GigaNotoSaurus News–new editor
Six years ago, I handed GigaNotoSaurus editorial duties over to Rashida J. Smith. And what an amazing job she did! She published a lot of awesome stories, and GNS was a finalist for the Hugo for best semiprozine.
Archive for really cool
Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate
So, there’s this band. They’re called Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. They’re a London rock band, and they’ve got science fictiony sensibilities–like, check out their 2016 album When The Kill Code Fails.
So, their newest release is Out of Mind, and one of the tracks is called “When I Was A Ship” and yes, they do mean that ship.
So, like, that’s a thing that happened.
You can hear “When I Was A Ship” on Spotify. You can also purchase it at Bandcamp, along with When The Kill Code Fails and their other albums. I’ve been listening to WtKCF for the past few days and really enjoying it.
Provenance Vestiges
So, I’m nearly to the last stop on my epic tour! I’ve had a lovely time, and met so many amazing and wonderful people. My readers are the best.
For the trilogy, I was giving out pins, which was great fun, but in all honestly were somewhat difficult to travel with. One pin may not weigh much. Several hundred are another matter entirely. And the mass of them tended to make airport security jumpy.
I wanted to do something fun this time, too, but maybe also something that wouldn’t set off every metal detector on my cross-continent trek, and might be more easily mailable once I got home. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like what I wanted was some kind of cool vestige! So I contacted Nikki Thayer. Nikki did me my GigaNotoSaurus banner, and it was Nikki who I turned to when I wanted some Emanations. So this time I went to Nikki and asked her to please make me some cool art to go on the back of some postcards.
If you came to one of my signings, you’ll have gotten (or been able to get) a vestige of the occasion with the first image here, but there are two others! And Nikki says y’all can use these for stuff–make things with them if you want! Do please try to credit Nikki if you can, though.
Also by the time I get home I should have actual postcards of all three images, so if you want one go ahead and send me a SASE (that a regular sized postcard will fit in) and I’ll send you one! Wait till some time next week, though, because I won’t be good for much till then. The address is on my Contact page.
Anyway, here’s the art! None of it is spoilers, really, though none of it makes much sense until you’ve read the book.
Con or Bust Bidding is Open!
The annual Con or Bust auction has begun! You can bid on all kinds of awesome things, but of course I’m particularly interested in this one:
The ARCs don’t even exist yet, but as soon as they do I will sign one and send it off to the high bidder.
Also, check out the other fabulous auctions going. I’ve seen some really cool stuff mentioned, so poke around and check it out!
Kouign-amann update!
This is mostly for the St Louisans who read my blog, because I don’t imagine it will do anyone else much good.
I found a place in St Louis that sells kouign-amann!
That place is Nathaniel Reid Bakery.
Nathaniel Reid himself–who is a very personable young man, he was behind the counter when I was there this morning–is apparently an award winning pastry chef guy. The bakery sells all sorts of cakes and macrons and croissants and things, plus coffee (including espresso and such) and hot chocolate (made from actual chocolate and milk and cream, he told me, not any kind of powder or syrup), and tea but it’s the usual afterthought tea generally is. They also have sandwich-sandwiches, and a small space to sit and eat.
I would tell you how the kouign-amann is but I was diverted by the breakfast sandwiches, which mine was even more delicious than it looked or sounded. It was also filling, so that box with the kouign-amann in it will have to wait a bit. But this is an excellent development!
Huge thanks to Anna Schwind for the heads-up on this!
Cards Against Significant Species
Y’all may remember, the other day I mentioned playing a customized Cards Against Humanity in Lieutenant Awn Elming Memorial Park. The person who brought it was kind enough to let me take the deck home, and now if you find yourself wanting to play CASS, either online or in person, well, click this link and you’ll find several ways to do that. Scroll down for links to various ways to play online, or download a pdf of the cards you can print on regular paper and cut out, or even (if you’re feeling extravagant) pay someone to make them into nice cards and mail them to you.
When I expressed my ignorance as to how the “play online” part worked, I got this back from badgerterritory:
it’s very easy to play it online!! i don’t know if this is the only way, but the way we do it is to go to http://pretendyoure.xyz/zy/ and then you pick a server. you set up a username, and then it’ll take you to a place where you can set up the game. once you have the game set up, it’s very easy to invite people, and the cardcast site has a command you can use to add the deck! once you put in the command, the deck is loaded and you can start the game.
It looks like there’s also an app you can add to Chrome or to your phone, too. I haven’t tried any of it and don’t know how the various methods work, but it looks like fun, and not just for this particular customized deck.
