Site Update: Fly Free, Little Website!, or Why I Want to Be Cory Doctorow
Site's been updated--no new essays, I'm afraid, but I cleaned up the language of a lot of things. Also, I finally found that story I'd been looking for (it's "The Road Not Taken," by Harry Turtledove, and one of the best short stories I've ever read).
Changed all the page titles to say "world-building dot net," which is rather more correct than the dot com was. Oooops.
And, likely the biggest news, I released the content under a Creative Commons license: attributed, noncommercial, share alike.
I want some actual content in here, so I think I'll try to keep up a list of what I'm reading. At the moment, that is Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Well, actually, I haven't started it yet. I finished Cetaganda earlier, and haven't yet started on the next book.
For those of you unfamiliar, these are two books in Bujold's series about Miles Vorkosigan. They're science fiction, future world, lots of technology, &c. My recommendor wasn't kidding when she said Miles was one of the greatest characters in science fiction. The books are a lot of fun--great touches of humor, a lot of action but none gratuitous, plot threads so tangled they resemble Maniac Magee's knot, yet which still resolve themselves in the end... I should mention that I started the first book last Thursday night, so I've read three whole books in one week while updating my website and taking a full load at school--that's nothing to sniff at. Engaging and highly recommended (I keep talking people's ears off about them).
From a world-building perspective, the books suffer a little more. Definitely not the books' strength, in fact. At least in these early ones, I get the feeling Bujold was flying by the seat of her pants--she knew the history of her main world, Barrayar, very well, but the rest of the universe was a lot fuzzier. I'm almost positive she mentions in The Vor Game that some Cetagandans have three legs, although that may have only been hearsay. Still, I get the feeling that details on the other planets come into being mostly as she needs them, rather than being worked out beforehand. I can't blame her, but I can wish otherwise anyway. :)
So, I recommend the books, as long as you're not looking for a stellar example of world-building. Speaking of which--anyone have any recommendations?
Changed all the page titles to say "world-building dot net," which is rather more correct than the dot com was. Oooops.
And, likely the biggest news, I released the content under a Creative Commons license: attributed, noncommercial, share alike.
I want some actual content in here, so I think I'll try to keep up a list of what I'm reading. At the moment, that is Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Well, actually, I haven't started it yet. I finished Cetaganda earlier, and haven't yet started on the next book.
For those of you unfamiliar, these are two books in Bujold's series about Miles Vorkosigan. They're science fiction, future world, lots of technology, &c. My recommendor wasn't kidding when she said Miles was one of the greatest characters in science fiction. The books are a lot of fun--great touches of humor, a lot of action but none gratuitous, plot threads so tangled they resemble Maniac Magee's knot, yet which still resolve themselves in the end... I should mention that I started the first book last Thursday night, so I've read three whole books in one week while updating my website and taking a full load at school--that's nothing to sniff at. Engaging and highly recommended (I keep talking people's ears off about them).
From a world-building perspective, the books suffer a little more. Definitely not the books' strength, in fact. At least in these early ones, I get the feeling Bujold was flying by the seat of her pants--she knew the history of her main world, Barrayar, very well, but the rest of the universe was a lot fuzzier. I'm almost positive she mentions in The Vor Game that some Cetagandans have three legs, although that may have only been hearsay. Still, I get the feeling that details on the other planets come into being mostly as she needs them, rather than being worked out beforehand. I can't blame her, but I can wish otherwise anyway. :)
So, I recommend the books, as long as you're not looking for a stellar example of world-building. Speaking of which--anyone have any recommendations?