Season 2 of Adventures in Scifi Publishing will begin with a big bang on January 12th. They will have Kevin J. Anderson and Sean Williams--then two weeks later, Terry Goodkind.
Go over to www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com and listen to the promo!
I know. That's over a month from now. Remind me to remind you...
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Friday, December 7, 2007
Shallow Red
This is my chess program in action.
You've heard of Deep Blue, the terror of Chess Champions everywhere? Well, this it ain't. I never promised that it was pretty. Like Frankenstein, I never bothered making my creation look good. It was only a personal project. If & when I'd the chess engine well tuned, then I intended on going back and give it a slick front end.
Is it alive? Barely. It can be set to Human vs Human, Human vs Computer, Computer vs Computer.
It never allows the human to make an illegal move. On computer mode it tries to calculate the best possible move, reiteratively adding and subtracting different possibilities based on pieces that are in jeopardy on both sides, depending on the value of the piece. Unfortunately, such exponential processing can get out of hand. Thus, I can't calculate too many moves ahead. Even so, it takes, at least, half a minute. And even then, it makes some boneheaded moves sometimes.
Obviously, it was a work in progress. But I haven't touched it in over 4 years other than, importing the code into Excel and making a type of spreadsheet chess. And why would anyone do that? Because I could. To satisfy my inner mad scientist.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Schrödinger's Finalists
Since hearing my story was in the finals, I've had some sort of strange writing block. Instead of thinking about my next story(or writing it), I find myself easily distracted. It seeps into my dreams. On the up side, I was surprised by the number of well-wishing, not only from among the fellow finalists, but from other writers, and from those with no aspirations to write(those seem most satisfying of all).
In obsessing over my odds, I've created a fiction of sorts, backed by spurious calculations to help me sort it all out. In essence, eight stories sit in Schrödinger's Box, each in a superposition of states. When a measurement is made, by judging, then the superposition will collapse.
While, perhaps, there may be one Hugo-worthy story(not mine, obviously) that will outshine the rest, until it is measured--we don't know. And there is the likelihood that several are equal in quality and it might come down to subjective taste or even mood. Of course, professional writers are doing the judging, and as Gurney Halleck in Dune said, 'Moods are a thing for cattle and love play!' Obviously, they won't let traffic jams and finicky cats cloud their judgment.
The point is there is great uncertainty. But it is sane to keep in mind that there are a finite number of states the superposition can collapse into, accompanied by its own set of odds:
59.03% : Nonwinning, nonpublished finalist
03.46% : Nonwinning, published Finalist
37.50% : Third place
25.00% : Second place
12.50% : First place
03.10% : Gold
Discounting published finalists, there are 56 winning groups that could emerge from the quarter(if you include who-wins-what that would up it to 168 combinations). Pick from the 56 and there's only a 1.79% chance for that combination. The odds of any two, say two Virginians, both winning are 10.7%. But the good news is that that odds for a Virginian to win this year are 64.3%.
How will the superposition collapse? We will have to wait and see.
To be continued...
In obsessing over my odds, I've created a fiction of sorts, backed by spurious calculations to help me sort it all out. In essence, eight stories sit in Schrödinger's Box, each in a superposition of states. When a measurement is made, by judging, then the superposition will collapse.
While, perhaps, there may be one Hugo-worthy story(not mine, obviously) that will outshine the rest, until it is measured--we don't know. And there is the likelihood that several are equal in quality and it might come down to subjective taste or even mood. Of course, professional writers are doing the judging, and as Gurney Halleck in Dune said, 'Moods are a thing for cattle and love play!' Obviously, they won't let traffic jams and finicky cats cloud their judgment.
The point is there is great uncertainty. But it is sane to keep in mind that there are a finite number of states the superposition can collapse into, accompanied by its own set of odds:
59.03% : Nonwinning, nonpublished finalist
03.46% : Nonwinning, published Finalist
37.50% : Third place
25.00% : Second place
12.50% : First place
03.10% : Gold
Discounting published finalists, there are 56 winning groups that could emerge from the quarter(if you include who-wins-what that would up it to 168 combinations). Pick from the 56 and there's only a 1.79% chance for that combination. The odds of any two, say two Virginians, both winning are 10.7%. But the good news is that that odds for a Virginian to win this year are 64.3%.
How will the superposition collapse? We will have to wait and see.