Meantime, have some screenshots of a game from a couple weeks ago:
Incidentally, some of the response cards are in-jokes. #not for AL is the tag Tumblr users put on posts about the books they would prefer I not read (I’ve got that tag blacklisted), and “Cousiiiin” is a reference to this lovely bit of fan art. No doubt there are others I don’t recognize because I’m not in on the joke myself. At any rate, it was great fun to play.
Also incidentally, at first there were just a couple of us playing so we pulled one card off the “response” pile every turn and threw it in with the couple of others. We decided that was Station’s card. We kept it up even after the number of folks playing grew, because of course Station was playing, but also because actually, Station was winning.
There is also a special rule for this deck, if you wish to play it this way: If you draw more than two “Anaander Mianaai” cards (there are quite a few in the deck, as is only appropriate) you may discard and redraw all but one card. You are now stuck with that card the entire game. This situation never came up, so I don’t know how that plays, but there you go, in case you want it.
Lieutenant Awn Elming Memorial Park
As I said yesterday, MAC2 had a thing where you could sponsor a “mini park” and a park bench. The dealers room and the exhibit hall and whatnot were all in a huge open space in the convention center, and there had to be some way to close off the dealers room at night, so they put up the Swanwick River and…a volcano? Yes, a volcano, to cordon that area off. There were benches and little “parks” alongside the river.
I figured it might be fun to sponsor a park. And it turned out, I was absolutely right, it was tremendous fun! Here are some pictures!
Nice and simple, right?
That’s how it started out, anyway. I’d had a vague idea that pens and post-its might come in handy in case people wanted to make or leave notes–to me, to other visitors, to themselves, whatever. And the post-its kind of took on a life of their own:
Even the No Fishing sign got into the act!
I put out some buttons, including these:
(picture by Foz Meadows)
I also played some Cards Against Significant Species:
(picture by darling-child-tisarwat, I think, or at least on their phone)
I’m told that at some point I’ll have a link to the file that will let folks print out their own hardcopy of the CASS deck, by the way, and when I do I’ll definitely blog it.
Oh, and the awesome cosplaying darling-child-tisarwat as Breq!
So the park was basically a smashing success! I got to take the bench home, and it’s in pieces in my car trunk right now, though I also have the plaque which I might well hang on my office wall (next to the File 770 “Ancillary Bench” plaque, which was kindly given to me on Sunday!).
Thank you to everyone who stopped by–it would not have been even a small fraction of the fun that it was without you all.
Ancillary Justice Book Trailer
Hey, y’all! I’m in the middle of getting ready for WorldCon, and also making progress on the WiP. Which means I haven’t really had the brainspace for blogging. Yeah, I know, I’m not exactly regular on that score anyway.
But. I saw this yesterday. I tweeted it and I tumbled it and now I am going to blog it because it is AWESOME:
It’s a book trailer! It’s by bironic, you know, the person who did the awesome Starships video! This trailer is assembled from a bunch of different sources, none of which was any sort of adaptation of any of the Ancillary books, and yet. And yet!
Look at that. Look how awesome that is!
Subterranean Special Edition Art
I’m in the middle of getting ready to go to Chicago this weekend for the Nebulas, but I just got word that prints of Lauren Saint Onge’s wonderful cover art for the Subterranean special editions of the Ancilary books are available for purchase.
Just personally, I love these. I already have the Ancillary Justice cover hanging on my wall, it is now only a matter of time before it is joined by Sword and Mercy. If you want one or more of these on your wall, well, here they are!
Short Fiction: Another Word for World
So, uh, this is a thing that happened. I mean, not just Ancillary Mercy being a finalist, which is super awesome (and thank you to the readers who voted for it!), but also, look at the novelette category.
Yeah, my story “Another Word for World” is a finalist for the Locus Awards this year. Like novel, the other works in the category are pretty amazing stuff, so I’m counting them just being on that finalist list as wins on my personal scoreboard. But “Another Word for World” has the distinction of being the very first time any short fiction of mine has been shortlisted for any sort of award. I mean, I’ve seen individuals say, here and there, “Oh, I’m going to recc/nominate “[Shortfic]” by Ann Leckie this year, I really loved it” (and enjoyed the heck out of seeing that, and tucked those away to remind me to keep going during long spells of rejection), but this is the first time a story of mine has actually made the cut.
So, I’m kind of giddy about that!
“Another Word for World” appeared in Future Visions, by the way, which is full of great stories by amazing authors. You can download the whole thing for free and read them all, not just mine!