Two events in the next couple of weeks at which I will be appearing live and in person: 1) This Thursday, Feb. 4, I will be giving a talk at the University of Maryland, College Park at 3:30 pm in the Lecture Hall (room 1110) in the Kim Engineering Building. The title of the talk… Continue reading Upcoming Appearances: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Live
Category: SF
Semi-Dorky Poll: Super Meeting!
I have to go to the Happy Fun Meeting this afternoon, which will be both Happy! and Fun! To keep things lively while I’m there, here’s a question that is dorky, but not in the usual way for this blog: What superpower would you most like to have to help you deal with annoying meetings?… Continue reading Semi-Dorky Poll: Super Meeting!
My Hugo Nomination Ballot
Cheryl Morgan has a post urging people to nominate for the Hugo Awards. While I don’t place the same priority she does on the gender distribution of who gets nominated, I applaud her for doing this now, while there’s a chance to influence the actual ballot, rather than waiting until April to complain about it.… Continue reading My Hugo Nomination Ballot
More Entropy, Less Spanking
I’m currently a bit less than halfway through Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here, which has leaped to the top of the literary inbox because I’ll be hosting a Book Salon at firedoglake next Saturday evening. If you want to see how my limited typing skills work in a live chat setting, be sure to… Continue reading More Entropy, Less Spanking
The Problem With Urban Fantasy: I Want The Ponder Stibbons Story
Most of my fiction reading at the moment is done while rocking SteelyKid to sleep at night, using a Palm as an e-book reader. This does not really lend itself to the reading of weighty Literary Novels, but rather lightweight genre trash. Which means I’ve been reading a bunch of “urban fantasy,” because that is… Continue reading The Problem With Urban Fantasy: I Want The Ponder Stibbons Story
That’s More Like It
Checking in to see whether the Amazon page for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog has been updated (it had an older version of the cover copy yesterday morning, but that’s been fixed), I see that the “Buy Together” box has been updated. It now says: Customers buy this book with The God Engines… Continue reading That’s More Like It
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2009?
The overlap between my readership and SF fandom is not as high as one might like, but I thought I would throw this out there anyway: What were the best science fiction and/or fantasy stories of 2009? (“Stories” here can mean anything from short stories to novels to feature films. We’re all about inclusiveness, here… Continue reading Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2009?
On Market Rates
There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the SF blogosphere about what writers should be paid for short fiction, which has led to a lot of people posting lists of their short fiction and what they were paid for it (Scalzi has links to most of them). This naturally leads me to wonder what… Continue reading On Market Rates
Companions in Zealous Research
Blogging has been light of late because I was in the Houston area for the weekend, at the annual meeting of Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society (think Phi Beta Kappa, but for science nerds). Every chapter is required to send a representative to the annual meeting at least once every three years, and… Continue reading Companions in Zealous Research
Great Moments in Targeted Advertising
We subscribe to Locus, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what’s coming out from various publishers, but it’s also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff. In particular,… Continue reading Great Moments in Targeted Advertising