Well, it took a couple of months, but the commentary for Colonies of Kobol is complete. The whole thing is 2,631 pages in Word with about 400 being the added commentary. That's a lot of pics, show connections, linguistic discussions, and so on. A lot.
You may recall a previous blog post wherein I was worried about the file size. Well, yeah. That's still a concern. (Warning: lots of talk about how the sausage is made follows.)
Smashwords, the ebook publishing site I use, has a limit of 15MB when it comes to uploading .doc files. The final version of CoK SE (with low-quality images) is 20.1MB. So that's out. However, they also allow uploading epub files and the limit on those is 20MB.
I've experimented with this and here's how it went. Calibre can make epub files from .docx files, so I converted the book from .doc to .docx and then ran it through Calibre. I don't know what black magic it utilizes, but the final epub file was only 5.9MB. Seeing that, I decided to create a version of the book with high-quality images. Well, that .doc file was 33MB, but after converting it to an epub, it was 18.7MB. Huzzah!
But there's a problem. Smashwords apparently employs rigorous standards for the epubs they allow to be published and their site specifically mentioned Calibre (and other programs) as often providing files that get rejected. They run the epubs through EPUBCHECK, which is apparently a standard for those files agreed upon by some sort of international cabal. I downloaded a program that allows me to check the files myself and, expecting the worst, I went ahead and ran CoK SE through. To my unending surprise, it got a green check mark and "OK."
I mean, my formatting isn't crazy because Smashwords also has rigorous criteria for their .doc uploads. I assumed with all of my footnotes and links to and fro in 90%+ chapters, it would throw off something. But it didn't.
I'm cautiously optimistic for next March when CoK SE will be published. My plan is to upload the epub to Smashwords and see what happens. If it ends up getting rejected, I'll have a contingency standing by, perhaps the barebones "no commentary" version that barely fit under 15MB but includes links to my Google Drive with the full version.
So there you go. I'll let both LoK SE and CoK SE sit and marinate for a bit. Then, in the fall, I'll give the commentaries another pass and be ready to publish the first one in December. As planned.
Thanks for reading.
Great news, loved the earlier versions and am looking forward to reading the special editions. I was planning to do a 20th anniversary re-watch from December to March so this is a nice coincidence!
ReplyDeleteVince from Oz
Have you ever considered a Ships of the ETY3rd universe? Maybe a side view of the various ships from the original pre LoK Larsans up to the Aetherjet? I'd love to see those and some of the 12 colonists original ships. I know it sounds daunting but maybe even focus on the Aetherjet and the Larsans ships, your could really go to town on those.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about FTL in your universe ? Was the original Larsans FTL tech more advanced than say the level of Galactica era cylons? When Apollo had to have the FTL tech rediscovered, maybe something was lost in the translation and it wasn't as advanced| as it originally was?Il
I can't remember if the Colonials kept FTL after they came to the Cyrannus system, or lost it like the 13th tribe did?
It kinda of boggles the mind how a civilization changing tech like FTL could be lost? No records or anything? That is kind of like forgetting how to make cars, or airplanes, etc.. I would have made sure that tech was archived and all info related to stored and made generational.
I've thought about making illustrations to put in the special edition, but I only rarely visualized anything specific. For example, the Aetherjet I imagine as being like a larger Gunstar from "The Last Starfighter," but with eight engines ... basically something that can be built up and up until it resembles the giant eight-armed Colony. I'm not sure I could create something interesting enough or good enough (more importantly). I can mimic a WWII propaganda poster for the Cylon War, but I'm not sure how much further my artistic talents extend.
DeleteAs far as which tech is more advanced ... I have no clue. We know Cylons were more advanced than Colonials, but we don't know how many jumps it took to get the fleet to Earth I. (In Lords of Kobol, I said it would take the Thirteenth Tribe 697 jumps to get from Kobol to Earth I, so I would suggest that their version of FTL maybe wasn't so hot. But the version made for the exiles got them to the colonies in about a month so ... who knows.)
I can't recall if you've read Colonies of Kobol, but FTL technology (along with almost everything else) was largely lost because of the "regression" suffered when the exiles fled Kobol. They didn't bring factories and such with them; it was mostly just the people and the vast majority of them were stagnant people who did little more than live lives on the Stream. An attempt was made to preserve some of that knowledge (the Stones of Kobol), but they didn't last and Virgon, the only ones to strive to return to that level of technology, was pretty much only interested in regaining FTL so they could spread out to the other worlds.
Take care.