Del Rey interviews their authors

Del Rey publishers are asking their authors a few questions about how technology has affected their lives. The promise to send the answers to, and only to, their online newsletter. It sounds like you need to subscribe by May 1st. You can subscribe at their website. The latest DRIN (Del Rey Internet Newsletter) asked readers to forward it along so people can sign up in time. I’ll post it below for the benefit of all. (I receive it as text, so any formatting will be my own.)

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT–FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND!

Del Rey is proud to announce that the May 2001 DRIN will be our 100th issue!

To celebrate, we’ve decided to do something special.

From its humble origins in 1993 as a Usnet newsgroup listing(*) to its more impressive and accessible distribution over your Palm Pilot, Visor, and/or Windows CE devices (in HTML or Text only), the DRIN has always been dedicated to bringing you information about Del Rey books, authors, editors, various conventions, and much, much more.

Hopefully we’ve been successful in bringing our authors a little closer to you, the reader. But we’re aware that there’s always something more we could be doing.

So to thank the 40,000 plus subscribers of the DRIN, we’ve asked our authors and a number of other special guests from the SF&F community to answer four questions:

1. How has technology affected your life?

2. How has technology changed the act of writing?

3. Paper vs. Pixels?

4. If you could choose a piece of technology– that doesn’t yet exist– from a TV show, movie, or book, what would it be and why?

Currently, we’re still collecting the responses, but so far even WE are surprised by the reception we’ve gotten.

So if you’d like to read Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke’s opinion of the computer, stay tuned. Or you may wonder what Joe Quesada, Editor-In-Chief of Marvel Comics, unwittingly has in common with the author China Mieville. Likewise, if you’d care to know Anne McCaffrey’s fictional solution for jet lag or what Terry Brooks might do with your cell phone, you won’t want to miss what we’re calling the DRIN 100A.

On May 15th, the DRIN 100A will be sent out as a supplement to the normal May 1st DRIN. Anyone signed up to receive the May DRIN (which you presumably have done, since you’re reading this) will automatically receive the DRIN 100A. But it’s a one-shot deal. If you’re not signed up, you won’t get it. And we won’t be doing this again for a long time. So if you have any friends who might be interested, please tell them to
sign up. We’d be happy to add them to the list. After all it’s free, we don’t spam, and you won’t likely find the personal comments– both funny and serious– of so many SF&F authors in any other format… unless maybe Oprah gets wind of this.

DEL REY BOOKS

* – (Usnet was an array of topical discussions carried over the internet and read by very few people– pretty much just college students, other academics, and a small number of otherwise technologically-advanced people)

HOW TO GET THE DRIN=============================================

To subscribe to the text only version: send a blank message to [email protected]

To subscribe to the HTML version: send a blank message to [email protected]

Or subscribe online at http://www.delreybooks.com

THE DRIN IS NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUR PALM PILOT, VISOR, AND WINDOWS CE DEVICES:

Go to http://www.randomhouse.com/partners/avantgo.html for more information, or visit http://www.avantgo.com and search for the Books@Random channel.