneeze at. Other countries that are either enacting such measures now or are intensively studying them include the UK, Portugal, and the Netherlands.
The devil's always in the details, but tax shifts like this are fundamentally simpler than other measures the provinces are already planning, such as the cap and trade market for carbon that is a major goal of the Western Climate Initiative (which 70% of Canadians now belong to). Tax shifting is simple: the government stops taxing you for being productive, and starts taxing you for being wasteful. This means more money in our pockets for at least two reasons: first, the carbon tax is immediately offset by income and business tax reductions; secondly, making waste expensive gives companies incentive to become more efficient, and efficiency drives down costs. This is why costs don't get passed on to the consumer, and it is why everything eventually becomes cheaper rather than more expensive.
When demand for fossil fuels increases, their prices go up. When demand for renewables like wind or solar power increases... their prices go down.
You can have more money in your pocket while making a huge difference to the environment. And this tax would not apply to gasoline.
The reason the Conservatives are complaining about the "Green Shift" proposal is that it would have been a perfect policy for them--more money all around with less of a hit on the consumer--but they didn't think of it first.
Jul 18, 2008
Sun of Suns audiobook is out
The complete, unabridged text is available for download from Audible.com, and soon on iTunes
You can listen to the complete text of the novel, read by Joyce Irvine. This is the first of three rapid-fire releases coming from MacMillan audio--the next two books in the series, Queen of Candesce and Pirate Sun, should be made available within the next few weeks.
To get it, bounce on over to the page at Audible.com. And enjoy!
Jul 16, 2008
The Good, the Bad, and the Alien
I'll be joining Scalzi and Toby Buckell in Ann Arbor on August 24th. We'll be pimping our new books
Sunday, 2:00 p.m., at the Ann Arbor District Library, we'll be showing off what we've been working on for the past year or so: John Scalzi's new Zoe's Tale, Tobias Buckell's Sly Mongoose, and of course, my own Pirate Sun.
More about the books:
Pirate Sun I've talked about; heck, the prologue is right below this entry.
Sly Mongoose is going to be really cool. To quote the press release,
It's the story of fourteen-year-old Timas, who lives on Chilo, a planet with corrosive rain, crushing pressure, and deadly heat, in one of the domed cities that float 100,000 feet above the surface, circling near the edge of a monstrous perpetual storm.
Above the acidic clouds the temperature and pressure are normal. But to make a living, Timas like many other young men, is lowered to the surface in an armored suit to scavenge what he can.
Timas’s life is turned upside down when a strange man crash lands on the city. The newcomer is fleeing an alien intelligence intent on invading the planet and discovering the secret hidden deep inside the perpetual storm—a secret that could lead to interplanetary war. As the invaded cities fall silent one by one, Chilo’s citizens must race against time to stop the enemy…Timas will find out what kind of man he has become in the harsh conditions of Chilo’s surface.
John Scalzi's latest is Zoe's Tale. It is
The story of Zoe Boutin Perry – a seventeen year old a colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world.
In Zoe’s words, she is a “Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in an interstellar chess match to save humanity - or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human.”
“Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too… All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now,…. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes”.
The Downtown Library is located at 343 S. Fifth Avenue in Ann Arbor. For more information on the event contact the Library at 327-4560.
Or email me.
Jul 15, 2008
My Denvention Schedule
I'll be at Worldcon in Denver. Drop in and see me!
Here's my schedule for the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, which happens August 6-10, in Denver Colorado. It's a pretty modest schedule, but when you realize that there's several hundred programming guests and only a limited set of slots--well, I don't know very many other midlist writers who have any more panels than this. In that sense, Worldcon is a victim of its own success; but I'm not complaining, because people will still be able to find me, and the Kaffeeklatsch and reading should be fun.
- Swashbucklers in Space, Thur 17:30 (I'm moderating)
- Canadian Science Fiction, Fri 10:00 (moderating this one too)
- Kaffeeklatch Sat, 16:00
- Reading:
Thur 11:30
If you want to see me outside of this schedule, just email me and we can talk.