{"id":1596,"date":"2009-09-11T15:02:56","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T23:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2009-09-11T15:20:25","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T23:20:25","slug":"the-history-of-flurb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/11\/the-history-of-flurb\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Flurb"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned that I\u2019ve been busy revising my autobiography, Nested Scrolls: The Memoir of a Cyberpunk Philosopher<\/em>. As part of the revision, yesterday I wrote up a little history of my webzine Flurb<\/em>. Here’s that passage, which is relevant as Flurb #8<\/em> went live this week\u2014and is off to a strong start, with five thousand visits in the first two days.<\/p>\n

By the way, you can click on any of the Flurb <\/em>covers below to see the issue in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"http:\/\/flurb.rudyrucker.com\/1\/index1.html\"<\/a>
\n Issue #1, Fall, 2006<\/a> <\/em><\/td>\n		\"http:\/\/flurb.rudyrucker.com\/2\/index2.html\"<\/a>
\n Issue #2, Winter, 2006<\/a><\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"http:\/\/flurb.rudyrucker.com\/3\/index3.html\"<\/a>
\n Issue #3, Spring, 2007<\/a> <\/em><\/td>\n		\"\"<\/a>
\n Issue #4, Fall, 2007<\/a> <\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n Issue #5, Spring, 2008<\/a> <\/em><\/td>\n		\"\"<\/a>
\n Issue #6, Fall, 2008<\/a> <\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n Issue #7, Spring, 2009<\/a> <\/td>\n		\"\"<\/a>
\n Issue #8, Fall, 2009<\/a> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

And here's the excerpt from Nested Scrolls<\/em>...<\/code><\/p>\n

Although I\u2019m often able to sell my short stories to science-fiction magazines, it\u2019s a fair amount of trouble for very little pay, and my stories do sometimes bounce back. In 2006 I hit upon the idea of starting my own online science fiction magazine.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d recently written a story with my old SF pal Paul Di Filippo, a tale called, \u201cElves of the Subdimensions<\/a>.\u201d\u009d I was in a rush to get the story published so that I could put it into an upcoming anthology of my stories\u2014it\u2019s generally considered wasteful to anthologize a story of yours that hasn\u2019t already been published.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t time to get \u201cElves of the Subdimensions\u201d\u009d into one of the major print magazines, but when I tried one of the existing online SF webzines, they had the temerity to turn our story down. And that\u2019s when I decided to start my own webzine. I mean\u2014why should I court rejection from strangers who weren\u2019t even going to pay me, just in the hopes that they might post my story online?<\/p>\n


\n[Paul Di Filippo]<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d started blogging by then, and I knew enough about the web to be quite sure that I could design and organize an online magazine. And given that my blog was getting quite a few hits by now, I\u2019d be able to steer a respectably large audience to the zine. And my son Rudy was running an Internet Service Provider business called Monkeybrains, so I could get the server bandwidth for free.<\/p>\n

What to call my webzine? The name jumped out at me from a line Paul had written in our joint story. The elves, who live in the subdimensions (whatever the heck that means), are discussing the oddities of our human world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe high-planers ingest sweet chunks of their worldstuff!\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cThey use picture boxes to learn their hive mind\u2019s mood!\u201d\u009d
\n\u201cOf flurbbing, they know not!\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, my webzine\u2019s title had to be Flurb<\/em>. I liked the Mad Magazine <\/em>sound of the word, and its vague feel of stumble-bum incompetence. If pressed, I might define \u201cflurb\u201d\u009d as a verb meaning \u201cto carry out a complex, non-commercial artistic activity,\u201d\u009d and \u201cflurb\u201d\u009d as a noun might mean \u201ca gnarly artwork that\u2019s incomprehensible to the average person.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This definition even appears in the Urban Dictionary<\/a>, although it\u2019s competing with an alternate defintion of a \u201cflurb\u201d\u009d as an obsessive role-playing fan.<\/p>\n

I started by asking my SF writer friends for contributions, and, as the issues went on, I branched out from there, first turning to writers that I knew less well, and then starting to read contributions sent in by strangers. You can see an overview of all the authors so far in Flurb<\/em>‘s Cumulative Contents<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

I have a fairly clean design for the zine, running a colorful border down along the left side of each story. For the borders, I use patterns that I create with Capow<\/a>, the cellular automata software that I\u2019d developed on with my students at San Jose State\u2014I use a fresh pattern for each story.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I also illustrate the stories with photographs that I\u2019ve taken. I like photography a lot, it\u2019s instant transrealism. When photography goes well, you\u2019re appropriating something from your immediate surroundings and turning it into a loaded, fantastic image. I\u2019ve been taking photos for fifty years by now, and I\u2019m still excited about it.<\/p>\n

For use in Flurb<\/em>, I make a pool of my best recent photos, and then I choose the individual illustrations from the pool very quickly, almost at random, in adherence to the old Surrealist principle that the human mind is capable of seeing any two things at all as going well together.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to enjoy the interactions with my Flurb <\/em>authors, and I\u2019ve just published issue #8. At this point, we get about sixty thousand visits per issue. And no money at all is involved. I don\u2019t charge people to read Flurb<\/em>, nor do we carry any advertising, nor do I pay my authors. I try to treat them well, they get a little publicity out of it, and they get to keep all rights. It\u2019s a sideline for all of us.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I like to think that Flurb <\/em>is a kind of clear-channel border-radio station for SF. As a personal matter, having Flurb <\/em>as an outlet has freed me to write some stories that are so quirky and non-commercial that I wouldn\u2019t have done them otherwise. For instance I wrote a story called \u201cTangiers Routines<\/a>,\u201d\u009d about William Burroughs having sex with\u2014and being in some sense eaten by\u2014the early computer scientist Alan Turing. A lot of people liked this gnarly tale. But I could never ever have published it for a large audience in any locale other than Flurb<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Editing an issue of Flurb <\/em>twice a year is a slight distraction from my writing\u2014but writers are always looking for distractions. Eventually you miss writing enough to want to do it again.<\/p>\n

...end of excerpt from Nested Scrolls<\/em>.<\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned that I\u2019ve been busy revising my autobiography, Nested Scrolls: The Memoir of a Cyberpunk Philosopher. As part of the revision, yesterday I wrote up a little history of my webzine Flurb. Here’s that passage, which is relevant as Flurb #8 went live this week\u2014and is off to a strong start, with five thousand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}