Category: Miscellaneous
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What I’ve Been Up To
It's been a while since my last posting, due to a combination of being busy and being sick (and not getting well as fast as I'd like because of the busy component). Fortunately, I can make other people do the work for me. This podcast explains some of where I've been for the past month.…
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Please FORWARD This IMPORTANT WARNING!
I've been following the news about the upcoming vote on whether or not Scotland should leave the United Kingdom. Interesting stuff. But then I had a shocking realization: there is a Sinister Plan underlying the whole scheme, and I'm sounding the alarm to make sure everyone is aware of what's going on. Follow the timeline:…
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Diversity and DragonCon
In recent years the cozy cameraderie of the science fiction world has been disrupted by controversies over diversity and tolerance. We've been told that SF is too white, too male, and too straight, and that we need to Do Something to change that. I'm not going to grapple with the question of whether the demographics…
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Here Be Dragons: Dragon-Con 2014
My talented wife Diane Kelly was invited to participate in this year's Dragon-Con in Atlanta as a science panelist. I tagged along, for several reasons. My first priority was to work in a little book promotion for A Darkling Sea and the upcoming Corsair. To that end I volunteered to help man the SFWA table…
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Congratulations Hugo Winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 Hugo awards, and to all the nominees. The winners: Best Novel: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie Best Novella: "Equoid" by Charles Stross Best Novelette: "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Kowal Best Short Story: "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu Best Related Work: We Have Always…
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Armadillocon, Featuring ME!!
This coming weekend I will be a guest at Armadillocon 36, in charming Austin, Texas. If you happen to be deep in the heart of Texas this weekend, come by. Here's what I'll be doing. Friday, July 25 4-5 p.m.: Cool Locations Which Haven't Been Used — A panel discussion; the title pretty much says it…
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On the Verge of Great Events
Most of us remember history as a series of Big Events: wars, revolutions, inventions, disasters, and so forth. (Historians in recent decades have done an immense amount of really amazing work studying day-to-day life in the past, but nobody seems to pay much attention to them aside from other historians.) The trouble with Big Events…
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Japanese Hamburgers, Hard SF, and Getting Things Right
The most recent issue of Smithsonian magazine had an interesting article about some Japanese fans of particular types of Americana — like hamburgers, bourbon, jazz, and denim. You can read it here so I don't have to summarize. It's a neat article, and it connected up with some other threads inside my skull. Second thread:…
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Congratulations, Brian!
Now that he's made the announcement on his own 'blog, I guess the secret's out: The Emperor's Blades is coming to HBO! Congratulations to Brian Staveley — you're in the big leagues now, Brian! Gonna have to get yourself a beard and one of those Greek fisherman hats! Watch the interview with Brian here.
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Lunacon Report
This past weekend my celebrated wife Diane and I drove through irritating Connecticut traffic to Rye Brook, New York for this year's Lunacon, the venerable New York science fiction convention. We had lovely weather, and took advantage of the fact that one of our kids is two weeks away from legal adulthood to have a…
The Cambias Digression 