i am from space and the future

I’m putting the finishing touches on my long-overdue Datalore story for TV Squad. It’s taken so long, because it just wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it to, and I couldn’t figure out why until this morning. I’d written some really funny raps for Picard, but they just didn’t fit in with the rest of the story. It’s funny, but it wasn’t serving the larger piece, so it had to go.

Talk about killing your precious babies! This is part of what I sent upstate to live on a farm with other words:

I’m Jean-Luc Picard, I’m chillin’ in my yard
Underneath my chrome dome in the ship I call my home
Kickin’ it with Data, my homeboy, my brotha
I wanna get freaky with Wesley Crusher’s motha!

It’s hilarious to me, but that’s probably because I can hear the music in my head (and other voices that want me to do bad things, but I won’t! I’ll show them! I’ll show them all! HAHAHAHAHAAAAaa!!11)

Cutting out all the rapping let me write stuff that’s far more amusing to me, like:

Riker looks around the bridge, sees all the commissioned officers he has available to him, does a quick scan of the ship’s manifest to see who’s on duty . . . and decides to send Wesley Freakin’ Crusher to "discreetly" sneak a peek at Data. Worf says, "Uh, excuse me, Commander, but since I’m kind of in the security department and all, and I’m a big old Klingon, shouldn’t maybe I go check this out?"

Riker replies, "I’m not going to lie to you, Worf: we all know that if there’s anything funky going on down there, you’re just going to get your ass kicked. So I’m sending the Boy Wonder and his giant brain instead."

Wesley jumps up from his console and shouts, "Wheee! I’m in Starfleet!" as he runs like a pixie to the turbolift.

Worf growls, but inside he’s secretly grateful that he’s staying safely on the bridge.

Lore, disguised as Data, is contacting the crystalline entity when Wesley shows up, and discreetly checks up on him thusly:

Wesley: Hi Data! Look at how totally in Starfleet I am!
Lore: Hello, Wesley! I am not Lore, I am Data! Look at Lore who is on the floor while I, Data, am standing here doing nothing suspicious!
Wesley: Wow, that sure does look like Lore! Neat! I’d better not call security or anything since nothing suspicious is going on here. Oh, before I leave, here are all the reasons I, and everyone else on the ship would suspect that you were actually Lore, disguised as Data, contacting the crystalline entity so it could come and eat our brains.
Lore: Hey, it’s not unreasonable, I mean, it’s not going to eat your eyes.
Wesley: Hey, did you know that I’m in Starfleet? I talk to the captain! I think I’ll go talk to him now! Wheeee!
Lore: Thanks for dropping in and observing that there’s nothing suspicious going on here. Run along now, you little scamp!
Wesley: Wheeee!

I also realized that my memory of Datalore is as divorced from reality as George W. Bush. I liked this episode a lot when it first aired, but watching it now, all I can see are gigantic plot holes and inconsistencies that never should have made it past the first draft. Gene is credited as the writer on this one, but it was done at a time when his health was rapidly failing, and I see Maurice Hurley’s hacky fingerprints all over it.

I’m turning it in to my editor at TV Squad later today, and I’ll link it when he pushes it live.

made of 100% win

One of Jonathan Coulton‘s fans sent him a French translation of RE: Your Brains. JoCo (which I suppose I need to call him now, since that’s what his fans call him, and I’m quite obviously a fan) recorded the French version, and released it yesterday:

While recording I couldn’t help but notice an opportunity in the
third verse for a reference to “Alouette,” that famous old French song
about plucking feathers off a bird. My first ever joke in French! Vive
me!

The result is this new version of Re: Your Brains for French
speaking zombies everywhere (yes, even Canada). I hope zat you like eet.

Re: Vos Cerveaux

Freaking. Awesome. Please to be Propelling eet?

nearly all hardbacks have shipped

It’s a strange day here in Los Angeles. It’s cloudy and gray, and if you looked out a window you’d think there was a chill in the air.

But it’s 78 degrees in my back yard right now, and tonight? It’s forecast to get as low as 46, just in case anyone was delusional enough to think that Los Angeles is not in the middle of a desert.

Anyway, if you’re in the 300, I thought you’d like to know that all the domestic hardbacks — except a couple of eChecks that found their way into the wrong box and will ship tomorrow — have just been dropped off at the post office.

International orders will start shipping ASAP. I’d hoped to have everything done by today, but with my writing deadline being moved up from mid-January to Tuesday, I sort of need to put as much of my time and energy as I can into finishing the story. Please accept my deepest apologies on the delays. I wish there was a simpler way to get the goddamn customs and postage done, but unless I’m willing to charge international customers an outrageous amount of shipping, this is the best I can do.

Can media conglomerates afford to pay the writers?

As someone who hopes to be in the WGA one day, and as a current SAG member (and former member of the Board of Directors) I am in complete and total solidarity with the Writer’s Guild. It’s quite heartening to me, also, to see that so many people refuse to be fooled by the lies that the six companies who control all of the media have been trying to spread.

The AMPTP has been successful (and helped by the news media they own) in spreading FUD about the things the writers are asking for. This post at United Hollywood puts some important numbers into perspective:

"But can the corporations really afford to pay you what you’re asking for?"

Let’s
set aside for the moment the issue of what the congloms say in their
press releases to us (which is basically "There’s no money! Ever! And
if there was, we spent it all on other projects that lost money so it’s
gone! Forever! We’re broke! We’re having to rent our yachts!") and focus on some hard numbers thoughtfully provided by Jonathan Handel on the Huffington Post yesterday.

He
writes an excellent (I think) and even-handed analysis that takes into
account the effect pattern bargaining will have in calculating real
numbers of what we’re asking for, and what it will cost the companies,
individually, to pay us.

It comes, by his calculation, to $125 million per conglomerate per year — if we got every single thing we’re asking for.

That, by the way, is less than the $140 million Disney spent to fire Michael Ovitz for 15 months of work.

Also, Carson Daly is still an epic douche.

Also, also:

And finally, a meager contribution from the actor half of me:

MWM seeks SF Anthology for Casual Reading

I love SF novels, and count stories like The Forever War and The Ghost Brigades among my all-time favorites, but in the last year, I’ve grown very fond of the SF short story. Since an SF short story is what I hope to scrape out of my brains as my next writing project, I’ve been reading as many short stories as I can get my hands on, in places like Subterranean online, the Subterranean magazine, and in various anthologies.

I recently finished a great anthology called the Nebula Awards Showcase 2007, edited by Mike Resnick. In addition to some great SF from established writers, it included some fantasy (Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners was wonderful), some poetry, and a novellette from Harlan Ellison that, while not SF or Fantasy, was probably my favorite tale in the book.

Now that I’m done with it, I’m looking for a new SF anthology. I’ve spent some time in the bookstore and on the googles trying to pick out a new one, but it’s tricky. Most anthologies are, by their nature, uneven, and some are downright garbage. I haven’t red enough to know if there’s one editor who I can rely upon more than another, of if there’s one publisher who puts out books with pretty covers and not much else.

While I wait for my sample issues of F&SF to arrive, I’m looking for a new anthology that’s not huge (some are over 800 pages, which is just too big for me to schlep around town) that focuses on speculative fiction.

Any suggestions?