Well, I did it again: led the Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop (created by science fiction and fantasy author James van Pelt) at a writing conference, this time, Wordbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Here’s the story I …
It’s time for this year’s Kickstarter to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume V, the fifth in the series of anthologies featuring science fiction and fantasy by authors who were guests on my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The …
It takes money to publish books, and most of that money flows out the door before the book is released and sales begin, so my publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, is turning to Crowdfundr to help …
Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth anthology featuring authors who were guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, is now available everywhere, including directly from Shadowpaw Press. Here’s a handy universal URL with links to …
My publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, has three great titles coming out in the first two months of 2024, all of them science fiction or fantasy. The first two, The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv and …
Here’s another seven-sentence short story! I ran the workshop again at Ganbatte, an anime convention in Saskatoon. It went well, and here’s the one I created, again with the instructions, created by noted SF short-story …
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A first step toward the future of Andy Nebula?
My 1999 YA science fiction novel Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star (which you can read online, or download, in its entirety) postulated a future in which company called Sensation Singles uses a computer to identify the next “big thing” on the interstellar music scene, plucks a person matching that description from musical obscurity, and raises them up to interstellar stardom.
Well, look what just popped up in my RSS feed from EurekAlert:
Spotting the next great music superstar
For every rock star who hits it big, there are thousands of artists who never make it out of their own back yards. Before Madonna was “Madonna,” she was a local success in New York clubs. Until Britney Spears became a global pop superstar, she performed in dance revues in her native Louisiana.
But how can you tell who will make it onto the Billboard charts and who will never get beyond the local bar circuit? Professor Yuval Shavitt, of Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering, has developed software that can accurately predict the next big music phenomenon. His software could become a profitable tool for music producers and record labels ― and a boon to young people who want to be in the know.
Read the whole thing.
Apparently I was more of a prognosticator than I knew!
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2008/12/a-first-step-toward-the-future-of-andy-nebula/
My 1999 YA science fiction novel Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star (which you can read online, or download, in its entirety) postulated a future in which company called Sensation Singles uses a computer to identify the next “big thing” on the interstellar music scene, plucks a person matching that description from musical obscurity, and raises them up to interstellar stardom.
2 comments
ah, when I saw the title ‘Future of Andy Nebula’, I hoped there was news of him making the jump to film or TV….whatever became of that?
I recall reading somewhere that Chumbawumba engineered “Tubthumping” to be a hit so they could make a bunch of money quickly, then go back to making the music they really wanted to make. There’s evidently a “hit” algorithm floating around…