Put the Message in the Box

A couple of days ago, I gave you fair warning that I was going to be putting up a "Suggestions Box" for Science Fiction Blog (I also gave you the uncomfortable mental image of Larry Niven naked, but let's move past that, shall we?). To that end, I have set up a GMail address for feedback, figured out how to get it to cooperate with my e-mail software, and sent myself lots of cutesy test messages to make sure that it all worked. Yay, me.

As a result, let me introduce to you our brand new site feedback address:

SFBlogFeedback@gmail.com

So: What do you want Science Fiction Blog to be?

What sorts of things would you like to see more of here, or even less of? Should we concentrate more on News, or Reviews, or Commentary and Essays? Should we focus more on TV and Movies? On Literature? On Fandom itself?

And what about subjects which don't necessarily involve Science Fiction, per se, yet still fall within the generally recognized ambit of Science Fiction Fandom: Comics, Anime, Gaming, Science, History, and generalized Gothery, Geekery, and Slashdottery?

What features are you interested in? Would you like Comments to be enabled? Categories? Picture Galleries? Fancy Whirling Animated Musical Flash Games?


And finally, in the almost certain event that you know more about doing this sort of thing than I do, could you give me hints on how it's done? Especially if you are suggesting something which will be difficult to do in Blogger, now would be a good time to clue us all in to that fact, and to any other options which exist out there on the internets.

Keep Watching the Skies!

It has been a week, now, since I got back from Dragon*Con, the world's largest Thing That Calls Itself a Science Fiction Convention¹. I am still working my way through more than 20 Gigabytes of pictures from the convention, even as the more than 20 different flu bugs I was exposed to at the con work their way through me. I'll try to slap together some sort of gaudy and ill-conceived photo essay (i.e., "a bunch of pictures with captions or something") on the subject in the coming days, but, in the meantime, I wanted to say a few words about the massive and earth-shattering changes afoot here at Science Fiction Blog².

I know that it's hard to imagine any changes which could possibly be more radical than those which have already overtaken SFBlog since my sudden coup d’état, but we want you to try.

To that end, I'll be putting up a "Suggestion Box," so to speak, in a day or two.

What do you want out of Science Fiction Blog? What things, aside from naked pictures of Larry Niven, would make this a more interesting place to visit? Put on your thinking cats (after you've fed them and changed their litter boxes, of course) and get ready to give us an icky grey piece of your mind.



¹ I say this because, given the amount of media SF programming it hosts, Comic-Con could have the title any time it wanted.
² Two words: "Pantsless Thursdays"
³ Made you look!

Drugged golden robots of the lost trilennia

Today's featured article at Wikipedia: Space opera in Scientology doctrine. It is truuuuuuly fascinating reading. Boy, was RLH fond of trillions.

Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon

Another Katrina charity effort worth a look-in: the Blank Label Comics co-operative is hosting a Webcomic Telethon in the week of September 12th.

Heavy Weather

It's very easy to feel like an ass, blogging about festivities and ephemera at a time when bureaucratic incompetence and mismanagement have turned one of the world's most congenial cities into a horrific real life Snake Plissken movie. Still, there are some things worth mentioning which are both topical and relevant.

Closest to home right now, here at Dragon*Con, there are numerous charitable efforts underway; from media stars who are donating their proceeds to the relief effort, to blood drives and dozens of other, smaller, efforts. Further afield, from Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light comes word of SCA deployments to help with relief efforts around the South, as well as a touching memorial to New Orleans' most beloved SF writer.

Dragon*Con 2005

So the big plan was to blog live from Dragon*Con, using the miracle of wireless internet access to upload timely reports and exciting photos of the goings-on.

However, given that Dragon*Con is perilously close to being a full 24 hour per day convention, I'm not entirely sure, in retrospect, just when, exactly, I thought I was going to be able to do this.

Still, I will try to catch up with the current of events before it has passed us completely by.