Daniel van Tonder on LinkedIn: Someone told me that if a book doesn't become a bestseller, it cannot be… | 28 comments (2024)

Where are the aliens?Well, from the POV of 98% of the observable universe (adjusted for cosmic expansion) the solar system hasn't yet formed, because the first light from the sun would not have had time to reach them.

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First Terrence Howard, then Billy Carson. Joe Rogan knows his audience are pot smokers. His guests are there to appeal to that demographic. It is hard to be too good at business for your own good, but very easy to be too good at it for everyone else's good.

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There is a surreal feeling when looking at a checkmate pattern you’ve made that is so unusual, and realising this is the first and last time that pattern will ever be arrived at from a real game.And yet, the chessboard is still so deceptively familiar. It’s the same pieces, the same arrangement of squares, the same rules.In other words, a completely unique pattern arising out of one that is utterly mundane.

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You know, I wonder if pop science has done more damage to scientific literacy than anything else.Pop science is almost always some oversimplification that is pretty much the equivalent of the lies parents tell their children when they think they wouldn't understand something.I think we need more mature and nuanced conversations. If you listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson, you'd think spacetime, for instance, was some magical concept (which is exactly how a new age cultist like Terrence Howard would make it seem), but in fact there are very rigorous and nuanced ways in which these words are used. Here is how it is defined by real physicists:'Spacetime is a four-dimensional topological manifold with a smooth atlas carrying a torsion-free connection compatible with a Lorentzian metric and a time-orientation satisfying the Einstein equations.' - From a lecture given by Dr Frederic Schuller.However, we still need science communicators. They just have to treat their audiences as also being intelligent, and lay the foundations properly to build off of with further learning.One example of such a person is from Neuroscience - extremely prone to distortion by popularisers, especially because bad neuroscience is very profitable.That person is Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett, as, even though she has written some books for general audiences and appeared on podcasts, she tends to be very clear and precise in her language, and accurately represents the research while cutting through misinterpretations.As an editor it would be wonderful to receive a manuscript like LFB's How Emotions Are Made (2017). This tendency to wipe away nuance and basically lie to the reader prevalent in non-fiction has made me incredibly hesitant to take on clients for developmental work.

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Star Trek 'alternatives' that were better than Star Trek:Battlestar Galactica > VoyagerBabylon 5 > Deep Space 9Stargate > The Original SeriesFarscape > The Next GenerationStar Trek tends to have very simple themes and minimal character development, as well as being quite preachy.The other shows, while they all do different things well, deal with more complex themes with much richer characters in a far less condescending way.[Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica]

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This ended up ballooning into a whole thing, and I still can’t see the end of it, so I’m breaking it up into little chunks. Here’s the first. And I know I keep screwing around with the branding, but this is just how I am. It takes me a while before I ever settle on anything.

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On Babylon 5, like in a lot of sci fi, the computer voice is classically robotic, despite the year being 2258.Obviously this is ridiculous, unless... perhaps in the future we decide that computer voices sounding too human is not good for us. Hell, maybe they decide computers taking on human qualities in general is a bad idea.By the 23rd century, hopefully we will have laws against AI that can manipulate us as they do now.

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Christopher Nolan is rumoured to be remaking the great British miniseries The Prisoner (1967) as a film starring Tom Hardy.Now, let's be honest, Tom Hardy is no Patrick McGoohan, although I don't know a movie star alive today who could pull off that character, and Nolan hasn't made something comparable to an episode of the show since Memento, so I anticipate some serious dumbing down.Nonetheless, I am excited about the possibility of this bringing attention to the cult classic. It reminds me of Tim Burton's adaptation of Big Fish. I mean, the movie was fine, but the real significance of it was that it bumped up the readership of Daniel Wallace's wonderful little book.

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Calling all authors and anyone else in need of an illustrator.Recently, I hired Carolina Lettieri to do the images on my Substack posts. Nonetheless, she told me she was looking for more work, as it is difficult making a stable living as an artist, and recent events have shaken things up as well.I'm not just saying this, but Carol is such a pleasure to work with. I get the sense that she is as invested in the project as I am - if anything she's made me care about my own work more than I would have without her, and has made the process fun. I get excited about what she's going to create.While very versatile, she has an uncanny ability to match the feel of her art to your personality, while giving it such a distinct flavour.If I were to say what she's best at though, it would be animals / creatures, and dreamlike worlds. There's an innate magical quality to her style, so if you are writing fantasy, science fiction or horror, and are looking for a great illustrator who charges fair and affordable rates, Carol is definitely someone I would urge you to get in touch with.Please share this so we can get as much visibility as possible. Thank you.

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So, I thought I'd repost this in light of the GPT-4o announcement.We all knew multi-modality was brewing, and it seems to have finally come together.However, multi-modality is really just an interface upgrade. It's snappier and more dynamic, but the fundamentals are the same.We are in the bells and whistles adding stage.

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