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book rec
Looking Glass by James R. Strickland.
It's from FlyingPenPress.com, which as a small press means there's a good chance that without my ranting you would never hear of this book. I'm not done with it yet, and when I am I'm doing a review for Gather, but it's one of the best cyberpunk books I've read in years.
And the main character is a forty-ish, bisexual woman in a wheelchair. It's sent in a post-war world where North America is dividted up into CalTech, TexMex, Canada (and the Southern Canadian Provinces) and the United Christian States of America. And it's filled with all that ridiculous Gibson-esuqe lingo that meant something really different in the days before we were all online.
The thing is the author knows and loves his net culture. But it's not like name dropping. It's seemless and hillarious. A minor character critiqued for being the sort of asshole who leaves feedback for fanfiction providing technical advice on the porn. A reference to the bastardized version of the mentat thing for Dune changed to be about caffeine. Furries. Poly. Multicultural and none of it rings false, politically correct, cheap or nasty except when the characters are being so.
Seriously, if you buy one book sight unseen, as I have no idea where you would find a copy to flip through it before purchasing it, this is it. It starts competently, becomes great and looks surprisingly like what is my world.
It's not, for me, one of those life changing books, but it's serious and very smart candy.
It's from FlyingPenPress.com, which as a small press means there's a good chance that without my ranting you would never hear of this book. I'm not done with it yet, and when I am I'm doing a review for Gather, but it's one of the best cyberpunk books I've read in years.
And the main character is a forty-ish, bisexual woman in a wheelchair. It's sent in a post-war world where North America is dividted up into CalTech, TexMex, Canada (and the Southern Canadian Provinces) and the United Christian States of America. And it's filled with all that ridiculous Gibson-esuqe lingo that meant something really different in the days before we were all online.
The thing is the author knows and loves his net culture. But it's not like name dropping. It's seemless and hillarious. A minor character critiqued for being the sort of asshole who leaves feedback for fanfiction providing technical advice on the porn. A reference to the bastardized version of the mentat thing for Dune changed to be about caffeine. Furries. Poly. Multicultural and none of it rings false, politically correct, cheap or nasty except when the characters are being so.
Seriously, if you buy one book sight unseen, as I have no idea where you would find a copy to flip through it before purchasing it, this is it. It starts competently, becomes great and looks surprisingly like what is my world.
It's not, for me, one of those life changing books, but it's serious and very smart candy.
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Thanks!
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Basically, you have to generate a lot of traffic before you can get the cash otpion (instead of gift cards).
Join and cross-post to as many groups as possible.
Ask games.
Be willing to fight with horrible people about the social issues you care about. But try to do it in your articles and not on other people's -- your articles generating comments tend to get more $/points than commenting on other people's.
Always check back to where you've commented to see if peopel are continuing to try to discuss with you -- the boards aren't threaded, so you needed to look for responses.
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