James Nicoll is soliciting recommendations for a series of novels about the planets of the Solar System. His first pass: Mercury: Venus: Earth: Imperial Earth, Arthur C. Clarke Mars: Jupiter: Jupiter Fred and Carol Pohl (ed) Saturn: Uranus: Neptune: Triton, Samuel R. Delany As you can see, there are some gaps…
Category: Books
Iain (M.) Banks Interviewed
Speaking (as we were) of the glamourour life of writers, Bookslut points to an interview with Iain Banks. If you’re not familiar with Banks, he’s a prolific author who alternates “mainstream” literary novels (as “Iain Banks”) with genre SF novels (as “Iain M. Banks”). With a very few exceptions, his books are very smart, fairly… Continue reading Iain (M.) Banks Interviewed
The Writing Life
OVer at the Whatever, Senor BaconCat has two long posts on the glamorous life of a successful SF writer: one breaking down his income from SF writing in detail, and the other talking about why he’s talking about money. The comment threads are also lively and interesting in their own right. It’s particularly funny to… Continue reading The Writing Life
Comprehensible Is the New Black
John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes (“people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines”), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible: 1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable… Continue reading Comprehensible Is the New Black
Hugo Recommendations
As Kate and I are planning to attend the Worldcon this year, we’re eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards, which are sort of SF’s version of the Oscars, or maybe the Golden Globes (the Nebula Awards being the other). This is only the third time I’ve had this opportunity, and it’s always kind of… Continue reading Hugo Recommendations
Daniel Keys Moran
Over in LiveJournal land, Kate has an open letter to Daniel Keys Moran: As someone who very nearly cries at the idea of a completed Trent novel languishing on your hard drive, may I introduce you to Lulu or Cafe Press? Both will print books from uploaded files, as they are ordered, for the price… Continue reading Daniel Keys Moran
Seventeen is the Mystical Number
Cognitive Daily proves it scientifically. I love it when life imitates Brust.
Go, Gary K. Wolfe!
The new issue of Locus arrived just before we left, so I spent some time reading reviews and commentary on the SF field over the weekend. It’s actually a pretty good issue– the retro-review of Isaac Asimov is interesting, and while the John Barnes interview doesn’t ask the important question (“How can the same person… Continue reading Go, Gary K. Wolfe!
SF and the History of Science
I’m going to be on a few program items at Boskone again this year. The highly preliminary schedule I received a couple of days ago includes a Saturday afternoon talk on “Spooky Action at a Distance,” which will be a sort of popular-audience explanation of the EPR Paradox and Bell’s Theorem. “Weird Quantum Phenomena” was… Continue reading SF and the History of Science
Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Paul Davies’s forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled “Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life,” so you know that he’s not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the “Goldilocks Enigma,” and what others refer to as “fine-tuning”– basically, how do you account for… Continue reading Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies