Finally made it to the George Optical V-Mall branch. Unfortunately, been straining my eyes too much so I need to relax them in order to get a proper check-up so no reading for me for the week (eep! time to go on a podcast download frenzy). Don't expect much next week... When it comes to personal plugs, I have a new essay at BSC Review: eBook Pricing – The Chicken or the Egg Dilemma . Oh, and...
Reverse decision-making is an amusing and informative exercise in which a group is asked to list what they would do if they were trying to produce a disaster. In no time, various actions such as "Don't seek legal advice" and "Alienate your best customers" may be on the board. As the participants ponder the list, someone usually says, "You know, we're sort of doing that third...
Conventions are fun. They are also exhausting. I did three panels today, one of which was "The Nancy Kress" panel, during which I discovered how embarrassing it can be to sit there while four other people discuss your work and tell anecdotes about you. More comfortable was the "Writing as Craft" panel, when established writers gave advice to aspirants. Everybody loves to give advice....
"One of the reasons we love history and literature is that we get endings. We find out what happened: they got married; they died; they were able to vanquish Evil. Sometimes we don't really even care how it works out,...
“Death is a subject Americans don’t like to talk about. I guess nobody does, but our American culture is especially in denial about death. If they do want to think about it, it’s in non-threatening Hallmark terms. Polls show these people don’t go to church, they don’t have any organized religion, but they all somehow think they’re going to heaven. They are in love...
We’re more than a bit pleased to announce that we’ve reached agreement to publish the limited editions of Connie Willis’s next two books, which tell a looong time travel tale set against the backdrop of London’s Blitz. We’ve read Blackout, and it’s a stunner, and expect to see the manuscript for All Clear in the [...]
Here's the list of ghost stories left in the comments section of my post the other day about your favorite ghost story . I'm not familiar with all of them. Some that I am, I'm skeptical as to whether I'd consider them ghost stories, but I'm not about to disabuse anyone of their notion as to what makes a ghost story. Big favorites were "Oh, Whistle and I'll come to you, My Lad" by M.R. James,...
I ended up typing in the opening of one of my favorite novels today as part of a True and Vivid Writing lecture: Traveller died of lockjaw two years after Robert E. Lee died. I looked that up one day in February, the day I went out to see where Abraham Lincoln's son Willie had been buried. I had been looking for the grave for over a year, and when I finally found it in a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln,...
I believe that you can get a larger version of that graphic by right-clicking on it. You may feel free to use the graphic, as long as you do not use it for any commercial purpose -- it must remain free for all to use. I don't have a lot of answers on end times. Some people seem to have answers, and they may be right. The above graphic illustrates reasons for caution. The Bible is not as clear about...
The entire range of human experiences is present in a church choir, including but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust, and existential despair. Connie Willis , "An Introduction to This Book, or 'These Are a Few of My Favorite...
In a effort to achieve complete escape from management reading, I recently started "Doomsday" by Connie Willis. After reading a gushing review, I'd bought the book for my wife over ten years ago. She smiled, put it on a shelf, and dove into a Michael Crichton book I'd also given her. Go figure. I thought she'd enjoy a novel about time travel and the plague. Anyway, I finally got around to...
In the brief history of the Book Chats we've read books by winners of the World Fantasy Award (Sean Stewart), the Rita Award (Jennifer Crusie), the Pulitzer Prize (Robert Penn Warren), the Booker Prize (Salman Rushdie), the Hugo and Nebula Awards (Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman), and the Newbery Medal (Susan Patron and Gaiman). Not to mention other nominations for those awards and hordes of wins of slightly...
Here is the table of contents for the upcoming Tachyon Publications anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, which reprints stories published from 1971-2007 making the case for the convergence of mainstream fiction and literary sf: "Angouleme" by Thomas M. Disch "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin "Ladies...
Ooooh, here's something I forgot existed, an online chat I did for Event Horizon in January, 1999, just a few months after The Blue Place was published. It was fun to meet my younger self again. (Via Free SF Reader .) Also, go check out the other chats with writers such as Connie Willis, Peter Straub, Stewart O'Nan, Pat Cadigan, and William Goldman. There's some good stuff.
Thursday 6 August Got off to a flying start with "The werewolves of Brigadoon" - a panel discussion on the cultural appropriation of all things Celtic by Hollywood and/or bad fantasy, and the atrocities committed against same. George R.R. Martin represented all things evil and American, Kari Spelling ranted about the myth of a Celtic matriarchal pagan goddess worshipping sexually liberated...
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