The Cambias Digression

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

  • Set Sail on the Inland Seas!

    The anthology Retellings of the Inland Seas launches today, from Candlemark & Gleam publishers. Edited by Athena Andreadis, this collection of original short fiction takes the myths and history of the Mediterranean into the realms of fantasy and science fiction. I'm proud to be one of a rather impressive lineup of contributors, including Shariann Lewitt, Alexander…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • Time For Tea!

    There's an excellent series of online readings organized by Sarah Smith, Brookline's Grande Dame of Fantasy and Science Fiction, called Teatime Readings. I did one last week, and now everyone can enjoy it here. The first half of the video is me reading a chapter from The Initiate, and the second half is a question-and-answer session…

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  • Work In Progress: The Billion Worlds

    A while back I started thinking about the distant future. What can humanity expect if we don't invent a magic FTL drive, don't go extinct, and our civilization mostly putters along the way it has been since the invention of agriculture? I described some of my thoughts in this blog post from 2018. Extrapolating with…

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  • 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…

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  • Kitchen Report: Tortillas

    The little locally-owned supermarket up in Greenfield has a good selection of Mexican items — I don't mean Mission brand tortillas or Paul Newman salsa, I mean stuff like masa flour, corn husks for making tamales, and big bags of dried beans. This probably has something to do with the fact that this is farm…

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  • Kitchen Report: The Elvis

    If you suddenly went from poverty to vast wealth, and could have more or less anything you wanted, what would you eat? Well, if you were Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n Roll, you'd have a sandwich. Specifically, a peanut butter-banana-and-bacon sandwich, sometimes on an entire loaf of bread cut lengthwise.  Today for brunch…

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  • Kitchen Report: Bucatini Alla Flamande

    These weeks of enforced leisure have inspired me to go ahead and do some cooking projects I've long put off. I did the first of them this past Saturday, a dish called Bucatini Alla Flamande. It's a molded pasta dish — you line a pudding basin or a rounded double boiler with semi-cooked bucatini, line…

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