Ben Browder to Star in SF Webisode Series

And speaking of webisodes:

According to the Science Fiction Buzz blog, Ben Browder, of Star Gate and Farscape,

• is starring and executive producing a webisode series based on John E. Stith's "Naught for Hire" novella from ANALOG, July 1990.

You can get more info at the project's website www.naughtforhire.com and the article says that there is a Facebook and twitter feed. Said twitters are:

• fake headlines from the comically dysfunctional future that our hero Nick Naught inhabits.

I really enjoy watching Browder work (especially off Claudia Black or Wayne Pygram) so this might just be something worth checking out.

Crystal Wizard announcing changes at Abandoned Towers

In the ongoing effort to make Abandoned Towers easier to use and easier to find stuff on, I've added a What's New page. I update that page every time I add something to the website (which is just about every day) so check it frequently.

In case you haven't found it yet, and don't know what you've been missing this month, here's a list of new items for April, 2009:

April 22, 2009

• "To Innocence" by Ashutosh Ghildiyal in the Poetry section
• "To Beauty" by Ashutosh Ghildiyal in the Poetry section
• "The Golden Treasury" by Ashutosh Ghildiyal in the Poetry section
• "Those Hills" by Ashutosh Ghildiyal in the Poetry section
• "Step Lightly" by Ashutosh Ghildiyal in the Poetry section
• "Looking for the future that was" by Shaun A. Saunders in the Science Fiction section
• Mike Grell Returns to The Warlord" by Eric S. Brown under Eric S. Brown on Comics
• "Marvel Zombies 4" by Eric S. Brown under Eric S. Brown on Comics
  

April 21, 2009

• "After October" by Apryl Fox in the Poetry section
• "(his name is j.uan)" by Apryl Fox in the Poetry section

April 17, 2009

• "The Biter's Bit" by Arthur Mackeown in the General Fiction section

April 15, 2009

• Page 14 of Hannible Tesla's Adventure Magazine is now online
  

April 14, 2009

• "Mirror" by Arthur Mackeown in the General Fiction section
• "Say Goodby" by Arthur Mackeown in the General Fiction section
  

April 13, 2009

• "Johnny" by Michael H. Hanson in the General Fiction section
  

April 8, 2009

• "The Eternity Compact" by James Benford in the General Fiction section.
• "In Memory of Homo Sapiens" by James Benford in the General Fiction section.
• "Frontiers" by James Benford in the General Fiction section.
  

April 7, 2009

• "It's Me" by Arthur Mackeown in the General Fiction section.
• "Lawyer Referral Service" by Peter Lukes in the General Fiction section
• "A Matter of Sheep" by Katherine McIntyre in the General Fiction section

---

New content added on a regular basis.

Visit Abandoned Towers at
http://cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers

And if you like your Science Fiction witha side of Surreal

You do? Well you're going to love this. How about a science fiction anthology in the form of a browser add on? That's what I said....

Ethan Ham writing for Boing Boing says:

• Turbulence.org recently released “Tumbarumba,” a project by Benjamin Rosenbaum and myself (Ethan Ham). Tumbarumba is an anthology in the form of a browser add-on. To read the stories, readers must stumble upon them while browsing the web. The browser add-on will occasionally insert a story fragment into a web page as it loads it. The result is a disorienting surreal sentence that sometimes is nonsensical and sometimes amusingly close making sense. If the reader spots the fragment, they can interact with it in a way that will cause the full story to appear—albeit in the format of the web page on which it was found.

• The authors in the anthology are:

  Haddayr Copley-Woods, Greg van Eekhout, Stephen Gaskell, James Patrick Kelly, Mary Anne Mohanraj, David Moles, John Phillip Olsen, Tim Pratt, Kiini Ibura Salaam, David J. Schwartz, Heather Shaw, Jeff Spock

If this isn't the coolest thing!

