Yog's Notebook, blog edition

Yog on break

2007-10-20T10:34:00.001-07:00

We're very sorry to announce that Yog's Notebook is on hiatus indefinitely. We'll be posting announcements here and on our mailing list as soon as we're ready to start up again. Please don't send us submissions in the meantime, as we will be unable to review them. Thank you.

Author Interview: Mathew Russell

2007-08-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Mathew Russell wrote "Electric Judas", about an android's attempt to understand his creator.

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Q: What motivates you to write science fiction or horror?

A: Dreams mostly, and also the ways in which the past effects the future.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: The bogeyman. He's trapped beneath the rubbish I have under there and keeps yelling for someone to help him out.

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: History, Art, Technology, Music and sleeping in.

That's the last of our summer authors. We've really enjoyed the stories in this issue, and hope you will too.

Author Interview: Stephen Couch

2007-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Stephen wrote "Foo Boxen", a story about putting Schroedinger's Cat to the test, which appears in our summer issue.

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: Graveyard People: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories
Vol. 1, by Gary A. Braunbeck: A crust of speculative fiction wrapped around a mantle of bleak, lightless despair, wrapped around a near-Pyrrhic core of hope and redemption, from one of the modern masters of the short form.

Q: What motivates you to write science fiction or horror?

A: I can't switch off the part of my brain that constantly asks, "What if...?" I think it's inextricably linked to the part of my brain that craves the Macaroni & Cheese Pizza at Cici's, because I can't seem to turn that off, either...

Q: What do you hope the future will be like?

A: I genuinely hope we can evolve out of our current cultural tendency to encourage and reward sociopathic behavior. We can be, both as a species and as individuals, so much more than just apologists and enablers for the sociologically toxic among us.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: Almost always an ankle-clawing cat.

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: I run an award-winning audio drama production company, Strange Interludes; I also sing in a cover band from time to time.

Q: Do you have a website you'd like our readers to see?

A: www.stephencouch.com

Author Interview: Glynn Barrass

2007-08-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

Glynn wrote "The Necronomicon Cookbook" for the summer issue, a poem about some very curious cooking experiments.

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: Sphere by Michael Crichton - one of the the most sinister novels regarding
contact with alien life forms I've read.

Q: What motivates you to write science fiction or horror?

A: I sorely need to get what's in my head onto paper otherwise I'm sure it'll
explode.

Q: What do you hope the future will be like? Or is there something that was
predicted to happen that you wish really had? (jet cars, food pills, or...?)

A: Invasion and subjugation by evil alien overlords.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: Way too much un-vacuumed dust!

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: Does sleeping count as a hobby?

Q: Do you have a website you'd like our readers to see?

A: Not yet, but I'm working on it.

Author Interview: Kaylea Hascall Champion

2007-08-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

Kaylea's contribution to the summer issue is a story about first contact and hubris called "KuiperGate".

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: I really enjoyed Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende; it changed the way I look at colonial history.

Q: What motivates you to write science fiction or horror?

A: I am fundamentally motivated by ideas—speculative fiction in all its forms provides a terrific opportunity to explore and to question.

Q: What do you hope the future will be like?

A: I could get preachy or sappy about it all, but it comes down to this: I hope that the future is messy, but with clean public bathrooms.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: Four half-finished novels....and they're getting hungry!

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: Most weekends will find me obsessively doing one of the following: playing computer games, digging in my chaotic garden, entertaining my dogs, or sewing fabulous new clothes for myself and others.

Q: Do you have a website you'd like our readers to see?

A: Sure, folks can go to http://www.kaylea.net.

Author Interview: Simon Petrie

2007-08-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

Simon wrote "Three-Horned Dilemma", a story about a man with a triceratops problem. It appears in our summer issue.

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: My left brain reckons Nova Swing by M. John Harrison, but my right brain would go for Simon Haynes' Hal Spacejock.

Q: What motivates you to write science fiction or horror?

