Aren't all blogs science fiction?
January 3, 2008 6:09 PM   Subscribe

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!
posted by anotherpanacea (27 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
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.
posted by grobstein at 6:18 PM on January 3, 2008


You FPP'ed a blog that has been published for one day?
posted by LarryC at 6:25 PM on January 3, 2008


It blew me away with neither awesomeness nor awfulness. I subscribed to see what happens. FYI.
posted by DU at 6:30 PM on January 3, 2008


It blew me away with neither awesomeness nor awfulness.

Okay, enough suspense. How did it blow you away?
posted by grobstein at 6:34 PM on January 3, 2008


This is not a sci-fi blog. This is a movie and TV blog.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 6:39 PM on January 3, 2008


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.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:46 PM on January 3, 2008


Co-editor Charlie Anders is an awesome writer and also host of the eclectic literary series Writers With Drinks.
posted by serazin at 6:55 PM on January 3, 2008 [1 favorite]


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.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:57 PM on January 3, 2008


But I will check out this site, in hopes that it's more better.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:58 PM on January 3, 2008


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.)
posted by wendell at 7:01 PM on January 3, 2008


Well, this might be good. But a list of upcoming movies without hyper links is lazy and just shy of useless.
posted by oddman at 7:12 PM on January 3, 2008


Hey, they have a tag for me there. I can't complain.
posted by jscalzi at 7:12 PM on January 3, 2008 [1 favorite]


I like Annalee's columns, so I'll be keeping an eye on this. Thanks for the post.
posted by homunculus at 7:22 PM on January 3, 2008


I kind of like it so far.

*kicks dust*

*wanders off, dejected*
posted by kbanas at 7:40 PM on January 3, 2008


Lot of hype about this around the (geeky) web, so I was disappointed to find little substance after much paginating (yesterday).
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:50 PM on January 3, 2008


Thanks for the tip.

::bookmarks under Ectomoplasmosis::
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:07 PM on January 3, 2008


Annalee rules, so io9 should follow. I'm happy to see it and subscribed immediately.
posted by mathowie at 10:24 PM on January 3, 2008


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.
posted by penguinliz at 1:42 AM on January 4, 2008


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.
posted by dong_resin at 3:57 AM on January 4, 2008


It reads more like boing boing than a science fiction blog.
posted by srboisvert at 4:38 AM on January 4, 2008


... 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!)
posted by cstross at 4:55 AM on January 4, 2008


... 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!)
posted by cstross at 5:08 AM on January 4, 2008


Not me, by fuck.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:55 AM on January 4, 2008


I have this fear that Gawker Blogs are going to be the net's equivalent of NBC Red.
posted by drezdn at 8:02 AM on January 4, 2008


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.
posted by lodurr at 8:39 AM on January 4, 2008


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?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:49 AM on January 4, 2008


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....
posted by lodurr at 12:08 PM on January 4, 2008


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