I’ve mentioned the Temeraire books before — now news hits that Peter Jackson has optioned them. Here’s hoping something comes of it.
Sep 142006
Reading
Thoughts about something I’ve recently read.
Two writers I met at Worldcon
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Sep 032006
I wanted to call out the work of two writers I met while at Worldcon. First up is Bill Shunn; I had dinner with him and his lovely wife Laura, as well as a host of other folks, one night. I naturally asked where I could find something he’d written; as it happens, Salon was the easiest place. And to my pleasure, “Love in the Age of Spyware” is one of the best SF shorts I’ve read in years.
The other is Tobias Buckell. I just finished Crystal Rain and it was great fun — an adventure story in an island culture world where enemy aliens have taken on the roles of gods in a fallen human civilization, recreating aspects of the Aztec culture in order to wage war. It’s full of airships, hidden technological secrets, island patois, and derring-do. Toby was a winner of the Writers of the Future contest, and a finalist for the Campbell. If you are looking for something a little different from the usual fantasy or space opera, this should fit the bill nicely without being so completely exotic that you can’t relate — it’s still very much in the straight-up science-fiction adventure story tradition.
So go check them out. 🙂
Aug 302006
Today’s Real Life nails the issue of modern convenience versus fun. 🙂
I’m at Worldcon
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Aug 242006
After a day of meetings and six hours of driving.
I parked, registered at the hotel, and went straight to register for the con. In the space of five minutes I saw Joe Haldeman and Harry Turtledove.
It’s so big that I am unsure where to go or what to do now. Find food is probably a decent answer.
Aug 212006
The August 18th issue of Entertainment Weekly has a fun little gimmick: six covers, one for each of the James Bond actors, going back in time. It provides an interesting window into the changing pop cultural preoccupations.
In 1995, with Pierce Brosnan on the cover, we see an article on “What’s Hot (And Not) on Laserdisc.” To which today’s response is “what’s laserdisc?” We see a pre-Shakespeare in Love Gwyneth Paltrow insisting that “I’m more than a head in a box.” And the cover article asks, “Do we still need 007 in a post-Cold-War world?” The Brosnan Bond movies of course answered that question; the 1995-era sense that history had ended was turned on its ear in not too many more years.
