Leaving the Amazon Kindle ecosystem

The Amazon Kindle is an amazing product that revolutionised the world of reading when it was launched in 2007.

Sadly, it is now time for me to completely leave this ecosystem.

Happily, there are other, non-shitty ecosystems that you can get into instead.

More on all that in a minute.

Long-time Kindle user

I got my first Kindle in 2010 as a birthday present from Nadia. This was a second generation Kindle and the first model that was available outside of the US, hence its ‘Kindle 2 international’ name.

The first ebooks I bought were Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series and Larsson was the first author to sell over a million books on Kindle.

Screenshot of an Amazon Kindle library showing the purchase of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium series Book 1)’ by Stieg Larsson on 14 September 2010.

I even got this Kindle signed by James “The Amazing” Randi when I attended The Amaz!ng Meeting in Sydney towards the end of 2010 :)

Photo of the back of an Amazon Kindle device that’s been signed in gold marker. The signature reads, “To Ameel – James Randi”.

Since 2010, various versions and iterations of Kindles have been my default book reading device.

Close-up photo of a man holding a Kindle Oasis device while sitting in a residential garden. The eReader’s screen shows the cover of the book, ‘The Left-Handed Booksellers of London’ by Garth Nix.

As a result, Nadia and I have built an extensive ebook collection.

Screenshot of an Amazon account ‘Digital Content’ screen showing 760 ebooks and 75 audiobooks.

I also have a decent audiobook collection on Audible, which is great for books like Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, in which your experience is elevated by the sound effects, or Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, in which the narration really helps you with the pronunciation of names.

Screenshot of an Audible library listing three books: ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir; ‘Lock In (Narrated by Amber Benson)’ by John Scalzi; and ‘Ancillary Justice: The Imperial Radch Series, Books 1’ by Ann Leckie.

Amazon purchased Audible in 2008 and, for a while, they were fantastic stewards of this service. For example, they launched the Audible Frontiers imprint through which they started recording science fiction and fantasy books that deserved to be heard; and they launched the ‘Whispersync for Voice’ feature that allowed you to switch seamlessly between the Kindle ebook and Audible audiobook versions of the book you were reading.

All of this was really cool and, as a result, I have been heavily invested in the Kindle-Audible ecosystem for years.

Not all sunshine and rainbows

Your books are not yours

The biggest issue with the Kindle and Audible ecosystem has always been that you don’t actually “buy” any books, you only “licence” them.

What this means is that Amazon can delete any book from your library if it itself loses the licence to that book – like it did in 2009 with, ironically, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Though in that specific case it was because Amazon discovered it didn’t own the correct licence in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You also can’t resell, back-up, or archive the books you thought you had purchased, and your kids can’t inherit your ebook collection either. In fact, if you delete your Amazon account, all your books go with it.

This has not been a concern to me because there are, um, workarounds to these restrictions for both Kindle and Audible.

Animated GIF showing a man tapping his head as if to say, “that’s smart”.

Market power and DRM

Even though this ecosystem’s licencing restrictions weren’t an issue for me, Amazon’s market dominance and, later, market abuse became an issue, especially on the audiobook side. This became so egregious that, in 2014, Cory Doctorow stopped selling his audiobooks via Audible.

It took me a little longer to catch on, so with the exception of Project Hail Mary in 2021, I stopped buying audiobooks from Audible in 2017. These days, if I do buy an audiobook, I buy it directly from the author if I can – like I do with Doctorow’s books. (It helps, of course, that I rarely listen to audiobooks any more. These days I mostly listen to podcasts.)

Things aren’t as bad on the Kindle side since there have long been viable alternatives. Kobo launched its ebook store in 2009, for example, and then its first eReader in 2010. Authors, publishers, and other booksellers have been selling ebooks online for years as well.

Not all doom and gloom, either

Not everything about the Kindle ecosystem is bad, of course. They were pioneers and innovators in the e-ink reader space, their device-to-device synchronisation is great, their devices themselves are excellent…the list goes on.

Low ebook prices

Amazon also made the most of their market power by, basically, forcing publishers to keep mass-market ebook prices low. We all know that book publishers (like film studios and record companies) work very hard to extract as much value as they can from both creators and consumers. But, for a while, thanks to the likes of Apple (with iTunes) and Amazon (with Kindle), the price of music tracks and ebooks remained low.

To counter Amazon’s insistence on keeping ebook prices low (typically US$9.99 for most fiction books), Apple and the large book publishers colluded to raise overall ebook prices, for which they were rightly sued. The book publishers all settled so, in 2013, only Apple was found guilty of price fixing.

Ebook prices have gone up since then, but I’m sure they would have be a lot higher if publishers could have had their way all along.

Still the default choice

The upshot of all this is that, even though I’ve been buying ebooks and audiobooks from authors, publishers, and other online bookstores in parallel for years, Amazon remained my go-to place for buying ebooks.

Switching ecosystems

Laziness, inertia, and a few remnants of brand loyalty (more so after the book publishers’ collusion) kept me in the Kindle ecosystem, but Amazon’s enshittification continued, so last year I finally had the time and brain-space to start moving to a different ecosystem.

