Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
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 […]
Read entry →July 15, 2009 · 241 words
From Junkfood Science
I suppose we all remember the big story about how rhesus monkeys kept on a highly-restrictive diet lived longer than those who were allowed to nosh at will. Turns out that this is only true if you, well, ignore the monkeys that died. The lower mortality claimed among the monkeys on the calorie restricted diet […
Read entry →July 14, 2009 · 553 words
Mr. Brown
Charles N Brown of Locus died today.Charles was one of those science fiction people who will be very difficult to explain to future generations, a combination of gruff titan and mischievous elf. He began Locus as a one-page mimeographed newszine to support a worldcon bid, and then built it over the years into the premi
Read entry →July 10, 2009 · 139 words
Meet Mr Fusion
DARPA’s attempt to produce a microchip-sized fusion reactor has dropped out of the budget. Chip-scale integration offers precise, micro actuators and high electric field generation at modest power levels that will enable several order of magnitude decreases in the volume needed to accelerate the ions. Furthermore, ther
Read entry →July 9, 2009 · 938 words
Gaston’s Phantom
I’ve seen most film adaptations of Phantom of the Opera, including the one in Chinese where the singer was a guy (The Phantom Lover, 1995), and I’ve seen no less than two musical theater adaptations, both of which sucked. So when I saw the original 1911 book by Gaston Leroux at the library, I picked […]
Read entry →July 3, 2009 · 49 words
Now At Popular Prices!
Implied Spaces is now available in mass-market paperback! Y’all probably knew this already, but I didn’t. I’m just the author. And, because I haven’t nagged you for a while, I’ll mention that you can pick up a copy of This Is Not a Game at the same time.
Read entry →July 3, 2009 · 73 words
Kicking George
This weekend features the anniversary of the day we officially decided to kick King George out of town. In a decision largely unrelated to King George, Kathy and I are going to secluded mountaintop retreat for three nights.There may be internet. There may not be. There may be internet but I may not decide to […]
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