Fonts

Jonathan Lethem, Richard Posner, and others reveal their favorite fonts.

Jonathan Lethem, author, You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Novel
I dislike the temptation of making a raw draft look like it’s already typeset. Before computers, I wrote three novels on a typewriter, and there can never be anything but 12-point Courier (double-spaced) forever: I write on an eternal Selectric of the mind. I can even hear the rattle of the metal ball against the sheet of paper, I swear.

Ditto. What’s the point of anything else, at least when I’m generating a manuscript? Although the labels on the folders of my GTD reference files at the day job are all typeset in Trebuchet MS.

Fanfiction

Whatever: My Policy on Fanfic and Other Adaptations of My Work:

“First: I do retain and reserve all rights to my work. I’m not very squishy about that fact. Just so you know. If you play in my universe, you implicitly accept I have the right to come around, say ‘mine!’ and then stomp off with all your pretty toys. Yeah, I know. I’m a dick. What can I say.

Second: As long as you can deal with that first point, as far as I’m concerned, you may play in my universe(s) as long as the emphasis is on ‘play.’ This means that nothing you do in my universes may:

a) Generate any sort of economic benefit for you, in any form;
b) Generate any sort of economic benefit for any third party;
c) Cause me economic detriment of any sort.”

Not that I ever expect anyone to ever write fanfic about anything I create. Nor have I ever written any fanfic of any kind (unless you count a DOCTOR WHO story I wrote back in the 7th grade as an assignment).

Mundane-SF Stuff

Mundane-SF: Encyclopedia of Life:

“Recently I got an iPod which now allows me to listen to all kinds of interesting broadcasts from around the world that were previously unaccessed. The aggregator software, the citizen journalism, the interviews with scientists who speak about what they believe in without the need to be filtered through the boring style required of scientific papers — all of this has appeared in the last couple of years as yet another phenomenon never mentioned in an SF story before it happened. Like most aspects of the internet.”