Okay, Catch-Up Post #1: Ode to the Domestic Shorthair Cat. Just kidding. Readercon, the Good: met cool people. David Edelman, author of Infoquake , and shared commiseratory we-didn’t-win-the-Campbell beers. Jenny Rappaport, agent to a friend of mine who started out merely as a talented wannabe in search of advice — and whom I should have […]
The Best Piece of Prose I Ever Wrote.
Category: miscOh, so much to report. Readercon (at which I met some of you, who did not buy me nearly as many beers as I had hoped). The Campbell Decision (which one might normally call “controversial”, except as far as I can tell, reaction has been unanimous). The mysterious disappearance of 22 of the 30 reader […]
Going South
Category: writing newsScant posts for the next little while: I’m heading off to Readercon, just outside Boston, at the crack of dawn tomorrow. I may even see some of you down there, assuming I don’t end up the token white guy in the little room at the border because some slack-jawed imbecile at Customs doesn’t like the […]
Banana Does Not Look Like This
Category: fellow liars, interviews, writing newsBanana‘s a brown tabby with gloriously misshapen ears. This actually looks more like my first-ever cat, The Cate. (Except for the nose. The Cate had 63 dots on an otherwise flawlessly-pink nose.) But there are many good things about the illustrations for this Nature interview. For one thing, Banana makes two appearances, the second in […]
And Now for Something Completely Different…
Category: UncategorizedThese are pictures from the bottom of the earth. (Click on ’em for higher res.) Who needs alien planets? This is part of a transmission from the bottom of the earth, recently received from a very cool chick I met at Readercon last year, who works with satellites and builds raccoon-scaring robots as a hobby […]
Nature Nurtures.
Category: fellow liars, interviews, science, writing newsThe Nature interview went pretty well, after a start-up technical glitch or two. I had a blast. The ideas were thick upon the ground. (I especially liked Ken MacLeod’s premise of military robots developing self-awareness on the battlefield due to programming that gave them increasingly-complex theories-of-mind as a means of anticipating enemy behaviour.) I got […]
The New Superstar of the Science Fiction
Category: writing newsWhich is what Google’s translation software makes of der neue Superstar der Science Fiction, which is evidently what I am according to the Random House/Bertelsmann web page heralding the German edition of ButtPflug — er, Blindflug — which translates as “Blind Flight“, but that’s fine because the literal translation of “Blind Sight”— Blinder Anblick — […]
Canadian… Smugness… Failing… Must… Read…. Darwin…
Category: evolutionFrom yesterday’s Globe & Mail, this flabbergasting factoid: Only 51% of Ontario residents accept the reality of evolution. Even Americans do better, at 53%. Nationally, Canada beats the States in the Enlightenment Sweeptstakes — at 59% — but that’s not by very goddamn much. Sullen, resentful thanks to Dave Nickle for the link. Meanwhile The […]
A Motley Mosaic of Miscellaneous Minutiae
Category: writing newsSorry for the recent radio silence; been a lot going on lately, events to plan, agents to approach, interviewers to charm (not easy when you’re me), awards to lose (somewhat easier). Also, I was hoping to get back to some cool science postings, since a lot of cutting-edge stuff has been coming down the pike […]
Three Times the Scabbery
Category: fellow liars, writing newsToday’s edition of the Vancouver Province carries a piece by Peter Darbyshire on online fiction giveaways, focusing on three of us Creative Commoners: Cory Doctorow, David Wellington, and me. The layout in the dead tree edition is quite pleasing to the eye, showing one of Blindsight‘s alternate covers without comment (I love it when that […]