The Cambias Digression

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

  • 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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  • Dinosaur Fundamentals

    Here's an interesting science story: researchers describe fossilized soft tissue of a dinosaur cloaca — the first time this part of any dinosaur has been seen before. You can read about it at ScienceDaily (for the highbrow version), LiveScience (for the popular-science version), or Gizmodo (for the . . . Gizmodo version). The New York…

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  • Arisia 2021

    This weekend I'll be appearing at the venerable Arisia science fiction con. Normally it's held in Boston, but this year it's happening right on your computer. You can join it here: https://www.arisia.org I'm doing three events this weekend. On Friday evening at 10:00 pm (EST) I'm doing a reading from my forthcoming novel The Godel…

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  • The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the Second

    A couple of weeks ago I posted about the exciting discovery in Oxford's Bodleian Library of unpublished notes and drafts by the 18th Century explorer and naturalist Dr. Lemuel Gulliver. That first post included Gulliver's discussion of how the difference in scale affected the architecture and habits of the Lilliputians. This excerpt is concerned with…

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  • Thoughts on That Christmas Movie

    A lot of people think they've watched the movie It's A Wonderful Life but either haven't actually seen it, or have forgotten most of it. This leads to a lot of misunderstanding. When my family watched it this past Christmas my son was astonished to discover that a good two-thirds of the film's run time…

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The Worldbuilding Index