politics
Recession or Depression?
I think the mood of the country is drifting from “how can we fix it” to “how bad is it going to get?” It seems the choices we’re being given are between Ford and Hoover, Gas Lines and Bread Lines, Read more…
intellectual property
ACTA? WTF?
This has been flying under the radar unless you’re like me and you follow uber-geek podcasts like I do. However, the US government has been quietly pressuring our friends and allies to sign on to a lil treaty called ACTA, Read more…
movies
Five flavors of dystopia
A recent email reminded me of a panel I was on at at Context. The subject was about making dystopias, which seems an oddly timely subject. One of the things we discussed a little bit was the fact that there Read more…
Apotheosis Trilogy
Prophets @ Bookscreening.com
Just to let everyone know, my book trailer for Prophets has been posted on Bookscreening.com which is a great site if you’re interested in book trailers. I appreciate them putting it up. I’ve also put up the home page for Read more…
Apotheosis Trilogy
Character abuse
I don’t think anyone would say I’m easy on the characters in my books. Almost all of them, in fact, are put through several flavors of hell before the end. I have noticed something lately, a developing trend in my Read more…
asshat
Scandinavian Asshat
I now present to you some choice quotes from Mr. Horace Engdahl, senior member of the awards jury for the Nobel Prize in literature: Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from Read more…
science
The stuff that really changes the world
There’s a bias in SF and its brethren such as alternate history to do world building around the big ass stuff; wars, revolutions, catastrophes. Or, for the sciencey mindset, the big ass discoveries that change our understanding of cosmology or Read more…
lol
It’s the economists, stupid!
I’ve made the point before that I believe that it’s the economists who deserve the bulk of the blame for the current crisis, those practitioners of the black arts in the Federal Reserve and in our major financial institutions are Read more…
about the blog
My sausage, watch me make it (now with weird video)
Just a note on a little experiment I am doing. One of the useful bits I got from Context (aside from reminding various people that I still exist) was a talk on effective blogging given by Toby Buckell. One of Read more…
science fiction
Actually, yeah you CAN write near-future SF
According to Charlie Stross: We are living in interesting times; in fact, they’re so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF. He has a few points about the hazards of planning a near-future SF novel in Read more…