A: Long lists of other things I really should be doing.

Q: What do you hope the future will be like?

A: Inhabited, but some days I wonder ...

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: From the looks of it, a dust bunny stud farm.

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: I'm interested in (and have done research in) "astrochemistry", which sounds like sf but is probably even stranger. I also have an unhealthy interest in obscure Sixties rock groups.

Q: Do you have a website you'd like our readers to see?

A: Not a proper 'Simon Petrie' website, no. I'm a member of the Andromeda Spaceways publishing co-op, which is at http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/.

Author Interview: Jessica E. Kaiser

2007-07-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

For our summer issue, we asked each contributor a few questions about their writing and interests. Partial answers appeared on the contributors page, but I thought it would be fun to share their full responses. Check back over the next week (give or take a few days) to see all of the interviews.

Here's what Ms. Kaiser, author of "Back to the Classifieds", had to say:

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross, was probably the most recent book I’ve read that I would unreservedly recommend. But I bet that’ll have changed to something else by the time this is published.

Q: What do you hope the future will be like? Or is there something that was predicted to happen that you wish really had? (jet cars, food pills, or...?)

A: The running joke between my friends and me is “Where’s my flying car?” from all the science fiction of the Golden Age that promised us flying cars by the early nineties (and all we got was this lousy gas crisis), but what I’m really excited about is all the news stories about Mars lately. I mean, water on Mars! Giant cave systems! Every time I read something about it, I feel like I really am living in The Future.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: There is absolutely nothing lurking under my bed. I know this because I check on a regular basis to make sure. As a kid, I used to worry that there were zombies hiding out under there, waiting to grab my ankle with a skeletal hand the second I dangled my foot over the edge of the bed too long. Every night, I took a flying leap into my bed to make sure the zombies couldn’t get me.

Now, as an adult, I realize that’s ridiculous, because, as everyone knows, the monsters are hiding in closets. This is why I cannot sleep unless all closet doors are firmly closed. Leaving them open is just asking for trouble (“trouble” in this case being a euphemism for “being disemboweled”).

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: I don’t have as many hobbies as I should, because… well… there are so many books. I have a very low resistance to books calling my name. But I rollerblade, make chain mail jewelry, and belly dance. Additionally, I make fantastic bread. It’s a short list, but as I said, you can blame all the publishers who keep putting more books on the shelves for me to buy.

Alien vs Disney

2007-07-22T21:48:00.001-07:00

Our beloved Editor Audrey Eschright had a birthday earlier this week, turning 28 years old. To celebrate, we decided to rent some movies that were also made in 1979. There was quite a list to choose from, including some of our favorites (Muppet Movie, Manhattan, Apocalypse Now, e.g.). Being big sci-fi fans we decided on two that really struck a chord of nostalgia with both of us: The Black Hole and Alien. I can't think of two more different films, especially considering they are ostensibly in the same genre, and were made with the same resources available to the filmmakers.

The Black Hole is Disney's take on space exploration, and was far more kid-oriented than I remember it being when I watched it as...well, as a kid. There are some recognizable actors (the best being Robert Forster), the music is OK, and some of the special effects are still neat (hanging the actors on wires to simulate zero-gravity), but really this one hasn't aged well. I repeat: this movie was made for kids, and was shelved in the kids section at our local video store. But robots with Texas accents, twirling their laser guns like six-shooters? I don't know...

There are a couple of parts of Black Hole that gave me the jibblies when I was younger, like when the evil robot Maximilian kills Anthony Perkins' character by drilling into his chest (through a book!), or pretty much any scene with the mad scientist character (played, coincidentally, by a guy named Maximilian [Schnell]). These scenes still seem slightly creepy, but for the most part while watching the movie we were cringing from the corniness of it all, and not from anything intentionally spooky. And the final sequence, after the ship goes into the black hole? I have no idea why Maximilian turns into the devil with six arms and human eyeballs, or what exactly the whole heaven/hell thing is supposed to indicate. My guess is they hadn't written an ending and just thought, "screw it, go with mysticism and let's get lunch."

