"a delightful futuristic absurdity: a computer program, pretending to be human, hawking a book about computers pretending to be human, while other computer programs pretend to have used copies of it. A book that was never actually written, much less printed and read."

"My sense is that most of these covers are supposed to convey strong, sexy heroines, but these are not poses that suggest strength. You can’t fight from these stances. I could barely even walk."

Very nice home made gadget.

'If ever we're all dragooned into "playing" for the dreary objectives of utopian dreamers, the fun will go out of gaming very quickly. On top of which, the conflicting goals and desires of individuals, the problem of evil, and the presence of death all guarantee that life will remain its old tragic self'

"Hold a pistol to the head of every adjective and adverb and make them justify their existence."

"As soon as you're talking about economics, you are talking about games: the economy is the economy game, really. It's got tokens that we pretend have value, it has rules, referees, it's a congenially entered negotiation, there are different ways of playing."

"85% of publishing employees with less than three years of experience are women. So, while everyone knows there are more women than men working in this field, that statistic raises the question: is an almost all-female publishing industry bad for business? Does it matter?"

"Atwood picked up the pen to autograph her new short story collection, The Tent, for the head of her British publishing company, Nigel Newton.  A few seconds later, across the exhibition room, two metal arms holding a pen reproduced Atwood's scribble onto the book: "For Nigel, with best wishes, Margaret Atwood.""

"But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is."

:0

Indeed.

Stunning piece of design, stepping from street side to the interior must be stunning.

ooh interesting.

I like this. I would have liked it when I was 20 too.

"both these people are, by any normal standard, mad. Hawks is prepared to put aside any canons of scientific ethics to achieve his goal. (Even though he notionally has Barker's consent for what he's doing, it's so obviously monstrous — and Barker is so obviously not in his right mind — that it's not a difficult question.) Barker, meanwhile, seems at first an overwhelming egotist, but soon seems more and more like someone empty at the core — which is what enables him to survive the death-experience."

"the shifting, interlocking triangles between Hawks, Barker, his lover Claire, and Vincent Connington constitute perhaps the best-oiled and most chilling of the book's death machines." How many Death Machines can you count in this book? I now count four.

"The cute thing about Rogue Moon is that I'm going to call it The Death Machine, which is what I've always wanted. I don't know what Rogue Moon means." He didn't want the original title, publisher did it I guess.

want

Want

Fabbing meets books. I see this becoming more commonplace, especially as licensing gets worked out.

via Bruce Sterling: "What a spectacle".

"Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 adapted into a first person shooter. Read and play along with the story of Montag as he roots out the evils of literature and unlocks 48 amazing weapons and abilities for setting fire to books and people. Revel in the incredible writing delivered as 10 chapters of embellished text set against the backdrop of a painterly dystopia. But watch out for the twist ending where Montag discovers that it is not books that are evil, but the people who burn them – and you for playing a game about burning books. If only you could go back and warn yourself what you were getting into. It's Bioshock meets Braid, IN A DREAM OF WHAT MIGHT BE IF WE ACHIEVED WHAT WE SHOULD NOT DREAM!"

Videogames reworked as Penguin Classics.

Arg, need to make more time for reading.

Must get back to this

"This police dog is called Blackie. He is specially trained to find lorry drivers who dress as ladies."

Comes to me highly recommended...

How on earth did I not twig that Charles Stross has a blog before now?

I can only imagine what prejudices lurk in the depth of this. Until I have time to look at it later.

Videogame aesthetics book, as a free PDF.

Ordered this. Trying to research the *actual* effects of media at the moment. Little talk of context, lots of people pushing agendas, but this looks like it might be worthwhile.