I finished the last of 32 Finncon slides today. Here’s #25. Now all I have to do is write a talk that has at least a tenuous connection to the other 31. In other news, an excerpt from an upcoming article in The New Yorker: There are people here who repeatedly drown themselves in […]
The Point of the Exercise.
Category: fiblet“The Bicamerals would think of it as more of a— a pilgrimage, I suppose.” His mouth tightened at one corner: a small lopsided grimace. “You remember the Theseus mission.” It was too rhetorical for a question mark. “Of course.” “You know the fuelling technology it used— uses.” Brüks shrugged. “Icarus cracks the antimatter, masers out […]
Guest Post: Pimping the Prognosticators.
Category: miscNot by me this time. Not even about me, a couple of gratuitous paragraphs notwithstanding. I’m currently hunched over a pint of Keith’s waiting for the BUG to show up, and subjecting Echopraxia to its final polish before I send it off next week. If I was going to show you anything, it would be […]
A Terminator with Training Wheels
Category: interviews, public interface, relevant techSo I was going to treat you to another fiblet today, but when you intersect previously-unposted excerpts with spoiler-free excerpts the overlap drops down into the single digits and the piece I wanted to post still needed a bit of work anyway (too many colons). Which is what I was working on before this happened: […]
Why I Suck.
Category: Dumbspeech, ink on artSo I’ve just sat through an entire season — which is to say three measly episodes, in what might be the new SOP for the BBC (see Sherlock) — of this new zombie show called “In the Flesh”. Yeah, I know. These days, the very phrase “new zombie show” borders on oxymoronic. And yet, this […]
A Few More Things.
Category: ink on art, On the Road, public interface, writing newsArt and updates, mainly: looks like I’m going to be back in Nantes this November for a return engagement at Utopiales, the massive French con that roots itself in Jules Verne’s home town. Caitlin and I were there back in 2010, and loved it. I am not just delighted to be going back, I am […]
Worst Date Ever.
Category: Dumbspeech, fiblet“Catch.” He turned, flinched, brought his hands up barely in time to catch the box sailing towards him. It might have held a large pizza, judging by size and shape; maybe three of them, stacked. Scasers, adhesives, bladders of synthetic blood nestled in molded depressions under the lid. Some kind of bare-bones first-aid kit. “Fix […]
A Momentary Lapse of Reason: An Appeal to the Hack-Savvy
Category: miscMy wife has just watched a big chunk of her life disappear: every e-mail or Gchat she ever sent or received since 2007. This is how it began: In a moment of dumbness, Caitlin clicked on the link: believe it or not, given the specific context of the missive it was actually plausible that it […]
Giving Up on Life.
Category: biology, interviews, just putting it out there..., public interfaceThe ‘crawl’s been kinda quiet lately, mainly because I am (for the second time in as many years) on the last lap of this dumb novel. I am, in fact, committed to delivering the damn thing to Tor before I leave for FinnCon — and I’m on track to do that, if I don’t let […]
Mind Hives Remastered
Category: economics, just putting it out there..., neuro, public interface, sentience/cognitionSo. The 2013 Aurora Ballot came out a few days ago. Once again, I hadn’t been paying much attention because I didn’t actually publish anything last year. Once again, I got a phone call telling me that whatever I talked about at last fall’s SpecFic Colloquium got me onto the ballot anyway, under “Best Fan […]