meme: Support the experience economy: send skzbrust $2
Please join me in convincing a stubborn Hungarian who is also a fabulous author (Steven Brust) to start accepting paypal donations on his website.
1. (optional) read the explanation of the reason/philosophy behind this: http://netmouse.livejournal.com/216556.html
2. If you have a paypal account, Paypal $2 (or more) to skzb -@- dreamcafe.com (take out the spaces and the dashes to use as an email address)
Note: please use the subject line "So there..." (feel free to add your own comment).
3. post this to your journal with a comment about Brust or his work.
My Comment:
I was sitting in 's home after a concom meeting for ConFusion 2005 where Steven Brust was to be a Guest of Honor, and chuckling over a song that was playing on the stereo. I asked Krysta December who the singer was, and she reacted with shock and horror to discover that there was someone in fandom who had never heard of him. It was the same sort of reaction I had when, during the runup to ConFusion 2006, I met people in fandom who actually had never heard of the Guest of Honor Vernor Vinge. This just goes to show that there are truly too many niches within fandom to keep track of, each with legendary talents who would be world-class if they weren't all serving a niche.
I met Steven in the hot tub at ConFusion, and asked him, of all the books he had written, which he recommended I start with.
"What do you like?"
"Well, um... hard science fiction, actually."
*chuckle* "You're shit out of luck then."
"I know you don't write that. But I like to expand my horizons!"
"Well what else?"
"I kind of liked reading Neil Gaiman."
"OK, try Agyar."
This is a man who, it seems to me, could use a marketing class. Don't assume they don't like your work! They don't know they like it yet. Being an author is a business, and some authors are better at that business than others. Cory Doctorow (who wrote this article which further argues 's point about changing business models) is such a slick marketer he actually had me salivating to drive all the way to Lansing to buy the hardcover for Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town and get his signature on it. It is a fantasy novel. I think I might purchase a refridgerator from that man while living at the North Pole, if he blogged about it.
I have still never read a Steven Brust novel, but I'm about to. During 's visit, I browsed through Dawn Treader Used Book Shop with her and . They decided the time was far overdue for me to read The Book Of Jhereg by Steven Brust, and purchased it for me. I immediately recalled the hilarious Penny Arcade comic strip about Jhereg and the accompanying point/counterpoint editorial about Brust. When we got to the counter, the proprietor, without any prompting from me, immediately web-surfed to this cartoon and showed it to us.
I don't read fantasy, but I look forward to whatever byzantine explanation will be employed in the heroic attempt to convince me that a) this novel is not a fantasy, and b) not all winged, fanged, quadrupedal lizards are dragons. As Gabe from Penny Arcade reported, "It wasn’t a robot or a computer construct or even a collection of sentient nano-machines capable of taking any shape they wanted. It was just a regular dragon." I expect it will probably be the sort of vocabulary abuse that only results in a nebulous cloud of unknowing. No matter. I have an open mind to read quality works outside my normal interests, and I am assured by those I trust that this is quality. I accept the gift with great joy.
I also bought the new Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, and it is already blowing my mind. I try to maintain a diet of one thing that I know and then one thing that's an unknown adventure.
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