Archive for June 2011

For those of you who haven’t heard about it already, Amazon has put up its opinion of the best (F&SF) books of 2011 (so far) While I haven’t read anywhere near as many of these as I’d like, I agree profoundly with their selection for #1. And yeah, between us, me & Ty made the list twice.  So that was very pleasant.

I just came across this, and it reminds my why I love and hate my language. New York bison whom other New York bison bully, themselves bully New York bison. or Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. With thanks to William J Rapaport, Steven Pinker, and Pharyngula. [NOTE: Edited for capitalization]

NPR was wondering what you thought the best fantasy and science fiction books of all time were. I’d encourage everyone to head over there are vote your conscience.  Especially if you really liked my stuff.

There’s always a problem for men advocating for women’s equality that we come across as something less than manly while doing so.  A woman I used to date had the solution of advocating for women in derogatory terms, as in “Ah, I say give the bitches equal pay.” Though I rarely work blue, it seems to me that this is the occasion for it.  If you are offended by rude language or are a woman, you may stop reading now.  [...]

So over on the good Mr. Scalzi’s Whatever, Ty and I were lucky enough to get a chance to post our Big Idea. In the middle of it, as an aside, I included this: (At this point, Daniel goes on a foaming-at-the-mouth rant about that one part of Cryptonomicon despite the fact that it’s in many ways a fine book and his friends assure him that Neal Stephenson is a perfectly decent human being.) There have been several requests to [...]

I had two books due on the first of the month, and then a little grace period to tweak one of them while the inimitable DongWon Song started on the other.  After that, I gave myself a few days to decompress, sit in the hammock, read a book (The Lock Artist), and watch the post-apocalyptic smoke of Arizona burning to death roll in from the west like a stormcloud. But all that’s done now, and it’s time to get back [...]

I was going to make this just a comment in Ty’s post, but I think it deserves it’s own headline. In a comment, “TheTick” said: Your typical player of sports who the mainstream media says is having such a slump is almost always facing stiffer competition with less help and more responsibility. My take on the “sophomore slump” for writers — and especially for those of us writing series — has more to do with reader’s expectations than the actual [...]