Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,175 entries, all of them here in full.
January 8, 2008 · 62 words
They’re baaaaack . . .
The new Wild Cards book will be out any second now. (Damn! Nice cover!) This is (1) the eighteenth book in the series, but one that (2) begins a new continuity, so you can start with this one without having read any of the others. I’m not actually present in this volume, but many of […]
Read entry →January 7, 2008 · 370 words
Attack of the Psycho Commie Roof Zombies
Can I just remark that today really sucked? On a sunny morning, we set off to Home Depot to rent a 10-foot stepladder, an act made more complicated by the fact that we are the only family in Valencia County not to own a pickup truck. Strapping the ladder to the roof of Kathy’s Subaru […]
Read entry →January 5, 2008 · 89 words
This Year’s Edge Question
This year, the Edge Institute’s question is, “What have you changed your mind about?”They asked this question of 164 people, from Alan Alda to Anton Zeilinger. A few science fiction writers are also in the mix.Here are the results. The essays cover physics, psychology, social sciences, linguistics, art, even science fi
Read entry →January 3, 2008 · 302 words
Philosophers’ Dinner
It’s back-to-work time here at the Williams ranchero, the difference being that I never actually left work during the holidays, except for Christmas dinner at the Denning/Rogers manse, and for a party we threw on the 30th. The rest of the time I was concentrating on my deadlines, which abound. The party last Sunday was
Read entry →December 29, 2007 · 582 words
The Tropics. So Warm. So Lurid. So May.
Here’s another photo from our splendid little calendar. This was taken in 1998, on the island of Curacao— which, you will be surprised to know, is a part of Amsterdam, the city in Holland. Even today Curacao remains a part of the Dutch Empire, and administratively the island is a part of Amsterdam. This relations
Read entry →December 26, 2007 · 883 words
This Year’s Best Christmas Story
This story from frequent blog commentator InsightStraight. To advance this tale it must be understood by all that I havebeen, off and on and for much of my life, a bookseller. And I am as prone as most others of that breed to fanciful notions and antique behavior.So you will appreciate that when I dressed […]
Read entry →December 25, 2007 · 109 words
Happy Sir Isaac Newton’s Birthday!
Here in New Mexico, we have many traditions for celebrating Sir Isaac Newton’s Birthday on December 25th. We eat tamales, we stew up some posole, we light bonfires, we set little candles inside brown paper bags, and we decorate the graves of our ancestors with lights. I’m not doing any of that this year, I […]
Read entry →December 23, 2007 · 919 words
Three Little Words
So I have been writing along on the novel, and it’s going surprisingly well, thank you.Right up till this week, actually, when I encountered the part of the book described in my outline with three words. The words being: Their relationship deepens.Three words that imply a great deal, but that— like the rhetoric o
Read entry →December 23, 2007 · 121 words
From Storm to Storm
So I’m back from the Left Coast. I got to New Mexico just in time to be hammered by the same winter storm that had hammered California three days earlier. I feel doubly blessed. I seem to have a new, albeit temporary, writing job. A very intense one. One that I still can’t actually talk […]
Read entry →December 16, 2007 · 126 words
So— Who Are You Guys?
I’m going to be out of town for several days, having an intense series of meetings about the Reely Good News item I mentioned last week, and which I still can’t tell you about. (Honestly, if I’d known it would have gone on this long, I wouldn’t have mentioned it.)I doubt I’ll be able to […]
Read entry →December 13, 2007 · 295 words
Air Force Cyberspace Command— ooh-rah!
“It’s all-out cyberwar toe-to-toe with the Russkies!” In 2008, the US military will start to fund a new Air Force “Cyberspace” Command (which will essentially attempt to create an ability for the US to wage warfare within civilian information infrastructures). As is typical with most post-conventional military efforts,
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