Alien remains a masterpiece of sci-fi/suspense/horror movie making. This is another movie I watched a lot as a kid (my Dad was a sci-fi nut, and my folks in general let me watch almost everything that wasn't pornographic), and like The Black Hole, there are scenes etched into my memory (I'm sure we all know which scene in particular a 12-year old boy found the most fascinating). Unlike that silly little film, though, Alien is probably better now than when I saw it at age 12.

The cast are brilliant, particularly John Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm; the characters are absolutely believable, complaining about their paychecks and making lewd innuendo to one another before crisis forces them into "adventure mode." The story itself, and Ridley Scott's direction, give just enough info to set a plausible scene, without going into too much banal, mood-killing detail. We know the Nostromo is a mining ship, it's not important to know what they're mining - in fact by the end of the film we know almost nothing about Earth society, what year it is, or anything about "The Company," beyond that they have a weapons division, and are pretty heartless (the Halliburton of the future?). By avoiding any long-winded exposition, the film concentrates your attention on 7 people (and a cat), and their ordeal with an intensely hostile ET.

Probably the most successful aspects of the film are the art and sets, which work so well because they're understated, like the story itself giving away only enough to draw us in, and let our own imaginations do the rest. Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator), in maybe his best directorial effort, makes masterful use of good old shadow and smoke, and never really shows us more than select glimpses of the Alien itself (designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger, for which he received a well-earned Academy Award for Visual Effects).

The Black Hole is goofy (Disney) movie, and has not stood up after 3 decades - not that it was ever seen as a masterpiece or anything more than kids' sci-fi fluff. Alien on the other hand is a seminal work of "new" sci-fi, and deserves recognition for more than just the visual aspects.

Issue #2 Now Available

2007-07-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Yogophiles.

Our horrible and formless leader, the All-in-One and One-in-All, a.k.a. Yog Sothoth, wants you to know that Issue #2 of his notebook is now available for purchase. Copies will ship as early as Thursday July 12, but you may order now.

Highlights of this issue include: Space Travel! Interdimensional Travel! Kitty Cats! Androids! And more...!!!

The price remains $5 for print, $2 for .pdf. If you don't yet have our first issue...well, first of all shame on you, but you can get them together at a discount (print edition only, see http://yogsnotebook.com/issue2.html for details). If you'd like to receive email updates, join Yog's google group.

Coloring Contest!

2007-07-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the publication of our second issue (coming soon!), we at Yog's Notebook are having a Coloring Contest!!!!

Oh, what fun! Who doesn't love to color? I sure do. And there'll be neat prizes too! Click on the awesome and scary picture below for more details! And have fun!!

A review and another updates

2007-06-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

We received a short review in the June Locus Magazine (thanks Tina for pointing this out!).

The summer issue is almost ready to send to the printers. With any luck, we'll have it for sale within the next couple of weeks. We have some really fun stories this time: demons, dinosaurs, aliens... plus another short comic, reviews, and a contest.

Also, in spring issue author news, Bill Kte'pi has decided to post the entirety of The Saint of Daybreak for free on LiveJournal. Donations are still appreciated, but the whole story will be available either way. The first three chapters are already up at saintofdaybreak.livejournal.com.

Hacking the steam age

2007-06-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

I might be outing myself as beyond geeky with this, but Hackers is one of the few movies I've enjoyed enough to watch multiple times. So I'm very happy to report that someone has written a steampunk version of the script, and recorded a group reading of it, all available online. It's called Clockers.

JOSEPHINE

What is that? What is that? Let me see it. What are these?

DAED

International conversion tables, Imperial gear radii to French and Chinese.

SNACK

What's this? Luscious orange?

DAED

Key machining standards.

SNACK

This?

DAED

Gear Shits book, so named for a famous misprint on the title page. Principles of Cog Power.

SNACK

This?

DAED

Dragon Book. Linkage bible.

