Introducing BitLit: Our New Literary Sub-Blog

We’re thrilled to announce a new sub-blog we’re launching today, BitLit. Bit, as in binary digits, Lit, as in literature! As far as we know, this is unique to the blogosphere in that we’ll be serializing entire novels and short stories—even some poetry, many published by major publishers like Random House. Every day, a new chapter until the entire story is complete.

Plus, we’ll be interviewing authors and having contests to give away free, autographed copies of their books!

Today, we launch with three stories:



The first is an amazing short story called Nomen Ludi by Rob Beschizza, our pal over at boingboing. If you’re a fan of old computer games, like those created for the Amstrad CPC, if you love that kind of nostalgia, you’re going to love this one. You can read the entire story right here.

Next, we present the critically acclaimed, Frostbite, by David Wellington. Nipped by a wolf during an Arctic camping expedition, Cheyenne Clark suddenly finds herself feeling ferally frisky when the moon is up in Wellington's far from routine werewolf tale. It turns out that Monty Powell, the loner who gives Chey refuge, is no ordinary guy, but the werewolf who turned her. But then Chey is no ordinary camper: she was sent to draw Monty out by a band of professional hunters who want the oil beneath the vast acreage Monty prowls—and to avenge the death of her father, whom Monty coincidentally slaughtered two decades before. Check out chapter 1 right here.

Finally, a novel that our own David K. Israel co-penned with author Jennifer Byrne called Trivial Pursuits, a novel that follows two protagonists as they try to come to grips with loss. Fareed is a 15-year-old Druze boy living in an RV cruising around Los Angeles with his father and trying to land a spot on the Jeopardy! Teen-tour. His world soon collides with Eos, an older girl who he quickly befriends and who is able to help him accept his mother's death. Meanwhile Amy, who lives miles away in the Valley, is trying to deal with the loss of her infant-daughter. She relies on the help of an extra-marital lesbian affair that might quite possibly be her undoing. Start with Chapter 1, right here.

Comments (3)

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@Readability

Thanks for the link. I like reading things off the web more than in book format because there are fewer lines so my eyes aren’t constantly skipping, so that margin size altering is great!
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mdarnton - you should try ouy the 'Readability' bookmarklet from http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ - makes reading on the web ever so much pleasanter.
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I see an immediate problem, and am surprised you don't, because your blog certainly doesn't have the same problem. The line lengths are just too long for comfortable reading, and they don't rewrap when the window size is changed, so there's no way to make them readable by changing window size to a comfortable line length.

Otherwise, I like the idea.
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I'm in the Science faculty... It may also have to do with the thing against pre-marital sex, since I notice that my faculty is predominantly asian. (75%+) Of course, I come from a city where there are a lot of asians. Also, in the Science faculty, the majority of the students are male lol.

It's not as bad as the engineering, where its pretty much all male. : P
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Im doing aerospace engineering. I spend plenty of time at the library and get pretty good grades. I used to be a real party animal, still am actually but not so much(no more spontaneous week long drinking binges in another country). I think why i do get laid and get decent grades at the same time is that i really enjoy learning new things. Im not even into it to get a *good job* or anything(i used to work in construction for 2 years and was making pretty good money with that).
The thing is that many *science nerds* that i study with seem to have no clue about what they are doing or why they are doing it. Most of them are afraid of *disappointing their parents. Some just drift along because doing math and science is the only thing they know. Being a science nerd does not prevent you from having sex. Having that narrow mindset, being under great pressure from your parents, being clueless about world outside of *go to uni-geta good job-become successful* is what actually isolates those people from society.
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What's even more amazing is that most virgins are male science nerds. And children. And the religious. And eunuchs. Actually it's not that amazing.
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I'm confused to what this study was getting at. It doesn't sound to be thought out very well. I mean, there could be the possibily that people that are naturaly socialy awquard stress their studies over socializing, or those that don't have the money to spend on higher education spend more time socialy. This research sounds too narrow minded to be really worth anything.
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I love studies which have results blown out of context.

What was studied? What were the controls for comparison? How was it blinded? The paper seems to indicate self-selection for starters, with a massive bias towards women responding over the boys.

There's some great science going on out there...and yet this is what newspapers latch onto? *sigh*

Athon
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Uhhh...I'm a female art student who's also a nerd (well, geek). What about me? Am I the exception to the rule?

Then again, I'm studying interactive media design, so maybe I'm a mix of both.
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Leokins..
this probably means that they cancel eachother out and you have a 'normal' sex life.
either that or the nerds* you draw with are too scared to talk to you and you have a.. less sexy sex life..

I don't know for sure cuz
I'm a male art student and a nerd and ain't gettin' any..
:\
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I am a female art student so I found this article amusing. I don't feel that it is true though. As far as I've seen, the Communications/Journalism majors are the most sexually active.
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I also think there's a contributing factor here that is explained well in the movie 'Idiocracy'. Basically, it seems the more intelligent people are (male or female), the less likely they will have kids (and if so, fewer). And vice versa (less intelligent leans towards having more kids). :P
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Is this study better than the 2007 MIT/Wellesley study? "Sexual Health" may be a more prestigious journal, but the study's sample size (n=185) seems awfully small. It looks like the MIT study was able to break down the categories with a lot more resolution.
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As a female who did an undergrad degree in a male field, I can attest to the truth of the article and tell you that some women in these science areas were able to easily obtain significant others. Basically, we were the only women whom these guys often talked to on a regular basis (even if it was only to compare answers for problem sets). And also, sometimes, we were the only women who shared significant interests with them and could relate to them and could tolerate some of their behavior (only some, there were some guys who were just hopeless and did things like not bathe for a week). Because of the male to female ratio in my field, I often had dates in college when my friends in the humanities had trouble located men they shared interests with.

There was an interesting phenomenon where sometimes you found yourself socializing a guy (on how to interact with women) only to have him be a better boyfriend for someone else.

I do want to point out that, at least when I was in college (yes years ago), the chinese and korean guys didn't lack for dates because they often had contact with others through ethnic student groups (like the chinese student association) but they could hold conservative views about sex.
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