For the half-dozen people who care, my Boskone panel schedule for this year, with a few comments. I don’t know for sure that this is the final final version– I might get added to something else– but it’s probably pretty close.
Category: SF
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!
Fun with Worldbuilding
Via Neil Gaiman, I learn that: John Crowley (author of Little, Big)has a LiveJournal… … where he’s collecting suggestions for reference works for people seeking to invent interesting fantasy worlds… …and he’s come up with a great class exercise/ party game for the results: Can’t do it for the upcoming class, but for a class… Continue reading Fun with Worldbuilding
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
Jack McDevitt Interview
Jack McDevitt is a prolific SF author, with a couple of running series that recently appeared in booklog entries here (see, for example, Antiquities Dealers in Spaaaace!!!). Coincidentally, he’s also talked to the Slush God, in an interview posted at SciFi Weekly. He says a bunch of interesting stuff, and not just about his books:… Continue reading Jack McDevitt Interview
What to See in Japan?
The 2007 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Yokohama, Japan this year, and Kate and I are going. It’s a bit of a delayed celebration for my tenure– I’ll be on sabbatical in the Fall, so I won’t need to worry about prepping a class for September, and we can make it a… Continue reading What to See in Japan?
Other Earths
Speaking of James Nicoll and space news, he also notes the launch of the COROT satellite, which is designed to look for extrasolar planets. The detection limit for COROT is supposed to be something like twice the mass of the Earth, so there’s some reasonable expectation that it should shed light on planetary systems more… Continue reading Other Earths
Some Fall Farther Than Others
The Slush God offers all-too-typical news: Today SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Terry Brooks’s latest novel, Armageddon’s Children, which is the first in a series that will connect his Word and the Void trilogy with his Shannara series. Is there any surer sign that an author has fallen to the Brain… Continue reading Some Fall Farther Than Others
Achilles and Hector Cannot Both Walk into the Sunset Alive
Bummer news from Making Light this morning: one of my favorite authors, John M. Ford, has died. That’s a shitty way to start the week. The post title is from his poem Troy: The Movie, which does not involve Brad Pitt. Also well worth reading is his September 11th memorial poem 110 Stories, which I… Continue reading Achilles and Hector Cannot Both Walk into the Sunset Alive