Web Site Reviews
Beth
Adele Long, Associate Editor,
Young Writer's Scene
Issue # 3: 04/01/01
What
Matters
Gauging
Success
Deeper
People
Otherwhens:
A Theory of Alternate History
By J. S. Burke
Blunting
the Knife
By Alison Sinclair
Reporting
for Fiction
By Katherine Derbyshire
Making
Dreams into Reality
By Jennifer St. Clair Bush
Fear
and Crisis
By Michael E. Norman
Fantasy:
A
Triad of Religious Articles
By Sarah Jane Elliott
Peggy Kurilla
Bryn Neuenschwander
Horror:
Classic
Structure in the Horror Novel
By Ron Brown
Poetry:
Poetry
Revival
By Lazette Gifford
Romance:
E-Books
and the Romance Field
By Anne M. Marble
Science Fiction:
Eureka!
By Bob Billing
Suspense & Mystery:
Preparing
for Your First Mystery
By Lazette Gifford
Young Adult & Children:
Turn
Personal Struggles into Books for Children
By Laura Backes
Young Writer's Scene:
Write
What You Know -- Or What You Want?
By Beth Adele Long
Book Reviews
Screenplay:
The Foundations
of Screen Writing
Reviewed by Shane P. Carr
Web Site Reviews
AImovie.Com,
Tangent Online
By Beth Adele Long
So
What's New?
By Jim Mills
From the Writers' Board
News from Forward Motion
www.AImovie.com
And you thought time travel was impossible.
The Steven Spielberg film AI, based on Brian Aldiss's story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," will be released this summer, and the film's publicity campaign has apparently opened a port to the 22nd century using---what else?---the Internet. Astute web surfers of 2001 have uncovered numerous websites related to the untimely death of a Donu-Tech scientist in 2142. The timelines of the two centuries seem to be moving in tandem: news flashes and updates from 2142 appear on their equivalent dates in 2001. The alternate timeline is accessible by email, telephone, and even fax, and today's web denizens are hot on the trail. This could be the first crime to be solved almost 150 years before it even takes place.
The cleverest have found the puzzle's earliest entry point: a phone number encoded in the AI film trailer (also found here). Others have depended on various tip-offs regarding Jeanine Salla, whose interesting role in the film trailer's end credits has pushed sharp-eyed surfers to run Internet searches to uncover Salla's identity and, ultimately, the vast story behind Evan Chan's death.
No single person is likely to have the time or wide-ranging knowledge needed to unravel this tangled skein, and curious researchers will find ample help from the underground community that has been laboring to solve the puzzle since late March. Collaborative groups seem to be popping up across the Internet, each at a different stage of investigation, though patient investigators should be wary of the various think-tanks and clues pages lest they run across too much information too soon.
Who
is Jeanine Salla? How did
Evan Chan die? Only the
patient and dedicated will be able to find out.
www.TangentOnline.com
Tangent
has been around for quite a while, providing good short fiction reviews of
both print and online stories. For
the past few weeks, though, their site hasn't been accessible.
But recently they relaunched with their new, independent domain (www.TangentOnline.com)
and a redesigned site.
As
before, the site has reviews of print magazines, listed by how often the
magazine is published (monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annually,
irregular). It also has
reviews of online publications (right now, just SciFiction.com) and
anthologies and collections. Plus,
if you have a question or comment about Tangent, you can post it on their
newsgroup, which the editor and webmaster seem to keep close track of.
The
new site will be updated as reviews come in, so you'll be able to see
things faster than before. There
is one catch; to help with site costs, they're asking people to subscribe
for $2 or more per year. If
you subscribe, you get a login and password, and you'll be able to see
updates as soon as they go up. If
you don't subscribe, you'll eventually get to see everything, but you'll
have to wait until reviews are two weeks old.
This sounds like a good way to get support from people who want to
contribute while still keeping Tangent's resources free for those who
don't want to pay.
All material © 2001, Holly Lisle except where noted