Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 207 entries, all of them here in full.
September 21, 2011 · 981 words
Global Groove
It’s September in New Mexico, and that means Globalquerque, our yearly festival of music where hardly anybody sings in English. There are three stages with bands rotating on and off all the time, which means that wherever you are, you’re missing two-thirds of the music. This also means that however much fun you are hav
Read entry →September 19, 2011 · 201 words
Muscular Academics
The web site of Trinity College, Dublin, has been vastly improved by the presence of a new English professor, one Conan T. Barbarian, Ph.D. (I could have sworn his middle initial was D.) According to the professor’s biography: Dr Conan T. Barbarian was ripped from his mother’s womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of
Read entry →September 16, 2011 · 442 words
Heavy Lifting
“Today, NASA revealed its plans for the new heavy-lift launch system intended to carry large payloads—including, perhaps, missions to send humans beyond Earth orbit. “The NASA authorization bill that Congress passed nearly a year ago demanded not only that NASA build a new heavy-lift rocket, but also that the new syste
Read entry →September 16, 2011 · 196 words
SETI Discovers Tatooine . . .
“The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA’s Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet — a planet orbiting two stars — 200 light-years from Earth. “Unlike Star Wars’ Tatooine,
Read entry →September 15, 2011 · 123 words
What’s Next
I’ve been working to get an ebook version of Hardwired up and available for your digitized pleasure. Here’s the first draft of the cover. (It’s a classic, if you ask me.) And of course I couldn’t resist the Zelazny quote, because, y’know, if you’ve got a Zelazny blurb, you really want to use it. This […]
Read entry →September 13, 2011 · 572 words
Procurement
When I wrote my one and only Star Wars book, I gave some thought to the Empire’s military procurement procedure, something I suspect had not actually been done before. I put my thoughts into the mouth of Han Solo, as he contemplates the Empire’s response to the invasion of a bunch of blue meanies called […]
Read entry →September 13, 2011 · 762 words
Reviews Too Late: Treme
I would most likely have a deeply embarrassing fanboy moment if I ever met David Simon. I’d babble and drop whatever I had in my hand and maybe do a Snoopy Dance. I would almost certainly drool. And the reason is that David Simon is such a damn good writer. And of course David Simon […]
Read entry →September 11, 2011 · 283 words
Ghosts
I think it was when ABC News started broadcasting messages from the 9/11 dead that I made up my mind. I won’t be watching the news on the tenth anniversary, or watching or listening to any of the ten-year commemorations. ABC is, after all, one of the country’s premiere news organizations, but apparently they can’t [&he
Read entry →September 10, 2011 · 310 words
Well Whinge
We’ve had two days of clouds and rain, and that’s lowered the temperature enough so that this was the first day since May, maybe, when we haven’t had to turn on the AC. I hope that the rain is raising the water table. We live in the country, and that means our water comes […]
Read entry →September 8, 2011 · 442 words
A Day Without Email . . .
. . . is like a day without being bitten on the hand by a chihuahua. In other words, a day without something that is vaguely painful and annoying but not in any way harmful or dangerous. For some technical reason, never quite deciphered, I couldn’t log onto the Internet from my Atlanta hotel, […]
Read entry →September 8, 2011 · 1,050 words
Dragon*Con
(Dragon*Con sort of wants the asterisk to be there, and I sort of don’t. So I’ll put it in the first sentence and the title, and you can take it as read from this point onward. Right?) Typographical issues aside, My Horrible Month of Travel is now over. During the last thirtysome days I’ve got […]
Read entry →September 1, 2011 · 240 words
Kicking It Old School
Via Ian McDowell, this juicy trailer from Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. Directed by my onetime creative associate Tsui Hark, with fight chorography by Sammo Hung, and starring Andy Lau, Carina Lau, and Tony Leung (Ka-fai). The movie was nominated for thirteen Hong Kong Film Awards and won six. I’m
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