As part of our home improvement project, I convinced my wife to turn our large interior foyer wall into a three-print gallery of sorts. The idea is that we’d put literary/magazine inspired prints there, which fits with the theme of our first floor (you can see the large wall-covering bookshelf in the library when you … Read more
In a post-WorldCon entry on his blog Contrary Brin, science fiction author David Brin worries that the grey hairs that dominated the convention are yet another sign that science fiction fandom is aging … and that this does not bode well for the future of the genre. He writes: The number of elderly people, riding … Read more
Once, geeks were reviled. Ridiculed. Ignored. Now … we’re sex objects. Yes, that’s right folks, there are now romance novels about geeks and nerds. I found this out accidentally, while walking through my local Giant supermarket on a quest to buy diapers and milk. There, on the book frontend, in bright blue and yellow pastels, … Read more
One of the many pleasant surprises following the birth of my son NeutronLad on June 14 has been how much reading I’ve been able to do. This is partly because I chose some particularly good books to read, but also because I have a lot more time thanks to those early morning and late night feedings, … Read more
Over at Uncle Bear we’ve had many a conversation about long-tail fandom, the idea that there’s so much good stuff out there — science fiction novels, games, movies — that you don’t really need be current to satisfy your geeky desires. I tend to stay a little closer to the wave front then Berin — … Read more
You’ve got your cyberpunk, your hard science fiction, your urban fantasy, but some days, what you really want is a good ship, faster-than-light travel, and a trusty blaster at your side. The Space Opera Renaissance (Amazon) looks like it’ll provide exactly that. The new anthology, released July 11, looks to be gathering a positive buzz online … Read more
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow turns the conventional wisdom that pirated SF novels are bad for the industry in his Locus Magazine column “Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet”. He raises two major points: 1) that the economy, as it has in the past, is changing … Read more
The podcast opens with the old X-Men cartoon theme song in honor of X-Men 3: The Final Stand and the launches into a review of geek mom and geek parenting web sites. There’s no fiction review this time around, as I’m still slugging my way through George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows but I … Read more
I used to read a lot of webzines, but got out of the habit in the early 2000s when their numbers declined and my free time disintegrated. This month, in addition to striving to read more in general, I’ve specifically attempted to return to my old webzine ways. Antipodean SF features something you don’t see … Read more
My resurrected reading habit picked up in April, allowing me to tear through Analog’s June issue and make another serious dent in the Hard SF Renaissance anthology, while a trip to New Hampshire to visit my sister for Easter gave me time to listen to the unabridged audio of Stephen King’s new horror novel Cell. … Read more