So, Jeff VanderMeer, author of many things (including frightfully good stories about mushroom people) linked to my post below about pseudonyms. He’s gone with the “rather laugh than cry” route and has introduced a new Internet meme for book nerds: So, what’s your literary pen name? THIS IS THE OFFICIAL FORMULA (as created by, um, me): (1) Use the first… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Zing!
This is the bitchy, badly-kept secret of American culture, which everyone knows but we’re supposed to be too polite to mention in public (and anyone who really thinks that obviously doesn’t know much about Americans): wherever there’s money to be made, that’s where “culture” will go. Because there is no culture in America, not really. There is only media, and… Read more →
Ions played instead of notes
This is how things happen: First, author Sarah Monette mentions a LiveJournal that posts a poem every Monday. I follow this link and make a note to come back later and look for poets I am not familiar with. And as I start looking over the list the first thing that grabs me is a post of Thylias Moss’s poem… Read more →
The Next Slum?
The Next Slum? Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of… Read more →
Bookish Bits: A Miscellany
Check out PodCastle, a new podcast of readings from in the F/SF genre. They got my attention with their first reading, of Peter Beagle‘s Come Lady Death. There are several more stories there now, as well. More details on Anathem, the new Neal Stephenson. Looks to be another monster of a book. And, I’m thinking, we’re going to be seeing… Read more →
Bookish Bits: Pseudonyms
OK, I’m comfortable with the idea of pseudonyms for authors. Sure, when I was a kid and first ran into the concept (I think it was when someone told me that the Eric G. Iverson guy whose stories I liked in the digests had novels under another name) I was a little shocked, but I’m used to it now. Some… Read more →
Bookish Bits: Small Press Publishers
I give a disturbing amount of money to Subterranean Press and Night Shade Books for some of their fine editions. They seem to print a lot of stuff that I want to have–hitting both my tastes in literature, in that they print books I want to read and own, and my tastes as a frankly insane collector type in that… Read more →
Bookish Bits: Vance Integral
That’s Jack Vance over there. I’m a fan. I’m enough of a fan that I wanted to sign up for the Vance Integral Edition when they were taking subscriptions. It played into my two compulsions: collecting all the good writing, and collecting fine or rare editions of the good writing. At that time I didn’t have the money sitting around.… Read more →
A Humument
I was recently in a discussion of books as art object. Usually when I’m in a conversation like that it’s about fine limited editions, but this time it was about books that are works of art in a more conventional sense. I cited the Codex Seraphinianus, and the person I was talking to cited A Humument. I admit I was… Read more →
Thursday Night Gallimaufry
And once again, we have my quick opinions on a variety of things I’ve run into in the last little while. I am fascinated with the mystery of what WalMart might be doing in their giant, mysterious data center. I’m guess that it might be related to “lowering prices every day”, but doing so by means that your average consumer… Read more →
SF Writers Say Smart Things: Hal Duncan
“It has to be Guinness–dark, black and rich. It’s a scientifically proven fact, you know, that Guinness is forty-five percent fortitude.” —Hal Duncan Read more →
Rokia Traore: Nothing to do with superstrings
A few years ago I picked up a Rokia Traore album. I’m not sure what the impetus was–probably I was looking for another hit of the same kind of musical whammy that I got from Orchestre Baobab‘s Pirate’s Choice, so I was exploring African contemporary. Let us cut a long story short and say that I enjoyed the album, and… Read more →
Understanding Superstrings
“Hooray for popularization!” A while back I mentioned that I was really enjoying following the various TED Talks as they are being put online. (In fact, at this point, I’ve got an archive of over 230 of the talks as MP4 videos–around 12Gb–that I’m working my way through, either on the iPod during enforced waiting periods, or in my rare… Read more →
Gravatars & Identicons
You may have noticed a while back that I turned on gravatars for comments on the blog. What this means, in a nutshell, for those who aren’t already down is that if you have a “globally registered avatar” at Gravatar.com, then your comments here will show the image beside the commentor name. (Assuming that you use an email address on… Read more →
Definitely the headline of the month
Sometimes I am very glad that I only have to deal with the relatively more abstract, if no less scary, concerns of modern Western society. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital KINSHASA (Reuters) – Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of… Read more →
