Month: April 2008

  • Hugo Short Stories

    The 5 short stories nominated for the Hugo Award are available to be read, for free, and they’re conveniently linked by SF Signal. They are all, with the exception of “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter, going to be on Escape Pod, too, in the next few weeks (“Tideline” was last week).

    My calls:

    “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter: Good story. Nice Dialogue. Depressing as hell.
    “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear: Good Story. Traditional. Predictable. Happy. I liked this one well enough.
    “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken MacLeod: I loved this story. A bit campy, but I still loved it. It’s my favorite of the five. I asked Steve Eley if I could read it for Escape Pod, but it didn’t work out due to scheduling. [sigh]
    “Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick: Weird love story. No idea what it really meant. Not my kind of story, but others may like it.
    “A Small Room in Koboldtown” by Michael Swanwick: Good story in the vein of a hard-boiled detective short set in a fantasy setting. I liked it.

    So, if I were a member of WorldCon, I’d vote for “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359”. One of these days, I’ll go to that con.

  • Red Light Enforcement

    I know that there are people who read my blog who aren’t otherwise in contact with me. For those people (and anyone else who cares to respond here, rather than the emails I sent out) I have a question:

    Do you have any strong objections to red light running enforcement cameras? If so, why?

  • Professors are Evil

    Apparently, My Wife is an evil, elitist, america-hating communist.

    My favorite part of this article is the “Crimes by Professors” section. They couldn’t find anyone denied promotion for stealing reams of paper?

    Edit 0715:

    It is to laugh…

    Were you aware, Peter, that 95% of our schoolteachers are members of a secret Atheist cabal dedicated to brainwashing our precious innocent children, and the remaining five percent are astro-vampires?

  • Science Fiction is Love

    Do you like science fiction? I like science fiction. I like science fiction because so much of science fiction is fucking hilarious.

    For example. John Scalzi. I’ve read this story several times, but I read it again today and I’m sitting here, at my desk, at work, trying not to advertise the fact that my guts are quaking with suppressed glee.

    “…INEXPLICABLY ENCASED IN AN ENORMOUS BLOCK OF UNFLAVORED GELATIN.”

    That’s funny.

  • I Edit

    I edit my wife’s papers and articles. Usually this is pretty boring (sorry sweetie!) but occasionally it’s downright funny. Mostly because of Autocorrect, which occaisionally inserts some odd words. Such as this one:

    … the popularity elves of other categories could lead to issues.

    And for your amusement, here was my comment on the paper:

    I’m certain that the popularity elves will cause problems, but I’m betting we can exterminate these pests

    How would you have commented on this sentence? Best response wins my admiration.

  • Flying Spaghetti Monster

    My friend Tom Sisson brought to my attention a recent post to the Flying Spahetti Monster website. The proprietor posted a ranting screed that he had received via email. It’s amusing to read, especially if you hie to pastafarianism, but I think the funniest line is:

    You people think any thing you feel like thinking just because you like to think about things.

    That is art, man. People go whole careers without writing something so pithy.

  • We're Doomed!

    Scifi Disaster flicks are a staple of the industry. Good Scifi disaster flicks are the minority. It looks like there will be soon a new miniseries to add to the other category.

    Budgeted at $13 million, the effects-heavy “Impact” chronicles the aftermath of a meteor shower during which a piece of a dwarf star lodges itself in the moon. That triggers a series of anomalies on Earth, including cell phone service interruption, exaggerated tides and the occurrence of sporadic weightlessness.

    Astrophysicist Alex Kinter (Elliott), with a help of a female astronomer, discover that the moon has been dislodged from its orbit and is on a collision course with Earth.

    Oh, sigh. “Sporadic weightless ness”? “Piece of a dwarf star”? I’m not getting my hopes up. This sounds to be as poor as the Scifi channel movie “Earthstorm” which was so bad that I had to stop watching after 15 minutes it hurt me so.

  • "Sweeney Todd"

    We watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street last night. When we turned it on, the advance warnings came up and one was the movie rating: R for “Graphic Bloody Violence”.

    Oh my god, they were right. If I wanted to see so many throats bloodily slit…never mind. I didn’t want to see that many throats bloodily slit.

    I had thought the movie just sort of implied the vicious murders of (non-returning) customers of the barber, who were then dumped into the downstairs pie shop for conversion to the staple eats of Fleet Street but no, it was extremely violent and bloody. I could have done without it.

    Thumb down.

  • "Don't Bore Me" -or- Why I'm not Finishing this Book

    I read Kate Elliot’s Manifesto this morning and it has pushed me over the edge to a decision I’ve been edging toward for the past few days. I will not finish Verner Vinge’s A Fire upon the Deep, despite being halfway through. Why? Because it’s boring me to death. I’m finding it to be work to read the next chapter.

    What’s funny is the concepts in this book are interesting. Vernor Vinge is one of the oft-cited Singularity authors, and this book contains some interesting twists on the slower-than-light and faster-than-light travel dichotomy. It’s still boring though, which disappoints me. It really disappoints me because this book is a Hugo award-winner and I just can’t finish it. I’ve got other books on my stack that are calling to me.

    If anyone has any Vernor Vinge recommendations, keeping in mind that this book won’t be completed, feel free to pass them along.