TV Review: Ironheart

Not the usual superhero origin story

A flawed protagonist making repeatedly questionable choices does not fit the typical trope of a superhero story. Even as a slow-paced origin story, Ironheart avoids the traditional heroic hints or setups. For those seeking a save the world, save a friend, or get justifiable revenge premise, this is not that series. Instead, we have a complex character study in a uniquely paced story that’s hard to turn away from.

Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) is a genius MIT engineering student obsessed with building a perfect Iron Man-style suit. She earns money for her pet project by helping students cheat and she soon gets expelled and is forced to return to her mom Ronnie (Anji White) and their middle-class Chicago neighborhood. While home, she is tormented by memories of her step-father Gary and her best friend Natalie being killed in a drive-by shooting. With even fewer resources available, she accepts an invitation to join a high-tech crime gang to help them physically attack and coerce billionaires into handing over their corporate assets. The gang is led by the charismatic but clearly sinister Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), a.k.a. The Hood, who wants to use Riri’s suit in their heists. When Riri has an urgent tech need, she turns to insecure black market tech dealer Joe (Alden Ehrenreich), a.k.a. Zeke, and coerces him into supplying her. Riri notices that Parker’s hood is exuding sinister magic and tries to figure out how to control its power by consulting with a mother/daughter mage duo. Despite her descent of questionable choices, Riri is surrounded by a supportive community of allies, including her surprisingly patient artist mother Ronnie, her talented and supportive friend Xavier (Matthew Elam), quirky mage Zelma (Regan Aliyah), and her insightful and sentient AI NATALIE (Lyric Ross). Riri alternates between pushing them away and embracing them as she tries to stop Parker and the nefarious evil that lurks inside him.

Ironheart is a mix of high points and frustrating inconsistencies. Dominique Thorne is excellent as the tortured, stressed-out genius. Her character’s personality is completely believable and immersive. The ensemble cast is surprisingly appealing. Riri’s mom Ronnie defies the stereotypical hero mom portrayal by being patient, firm, and surprisingly practical when it comes to tracking down the supernatural help her daughter needs. The heist gang consists of colorful characters who steal the scenes they are in. On the other hand, the story suffers from inconsistencies that are hard to ignore. Riri is a genius but can’t get a high-tech job to support her hobby. She’s traumatized by her friend being murdered in a drive-by but chooses to work with a violent crime gang who knows where her family is. And the heist gang’s corporate theft goals seem confusingly unlikely to be sustainable from both a contract enforceability or ongoing criminal liability perspective. This is where you need your willing suspension of disbelief—for the real-life logic leaps, not for the sci-fi tech and the magic.

However, these conflicting plot elements work when filtered through the mind of a flawed protagonist. An unreliable narrator or flawed protagonist is always an interesting storytelling device. In many ways, she seems bent on self-destruction in a way that corresponds to some variation of survivor’s guilt for the loss of her friend. She is introspective, stubborn, and emotionally damaged, with behavior that seems intentionally focused on a series of bad choices. Riri draws her inspiration from Tony Stark, a character with significant personality challenges and anti-hero vibes. Although the two characters are from very different backgrounds and life experiences, they are parallel in terms of their arrogant and sometimes irresponsible worldview.

Surprisingly, my primary comparison for Ironheart is The Bear, another working-class Chicago-based introspective series. Both shows feature uptight genius creators whose internalized trauma leads to toxic behavior and trouble for those who care about them. The ensuing chaos is played out in a uniquely paced, personality-centered story that’s hard to turn away from. Some superhero origin stories involve an immature character making bad or selfish choices that come back to haunt them before they make the pivot to heroism. Peter Parker in Spider-Man had a rough start before finding his way. Rogue in the X-Men started out as a villain before she found her heroic side. Ironheart is a story I watched waiting for the heroic realization to arrive. But when it does finally arrive, Riri remains complicated and continues to make surprising choices in a way that is intriguing but different from the norm. If you are looking for a traditional hero epic, this is not that story, and you will likely feel frustrated. But if you are interested in a complex character study with solid acting and entertaining side characters, Ironheart is a show that will give you plenty to analyze.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Appealing, unevenly paced artistic vibe
• Frustrating protagonist making confusing choices
• Excellent lead and supporting cast

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction-writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Science Fiction Predicts the Future!

Most of the time science fiction is just that--fiction. But sometimes our beloved authors are on to something. This infographic details some of the things--scientific discoveries, technological advances, sociological changes--that SF has successfully predicted:

(H/T: Universe Today.)

INFOGRAPHIC: 10 Deadly Solar-Powered Weapons

[Thanks to Nerd Graph for this one.]

Nerdgasm! Interactive Mars Panorama on Your Phone

I found out about this on TheAtlantic.com (original article) -- there is an interactive, 360-degree panorama of Mars made from assembled Curiosity Rover pictures, and when you access it on your phone, it uses the built-in accelerometer and compass to re-orient the image in real-time. That means as you sit in your desk chair and spin slowly around, your office turns into freaking Mars.

Freaking Mars.

The planet Mars.

Pay What You Want Music (for a good cause)

Contrary to popular opinion, and the rules of
reading printed English, They Might Be Giants
did not name their B-sides collection "Album Raises Bling."

For the next two weeks, nerd band extraordinaire They Might be Giants, and Rube Goldberg nerds extraordinaire (also band) OK GO, and also four other bands I'm less familiar with, are each offering up a release you can download for as much or little as you would care to at www.humblebundle.com.

This is a really cool platform. As a musician who has donated album proceeds to charities in the past (and just this week got involved with another charity project), I know that tackling something like this can be sticky for musicians and consumers, alike. Where is the money going? Who is it helping? Are the artists being compensated? Is the sponsoring organization taking a chunk? Lots of questions. The Humble Bundle program puts the answers to all of that in the consumer's hands. When you order the bundle -- all six albums -- you can designate exactly how much of your purchase goes to charity (and what portion goes to each charity), how much goes to the musicians (and what portion to which musicians), and how much (if any) goes to the Humble Bundlers. Pretty cool.