SNACK

And that?

DAED

Devil Book. Secret London tunnel maps. Also known as the "Ugly Red Book That's Too Big For A Shelf."

I don't think you have to be a fan of the source material to enjoy this, but that may help. It's silly, anachronistic, and full of steampunk tech.

Story of the Week

2007-06-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Subterranean Magazine recently switched from print to the web, now offering quarterly content for free online. I've been very impressed with the stories and essays they publish.

My story of the week is from their new Summer issue. It's "Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind" by Rachel Swirsky, a poignant narrative of the last people on earth. It reminds me a little of one of my long-time favorites, Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains". Slow, subtle, a series of images that stick.

Hugo Nominees, 2007

2007-05-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

The Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy take place every year at WorldCon. This year it's happening August 30-September 3 in Japan. Anyone with a WorldCon membership is eligible to vote, and that includes people who purchase a supporting (non-attending) membership. So for $50 you could help decide who wins the awards.

Even if you won't be voting or attending, the Nippon2007 site has a page listing all the nominated works, with links to read all of the short stories and some of the novels for free online. I can attest that Glasshouse is excellent, and I've enjoyed other work by many of the other authors.

Serialized Novel: The Saint of Daybreak

2007-05-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

Bill Kte'pi, whose story "Everything Life Carries on Without" appeared in our Spring 2007 issue, is currently serializing a novel on his website on a donation basis. It's a fast-paced story about vampires, conspiracies, and New Orleans called The Saint of Daybreak.

From the first chapter:

There was no time for shoes if I wanted the hooker to live.

I’d left them on the floor on her side of the bed, and caught a glimpse of them when she picked up my T-shirt to dry her tears on. Watching her, something drew my eyes to her throat, some old habit, some new awareness saw the artery pulse, a little twitch she wasn’t aware of.

I grabbed her wrists and yanked her across the bed, rolled us both to the floor, kicked the bathroom door open bare-footed and listened to the floorboards. The worn-out quilt slumped to the floor in our wake, most of its weight having been pinched to the edge of the bed.

“What the fuck –”

“Shh!” I covered her mouth. Shit, I’d forgotten that it hurt to land on things. My hip flared in frustration. Those little things, those stupid little things, you could forget them so easily. “Ever been religious, Maggie?”

He'll post the second chapter once donations reach $20, and the following chapters for each $40 after that. I've read an earlier draft of the entire thing, and it's a really interesting story. Go read the rest of the first chapter, and if you like it, consider donating a few dollars toward the rest.

Things I don't want to read (and a few things I do)

2007-05-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

I just caught up on all of the stories we've received through the end of April. We'll be sending out responses as soon as I can get Lucas to review the things he hasn't read yet. We tend to do rejections first (some stories pretty clearly won't work for us), and then start evaluating which of the stories that pass the first round will actually make it into the magazine.

Every time I read a batch of new submissions, I notice certain patterns in stories that are really an automatic no for me. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to send us their work, but some things aren't going to make the cut. Here's a few elements to avoid:

* Completely gratuitous violence. I want a balance of science fiction and horror, but we receive a lot of things that are gross without being scary or thought-provoking. Especially when the story is about raping or torturing women. Sorry, no.
* Stories that have more sex than plot. I'm not saying no sex at all (Bill Kte'pi's story "Everything Life Carries on Without" certainly includes it), but if the whole point of the story is the sex, there are other publications that would be better choices for your work.
* All action, no plot. Tell me about zombies, monsters, aliens from another galaxy. Go ahead and blow things up. This is great. But ultimately we want stories about people, not GI Joe adventures.

That said, here's what I wish we'd receive more of:

* Stories about strange technology and its implications. The Singularity. Nanotech. Read the "Lobsters" story in Charles Stross' Accelerando for a great example.
* Space exploration. I'd even go for retro Moon colonies if it had a good setting and characters. Get out into the unknown.
* Humor. Being funny can be hard, but you can develop a sense for what works and what doesn't over time. Have a friend read it if you're not sure.