I prefer to read on e-ink devices (meaning no Apple Books or Google Books), which means the obvious alternative was the Kobo ecosystem and so that’s where I went.

Hello Kobo

I formally started my move to the Kobo ebook and audiobook ecosystem when I bought the Kobo Clara Colour eReader. I still had a few unread books on Kindle – which I’m still making my way through, by the way – but that was when I switched to using this Kobo as my primary reading device.

Making the switch was pretty easy since I already had a Kobo account. I’d created one when Humble Bundle offered a great Kobo-only deal on the entire Seanan McGuire urban fantasy book collection and, since she’s my favourite author, I used this opportunity to create an account and put one foot in the door of this nicer ecosystem. (And I’m not just saying ‘nicer’ because Kobo is a Canadian company.)

Beefing up my library

I haven’t transferred all my Kindle books to my Kobo eReader – I have them archived on my computer and I’ve read most of them anyway ­– but I have bought a bunch more ebooks since then. The recent Ursula K. Le Guin Humble Bundle helped with that too!

All this to say that I’ve already got myself a good starting library in the Kobo ecosystem, which is cool.

Screenshot of the Kobo library showing 93 ebooks.

Final nail in the Kindle coffin

For me the final nail in the coffin for the Kindle ecosystem came when Amazon announced that, from 26 February 2025, they would no longer allow you to download ebooks to your computer to transfer them via USB to your Kindle device.

Screenshot from an Amazon Kindle library pop-up window with the title, “Download & transfer via USB”. The text under this reads, “Transfer Tip: After downloading, use your USB cable to connect your computer and Kindle. Your Kindle will appear as a drive on your computer. Copy your downloaded file from your computer to your Kindle’s documents folder.” Below this is an information icon with this text next to it, “Starting February 26, 2025, the “Download & Transfer via USB” option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi enabled devices by selecting the “Deliver or Remove from Device” option.” This is followed by a hyperlink that reads, “Learn more about managing downloads”.

This is the mechanism I use to archive my ebooks (ie I don’t download them to copy to my Kindle, I download them to back up my library). So, with this option gone, none of the books I’ll buy in the future will actually be mine to own.

Screenshot of a news article by Andew Liszewski from The Verge with the title, “Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books”. The article slug reads, “After February 26th, you can only download books from the Kindle store to your e-reader over Wi-Fi”.

That to me is unacceptable, so it was finally time to pull the plug and exit the entire Kindle ecosystem once and for all.

Screenshot of an article by Michael Kozlowsky in Good E-Reader with the title, “Amazon is not to be trusted anymore with their Kindle e-reader”.

Last few Kindle downloads

My first step was to download the 1-2 books I hadn’t yet downloaded from my Kindle library.

I have a recurring monthly reminder to do these downloads but, because I’d been spending all my time on my Kobo, I hadn’t kept this up.

Cancelling Kindle preorders

My second, and more future-focused, step was to cancel the three preorders I had with Kindle. Fortunately, this is really easy to do.

Screenshot of an Amazon account’s ‘Your Orders’ screen that shows two cancelled book preorders. The cancelled preorders are for ‘Overgrowth’ by Mira Grant and ‘Exit Strategy’ by Lee Child and Andrew Child.

Preordering on Kobo

My final step was to add those preorders to my Kobo account.

Though, as I discovered, I had mistakenly preordered the upcoming Mira Grant book on both ecosystems already! (Mira Grant is one of Seanan McGuire’s aliases, fyi.)

Screenshot of a Kobo library showing eight books, six of which are preorders. The preorders are for ‘Overgrowth’ by Mira Grant, ‘The Shattering Peace’ by John Scalzi, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me’ by Django Wexler, ‘Automatic Noodle’ by Annalee Newitz, ‘The River Has Roots’ by Amal El-Mohtar, and ‘Exit Strategy’ by Lee Child and Andrew Child. The two books in the library are, ‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ by Holly Jackson and ‘Under the Whispering Door’ by TJ Klune.  

End of an era

So that’s it then.

I’ll read the last few books I have left on my Kindle, buy a second Kobo device (this one for Nadia, since we share a library), and move on with my life.

It’s sad to be leaving an ecosystem that brought me so much joy and convenience, and also brought so much good to the world of reading. But once you’ve made enshittification your business strategy, the only way for your ecosystem is down. And the sooner users jump ship to a more open, distributed ecosystem, the better.

*sigh*

Screenshot of an email from Kobo with the title, “Congrats on finishing Five Survive”. An image at the top of the email shows the Rakuten Kobo logo and has the title, “We’ve got your next read covered”. Text below this reads, “We love a good ending, but there’s nothing better than a new beginning”.

Start of a new era

Fortunately, all is not lost!

There are eight days left to download your Kindle books, so there’s plenty of time to archive your whole library.

Once you’ve done that, there are three large ebook ecosystems you can easily switch to: Kobo (Canada), Apple Books (USA), and Google Books (USA). There a bunch smaller ecosystems too, of course, like Vivlio (France), Tolino (Germany), and Nook (USA). However I think most people will jump to one of the other big ones. (Unless you’re a big Barnes & Noble customer, in which case the Nook is for you.)