And yes, the TMBG album includes versions of "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" -- for those of you who, like me, discovered this band in the Long, Long Ago via Tiny Toons.

Guest Post: Inside "Pottermore"

Raighne Davidson's nerd specialties are Harry Potter (naturally), The X Files, Star Trek, 50s sci-fi, and Sherlock Holmes (retro nerdery!). She recently undertook a voyage through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on Pottermore, the new online interactive Harry Potter destination, and reports back.

First of all, Pottermore looks beautiful. Really beautiful. The colors are rich (and I’m on a laptop with a regular screen, nothing fancy), the texture is deep, and the illustrations pop off the screen. Please don’t crucify me for this, but I love these visuals so much more than Mary GrandPre’s original book illustrations. They are a beautiful, velvety representation of the world of the books – you just want to crawl inside them and stay there.

Platform 9 3/4: Your gateway to murder, persecution, and terror! Exciting!

Here’s how Pottermore works: you go through the standard sign up/confirmation email/log back in stuff, but when it comes to choosing your screen name, you get offered these wonky compound non-words with numbers as your only options. Part of me understands why this is (there will be no SnapeLove69 or OneEyedMoonyPants14 on this site!) but receiving the odd pairings and having that be it, no ability to change or request more options, eh, well, let’s just say that is my least favorite part of the whole experience.

You start off, quite properly enough, in Chapter 1 of Sorcerer’s Stone. Everybody wants to just sign up and get sorted into their house at Hogwarts, but hold onto that Thestral, fanboy, all in good time. You read about Privet Drive and you see Hagrid in the sky on his flying motorcycle delivering Baby Harry while Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall wait on the street. As you move through the chapters, you visually hit all the high points: setting the snake loose at the zoo, receiving the Hogwarts letter, moving to the shack in the middle of the sea, the arrival of Hagrid. Once Hagrid joins you, however, the experience becomes much more involved. He takes you to Diagon Alley where you visit Gringott’s and receive your wizard gold. You then have to purchase all the items on your school list before you can proceed. This includes your wand, of course, and even though you can’t hold it in your hand, you do think your little mouse pointer has been chosen by this particular wand to be yours and yours alone.

After a quick trip on the Hogwarts Express, you arrive at the castle to be sorted (which is what everybody is waiting for). In a nutshell, you answer several questions that I think used to be a personality quiz in a magazine somewhere. And there are more of them than I expected. After the fourth or fifth one, I thought, wow, this is thorough. At the end, the Sorting Hat thinks awhile and pronounces your house. I know the Hat is supposed to take your choice into account, but it doesn’t ask here. I was sorted correctly. I will not tell you where. Let’s just say I know I ended up where I belong.

Once classes begin, the interactivity continues. You learn spells and can duel to win house points. You can brew potions (which can sometimes be difficult), also to win house points. At the end of the year, all of the collective house points are totaled and a House Cup is awarded and the Great Hall is decorated appropriately. Let’s just say I was very happy with the colors in the Hall at the end of last term...

Inside Pottermore, JK Rowling explains how she transfigured Matthew Lewis
from bumbling pre-teen into Clive Owen, Jr. 

The "more" in "Pottermore" refers to the fact that J.K. Rowling has added new information about the world of Harry Potter that you can unlock as you move through the chapters. This is, hands-down, my favorite part of Pottermore. Digging deeper and learning more background on the people and things you love in this world is so fascinating. Rowling also includes some info that is utterly unique, like the list of ‘The Original Forty.’ It’s her original list of forty student names from Harry’s year. We only see the names themselves, but in Rowling’s notebook, there are also notations of their parents and which house they were sorted into. There are also extended descriptions and backgrounds on characters themselves. I loved reading about Professor McGonagall – from the development of her name, to the struggles of her mother, to the men she loved – I read it all and still wanted more.

I think that statement right there is the reason everything to do with Harry Potter has been so utterly successful. I still want more. A single experience is not enough. We read the books and then we want the movie. We see the movie and we want to read the books again. We experience the books in a new way as part of an interactive website and want to move to a castle in Scotland that is Unplottable. Then we catch ourselves telling our children things like, “No, the proper way to mount a broom for flying is like this...”

We, the collective fans of all things Potter, wanted more. So JKR provided. Pottermore. I will keep coming back. For more. Always.

Beachfront Property on the Sea of Tranquility

En route to the Moon as we speak

Digitaltimes has an article today about how NASA wants commercial space ventures to respect the Apollo landing sites. That's well and good, but I think this is actually the big news:

“NASA recognizes that many spacefaring nations and commercial entities are on the verge of landing spacecraft on the moon,” the agency explained in a statement, adding that it had “engaged in a cooperative dialogue with the X Prize Foundation and the Google Lunar X Prize teams to develop the recommendations, and that all parties “share a common interest in preserving humanity’s first steps on another celestial body and protecting ongoing science from the potentially damaging effects of nearby landers.”

Wait...what? Last I heard, returning to the Moon was a crackpot idea Newt Gingrich floated during his failed presidntial campaign. Not that I'm against it...anything but; I just didn't realize it was serious and imminent enough for NASA to release this hefty, 93-page report expressing its concern that the coming Moon-rush not build casinos on historical sites.

Turns out, the X Prize people are on their way--and given the success commercial space ventures have had so far, I wouldn't doubt them. But for now, the ventures are distinctly robotic in nature.

Your potential new neighbor

Guess I can hold off on those beach house designs...for now.

ALERT! We Can Now Control Robots With Our Minds

And it gets better...the subjects who did it are quadriplegics, individuals paralyzed from the neck down. From the NY Times:

Two people who are virtually paralyzed from the neck down have learned to manipulate a robotic arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach out and grab objects. One of them, a woman, was able to retrieve a bottle containing coffee and drink it from a straw — the first time she had served herself since her stroke 15 years earlier, scientists reported on Wednesday.

