As I write this, Twitter is dead. Not just down with the usual overusage whale or twittery bird, but completely dead as in their home page won't even come up.

This begs the question of how useful the service really is when it seems to spend so much time being down instead of up. Over on Men with Pens, there's a lengthy discussion going on about just that subject.

I've been using Twitter since my initial post about how I didn't get it. I like it well enough now. I don't use it all the time or even every day, but it was recently #2 on my list of driving traffic to my site (it only recently fell to #3 behind StumbleUpon), so in that respect it's been a boon. I also like the quick interaction it provides with others. However, when it's down, it's down, and not of much use to anyone.

One solution for when Twitter is down and you still want to twit is Twiddict. Think of Twiddict as an offline version of Twitter. Ahhh, maybe that's not the best way to describe it, but Twiddict queues your twits for you until the Twitter service comes back up. Then, when Twitter decides to come back up, it shoots them over. I've just tried using the service, so I can't attest to it's reliability, but it's a good idea and certainly interesting how niche apps crop up to fill gaps created by other applications or services.

Just a short list this time. Have a good one.

Online collaboration lands young authors book deal
Two 21-year-old women have landed a book deal after writing a book together online in only 18 days. Danielle Bennett, from Victoria, and Jaida Jones, from New York, managed to attract the attention of a major publishing house with a fantasy novel featuring flying metal dragons, magicians and an all-out battle between warring rivals.

Twelve Books You Should Read at the Beach This Summer
It's boiling hot up here in the Earth's northern hemisphere, so hopefully at some point you'll find yourself vacationing at a beach — or at least lounging near a large body of water. And when that happens, you'll need a really awesome scifi adventure to read while you sip a cold drink and pretend you never have to go back to your desk at the Ministry of Information.

Tor's latest free e-book giveaway is In the Midnight Hour by Patti O'Shea.

Ms. O'Shea has an impressive list of books to her name with a definite slant towards the romantic.

From the author's web site:

Ryne is a magical troubleshooter, sworn to protect the innocent from being harmed by magic—and she's been chasing Anise, her former mentor, for six years.

Deke is a private investigator who knows something key to defeating Anise.  But Anise cast a dark spell over him, and even though Ryne has managed to temporarily lift the curse, Deke can't remember what it is that he knows.

Ryne has sworn to never get involved with a human, but Deke is sexy, charming, brave and irresistible—and as Ryne and Deke are pulled further into Anise's evil schemes, it's harder and harder for Ryne to resist the attraction.

But dark magic has its own attraction, and in order to defeat Anise and lift Deke's curse permanently, Ryne will have to risk following in Anise's footsteps and succumbing to the lure of the darkness...

Hmmm… sounds like romance and paranormal all wrapped into one. Not my usual thing, but what the heck. It's free.

Download this e-book in the following formats:

PDF | HTML | ZIP | MOBI

For a running list of all of Tor's free e-books, go here.

The Wertzone continues The SFX Top 100 List with numbers 1 through 50.

Who's #1? Terry Pratchett.

I was happy to see some of my favorites: Michael Moorcock, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson, Stephen King, and others.

Away with the fairies
The massive success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy led to the green-lighting of many fantasy movies, but what about those classics that have yet to be re-imagined?

SF/F Writers Who Blog
Comprehensive listing of author's who blog.

Dystopian Science Fiction Can Save The World
The Sci Fi Channel did an online poll, through its Visions For Tomorrow initiative, to find out the top "things to read, watch and do to save the world." And the winners were dark tales of a world gone to hell, including Blade Runner, 1984, Firefly, the new Battlestar Galactica and The Matrix.

Artificial Islands of the Dead Sea
The Dead Sea, a body of water that sits at the nexus of several political hot spots in the Middle East, has been a source of contention for decades. Now a New York City architecture firm called Phu Hoang Office has proposed a way to turn the sea into a thriving center for tourism and eco-research.

Proto-DNA from Meteorites Kick-Started Life on Earth
How life got started on Earth is still a big problem for scientists. The story goes something like this: "Well, there was this primordial soup of amino acids and stuff, then maybe there was some lightning, or something, and then ::mumble, mumble:: and then we had life."

How Much Science Do You Need To Know To Write Science Fiction?
Farthing and Tooth And Claw author Jo Walton is widely regarded as one of the best writers of fantasy right now, and she won the John W. Campbell award for the best new writer of speculative fiction. So why does she feel she can't write science fiction? Because, she explains on her journal, she knows too much science to write utter nonsense […]

Author Sues Booksellers for Selling His Books
A few weeks ago John Mitzel, proprietor of Calamus Books in Boston, was surprised to open his mail and discover he'd been named in a lawsuit filed by an author.

Newly found planets make case for 'crowded universe'
European astronomers have found a trio of "super-Earths" closely circling a star that astronomers once figured had nothing orbiting it.

Photos: Ian Fleming and how he forged a Bond
The Imperial War Museum in London is marking the 100th anniversary of writer Ian Fleming's birth with an exhibit that explores his life and work.

The latest issue of SFX features the "Top 100 Favorite SF and Fantasy authors of all time – voted for by SFX readers".

Approximately 185 people voted on the SFX Forum for the list. But more than 3,000 other votes were also counted for the list, which makes it far bigger than any of the other recent online polls.

The Wertzone lists them out for us non-subscribers starting with the bottom 50. The remaining fifty are to follow.