Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: THE NAME OF THE WIND is now available in paperback:
Only the Bookscan numbers are in (it will be a while before we get a full tally), but it looks as though The Name of the Wind has surpassed the sales of both George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule.
Woah! If it beat out A Game of Thrones and Wizard’s First Rule, I am going to have to check this book out. I really enjoyed those two books, especially A Game of Thrones.
According to the Associated Press, Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.
[HT: Charles Stross]
Well, somebody else is giving away a copy of The Last Wish. Over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, there are four copies of the book available. I’ve already sent in my entry!
I am really looking forward to The Last Wish finally being available in the US. I have heard nothing but good things about the series.
Thanks to Orbit Books for linking to the giveaway, and for both getting the book to the states and making it available through a fellow blogger!
Movable Type News A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide:
And of course there are lots of third-party plugins for the MT dashboard, to integrate statistics and information from third-party services like your number of FeedBurner subscribers.
It’s always fun when one of my plugins gets, well, plugged by the Six Apart folks.
Charles Stross (scifi author, D&D nerd, and former perl columnist) posted Politics as she is Played with 3d6:
The recent death of Gary Gygax, who together with Dave Arneson invented Dungeons and Dragons, coincides with a most interesting period in the American Presidential primary season, as three hopeful monsters slouch towards an appointment with the polls in October or November or sometime around then. (You can tell how much attention I pay to US politics.) Anyway, in an attempt to correct my woeful ignorance of the state of play, I decided to turn to AD&D as the analysis tool du jour, and consulted my battered copy of the Monster Manual in hope of shedding some light on the crypt.
The rest of the posting includes stats for the top three candidates. Go take a look!
(HT: Scalzi)
Having not been able to attend DDXP last weekend, I queried a few folks I knew that went for their impressions of the upcoming new edition of D&D. Here are the responses I got.
xkcd had a wonderful new comic posted today:
I just received an email from my friend Peter with some sad news:
It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Gary Gygax has passed away. He meant a lot to me, even if I sometimes joked like Gary was some crusty old guy from a previous generation. The truth is, he was one of a kind. He created something that I have always loved, and I will miss him.
http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4373&highlight=gygax&mforum=trolllordgames
It would be hard to quantify the contribution Gary Gygax has made to my life, and to the lives of countless other people like me. So much of the gaming culture I consider myself a part of has been influenced by him, directly or otherwise. So much of my childhood and teenage years was spent playing games based upon his work, games that I continue to play today with friends old and new.
Your presence will be missed, Gary. My deepest condolences go out to his family and friends.
Update: Here are some of the wonderful tributes I have seen across the web today:
From Neil’s Journal Kids! Free! Book!:
For the next month, your free copy of American Gods is waiting for you at http://tiny.cc/WRiXE
Feel free to spread the link as widely as possible around the web. If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they’ll simply let us give away the book in electronic form….
There is some follow-up discussion of the pros and cons of making a book freely available if you check out the free book section of Neil’s Journal.
There’s even a fancy little flash widget you can stuff onto your own sites.
From the DDXP Liveblog Gamer Zero’s DDXP Videos:
I just saw that Gamer Zero posted a whole pile of videos from D&D Experience including just about the entire design and product release talk.
I wasn’t able to go, so I am looking forward to watching these when I can get a free moment. Should be some pretty interesting stuff!
