In Gun, with Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem gives us science fiction’s worthy successor to Raymond Chandler. Though this is the easy take-home message from nearly every quoted newspaper columnist, book jacket blurb, and miscellaneous reviewer — they also all happen to be right. Even a cursory familiarity with Chandler’s pulp noir will ring through with […]
Mentioned here previously, 365 Tomorrows has become a favorite daily stop on my internet rounds for a little fiction. Since it’s flash fiction that they have there, it’s good for a quick dose of something new. Roughly 600 words and you’ve gotten yourself a refreshing fix of scifi. Admittedly, it can be hit or miss. […]
As with many “Year’s Best” type anthologies (regardless of genre), it is difficult to evaluate Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection as if it were a whole. Unlike a themed collection (e.g., Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse), you cannot easily ask how each story is helping to advance or otherwise round-out […]
Whither The Hard Stuff? via Futurismic: Norman Spinrad on “hard” sci-fi (tags: fiction literature scifi essay todo) Bluetooth Proximity Detection on OS X The Technocrat (via TUAW) — an intriguing hack w/r/t/ your Mac and Bluetooth… (tags: Mac OSX security Bluetooth essay todo hack)
Imaginary Homelands via MeFi: pretty good round-up of well-known sci-fi and fantasy worlds; topography, geography, history… (tags: fiction literature scifi fantasy todo research)
Interstellar Ark :: Strange Paths (tags: blog future science scifi essay todo) Cocoa Dev Central: Learn Cocoa II via TUAW (tags: Cocoa dev tutorial Objective-C Mac OSX todo) The cost of leaving your PC on via Coding Horror (via LifeHacker): calculate the cost of running your computer ’round the clock (and determine how to reduce […]
Science vs. Faith (a flowchart) via B^2 (tags: science visualization graph humor) Oort-Cloud via B^2: “Write – Share – Read – Respond” (tags: blog community literature scifi social writing todo)
Community Gardens (tags: gardening Burlington todo) Use line breaks in iTunes Comment field via Macworld: Mac OS X Hints (tags: iTunes hack todo) flavordav: A Political History of SF via Beyond the Beyond: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/02/a_political_his.html (tags: fiction history literature scifi essay todo writing research politics)
Last night I finished re-reading Nancy Kress’ novel Beggars in Spain. I’d read it once before when I was quite a bit younger. (High school, maybe?) An interesting sci-fi read, it toys with a near-future scenario where genetic modifications are relatively commonplace and an arguably separate race of Sleepless are created as a consequence of […]
So I watched 2010 tonight since my local Blockbuster doesn’t seem to have 2001. This is a drag for several reasons. But for several other reasons, I’ll live with it. 2010 is good enough in it’s own right. Potential spoilers below: First and foremost, it stands well enough on its own. You get enough of […]