Alternatively, if you don’t want to get into a new, closed ecosystem, you can buy DRM-free ebooks from lots of places online (including most bookstores) and use any number of non-affiliated eReader devices to read your books, with ONYX BOOX and reMarkable being the most popular in Australia.

So let the reading continue! And hopefully this time without any DRM or shitty business strategies to slow you down :)

PS. Good E-Reader wrote a nice, long history of Kobo back in 2018 if you’re into that kind of stuff.

Decision fatigue solved: what to watch next

How do you decide which movie or TV show you’re going to watch next?

Do you make lists? And if so, how do you organise those lists?

After years of trial-and-error and one-dimensional list making, I now have a solution that works exceptionally well for me. So let’s talk about it.

To get to my current solution I had to solve three problems.

1. Effort required to watch

Some media takes effort to consume, while other stuff is quick and easy to watch.

When I used to have all my movies and TV shows in a single, long list, deciding what to watch next became a chore in itself. As I went through the list, I’d need to keep track of which movies and TV shows I had the mental capacity to enjoy at the time. And because it took so long to pick something, I’d often just end up watching what was being broadcast on one of the movie channels instead – flicking through until I found something interesting enough.

I fixed this problem by grouping my next-watch items into three ‘brain power’ categories: 30%, 60%, and 90% brain. Now, based on how I’m feeling and how much effort I’m willing to expend, I can decide which of those shorter lists to look through. I also maintain separate lists for movies and TV shows, which makes the lists even shorter.

So what do those brain power categories mean?

30% brain

This is stuff that’s easy to watch – low emotional stakes, relatively straightforward plots; usually something fun and quick.

Action and comedy media tends to fall into this category, as does most YA stuff; some talk shows and panel shows too. Most reality TV doesn’t fit here though, since that to me is 10% brain media and I usually get bored watching it.

Some examples of 30% brain media that I’ve enjoyed watching recently are Obliterated, Wednesday, and FUBAR.

These shows might not be 30% brain for everyone, of course. But for someone like me who watches a lot of action and SFF (science fiction and fantasy), they all make for low-effort watching.

60% brain

This is stuff that has a bit of meat on it, but you don’t need to fully invest yourself emotionally to enjoy.

Plot-driven and character-driven action and drama media tends to fall into this category, as well as some SFF stuff with more advanced world building.

Some examples of 60% brain media that I’ve enjoyed watching recently are Reacher, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Fallout.

90% brain

This is stuff takes a bit of effort to enjoy. You need to invest yourself mentally and emotionally, but the resulting payoff is worth it.

The things that fall into this category are advanced drama, action, and SFF. Mostly stuff that you can’t or don’t want to binge-watch.

90% brain media I’ve enjoyed recently: The Peripheral, Shōgun, and Silo.

Yay for Tumblr

This way of categorising content into how much effort it takes to consume comes from Tumblr, by the way. I can’t find the original post (it was from a long time ago), but in it the poster had said they were tired and only had the energy to watch a “30% brain” TV show that night. This method of classification stuck and is now used quite frequently on that social network.

2. Priority-sorted lists

Grouping to-watch items into separate lists doesn’t solve the problem of having to go through each list every time you want to watch a movie or start a new show. So now I prioritise my lists, with the things I want to watch first placed towards the top.

Every now and then I’ll go through each list and re-sort it, moving the items I feel like watching sooner further up the list. This usually happens after I’ve listened to a podcast episode featuring someone who talks about a movie or TV show they were involved with.

3. Search-minimising processes

Maintaining three priority-sorted, brain-power grouped lists – one set for movies and one set for TV shows – didn’t solve all my problems though. I needed to create some additional processes to make everything run smoothly.

I did that by adding three more lists:

  • Inbox: This is where all new items go if it’s not already clear which brain-power list they should be sorted into.

  • Waiting: This is where I move TV shows when I’m waiting for the next season to start.

  • Watch next: This is where I put items that, regardless of brain-power level, I want to watch as soon as possible.

Now the first place I look is the ‘watch next’ list. And as I start to clear this list, I add items from the three brain-power lists to the bottom of this one.

Great success

Screenshot from KanbanFlow

I moved fully over to this system at the end of last year and it has been working incredibly well for me. So much so that a few months ago I adopted the same approach for the books I want to read.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering which tool I use to maintain these lists, I use the free version of KanbanFlow since that has all the functionality I need.

What system do you use for deciding what you’re going to to watch or read next? I’d love to know.

Workarounds

There are four types of tech users:

  1. Regular users: they only use what works; they do things the way they’ve always done them; they aren’t good at troubleshooting

  2. Power users: they know how and, more importantly, why things work the way they do; they can troubleshoot, find solutions, and find workarounds

  3. Fixers: when something goes wrong, they don’t just find a workaround, they actually figure out what’s happened and then they properly fix it

  4. Hackers: they figure out why things went wrong and how else things can go wrong; they find the edge cases that make things go wrong

I bring this up because, while I’m usually a fixer, when I don’t have enough fucks to give I’m happy to just be a power user.

Screenshot of a Kindle Store page taken from an Amazon Kindle Oasis device.

Case in point: since my Kindle Oasis firmware got updated last week it has refused to open the book that I was reading when the update took place.

