Archive for February, 2009
Observation: The Painful Now
If we’re really in a depression like the 30’s, or almost there, shouldn’t we be wearing old clothes and driving old cars and look like people in the 20’s looked? And maybe be done all in sepia tones?
Microsoft TechFest Report
Microsoft’s Tech Fest 2009: A Richness of Id
Reading Recommendation: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Although I read widely, I seldom recommend purely literary work like this because it seldom picks me up and refuses to let go like Edgar Sawtelle. Now to be fair, it didn’t spell me until the last 100 pages, whereupon I sat upstairs in the great green reading chair and refused to come down [...]
Ken’s Reading a Grand Success
All three of us went out to Third Place Books yesterday for Ken Scholes’ reading of Lamentation. It’s a very wonderful book, and it was fun to listen to him read it. Also, as I sat there, I realized that the book could do with more than one read. I caught a lot of details [...]
A Good Mood Helps
One of my staff asked me today if there was any good news at all. Our budget at work is bleak, and so was the economic forecast on the news today. My own morning writing pages had me wondering if the people in the 30’s felt the fall into the Great Depression like we are [...]
I have my copies of Lamentation, by Ken Scholes
Beautiful book! I have an ARC, which I read and recommended, but now I have the real thing. Nicely done, Tor! And Ken, of course. Best of all, the books aren’t coming out once every two or three or four years – they plan to clip through them. The world is fabulous and complex, and [...]
Happiness: Mailbox yields my Valentine’s Story in Nature Magazine
I love the very short form that adorns the last page of the science journal Nature. I’ve been lucky enough to write three stories for them so far, and editor Henry Gee managed to match my story (about love) with the February 12th issue.
The cover is a nice artsy sketch of Darwin.
Reading Recommendation: America, Such as She Is, by Jay Lake
This is in a collection of four novellas collected in the book “Alembical”, edited by Lawrence M. Schoen and Arthur Dorrance. I set out to read this because Jay talked about his process on it quite a bit – it’s a second person story, or really set of linked stories threaded together. It’s unique, and [...]
Getting ready for the Rainforest Writers Village
March 3-8th, I’ll be in the Quinault Rain Forest with about thirty writers, including James Van Pelt, Jack Skillingstead, Louise Marley, Nancy Kress, and the organizer Patrick Swenson. There are five slots open – so if you want to join us, hurry up! Pictures from last year are up on the web.
Anyway – I’m quite [...]
Reading Recommendation: SEED Magazine
Finding SEED feels like finding WIRED the first year it was out….it’s a lovely magazine full of ideas. Some are a little wild, some are sort of philosophy as much as science, but most are great short bites of interesting studies. Last night’s thought piece for before-bed reading was a study of telecommunications and cities [...]
