May 13 Try to rememberEver try to list a series of interesting things you've heard or own or read about for someone else, only to end up saying something like, "and...and...and I forget the other thing." There's a good reason why we often "forget the other thing"--because our conscious mind, or what is sometimes called o..
May 5 The green fairy loses her mystiqueIt was called “the Green Fairy” Among the bohemian artists and writers of late 19th-century Paris, it took on legendary status for its supposed ability to enhance consciousness and bring on s inspiring hallucinations. Its strange reputation was only enhanced when, in the early 20th century, coun..
May 2 Putting on my acting hat again...I'll be part of the Saskatchewan Playwrights' Centre's Spring Festival of New Plays this month--but not as a writer (although I like the idea of writing plays, somehow I rarely get around to actually doing so): rather, I'll be one of the actors. Here's how the festival is described: Local actors wor..
May 2 "Grow up, SF people!" says Richard MorganSF writer Richard Morgan has a terrific post about the curious need within the SF&F community to denigrate those within the community who write or read stuff that we, ourselves, might not choose to write or read. Me, I'm pretty eclectic in my SF&F tastes, as both a writer and a reader, so I'm with h..
May 1 The aforementioned chapbook Further to yesterday's post about the workshop and reading that wrapped up the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild's Online Youth Mentorship program last night, here's what the chapbook looked like (well, here's what one chapbook looked like, one of the ones I assembled: every one was a bit different, depe..
May 1 We came, we saw, we chapbooked Today was the final day of the 2008 Saskatchewan Writers' Guild 's Online Youth Mentorship Program, and a fine day it was. The twelve teens who have been taking part in the program and the four mentors (of whom I was one) met this morning at St. James's Anglican Church in Saskatoon and, with the gu..
Apr 28 The science of fairy talesI have a six-year-old daughter, which means in the past few years I’ve been reintroduced to the wonderful world of fairy tales. I’m as willing to suspend disbelief as the next guy--more so, probably, since I’m a reader and writer of fantasy--but I also have a scientific bent, and every once in..
Apr 26 Another Marseguro review......this time from the Eclectic Writer blog . Generally favorable, concluding with: With good characters and an interesting story that looks at very difficult issues that are important to the world we live in today, Willett managed to elevate the story to a good read. What I saw as its flaws in story..
Apr 24 My KeyCon scheduleI'll be at KeyCon in Winnipeg over the Victoria Day weekend, and they're going to keep me busy! Here's my schedule (still tentative at this point); if you're attending, seek me out and say hi! Friday 9pm to 10pm: Mundane SF and Space Opera with Hayden Trenholm. Saturday 10am to 11am: Aliens in SF wi..
Apr 23 Another round up of my Futurismic posts......from roughly the last three weeks: One wandering planet can ruin your whole day Universal translator a possibility? Uncrashable cars…and one that definitely isn’t Sailing, sailing, over the bounding interplanetary main Moving beyond turning food into fuel Microsoft creates an algorithmic acco..
Apr 21 Molecular gastronomyThe terms “soft condensed matter physics, biochemistry, and molecular biology” are not usually associated by the average person with “bread, cheese fondue, and the mystery of milky sambuca,’ but as Rachel Ehrenberg recently pointed out in Science News , they should be. That’s because (and ..
Apr 21 A good year for Ransome fans! That would be Arthur Ransome , author of the Swallows and Amazons series, one of the greatest writers of children's books ever, and a personal favorite of mine from a very young age (I saved up my allowance and ordered the entire 12-book series, one a month, all the way from Jonathan Cape in Englan..
Apr 15 An interview with Hayden Trenholm Here's the interview I conducted with Hayden Trenholm, nominated for this year's Aurora Award for best short-form English-language fiction for his story " Like Water in the Desert ," over in the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy group on Facebook : Let's get things started with a little basic ba..
Apr 14 Take me out of the ballgameI have a confession to make: although born in the United States, I’m lousy at that country’s national pastime. I hit not, neither do I catch. If I had a dollar for every fly ball I dropped as kid, I could buy...well, a baseball glove, probably, but what would be the point? So this week I was ple..
Apr 14 Announcing the Hayden Trenholm interviewI'm currently interviewing Aurora Award nominee Hayden Trenholm on the discussion board of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Facebook group , and will be all week. You can follow along over there (if you're on Facebook), or check back here: I'll be posting the interview here as it develops.
Apr 13 Foresight: Speculative Fiction in Canada That's the name of a Canada Council-funded reading and discussion series starting up soon at the Toronto Public Library--and I'll be one of the 26 featured authors . Here's how my two events are described: Candas Jane Dorsey and Edward Willett Two of Canadian SF’s most fearless explorers of big i..
Apr 11 The Guardian arts blog says nice things about.. To whit : Few in our contemporary culture spend as much time as the readers - and writers - of SF regularly considering the repercussions of technological and social change, or environmental transformation, or the ideological inflection in popular cultural products - no matter how frequently the pr..
Apr 11 Photo of the (Yester)day: Me reading in Saska.. I made the trek up to Saskatoon yesterday, killing two birds with one stone: I met with two of the girls I'm mentoring through the Saskatchewan Writers Guild's Youth Mentorship Program, and then read from Marseguro at McNally Robinson bookstore. Both events were successful, although you have to won..
Apr 10 The most boring headline in my RSS feeds toda.. Statement by the American Egg Board and Egg Nutrition Center on AJCN study on egg consumption Just one glimpse almost about made me keel over face down and snoring on the keyboard.