I’d tried everything short of completely factory-resetting the device when I found a workaround: if I go to that book in the Kindle store (via the device) and once there I click the ‘Read’ button, the book opens and works just fine. So that’s what I’m doing now.

Is this a pain? Yes. Does it fix the problem? No. Do I know why there’s a problem? Probably. Do I care enough to do something about it? No.

And so I keep using the workaround :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Perfect timing

Perfect timing with the delivery! I’m heding into the long weekend in Melbourne with the latest Seanan McGuide book :) #WinningAtLife

(Not that it'll take me the whole weekend to read it, of course.)

Photo of a man holding up a paperback book titles ‘Calculated Risks’ by New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire. In the background of the photo is a red dog, sitting on the grass, looking up at the photographer.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

Garth Nix is one of my favourite authors and his latest book, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, is fantastic.

I spend a sunny weekend in Melbourne being transported to 1980s London while reading this book – and I loved every minute of it!

10/10 would recommend.

Photo of a man holding an e-reader that shows the cover of a book called ‘The Left-Handed Booksellers of London’ by author Garth Nix. The tagline above the book title reads ‘Authorised to kill…and sell books’. The photo is taken in a garden, with grass and flora in the background.

My Bridge Authors

In the November 2012 episode of the ‘First Tuesday Book Club’ Jennifer Byrne and her guests discussed the ‘The Chrysalids’ by John Wyndham.

Author Monica McInerney had this to say about it:

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham was what I call my bridge book. It was my first book to read that wasn't Enid Blyton, Trixie Belden, you know, like children's books. And it was the book that introduced me to a whole world of adult fiction. So it was the one that I walked across into a big, wider world of books. [Read the full transcript on the ABC website]

To a certain extent ‘The Chrysalids’ was my bridge book, too.

However I took my first steps into the world of adult fiction with the help of a number of authors, including (in no particular order):

My proper love of adult fantasy fiction didn’t kick in till later. Not till I’d read things like the ‘Duncton Wood’ series by William Horwood and, of course, the J.R.R. Tolkien canon.

What These Authors Did For Me

Of all those books, I think the ones that really opened my mind were Wyndham’s ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘The Chrysalids’. I suspect that’s because they were among the first adult-level first person narratives I’d read. And, as someone who has a younger sister, David and Petra’s relationship in ‘The Chrysalids’ was something I related very strongly to. 

The stories that inspired me the most were probably the Clarke and Asimov short stories. I both wanted to be and had a huge crush on Susan Calvin and was generally looking forward a world in which Multivac existed.

Finally, the books that got me thinking the most about people, society, and politics were the ones by McCaffrey, Christie, and MacLean. Also, I think the first few books I ever read in which people simply lived and worked in space – as opposed to went exploring in space – were McCaffrey’s.

Newer Bridges to Cross

In more recent years (the last fifteen or so) the latest literary “bridge” I’ve crossed has been into Young Adult (YA) fiction. And the authors that have led the charge in that crossing have (so far) been J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Philip Pullman.

What were your bridge books and who were your bridge authors?

A System for Editing Documents

Aussiecon 4: Day 5

aussiecon4_logo_web Today was the fifth and final day of Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention.

I am tired, brain-stuffed, geeked-out, hugely inspired, and incredibly happy.

This despite the fact that there was so much more I wanted to do but simply wasn’t able to get to. Oh well…next  time :)

Declaration

It is now one of my life’s goals to attend every single Worldcon and win at least one Hugo award.

Sessions Attended on Day 5

Today’s program changed quite a bit – I think the Hugo winners were doing interviews while the Hugo nominees were sleeping in! – so I attended the following sessions:

High stakes: the television world of Joss Whedon

  • There are lots of good things about Joss Whedon’s shows: great writing; smart dialogue; excellent humour (i.e. the show doesn’t take itself too seriously); a sense of family; good, strong characters (particularly women); complex characters; damaged characters are fabulous; great character growth (e.g. Wesley, Fred/Illyria, Drusilla, Topher, etc.); a consistent and well developed world; great stories (some of which may make you uncomfortable); brilliant story arcs; letting the actors inform their characters; and the show doesn’t fall apart when a character’s love interest is realized (and later falls apart catastrophically!)
  • There are plenty of bad things, too: some of the fight scenes (particularly early Buffy ones) could have been better; the cast is too racially white; and some issues are handled naively (e.g. Inara as a Companion and the implications of her profession and position in society)

Losing the plot: plotting in advance vs writing as you go

  • When approaching the plot for a story, writers range from gardeners (they see how things grow as they write their story) to architects (they plan everything in advance)
  • Television writing is very architect-oriented while book writing appears to be more gardener-oriented
  • Most authors seem to have a general beginning, middle, and end in mind when they start to write their story
  • The ‘middle’ often consists of milestones or tent pole events in the plot
  • Plot outlines can be useful, particularly in complicated stories
  • Plot outlines can help you write faster and more efficiently

Reading: Charles Stross

This was a great reading. Stross read from his upcoming book, ‘Rule 34’, that’s due out in July 2011.

