Category: Miscellaneous
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A New Blog
The United Nations Interstellar Cooperation Agency has a new blog devoted to their Ilmatar interstellar mission. Check it out here. There's also a link to a site with some cool HENRI KERLEREC merchandise.
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The Lost Age of Romance
What do James Bond, Don Quixote, and steampunk fiction have in common? I was talking with one of my kids about Don Quixote, and something struck me. In Cervantes's novel, the elderly Quixote is a Spanish gentleman whose wits become addled from reading too many romances of chivalry. He begins to think of himself as…
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Winter’s Tales
Winter has arrived. One can go by the calendar, using either December 1 as the start of the "winter months," or use the Winter Solstice. The latter is beloved of radio disk jockeys and talk show hosts, who love to announce on December 22 that "this is the official beginning of winter" and mock those…
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Thumbs Up
The first reviews for A Darkling Sea are starting to trickle in, and Kirkus Reviews has a very favorable one. It's very gratifying to see that other people enjoy what I've written. I hope everyone else likes it as much. Up to the point at which the publisher accepted my final draft, Darkling Sea was…
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Administrative Note
I've had to switch over to moderated comments because of the astonishing volume of gibberish spam lately. If you post a brilliant comment or clever riposte and don't see it right away, that just means I have to approve it.
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Leveraging Our Desires
My kids have recently become enamored of the TV show Leverage, watching it via Hulu and Netflix. If you're not familiar with the series, it's basically an updated Mission: Impossible. Each episode centers on an elaborate caper performed by our slightly shady heroes, typically aimed at righting some wrong. To make the episodes interesting, the…
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Season of the Witch
It's Halloween today, and I notice that Google has chosen to celebrate the day with a "Google Doodle" of a witch busy at her cauldron. I've written about Halloween witches elsewhere, but one of the links off the Google page (this one) reminded me of something I've come to detest in modern supernatural fiction. In…
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Comic Con
This past Friday my talented wife and I spent the day on the placid isle of Manhattan, at the New York Comic Con. I've gone to a lot of science fiction and game conventions in my time. I've manned a booth at Gen-Con during the peak of the card game boom. I've been to World…
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Belloq’s Obsession
Recently I was listening to the soundtrack for Raiders of the Lost Ark and talking about the movie with my kids when I had a thought. Just after Indy's epic fistfight with the Giant Bald Guy at the airplane, the movie cuts away to a reaction by Indiana Jones's villainous rival Belloq. Belloq sees something…
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The Perpetual Tourist
I recently got back from a trip, and of course there were lots of mundane errands to run as soon as I got home. The usual stuff — buying things, dropping kids off, mailing things, banking, all the business of middle-class life. But I found myself experiencing a sort of psychic jet-lag, as though my…
The Cambias Digression 