To be continued...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Writers Of The Future Q407 : Finalist!!!
http://wotfblog.galaxypress.com/2007/11/4th-quarter-writers-of-future-finalists.html
I feel I should say something insightful, something profound, but right now my mind is all a jumble. In fact, if I were the first man on the moon, those would probably be my words upon stepping out of the Eagle: "Um--uh--my mind is blank!"
Of course, there's only a 37% chance that my story will place first, second, or third. The judges will have to weigh my story's merits against 7 others. I am pleased to see a fellow Virginian among the finalists. It's a possibility, albeit a slim one, that we'll both be in the workshop and our stories in the anthology. Wouldn't that be a good way to represent Virginia!!!
Though I haven't yet made it, I have to say, crafting a publishable story isn't easy. It takes work and there are many dimensions of consideration. Style, characterization, plot, clarity, pace, suspense, ect, ect--and in SF&F there is the added burden of worldbuilding & making the unreal credible-seeming. This particular story went through 3 drafts. Then, since mistakes abound, two rounds of proofreading. Hours and hours of work over many months.
None of this would've been possible either without solid feedback, which I recieved from my wife and Paul Comstock, a fellow Hatracker, Critter, and Writers Of The Future semifinalist. Many thanks to them!
Incidentally, here's a link to Paul's site, which contains many helpful tips on writing:
http://www.paulallancomstock.com/
I feel I should say something insightful, something profound, but right now my mind is all a jumble. In fact, if I were the first man on the moon, those would probably be my words upon stepping out of the Eagle: "Um--uh--my mind is blank!"
Of course, there's only a 37% chance that my story will place first, second, or third. The judges will have to weigh my story's merits against 7 others. I am pleased to see a fellow Virginian among the finalists. It's a possibility, albeit a slim one, that we'll both be in the workshop and our stories in the anthology. Wouldn't that be a good way to represent Virginia!!!
Though I haven't yet made it, I have to say, crafting a publishable story isn't easy. It takes work and there are many dimensions of consideration. Style, characterization, plot, clarity, pace, suspense, ect, ect--and in SF&F there is the added burden of worldbuilding & making the unreal credible-seeming. This particular story went through 3 drafts. Then, since mistakes abound, two rounds of proofreading. Hours and hours of work over many months.
None of this would've been possible either without solid feedback, which I recieved from my wife and Paul Comstock, a fellow Hatracker, Critter, and Writers Of The Future semifinalist. Many thanks to them!
Incidentally, here's a link to Paul's site, which contains many helpful tips on writing:
http://www.paulallancomstock.com/
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Realms Of Fantasy : The Envelope Please...
In late December, I sent “Foregleamer” to the Writers of The Future contest/anthology and the story placed semifinalist, one of the last cut from the potential list of finalists according to my critique from K.D. Wentworth. I revised the story per her feedback, as well as the critiques I recieved from Critters. In September, I cut it down to 9,800 words from 12,000, as painful as that was, and on October 1, I mailed it to Realms of Fantasy.
Today I received the results: The Yellow Form of Promise. Of course, had I recieved the Blue Form Of Death, I could have griped that Douglas Cohen, the assistant editor, didn't even give the story a chance--but, in all fairness, he read it and gave it many. And for his time, effort, and honest assessment, I thank him.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I am Geek--hear me type!
I should be rewriting the story that I'm planning on sending to WOTF for Q108, but I'm being a Murphy's procrastinator. I'll let my subconscious work on an attack plan for the revisions. Meanwhile...
I am a geek.
According to the Wiktionary, a geek is:
*A person intensely interested in a particular field or hobby, generally at the expense of broader social interaction.
According to Wikipedia:
*somebody whose reasoning and decision making is always first and foremost based on his/her passions rather than things like financial reward or social acceptance.
*A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill...and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
*A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream.
*A person who rejects society, yet is involved in it — unlike and in contrast to a hermit.
*the particular interests of nerds are of practical nature...while those of geeks are often considered trivial but entertaining.
*a bright young man turned inward, poorly socialized, who felt so little kinship with his own planet that he routinely traveled to the ones invented by his favorite authors
I'm not too sure about the bright part. According to Tickle.com my IQ was 130, and, of course, that's as far an online tests can be trusted. A timed online test I took a decade earlier had me at 120. I tend to do well in what captures my fancy, while zoning in areas that don't. It wouldn't surprise me to learn I've been struggling with attention deficit all my life--in fact, I'm pretty sure of it. And for those of you that don't have that problem, thus less than sympathetic, it's not something that can just be willed away.
