I realize one is supposed to crawl back to one’s hotel room in the wee hours of the morning when one is attending an SF con, but that’s never been my style. It’s not even midnight yet, and here I am virtuously blogging before bed–although I did spend the last hour with Rob Sawyer and …
ConVersion is off and running. Registration was only half an hour late opening today, which isn’t too bad by short-handed volunteer-run standards. I was second in line, and although the person-in-charge didn’t seem to have a clue that I was, in fact, a program participant, nor did my name appear on any list he had, …
Which is not the same as waiting to be converted, thanks. ConVersion is the annual SF convention in Calgary, which is where I am now after a long drive yesterday (made less stressful than it might have been by the fact that my three-year-old daughter Alice was a wonderful traveller and didn’t whine at all, …
Had a pretty productive day yesterday; no fiction, because I’m trying to get ready to go on vacation, but I wrote a new column (on a new technique for recovering old analog recordings) and finished Chapter 4 of the Orson Scott Card biography. Today I have to try to wrap up some exhibit copy for …
That’s the projection of astronomer Seth Shostack from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California. I hope he’s right!
It’s by William Hyde, a paleoclimatologist from Duke University. Enjoy!
Technology for recording sound has been around a lot longer than many people realize, long enough that some very interesting people we now think of as distant historical figures made recordings of their voices–people like Queen Victoria, Alfred Tennyson and Florence Nightingale. We seldom hear those recordings, though, because they’re so fragile that playing them …
A slightly delayed reading diary, because I wanted to be able to report that I had finished The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen–which I have. Highly recommended, a fascinating bit of popular history that points up the largely forgotten impact that the Chicago World’s Fair had on everything from popular culture to …
I wouldn’t exactly call this the science fiction headline of the week, but…maybe the medieval fantasy headline of the week?
Not much to report from yesterday. I spent part of the day preparing and then delivering my Saskatchewan Book Awards entries (I entered The Iran-Iraq War, Ayatollah Khomeini and J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Imaginary Worlds in the children’s literature category, and also entered the Tolkien bio in the non-fiction category; I might have entered more …
Mercury is not a very nice place, but it’s an interesting one. NASA is launching a probe to the inmost planet on Monday. Who knew it was so hard to get to?
Don’t miss this online exhibit about the future in transportation…as they saw it in the past. Where DID I park my flying car, anyway?