In general, the thing that would most help the stories we reject is having someone else to review it before it's submitted. An outside reader can help spot problems while you still have a chance to fix it. Ultimately, Lucas and I want to select stories that readers of Yog's Notebook will be excited to see, and the best thing you can do to get your work there is to have other people read through it, and tell you what they think.

Read science fiction for free online

2007-04-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

This week's post is a roundup of links to some fine sf offerings available for free online. They generally fall into two categories: works that authors have decided to release under a Creative Commons (or similar) license, and works that are in the public domain due to their age. Most people will be comfortable reading a short story or two on their computer, but for longer book-length works, you might prefer to use a PDA or video iPod. This is also a way to sample several chapters of a book before buying a print copy.

A good starting point is manybooks.net. Their science fiction section contains 274 modern and historical works. These can be downloaded pre-formatted for a variety of ebook readers, or as a PDF. The collection includes Accelerando, winner of the 2006 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and Blindsight, nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

There are also several e-zines that publish a rotating selection of stories, available for free on the web. Strange Horizons, one of the longest-running and most recognized publications in this category, updates weekly. Subterranean Press recently switched their quarterly magazine from print to the web. The spring issue features stories and essays by Elizabeth Bear, Charles Stross, Mike Resnick, and Bruce Sterling. Ideomancer and Coyote Wild are also worth checking out.

Finally, authors also maintain collections of their work available online. Cory Doctrow shares his work primarily through a podcast, but text versions of several of his stories and novels also exist. John Scalzi has a novel and several stories linked from his site. And members of the Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA) recently declared an "International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day", wherein science fiction writers who have published work for pay each offered their work online for free. The roundup of contributions is on Jo Walton's blog.

I've found these resources to be a great way to discover new authors. There are several writers whose books I purchased specifically because I liked the work they had online. I hope this helps other people find new and interesting things to read too.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

2007-04-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut died last week, as a result of head injuries incurred through a fall in his apartment. Throughout college (where I was, in part, a Literature major) and the subsequent years of voracious reading, I had somehow never read anything by the much lauded American author. His work had been described to me as everything from satire to post-modernist dystopianism, anti-war diatribe to science fiction; one thing everyone mentioned when recommending Vonnegut was that the man's writing was funny (something I believe is extremely important to the enjoyment of any book; there are very few writers not named Woolf or Faulkner who can - or should try to - write edifying and/or entertaining literature without injecting some overt humor).

By coincidence, I read my first Vonnegut book, Cat's Cradle, just a few weeks ago, as the monthly selection for our book club. It was as bizarre and intriguing as I'd hoped it would be, and most definitely qualifies as Sci-Fi in my opinion. The book, written in over 120 small chapters, has at times an almost poetic timbre to the narrative, a very spoken quality. The science-fictiony aspect to the story doesn't become apparent until about midway through, when we are introduced to a substance known as Ice-nine, which causes water to freeze at very high temperatures. Without giving away too much of the plot, I'll just say that what starts out as a fairly prosaic story about a reporter evolves into a pretty fantastic set of circumstances.

Vonnegut has the delightful ability to cram layers of texture and meaning into crisp and witty sentences that sometimes read as crass bon mots. His dialogue, in particular, elicited the most laughs from me, where his often cartoonish characters ineract in some frankly ludicrous situations. Ludicrous; yet within the confines of his self-contained universe, gripping enough to allow the reader to suspend disbelief with ease and enjoyment.

Whether you are a fan of sci-fi, or more "literary" writing (and my opinion of the distinctions therein will wait for another blog post), you must see to it that you read some of Kurt Vonnegut's books. I myself am very excited to read more from the man who said that he is sure that "evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer.... That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap."

Welcome

2007-04-16T13:14:00.001-07:00

Yog's Notebook is starting a new blog to feature short reviews and other things that catch our eye, updated weekly. Check back to see what's next.