I guess it’s kind of official — my short story “The Eyes of God” is going to appear in that Solaris anthology I was cringeing about the other day. Dave Nickle thinks it comes a wee bit close to being pro-pedophile, but hey — at least I’m officially writing again. I wonder if NAAMBLA publishes […]
You Take What You Can Get
Category: public interface, writing newsSnagged from some online promotional pdf from Tor; looks like the trade paper is officially set for March ’08. The lurid red border seems to be absent this time around, and the title font actually looks quite cool; one can only hope they gave it a different colour than the split-pea soup tint of the […]
We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Carbon
Category: extraterrestrial lifeOkay, now here’s a paper to kick your paradigms a little off-kilter: self-replicating, mutating complex structures built from inorganic dust, kick-started into a form of rudimentary “metabolism” by charged plasmas. For want of a better word, Life. Inorganic life. Spawned from starting conditions reasonably common in deep space, if I’m to believe the commentary. Of […]
Housekeeping
Category: blindsight, ink on art, public interface, reviewsIn between not doing the paying stuff I’m supposed to be doing and checking out the various articles and links you folks have sent my way over the altruism essay (thanks for all of that, btw — there was a lot of good stuff in there and it actually changed my thinking somewhat), I managed […]
XFire PrePostMortem
Category: public interface, writing newsI’m just decompressing after one hellaciously frenetic hour answering questions, along with Mssrs. Vinge and Stross, on XFire. The way it worked was, attendees asked questions in one chatroom; XFire staff selected some to paste in a separate room; we authors selected the ones we wanted to answer from that room, and posted said answers […]
Selfish Bastards, Every One
Category: just putting it out there..., rant, sociobiologyNow and then I’ve fielded questions — in interviews, private e-mails, maybe even here in the ‘crawl — about my reductionist take on human nature. In particular, a lot of folks are not comfy with my dissing of altruism, which (if it ever does arise in a population) is likely to get weeded out real […]
I’m not dead yet.
Category: whingeJust another couple of placeholders while I shovel sand against the tide. Placeholder #1: the observation of a certain correlation in the skiffy community: Group A: “Blindsight would definitely be my choice for the Hugo, if I were voting. Which I’m not.” Group B: “Blindsight is good/crappy/great for wrapping fish, but it didn’t get my […]
This. Is. The. Real. Peter. Watts. Speaking. This. Is. Not. An. Android. Imposter. No. Way.
Category: ink on art, writing newsOkay, the comments were touching enough, but I’m starting to get emails now. Even a phone message. Time to put these ugly rumours to rest. First of all, I didn’t know you cared. I am touched. Second of all, I am still alive and reasonably healthy. There have just been a number of deadlines keeping […]
Guest Stars
Category: fellow liars, miscToday we take time to honour the works of others, especially when such works reflect well on me in some way. First up is this cool rendition of Lenie Clarke, rendered by one Brian Prince (who quite needlessly apologises for its “hastiness”). I love the look and the apocalyptic mood of this piece. I even […]
We’re Number Three! We’re Number Three!
Category: fellow liars, writing news…”We”, of course, being Jo Walton and myself, who (as you all must know by now even though I’m only getting around to posting it now) tied for third on the Campbells. We came in just behind Morrow’s The Last Witchfinder in second place, while the lot of us lost to Ben Bova’s Titan, the […]