 Here's how they did it:

The two people in this study, a 58-year-old woman and a 66-year-old man, are quadriplegic, unable to use their limbs as a result of strokes years ago. Each had a tiny sensor about the size of a baby aspirin injected just below the skull, in an area of the motor cortex known to be active when people move their arms or hands. They learned to move a robotic arm, mounted at shoulder height on a dolly next to them, by watching the researchers move the arm and imagining they were actually controlling it.

The sensor — a chip of silicon with 96 pinprick electrodes connecting to a patch of neurons — transmitted those neurons’ firing patterns from this imaginary movement to a computer, through a wire. The computer recorded the patterns, then translated them into an electronic command: Move left, now down, now right. With a little training, the two participants took control of the arm. It was the first time the man had used a limb of any kind in three years, and the first time in 15 years for the woman. Both were able to move the robotic arm and hand skillfully enough to pick up foam objects.

See for yourself:

Now for the really good stuff: according to John Donaghue of Brown University, who is one of the co-authors of the study, this isn't just a one-off event:

“This paper reports an important advance by rigorously demonstrating in more than one participant that precise three-dimensional neural control of robot arms is not only possible, but also repeatable,” says Donoghue, who directs the Brown Institute for Brain Science.

“We’ve moved significantly closer to returning everyday functions, like serving yourself a sip of coffee, usually performed effortlessly by the arm and hand, for people who are unable to move their own limbs. We are also encouraged to see useful control more than five years after implant of the BrainGate array in one of our participants. This work is a critical step toward realizing the long-term goal of creating a neurotechnology that will restore movement, control, and independence to people with paralysis or limb loss.”

Here's a link to the original Nature article, which gets really technical, but adds a lot of color and detail to the narrative.

Interview with Ian Rose of NINE

Publishing and the new electronic frontier are issues nerds-feather cares deeply about. Just how will ebooks and electronic delivery alter the way we produce and consume fiction? Though previously this blog has concentrated on the world of novels, this is every bit as true for the world of edited short fiction. And short fiction is, in many ways, the lifeblood of SF/F: it's where new authors come from, it's where ideas for novels are generated (see Saladin Ahmed's precursor to Throne of the Crescent Moon, for example), and so on. Enter Nine, which bills itself as a "journal of imaginative fiction" and is taking a different approach to publishing short fiction. The G recently "sat" down with managing editor Ian Rose to discuss these and other issues.

Please explain the genesis of Nine. How did it come about?

We officially launched the site in January 2012, but we didn't publish our first issue until April 24th. The editorial staff of Nine consists of three editors (Ian Rose, Tom Corcoran and Sam Reed). We also have five other reviewers. Our editorial and publishing experience is negligible, mostly various college literary magazines and a lot of nonfiction on the web. We're all writers, and we tried to create the market that we would most want to contribute to, ironically the one for which we are all now ineligible.

The three of us were talking about short fiction markets and what we'd like as authors in our ideal market. The top criteria were decent payment, fast response times, and a relatively open online platform. A few drinks in, we decided that there was nothing that exactly fit those criteria (though a few that I list later are mighty close). Talk naturally turned to doing it ourselves, and a few months later, after some more sober planning sessions, we launched the site.

How do you see Nine fitting into the existing ecosystem of SF/F journals? What journals do you see yourselves most closely resembling? What differentiates Nine from existing journals?

I think, to a certain extent, that's up to the ecosystem to decide. We are small, with the advantages and disadvantages of a tiny staff. At this point, it's hard to say who we resemble, but we try to emulate Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Analog, and a few others. What differentiates us is that we consider ourselves more beholden to our writers than our readers. We love our readers - they pay us for something that we love to do - but we exist for the purpose of creating a paying market for writers.

You describe Nine as a “journal of imaginative fiction.” I like the more inclusive nature of that framing, but on the other hand, all fiction is arguably imaginative. So what defines the ideal Nine story? What kind of stuff are you looking for?

It's true - you don't need spaceships or faeries to be imaginative. We chose "imaginative fiction" partially because we have never been comfortable with the term "speculative fiction" as a catch-all to include fantasy and science fiction, and also because we wanted to encourage the mixing, bucking and outright ignoring of genres in our submissions. So far, we've been very happy with the results of that encouragement.

Clarkesworld has a rather detailed list of things it doesn’t want, such as zombies, lusty pirates, libertarians/communists who save/ruin America, kids who find stuff in fields, etc. Do you have subjects, devices or tropes you’d like to avoid?

We've actually been thinking about this as a blog post, but we've been waiting until we get more submissions under our belt and have a better idea for what tropes annoy us the most. We are 99% opposed to twist endings. If the last paragraph of your story can be summarized as "He/She/It was the killer/monster all along!", we're going to pass. In almost all cases, an unexpected turn is better than an outright twist. Other than that, don't cover a song or remake a movie unless you're adding something to the original. Using elements from other stories is fine, and is probably inevitable, but the less original the story becomes, the better it has to be written. We're talking mostly about re-imaginings of faerie tales and myths. Fan fiction or references to a more recent property won't make the cut, ever.

How has the submission process gone so far? Your launch issue had a story from Ken Liu, who’s one of the hottest names in SF/F short fiction at the moment. I’d say that’s something of a coup for a new journal. How did you manage that?

I'd love to say that we earned that one, but I'm not sure that would be honest. Ken is not only one of the best and hottest writers in short fiction right now, he's also one of the most prolific. The man writes, and submits, a phenomenal amount of high quality fiction. We were lucky enough to be one of the places he chose to send one of those stories, and once we read it, we knew it would make the first issue. Ken would have to answer for himself why he chose to submit to us, and being that he is one of the most responsive and friendly writers we know, he certainly would if you asked him.

As for how submissions have gone overall, we've been thrilled by the response to our calls on Twitter and elsewhere for submissions, and we've had more than we ever expected to choose from. Duotrope has been a huge source of submissions for us, and probably our best partner in this experiment outside of the writers themselves.

