Science, Fiction, and points in between
October 1998

Bruce Sterling's New Manifesto
Bruce Sterling has launched a new ''technocultural art movement'' called Viridian in a manifesto with a target date of January 3, 2000. From an item in today's Salon online magazine: ''Greenhouse warming, says Sterling, is undeniable to all save fools and fat cats, but previous "green" environmental attempts to change the world have failed. Sterling's answer is to concoct a new esthetic -- one that values healthy design, eschews 20th century-style waste and flourishes through distributed, collective, networked development.'' The full Manifesto of January 3, 2000 is available at the Bruce Sterling Online Index.
(Tue 27 Oct 98)

Booker Prize
Ian McEwan has won this year's Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Britain, for his novel Amsterdam. (The link is to the UK edition; the book has not yet been published in the US.) Several of McEwan's previous works are of crossover appeal to SF, fantasy, and horror readers, including his novels The Cement Garden and The Child in Time and a 1989 collection, In Between the Sheets. His most recent novel published in the US is Enduring Love.
(Tue 27 Oct 98)

Writing for Hollywood
A study released Monday reveals that writing jobs in Hollywood are increasingly going to young, white, male writers. In 1997 over 70% of TV and film writers under age 30 had jobs, while less than 33% of those over age 50 had been employed. And while there have been gains in employment of women and minorities over the past 15 years, these gains have been very slight. (Here's the report on the Writers Guild of America site. This link to the Los Angeles Times article about it should work for a while. )
(Tue 27 Oct 98)

eBooks
According to this Publishers Weekly article major publishers including Bertelsmann, HarperCollins, Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, and Time Warner Books have joined forces with Microsoft to support development of an open standard for the format and delivery of electronic files for eBooks. The standard will be based on the HTML and XML format languages used for web pages, and will support both conventional PCs and the new eBooks just coming onto market.
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Meanwhile, Peanut Press, a content provider for PalmPilots, went 'live' yesterday, October 26th. Users can download titles directly from the website, including Greg Bear's Slant, David Farland's The Runelords, and several novels by Robert Silverberg.
(Tue 27 Oct 98)

Weird Science
Physical confirmation of the fifth dimension may be just around the corner, according to this article in New Scientist.
(Tue 27 Oct 98)

Taliban Online
Allah Is Good. Technology Is Bad. Visit Our Web Site reads the headline of this New York Times article the radical Islamic sect Taliban, whose religious police confiscate and destroy televisions, playing cards, and computers, and then throw their owners in jail -- and which runs a website, Taliban Online, to promote its views.
(Tue 27 Oct 98)