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Going LIVE!
I've finally dipped a toe into the waters of independent e-publishing. My e-chapbook "Outlaws and Aliens" is now live on Amazon! It's an affordably-priced little ebook containing two of my short stories — "The Alien Abduction" and "Object Three." The cover art is by Rob Caswell. You can buy it here. Makes a great way to…
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It’s Not Christmas Without NORAD
Every year at this time I link to my favorite Christmas Web site: the Official NORAD Santa Tracker page. If you don't understand why this site is the sweetest, goofiest, and yet also the greatest embodiment of the Christmas spirit, you have the soul of a Krampus. And Krampus is not welcome in this airspace.…
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Kitchen Report: Timballo
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, is a landmark of Italian literature. There are many reasons to read it, but among others it contains some of the great dinner scenes in modern fiction. The meal in Chapter 2 begins with "monumental dishes of macaroni." But this isn't just a pile of pasta, oh no. Di…
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The Argument For Space
I've always been a fan of space exploration, which means I've often gotten into arguments with people over the value of doing it. NASA (among others) spends a lot of its public-relations budget promoting the importance of exploring space, but I think they focus on the wrong things. On the NASA web page there's a…
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Blogs I Read
Since I have twice this year had spikes in my blog traffic due to other people mentioning it on their blogs or on Twitter, I think it's time to do the same with my own mighty horde of followers. Here are the blogs I regularly read — with some important exceptions. I'm leaving off purely political…
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Inoculating Against Woo
A while back I posted a little joke about why Marty McFly's father George, in the movie Back to the Future, is the worst science fiction writer ever. One of my complaints was that George couldn't bring himself to publish his stories until a midnight encounter with a fake "spaceman" convinced him it was all…
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Movie Review: Arrival
Short version: it's great, go see it. Long version: I confess I was a bit worried when I got tickets to this movie. When I heard that Ted Chiang's great story "The Story of Your Life" was being made into a film I was very pleased and excited . . . but then I saw the…
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Nostalgie Du Geek: Hearing the Call
In a couple of earlier posts I've described my reaction to my first two role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. Those two were followed in the marketplace by a whole wave of other games in a variety of genres: Tunnels & Trolls, Universe from SPI, Gamma World, Chivalry & Sorcery, Metamorphosis Alpha, RuneQuest, Villains…
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PhilCon 2016, Featuring ME!
This weekend I'll be attending the venerable PhilCon science fiction convention, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in scenic Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Here's my schedule of events: Friday, November 18, 8:00 p.m., Plaza III: Utopias That Make Us Cringe — I'll be moderating a panel on utopian societies in science fiction that don't actually seem very…
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Movie Magic
Last weekend the family went out to see Dr. Strange, the latest Marvel Comics movie. This one is the origin story for Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme and master of the mystic arts. It was entertaining and visually wonderful. It did get me thinking (uh-oh) about how magic is depicted in most modern films — and…
The Cambias Digression
Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.
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The Cambias Digression 