The Cambias Digression

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

  • Armadillocon, Featuring ME!!

    This coming weekend I will be a guest at Armadillocon 36, in charming Austin, Texas. If you happen to be deep in the heart of Texas this weekend, come by. Here's what I'll be doing. Friday, July 25 4-5 p.m.: Cool Locations Which Haven't Been Used — A panel discussion; the title pretty much says it…

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  • First Impressions of Fifth Edition

    Wizards of the Coast is rolling out their latest edition of the venerable Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game this summer. This isn't just a new version of the game, though; the designers' stated goal was to create a version of D&D which would reunite the game's fan base, and bring back into the fold all…

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  • A Darkling Alumni Magazine

    The University of Chicago magazine Web site has the transcript of an interview with me about A Darkling Sea. Enjoy!

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  • No Royal Road

    On May 19 the staff of the Tilton Library in Deerfield were kind enough to host me for a reading and brief lecture about my novel A Darkling Sea and my forthcoming book Corsair. If you were at the library, you can probably skip the rest of this 'blog post, but if you're among the…

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  • Invoco Legem Magicarum!

    . . . as Mandrake the Magician used to say. Kinetic fantasy author Max Gladstone wrote an interesting post about "Magic Systems and the Wizardsroman" on his own blog. He's interested in the connections between story and How Magic Works (that is, how the fictional magic operates within a fantasy story), and it started me…

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  • The Madness Returns . . .

    . . . to Chicago, as it does each year about this time.

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  • My Northwest Passage

    Inhabitants of the upper-left part of the United States (the place where the return address goes) can see me in person, hear me read from A Darkling Sea, and get some books signed next week. There are two stops on this mini-tour: Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, in Beaverton, Oregon, on May 13 at 7…

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  • On the Verge of Great Events

    Most of us remember history as a series of Big Events: wars, revolutions, inventions, disasters, and so forth. (Historians in recent decades have done an immense amount of really amazing work studying day-to-day life in the past, but nobody seems to pay much attention to them aside from other historians.) The trouble with Big Events…

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  • Japanese Hamburgers, Hard SF, and Getting Things Right

    The most recent issue of Smithsonian magazine had an interesting article about some Japanese fans of particular types of Americana — like hamburgers, bourbon, jazz, and denim. You can read it here so I don't have to summarize. It's a neat article, and it connected up with some other threads inside my skull. Second thread:…

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  • A Video Review and an Interview

    Here's a nifty video review of Darkling Sea, courtesy of SFReviews.net. And if watching videos isn't what you want to do today, here's a print interview at Space Review.

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