Archive for August, 2008

We officially have a kick-ass cover

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Well Eleanor just got the Prophets cover from DAW, and it's all full of crunchy SF goodness. This will be hitting the shelves March 2009. UPDATE: I should let you all know who the artist is behind this great cover, the 2008 winner of the Hugo for best artist, Stephan ...

The man who would be president

Monday, August 25th, 2008

As we watch ignore the proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, I think it is time to reflect on the nominee who could have been. I am talking about a candidate of vision, of character, of purpose. A candidate who could have been a historic first if not ...

Michael Chabon is made of win!

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

(via swivet) Michael Chabon has laid out to the LA Times just how the attitude of the Literati toward genre fiction ("oh, your genre has cooties") is kind of stupid. There are a lot of people on both the pretentious literature side ("It was written well so it can't be science fiction!") ...

How to be an asshat, literary edition

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

To all the aspiring writers out there who want to make a bad impression and leave a permanently sour taste in the mouths of not only your readers but with anyone who's ever heard of you, Victoria Laurie has some tips for you. (Original post is gone, but once ...

Forever Old Man’s Starship Troopers

Monday, August 18th, 2008

I just had the opportunity to read Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, and Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein all in fairly quick succession. I’d recommend the same to any aspiring SF writer, and not just because they’re all good books in their ...

Rainbows = Evil!

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

This video is making the rounds, so I figured why not? Somewhere in my heart, I really hope this is a satire. . .

Can you say Sudetenland?

Monday, August 11th, 2008

I am not a liberal, and I don't subscribe to the idea that George W. is a secular antichrist, my qualms about the (Iraq) war have always been of ones of tactics (i.e. letz fite stoopid) and strategy (this served the national interest how?). However, events in Georgia have ...

Writerly type stuff

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

Side-stepping the world of politics for a moment, I wanted to mention that I'm finally back to writing new material, after doing rewrites of three novels in a row.  You'll notice the counters slowly starting to move again as I work on Heretic, the second volume of the Apotheosis trilogy. ...

Update: Islamic Students reasonable. Islamic Scholar, not so much.

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

According to Gallycat, the students riled up by the threat of Random House's publication of the Jewel of Medina were planning little more than a publicity campaign to e-mail the publisher and news outlets and so on. Perfectly innocuous stuff in a pluralistic society. Which makes Random House ...

Islamic Overreaction freaks out Random House

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

From the “this surprises you why?” department:Random House was going to publish a book titled The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a historical novel that features one of Mohammad’s wives, and has decided “oops, bad idea.” Quoth Random House in the Washington Post Op-Ed, “after sending out advance ...