Fanatical Pupil

While I didn’t make the straight comparison in my mind the way SF Signal did, it does seem an obvious comparison to make; they’re both new SF shows for this season and even started just about the same time.

Unfortunately for me (and, I would argue, everyone else), the better show is not going to last as long.

FlashForward had better acting, had more interesting characters, is more character-driven (rather than “see what we happen to come across in space”-driven), had a more interesting back story, and had better directing/cinematography.

I really wanted Stargate Universe to be good, if only because I like John Scalzi’s blog and he is employed as a creative consultant on the show.

He shouldn’t have to worry about his job there, though, even though I feel like Stargate Universe is an inferior program in just about every way.

Why?

Well, first off, as SF Signal points out, FlashForward has a pretty specific end date: April 29, 2010. Yes, I can think of several ways they can get around that (and the writers probably already have in mind several others that I didn’t think of), but even if you get past that date, there’s just no way to that the show is going to continue on for any extended period of time without getting a little Lost. (Pun intended)

Stargate Universe on the other hand, starts out basically on a ship that is who knows how far from the final destination. They can just keep heading back towards Earth, encountering new and different kind of aliens, and having turmoil within the “crew” of the ship, for, I would say, at least 10 seasons if the viewership is there to sustain it. Which brings me to the next reason that FlashForward is going to bow out first: Audience.

FlashForward is on network television, and it seems like more and more if shows don’t post big ratings numbers right away, they get canned. I don’t have cable, so I don’t know if it works the same way there, but the fact that Stargate SG-1 was on for 10 seasons indicates to me that shows on cable have a little bit longer of a runway in which to get off the ground and gain a following. It’s sad when people have to start Twitter Campaigns just to keep their favorite (good) shows on the air even for a second season. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking about just running the shows I like on Hulu in a separate tab just so the networks will see them getting more views.

In summary, I’m very interested to see where FlashForward goes, and I hope we get to see it come to a logical conclusion, and I’m not at all interested in what happens in Stargate Universe, but I’m sure if I did want to catch up at some point, I could just buy the DVDs that are already being pressed.

So, I was researching new music (it’s actually for a writing project, so don’t think I was vacuuming the dog or anything) on Lala, and through a fairly Six Degrees-like path, I came across this artist: Midnight Sun (Twilight Inspired Artist)

The Album on Lala

My immediate thought was: So, if I put “Twilight Inspired Author” after my name, will I automatically get me some extra readers? I mean, sure they’ll realize after not too long that my writing has nothing really to do with vampires, but maybe they’ll get to the almost-angsty character-driven parts and maybe think it’s okay. Or else the Meyerites (or whatever they’re called – Twilites?) will start a smear campaign against me. Or else they’ll just forget about me and move on.

Anyway, just a thought.

Also, I found it interesting that on the “unofficial” score for New Moon, Midnight Sun put “Sam Cushion” instead of Midnight Sun. Is he trying to get hired to do the score for the next one?

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Joe Konrath not only has a really cool marketing experiment going on, but he also puts forth some good ideas about marketing books.

The one that most caught my attention was this:

For years, I’ve been wondering why publishers waste money on full page ads in the New York Times, featuring a picture of the book cover and a bunch of blurbs, when a much more effective ad would be a full page excerpt from the novel.

It seems that even the back cover of a book would be more effective. Sure, it’s great that people give blurbs, but honestly, I often feel like these are reciprocal back-scratching sorts of moves rather than real opinions. And they don’t really tell you what the book is about. The first thing I read when looking at a book on Amazon is the description. Then, if it sounds good, I’ll check a review that rated it highly as well as a review that rated it low. Most of the books on Amazon don’t have an excerpt available yet, or I would consider going to that as a second option (or definitely as a third option if my quick review of the reviews kept me interested).

In terms of Konrath’s experiment of putting other people’s excerpts into his books, it sounds like something I’d be interested in. I usually don’t read the excerpts if their from the same author because either I liked the book enough that I plan to read the book from which the excerpt comes anyway, or I didn’t like it enough to feel like reading an excerpt would make me want to read the next book (or another book by the author).

If it was framed, however, as books “recommended” by the author I’d just read, and there were 3-5 excerpts available to read through, I would find it fascinating. It would probably be enough for me to check out a book, even without an excerpt, if it were simply in a list of books recommended by an author I liked. Getting to read excerpts of these new books for free would fit exactly in the movie preview metaphor that Konrath came up with.

And maybe the best part of this marketing effort is that it maintains it’s utility (and perhaps increases it) as the market continues to shift more towards eBooks and away from traditional paper books.

I’ve already seen a couple thousand posts in response to this Wall Street Journal article by Lev Grossman. There’s a video here that kind of further expounds on his theory behind modern literature, which evidently can actually include novels that have plots. Who knew?

Since there’s so much else to read, I’ll try to sum up my comments in a single sentence: Grossman’s article appears to be written by someone who has been trapped by TIME magazine’s definition of “literature” for so long he didn’t realize that there books (I mean, any books) were actually written after 1930, until he read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel.

If you’re interested in more:
Conversation Reading
The Mumpsisms

If you want more:
From me: I read another interview with Grossman where he says how he grew up obsessed with fantasy novels/series like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. It’s odd, then, to think that he could be so close-minded when it comes to the idea of “good books” having good plots. I’ve always been more interested in Science Fiction myself, and while I’ll admit that I haven’t read many of the science fiction works from around the time of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, I have read quite a bit of modern scifi. While certainly not all of it can even approach what might be called “literary” I can’t help but think of Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book), The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book), Cryptonomicon. Yes, I realize they’re all by Neal Stephenson, but all of them are clearly plot-driven, but also written in a style that I would consider worthy of literary criticism.

Of course, the whole article could really just be a Michael Arrington-like Controversy On Purpose designed to get people to say Lev Grossman as many times as possible across the internet. If that’s the case, Bravo! Great Success!

Cory Doctorow is serializing his next novel Makers on Tor.com. Here is the official announcement. It’s not the first time he’s done it:

Cory Doctorow … serialized his novella, Themepunks, [on Salon.com] sometime around 2005.

The index page is here, but unfortunately, Tor is not providing an RSS feed. So, I guess it’s true, RSS is dead. I’m not of the reasoning behind not providing a feed, since it’s not like there’s a whole bunch of ads on the Tor.com (which I appreciate). So, they’re not trying to get people to visit the site instead of just staying in their RSS readers – a strategy employed by a lot of blogs/sites that I don’t subscribe to for that very reason.

But, they do have it timed well in that you’ll be near the end of the novel when it’s released so that if you’re really into it, you can just buy the book and finish it in one sitting without waiting for the rest of it to be released on the site. Definite marketing strategy points for that.