Fearless diver, world traveler, and crusty-old electronics and computer engineer who has now found solace in writing novels; Novels which fantasize about the unknown, people, politics, AI and the (generally optimistic) future of humanity.
My Epic Techno-Thriller/Sci-Fi/Mystery novels are free to download from my website rodyne.com
I am unfortunately very bearish on politics in general. All politicians think short term, look after themselves, their families, their friends, and their interests first; Facts, and working simulations just get in the way. (I am still looking for a politician that is an exception to this rule)
Human nature is unfortunately real, and the only way I can see to "solve politics" is to remove human's entirely, but that comes with a whole new set of issues and is another book I guess.
Yes unfortunately any system can be gamified once the incentives are there: Best wine, best movie, best album, best keyboard, best monitor, the list goes on. Hugo or Nebula winners, and any other "winner" for that matter are usually actively sponsored and artificially pushed onto the nomination lists by their publishers/influencers/etc, there is just no way the judges can read the 1000's of novels that come out each year.
Occasionally indie authors beat the system like Andy Weir with the Martian, but that took both good writing and a lot of traction from his online community for it to go viral and for it to get recognition.
Still occasionally bring out my old jaguar for Alien vs Predator to try and remember what the excitement was all about, but as to putting Linux on it, amazing effort, but I think I'm going to pass :-)
But how do you know the books you want to buy in the first place? That's the Indie creators dilemma, sometimes good creators are terrible marketers, or have no budget, and their creation is undiscovered from the others that spend, market or game the system.
Many of us do. But the majority of ebook readers will: a)never find us
and b)just want to click buy now not download epub (from a site they have never heard of) then transfer to kindle manually. So best to cover your bases and give them the Amazon option too.
Easy solution, make a show that lasts exactly one season, put all the good plot elements in it, and give it a proper ending, so it doesn't become a fucking never-ending soap opera.
>Gutenberg might be ugly, but it was fast to load, had all the data I needed and I was downloading the ePub within 5 seconds.
That wasn't a defense, that was me saying it worked well for me. Looking at it again in light of your comment, I might even not even use the "ugly", it is actually quite a clean layout, easy to use, doesn't waste screen space, and I would double-down on it being perfectly fit for purpose. each to his own I guess.
The Rolls Royce modular reactor update page [1] leaves me scratching my head as to where they are, it seems they've passed some really hard UK regulation though, maybe the official source is not the best:
Gutenberg might be ugly, but it was fast to load, had all the data I needed and I was downloading the ePub within 5 seconds. That's a winning formulla these days in my book (no pun intended)
There are still plenty of us writing the book start to finish with all our own words and plots, it is very tempting to use AI to get the cover art correct, but going to a cover artist will these days likely get you the same "AI assisted" creation.
I do have one freely downloadble Sci-Fi book from 2022 which took 10 years in total to write so it might safely pass all your standards, but if a fixed cut off date is your criteria for a good book then there really is no hope for writers like me continuing.
I receive a dozen or so emails a year from people who read my free sci-fi books. they are generally to say thanks, or to point out spelling errors or something factually incorrect that I have usually fixed. Most are shocked I reply. I guess quite a few also get zapped by my aggressive spam filters, which with the amount of spam I get is going to make it a real problem in the future.
Neither are the politicians, or the influencers, or Hollywood, they all have an end-game, a message or something to sell, none of these people are better than you, yet people pick someone and agrees with everything they say.
The world has lost the ability to critically think.
My Epic Techno-Thriller/Sci-Fi/Mystery novels are free to download from my website rodyne.com