Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 181 entries, all of them here in full.
January 30, 2013 · 82 words
Wanna Hand Out Some Awards?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s Award Season, and not just in Hollywood. Eligible folks are now nominating for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Feel free to nominate your favorite books and stories right here. I won’t hand out any awards, but maybe I’ll go on to read them and nominate them. You […]
Read entry →January 29, 2013 · 546 words
Reviews Too Late: The New World
So I’m just a little late in viewing Terrence Malick’s New World, which came out in 2005. It was far down in my Netflix queue somewhere, but either Netflix’s computer glitched or every other damn disk wasn’t in the warehouse that day, so here the movie came. It sat around for months, and then I […]
Read entry →January 23, 2013 · 763 words
Seriously?
I’ve just read a literary novel. And I suppose you know, simply from reading that sentence, that what follows will be a litany of complaint. My apologies for being so predictable. (Honestly, there are literary novels that I like, even adore. This just doesn’t happen to be one of them.) Exhibit A for the prosecution [&h
Read entry →January 22, 2013 · 284 words
You Are Herein Invited . . .
. . . to give me a damn literary award. Fuck yeah! It’s the season for nominations for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. And I’ve been reading on other folks’ blogs where they’ve been listing their eligible works, just in case, y’know, their readers were confused or something. Well the heck with that! What […]
Read entry →January 18, 2013 · 50 words
For Your (nearly free) Enjoyment
As a sort of belated holiday gift, I’ve made my Nebula-winning story “Daddy’s World” available free at Smashwords. It’s $0.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I wanted to give it away free, but they insisted I had to charge something. Either way, it’s a bargain. Enjoy!
Read entry →January 16, 2013 · 173 words
Filth-Spattered Wretch That You Are
You are such an accursed, ungrateful wretch that you will not give a child into training for the maintenance of the gifts of God. You have everything, all of it free of charge; yet you show not a particle of gratitude. Instead you let God’s kingdom and the salvation of people’s souls go to ruin; […]
Read entry →January 16, 2013 · 1,049 words
Reviews Too Late: Freeing the Slaves
Carrie Vaughn suggested on her blog that someone could do a combined review of Lincoln and Django Unchained. Happy to oblige, Carrie. In brief, Lincoln is a glossy, reverent, beautifully acted dramatization of Lincoln’s attempts to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Django Unchained, on the other hand, i
Read entry →January 15, 2013 · 41 words
For Your Hand-Helds
The Fall and Winter issues of Subterranean Magazine, including my story “The Boolean Gate,” are now available for free download in Epub and Mobi formats. You may now enjoy my Twain/Tesla saga on the electronic reader of your choice. Carry on.
Read entry →January 10, 2013 · 206 words
Cheap Louis
This blog gets a lot of spam, but WordPress is exceptionally good about catching it, and so—- luckily— you don’t have to read it. But I do, because I’m reasonably conscientious about this blog, and I want to make certain that none of you get shut out unfairly. Most of the spam is simply that, spam, [&hellip
Read entry →January 10, 2013 · 376 words
Uncensored!
For the first time in history, our friends in Turkey have pretty well done away with censorship of books and other reading material. Back in July, parliament passed a law that would free all banned works, provided that no court chose to uphold the ban in the meantime. Apparently no court did, so 23,000 banned […
Read entry →January 8, 2013 · 113 words
Dumb Ol’ Facts Anyway
When I was writing about this kind of thing back in the Eighties, I recall being denounced to my face on a panel at a science fiction convention, by s writer who claimed that the mind-machine interface was just dumb fantasy, because it wasn’t Supported By The Facts— any electrode inserted in the brain would [&hel
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