I've had pseudo-intellectual interests in technology and layman science. Ever since my father came home with the C64, I was hooked on programming. First with Basic 2.0, then with 6510 Assembler--later on it was C & C++. But, professionally, I ended up on the mainframe, and when I came home, the last thing I wanted to do was more programming.
Yeah, I've made a few side projects. Of course, I've done Tic Tac Toe--haven't we all? The code was surprisingly short and simple.
A couple years back I got 75% through a homemade version of Pacman, enough to get Pacman, Blinkey, Pinkey, Inkey and Clyde moving through the maze, with power pellets and dots. Yes, when Pacman ate the blinking power pellet, the ghost turned blue. Pacman could eat them, leaving their eyes wandering back to the ghost box and regenerate. Why not add sound, scoring, and a more rigorous routines for the ghosts? Because, I realized I could, and when I realized that, I'd finished what I set out to accomplish. To continue on would have little point.
In '03, I did a workable version of chess. You could play against another human, or the computer, or computer against computer. Of course, the computer made lousy moves. I tried refining and refining the reiterative routines, but there was only so much VB could crunch. In chess, things get exponential very fast. I rewrote the core engine in straight C to see if it would run faster, but I got sidetracked with other things. A couple years back, I did massage the VB code into Excel and refashioned it into a workable Excel Chess. But since then, I haven't touched it.
So most of my homemade programs have tended to be interesting trinkets, experiments as it were, and when I began writing I had little time for these diversions anymore. And, of course, technology marches on, faster and faster. You blink and you fall behind. I understand C++ has moved on to C# and VB has moved onto VB.NET. But I still miss the days of DOS 3.0, when I knew exactly what my PC was doing. Namely, only what I told it to. With Vista, I feel like a helpless baby. I hear you churning, hard drive--what are you doing?
Thus, I trend toward the trivial but entertaining(geekdom), rather than to the technical but practical(nerdom). My interests are definitly outside the mainstream. I reject many aspects of society and question the cultural norms--who says that until 11AM you eat one foodset, but after you eat another? If it's 6AM--give me my pizza! Oh--just not from a chain restaurant.
No, I am not being different for it's own sake, or because I think it makes me look cool. I'm not concerned about your acceptance. I'm not afraid that you'll stop interacting with me--it'll give me more time for my own pursuits.
I am a geek.
According to the Wiktionary, a geek is:
*A person intensely interested in a particular field or hobby, generally at the expense of broader social interaction.
According to Wikipedia:
*somebody whose reasoning and decision making is always first and foremost based on his/her passions rather than things like financial reward or social acceptance.
*A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill...and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.
*A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream.
*A person who rejects society, yet is involved in it — unlike and in contrast to a hermit.
*the particular interests of nerds are of practical nature...while those of geeks are often considered trivial but entertaining.
*a bright young man turned inward, poorly socialized, who felt so little kinship with his own planet that he routinely traveled to the ones invented by his favorite authors
I'm not too sure about the bright part. According to Tickle.com my IQ was 130, and, of course, that's as far an online tests can be trusted. A timed online test I took a decade earlier had me at 120. I tend to do well in what captures my fancy, while zoning in areas that don't. It wouldn't surprise me to learn I've been struggling with attention deficit all my life--in fact, I'm pretty sure of it. And for those of you that don't have that problem, thus less than sympathetic, it's not something that can just be willed away.
I've had pseudo-intellectual interests in technology and layman science. Ever since my father came home with the C64, I was hooked on programming. First with Basic 2.0, then with 6510 Assembler--later on it was C & C++. But, professionally, I ended up on the mainframe, and when I came home, the last thing I wanted to do was more programming.
Yeah, I've made a few side projects. Of course, I've done Tic Tac Toe--haven't we all? The code was surprisingly short and simple.
A couple years back I got 75% through a homemade version of Pacman, enough to get Pacman, Blinkey, Pinkey, Inkey and Clyde moving through the maze, with power pellets and dots. Yes, when Pacman ate the blinking power pellet, the ghost turned blue. Pacman could eat them, leaving their eyes wandering back to the ghost box and regenerate. Why not add sound, scoring, and a more rigorous routines for the ghosts? Because, I realized I could, and when I realized that, I'd finished what I set out to accomplish. To continue on would have little point.
