The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • Inception Et Cetera

    I recently saw the film Inception for the first time — I'm not sure why I didn't watch it when it came out, but I didn't. It's a great movie, and it helped me to understand a key difference between science fiction films and novels. A perennial gripe about SF in movies is that films…

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  • Look What’s Here!

    I was sitting at home minding my own business on Thursday when the dog started barking because a delivery truck was coming up our driveway. They're common enough nowadays, but this truck had come to deliver something I wasn't expecting for a couple of weeks yet: the first copies of my new novel The Godel…

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  • Appendix JLC

    Everyone who owned a copy of the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide knows about the legendary "Appendix N," in which Gary Gygax listed all the fictional influences on D&D. In recent years some younger gamers have rediscovered that list, leading to works like Jeffro Johnson's book Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons…

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  • Planetary Events Comes to Earth!

    Most of what I've been writing lately has been fiction — The Godel Operation, some short stories in the Billion Worlds setting, and the followup novel (still in progress). But I call myself a "writer and game designer" for a reason: I haven't given up on writing game stuff. Recently I decided to take the…

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  • The Songs of Distant Earth and the Roots of Inspiration

    For a long time I've enjoyed the music of Mike Oldfield — especially his longer, more complex works. Until a few years ago his stuff wasn't easy for me to get my hands on. Back when record shops existed, they didn't often carry his records. But with the rise of online music he's a lot…

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  • Everything But The Quack

    For some reason the local discount club store had ducks for $2.99 a pound. That's cheaper than I've seen duck in a long time, so I got one last time I was there. Diane wanted to try making duck confit, so we thawed the bird and began taking it apart today. She cut up and…

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  • Why Odysseus?

    My son is taking a class on Mythologies of the Ancient World, which means he's been reading things like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, and other ancient works (in translation). And since we've been talking about what he's studying in class, that means I've been re-reading them and thinking about them, as well. In…

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  • More Free Time

    It appears I won't need to bother going to this year's WorldCon. If they are willing to believe and promote lies about my publisher, they can get along without me. I urge everyone else who cares about science fiction to skip this year as well.

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  • Steely-Eyed Missile Robot

    Congratulations to the Perseverance rover on its successful landing on Mars. Pretty impressive job for a rookie pilot! Let's all wish it a long career of rolling around the Martian landscape. ADDENDUM: Almost as impressive as the landing is the amazing improvement in data return. Forty-five years ago, when I watched the Viking landings on…

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  • Notes on The Lost Road

    I recently acquired a copy of The Lost Road, an unfinished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited and extensively annotated by his son Christopher Tolkien. The origin of the work is very interesting: according to Tolkien's own account, it grew out of a conversation he had with his close friend C.S. Lewis. "Tollers," Lewis told him,…

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