Category: publishing

“In the middle of the 19th century, the main professional bodies governing linguistic research formally banned any investigation into the origins of language, regarding it as pointless. The topic remained disreputable for more than a century, but in the last decade or so, language evolution has eased toward the front burner, attracting the attention of linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists.” Now, a new book offers a view into what is regarded as one of the most complicated scientific questions facing humanity today.

“Author Laura Albert must pay nearly $350,000 in legal fees, triple the amount a jury said she owes a production company for duping it with a novel supposedly based on the life of a prostitute named JT LeRoy, a judge has ruled.”

The fantasy and science fiction genres are particularly well suited to explorations of issues like race and culture. “But some in the speculative-fiction community complain that a number of their white contemporaries no longer tackle these subjects. … In the last decade, sci-fi/fantasy fans of color have begun creating their own communities. These spaces are necessary in a world where they stand out as geeks among blacks, and as ‘the other’ in the speculative-fiction world.”

“Older people who lack ‘health literacy’ — that is, they cannot read and understand basic medical information — may be paying a high price. A new study finds that they appear to have a higher mortality rate than more-literate patients. … But, writing in the July 23 Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers say that one particular characteristic of a poor education, low reading skills, may alone account for much of the problem.”

“Robert Ludlum died six years ago, but that has done nothing to slow the release of books published under the name of the actor-turned-novelist who specialized in thrillers built on a foundation of paranoia. Twelve Ludlum books have been released since his death, with a 13th due out in September. The business is deployed now as a kind of film studio, presenting books completed by others or new ones written using his name.”

So book reviews are leaving newspapers and going online. So what? “Proliferation — the chaos of the endlessly branching paths — is one crucial structural difference between the print and digital realms. Never mind that the Web has swallowed vast archives of print material; we are also seeing a significant shift in the nature of the discourse itself. Blogs and on-line journals do not simply transfer old wine into new bottles — the wine itself is changing.”

Book collecting is a solitary pasttime, and the circle of devotees who partake of its delights is a relatively small one. That latter fact can make for a tough market for collectors looking to unload their treasures. “The [internet] has created a buyer’s market, by forcing sellers from all over to compete with each other for titles that are often abundant.”

Could we stop with the epilogues already? Michael Schaffer says that far too many authors are tacking on pedestrian glimpses into the future of their characters that diminish the overall value of their manuscript. “The allure of the epilogue is undeniably strong, powered by the fragrant aroma of authorial omniscience and the human desire for closure… [But] nothing is sillier or more gratuitous than a glimpse into the future of people who never existed in the first place.”

“Here, perhaps, is the new poetry of the 21st century, a reinvention of language that pushes the cut-up technique of William Burroughs or the randomly generated ‘liquid writing’ of Jeff Noon’s Cobralingus into new brave new territories. Here is the future language of poetry: part machine, part human, all good.”

“Bootleg English-language copies of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,’ J.K. Rowling’s latest and last novel in her super-selling series, have been appearing on the streets of Beijing — testimony to local pirates’ ability to churn out copies of any in-demand entertainment in the blink of an eye.”