Archive for eulogy

The Senior Emissary from Moo.

She 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 […]

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The Man Behind the Infodump: Denis Lynn, 1947-2018.

There’s a chapter three-quarters of the way through Maelstrom— “Mug Shot”, it’s called. It’s an executive summary of the apocalyptic microbe βehemoth.  It contains such gems as βehemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino listeriolysin analog. βehemoth then competes with the […]

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Colossus.

  Two ARCs sit on the bedside table, here in the Magic Bungalow. One waits for a blurb from the BUG, the other for a blurb from me. They represent my most recent interaction with the NY publishing industry. They were both sent by David Hartwell, of Tor. On my brag shelf is an old […]

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The Man I Am Today.

So much I was saving up. The conclusion of the Kawasaki Chronicles. Experimental protocols for dealing with AI-equipped toilets. Fiblets from upcoming stories in Tor.com and Neil Clarke’s latest anthology. Even some award that J. Pekka Mäkelä’s translation of Blindsight just won over in Finland. I was saving it all up for my return to […]

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The Halting Problem.

  You know you’re asking for it.When you turn down the kittens, because everybody and their dog adopts kittens. When you seek out the battered one-eared guys with pumpkin breath and rotten teeth and FIV, the old bruisers who’ve spent their lives on the street because who else is gonna give them a home? Even […]

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No Pictures. Only Words.

I don’t have any pictures of my father. I just realized that now, two days after he died sitting on a toilet in frigid fucking Edmonton, 2700 km from home. He was visiting my brother. He was supposed to be back by December 21st, we were going to go out for dinner before Christmas. But […]

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Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall

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 […]

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The Black Knight. In Memoriam.

Two months ago my brother Jon — my senior by eight years — suffered a stroke which bled into his cerebellum. The time since has been, as his wife Tracy described it, a roller coaster: neurosurgeons reluctant to operate while Jon was on heart meds, cardiologists unwilling to take him off those meds for fear […]

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The Life Sausage

A while back I was trying to explain “quality of life” to my stepdaughters— why sometimes it’s okay to die young, why sometimes a long life can be the most terrible of fates. I invented a simple graphic to help make the point. Imagine time along the x-axis: quality-of-life along the y, but as a […]

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The Inspirational Undead.

Apparently this is the day when the blogosphere and the twitterverse and everybody who thinks the world is holding its breath to hear their latest breadfruit recipe weighs in on What Happened This Year and What This Portends for Next Year and how everyone should Dream Big And Hug Someone.  If that’s what you’re looking […]

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