The 2010 David Gemmell Legend Awards for Fantasy

And the 2010 winners are... - The David Gemmell Legend Awards


Ravensheart Award for best Fantasy Book Jacket/artist: Best Served Cold – Didier Graffet, Dave Senior and Laura Brett.

Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer/debut: The Cardinal’s Blades by Pierre Pevel.

Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel: Empire by Graham McNeill.

Amazon adds video, Audio support to Kindle apps | The Digital Reader

Amazon adds video, Audio support to Kindle apps | The Digital Reader:

From the press release:

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced a new update to Kindle for iPad and Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch, which allows readers to enjoy the benefits of embedded video and audio clips in Kindle books. The first books to take advantage of this new technology, including Rick Steves’ London by Rick Steves and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway, are available in the Kindle Store at www.amazon.com/kindleaudiovideo.

I disagree with Nate the great. I think Amazon can repurpose an existing Shanzai LCD tablet with their own firmware and come up with an inexpensive alternative to the iPad.

"This will likely raise a question in everyone’s mind. Is Amazon going to release a LCD based Kindle? It’s possible, but I would bet against it. A Kindle tablet would have to compete directly against other tablets. The iPad alone would make this a risky idea."

2010 Locus Award winners! - Boing Boing

The 2010 Locus awards are out. Nothing surprising, though I haven't read Boneshaker yet. Check out the bit of drama in the comments section of the Boing Boing post. First of all, I am also getting a bit tired of steampunk and zombies. Second, what is the problem with discussing this distressing trend where the nostalgic yearning for the "good old days" is turning to active disbelief in science (immunization shots, evolution, climate change).

I think if authors are addressing these issues its all to the good, but if a novel is just a bit of pulp pandering to this trend then it should be recognized as such. It certainly shouldn't be given an award.

2010 Locus Award winners! - Boing Boing:

Best SF Novel: Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel: The City & The City, China Mieville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

Best First Novel: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Best Young Adult Book: Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Best Novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette: ''By Moonlight'', Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)

Best Short Story: ''An Invocation of Incuriosity'', Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)

Best Anthology: The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)

Best Collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)

afs97209 • #2 • 11:28 PM Saturday, Jun 26, 2010 • Reply

Bad enough that the right wingers fill the airwaves with anti-science propaganda, and we're stuck with religious propaganda in science classrooms. Now we're stuck with both fantasy and SF wings of this genre clogged full of "better, simpler, earlier" times.

You can't run to the SF aisle as a refuge from anti-science attitudes anymore. Look at the Locus Awards. Steampunk, swords and sorcery, apocalypse, literary fantasy, Victorian England. A space opera anthology is the closest we get to any message from any Locus Award winner that science is a positive force on society.

Antinous / Moderator replied to comment from afs97209 • #8 • 1:49 AM Sunday, Jun 27, 2010 • Reply

Your attempt to politicize the thread is out of order.

Apple DRM Abuse Pay Full Price For an Ebook You Already Bought

Apple: Pay Full Price For an Ebook You Already Bought (by @baekdal) #publishing

The picture says it all. The Baekdal's blog post concludes that the smart thing to do is stick with Kindle and Stanza, but I think this speaks more to the serious problem with DRM in general.

A simple upgrade to iOS4 and all of a sudden you have to purchase a book you've already bought? I'm sure that 'bugs' will be fixed eventually, but in the meantime restrictive DRM policies give companies like Apple the right to intimidate and steal.

All other e-bookstores using restrictive DRM are guilty of employing a customer-hostile policy of restricting the after-purchase use of an e-book. E-books should be treated the same as regular books: they can be given away, re-sold, or used with any e-reader hardware or software.

calibre 0.7.5 now available – now supports Dell Streak, Eken M001 | The Digital Reader

calibre 0.7.5 now available – now supports Dell Streak, Eken M001 | The Digital Reader

A bunch of new features and bug fixes as well as support for new devices, including the bargain tablet the Eken M001 ($102 Cdn). I still haven't put all my eggs in the Calibre basket because it doesn;t support my ebookwise e-reader, but I will definitely base my next hardware purchase on how well it is supported by Calibre.

Click on to The Digital Reader for a bullet list of changes or go straight to the Calibre site.

SIGIL - multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor

This is the best open-source WYSIWYG html editor I've seen since Kompozer. While it is not as feature-rich at html as Kompozer it succeeds in its main mission to provide a powerful yet elegant tool to create all the components that are involved in authoring an ePub electronic book.

ePub packages are rather complicated and this tool provides a professional interface to create and manage the html, xml, css, (etc. etc.) components without sugarcoating anything.

