December 2011
6 posts
The List of Books I've Read This Year
Fiction:
THE CURSE OF CHALION*, Lois McMaster Bujold
PALADIN OF SOULS*, Lois McMaster Bujold
THE UNWRITTEN*, Vol 1, Mike Carey & Peter Gross
THE FOREVER WAR**, Joe Haldeman
FOREVER PEACE, Joe Haldeman
STARSHIP TROOPERS**, Robert Heinlein
THE SUN ALSO RISES, Ernest Hemingway
BONESHAKER, Cherie Priest
RED MARS*, Kim Stanley Robinson
HOMINIDS, Robert J. Sawyer
A FIRE UPON THE DEEP*,...
2 tags
Questionable Content
Hey! Today’s Questionable Content is also about robot civil rights.
Just like my published story, Artificial Ineptitude.
3 tags
As long as there is life, joy will never die.
As long as there is joy, light will never die.
As long as there is light, joy will never die.
As long as there is light, life will never die. This was a song in a dream I just had. It was being sung in a bomb shelter, during the apocalypse.
…cheery, non?
WatchThis is the movement that DHS held a conference call to “suppress.”
The police are SUPPOSED to be our army. They aren’t SUPPOSED to answer to DHS.
So why are they?
mollycrabapple:
Lou Reed using the people’s mic to declare his support of Occupy Wall Street. God, a man speaking in a proper New York accent, brings a tear to my fucking eye. This is beautiful
November 2011
3 posts
“Mark Schatzker, a Canadian satirist, told The Lede on Wednesday that it was “a...”
– The New York Times, “Satirist Surprised His ‘Occupy’ Fiction Was Cited as Fact.”
LOL Republicans.
Alternative headline: “People With Common Sense Not Surprised Conservatives Cited ‘Occupy’ Fiction As Fact.”
(via inothernews)
October 2011
21 posts
Best idea today: orbital art projects. Ten trillion LEDs in a wide orbit around Earth.
Anybody want to give me like a billion dollars? Kickstarter?
King of Vests: teal-deer: King of Vests: Your job... →
Hunh…I have fans now? Neat. Someday, I will post reviews of their fiction. It will be glorious.
I guess there’s a meme somewhere in here, and I don’t typically do memes, but since I’m replying anyway, might as well.
Uhhhh:
The 5th Scientist-Writer, in his brown suede trenchcoat, rushes in saying, “Trust me, I’m a writer!” with his companion (and...
2 tags
Can someone recommend good books about teenagers living in the Age of Sail?
4 tags
Hugo Review: AMERICAN GODS
Okay, so, I think before I begin this one I have a little disclosure to make: I didn’t actually read this one for the Hugo quest, but instead read it a couple of years ago because I wanted to read it. Generally speaking I’ve been skipping books that I’ve already read in the interests of time and not reviewing them because I felt my impression of them was too long ago to give a...
2 tags
What's The Difference Between FM And AM Radio?
fakescience:
1 tag
4 tags
"Artificial Ineptitude," by John Skylar →
My first published story.
Thanks to the editors over at The Cynic Online!
It’s an old story of mine, and I think I’ve moved beyond it a bit as a writer, but I think it’s a story that needed to be told. I’m so happy to see it in print.
2 tags
Thoughts on Writing Science Fiction
At NYCC, I went to a panel involving Cory Doctorow and Intel’s “Chief Futurist.”
During the panel, the idea of what it is a science fiction writer does—something that I think about and talk about basically all the time—was brought up.
The basic notion that the panelists put forward is that there’s nobody who should even try to predict the future, because for...
“What interests me is when people of one culture and class start following...”
– William Gibson, via thebronzemedal. So he has a nonfiction book coming out in January, and just like that I have the book I’m most looking forward to in 2012. (via davepress)
6 tags
Hugo Review: PALADIN OF SOULS
I continue with my quest to read all the Hugo award winners for best novel.
PALADIN OF SOULS is a lovely book by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s the sequel to the also excellent THE CURSE OF CHALION, which did not win the Hugo, but which I had to read in order to have the full context for this book.
PALADIN OF SOULS can be read on its own, but I think having read THE CURSE OF CHALION made it a...
