Yesterday was apparently Gender in Science day here, while the theme for today is Tab Clearance– a couple of shortish posts about things that deserve more than just a Links Dump mention, but don’t really cohere into any kind of grand synthesis of deep thoughts, or whatever. This particular link was prompted by an item… Continue reading Scientists and Science Fiction
Category: Books
Dog Physics Around the World, and Beyond
When we got home from visiting Kate’s family yesterday, there was a large shipping envelope from my agent waiting for us. This can mean only one thing: author copies of foreign editions! That’s the Czech edition, Jak nauÄit svého psa fyziku, which seems to have used the same glasses-wearing golden retriever as the Brazilian edition.… Continue reading Dog Physics Around the World, and Beyond
Ten Years Before the Blog
While future historians will undoubtedly remember August 7th primarily as SteelyKid’s birthday (it would be irresponsible of me to encourage people to go edit the Wikipedia date page accordingly, wouldn’t it?), there was another locally important event on August 7th, some years earlier: August 7th, 2001, saw my first blog post ever, the inaugural post… Continue reading Ten Years Before the Blog
Religion, Science, and Joy
I was just tagging this for the Links Dump, but I thought it deserved better. Fred Clark, blogdom’s best writer on politics and religion, is putting together a book-like thing from his blog, and has posted the introduction to the section on creationism: The oldest book in our Bible contains a hymn of praise to… Continue reading Religion, Science, and Joy
Jim Butcher, Ghost Story [Library of Babel]
One of the problems with a long-running series is that it accretes backstory as you go (unless, of course, you go the Rex Stout route and just pretend that time doesn’t pass for the characters, even when you have the client in a later book being the son of a character from one of the… Continue reading Jim Butcher, Ghost Story [Library of Babel]
China Mieville, Kraken [Library of Babel]
I’m not a huge Mieville fan, but the descriptions I read of Kraken sounded like good fun. As I like fun books, and a fun book written by China Mieville seemed sufficiently improbable that I just had to see it, I picked it up a little while ago, and read it over the last week… Continue reading China Mieville, Kraken [Library of Babel]
Launch Pad
For the past few years, astronomer and SF author Mike Brotherton has been running the Launch Pad Workshop, a program bringing interested SF authors to Wyoming (where he’s on the faculty) to learn about modern astronomy. The idea is to teach writers the real facts about the weird and wonderful things going on in astronomy… Continue reading Launch Pad
The Bose Condensation Theory of Literature: “Why We Love Bad Writing” at Readercon
Michelle Sagara’s rant about convention panelist behavior reminded me that I never did get around to writing up the other panel from this year’s Readercon that I wanted to say something about, namely “Why We Love Bad Writing” James D. Macdonald, Anil Menon, Resa Nelson, Eric M. Van, Harold Torger Vedeler (leader). In the Guardian,… Continue reading The Bose Condensation Theory of Literature: “Why We Love Bad Writing” at Readercon
George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons [Library of Babel]
Contrary to Jo Walton’s prediction, I didn’t love this book. In fact, I didn’t even like it very much. Much has been made over the long wait for this latest installment in the Song of Ice and Fire series, building it up to the point where actually reading and reviewing it feels a little like… Continue reading George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons [Library of Babel]
The Inevitable Death of the Book, Aleph-Nought in a Series
A lot of pixels have been spilled lamenting the death of Borders books, a rather large fraction of them being used to say stupid things. Particularly in the “they killed off independent bookstores so good riddance to them” vein– it’s great that you lived in a place that had good indie bookstores and enough hipsters… Continue reading The Inevitable Death of the Book, Aleph-Nought in a Series