In '03, I did a workable version of chess. You could play against another human, or the computer, or computer against computer. Of course, the computer made lousy moves. I tried refining and refining the reiterative routines, but there was only so much VB could crunch. In chess, things get exponential very fast. I rewrote the core engine in straight C to see if it would run faster, but I got sidetracked with other things. A couple years back, I did massage the VB code into Excel and refashioned it into a workable Excel Chess. But since then, I haven't touched it.
So most of my homemade programs have tended to be interesting trinkets, experiments as it were, and when I began writing I had little time for these diversions anymore. And, of course, technology marches on, faster and faster. You blink and you fall behind. I understand C++ has moved on to C# and VB has moved onto VB.NET. But I still miss the days of DOS 3.0, when I knew exactly what my PC was doing. Namely, only what I told it to. With Vista, I feel like a helpless baby. I hear you churning, hard drive--what are you doing?
Thus, I trend toward the trivial but entertaining(geekdom), rather than to the technical but practical(nerdom). My interests are definitly outside the mainstream. I reject many aspects of society and question the cultural norms--who says that until 11AM you eat one foodset, but after you eat another? If it's 6AM--give me my pizza! Oh--just not from a chain restaurant.
No, I am not being different for it's own sake, or because I think it makes me look cool. I'm not concerned about your acceptance. I'm not afraid that you'll stop interacting with me--it'll give me more time for my own pursuits.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Podcasts
As a gift, my wife gave me an ipod back in May. At first, I wondered what in the brane I'd do with it. My car has a CD player, so why do I need this trendy little device--this fad? Yeah, I dumped scores of albums onto it. I purchased a couple from iTunes. But, of course, there's only so many dozen times of listening to Spock's Beard or Mike Oldfield before once experiences music burnout.
And then I discovered the wonders of Podcasts. Rather late in the game, some may say. Others, like I was, may be hesitant to give this medium a try. I really believe podcasts have real staying power. It's great for the commute to work and back. It's great when doing the dishes and laundry. And the best part, like radio, many Podcasts are free, however, unlike radio you've more say about the content.
I listed some of my favorite podcasts in the Links. Of all of them, Adventures in Scifi has caught my fancy the most. Upbeat, sometimes to the point of lunacy, and yet not too over-the-top, they discuss what's happening in the world of SF&F, namely in reference to the written word. They interview authors. They discuss writing tips. As voracious readers of the books and mags, they know their stuff. And if you poke around the links listed on their blog, you will probably discoverer some other great productions as well.
Then there is Escape Pod, a podcast of pro and semi-pro SF&F short stories and novelettes. You'll find stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's, Interzone, ect. If you're like me, your reading logjam is too backed up too catch all of the shorts, or perhaps the trope is not appealing, or an opening didn't grab. Here's a chance to listen to a story that you might not otherwise read.
Lastly, I want to highlight I Should Be Writing. Not as exciting as the other two, but very instructional. Lots of pauses to help make the listener think and absorb.
A wise man once said, 'Don't be the first to jump on a bandwagon--don't be the last.' If you haven't discovered podcasts, maybe it's time to give them a try. And if you discover a good one, let me know!
And then I discovered the wonders of Podcasts. Rather late in the game, some may say. Others, like I was, may be hesitant to give this medium a try. I really believe podcasts have real staying power. It's great for the commute to work and back. It's great when doing the dishes and laundry. And the best part, like radio, many Podcasts are free, however, unlike radio you've more say about the content.
I listed some of my favorite podcasts in the Links. Of all of them, Adventures in Scifi has caught my fancy the most. Upbeat, sometimes to the point of lunacy, and yet not too over-the-top, they discuss what's happening in the world of SF&F, namely in reference to the written word. They interview authors. They discuss writing tips. As voracious readers of the books and mags, they know their stuff. And if you poke around the links listed on their blog, you will probably discoverer some other great productions as well.
Then there is Escape Pod, a podcast of pro and semi-pro SF&F short stories and novelettes. You'll find stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's, Interzone, ect. If you're like me, your reading logjam is too backed up too catch all of the shorts, or perhaps the trope is not appealing, or an opening didn't grab. Here's a chance to listen to a story that you might not otherwise read.
Lastly, I want to highlight I Should Be Writing. Not as exciting as the other two, but very instructional. Lots of pauses to help make the listener think and absorb.
A wise man once said, 'Don't be the first to jump on a bandwagon--don't be the last.' If you haven't discovered podcasts, maybe it's time to give them a try. And if you discover a good one, let me know!
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