GPF News Archive

Greetings, Faulties new and old! Two News posts in one month! This must be a sign of the impending apocalypse...

FLOSS Weekly Aftermath: I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for your wonderful support of our FLOSS Weekly appearance. The entire experience was exciting, frightening, and hilarious, and it was a complete and utter blast. I especially want to thank Chris Wright and Chris Kohler for agreeing to step in front of the firing squad with me, and Randal L. Schwartz, Leo Laporte, and Jono Bacon for letting us make idiots of ourselves before their international audience. The official audio podcast can be found here, while a captured copy of the live video stream can be streamed or downloaded from here. If you haven't given it a listen yet, please do; there were tons of great information and ideas floated around, including some interesting ideas about where Open Source software and online comics intersect.

GPF Book #5 Finally On Its Way: I'd also like to officially announce that after an uncomfortable five year absence, GPF is finally returning to print. This was announced long ago to our Premium subscribers, but the fifth GPF book is now on its way to the printers. And it's title is definitely a whopper: $ which spoon /usr/bin/which: no spoon in $PATH. I'd say that's no joke, but it actually is a joke—a rather bad UNIX/The Matrix joke. I know it's a bear to say or type, but personally I think the joke is worth it.

As with our previous books printed by Plan Nine, this book encompasses an entire year of GPF; in specific, it covers Year Five (November 2002 to October 2003) and picks up immediately after the events of Surreptitious Machinations. It includes all the strips from that year minus crossovers, and features such important stories as "The Counsel of Ethendale", "A View to a Kill -9", "Sister Sharon", and of course "The MUTEX ReBooted". Unlike our previous books, however, it will be coming from a brand new publisher: Moonbase Press, the same folks who are currently printing the latest "Kevin & Kell" books by Bill Holbrook. The book will be $15.95 USD (plus shipping and handling) and we're already taking pre-orders. Hopefully the books will be shipping as soon as the Moonbase folks return from Dragon*Con this week. You can place your pre-orders now in the Moonbase Press Store.

Now, I'm sure certain aspects of this little News item are going to raise some questions. Yes, we're starting out with "Book #5", but that doesn't necessarily mean that Moonbase will be reprinting Books 1-4 as they previously existed. Odds are these books will eventually have the same basic content (i.e. Moonbase book #1 will have the same strips as Plan Nine book #1), but they will likely have different titles, covers, and potentially bonus material. I know that some folks may complain about having to "buy the same book twice", but nobody's twisting anyone's arms to do so. We're also not sure in what order future Moonbase books will be coming out. The decision to start with "Book #5" was a difficult one, but the rationale was that this book will be new to everyone and not just folks who have never bought a previous GPF book, so there's plenty of incentive for everyone to buy it, whether just starting out or expanding their old collection. Personally, I'd like to alternate between reissuing the old books and releasing new books (say, start with #4, then #6, then #3, etc.), but that hasn't been discussed at length. The bottom line is that we still have a lot of things to negotiate and decide upon, but for now our top priority is to get new GPF books into your waiting hands. Keep checking back here regularly for potential updates. (And Premium folks should keep an eye on the Rumor Mill, as you'll probably get to hear much of this information first.)

Jeff's on Vacation: Finally, as you're reading this, I'm probably basking in the sun on an unnamed beach, working on enriching my golden tan. OK, in reality I'm probably hiding in an air-conditioned condo complaining about the heat while my wife forces me to slather on SPF 1000 sunblock so I won't spontaneously combust once I step outdoors. Our family will be on vacation all this week, and for once it will be a vacation from both my day job and the comic. While I'll have my trusty laptop and smart phone with me and I'll probably still be getting online regularly, I'll likely be online far less than usual and even slower to respond to e-mails, forum posts, tweets, and the like. Never fear, dear reader, as the site is programmed to keep chugging along without me and you should still get your daily dose every day this week. If you need to get in touch with me, please be patient and I'll respond as quickly as possible.

Algernon Dilemma and the Status Quo: And just another reminder: Jim Alexander's Algernon Dilemma reprints end this week (Tuesday, in fact), and we'll have a brief epilogue with Nick, Ki, and Prof. Wisebottom for Wednesday through Saturday. There will be no comic on Sunday, September 6th, and on Monday, September 7th, we will return to the Monday-Wednesday-Friday three-day-per-week update schedule we had prior to Jim's guest stint. The next story is a dozy—here's a hint: it features Todd and Mischief—and will be a bit heavier than Jim's light-hearted temporal romp. But that story will round out Year Ten, and Year Eleven will be filled with a lot more laughs and surprises.

See you next week, gang (assuming I don't spontaneously combust, of course)!