The great thing about the Internet is the way you can find out way more information than you ever used to about your favorite authors, actors, singers, etc. Or not. Because here’s the thing: most people don’t agree with you. Oh, don’t feel bad, they don’t agree with me, either. Sure, you can find people …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/11/Sundrop-Farms_01_01.mp3[/podcast] If I told you something has been built in the Australian outback in the past couple of years that can be solidly argued is one of the most important technological advances in decades, would you have a clue what I was talking about? You wouldn’t? Well, I wouldn’t have either until this past weekend …
It’s always a mistake to make a grand pronouncement that one is going to make a valiant attempt to post regularly to one’s blog again, especially after having made similar grand pronouncements in the past and then not following through, but… Consider this my grand pronouncement. It’s not as if I can’t come up with …
At the end of August and beginning of September, I and my wife and daughter were in Chicago for the World Science Fiction Convention…and a fair bit of touristy sightseeing, including taking in the (highly recommended) architectural river tour offered by the Chicago Architecture Institute. In the little over a decade since the last time …
I’ve sung all my life, in church, in choirs, and on-stage, both just for fun and professionally. And through all those years, I’ve heard music teachers say anyone can learn to sing…and the occasional person who counterclaims (and through their singing seems to support the statement) that, well, no, they can’t. So…who’s right? In “Singing …
In view of the announcement this week that Canada will send a mobile laboratory to help stem an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I offer an account of a similar effort from Canada to help combat an outbreak of Marburg hemmorhagic fever (closely related to Ebola) in Angola a few years …
The Hunger Games may be getting all the attention right now, but there’s a long history to dystopian science fiction. War of the Worlds, Brave New World, 1984, A Canticle for Leibowitz, A Handmaid’s Tale…the list goes on and on. I’ve written some myself. Dark and dangerous futures are, of course, ripe settings for fiction. …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/09/Throwing-Like-a-Girl.mp3[/podcast] There’s a scene in Huckleberry Finn where Huck is attempting to pass himself off as a girl, but is betrayed, in part, by the way he throws a lump of lead at a rat: “And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over …
(Note: if you’re thinking this doesn’t exactly read like a typical convention report from a SF writer, that would be because this is actually my weekly science column. A slightly different version will be my column for the next issue of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild newsletter Freelance. Never let a convention go to waste! (The …
(I wrote this feature during my recent short-lived stint as an editor for Fine Lifestyles magazines. It was supposed to be the cover story for Fine Lifestyles Yorkton, but I can’t see any sign Fine Lifestyles Yorkton made it off the ground. It did run in Business Saskatoon.) By Edward Willett Dave Rodney has twice …
OK, admittedly the title of this column is a bit tongue in cheek. Compared to, well, any other human being on the planet, Usain Bolt is, of course, insanely fast. (I have not personally compared my speed in the 100-metre dash with his, of course, but since I’d have to stop halfway to be loaded …
Careers in Outer Space is woefully out of date now, having come out ten years ago, but it’s notable in that it’s the first of several books I did for Rosen Publishers (I haven’t done one for a while, but I hope to do more in the future). Also, of course, it was on a …