Hand-waving, rule-breaking and other dirty tricks of hard sf

  • Unless they belong to the mundane SF movement, most hard SF authors are okay with bending the rules if the science gets in the way of their story (e.g. faster-than-light travel)
  • They will, however, take pains to be internally consistent with the changes that they have made – even if they don’t actually address how the new science/knowledge works (e.g. they won’t explain the workings of an FTL engine in a space ship in the same way you wouldn’t explain the workings of an internal combustion engine every time you talked about a car)
  • Remember Clarke’s Three Laws 
  • Hard SF stories that use current knowledge that is later found to be incorrect do get dated but this doesn’t mean those stories will no longer be read (take, for example, H.G. Wells and all his stories that were based on the science knowledge and theories of his time)

Fantasy fiction and the Bechdel Test

  • The ‘Whores and virgins: finding roles for women in fantasy fiction’ session was cancelled so I went to this session, instead
  • As it happened, because of all the schedule changes that took place today, the panelists for this session didn’t turn up (they’d either left or didn’t know they were on this panel)
  • Fortunately, the thirty of us who did turn up made a circle of chairs and did the session ourselves :)
  • The Bechdel Test, which was created for movies & television, can also be applied to fantasy fiction books, comics, anime, and video games
  • Most early books don’t pass this test while many newer ones do
  • The test is, of course, an awareness-raising tool so it has its limitations and can’t be applied universally
  • It is useful in pointing out blind spots to authors, though

Closing Ceremony

  • Aussiecon 4 was awesome – thanks to everyone (organizers, guests, and attendees alike) for making it so much fun

What Next?

renovation-banner-follow-greenWhen one Worldcon ends, another one begins. Aussiecon 4 is dead. Long live Renovation!

The 69th World Science Fiction Convention, called Renovation, will be held in Reno, Nevada, USA from 17-21 August 2011.

I will do my best to be there.

Concluding Thoughts

John Scalzi, Charles Stross, Gail Carriger & Melinda Snodgrass are awesome.

I have craploads of books to read. I have lots of stuff to write. I have many magazines to subscribe to. I have a bunch of fan clubs to join.

I have autographs from Gail Carriger & Charles Stross. I also have photos of them (from their readings) and with them.

Here’s Carriger:

Gail Carriger at her reading at Aussiecon 4

Here’s Stross:

Charles Stross at his reading at Aussiecon 4

And here’s me with Stross (somebody asked if I was his stunt double!):

Me and Charles Stross

All in all, it’s been a fabulous five days.

Now back to the real world…

Aussiecon 4: Day 4

aussiecon4_logo_web Four down, one last day to go at Aussiecon 4.

Sessions Attended on Day 4

I made a few changes to the sessions I attended today, which ended up being:

Novellas: the perfect format

  • I attended only half this sessions because Gail Carriger’s reading started on the half hour
  • Novellas (a manuscript that’s 17,500-40,000 words in length) used to be harder to sell: you can’t sell them as standalone books and, though they’re featured in some SF magazines, there’s only one per issue
  • They’re becoming easier to sell thanks to the rise of e-books and publishers that are publishing two-for-one novella books or novella anthologies
  • Authors generally know, when a story comes to them, what its length is going to be; i.e. whether the idea will work best as a short story, novella, novelette, or book

Reading: Gail Carriger

  • This was a really fun reading from Carriger’s third book, ‘Blameless’, followed by a quick Q&A session
  • Fun tweet: @gailcarriger: Heard at #worldcon #aussiecon4 "I love Gail's fans all the men are quiet and gentlemanly and all the women are bold and obstreperous." 

How to review

  • There is a difference between ‘reviewing’ (with answers the basic question of “should I spend my hard earned money on this book?”) and ‘critiquing’ (which is a more in-depth, in-context analysis of a piece of work)

The short half-life of strange television

According to the panel and audience members, the following good TV shows were cancelled before their time:

Science fiction and the television industry

  • SF in the TV industry is complicated
  • For more about the entertainment industry listen to the podcast, The Business

The future of gender and sexuality

  • There are lots of speculative science fiction works in which authors have talked about possible gender and sexuality futures (including post-gender, post-human, post-sex-for-reproduction types of futures)
  • Some of these authors explicitly talk about the impact of such futures (including, for example, reactions and counter sexual revolutions) while, for others, the future gender and sexuality situation is part of the backdrop of the world they’re describing (so future earth is described much like an alien culture)
  • Unfortunately, this session ended up being more of a topic-raising discussion as opposed to a good topic-analysing discussion so I left halfway through
  • And, while author Cristina Lasaitis did have some really great things to say, sadly the level of conversation was too basic for her to have a good discussion about it

Taking it on the chin: authors and reviewers

  • There are three kinds of reviews – overly positive ones, overly negative ones, and properly considered ones – and authors should ignore all but the last kind
  • Negative reviews shouldn’t make you feed bad: you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) please everyone all of the time
  • Ignore reviews in which the reviewer is only using you or your work to promote their own agendas
  • There’s a difference between a bad review and a negative review
  • Never respond to a review

The Hugo Awards

  • The Hugo Award ceremony was really fun.
  • I’m really glad that Charles Stross won for ‘Palimpsest’ in the Best Novella category. That novella really blew my mind, as have all the other works of his that I’ve read.
  • The only other author that blows my mind as much as Stross does is Vernor Vinge

Sessions for Day 5

Here are the sessions I plan to attend tomorrow, which is the last day of the convention:

  • High stakes: the television world of Joss Whedon
  • The Grandfather paradox
  • Book signing with Charles Stross
  • Hand-waving, rule-breaking and other dirty tricks of hard sf
  • Whores and virgins: finding roles for women in fantasy ficition
  • Closing Ceremony

This con has been a blast so far and tomorrow shouldn’t be any different.

