West of the Moon

science fiction

WisCon Schedule!

A bit late to be posting this, given how many people are already arriving in Madison, but better late than never!  I’m getting in Friday night, arriving too late for dinner but (barring flight mishaps) not too late for the karaoke extravaganza.
I’m on two panels, both of which are in the Science and Technology track, [...]

bored now.

I feel like this is the kind of thing I shouldn’t admit, but honestly, I’m in kind of a reading slump where science fiction is concerned.
You know those moments where you’re casting about for something to read?  It used to be that my first impulse in those moments was always towards the science fiction or [...]

Strange Horizons Fund Drive!

You know what happens when you move cross-country in the middle of the Strange Horizons fund drive?  You forget -entirely- to mention it on your blog.  Horrors!
Strange Horizons has been publishing fabulous science fiction (and related nonfiction) every week since 2000.  I think we do pretty good work, and we’ve helped introduce some of the [...]

Tags: strange horizons fund drive

phone home! be good!

On a much lighter note: our TiVo picked up ET recently, and I watched it last night.
You know, I’m trying to remember the last time I saw ET. It may have been in Spanish class (and thus in Spanish) in tenth grade. ET is one of those movies that I always felt like [...]

Tags: e.t., mixed media, movies

critical mass.

I have, officially, too many books-in-progress.  (Reading, not writing.)  I usually have two or three going at the same time–different ones for different moods, or different locations–but this has just gotten out of hand.
The current list of books I’m partway through reading, plus the reason why I haven’t finished them yet:

Africa: A Biography of a [...]

Tags: books, greg egan, mixed media

friday housecleaning.

Closing tabs, as they say.

I’ve seen a lot of people linking to this article from National Defense Weekly, about SIGMA, a group of science fiction writers who are offering their services to the US government in an advisory capacity. News of this group has been around for a while–the idea being, presumably, that people [...]

Tags: academic trainwreck, hugo, sigma

the robot future.

Just the other day, I was thinking that it must be some kind of indication about my personality that I got a warm fuzzy happy glow when I heard a newscaster on NPR use the phrase “giant robotic arms on the space station” and not be talking about fiction. Giant robotic arms! On [...]

Tags: robots

so, about those books.

So, as promised, what I thought about some of the books on the big 2007 list. I want to start with a little disclaimer, though–these aren’t really book reviews proper. I think a good book review should probably have some critical infrastructure, and should certainly have more thought put into it. This [...]

Tags: books

Regrouping, miscellaneous.

There’s something deeply satisfying about taking a day or two at year’s end to regroup, reorganize, reflect. In high school and college, I used to set aside time at New Year’s to re-read all of my old journals and diaries; that tradition stopped when I stopped keeping a diary, but I still like the [...]

Tags: christmas, strange horizons

Behind the Scenes, or, the real reason the SH podcast updates so infrequently.

This week’s issue of Strange Horizons is the last issue for 2007–our regular end-of-year hiatus is two weeks this year, for arcane calendaring reasons. This week’s issue also has a new episode of the podcast, featuring an interview with Maggie Hogarth, in which we have a great time talking about how the internet is [...]

Tags: podcast, strange horizons, technical difficulties