For what it’s worth, if I were picking the winners of the Nebula Awards right now (not the ones I think will win, but rather the ones I thought were the best) from the preliminary ballot the winners, according to my arbitrary and would be: For novel, either Hal Duncan‘s brilliant mess Vellum, or else Peter Watt’s “no, this is… Read more →
Category: Books
The word ‘knell’ is in a lot of his stuff.
Extracted from The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore, Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes. As by the shore, at break of day, A vanquished chief expiring lay, Upon the sands, with broken sword, He traced his farewell to the free; And there the last unfinished word He dying wrote, was “Liberty!” At night a sea-bird shrieked the knell Of… Read more →
We’re Living In Science Fiction: Street-Level Nanotech
There’s certainly something to be said for wild and crazy, “the universe is my canvas”, science fiction ideas–things with broad scope that seem tenuously plausible but highly disconnected from our day-to-day lives. Ever since 1982… or 1986, if like me, you first read Burning Chrome after the Mirrorshades anthology gave you a startling eye-opening. though, we’ve also known that there… Read more →
On H.P.L.
Without any further commentary, I present Clark Ashton Smith, writing about H. P. Lovecraft: To Howard Phillips Lovecraft Lover of hills and fields and towns antique, How hast thou wandered hence On ways not found before, Beyond the dawnward spires of Providence? Hast thou gone forth to seek Some older bourn than these– Some Arkham of the prime and central… Read more →
I’m Excited: Shadow Unit
Well, this is certainly the best “online entertainment” news I’ve read in a while. I’ll let one of the participants explain: Shadow Unit is, more or less, the website for a serial drama in internet form. Or possibly it’s a fan site for a TV show that doesn’t exist. Over the next couple of months, the site will be updated… Read more →
2008 And The Public Domain
Well, it’s another year, and consequently there’s a bunch of new works falling into the public domain. You can read all about it at copyrightwatch.ca. Some highly relevant examples to me: in life+50 countries (like Canada and most of the world) the published works of Dorothy Sayers, Lord Dunsany, Nikos Kazantzakis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and lots of others are all… Read more →
Even More Things I Did Not Know
Science has brought us a permanent, but easily-removable, tattooing ink. Does this change the metatext of tattooing? I mean, the pain is still there, but if the permanence isn’t part of the subtext anymore, what does that mean for the story? Is it to obvious to predict the rise of a serial-tattooing culture, or a rift between the permanents and… Read more →
Leonard Cohen For Iron Doug
This post is primarily targeted to my pal “Iron” Doug Hern, who is having his 127thThis is an approximate value birthday today. This is a recording of Leonard Cohen doing a reading/performance at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA (yes, that’s the “The Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association”) Hotel in New York City, New York on 14 February 1966. It includes Cohen… Read more →
Things I Did Not Know
When she was young, Joan Didion was quite the hottie. Evidence: Read more →
A miscellany for a Friday
There’s absolutely no theme here, just a bunch of stuff that caught my interest. Why did I not know there was a new Grimjack comic being serialized to the web at ComicMix.com? There’s like 60 pages there already. I hope this is web-to-trade serialization. And look, there’s also a Jon Sable, and what’s this Bar Sinister? The good folks over… Read more →
El Enigma de Paris
I read this today on one of the messageboards I frequent: I just finished reading a book called ‘El Enigma de Paris‘ (don’t think you guys will have much trouble translating that) by Pablo de Santis. I don’t know if it will ever be translated to English, but if you ever see it at the bookstore, it’s pretty good. The… Read more →
The Most Beautiful Woman In Town
I don’t know why it isActually, I have some idea, but you won’t catch me admitting it. but in the late part of December every year, I start to feel some sort of compulsion to read some Bukowski. (As an aside, my mental picture of Bukowski doesn’t match any of his photos–it’s Henry Chinaski.) I read different stuff every year–Bukowski… Read more →
Something Great: Courtney Crumrin
This is the first in what I hope will be a series of positive posts about things that are great. It seems like I should balance out all my ranting in some way, and this seems like a good way. This time out I want to talk about Courtney Crumrin and the Fire-Thief’s Tale. I read a lot of comics… Read more →
My Country Embarrasses Me
For years now I’ve been known to laughingly comment on the fact that you hear all these wacko religious groups opposing Harry Potter, but you never hear anything about groups opposing Pullman‘s His Dark Materials–a series that is also marketed as YA, and that sells if not Rowlingesque numbers, at least very impressive numbers. This is an especially amusing discrepancy… Read more →
Massey Lectures 2007: Follow-up
You may recall my lengthy post about attending the first of the 2007 Massey Lectures. I just wanted to point out a couple of things about that: Ideas is currently hosting MP3 versions of the lectures. If you subscribe to the Ideas podcast, you would already have them, but you can download them directly as they appear on the podcast… Read more →
