Comments on: Aren't all blogs science fiction?

Aren't all blogs science fiction?

anotherpanacea — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:09:05 -0800

io9 is a sci-fi blog that went live yesterday, edited by Annalee Newitz and friends. Newitz is an AlterNet Columnist and a founder of Bad Subjects, which is a major achievement considering she used to be afraid of blogs!

By: grobstein

grobstein — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:18:33 -0800

I like science fiction, but I'm not really into the gossip side, and I'm not planning to get into it. Actually it's sad to me that this crew of talented, unique folks produced a blog that reads like a clone of every other Gawker property.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:25:51 -0800

You FPP'ed a blog that has been published for one day?

By: DU

DU — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:30:59 -0800

It blew me away with neither awesomeness nor awfulness. I subscribed to see what happens. FYI.

By: grobstein

grobstein — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:34:50 -0800

It blew me away with neither awesomeness nor awfulness. Okay, enough suspense. How did it blow you away?

By: Slithy_Tove

Slithy_Tove — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:39:13 -0800

This is not a sci-fi blog. This is a movie and TV blog.

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:46:31 -0800

You FPP'ed a blog that has been published for one day? Gawker blogs do a few months of cold posts to build a backlog.

By: serazin

serazin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:55:29 -0800

Co-editor Charlie Anders is an awesome writer and also host of the eclectic literary series Writers With Drinks.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:57:11 -0800

My traditional understanding of the connotation of the word 'gawker' is a slack-jawed dimwit yokel, staring with unalloyed kallikak wonder at pedestrian misfortune, unconcerned about the human suffering that underpins the spectacle. It may not have been what Gawker intended to shoot for, but from what I've seen, the target has been ably hit.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:58:22 -0800

But I will check out this site, in hopes that it's more better.

By: wendell

wendell — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:01:39 -0800

The io9 blog has archives going back about 3 months, starting with a bunch of brief reviews of iconic sci-fi movies/books/TV, the first of which was The Blob (Blog the Blob!), preceded by some still-visible test posts from months earlier, including a classic "lorem ipsum", then if you go back any farther you end up stumbling over some 2006 posts by MetaFilter's Own Dong Resin that originally appeared in his short-lived Gawker Blog "Screenhead", but are credited to another defunct Gawker property Sploid, which is currently home to some test posts featuring Oprah, Obama and the Spartans. Now I have some equally stupid stuff sitting on domains I'm not using where all the world can see it, but I'm not Gawker Media. (However, I am gawking.)

By: oddman

oddman — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:12:28 -0800

Well, this might be good. But a list of upcoming movies without hyper links is lazy and just shy of useless.

By: jscalzi

jscalzi — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:12:50 -0800

Hey, they have a tag for me there. I can't complain.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:22:45 -0800

I like Annalee's columns, so I'll be keeping an eye on this. Thanks for the post.

By: kbanas

kbanas — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:40:11 -0800

I kind of like it so far. *kicks dust* *wanders off, dejected*

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:50:12 -0800

Lot of hype about this around the (geeky) web, so I was disappointed to find little substance after much paginating (yesterday).

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:07:16 -0800

Thanks for the tip. ::bookmarks under Ectomoplasmosis::

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:24:55 -0800

Annalee rules, so io9 should follow. I'm happy to see it and subscribed immediately.

By: penguinliz

penguinliz — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:42:54 -0800

Maybe I'm just super-cynical about this, but if I had a blog which is going to live and die by page views and how much the ad space costs, I would make sure to write lots of posts about authors with large internet fanbases who might plug it on their blogs and bring in the traffic, like jscalzi. Still, I liked She's Such a Geek, so I've subscribed to io9 to see how it goes.

By: dong_resin

dong_resin — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:57:27 -0800

I knew I had a reader! I knew it! I could hear it cough a little when it got cold! I'm not involved with i09, it's a cut and paste situation to kill space. Looks pretty. Annalee does rule. Mazel Tov.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:38:50 -0800

It reads more like boing boing than a science fiction blog.

By: cstross

cstross — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:55:39 -0800

... And they introduced themselves to me by spamming me. Repeatedly. I say to boycott the fucktards until they learn better. (Annoyed by spam? Who'd have expected that!)

By: cstross

cstross — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:08:21 -0800

... And they introduced themselves to me by spamming me. Repeatedly. I say to boycott the fucktards until they learn better. (Annoyed by spam? Who'd have expected that!)

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:55:09 -0800

Not me, by fuck.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:02:43 -0800

I have this fear that Gawker Blogs are going to be the net's equivalent of NBC Red.

By: lodurr

lodurr — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:39:53 -0800

cstross, you did that on purpose, didn't you? I like the content so far, but I think it would be kind of nice if people could find a nice pithy one-word descriptor for blogs like this that aren't really "blogs" in a traditional sense. Really, they're just real-time commercial newsletters. Annalee or whoever may give them a pretty and interesting face, but when all is said and done they exist to make money for Gawker, and losing sight of that is a recipe for disappointment.

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 09:49:26 -0800

a nice pithy one-word descriptor for blogs like this that aren't really "blogs" in a traditional sense. I remember when I used to hate the word 'blog' and think it was too precious. That was two or three years ago. I find the notion that there's a 'traditional sense' of the word 'blog' to be utterly absurd, but I also agree that there's a dearth of vocabulary to describe what's going on. Gawker sites are actually group blogs with professional editing and article assignment, and are different from, say, PrawfsBlawg or other academic group blogs because they're for profit and for hire. Seeing as we've never gotten much beyond community weblog here at metafilter, I doubt we'll find something better any time soon for all the kinds of blogs out there. Maybe calling these trashy trade-blogs 'gawkers', like xerox and kleenex?

By: lodurr

lodurr — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:08:59 -0800

I like 'gawkers', but I don't think it will fly. I was always fond of 'trade rags' as a term of backhanded affection for trade pubs. 'Trade blogs' doesn't really capture it for me, since for most of us these aren't 'trades'. They're really more the equivalent of glossy magazines, in a way, than of trade rags. I'd like something - well, more pejorative, frankly. Keep the buggers in their place. As we, you know, read them obsessively at the same time....