We seem to share concern with the low rates of author compensation that are standard in publishing. The usual argument against raising author compensation is that it would put publishers out of business, but you have promised to give 81% of every issue’s cover price to authors. How are you able to do this in the current market?

We can do it for two simple reasons. First, we have very low costs. Our founders include a web developer who does all the maintenance and technology work on our site and that site is hosted on a server we already owned. Our only out-of-pocket cost (aside from the enormous amount of time everyone on staff basically donates) is the $360 base fee for our writers each month.

Second, we are prepared to lose money. All of us have other jobs, which to varying degrees supply us with our income. We see it this way: if no one at all subscribes to Nine, we pay out $360/month to writers. We can afford to do that for quite some time. Luckily, some people have decided to subscribe, and so we feel like we can do it for even longer.

Do you anticipate becoming a Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) qualifying market?

Realistically, we aren't aiming for that right now. We are concentrating on picking the best nine stories that are sent to us each month, getting them on the site, and making it as easy as possible for our subscribers to read and, if they wish, download them. If we get to the point where we are consistently earning out the $40 advance we give to the writers and paying out additional royalties, then we'll start to think about raising the guaranteed payments and getting closer to pro-level payment. Since the concept of high-royalty revenue sharing is a foundational part of this project, we want to pay writers more that way, not necessarily through higher base pay.

Currently Nine is available through your website, but I don’t believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) that you can buy it from Amazon, B&N or Apple. What went in to the decision to do things that way? Are you looking to sell Nine through those stores at a later date, or are you consciously avoiding them? If the latter, why?

This one's simple. They take too large of a cut. I don't think they take an unfair cut, considering the incredible amount of added exposure and marketing that their platforms provide, but if we are really going to give away 81% of what we take in on every issue, we don't want to give away too many slices of that pie. The only outside vendor that takes any percentage of the cover price right now is PayPal, and that's how it will remain for the foreseeable future. Each of those marketplaces also has their own thoughts about format, DRM, etc. We want our readers to have access to read our stories in as many ways as possible, which is why we offer a web version as well as .mobi and .epub downloads.

What has been the response to issue #1 so far?

Overwhelmingly positive, with some helpful reality checks mixed in. Readers have chimed in with ways we can improve, and we've tried to take those thoughts on board without changing direction in any major ways. But overall, we've gotten 100 pats on the back for every slap on the wrist.

What can we expect from issues #2 and 3?

For one thing, Issue 2 is turning out to be quite dominated by female authors, which is exciting to us. Our first issue had great stories by Kristin Janz and Shannon Wendt, but was 7/9 male, which had a few of us a little concerned because we wanted the best fiction we could get our hands on, and that means a diversity of writers. So far, Issue 2 is much more weighted to women writers, and is oddly and entirely coincidentally dominated by Sarahs. Issue 3 is still just a twinkle in our eyes, so there's not much to say about that one. In general, we hope to settle into a nice balance between the major genres. Once again, we'd love to see more science fiction. Issue 2's novelette is scifi where #1's was pretty high fantasy, so that's going our way. Other than that - cliche alert - you'll have to read to find out!

...

And there you have it! You can pick up the inaugural issue of Nine through their website. We highly recommend it, not only because they've figured out a cool way to do things, but also because the stories are really good.

In Response to Charles Stross

Charles Stross has written another mindblowing essay, called "The Death of Genre." The essay is, in part, a response to Elizabeth Bear's recent essay suggesting science fiction and fantasy (which  we call SF/F but others, including Bear, call speculative fiction) have gotten too impressed with their own seriousness (which she pejoratively calls "grimdark"); and Abi Sutherland's response that, no, SF/F is plenty fun, thank you very much. Stross thinks they're both asking the wrong questions. Rather, he argues, we should be asking what the label SF/F actually means, where it came from and, if the conditions that led to the genre-balkanization of literature are even relevant anymore. And if not, what's next?

The Death of Genre


Stross argues that genre-balkanization is an effect of shelving expediency in the physical bookstore:

Regular bookstores have to rely on churn, to attempt to provide a customer who returns every month to buy a couple of books with a fresh selection, to provide the illusion of something wider than the choice dictated by the rent they pay on floor space.
But suppose you're a reader looking for a new novel by your favourite author in a shop with thousands or tens of thousands of titles! You need some sort of indexing system. Consequently, books are filed by category—which in fiction means by genre—and then, hopefully, alphabetically within their category. 

The book store clerk, then, has to be able to rapidly identify the category to which a book (coming in one of several cartons, along with hundreds of other books) belongs. And that's where the rocket ship logo on the spine, or the headless woman with a stake (back turned to reveal the tramp stamp) comes in. It tells the store clerk that this is a work of SF, or a work of paranormal romance. Which in turn tells them where to shelve the book.
And this is where our genre ghetto comes from.

Then he argues that ebooks have completely flipped the script:

Genre, in the ebook space, is a ball and chain. It stops you reaching new audiences who might like your work. You are an editor, presented with "Rule 34": do you choose to market it as SF, as crime/police procedural, or as mainstream literary fiction? Wouldn't it be better to market it as all three, with different cover designs and cover blurbs and marketing pitches and reader recommendations and reviews for each bookstore category? We've seen this in microcosm with Harry Potter: the use of adult-friendly covers allowed parents to buy the books and read them during their commute to work, for example.

On paper, that's very expensive/hard to organize: in electronic media it is simply a matter of commissioning as many cover designs as your book design budget will stretch to, and then convincing the big retailers to associate a different cover image with the results of each search by genre category. 

We already see ebooks being tagged as multiple categories. It's only a matter of time before publishers and authors develop more sophisticated electronic marketing strategies that either micro-target a specific audience, or that target multiple readerships in parallel.

The upshot of this is that ebooks allow for a break with genre-balkanization, the implication being that once you have a more complex and multidimensional labeling system, you don't need the shackles of genre, which may be comforting, but in reality have regulated you to a specific section of the bookshop,  separated from others who are different from you. Instead, you can label something in all the meaningful ways you can think of, and draw consumers from all those orientations. For example, Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occassional Music would be labeled as: dystopian science fiction, detective/noir fiction and literature. It would not be relegated to just one shelf. This, Stross argues, portends the death of SF/F as mode of categorization.