Aussiecon 4: Day 3

aussiecon4_logo_web I have now had three fantastic days at Aussiecon 4.

The best part is that, even after three whole days of awesomeness, there are still two more days to go!

Gail Carriger: Book Signing & Photo

Today was particularly fantastic because I went to Gail Carriger’s book signing at which she signed my copy of her third book, ‘Blameless’ :)

I also got my photo taken with her:

Photo with Gail Carriger

:)

All three of her books – ‘Soulless’, ‘Changeless’, and ‘Blameless’ (collectively known as the Parasol Protectorate series) – are really good, by the way. They’re fun, funny, and creative and they feature Alexia Tarabotti who has quickly become one of my favourite science fiction characters.

These books, if I could describe how they feel, are like chocolate cake without the calories: they’re delicious, decadent, lots of fun, and you don’t feel guilty about gorging on them.

Maybe at the next Worldcon, instead of wearing my ‘What would Ripley do?’ t-shirt (as I am in the photo above), I might have to make and wear a ‘What would Alexia do?’ t-shirt, instead.

Sessions Attended on Day 3

I attended the following sessions today:

Copyright in the 21st Century

  • Copyright is complicated
  • At a very basic level, you have to ask yourself: “What is the purpose of copyright”? and
    • How much of it has to do with protecting and/or recognizing intellectual property?
    • How much of it has to do with the economic benefits of creative work flowing to authors?

The best SF novel you have never read

As if I didn’t already have a huge list of books to read, I now have more; including:

I also have a book that was published as a podcast series to listen to:

The James Bond enigma

  • James Bond is the only spy movie franchise to have survived the decades (for a number of reasons; one of which is that it keeps adapting to the needs of that particular decade)
  • It is being threatened by the Bourne series of movies
  • The reboot is great because it’s now gone back to its old, darker, more character driven, and less gadget focused style

Melinda Snodgrass: writing for television

Kim Stanley Robinson's guest of honour speech

  • Robinson interviewed himself; it was a really good speech

Cyberpunk and the city

  • Cyberpunk as a political movement is dead but it remains alive as a stylistic movement through fashion and iconography
  • It has evolved to what is sometimes called ‘post-cyberpunk’ (until someone comes up with a better name for it) in which the protagonist is often trying to fix a dystopian work by building instead of by tearing down
  • It has a sub-genres, such as biopunk

Just a Minute

  • This was a fun SF-oriented quiz show based on the famous and long running BBC Radio show of the same name
  • It featured Paul Cornell (as host), Jennifer Fallon, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Chine Mieville, John Scalzi, and Catherynne Valente
  • It started late and ran over time so I missed the end but I’m pretty sure Scalzi won hands down :)

Academic Panel: Fantastic females: reworking feminism in women’s fantasy

Masquerade

  • The masquerade was fun; some people make awesome costumes

Sessions for Day 4

Tomorrow I’m planning to attend these sessions:

  • The problems with first contact or Film Program: International Animated Shorts
  • Do you want to be in our club? or Far future: where fantasy meets SF or Anachronistic fiction: successors to steampunk
  • Readings: Jason Nahrung, Gail Carriger or 3D cinema: revolution or novelty? or Editing the novel or The case for a female Doctor or Novellas: the perfect format (this is going to be a difficult choice!)
  • Great women of science fiction or, if I can make it, a kaffeeklatsch with Charles Stross
  • The short half-life of strange television
  • Science fiction and the television industry or The limits of science
  • The future of gender and sexuality or Norman Cates’ WETA digital presentation
  • Mary Poppins: from the Outback to Cherry Tree Lane or Build a LEGO Dalek (for adults) or Boxcutters present: writing Doctor Who
  • The Hugo Awards

It should, again, be an awesome day – by the end of which we’ll find out who’s won this year’s Hugos :)

Aussiecon 4: Day 2

aussiecon4_logo_web Thus endeth another fantastic day at Aussiecon 4. Well, at least for me. Others will party late into the night, I’m sure.

