The journal

January 6, 2006 · 68 words

Calling All Martian Poets

Word has reached this office of the first Martian Poetry Slam. Commander Shannon Rupert and the rest of Crew 41 eagerly solicit your submissions by noon, January 9th. (Tight deadline, this.) Winners will receive “eternal glory” (and, we presume, no money). Winning submissions will be read aloud by someone or other and

January 4, 2006 · 23 words

Oh, puhta!

From the scholar Tyellas we have a cross-referenced list of everything Tolkien said about elf sex. Orlando Bloom fans will not be happy.

January 4, 2006 · 43 words

Gentleman Farmer

Halojonesfan, in a response to the “Despair” essay below, linked to this article on the new popularity of tiny cattle. Which reminded me that I happened to have this picture of me on Tractor Beam, hauling one of our mini-cows to market.

January 1, 2006 · 0 words

How My Mind Works

December 31, 2005 · 96 words

The Second-Coolest Thing

The second-coolest thing I’ve encountered lately is pandora.com. Type in a favorite song, or a favorite performer, and a little invisible machine will start chugging out music of a similar stripe. The engine is not perfect— it judges a song based on its instrumentation and style rather than its content, which means you

December 31, 2005 · 535 words

Despair

I would like to inaugurate this blog, and the New Year, with a cheerful little holiday essay entitled Despair As a science fiction writer, I like to create future worlds that are, for lack of a better word, gnarly. (It occurs to me that Rudy Rucker used the word in a somewhat different context in […]