In Response 

Before adding my thoughts, I'd just like to say that I think Stross' essay is brilliant. There's loads more thoguht-provoking stuff in the article that I don't have the time or the space to cover here, so please click through and read it in its entirety.

That said, while I accept the premise that the ebook market will transform the way we categorize books, I think Stross is only partially right in his conclusions. Here's why...

TEAM-UP! Microsoft+B&N = NOOK Viability

Own a Nook? Like the Nook platform? Don't really care, just don't like the idea of Apple and/or Amazon dominating the ebook market? If your answer to any of these questions was "yes," then you're in luck:

Books and bits united Monday as Microsoft provided an infusion of money to help Barnes & Noble compete with top electronic bookseller Amazon. In exchange, Microsoft gets a long-desired foothold in the business of e-books and college textbooks.

With Microsoft Corp.'s $300 million investment, the two companies are teaming up to create a subsidiary for Barnes & Noble's e-book and college textbook businesses. Microsoft is taking a 17.6 percent stake in the venture.

The agreement underscores the importance of electronic bookstores as traditional booksellers and technology companies jockey for position in the increasingly competitive market. While no definitive numbers exist, e-books are believed to account for some 20 percent of book sales in the U.S.

So this is mostly of interest to college students, some of whom may be nerds, but who are rarely asked to read the right kind of nerdy books for their courses.

Comp-lit students demo B&N's new, funnel-shaped e-reader

However...

Blog Roundup: What the Neighbors Are Saying

We here at nerds of a feather recognize that this is just a small corner of an ecosystem of blogs and websites dedicated to nerdery. So periodically we'd like to recognize all the good stuff our friends and neighbors are producing.

Ebooks, DRM and the Brave New World of Publishing

Ebooks and the changes they entail to the publishing industry are hot topics at the moment in the nerdosphere. Just the other day, major SF/F publisher Tor (a subsidiary of Macmillan) announced it would forgo DRM, to the delight of bloggers everywhere.  Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi all offer sophisticated arguments as to why this is win/win for everyone involved. The best: 1) that DRM leaves readers in the lurch if their chosen ebook format disappears; and 2) that they don't really do much to stop piracy anyways.  It may herald a broader trend, where publishers one-by-one abandon DRM.

For the record, I tried to find an opposing view--someone who could eloquently defend the use of DRM for ebooks on moral, ethical or strategic grounds. I failed, because DRM is just terrible. I did, however, read this article from Guardian Books (which isn't a blog, per se, but is very bloggy in its approach). The author, novelist and blogger Barry Eisler, makes an incendiary rebuttal to the conventional wisdom with regards the DOJ suit against Apple and 3 publishers, summarized here. The most important bit:

If you ask legacy publishing's defenders, "Which is the monopoly: the entity that charges high prices and pays low royalties, or the entity that charges low prices and pays high royalties?", you'll be told by those defenders (tortured logic to follow) that of course it's the latter. If you're a customer of Amazon, novelist Charlie Stross wants you to believe that in fact Amazon has you in a "death-grip". If you love books and like buying them from Amazon, Authors Guild president Scott Turow argues that in doing so you and Amazon are "destroy[ing] book selling". Enjoy your Kindle? More legacy insiders than I can count will accuse you of participating in the degradation of "literary culture", an Orwellian euphemism for "current literary establishment of which I am a member and with which I identify". 

Now, will Amazon break up the current publishing cartel only to become a monopoly itself? I doubt it. The company's DNA is all about serving customers, for one thing; for another, unlike in the analogue world, on the internet the competitor who wants to eat your lunch is always just a mouse click away, and with competitors like Apple and Google, I expect Amazon will be forced to stay true to its customer-centric roots rather than attempting to rely on the kind of monopoly rents that have poisoned legacy publishing's willingness and ability to compete. In the meantime, the publishing establishment wants you to believe that in order to prevent Amazon from possibly one day charging higher book prices, the establishment has to charge you higher prices today. Or, to put it another way, "Hey, you might get robbed if you carry all that cash around, so I'll just save you the trouble by taking your wallet right here." This isn't an argument; it's a con job. Consumers ought to recognise it as such.

Nick Harkaway (John Le Carre's son) rebuts the rebuttal here...

Exhibit: 'The History of Space Photography'

Readers who live in the LA area, as well as those passing through sometime between now and May 6, might want to head to Pasadena, and specifically to the Art Center for Design for an exhibit on 'The History of Space Photography.'  The LA Times has a nice review of the exhibit.

If you go, you can see stuff like this 1882 photo of a comet:

Or this 2008 photo of a black hole:

More photos here.  Details on the exhibit here.

ALERT! Asteroid Mining Plans Revealed

Artist's Rendition of Asteroid Prospector

We've been waiting a whole 2 or 3 days for this, and it's been pure agony. Turns out we'll have to wait a little longer before we can git prospectin', but not actually that long:

It's unclear exactly when the actual mining of these asteroids will begin, but within 24 months Planetary Resources plans to release the first of its spacecraft, the Arkyd 101, which will operate in low-earth orbit as a space telescope. "We will use this capability to look out to the asteroids," Planetary Resources president Chris Lewicki said at the press conference.

After the Arkyd 100-series, the company will launch the Arkyd series, which will go beyond the low orbit of the Arkyd 200. Next, the Arkyd 300 series will directly explore asteroids with swarms of a half dozen spacecraft that will collaborate to learn more about the asteroids. Subsequent series of spacecraft will actually do the mining. According to Anderson, the spacecraft will take advantage of the latest in information technology, including cloud computing.

