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March 25, 2008
Media Glutton, March 26, 2008
New Media Glutton post at allvoices.com:
So I had a rather unusual but quite exciting media overload experience this past weekend - spoke and worked my publisher's table at the San Francisco Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. It was, in fact, a lot of fun, and really quite strange on occasion. Not that I'm unfamiliar with the strange. I've been to gaming conventions and hacker conventions and sci-fi conventions and comics conventions and academic conferences. I've seen people in weird costumes, history professors doing "this little piggy" in latin with their infants, and impassioned, glorious rants on everything from civil rights to secure computing to what makes a good gaming experience. So from that point of view, the Anarchist Book Fair was very familiar, although all the details, issues, and glorious rants were new to me (in person anyway - I've read quite a bit of anarchist writings and written some myself in a way).
I was there promoting my own books, Geek Mafia, and the sequel, Geek Mafia: Mile Zero on behalf of myself and my wonderful new publisher, PM Press. New not only to me, but to everyone else as well, as they're only a few months old (although the people who make up PM have decades of publishing experience and contacts). I gave various version of my one-line sales pitch for Geek Mafia that I've said thousands of times before, although I tried a couple variations in an effort to appeal to this crowd's particular tastes. There wasn't a lot of other fiction at this predominantly serious-minded event, so I think my book there was both a little bit of fresh air and maybe a little confusing. People seemed a little unsure as to how fiction fit into the broader themes and politics of the event and movement, but once we explained out goal of coming at those same themes from another angle and perspective, most people really liked the idea. In one of my talks this weekend I likened my books to a big helping of ice cream with some little vitamins of politics and inspiration slipped in there. Mostly they're about the fun and the exciting stories, but there's stuff in there to make you think too.
With that in mind, I thought I'd highlight a few other forms of radical fictional ice cream that I particularly admire and would encourage anyone to go out and read (right after they go out and read my stuff of course).
Read the rest here, at allvoices.com.
Posted by rdakan at March 25, 2008 02:41 PM