Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 272 entries, all of them here in full.
July 30, 2009 · 598 words
Revisiting the Classics: Fahrenheit 451
I recently re-read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time since I was 14. I found the book full of surprises, in part because I retained more vivid memories of the Truffaut film, which I’ve seen multiple times, than of the novel, which I’d read only once, and long ago. The first thing that surprised me […]
Read entry →July 28, 2009 · 304 words
15 Books
Ish tagged me with the 15 Books meme, in which— quickly, and without giving it a lot of thought— you write down the top 15 books that will always stay with you. I’d like to start another meme, in which you actually think about this stuff before hurling a list before the public. Here’s the […]
Read entry →July 23, 2009 · 444 words
Movable Memoir
Scribner is about to release a revised, bowdlerized edition of Hemingway’s A Movable Feast. A Hemingway grandson has substantially revised the book, apparently to make his grandmother (aka Hemingway Wife #2) a more sympathetic character. He’s dropped the last chapter, which he claims was written by Mary (Hemingway Wife
Read entry →July 22, 2009 · 258 words
My Fame Advances
The Review Fairy has been good to me this week.First, This Is Not a Game got a nice review in the Seattle Times. Fast-paced and with an immensely satisfying resolution, “This Is Not a Game” uses the latest true-to-life phenomenon of “Alternate Reality Games” to make its gripping story’s grasp tighter, more relentless,
Read entry →July 21, 2009 · 306 words
Northrop Builds a Horten
Northrop has built a replica of the world’s first het-powered flying-wing stealth bomber, the Horten Ho 2-29. First built and tested in the air in March 1944, it was designed with a greater range and speed than any plane previously built and was the first aircraft to use the stealth technology now deployed by the [&hel
Read entry →July 19, 2009 · 142 words
Philosophers Needed: Apply NASA
. . . He was an engineer who until recently had been a NASA heat-shield specialist. A baffling wave of layoffs had begun, and his job was eliminated. It was so bad he was lucky to have gotten this stand-up Spielmeister gig on a tour bus. Neil Armstrong and his two crew mates, Buzz Aldrin […]
Read entry →July 18, 2009 · 300 words
And Speaking of Jack Vance . . . .
A new Dying Earth volume will be released any day now, a book that is not by Jack Vance but of Jack Vance. Songs of the Dying Earth is a collection of stories written in honor of Vance, by writers like Kage Baker, Tanith Lee, Mike Resnick, Dan Simmons, Robert Silverberg, and yours truly. It’s […]
Read entry →July 16, 2009 · 273 words
Corpse-Eating Robot
According to our friends at Fox News, a corpse-eating robot called EATR may roam the battlefields of the future . . . A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even [&hel
Read entry →July 15, 2009 · 899 words
Queen of the Crapsellers
Flashing back now to April 12, when we came booming up from Bodrum to our base at Selcuk, on the way looking at places like Eurotas and Herakleia, then going in search of Apollo’s temple at Didyma. Signage sent us astray. It turns out that Didyma is not precisely exactly quite the same city as […]
Read entry →July 15, 2009 · 225 words
Cybugs
Okay, cool new DARPA thing . . . The military and spy world no doubt would love tiny, live camera-wielding versions of Predator drones that could fly undetected into places where no human could ever go to snoop on the enemy. Developing such robots has proven a challenge so far, with one major hurdle being […]
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