Monthly Archives: October 2008

Last night I had an election year nightmare–hopefully not the first of a series. It was the Thursday after the US election and I was glumly watching the news about the ongoing recounts. On the little electoral maps that the … Continue reading →

In Morlock-related news, John O’Neill of (Black Gate fame) wrote me a while ago to tell me that he was taking two more Morlock stories (“Traveller’s Dream” and “Where Nurgnatz Dwells”, the latter featuring my favorite villain ever, but don’t … Continue reading →

It looks like Sam Raimi et al. are going to do for Roman history what they did for world mythology. (I was going to write “Greek mythology” but Xena & Herc. roamed around a lot in later seasons–and for that … Continue reading →

Farhad Manjoo has a pretty good column up at Slate.com on the advantages and disadvantages of Ubuntu, probably the most user-friendly flavor of the Open Source operating system Linux. My little Eee PC has Ubuntu installed on it; this was … Continue reading →

1. I’m completely against the anathematizing of specific words or word-types. Except. You know. Sometimes. Does anyone except a geologist ever really need to say “epicenter”? And “virtually”: there’s virtually never a reason to use it. Those are old complaints. … Continue reading →

The SF Signal guys have a new Mind Meld feature up, asking a bunch of writers, “Which Authors and Books Have Most Influenced Your Writing?”… and for some reason they asked me. Odd to see my byline in there with … Continue reading →

Over the past week I was doing line-edits of Blood of Ambrose and a new(ish) Morlock story for Black Gate and I was forcibly reminded that I cannot read my own work attentively. I don’t mean that I find it … Continue reading →

Maybe some oblique political comment here, but the main thing is that all the Palindroning about the Weathermen lately has been reminding me of the old video-from-before-they-were-videos of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”… and, in turn, of the Weird Al parody, “Bob” … Continue reading →

To celebrate her second collection of stories, Kelly Link is giving away (most) of her first collection, Magic for Beginners, as a digital download. I will not lie to you: most fiction that could be classed as interstitial makes me … Continue reading →

In the course of eviscerating one of Robert Sheckley’s early stories, James Blish penned (or typed, more probably) the immortal line “they look like rabbits, but if you call them smeerps that makes it science fiction.” This made its way … Continue reading →