Today I:

  • bought a book: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (which I will ask him to sign tomorrow)
  • ordered three t-shirts: one for Nadia, two for me (including the official con t-shirt)
  • attended a number great sessions

Sessions Attended on Day 2

These are the sessions I attended:

The Last Airbender: race and Hollywood cinema

  • We talked about a lot of stuff, most of which is covered on Racebending.com

Making a living: Professional writing for speculative fiction authors

  • Great session and I got to hear both John Scalzi (Wikipedia) and Cory Doctorow (Wikipedia) talk! :)
  • Most writers of speculative fiction (or fiction of any kind, really) need to think, work, and act like freelancers, entrepreneurs, and sole traders
  • Important things to do/remember:
    • have multiple income streams (including fallback streams)
    • day jobs can be very useful to have
    • save all the money you can
    • be good at scheduling your time
    • write every day (this is important)

The future of privacy

  • This was another great session and, in this, I got to hear Charles Stross (Wikipedia) talk! :)
  • Privacy is complicated and our concepts of privacy are changing very quickly
  • Technology is moving much faster than the cultural shifts needed to use it well

Eowyn and Sam: underappreciated heroes in The Lord of the Rings

  • This is my favourite session of the con so far
  • Everyone in the room loved Tolkien, knew a lot about him and his books, and spoke very intelligently about the books and the Peter Jackson movie trilogy
  • We talked mostly about Eowyn, Sam, and Faramir

To the stars: the never-ending history of Star Trek

  • This was an excellent session as well, especially since it included Melinda Snodgrass (Wikipedia) on the panel :)
  • The new Star Trek film was shot using the script’s first draft because it was shot during the Hollywood writer’s strike

Academic Panel: These are not the people you are looking for: race in SFF

  • This was a good panel with some brilliant panelists, including China Miéville
  • I can’t write all the awesome stuff that was discussed so, instead, I suggest you read the article that this session was inspired by: ‘Racism and Science Fiction’ by Samuel R. Delany in the The New York Review of Science Fiction

Sessions for Day 3

Tomorrow I’m planning to attend these sessions:

  • Copyright in the 21st Century
  • The best SF novel you have never read or Capes and skirts: the plight of female superheroes or QF (the SF version of Stephen Fry’s quiz show QI) – I’m having a hard time making up my mind!
  • The James Bond enigma
  • Book signing with Gail Carriger followed by Did the future just arrive? The e-book and the publishing industry
  • Cyberpunk and the city or Vote #1 The Thing for President: how cult films are born
  • Thinking in trilogies or Micro-audience and the online critic
  • Academic Panel: Fantastic females: reworking feminism in women’s fantasy
  • The Masquerade Ball

It should be awesome :)

Aussiecon 4: Day 1

aussiecon4_logo_webI’m attending the 68th World Science Fiction – Aussiecon 4 – that’s being held in Melbourne, Australia from 2-6 September. 

Today was the first day and, so far, it’s been awesome.

Choices, Choices…

The biggest problem with conventions like these are that there are multiple sessions running concurrently (in multiple rooms, of course) so you have to choose which one of those you want to attend.

The organizers do, however, try to make your life a little easier by dividing sessions into topic streams – such as kids, young adults, academic panels, academic papers, writers workshops, film programs, signings, talks from guests, and so on. That way, if you have any special overarching interest in one streams, it makes it a little easier for your to make your choices.

Sessions Attended on Day 1

Aussiecon 4 opening ceremonyToday, aside from the opening ceremony, I attended the following sessions during which I learnt the following things (though, of course, this is just a small sample of what was discussed there):

Breaking the fourth wall: Supernatural and its audience

  • There are two kinds of ‘fourth walls’:
    • one in which the show’s authors are influenced by the fans (e.g. the killing off of Bela in Supernatural season 3) and
    • the other in which the show’s characters interact with the audience during/through the show (e.g. the bit after the credits in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
  • Fan influence can be both to the show’s benefit and detriment. In the case of Supernatural the consensus seems to be that the latter occurred.
  • It can sometimes be hard for a show’s authors to figure out whether the feedback they’re getting from their fans is:
    • just the loudest people trying to get them to write the show they really want to see (e.g. this must happen in the next season because I think that would be awesome!) or
    • a genuine fan pointing out a flaw or blind spot in their story or show choices (e.g. all the show’s characters happen to be Caucasian…wtf?).
  • American TV networks seem to be shifting the way in which they source and plan for serialized shows. The original model was, for example, a show that had a 5-year storyline with defined milestones for each season. The newer model seems to be the British one of shows being sold with 1-year plans and, if they do well in that first year, being picked up for subsequent seasons.

Perfectly packaged: designing and marketing science fiction

  • A book’s cover image should tell you what it feels like to be reading that book
  • Some manuscripts are really easy to pick covers for while for others (such as cross-genre one) it’s a much harder exercise
  • ‘Less is more’ in book covers and one of the most effective covers is one with big lettering for both the author’s name and book’s title and with only a small image/illustration
  • Publishers try to avoid people’s faces on book covers because it leaves more to the imagination
  • Black book covers with a single, coloured high-contrast image in the centre (i.e. the Twilight style) is very last year

Things to do in Melbourne when you’re geek

Sessions for Day 2

Tomorrow I’m planning to attend the following sessions:

  • When history becomes fantasy: artistic license and historical cinema
  • The Last Airbender: race and Hollywood cinema
  • Rethinking SETI: 50 years on – though this has been rescheduled so I’ll have to change my plans accordingly
  • The future of privacy or, if I’m one of the first ten to sign up, a kaffeeklatsch (i.e. small group discussion) with Gail Carriger
  • Shaun Tan Guest of Honour Speech
  • Eowyn and Sam: underappreciated heroes in The Lord of the Rings
  • To the stars: the never-ending history of Star Trek
  • Academic Panel: These are not the people you are looking for: race in SFF

I’ll also go check out the dealer’s room and go to the Friday Night Filking session (which should be lots of fun).

