Category: Miscellaneous
-
PhilCon 2020 Goes Virtual
This year's PhilCon — the venerable Philadelphia-era science fiction con now in its 84th year — is going to be all-online. On the plus side that means no New Jersey traffic and mall food; on the minus side it means no spontaneous conversations in the hotel lobby, no room parties, and no basic human contact.…
-
Twenty Years!
Today marks a significant anniversary. Twenty years ago, on October 31, 2000, the first crew launched to the International Space Station. Station crews are called "Expeditions," so Expedition 1 began on that date. We're currently on Expedition 64, with three in the pipeline and many more planned. The Expeditions overlap, so that the new crew…
-
Snow
It's snowing outside as I write. Feh. The leaves aren't all off the trees yet. I was waiting for all of them to fall before raking. Now there's a layer of wet unraked leaves under the snow. Feh.
-
The Need For Long Campaigns
Here's an interesting — and, I think, important — brief essay on the value of long things. Listening to long pieces of music, reading long books, and (for us nerds) playing long roleplaying campaigns. It's by David McGrogan, better known as "Noisms," the somewhat mysterious author of the amazing Yoon-Suin game setting. Possibly revealing confession:…
-
The Glorious Fourth of July
Two hundred and forty-four years ago a group of men signed a remarkable document: a Declaration of Independence. They wrote out their reasons for defying their King, and signed their names to it, then published the whole thing. They even sent a copy to the King they were challenging, even though they all knew this…
-
Luna in the Night
We got our cat Luna as a little black kitten in 2006, and she quickly grew into a grouchy, headstrong animal — always quick to nip or hiss when she didn't get her way. She was never an "inside cat." We let her outside any morning she wanted to go. In practice this meant any…
-
AmazingCon Continues!
The online SF convention AmazingCon continues all this weekend. Tomorrow, June 14, I'll be doing a panel at 10am on Worldbuilding. It should be a great show, as the lineup of panelists is pretty impressive: me, Paul Levinson, Rosemary Claire Smith, and T.B. Jeremiah. We'll be talking about how to make convincing and unique science…
-
This Con Will Be Amazing!
This weekend Amazing Stories is sponsoring a virtual science fiction convention: AmazingCon! It features readings, panels, special events — all the good parts of a convention without the hotel food and travel expense. I'm doing two events: a reading from my work in progress at 3pm on Friday, June 12; and a panel on Worldbuilding…
-
Historical Perspective
Like most of the rest of the world I've been thinking about diseases lately. What I've been thinking about is how mild the coronavirus epidemic has been. No, stop shouting at the screen and look at some numbers. The Spanish Flu: the post-World War I influenza epidemic caused 17-50 million deaths; I've seen the…
The Cambias Digression 