Sweet. And when we get there, we'll find all kinds of awesome stuff:

Anderson said in the press conference that he sees the key resources available in asteroids to be water and precious metals such as platinum. Water is widely used as a rocket propellant, and Anderson said that he foresees the water found in asteroids as a means to create "gas stations on the way to Mars or to the moon." He also said that it could be used to produce breathable air and to support life as drinking water. Precious metals like platinum, meanwhile, don't occur naturally in the Earth's crust, but are found in abundance in asteroids--a single asteroid could hold the equivalent of all the platinum ever mined on Earth. Other minerals found in asteroids include nickel and iron.

So we're set if we get thirsty, and man jewelry should be cheaper in space. Score!

ALERT! Tor/Forge Books Go DRM-Free!

Previously, I took a look at Digital Rights Management (DRM) protections on ebooks, and concluded that they have a mostly negative effect on the burgeoning ebook industry. Prominent SF authors agree, for example Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross.

Today, Tor/Forge--one of the biggest names in SF/Fantasy publishing--announced that their ebooks would, heretofore, be DRM-free. As per head honcho Tom Doherty:

"Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time....They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another."

Amen, brother. This was interesting, though:

DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.

Not entirely sure what that means. It definitely means that Tor/Forge intends to sell its DRM-free titles through Amazon, B&N and iBooks...for now.  However, it also seems to mean that, later down the road, those retailers will have to demonstrate they've ditched DRM altogether if they want to get Tor/Forge titles.

Pressure on the bigs to scrap DRM is a good thing, but I'm not sure how much pull Tor/Forge has, and I'd feel mighty bad for Kindle/Nook owners (who are stuck with a proprietary format) if they were suddenly cut off from all the goodies Tor/Forge has to offer. That said, something's got to give, and if enough publishers made the same commitment, maybe we'd see the end of DRM on ebooks.

What do you think: necessary move or unfair to Kindle/Nook users?

UPDATE: a few of my favorite author-bloggers have weighed in on this. John Scalzi explains why the move from DRM benefits customers:

As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks; DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the Internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalized for playing by the rules. The books of mine they have bought have been chained to a single eReader, which means if that eReader becomes obsolete or the retailer goes under (or otherwise arbitrarily changes their user agreement), my readers risk losing the works of mine they’ve bought. I don’t like that.

...and why it doesn't really hurt publishers:

Does this mean it’s easier for someone to violate my copyright? It does. But most people don’t want to violate my copyright. Most people just want to own their damn books. Now they will. I support that. And I believe that most readers who like my work will support me. They get that if I don’t get paid, they won’t get books — and more than that I really do believe most people who can support the artists whose work they like will support them. So personally I don’t think ditching DRM will mean people will stop buying what I and Tor have to sell.

Plus, now it looks like Macmillan may follow suit.  Charles Stross has the skinny here.  His conclusion--dropping DRM won't suddenly save the publishing industry from its existential crisis. However:

Longer term, removing the requirement for DRM will lower the barrier to entry in ebook retail, allowing smaller retailers (such as Powells) to compete effectively with the current major incumbents. This will encourage diversity in the retail sector, force the current incumbents to interoperate with other supply sources (or face an exodus of consumers), and undermine the tendency towards oligopoly. This will, in the long term, undermine the leverage the large vendors currently have in negotiating discount terms with publishers while improving the state of midlist sales.

Net win.

BIG IDEA: A Sustainable Lunar Colony

Ever wondered what it would be like to live on the moon? What it would take to actually live there and, you know, not starve or be held hostage to supplies from Earth? Well, a group of scientists mapped out what a sustainable lunar colony could look like. They call it Luna Gaia. Here are their six steps to sustainable moon living:

FIND A BIG CRATER Designs call for Luna Gaia to be built in a mile-wide crater near the moon's north pole. The crater wall casts a shadow that protects the astronauts from solar radiation. 

GO SOLAR A dozen mirrors, each 100 feet wide, sit on top of the crater's rim, an area that's nearly constantly bathed in sunlight. These direct light onto another set of mirrors that focus the beam on a water supply, creating steam that drives a turbine and generates electricity for the base. 

INFLATE YOUR BEDROOM Luna Gaia will consist of several inflatable modules made of Vectran, a flexible material that's more durable than Kevlar and can be compressed in transit to help keep delivery costs down. The greenhouses will be transparent, but living quarters will be covered with a layer of regolith, or lunar soil, to provide added protection from radiation. 

GO FISHING Tilapia are high in protein and thrive in a crowded tank. Astronauts will also dine on hydroponically grown wheat and a variety of vegetables, such as spinach and potatoes. The same algae that cleans up the crew's water will be a good source of protein. 

URINATE OFTEN Urine runs first through an ion-exchange filter that removes some contaminants and then into the algae tanks, where the algae drink it up and release water vapor that a condenser liquifies. This water either runs back to the crew quarters for washing or is further purified to make it drinkable. 

REUSE EVERYTHING Several different strains of bacteria break down feces into water, minerals and ammonium. These materials are converted into nutrient-rich fertilizer and pumped into the plant, fish and algae chambers.

Washing down endless meals of tilapia with urine-derived water doesn't exactly sound too appealing, but you've got to figure the kind of people who'd actually be stationed on Luna Gaia are already used to freeze-dried meals and astronaut ice cream. So maybe this is a step up? Popsci has a nifty animation explaining Luna Gaia's architecture here.

ALERT! Asteroid Mining to Begin Tuesday

A mysterious Seattle-based company, Planetary Resources, claims that on Tuesday, it will unveil an actual plan to mine actual asteroids for metals.

According to the press release, the company is run by: Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.; leading commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson; former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki; and planetary scientist & veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, Ph.D. In case you don't know who these people are, here's some background information on Diamandis:

[Diamandis] is the Founder and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.[1] His foundation is best known for offering the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private-sector manned spaceflight, a prize that was won in October 2004 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and famed aviation designer Burt Rutan with SpaceShipOne, the world's first non-government piloted spacecraft. More recently, Diamandis has created the Rocket Racing League. In addition to serving as chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, Diamandis is also the CEO and co-founder of Zero Gravity Corporation, which offers parabolic weightless flights to the general public. He is also the co-Founder and a Director of Space Adventures, Ltd, the company that has flown eight private citizens on Soyuz to the International Space Station.

