[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/09/Monkey-Music.mp3[/podcast] I’ve written more than once about science related to music, but every time it’s been about human music. It’s never occurred to me to write a column about monkey music. Until now, that is. Now, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Charles Snowdon and National Symphony Orchestra cellist David Teie have decided to delve into …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/09/The-Thrill-of-the-Chase.mp3[/podcast] I had a hard time getting started on this column. See, as I was calling up the items I’d starred in Google Reader as possible topics, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to do a quick search for new reviews of my latest novel. And then I thought, well, as long as I’m online, maybe …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/09/Arachnophobia.mp3[/podcast] “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout. Down came the rain, and washed the spider out…” At which point a large percentage of us screamed and ran the other way, because surveys show that one fifth of men and a third of women are frightened of arachnids. It makes sense, right? Spiders can be …
Well, got a couple of nice bits of news this week. First, I’ve been asked by Pure Speculation, a science fiction convention in Edmonton, to be their Author Guest of Honour, filling in for Spider Robinson, who has had to bow out because of the need to concentrate on helping his wife, Jeanne, as she …
You may have noticed that blogging pretty much dried up after WorldCon. Heavy-duty vacationing will do that to you. And now that I’m back home I’m so completely snowed under by things that need doing that blogging generally falls pretty far down the list. Heck, I’m barely managing a Tweet now and then. Still, I’ve …
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/08/Guilt.mp3[/podcast] Guilt has gotten a bad reputation in recent years. People talk about being “plagued by guilt” as if guilt were some kind of mental illness. But in fact, guilt is a very useful emotion. People who are entirely guilt-free have no constraints on their behavior. They can cheerfully commit all kinds of mayhem, from …
Every now and then I attend a science fiction convention, and when I do, I like to talk about it in this column, as part of my ongoing evangelical campaign to raise the profile of science fiction and win the genre new readers. Well, I just finished a doozy of a convention, the grandaddy of …
And so the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal winds down. We were at the convention centre at 10 a.m. for me to give a reading with Alison Sinclair and Heidi Lampietti…but the only person to show up was there to hear Heidi, and Heidi, it turned out, had to stay in the dealers’ room …
Today’s highlight would ordinarily have been the Hugo Awards, presented this evening here at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, but as it happened we were rather late arriving at the Hugos because I ended up having a dinner meeting with my edito,r Sheila Gilbert, and her fellow publisher at DAW Books, Betsy Wollheim. Among …
It would be hard to improve on yesterday, when I won the Aurora Award for Marseguro (did I mention I won the Aurora Award? I did? Hmmm, imagine that), but today was another good day at the World Science Fiction Convention here in Montreal. After a great breakfast at a local cafe, I had my …
Well, you can’t have a much better day at a WorldCon than I had today, short of winning a Hugo: tonight I won the Aurora Award for the best long-form work of science fiction or fantasy by a Canadian writer in English in 2008. The award was presented at a banquet this evening, and my …
Well, it’s been a while since I posted anything. Driving from Regina to Ottawa will do that to you. Even when I had Internet access in the places we stayed, I didn’t have much interest in blogging after seven or eight hours of driving. But we arrived safely in Ottawa on Tuesday (by way of …
