[podcast]http://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 …
Here’s a blast from the past: my 1993 script for a half-hour science-fiction-flavored promotional TV show for the Saskatchewan Science Centre, which aired on Cable Regina (now Access Communications). I was communications officer of the Science Centre at the time. Since I voiced the alien, large portions of this consisted essentially of me talking to …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/The-Naming-of-Drugs.mp3[/podcast] If you take a prescription drug, you’ve probably said to your pharmacist something like this. “Hi, I need a refill of the hydro… chloro… thoro… acti… zine? Zanc? Something like that.” At which point the pharmacist manfully chokes back his laughter at your pharmaceutical phonetics phailure, tactfully supplies the actual name of the drug, …
Nominations are now open for the Prix Aurora Awards, presented annually by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) for the best in, you guessed it, Canadian science fiction and fantasy. I was fortunate enough to win an Aurora in Montreal in 2009 for Marseguro (that’s me holding the award, flanked by Betsy Wollheim, …
Wonderful to see that Magebane has been picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club; my last book the SFBC brought out in hardcover was Marseguro. Their description is nice, too: Magebane by Lee Arthur Chane is that rare breed of novel—a brisk-paced, twist-filled stand-alone adventure of science vs magic! Four centuries ago, a devastating …
This is an unpublished and, as far as I know, never-submitted short-short I rediscovered in my files.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 …
[podcast]http://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 …
A few years ago, at the time of Saskatchewan’s centennial celebrations in 2005, I had the opportunity to thrice portray T. Walter Scott, first premier of the province of Saskatchewan, and give a speech in his guise. Naturally, I made him a time traveler, so I could treat the whole thing a bit like a …
[podcast]http://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 …
QC and Bridges, weekly free-circulation entertainment/lifestyle magazines put out by the Regina Leader Post and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, respectively, have both just run what I wrote for their popular “Read My Book” feature focusing on local authors’ works. Here’s what I had to say about Magebane (the online version here at the Star-Phoenix’s website is …
Delayed once more by festive cheer, I make my first post of the year! *** How serious are you, my poet friend, About the craft to which your heart aspires? Do your words borrow pain, and seek to lend Unto the world the vision it requires? Do you object to light verse as a waste …
[podcast]http://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 …
