Category: Columns

The Space-Time Continuum: These Are a Few of My Favorite Links

We already live in a science fictional future: your pocket, after all, probably contains a powerful communicator/computer with which you can log onto a world-spanning information network. Not surprisingly, science fiction (though not overly successful at predicting its rise) has taken to this futuristic resource in a big way. But how to choose which sites …

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Mind-reading through technology

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/02/Mind-reading-Through-Technology.mp3[/podcast] Most of the time, we don’t really want other people to know what we’re thinking. When a friend starts spouting conspiracy theories or a relative asks what we think of her new tattoo, it’s just as well that only our soothing platitudes are heard, while the words running through our heads remain unspoken Outside …

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Vehicle-to-vehicle communication

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/Communicating-Cars.mp3[/podcast] Do you talk to your car? I know I do (perhaps not as much as I, um, “talk” to other drivers, but some). I think I inherited the trait from my mother: all of the cars of my childhood, I knew from her, were named “Suzy.” These days, your car may even listen to …

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Saturday Special from the Vaults: Picking the Bones

This is an unpublished and, as far as I know, never-submitted short-short I rediscovered in my files. I think I may have written it at Banff during the Writing With Style workshop on writing science fiction with Robert J. Sawyer, the same workshop out of which came Marseguro. The landing pod settled in the middle …

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Willpower

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/Willpower.mp3[/podcast] The New Year may already be a little long in the tooth for a column on New Year’s Resolutions, since many of them have already been broken, but, hey, maybe you’re one of those still clinging to the hope that this year will be different than all the rest: in which case, this column’s …

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Weight-loss through writing?

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/Losing-Weight-Through-Writing.mp3[/podcast] One of the risks of being a writer is a tendency to fall into sedentarianism (which isn’t a word, but ought to be; clearly, it refers to a religious belief that the best way to avoid sin is to do as little as possible). Aside from those keeners who have set up combination desks/treadmills …

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The annual alcohol column

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Annual-Alcohol-Column-2011.mp3[/podcast] Every Christmas/New Year’s holiday season brings with it a spate of articles about alcohol—you know, like this one. Alcohol is a very odd thing for us to imbibe, when you come right down to it. It is, after all, the waste product of another life-form: namely, yeast. There are very few other life forms …

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The Holy Grail of hemophilia treatment

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Hemophilia-Gene-Therapy.mp3[/podcast] Over more than two decades of science writing, I’ve seen a lot of my past writings rendered obsolete by scientific progress. Case in point: the release last week of a research report on exciting new progress in gene therapy for hemophiliacs. Back in 2001, I wrote a book on hemophilia for the Enslow Publishers …

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Snow business

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Snow-Business.mp3[/podcast] It’s hard to believe that, in 20-plus years of science column writing, I have (as far as I can tell) only ever written about snow once. After all, snow is as much a fact of life in Saskatchewan as sun, wind, and the Riders losing. Perhaps there is a psychological reason for my avoidance …

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Creative cheaters

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Creative-Cheaters.mp3[/podcast] I like to think I’m a fairly creative guy. It’s hard to write a bunch of science fiction and fantasy novels without having at least a modicum of creativity. I also like to think I’m an honest guy. Tell the truth, keep your word, don’t cheat: that’s how I was brought up, and I …

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The doorway to forgetfulness

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Doorways-to-Forgetfulness.mp3[/podcast] It’s been a staple gag of TV sitcoms for years: an older character walks into a room and says, “Now, what did I come in here for?” But gags like that are funny because they have a grain of truth in them, and increasingly, I’m finding that grain of truth sticking in my own …

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The Space-Time Continuum: You got science in my fantasy!

As I write this, I’m about to fly off to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, where I’ve been assigned to moderate a panel entitled “You’ve Got Science in My Fantasy!,” featuring fellow writers Gregory Benford, Yves Meynard, Brent Weeks and L.E. Modesitt. The panel is described this way: “In Operation Chaos, Poul Anderson’s shapeshifters’ …

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