Alas, Journeyman...

In attempting to figure out when the next episode of Journeyman would air--I hear it will not. The Man, sporting his peacock logo, has effectively canceled it. NBC can spout all the excuses it wants. Ratings, blah, blah, blah, writer's strike, blah, blah, blah--I ceased listening to "official" statements long ago.

NBC: Did you try to promote it more? Did you try airing it in a different time slot? Did you try--there's a million-and-one things to try! Do you think I'm going to now watch the junk you plan on substituting for it? Do you leave me any reason to turn on NBC at all? No thanks! I'll just use the timeslot to read.

Writers Of The Future: The Envelope Please...

It'll be announced here shortly: http://wotfblog.galaxypress.com

But from what I've pieced together, the waveform has collapsed thusly:

First Place: Erin Cashier
Second Place: Sonia Timms/Helbig
Third Place: Jeannette Cheney

Congrats!

Of course, the published finalists, if any, are yet to be determined...

Update per Sonia: the judges this quarter were Larry Niven, Tim Powers, Kevin J. Anderson & Nina Kikiri Hoffman.

Schrödinger's Cats Unleashed...

For no particular reason, here is a picture of my cats. The one on the left is named Katie. The one on the right is Niya.

Katie greets us when we come home by rolling on the floor. When the mood strikes her, she loves to play fetch. At best, she tolerates Niya's existence, though sometimes she goes way out of her way to bat Niya on the head.

Niya is good at figuring out how to open doors. When she feels that she's "won" at a game, she'll drag her toy round and round the room in a triumphant procession. If she's suspicious of a new object, she's quite adept at boxing it. Niya sometimes will watch TV for a few minutes and at times, I've had to accomodate her by not changing the channel if she seems interested in what's on. Niya's the copycat, emulating what Katie is doing.

Both love to chase ice around on the kitchen floor. Neither support my writing, but rather stand outside the office door and meow their heads off. If I let Katie in, she'll jump between me and the monitor. Katie prefers my wife and will beg for her to pick her up, or will jump in her lap when watching television. Niya will get in my lap when reading or watching TV, and put her head on my chest, but then, she'll do the same to my wife. In fact, though Niya doesn't spurn me, I think it's a matter of opportunity. If both my wife and I are available, she'll choose my wife over me. I suspect they view her as a mother figure and the supreme authority.

Adventures in Scifi Publishing returns on January 12th

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...

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.

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...

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/