This week’s Saturday Special is the interview I conducted with Paul Nolan, who grew up in the small town of Rouleau, just outside Regina (better known, perhaps, as Dog River from the TV series Corner Gas), and just ended a run on Broadway in the title role of the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar (he’s …
While I was browsing for another Olympic-themed column idea (as promised last week) one story particularly caught my eye: a Reuters piece by Kate Kelland headlined (in the Regina LeaderPost, at least) “Scientists skeptical as Olympic athletes get all taped up.” It caught my eye, not because it had a picture of female beach volleyball …
I think I’ve now posted the introductions to all of the biographies I wrote for Enslow Publishers except this one: J.R.R. Tolkien, Master of Imaginary Worlds. Like my book on Orson Scott Card, it was part of their Authors Teens Love series. Why, yes, I did really really enjoy writing this one. How did you …
(My Space-Time Continuum column from the May issue of Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild.) Science fiction is popularly perceived as being concerned with predicting the future. It’s not hard to see where that notion comes from: after all, over the years science fiction has gotten quite a few things right about the …
Just in time for the Olympics (and just in time for this science column), COSMOS Magazine has run an interesting online piece by Richard A. Lovett on the history and physics of the Olympic throwing sports. It is customary, in the column-writing biz, to be up-front about any direct personal connection you have to your …
There are few more awe-inspiring sights in the sky than the northern lights. Probably everyone who lives in Saskatchewan has seen them multiple times, and those who live further north are even better acquainted with them…but that doesn’t mean we know everything about them. One mystery associated with the northern lights is the claim by …
For this week’s Saturday Special, the first chapter of the YA/middle-grade ghost story The Haunted Horn, which I’ve just released to Kindle (other ebook formats and eventually print to follow). It’s set in Arkansas, where I went to university, although Searcy bears only a passing resemblance to the Oak Bluff of the story (although both …
Speculating Canada, a relatively new blog focusing on Canadian science fiction, fantasy and horror, has a nice review of “A Little Space Music,” my humorous “amateur theatre in outer space” short story just published in OnSpec. It begins: In “A Little Space Music”, Edward Willett demonstrates his creative wit and humour. He plays on an …
I missed a couple of Saturdays of posting bits from my vaults, and I may even be running a bit short on material, but here’s something that might be of interest. This play was written a long, long time ago, in the 1980s, when I was working at the Weyburn Review. Someone (the Saskatchewan Writers …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Edisons-Battery.mp3[/podcast] Thomas Edison gave us many wonderful inventions, mainstays of 20th century life. However, since he died in 1931, you might be forgiven for asking, “What has he done for us lately?” Him personally, not so much, what with being dead and all: but one of his inventions has just taken on new life, thanks …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Gas-Price-Conspiracies.mp3[/podcast] There’s a public perception that somebody must be pulling the strings on gas prices, that somewhere in some shadowy secret lair mustache-twirling oilmen are gleefully conspiring to raise prices across the board just in time for summer holidays. It’s such a popular perception that it has sparked any number of public inquiries around the …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/A-Handheld-MRI.mp3[/podcast] Magnetic Resonance Machines are massive (and massively expensive) devices, large enough to slide an entire person into on a table. But the technology that makes them so valuable in diagnosing cancer and other diseases doesn’t have to be either huge in size or cost. In a recent post on the technology website Gizmag, Brian …
