To raise money for the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation, a team of five novelists posed for a gender-flipped posed copy of a sexy science fiction cover.

You can bid on an autographed copy of the photograph at eBay. Photographer Al Bogdan shot the picture, imitating the cover of Young Flandry by Poul Anderson. The io9 blog has more about the history behind the pin-up photograph.

Check it out: “This is one of only two 16″ x 16″ high-quality prints, and has been autographed by John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jim C. Hines, Patrick Rothfuss, and Charles Stross, as well as photographer Al Bogdan. This would be a GORGEOUS piece to frame and hang over your couch, in your bedroom, or even in your office at work. You’ll be the envy of everyone you meet! Best of all, every penny raised from this auction will go to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation, supporting the girls and families fighting this condition and helping to fund research into the cause and, some day, a cure.”

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As various levels of funding were reached, fellow science fiction writers unlocked special fundraising treats. For instance, author Patrick Rothfuss shared an excerpt from his high school novel and novelist John Scalzi sang a lost Bob Dylan song.

Here’s more from the fundraiser: However, a new technology is becoming available—one that may offer his doctors a better option for treating the cancer. We’re trying to raise funds to allow Jay to have whole genome sequencing. There is a small possibility that the results of such a test, which is more comprehensive than conventional genetic testing of tumors, may suggest a treatment path that Jay’s doctor’s may not have considered, and that could be life saving. It’s a really small chance, and Jay knows that. For this fundraiser, we have asked some science fiction and fantasy writers to donate an “Act of Whimsy” which they will share with the community as we reach milestones in our fundraising.

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Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the winners–including the complete text of the winning novella, novelette, short story and graphic story. Be sure to check out John DeNardo‘s SF Signal blog, winner of the best fanzine award.

Here’s more about the awards:  “The 2012 Hugo Award winners were announced on Sunday evening, September 2, at the at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago. The ceremony was hosted by Chicon 7 Toastmaster John Scalzi.”

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Science fiction novelist John Scalzi will release the next book in his Old Man’s War series as a digital episodic novel. The Human Division serial will begin in December.

Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden outlined the strategy in the release: “The Human Division will be an experiment: an episodic novel, released initially in digital, serialized form. Currently the plan is to publish these episodes weekly between December 2012 through February 2013. Like the episodes of a good high-end cable drama, each one will have enough internal integrity to work as an enjoyable chunk of story on its own, but each will advance a ‘season’-long storyline as well.”

The book will be released in traditional formats next year, once the experiment has concluded. Hayden hopes that the price for the complete serialized novel will be “about the same as buying the full eBook.”

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Scalzi (pictured, via) reminded readers that before Facebook, Internet users migrated between AOL, Friendster, MySpace and other sites. He encouraged writers to use trendy tools to connect with readers, but stressed the importance of owning a steady domain like “www.yourname.com.”

Here’s an excerpt from his blog post: “If you’re going to be online, it’s best to have a site that isn’t at the whims of stock evaluation, or a corporate merger, or an ambitious executive’s ‘content strategy,’ or whatever. Ultimately, your online home should be something you control, and something you can point the people at Facebook (or MySpace, or Friendster, etc) to. Having one’s own domain isn’t always simple and has its own share of headaches (as you will find if you ever have the need to change your ISP), but at the end of the day what it has is stability.”

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Scalzi discussed the news on his blog: “The movie that is eventually made of Old Man’s War will be an adaptation of the book — not the book itself. The filmmakers are going to have to make changes…I wanted filmmakers I felt could best adapt what I wrote.”

Scalzi is a two-time Hugo Award-winning writer. After releasing Old Man’s War (2005), he followed up with three sequels: The Ghost Brigades (2006), The Last Colony (2007), and Zoe’s Tale (2008).

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All kinds of stories will be accepted, except slash fiction. The winner will earn 10-cents a word for the story, take home a set of Subterranean Press books, and get published in a special eChapbook with stories by Scalzi, Wheaton, Catherynne Valente and Patrick Rothfuss. Deadline is 11:59 pm EST on June 30, 2010. Read all rules and submit here.

Here’s more about the picture: “[W]hat is Wil Wheaton doing astride a unicorn unicorn pegasus kitten, in the INFAMOUS clown sweater, aiming a spear at an Orc version of me? … neither Wil nor I know how we got to the point where we are in the picture. We are open to theories. Theories in the form of fanfic. That’s right: We’re looking for fan fiction which explains what the holy hell is going on in that picture. Because if ever a work was made for fan fiction exegesis, it is the image above.”

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Next month we hope to host the world’s longest literary remix, letting individual GalleyCat Reviews readers rewrite short passages from a piece of public domain fiction. UPDATE: There is still time to sign up. The writing challenge officially begins on Monday, May 3rd.

We were inspired by the Star Wars: Uncut project showcased in the video embedded above. The project divided the Star Wars film into snippets and gave hundreds of filmmakers the chance to re-shoot one 15-second scene. The surreal results made this GalleyCat editor giddy–one filmmaker substituted dogs for actors and another fan replaced a starship with a hamburger.

We want to do the same thing with a piece of public domain fiction from 19th Century–letting you rewrite a passage from the out-of-date story in your own unique style. You can turn a flowery Victorian soliloquy into a stark Cormac McCarthy scene; refurbish wooden dialogue with Virginia Woolf stream-of-consciousness style; or rewrite a dull description with technicolor Thomas Pynchon prose.

