Category: Miscellaneous
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Boskone 2016, Featuring ME!
Join me at Boskone (February 19-21, 2016) at the Westin hotel in Boston, MA for New England's longest running science fiction and fantasy convention. It's going to be a fun weekend filled with books, film, art, music, gaming, and more. For more information about Boskone, check out The Boskone Blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Visit the Boskone…
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David Hartwell
Earlier today I was at the memorial service for David Hartwell. It has been a week since he died, and in that week I have read a number of tributes, some heartbreaking, some funny, from his family and people who knew him for decades. I knew David for less than twenty years. I can't remember…
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We’re Living in a Japanese Anime Series
Terror and violence are spreading. War looms. And a couple of super-robots go to school. This is pretty much the plot of every Japanese animated series ever made. Except now it's reality. If you live in Greater Boston, this is bad news, because while it means you now have super-robots to defend the city against…
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Trader Joe’s Reaches the Pumpkin Singularity
Maybe it's because I grew up in Louisiana. Pumpkin pie was not a common dessert when I was a kid. At Thanksgiving we ate pecan pie, and I remember my grandmother making sweet potato pie a few times. I heard of Pumpkin pie, from the song "Over the River and Through the Woods" or various…
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Excerpt From A Neglected Collaboration
Piglet has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and irresponsible things about what he saw in the Heffalump trap: "the empty jar", "the fawn-colored fluff", "the nameless cylinder", "the condensated milk", "the primal gold jelly", "the West Pole", "the eyes in the darkness", "the very bouncy animal", "the Thing of Little Brain" and other bizarre conceptions;…
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Empire of the Dragon Khan
That's actually a pretty good fantasy novel title . . . This weekend I will be an "attending professional" (kind of like a guest, only not as cool) at Dragon-Con in Atlanta. You can find me (if you can find anything in the massive crowd of Star Wars stormtroopers, anime catgirls, superheroes, and Klingons) at…
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The Decline of Musical Hipness
For half a century, music was the badge of hipness. What you listened to determined if you were a cool, enlightened person or not. Clothing, hair styles, taste in movies, political opinions — these all had a role, but ultimately music trumped everything. You could be the coolest kid in high school with all the…
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Congratulations to Nebula Winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2015 Nebula Awards, chosen by the members of SFWA. This year's honorees are: Jeff VanderMeer, for his novel Annihilation Nancy Kress, for her novella "Yesterday's Kin" Alaya Dawn Johnson, for her novelette "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" Ursula Vernon, for her short story "Jackalope Wives." The Ray…
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Accidental Prophets and Texas Sharpshooters (Part 1 of 4)
One thing I've discovered about being a science fiction writer is that it somehow makes me into a futurist. Because I write stories with spaceships and aliens in them, people think I must have some kind of inside line on how the world is going to look a century from now. In fact, that seems…
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Science of Sci-Fi at M.I.T.
Tomorrow evening I'll be entering the august and notoriously long halls of the mighty Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take part in a panel discussion on "The Science of Sci-Fi." It will be held in M.I.T. Room 4-231 (wherever that may be) at 7:30 p.m. on May 13, and is open to the public. We'll…
The Cambias Digression 