I've not spent too much time working with ePub files as my ebookwise e-reader it too old to handle ePub files (even converted) in any useful way. The documentation associated with SIGIL is a great tutorial and reference for learning how to create ePubs from scratch.

sigil - Project Hosting on Google Code: "Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format.

* Free and open source software under GPLv3
* Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
* Full Unicode support: everything you see in Sigil is in UTF-16
* Full EPUB spec support
* WYSIWYG editing
* Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View
* Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each
* Table Of Contents editor
* Multi-level TOC support
* Book View fully supports the display of any XHTML document possible under the OPS spec
* SVG support
* Basic XPGT support
* Advanced automatic conversion of all imported documents to Unicode
* Currently imports TXT, HTML and EPUB files; more will be added with time
* Embedded HTML Tidy; all imported documents are thoroughly cleaned; changing views cleans the document so no matter how much you screw up your code, it will fix it (usually)
* An actually usable user interface
* Native C application
* Bugs :)
* And a lot more..."

The 20 most anticipated sci-fi movies of 2011 | SCI FI Wire

The 20 most anticipated sci-fi movies of 2011 | SCI FI Wire

SCI-FI Wire has come up with a list of sci-fi(ish) films coming out next year. Besides the usual crop of comic book movies there are a couple of interesting films coming down the pipe. Check out their list for synopses, release dates, and their take on the films.
(Films I'm gonna keep an eye on are in bold)

20. Red Riding Hood
19. Immortals
Stars: Mickey Rourke, Kellan Lutz, Isabel Lucas, Stephen Dorff
18. The Night Chronicles: Devil
17. I Am Number Four
16. The Green Hornet
Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz
15. Transformers 3
Director: Michael Bay
Stars: Shia LeBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, John Malkovich, John Turturro
14. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
13. Contagion
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne
12. X-Men: First Class
Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender (rumored), Aaron Johnson (rumored)
11. Rise of the Apes
Stars: James Franco, Don Cheadle (rumored), Freida Pinto (rumored)
10. Sucker Punch
Stars: Emily Browning, Carla Gugino, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Jon Hamm
9. Real Steel
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Kevin Durand, Hope Davis
8. The Thing
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes
6. Battle: Los Angeles
5. Cowboys & Aliens
Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde
4. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Thor
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Ray Stevenson
2. Green Lantern
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Tim Robbins
1. Super 8
Director: J.J. Abrams

Getting Started with Calibre eBook Management | The eBook Reader Blog

Getting Started with Calibre eBook Management | The eBook Reader Blog: "
Calibre is the best e-book management software available. It supports more devices than anything else out there and is loaded with tons of features. Check out the overview and intro to Calibre, including 4 Quick Steps to Getting Started with Calibre.

Toshiba : News Release 21 Jun, 2010

Toshiba : News Release 21 Jun, 2010: "Toshiba introduces the world's first dual-touch-screen
Windows� mini-notebook PC 'libretto W100'"

This thing looks great. I am intrigued by the haptic interface on one of the touchscreen sides--tactile feedback. Apparently there are 7 keyboard styles that can be set up on one of the screens, from regular qwerty to blackberry-style thumb keying.

From the Press Release:

Toshiba's excellence in high-density mounting and engineering have created a unique, pocket-sized companion, with distinctive dual 7.0-inch Wide LCDs that offer a display equivalent to a 10.0-inch wide screen. The clamshell case opens like a book or a notebook PC to reveal the world's first Windows® platform to integrate dual touch-sensitive screens. Used as a PC, the libretto displays a haptic keyboard on the lower screen; held vertically, it becomes an ebook reader that displays a double-page spread. Compact and only 699 grams, the libretto W100 is a "mini-note PC" that can go everywhere.

62GB SSD
2GB memory
Weight 699g, battery life approx. 2.0 hours (with standard battery pack attached) Weight 819g, battery life approx. 4.0 hours (with high-capacity battery pack attached)
WiMAX wireless communication module
Bluetooth integrated
1.02 Megapixel webcam

Launch in Japan End of August, 2010. Est. retail price $1099


Toshiba Debuts eReader - mediabistro.com: eBookNewser

Kindle 2 Now $189 (from $259) Let the price wars begin

With B&N announcing the $149 wi-fi only Nook and dropping the price of the 3G Nook to $199, Amazon responds immediately by dropping the price of the Kindle 2 to $189.

It looks like a price war heating up with Nook, Kindle, and Kobo trying to grab as big a market share as they can. They know that the big money will be made in the ebookstore, not selling hardware.

I'm looking forward to the Android tablet price war that should hit North American shores this summer and into the fall. It should be possible to pick up a 5,6,7" Android tablet for under $80. The big boys may grumble but they will also make sure their ebook store/reader software will be freely available.

Kindle 2 Now $189: Amazon’s Retaliation | The eBook Reader Blog