Autopope! - Yippee!

(Recent Entries) (Archive) (Friends) (User Info) (My Website)

Mar. 19th, 2005

04:30 pm - Yippee!

Previous Entry Add to Memories Tell a Friend Next Entry

I just wrote (and submitted) my third short story in about a month: "MAXO signals: a new and unfortunate solution to the Fermi Paradox". It's a short-short (only 803 words long) for the new series of back-page hard-SF stories running in NATURE.

I'm now crossing my fingers and toes and hoping like hell that nobody else has written this particular story, because it's a blindingly obvious one-trick pony ...

Current Mood: [mood icon] accomplished
Current Music: I wanna be a Flintstone -- Screaming Blue Messiahs
(Leave a comment)

Comments:

[User Picture]
From:[info]del_c
Date:March 19th, 2005 09:30 am (UTC)
(Link)
unfortunate solution to the Fermi Paradox

Most of the convincing ones are, sadly.
(Reply) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]autopope
Date:March 19th, 2005 09:41 am (UTC)
(Link)
Remind me of your email addy -- I need a has-this-been-done-before check!
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]del_c
Date:March 19th, 2005 02:30 pm (UTC)
(Link)
You can reach me, like most paid LJ users, via del_c at livejournal.com.

Glen David Brin's review paper "The Great Silence" is twenty years old now, but still gives a good framework for all the different hypotheses extant then.
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]purplecthulhu
Date:March 19th, 2005 10:37 am (UTC)
(Link)
Hmmm - if Nature has started doing SF again, maybe I should think about getting a subscription. I suspect the SF is not going to be in the Web version.

I bet they pay SF writers better than those writing scientific papers (who get nothing)!
(Reply) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]autopope
Date:March 19th, 2005 11:06 am (UTC)
(Link)
They pay, but I suspect it's in line with what they pay for editorial/news content, and it's not that much; I mostly did it because I want the citation :)
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]coalescent
Date:March 22nd, 2005 09:14 am (UTC)
(Link)
I suspect the SF is not going to be in the Web version.

Oh, but it is:

Under Martian Ice by Stephen Baxter

Undead Again by Ken Macleod

A Modest Proposal... by Vonda N McIntyre (my favourite of the ones that have appeared so far).
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]ckd
Date:March 19th, 2005 01:20 pm (UTC)
(Link)
Well, there goes an item from my Ten Things meme list....
(Reply) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]lethargic_man
Date:March 20th, 2005 02:41 am (UTC)
(Link)
All the best new ideas are obvious in retrospect, but are self-evidently not in advance or someone would have thought of them earlier. You have such a knack for coming up with cool conceits in this manner - little ninety-degree twists to reality like "the People's Magical Libyan Jamahiriya" leave me going "I wish I'd thought of that" - that what's "blindingly obvious" to you may be completely out of left field to the rest of the world.

That said, that doesn't nesse-celery apply here.

On the third hand*, even if it has been done before - and this particular conceit is not a million miles conceptually from things in previously published stories from your own to A Fire Upon The Deep, there's precious little new under the sun†, and what counts, as you well know, is way you pull it off.

I'll stop teaching my grandmother to suck eggs now‡.

* Now which is scarier, [info]lethargic_man as Shiva, or as Zaphod Beeblebrox...?

† Because, of course, gravitationally speaking everything is above the sun...

‡ Why my, or anyone else's grandmother, would want to suck eggs, is a different matter altogether...
(Reply) (Thread)
[User Picture]
From:[info]sleepycinderell
Date:March 20th, 2005 07:39 am (UTC)
(Link)
The story was a brilliant idea Charlie, and I wouldn't mind receiving spam if it was as inventive as that. Fingers crossed then..
(Reply) (Thread)