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I
have seen the future, and it is squishy.
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Now & Then (a Log)
It's All Relative
I'll admit to taking just about every online quiz I come across (even the really idiotic ones), but rarely do I find one as delightful as "Which Science Fiction Writer Are You?"
For some reason, I'm William Gibson. Perhaps that's because, in answering some of the questions, I was forced to picked the most nihilistic response among a bunch of ill-suited contenders. Changing one of my "on-the-fence" responses makes me Octavia E. Butler, which I'm much more comfortable with.
Someone posted the list of possible authors in Making Light's comments:a: Isaac Asimov
I can almost understand Ayn Rand's presence on the list, but Mickey Spillane?!
b: Alfred Bester
c: Arthur C. Clarke
d: David Brin
e: Octavia E. Butler
f: Philip José Farmer
g: Gregory Benford
h: Frank Herbert
i: Samuel R. Delany
j: Jerry Pournelle
k: Mickey Spillane
l: Ursula LeGuin
m: Stanislav Lem
n: William Gibson
o: Olaf Stapledon
p: Philip K. Dick
q: Hal Clement
r: Robert A. Heinlein
s: E.E. "Doc" Smith
t: James Tiptree, Jr.
u: Jules Verne
v: Kurt Vonnegut
w: H.G. Wells
x: Cordwainer Smith
y: Ayn Rand
z: John Brunner
Spiffy Skiffy
It's donation time over at Strange Horizons, the exceptional non-profit speculative fiction magazine. I'll admit to being a wee bit partial to this cause (they've published a poem of mine), but donations are their lifeblood, and as a rare non-profit pro-rate market they deserve to get some juice. The all-volunteer staff at SH is known for expanding the boundaries of speculative fiction -- i.e., publishing genre-bending stuff you won't find in Asimov's or Analog -- and for cultivating the field's emerging voices.
To make donating even more worth your while, SH randomly selects some donors to receive prizes donated by SH authors -- a great way to get a hard-to-find item or an interesting small press publication you wouldn't have heard of otherwise. After the last drive I was gifted with an advance copy of The Annunciate.
Some of my SH favorites from the archive:
Tim Pratt's mythological series of Bestiary poems includes the enchanting Poor Bahamut.
In the spirit of Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Benjamin Rosembaum's "Other Cities" series weighs in with some imaginative sociological extrapolations. Ylla's Choice is among my favorites.
C.A. Conrad's surreal Frank poem tickles my fancy to the extreme.
Go read; then donate!
The Apocalypse Ain't So Bad...
On a whim I just went to the GNE for the first time in weeks, and unexpectedly found myself in the midst of the apocalypse. As the developer announced an imminent wipe to load the beta code via the global chat, talk turned to ruminations on the Four Horsemen and the afterlife. Then suddenly, as though it had never existed, the game was gone... taking with it the experience points, making skill levels, belongings, and virtual homes of the intrepid alpha players.
Sign up for the beta and join the next round of goodness.
Lawn Cake
It's beginning to warm up and the sky is bright and clear. Outside my office window, the ground near the Point looks as though it's been sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. The part of me that never got used to cold, sunless winters is enjoying this short spring-like interlude while it can. It imagines that the snow on the ground is a remnant of the last snowfall of the year, and that little budlings are even now beginning to make their way to the soil's surface.
At the same time, it can't help but contemplate what the prognosticators say we're in for tomorrow: freezing rain.
Turtle and the Bomb
This is the first in an occasional series on my childhood obsessions. I'm sure I'll veer into teenage obsessions as well, since those are ridiculous and fun. My goal is to capture the past: to remember what I found compelling back then and reflect on it. My childhood memories are hazy at best -- quiet apparitions begging for flesh. We'll see how it goes...
I was probably ten or eleven when I first read The Westing Game, a delightfully dark and complex children's book by Ellen Raskin. I'd read some good books -- a little Judy consumed guiltily under the covers at night; a little Tolkien, which inspired me to write my own incredibly derivative fantasy -- but I hadn't read anything quite like this.
The Westing Game is a sublimely layered murder mystery that assumes its audience has a brain and treats it accordingly. It takes place largely in a high-rise apartment building, where we meet a cast of characters whose lives become entangled when they are all invited to live there. One can't underestimate the impact of such a setting on the mind of a youngster; I was fascinated back then by exotic resorts, grand estates, luxury liners -- basically any place populated by strangers where anything might happen. Sunset Towers, in close proximity to the fanciful mansion of the late Sam Westing, fit the bill nicely.
Because I'm feeling lazy at the moment, I won't go into details about the plot or characters; you'll have to read the book for yourself it you haven't already. Reading it as an adult, you'll probably untangle the web of events that comprise the mystery before it's revealed at the end, but you'll most likely have fun doing it.
As a child I was so dazzled by Ms. Raskin's literary achievement that I formed the Ellen Raskin Mystery Fan Club. Mind you, the only other member was my friend Susan (who was also my co-conspirator in forming the Code Club -- which you're not allowed to know about 'cause we swore never to divulge its secrets; and the Terra Tribe, which furnished a foundation for imaginary priestess play), and we had nothing even remotely resembling a mandate, but... consider it a rudimentary version of the modern-day book club.
After reading the book, I also wrote my second fan letter (the first was to my very first crush; perhaps he deserves his own entry). I told her I wanted to be a writer myself someday, talked about what I'd been working on to get there, and gushed over her books. Soon after I sent it off a reply came in the mail. I remember it was typewritten, and that she'd signed her name with a green colored pencil. In it, she encouraged me to do what one must do to become a writer -- keep writing. Although I'm no novelist now, I appreciate the fact that she spoke directly to a fan and told her what she needed to hear. (And perhaps one day I'll get that YA novel out of my system after all.)
R.I.P., Ellen. You'll long be remembered.
The Third Kind of Lie
In another exposé of government agencies skewing and misinterpreting research data to foist policy initiatives on defenseless citizens, Steven Milloy neatly deconstructs a recent initiative from our nation's friendly Drug Czar and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Not only did Mr. Czar and the NHTSA take liberties with numbers to justify a new crackdown on "drugged driving," but the NHTSA recently sponsored a program in the Netherlands to study the effects of marijuana (and the combined effects of alcohol and marijuana) on driving -- using human subjects in real traffic. This is the sort of thing that brings out my inner libertarian. And my inner libertarian doesn't appreciate being acknowledged.
This is the work of Abbi Ball, and is licensed under a Creative Commons License.