Go Farther: Foodify Your Fiction!

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Last week I wrote about how I wanted to see more economics in genre stories like fantasy and science fiction, to see it be more part of good worldbuilding and plotting.  Economics affects our world, so I figure why not fictional worlds?  Besides, adding economics to your world makes it richer and more believable.

So in this "Go Farther" I want to suggest something else that is often missed in genre fiction and world building.  Something near and dear to our hearts, or organs slightly lower.  Something you may even be indulging in as you read this.

Food.

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Frustration Friday: Applenesia

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Apple is on top.  Apple rules our world.  iI want my iPhone, my iPad, and my iSystem.

Sure there's some bumps.  Ping has spam.  Apple has higher prices than some.  There's concerns expressed by people about closed technology ecosystems that are very legitimate.

However, let's face it – Apple is on top.  Everyone talks about them, wants to be like them, praises them.

So, I'd now like to see some people kindly discuss why all the doomsaying about Apple that we've seen on and off the last twenty years was wrong.  Publicly.  In detail.

I'm not angry it happened.  In some cases the various Apple-will-die stories seemed relevant at the time.  However they all turned out to be dreadfully wrong, so can some of the journalists and pundits and writers please go back and explain why so many of us were dead wrong?

Would it be hard to stop the praise to look back and ask just what we were thinking here?  Maybe it'll help us get better at predicting and evaluating.

Would it hurt to explore what Apple did to survive all those many years?  Maybe we can learn some lessons.

Could we ask ourselves if the death-of-Apple stories were just a fad (much like the death-of-Twitter stories these days)?  Perhaps we can stop history from repeating itself, as it often does to our embarrassment.

So, please news pages and magazines, journalists and writers, take a moment and explore why Apple lived when there were many times its demise was predicted.  Give us books, or articles, or even blog posts.

You can even write the draft on your iPad if you want, to get you in the mood.

– Steven Savage

(By the way the title of this?  One of my lamest.  Seriously.)

Fannish Skills On The Job Search – Art

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I write a lot about using your fannish and hobby skills on the job.  It's sort of a big thing, what with this whole "Fan To Pro" title putting pressure on me.  But there's more to using the skills from your recreation in your profession – you can use them in other "professional areas", which I'm going to talk about in the weeks to come.

Namely, I'll be writing about how your fannish, geeky, and otaku skills can also be used in your job search.  It's even possible you have some skills you don't want to or can't use in your chosen career that are great to use on your job search.  You probably have a lot of unappreciated talents anyway (or at least ones that you may not be great at but you can leverage)

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