Please join us on this grand experiment. If people are interested, we will give out prizes of some sort (most likely books) and feature some individual entries on GalleyCat. We will repackage the final product into a free eBook (complete with illustrations) that you can share with the world. Every contributing writer will receive a byline and a short biography in the remixed book.

Are you in? Email us today with the subject line “GalleyCat Remix” and we will add you to the list of contributors. If enough people sign up, we will band together to remix a 19th Century bestseller full of cheesy adventure, purple prose, wooden dialogue, crazy sermons, and plenty of Bad Writing.

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Last week Scalzi revealed that he will revisit the classic novel in a new kind of book: “I took the original plot and characters of Little Fuzzy and wrote an entirely new story from and with them. The novel doesn’t follow on from the events of Little Fuzzy; it’s a new interpretation of that first story and a break from the continuity that H. Beam Piper established in Little Fuzzy and its sequels.”

Here’s more about the deal, straight from Scalzi’s blog: “I’m deeply pleased to have the book find a home with Tor, which has published all my novel-length fiction to date, and which is filled with excellent people who have been a delight to work with. I’m very happy to be working with them again.”

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Earlier this week, novelist John Scalzi defended the column in a long post that has already generated more than one hundred comments. Here’s an excerpt: “Personally I think Cohen is pretty much correct. Speaking for myself (and only for myself), when I put out a book and you buy it for yourself in whatever format you choose to buy it in, the transactional aspect of our relationship is, to my mind, fulfilled. You bought the book once and I got paid once; after that if you get the book in some other format for your own personal use, and I don’t get paid a second time, eh, that’s life.”

The entire essay is worth reading. Add your thoughts in the comments section.

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This morning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) broke world records for smashing together elementary particles at high levels of energy–a physics project that has inspired a generation of authors with doomsday scenarios.

That photo (via CERN) shows scientists reacting to the experiment. To celebrate, GalleyCat Reviews rounded up reviews of books that use the Large Hadron Collider as plot device. Most famously, novelist Dan Brown wrote an apocalyptic scenario in Angels and Demons.

Here’s Janet Maslin‘s breathless review: “With ‘Angels and Demons,’ Mr. Brown introduced Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of art history and religious symbology who is loaded with ‘what his female colleagues referred to as an ‘erudite’ appeal.’ No wonder: the new book finds the enormously likable Langdon pondering antimatter, the big-bang theory, the cult of the Illuminati and a threat to the Vatican, among other things.”

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The Wrap covered the whole debate in an article, quoting this GalleyCat editor–who worried (but did not endorse) that it may be too late to convince readers to adapt to a price point higher than $9.99.

What do you think? Will readers pay more than $9.99?

Daily Finance writer (and former GalleyCat editor) Sarah Weinman thought publishers should work hard to combat that price point: “Amazon has done a great job of marketing the illusion that an e-book should be $9.99 … So how can publishers tell consumers, in clear terms, why $9.99 is bad and convince them that discount culture shouldn’t screw over the authors they profess to love?”

Here’s more coverage of this long, strange week: Macmillan received a supportive standing ovation at an industry program yesterday. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has dipped his toe into the eBook pricing debate. Macmillan author John Scalzi has rejected boycott and urged readers to buy books instead. Meanwhile, some Amazon customers continue to boycott Kindle books priced higher than $9.99. As of this writing, 1,724 different comments have been posted in response to Amazon’s note to customers about the price war.

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To help ease the financial strain, Macmillan author John Scalzi issued A Call for Author Support this morning. After ruling out a boycott, Scalzi listed a number of book buying alternatives online–urging readers to buy books by Macmillan writers who are affected most directly by the stand off.

Here’s an excerpt: “I have friends who are deeply worried right now about what this thing is doing to them, and they should be worried, because it’s going to hurt them if it drags out. Amazon is not the entire sales universe, to be sure, but it’s a significant chunk, especially for genre writers who build their communities online and sell a large percentage of their work online (and thus through Amazon) because of it…So rather than focus on what should happen to Amazon or Macmillan, here’s an idea, and here’s my point: let’s us focus on the writers, who are getting kinda screwed here. ”

To get you started, Scalzi posted these ideas: “Barnes and Noble. There’s Powell’s. IndieBound will hook you up. Specialty bookstores have their own web sites. You can often buy books online from the publishers themselves. Hell, even Walmart.com sells books.”

Add your favorite online or offline bookseller in the comments section. Let’s give readers more options during this difficult time for the industry…

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Here is an excerpt: “Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books, said this person, who did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

It appears that Macmillan books are still not available directly from Amazon, as you can see by following this link to John Scalzi‘s Old Man’s War or this link to William Poundstone‘s Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value.

We’ve contacted Amazon with a request for comment, and we will keep you updated as the story evolves. In the meantime, here’s more from BoingBoing and VentureBeat and John Scalzi and Munsey’s.

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9/3/08, 1731 EDT: John Scalzi explains how his latest short story, “Denise Jones, Super Booker,” went from completion to sale to online publication in just 13 minutes. OK, technically, it’s not being sold online, but it could’ve been!

(Also, thanks to the readers who pointed out that publishers like Harlequin and retail outlets like Amazon.com are already selling short stories as individual units.)

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