If you read The Atlantic, you may have heard the news: A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked! Libet’s classic eighties experiments, the first neurological spike in the Autonomist’s coffin, has been misinterpreted for decades! Myriad subsequent studies have been founded on a faulty and untested assumption, the whole edifice is a house […]
The Senior Emissary from Moo.
Category: eulogyShe hated me on sight. I don’t know why. Her compatriot, Nutmeg, was a furry little slut who climbed into my lap the moment we met and wouldn’t stop talking (still hasn’t, actually). But Minion— back in the early days, Minion would hurtle towards the front door at the sound of someone entering the house […]
The Oxymoronic Earth
Category: ink on art(A Nowa Fantastyka remix) Lers of Spoi. You Have Been Warned. “The Wandering Earth” is the most successful movie I almost never heard of. It’s China’s second-highest grossing movie ever. Globally it’s the 3rd-highest grossing film so far this year, and the 2nd-highest grossing non-English movie of all time. Yet I blinked and missed […]
The Clipperton Conundrum
Category: deep sea, rifters, science. . Two obscure yet related things happened this month: Jonathan Strahan’s Mission Critical anthology was released, containing (among many other worthy works) my story “Cyclopterus“; and The IUCN announced the first species to receive “endangered” status due to deep-sea mining. For those who haven’t read “Cyclopterus” (pretty much all of you, judging […]
The Belligerence of Stoneburner
Category: blindsight, ink on artMeet two of the most remarkable hominins to ever cross the threshold of the Magic Bungalow: Those in the know recognize them as the custodians of the World’s Ugliest Cat, but they are more widely known as the Industriogothronica1 duo Ego Likeness. Donna Lynch is also a poet and a horror writer and a Stoker […]
The Understated, Underrated Genius of Counterpart.
Category: ink on artThere was a time when I lamented the cheesiness of televised science fiction. Sure, Star Trek and Babylon 5 played with cool ideas— ideas you wouldn’t encounter anywhere else on the broadcast landscape— but why, when recommending them to the uninitiated, did I always have to start with “If you can look past the acting/writing/production […]
Meta2
Category: AI/robotics, Omniscience, writing news“Get used to disappointment.” —The Dread Pirate Roberts First, the PSA: Yeah, Freeze-Frame has evidently made the finals for the Campbell. Given its cohabitation with nine other worthy finalists, I’m not holding my breath. Realistically, I expect FFR will not win the Campbell a full day before it doesn’t win the Locus. On the plus […]
The Hypersonic Weaponised Yogurt Award Nomination
Category: writing newsWelcome to the Starfish Initiative The green icon on the map represents the realtime location of an unmanned hypersonic glide vehicle carrying an explosive payload of 300 kilotons. You are one of a million participants randomly selected from the online community to choose its target. Use your keyboard, joystick, or saccadal interface to move […]
Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor.
Category: writing newsSo that’s the title they went with. My suggestion was simply “Revenge Fantasies”, but apparently in the #MeToo era such a phrase, in isolation, is too evocative of “revenge porn”. I believe the whole sentient tumor thing was originally coined by Analee Newitz. As titles go, I admit that it rocks. I’m surprised to be […]
Late Notice, Long Distance
Category: On the Road, public interfaceI’ve been head down lately: writing a story to accompany an upcoming art installation on Hypersonic Glide Vehicles, gearing up for a class talk at York University, and— weighing most heavily— preparing for a symposium/workshop over in Hungary, under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Köszeg (iASK for short). The title of the […]