Goodbye, Universe

I learned the sad news yesterday that Jim Baen's Universe will be shutting down next year with the April 2010 issue. I had really fallen away from JBU, as I've fallen away from so much in the past year or so (and even more so in the past six months), but I've always felt a kinship with them, since my first published short story appeared in their first issue in June 2006.

They generated such hope and excitement from the moment they announced that they would be producing an online magazine (which was at first going to be called Baen's Astounding Stories). Writers were excited at a new market, especially a market from an established, well-funded publishing house, and even more at a market that guaranteed some space to unpublished writers. Meanwhile, those fans bemoaning the dwindling of short stories as opposed to Big Fat Novels were also happy, as well as those folks who preferred Baen's more old-fashioned, two-fisted approach to sci-fi over the more cerebral fare preferred by other magazines' editors. And if anybody could come up with a viable electronic publishing model, it would be the guys at Baen, virtually the only publisher who had managed to make e-books into a profitable business.

Excitement mounted when they began to announce the writers who would be appearing in the magazine. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson doing a new Dune story, David Drake doing a new Hammer's Slammers story, Alan Dean Foster, Cory Doctorow, Gene Wolfe, David Brin, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova, Elizabeth Bear, Mike Resnick, not to mention in-house Baen favorites like Eric Flint and John Ringo.

In addition to the normal subscriptions for the magazine, Baen's offered special club memberships with additional benefits, like getting yourself written into your favorite Baen series (not as a major character or anything, more like seeing your name as one of the people killed during a space battle in an Honor Harrington book or something--still, who else would ever have given you the chance?), and the response that first year was overwhelming.

But it so happens that I got a chance to hang out at Conestoga with associate editor Paula Goodlett and web maestro Rick Boatright and author David Drake about a month after the first issue went live, and even then, they had some worried conversations about whether they'd be able to sustain the magazine for more than two years. They'd sold lots of club memberships, which gave them a lot of cash up front, but not as many regular subscriptions as they needed to keep things going.

I heard the same rumblings the following year, when Eric Flint was at Conestoga. We all hoped it would turn around, but there was a sense from the beginning that it might never.

But at the same time, the magazine didn't fold after two years, so even if it didn't fulfill the hopes invested in it from the start, Baen's Universe did at least last longer than people feared it might. And really, like any new venture, they always knew it could fail, but they had the courage to do it anyway. And unlike some writers of this blog, they took that huge risk and managed it in a smart way that will allow them to have a soft landing that won't leave their writers or subscribers high and dry. I wish the entire staff there the best. They were good people who tried to do a very hard thing, and if they didn't succeed as well as they hoped, the science fiction world is better for the attempt.

Escape

So "Astromonkeys!" is now up and available on Escape Pod. I have kind of mixed feelings about it, since the guy who reads the story sounds nothing like the voice in my head when I read it. But you know, it's so cool to have it selected and posted that I'll give not another word of complaint as soon as the check clears.

I know I haven't posted in a l-o-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-n-n-g time, and there's a long story behind that which I won't tell here. Suffice it to say that I think I'm back. I'm writing stories again, contemplating draft 3 of Hero Go Home (I think this one might actually be worth submitting to someone if it works out on paper the way it's feeling in my head), looking at job options. A lot of things got put on hold in the last three months, and now they're starting to get moving again.

Funny thing is, even though I haven't posted here in over a month, traffic has remained virtually unchanged. Mainly that's because hardly anyone ever reads this blog anyway. The other reason is because most of the people who do visit, do it because they're Googling "Whack the monkey" and landing on this. So if you came here from Baen's Universe or Escape Pod, thanks for dropping by, and please check out the T-Shirts. The link is at the bottom of the left column. Cafe Press shirts are expensive, but you would have the only one in existence (other than the one I wear to cons). Meet me at Conestoga this year, I'll even sign it. Such a deal!

Still Alive

Yes, I'm still here. I've just been on a brief personal hiatus from a lot of things. But I have a bit of news.

My third Digger tale, "Double-Secret Weapon," is now live at Baen's Universe. This issue doesn't have quite the all-star lineup of issue one (but quite frankly, what could?), but still, Nancy Kress, Mike Resnick, Eric Flint, Norman Spinrad... not bad to share a TOC with.

Funny, though, how the last few jobs I've worked all used the acronym TOC with different meanings. In the Army, it was Tactical Operations Center. At TV Guide, it was the Transmission Operations Center. At Clear Channel, we're the Television Operations Center. When I'm writing, though, it's a Table of Contents. I wonder if there's a big publishing house somewhere that has a department just for producing tables of contents for all their different book divisions. They could call it a Table Of Contents Operations Center (TOCOC).

The illustrations for this story (by Luis Peres, example at left) are better than the ones for "Astromonkeys." A nice comedic flavor, although the guy apparently kind of skimmed the story. He gave Digger a helmet with dog ears apparently because someone mentions Dig-Dog at one point. And he gave Digger white hair, although the story quite specifically assigns that feature to Professor Pierce. But those are tiny nitpicks against what is a Really Cool Thing: having another story officially published.

I actually started to do an illustration for this myself a couple of months ago, but couldn't get it looking the way I wanted, so I gave up. I may give it another try.

The story went live late Friday, and then today, Monday, I got another cool piece of news. "Astromonkeys" has been accepted for Escape Pod, so double-sale for that one. Yay!

Now I just need to start writing again. Haven't written a lick for a couple of months. Time to get back on it.

Conestoga 11

So the con is over, and it was fun, as usual. Spoke on a couple of panels, listened to a few more. Read an excerpt from a short story called "No Love For the Middleman," which came in second in a short story contest among members of Codex earlier this year.

One thing that was odd this year was that it was sort of two conventions in one. Alongside the regular convention stuff was a track wholly devoted to Grantville/Ring of Fire, a series of novel and short stories that got its start with Eric Flint's alternate history novel, 1632 (available as a free download from the Baen Free Library). The 1632 folks had their own room and didn't mix much with the rest of the convention, but I spent half my time sitting in on their activities, because 1) I liked 1632 and am in the process of reading 1633, and 2) several of the folks involved in the con are also involved with Baen's Universe, and I like hanging out with them.

We also had a memorial to Jim Baen in the bar, at which I told my story of how Jim played a role in my first professional sale. It was a good time, with a much larger crowd than I expected.

Friday night was a Harry Potter launch party, at which books went on sale at midnight. I bought one, read it yesterday, and I'll do a sort of review very soon.

I have about decided not to go back to ArmadilloCon next month, because it's just too soon after Conestoga, but I might go to FenCon in Dallas in September.