Wednesday, April 12, 2006

New SubGenius Book DEEP in Progress

The new SubGenius book, The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack -- THE BOBLIOGRAPHON is scheduled to be in stores in August -- IF 9X-Day turns out to be just another Drill. However, the finished manuscript and complete layout with illustrations must be in the hands of the publishers, Thunder's Mouth Press, by May 30. (Note: they are also reprinting our Revelation X!)

We did not get the go-ahead on this project until middle February, giving this book such a short production schedule that ONLY an Emergentile SubGenius could possibly make it, and ONLY by doing it single-handedly. Thus, I, your not especially humble ediotor, am Slack-working 16 hour days both writing and doing the layout. Most of the art, and many of the text pieces, are by dozens of other SubGenii, but this time I am working alone to pull it all together. If the budget was a little bigger, no doubt Paul Mavrides or another pro would be doing the design. Don't tell the publishers this, but I never even learned a page layout program until last week...

Anyway, the cover (see earlier article) and the first 20 pages are done, and it's looking GORGEOUSLY DENSE. I have to hammer together chapters at the rate of one every two days between now and the deadline, so that is practically all I'm doing.

I'm still putting out Hours of Slack, but 3 out of 4 are re-runs from the olden days. Not necessarily a bad thing. I doubt if I will be able to get to teX-Day, which is a major bummer. And since Magdalen and Jesus have their custody case to fight, I'm also doing what they used to -- filling Membership and product orders, and keeping the swag in stock.

So far, so good. I'll be glad when the book is finished and I can do things like read books and watch TV again.* On the other hand, because I am an Emergentile SubGenius, and love "Bob," I am in hog heaven with all this work. Assembling the best of the last ten years' worth of SubG art and writing is ABSOLUTE TOTAL ALL-OUT SLACK for me. Princess Wei is helping in a million ways, including taking on talk-show jobs that I can't do.

The child custody case that Magdalen and Jesus are fighting has drawn a great deal of attention. Several of the better-known web-zines and blogs are covering it, and this has resulted in a huge influx of business for the Church. We've been ordaining new SubGenii at the rate of 3 a day for a couple of months now, and I'm having to restock ARISE! DVDs and The Book of the SubGenius every couple of weeks.

In other words, when that judge threw his temper-tantrum in court (for which he has since recused himself and handed the case to another judge), sure, he did manage to screw up the lives of several people OVER A CARTOON, but he also inadvertently gave the Church a new financial lease on life.

We have never been so busy. Thanks to the influx of new customers and believers, we've paid off some old Stark Fist printing debts and are actually starting to make REAL MONEY (and KEEP IT!) for the first time since August, 1998!

SO... if it takes me two or three months to answer your email, if I ever do, THIS IS WHY.

As I've been doing for the twelve years, I post daily to alt.slack, which I still consider the main SubGenius forum. It has changed in the last two years, since Google Groups made it easier for amateurs to use Usenet newsgroups, but by the same token it has allowed a lot of riff-raff to abuse it. If you look at alt.slack this month, you'll have to skim past an awful lot of "kook posts" to find the juicy true SubGenius material. Luckily, the kook stuff is instantly identifiable -- it's insanely racist. The current kook crop would be FUNNY, and is at first, but unfortunately there are a lot of Bobbies who insist on FEEDING the kooks rather than ignoring them.

You will soon learn which are the Bobbies to avoid this way, too.

I use a newsreader proper to view Usenet groups like alt.slack, so I am able to filter out the kooks and the subkooks who feed them. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I would heartily suggest looking into Usenet and good (free) newsreader programs -- there's a whole world of goodies out there, a lot more than you can get on the Web without spending a lot of money. My personal favorite goodies are the SubGenius ones.

Most of what's in the new book originally came from alt.slack, alt.binaries.slack and alt.binaries.multimedia.slack.

WHICH REMINDS ME, I have to finish the "Bob" chapter today. Back to work! Work-Slack! OK OK SLACK SLACK

* I actually have been taking "breaks from Slack" and have managed to read a novel per week by my current ShorDurPerSav, Terry Pratchett and his FUCKING HILARIOUS Discworld series. Also, I have seen the Peter Jackson KING KONG 7 times so far. (I'm out to beat Harryhausen's record on the first Kong.)