I didn’t watch the Emmys last night. I assume BSG swept all categories anyway — right? am I right? — so, you know, what’s in it for me?
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The Un-Einstein; or, Paul Dirac, Possibly the 20th Century’s Single Nerdiest Man
While I was traveling last week I was lugging around an incredibly fascinating book called The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom. Dirac was one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. He predicted the existence of anti-matter, mathematically, before there was any experimental basis for it. He won a …
Now in Papervision: The Future of Literature! Plus, I Skive Off Again
Just pointers to two things that I wrote, which are not unrelated.
The first is a piece about the Hunger Games books, the first of which came out from Scholastic last fall. There was a lot of buzz about them, and I picked the first one up … and then put it down again. It was all too grim and earnest and dystopic. And frankly it was …
I Am at Worldcon in Montreal
This morning I woke up at 7:25, in Brooklyn, hungover. My train left at 8:15 from Penn Station in Manhattan. It was a photo finish. Though maybe it’s better that no photos of that event are actually available.
The train is — over the course of 11 hours — taking me to WorldCon in Montreal. I’ve never been before, but judging by …
A Book I Liked: Best Served Cold, by Joe Abercrombie
I came across Joe Abercrombie when I had lunch with some people from Orbit, the science fiction publisher, a few weeks ago, and they mentioned him. They publish Abercrombie, so their objectivity is hopelessly compromised, but I put him on my list anyway. Then I was reminded of him when I was obsessively checking the Amazon UK page …
Now in Papervision: My Article on 18th Century Scientists
This ran in Time, and I just decided it was germane to this blog. Just like that.
It’s a piece about a book — no wait, hear me out — about late 18th century scientists, who were working at a time when the field was so wide open, anybody with a basement lab and some free time could make major discoveries.
The book is called Age of …
New Potter Puppet Pals: Snape’s Diary
The Potter Puppet Pals are important to me. Therefore you have to look at them. Actual real posting resumes tomorrow.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-a8USS84F4&hl=en&fs=1&]
“My mum was awesome!”
Also look at this: Warren Spector’s steampunk re-imagining of Mickey Mouse. It’s so cool, it can’t be real. But people say it is.
The Old Man and the C (Comic-Con)
I’ve been to 13 Comic-Cons. And every year I go back, I get this crazy feeling. It’s a combination of exhaustion and déjà vu and girls in costumes that warps me into a headspace where I believe that Comic-Con is my only true existence. The rest of my life – the other 364 days – seem like a dream. What I think of as “Real …
San Diego Comic-Con: In Which I Find the Movie of the Con
This is what it’s like to be press at Comic-Con. It’s not that you don’t feel like an ass, when you walk past a mile-long line to get into a big screening, fans who have sweated and ground out the hours it took to have a reasonable shot at a reasonable seat. You wave your flimsy little purple construction-paper pass, go in the side …
Fear and Loathing at San Diego Comic-Con
I type this from the WIRED Cafe, where they have wifi and free food and also deafening house music.
Spend any time at all at Comic-con and it’s hard not to go all Hunter Thompson. There’s just so many damn people. Nerd culture has gorged and gorged, and then bloated, then collapsed under the weight of its own flesh. The excess flesh …
Trailer Outbursts
The following outburst was yelled after the trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife:
More time travel! Less wife!
Some important things/people that I saw/met/learned/heard about at Readercon
I spent this past weekend (+ Friday) at Readercon.
Although Readercon is an ancient and stable institution — this was the 20th one — I’d never been before. It was held in Burlington, MA, which involved a whole peripheral psychodrama since I grew up in Lexington, which is the next town over, and spent most of years 10-16 in the …