Say what you will about this Peter Watts guy, he sure has a way with punchy quotes. Just look at some of the one-liners he’s come up with that various folks have pinched for their sigfiles, or stuck on the sidebars of their blogs. Just look at all the pithy wisdom quoted on GoodReads: “Science [...]
I admit to being both gratified and surprised by the impact that Ray Bradbury’s death is having on the cultural landscape. It’s not that his legacy doesn’t deserve the attention; I simply didn’t expect society to give a shit. He was, after all, a writer in a culture where a quarter of the population doesn’t [...]
The last story I read by David Nickle left me impotent for a week. That was a compliment. I have never actually read a bad story by David Nickle. I read an opaque story by him once: it was called “Pants Are For Company”, and it was (roughly) about personification of the abyss. I didn’t [...]
Overcoming Bias is an erudite blog out out Oxford which focuses on the general theme of self-deception. It plays around with everything from God to zombies, from neuroeconomics to applied statistics. It is sometimes dry, but always substantive — and now, for a limited time only, it is also fucking hilarious. Blogger Eliezer Yudkowsky is [...]
It takes a while sometimes for electrons to get all the way out here to Gibralter Point, but my understanding is that Elizabeth won the short-story Hugo last night for “Tideline”. And though I hate her for her talent and her characters, I also love her for her talent and her character. So, way to [...]
So, my bud Dave Williams‘ The Mirrored Heavens is out, and garnering raves as well it should. And if you wander over to the appropriate Amazon page and click on the cover art, you’ll see a blurb dead center of the spread, courtesy of Stephen Baxter. But once you get your hands on the actual [...]
Sometimes, in defiance of entropy, little knots of complexity form in the universe and awaken. I have always found it deeply unjust that such knots, sooner or later, always stop. Each is unique, each cognizant, and if I were running things, the moment matter developed enough complexity to look around and start asking questions, well, [...]
Ah. I see my interview is featured in this month’s Locus. I get second billing to Charlie Stross, but hey — who doesn’t, these days? There I am in the lower right-hand corner (and I’m actually kinda glad the picture is small because I look a wee bit goofy in it). Haven’t read the final [...]
I may have mentioned a fellow by the name of Dave Williams (maybe not here — I know I’ve mentioned him in interviews, at least). The guy came at me out of the blue a few years back via a mutual friend, and asked me to check out some skiffy prose he was working on1. [...]
Rainbows End took home the Hugo, coming from behind to unseat Novik’s Dragon opus in the fourth round. Congratulations to Vernor Vinge; the first story I ever read by the man was “Bookworm, Run!”, back in the mid seventies — it actually first ran in 1966, from Analog — and after forty years in the [...]
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