Movie Reviews from Around the Web: Twilight, 2012

I have a few movie reviews to share.

2012

I recently watched Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster movie, ‘2012’ and quite enjoyed it. My favourite reviews thus far have been:

Twilight: New Moon

Now I am considering watching the film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s second book from the Twilight series, ‘New Moon’.

However, these reviews are making me think twice (FYI: the second review is a lot shorter):

So I’ll probably will till it comes on pay-per-view cable next year.

Speaking more generally about the Twilight books, you really should watch/read the following:

Skeptical Resources

My previous blog post was the story of how I set off on my skeptical journey. Here are some resources to help you along yours:

These are some organizations whose websites you should explore:

Here are some good blogs to read:

There are many, many more out there and they’re very easy to find.

You need to listen to the following podcasts:

Also check out Hunting Humbug, Skepticality, and the Pseudo Scientists.

The following are excellent resources on critical thinking and logical fallacies:

Here are some excellent general resources on skepticism:

These are a few good YouTube channels to subscribe to:

Here are some magazines worth subscribing to:

And, finally, here are a list of books worth reading (all but one as suggested by Dunning in Here be Dragons):

If you can think of any other resources that are worth adding to this list, please let me know. Thanks.

Imran Ahmad is in America

I read a whole lots of blogs and among them is Imran Ahmad’s hilarious ‘Unimagined’ blog. The name, of course, refers to the title of Ahmad’s book: Unimagined – A Muslim Boy Meets the West. I haven’t read the book myself – I’m not buying any new books till I get a job – but I’ve heard it’s quite awesome and I hope to get it as soon as possible.

Anyway, Ahmad was recently in Australia, which is how I first heard about him. Now, though, he’s driving around the US doing a book tour which you can read about in his recent BBC article ‘Hello America, I'm a British Muslim’. He’s also writing about his travels on his blog and that’s always worth a read (even though his blog posts are rather lengthy).

Enjoy :)

Roland Emmerich to Direct Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Series

Variety reports that Columbia Pictures has won the screen rights to the ‘Foundation’ series of books written by Isaac Asimov. Asimov is one of my all-time favourite authors and ‘Foundation’ is one my all-time favourite series of book so the fact that they’re in the process of developing these books for film – presumably a series of films – is awesome.

Unfortunately the director they have chosen to do so is Roland Emmerich. Now Emmerich isn’t a bad director – ‘Stargate’ (1994), ‘Independence Day’ (1996), ‘Godzilla’ (1998), ‘The Patriot’ (2000), and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ (2004) are all good films – but the ‘Foundation’ series is much too awesome to be made into simply a good series of films. And thus I am…concerned.

That said, what is cool about Emmerich’s films is that they manage to depict very well the epic scale of the stories being told. Further, the epic nature of these stories is brilliantly supported by superb special effects that don’t get in the way of the storytelling (think: ‘Star Wars’ prequels as a case in which the CG got the better of the story being told).

What all of those movies lack, then, are deep, complex, meaningful characters that you find yourself caring about…well, with the exception of Benjamin Martin’s character (played by Mel Gibson) in ‘The Patriot’. Okay so the characters aren’t all that bad (you could even say that some of them are good) and, yes, you do end up sympathizing with them (and the predicaments they find themselves in) but they are pretty one-dimensional. Indeed, most of the conflict that makes Emmerich’s films interesting occurs, not because of the way the characters are written, but because of the stories themselves.

*Realization dawns on Ameel*

Ah.

Which is why, I suppose, that Emmerich is the perfect director to tell Asimov’s stories. Why? Because Emmerich makes the kinds of stories that Asimov writes.

Let me explain: Asimov was never good at writing characters that were deep, complex, and meaningful – indeed very few science fiction authors are – but he did tell awesome stories on a very grand scale.

For example, the Foundation series – which spans a period of about 500 years – contains only one deeply-written (though not very complex) character in Hari Seldon and only one complex (though not very deeply-written) character in Golan Trevize. What you get instead is an excellent, nay mind-blowing, story that is worthy of the the special “Best All-Time Series” Hugo award. And since this matches so well the types of stories that Emmerich likes to make into films…this could actually work really well!

And thus I am now…excited :)

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton, one my all-time favourite authors, passed away a few days ago.

I loved his books and the way he wrote them: they were exciting, inspiring, and a whole lot of fun. Indeed, I've read all his fictional works though I've only read one of his non-fiction ones (must remedy that). I've also watched almost all of his films and remember being blown away by 'West World', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Twister'. Heck, I even remember the ending scene from 'The Andromeda Strain' which I watched on TV back in the mid-80s! I must now watch the three films that I've missed.

You can read more about Crichton here:

Rest in Peace, Michael.

Arthur Clarke Turns 90

Arthur C. Clarke, who really needs no introduction, turned 90 yesterday (Sunday, 16 December). Reuters has a story about this and he's posted a 90th birthday message on YouTube as well:

If you're interested, also check out the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

[P.S. I so love Windows Live Writer. To embed this video, all I had to do was paste the YouTube URL in the body of this blog post.]