As well as Eric Anderson and Tom Jones. So these are no slouches in the space business. Also, they claim support from some famous dudes as well, who are ready to blaze some new frontiers:

Supported by an impressive investor and advisor group, including Google’s Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.; film maker & explorer James Cameron; Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, Ph.D.; Founder of Sherpalo and Google Board of Directors founding member K. Ram Shriram; and Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr., the company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.

Sounds great, right? There's certainly a lot of upside:

Such mining could yield a large amount of water, oxygen and metals to help further space exploration by allowing humans to fuel spacecraft, build space stations and other constructs. The resources could potentially be brought back to Earth as well.

Plus:

Harvesting raw materials in space is possible with modes of technology currently available or expected to be developed in a matter of decades. A robotic mission may capture a smaller NEA with a diameter of several meters and slow it down enough to bring into low-Earth orbit for further processing. As a bonus, no nation has sovereignty over space, so its riches are free for anyone to come and get it from a legal point of view.

Sounds good, right? Well don't get your nickel pan and prospecting hat packed just yet: But in practice such a mission has numerous challenges, from identifying an asteroid with proper orbit and composition to timing it to return the investment fast enough. Planetary Resources apparently are more likely to become trailblazers of private space exploration than future asteroid-drilling trillionaires. And:

Louis Friedman, a former NASA aerospace engineer who also was involved in the study, said he supports this strategy but noted that it would take "hundreds of millions of dollars" to get started and that Planetary Resources would "need to find a lower-cost way to access space" in order to succeed. He is also skeptical the company could find ways to transfer raw materials extracted from asteroids back to Earth, given the cost of going in and out of earth's gravity well. Thus, he said, the materials could only be useful in space.

Bottom line, though, is that this isn't really all that far-fetched. Others are thinking along the same lines:

Although the general public is mostly unaware of this nascent industry, the notion of mining space has already inspired several other major efforts. Moon Express hopes to make regular trips to mine Earth's Moon, and NASA itself plans to launch an asteroid surveying spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx in 2014. If the hints at space mining mentioned in Planetary Resources' announcement turn out to be on mark, this could very well be the dawn of an exciting new age of extraterrestrial wealth creation and innovation.

So just around the corner...maybe not. But there's a lot of asteroid-mining-based science fiction for a reason...it sorta, kinda makes a lot of sense for an increasingly resource-strapped, crowded world to look towards a bunch of uninhabited, metal-rich rocks as an alternate source, doesn't it?

The Entire World as a Zelda Map

Since I'm on this 8-bit kick, here's something google did a few weeks ago...all of google maps, for the whole world, re-rendered as a Legend of Zelda/Dragon Quest map.

In case you're interested, here's the story behind it.

Creepy Fake Tupac Explained

...and it wasn't a hologram. Check this video to see how it was done. 19th century technology FTW!

TSoP, Part II: Ebook Pricing and the DOJ Lawsuit

Last week I tackled the issue of DRM and what it means for consumers. In Part II, we'll discuss how ebooks are priced, as well as the implications of various pricing models on the pillars of the publishing industry: authors, publishers and bricks-and-mortar booksellers. At present, they appear to be, in turn: "uneven," "unclear" and "not good." And that, kids, is with a thing called "agency pricing," which publishers favor.

Unfortunately for publishers, mega-retailer Amazon and the Department of Justice disagree. In fact, the DOJ has brought an antitrust suit against six publishers and Apple, described as the mastermind of an "anti-competitive price-fixing scheme" to keep ebook prices artificially high.  Three publishers have already settled, leaving Apple and the rest exposed.

Before getting into more detail, let's first consider two terms bandied about in the press a lot, and typically without much explanation. First, the "wholesale model." This is how Amazon prefers to buy its ebooks: as with most goods for sale, publishers suggest a retail price to retailers, and sell the actual product at a set discount. The retailer, though, reserves the right to adjust the actual selling price according to market conditions. With the wholesale model, a retailer like Amazon or B&N can sell a book they bought for $5 for $1, if they feel it will help them sell Kindles/Nooks or build brand loyalty among customers.

The second is the "agency model," allegedly brought into the ebooks market by Steve Jobs for iBooks. With the "agency model," the publisher sets the final price, and the retailer gets a set commission. The actual amount of money that goes to the publisher is roughly the same as with the wholesale model; the difference is who gets to set the final price.

Open Questions

So why would publishers prefer the agency model, when they get paid the same thing either way? Why would one retailer prefer the wholesale model, and another prefer the agency model? Why does the DOJ care? What about the people actually writing the books?

1. The first question is an interesting one, given that publishers already use the wholesale model to sell books to bricks-and-mortar retailers--as well as online retailers, like Amazon and B&N, for physical books. But that's a different kind of case: while Amazon heavily discounts its physical books, it seems prepared to take a bigger loss per ebook in order to get people hooked on its proprietary format, Kindle. Plainly put, if you've got a Kindle or Kindle app, and see an ebook version selling for $0.99, are you really going to buy the mass market paperback for $7.99 instead? Diehard paper-lovers might, but an increasing number of people would not.  And if Amazon does it, you know Apple and B&N won't be far behind.  A price war could claim B&N as a casualty.

For publishers, this kind of aggressive ebook pricing is viewed as threatening to their other customers: bricks-and-mortar booksellers . As author Scott Turow notes in a thoughtful essay, rapid growth in ebook sales, in the context of the wholesale model, could create a new bookselling universe in which everyone is even more dependent on Amazon than they already are. Noted science fiction author Charles Stross makes an even more strident version of this argument, suggesting Amazon is aiming for a true monopoly of the ebooks sector. (The market seems to agree: Amazon rival B&N's stock fell almost immediately on news of the DOJ suit.)