<- Tumbarumba ->

Transcriptase

In July 2008, Helix editor William Sanders stirred up controversy in the community with remarks that many found offensive. As the controversy continued, several Helix writers asked to remove their work from the magazine. Which in and of itself started another blaze of controversy. Those that took their fiction off Helix or those that left theirs up on Helix but wished another forum started the web site Transcriptase which hosts reprints of their stories and poems originally published at Helix. One of the driving motivations for Transcriptase is as the writers state:

• so that you can enjoy our work away from Helix, if you choose.

<- read more of the controversy and the authors words and works on Traanscriptase ->

The "web" time forgot

I often rail against the common misconceptions used when describing the internet and the world wide web. Users do not often differentiate between the two but in truth they are two separate entities. The internet supports the web, the web could not survive without the internet but the internet could operate without the web. Think of the internet as the computer and the web an application running on it. Simplistic surely, but there is a distinction. Ok, that being said, Barry sends in this article from the New York Times describing visionary Paul Otlet's description of an interconnection of devices that would allow users to look up all manners of documents anywhere in the world. Not in the 80s or the 50s but In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web. Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links. While that notion may seem obvious today, in 1934 it marked a conceptual breakthrough.

click the title to go to the complete article. There is a snippet of the film "The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World" that sounds like a manual for setting up the web in the 90s not the 30s. Facinating!

Farscape Goes Oline! well, maybe

ohhhhhhhhh now here is one I can get behind. IO9 reports: Farscape may make a comeback online. Star Ben Browder says he's into reprising the role of John Crichton. Sci Fi Wire says Executive producer Brian Henson and creator Rockne O'Bannon are talking about how to revive Farscape on the Web. The recently settled writers' strike put the project on hold, and as Browder puts it "it will take a little while before a number of things get going again."

Lets hope this project does come to fruition.

Infinity + to cease operations after 10 years

Jason from SF Signals writes

After 10 years, Infinity Plus, the science fiction website started by Keith Brooke (and later co-edited with Nick Gevers and then Paul Barnett) is calling it quits. Infinity Plus was publishing free online fiction before it was in vogue. The website is also a great resource for insightful reviews and commentary.

Here is a link to Keith Brooke's parting words *Keith Brooke link*

Galaxiki

Have you heard about Galaxiki? Well neither had I until a short while ago. But if your into Sci-fi and story telling, this might just be the place for you!

Here is what Galaxiki says about itself:

Galaxiki is a web 2.0 community website for Science Fiction lovers and creative people.

It's a virtual galaxy with stars, planets and moons that can be edited in a wiki-like manner.

You can write your own stories in your solar system and / or visit other users solar systems and read their stories.

Solar systems and stories are located in one single galaxy, which represents a complete fictional online world created and maintained by its community.

Click on the article title or here for more information

Antipodean issure 110 is now available

Just got a note that Antipodean #110 is up. Here is the note they sent me:

... This month's issue we celebrate the publication of the fiftieth piece of flash fiction to grace our pages from the pen of Shaun A. Saunders. Please also visit to find out more about Shaun's upcoming anthology "Navigating In The New World" which is already receiving rave reviews. As for the magazine, this month's stories are:

"Fine Tuning" by J. Alan Brown
"Little Green Apples" by Angela Slatter
"Assassin's Sorrow" by Chris Pavey
"Lie Back And Think Of Efficiency" by Meika Loofs Samorzewski
"A Fine Madness" by Shaun A. Saunders
"Egg Sharing" by Julie Bailue
"All For An Orchidaceae" by Andrew Leadbeatter
"Framework" by Rodney J. Smith
"Sweat" by Deven Kivioja
"Yum Yum" by Charles Richard Laing

Also, this month, we bring you more reviews than ever of recent fantasy and SF in "Vide", where Nuke dreams of Electric Sheep & ascend's Elliott's Spirit Gate, while Craig Miles gets into a little Shadowplay. Sue Clennell does her usual stuff too, in E-scapes, and finds out what word is applied to you when you have a phobia about conspiracies. Are you frightened to go outside lest the UFOs land? If you are, you're not one of us, it seems, and you ought to visit this month's Ionospherics to discover the usefulness of the notion of "dedicated weird".