1 tag
Someone appears to want to put short fiction that I wrote into print.
Cool. :)
Just signed the contract.
5 tags
A Point of Clarification
I remember back at the beginning of the financial crisis, I heard a lot of people I knew in finance saying how persecuted and scapegoated they felt about things. The cry, “Who is John Galt?” went out among them, since they felt they were somehow supporting all that was left of our banking system with little to no appreciation.
Of course in this narrative, they were seeing themselves...
s4mmich asked: www(.)occupiedworld(.)tumblr(.)com/ Spread the word <3, We are the 99%.
2 tags
1 tag
5 tags
Hugo Quest: HOMINIDS
It looks like I left off posting Hugo award book reviews after I read SPIN, by Robert Charles Wilson.
I read PALADIN OF SOULS after I read SPIN, but I said I’d review HOMINIDS next, so that’s what I’ll do.
HOMINIDS, as you can see, is a Hugo award winner for Best Novel written by Robert J. Sawyer. It won the Hugo in 2003. It’s about a neanderthal from a parallel...
September 2011
1 post
1 tag
Time to do a Little Explaining
Well, hello there. Blogging for yourself is still a thing, isn’t it?
There was a time when I wrote things on a blog called The Anachronist’s Blog. Back when I started that blog, I was working on a fiction project it was tied to, and I was focused solely on that fiction project. Not anymore.
Now I run a discussion group called Immodest Proposals through a thing I call Better...
May 2011
1 post
1 tag
April 2011
2 posts
Better Worlds: Immodest Proposals IX is in THREE... →
betterworlds:
Hey everyone! It’s been a long time since our last post on this, so we just wanted to post a reminder that the ninth Immodest Proposals discussion group meeting is in NYC in three days. For our NYC followers, we’d love to see you come out. Neurolaw tumblr Psydoctor8 will be in attendance.
The…
2 tags
March 2011
5 posts
hipsterlibertarian asked: You're welcome, and thanks for the discussion!
2 tags
Hey, people who followed me off of Whitechapel!
Thanks—I’ve just followed you all back. For some reason tumblr follower notifications didn’t make it to my mailbox, or I’dve been around sooner. Thanks for sticking out the wait.
Getting back into the mix of writing in character on blogger.
Slowly.
February 2011
5 posts
The Domino Effect
In the past few months I’ve seen a lot of articles decrying the false belief in the “domino effect” that the US used to justify its war in Vietnam. A lot of people like to use hindsight to inform about the validity of a pretext for war, when there are plenty of other reasons that the war in Vietnam was a bad idea. The Domino Effect itself did have some degree of legs, but...
1 tag
4 tags
Quick Book Review: SPIN, RC Wilson
Cover of Spin
Right, so the quest to read the Hugos continues.
I finished SPIN, by Robert Charles Wilson. Great book! It’s a mixture of hard science fiction and literary fiction. Strong characters and a world that obeys normal laws of science.
Unfortunately, this is often the exception in SF.
Beyond that, Wilson is a master of information control and when you turn the corners in his...
3 tags
From Many, One
Image via Wikipedia
Another written experiment for you:
Within a full state college graduating class of orchard products, misted lightly and displayed by the world’s largest supermarket, sits the perfect apple.
It is an apple without pretense, unshined by fake wax and unmarred by time. You might think it was perfectly red, like many of those around it, but no. This apple has just the...
January 2011
9 posts
5 tags
An Early Experience With Language
Like I’ve noted before, I’m trying to work more on how I employ and deploy words. I’m trying to bring each sentence up to a deliberately amazing level.
I want to be a word-ninja, and to do that I must meditate on every word. I must arrange the words as grains of rice, scrawled upon in unseen hand and seasoned with just the right amounts of sugar and vinegar.
This means...
5 tags
The Value of Belief in Scientific Research
I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing this post for some time.
I am, as some of the readers of this site know, a scientist by day. It’s pretty uncommon for a scientist to believe in any sort of deity, and it’s even less common for that belief to be something they broadcast. Belief in a deity is unsupported by data, and that means it’s not something you talk...
A Short Reminder →