The agency model, by contrast, forces all the major ebook retailers to adopt the same--and standardized--pricing model, which appears to appears to allows publishers to keep ebooks from eating too quickly into physical book sales, and protecting smaller sellers from price wars.  I think, from the publisher's point of view, this is definitely the preferable route: with prices stable, you could actually envision more ebook retailers emerging, including a technically improved version of the partnership between Google and independent bookstores.  More customers means more leverage, and better hedging against a bad turn of events.  That becomes difficult to imagine in a price war context.

2. The answer to the second question is more straightforward: back in 2010, Apple had this new device called the iPad, and resident genius Steve Jobs figured, correctly, that the ability to use the device as an e-reader would be one of its biggest and most immediate selling points.  This being Apple, Jobs didn't just want to let Amazon, B&N and others sell their books for his device--he wanted to sell them himself.  But how to eat into Amazon's marketshare and propensity to underprice the competition?  Jobs, one of the craftiest businesspeople of the modern era, decided to harness publishers' discontent with Amazon:

"We told the publishers, 'We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent," Jobs told Isaacson. "And yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway."

Jobs then told Isaacson that the publishers were able to force the agency model on all the other retailers. That's what some say is a smoking gun.

3. This also speaks to the DOJ's interest: Apple, they allege, schemed with publishers to set prices at a standard, rather than let the market dictate prices. This arguably has kept ebook prices artificially high, to the detriment of the consumer.

Did publishers really collude?  Bestselling author and SFWA president John Scalzi has expressed healthy skepticism:

My immediate thought is that if all of them were in fact stupid enough to have colluded, then sue away, United States Justice Department. If they were dumb enough to collude, then they get what they get.

My next thought, however, is that I’ll be interested to see if the case can be proven, because I don’t think they had to act in concert. That Apple would be aware that publishers would be desirous of agency pricing in a general sense is not hard to imagine; Apple doesn’t enter a market without knowing the players and how to leverage themselves to make a maximum splash and receive a maximum benefit. Once Apple made it known it would accept agency pricing (but not selling books at a higher price than other retail competitors), the publishing companies didn’t have to act in concert, although one of them had to be willing to bell the very large cat called Amazon by moving to the agency model.

+1 for this logical, incisive argument. Apple certainly agrees; Macmillan too. While denials are expected, like Scalzi I'm also not sure how the DOJ would go about proving collusion. Thing is, though, 3 of the publishers have already settled, and the terms were not favorable. That makes me think the DOJ's got something they haven't revealed yet. This guy agrees.

4. The final question concerns the people actually writing the books. Let me begin by stating the opinion that--wholesale or agency model--authors get the shaft. The median advance for first-time authors is $6,000, if they have an agent, and $3,500 if they don't. And did I mention it takes them an average of 11 years to sell that first book? Writers aren't compensated well enough for stuff that takes them a really long time and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to produce.

How the wholesale vs. agency model debate affects authors isn't totally clear. Many authors and literary agents, though, aren't happy with the DOJ lawsuit. Author Sherman Alexie, quoted by the LA Times:

I know for a fact that my publishers and my editors publish books that they know are going to lose money but they think should be of the world...The John Grishams of the world support the experimental nature of publishing. [The DOJ's suit] gave Amazon explicit permission to go for a total monopoly.

While these are legitimate concerns, I haven't ben able to find any evidence that the wholesale model actually treats authors worse than the agency model, while Mike Schatzkin over at Idealog provides data suggesting that authors are marginally better off with the wholesale model, and generally (though still marginally) better off with ebooks than printed books.

Conclusions

If this feels like a pile-on-Amazon, then that's because: a) there are some legitimate concerns about Amazon's growing dominance of the publishing industry; and b) a lot of people in the industry view Amazon as an existential threat, but do not feel the same way about Apple. Though some side-taking is inevitable, Scalzi, in another good blog post, cautions against treating the antagonists like sports teams:

Amazon is not on your side. Neither is Apple, or Barnes & Noble, or Google, or Penguin or Macmillan. These are all corporations, not sports teams, and with the exception of Macmillan, they are publicly owned. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize value. You are the means to that, not the end. The side these companies are on is their own side, and the side of their shareholders. This self-interest doesn’t make them evil. It makes them corporations.

I agree, and given that I actually really like both Amazon's and Apple's ebook platforms, don't want to give the impression that I've got a stake in this fight.  I do think that there's a very valid argument that the government shouldn't aggressively pursue antitrust legislation when it so clearly benefits the market leader.  And the traditional publishers, booksellers and so on are worth preserving.  At the same time, Amazon is also one of the driving forces in America's current reading renaissance, and, well, provides a better user experience than Borders did. Popular detective fiction writer Michael Connelly, in the LA Times piece linked above, offers some measured commentary:

I believe in fair play. So I feel that if the government is going to step in and put controls on how publishers act to ensure a competitive marketplace, then I hope the government will be just as vigilant in guarding this amazing, creative and important industry from being monopolized by one entity...Amazon spreads my work far and wide. You can't beat that. I'm very grateful. But I don't want a world where there are no bookstores or other venues for discovering my work or the work of any other writers.

I feel you, Mike. What we want, ultimately, is a competitive market populated both by innovative big players like Amazon, at least a couple other big ebook retailers, and an ecology of high-quality independent bookshops.

That said, I can't help but think everyone's barking up the wrong tree here: in this whole debate, the fate of the people actually creating the books remains unaccounted for. With ebooks, where print runs are not a factor, we could move away from the "throw lots of mud at the wall and hope some of it sticks enough to make up for the stuff that doesn't" business model. Instead, we could be talking about getting to a place where authors actually get paid commensurate to what they produce, or at least closer to it. Instead, we're arguing over which other elements of the supply-chain should get the most say/cut.

So do I think that it's okay to ask consumers to pay moderately higher ebook prices? YES, provided the right people get that extra love. If, say, Amazon or Apple were to suggest a wholesale model that allowed retailers to set prices, but included a retailer-supplied $1/ebook increase in author royalties, we'd simultaneously satisfy the DOJ's antitrust concerns, take some of the pressure off print and make publishing more fair.  Net win, right?