Pop Culture
drorzel | November 17, 2007An email from Amazon arrived yesterday announcing their Best Books of 2007 lists. This is an earlier-than usual opening of the "Year's Best" season, in which every publication in the universe produces a list of the N best Whatever of the past year, but with the Christmas shopping season now starting before Halloween, I suppose this is only to be expected.
Amazon helpfully provides both a list of bestsellers, and an Editor's Picks list of the Best Books of 2007:
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book…
evolgen | November 7, 2007He's not an atheist! He's found god! This atheist is no more! He has ceased to be (an atheist)! He's found god on his way to meet his maker! He's a deist! Bereft of doubt, he thinks no more! If you hadn't written his book for him, he'd be wandering around a nursing home dribbling spit! His intellectual processes are now history! He's off his rocker! He's kicked his skepticism, he's lost his marbles, run away from reason and joined the bleedin anti-science brigade!! THIS IS AN EX-ATHEIST!!!
drorzel | November 7, 2007I really, really did not like Glasshouse, Charlie Stross's Hugo-nominated novel from last year. I enjoy his "Laundry" books, though (The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue), and at Worldcon I had a conversation with Robert Sneddon, who recommended the forthcoming Halting State as closer in tone to those, so I picked it up a few weeks ago.
Halting State carries back-cover blurbs from three people: 1) Vernor Vinge, 2) John Carmack, lead developer of Doom and Quake, and 3) Bruce Schneier, the noted security expert. That pretty much tells you what you're going to get right there: a highly…
drorzel | November 5, 2007I realized that last week's scavenger hunt posts neglected half of my favorite genre fiction, so here's a post to make up for that:
What items should appear on a Science Fiction Novel Scavenger Hunt?
Some suggestions to get things started:
One Big Dumb Object
One improbably brilliant genius scientist who is able to both invent a new Theory of Everything and use it to build a time machine/ star drive/ whatever in his basement lab
One book offering a "scientific" explanation for some "paranormal" phenomenon
One alien planet consisting of a single ecosystem
One reference to special relativity…
drorzel | November 4, 2007Here's a picture of the haul from the World Fantasy Convention:
(We got two of the bright blue bags with the odd aspect ratio, but I only put one in the picture.)
The small pile on the left is a collection of samplers and free magazine issues (if I read them all, I'll have a really good idea of whether I should subscribe to F&SF). The pile in the middle is stuff from the bag of free books that you get for attending WFC. The pile on the right is stuff we bought in the Dealer's Room.
We may need to reinforce the office floor one of these days...
Contents of the piles, for those who care.…
drorzel | October 28, 2007Back in August, somebody from Night Shade Books contacted me and asked if I would like a review copy of the forthcoming book by Nathalie Mallet, The Princes of the Golden Cage. I almost never turn down free books, so I said yes (actually, both Kate and I were contacted, and she replied first, so we just got the one copy sent to her). I then proceeded to spend two months not gettingaround to reading it, despite carrying it to Japan and back.
The book is a quasi-Arabian fantasy novel, set in the "Golden Cage," the palace where the adult sons of the Sultan of Telfar are kept in luxurious…
drorzel | October 27, 2007Bora has tagged me, and nagged me in comments for this "Happy Hallowmeme" thing where people post links to clips from their favorite scary movies. The problem with this is that I really don't have that much interest in horror in general, or scary movies specifically.
I do, however, retain some affection for 80's cheese, which includes some of the campier scary movies of that era, along with this gem:
Can't you just smell the hair spray?
I saw this as half of a double feature at a drive-in (!!) during the summer after my senior year of high school. The other movie was one of the Nightmare on…
evolgen | October 24, 2007Too funny to pass up:
Seeking NIH Geneticist as early (paid) reader of Science/Adventure Novel
I'm looking for a one or more readers to vet the science and NIH-specific details of a science/adventure novel. This is a "hard science" book along the lines of Carl Sagan's "Contact," but with certain spiritual elements. The ideal reader would be someone with a graduate level genetics background at the NIH, but who is open to possibilities beyond rigid, scientific reductionism -- -- somewhere between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins.
Willing to consider a reading fee for the right person.
If you…
drorzel | October 24, 2007One of the odd things about blogdom, and the commentariat in general, is the way that people will all seem to latch on to some particular idea at about the same time, despite the lack of any obvious connection between them. I keep having days when I scan through my RSS feeds, and find the same topics coming up again and again.
This week's emergent theme seems to be "Kids These Days." It started with this deeply silly complaint about the "whiteness" of indie music by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, which strikes me as a classic example of a writer straining to find deep cultural meaning…
drorzel | October 22, 2007I've been Netflix-ing and sloooowly watching the anime Last Exile over the last few months, and finished it over the weekend. It's all very pretty, but I really don't understand what the hell happened at the very end. Some fun stuff along the way, though.
This means that I have once again run out of Japanese cartoons to watch, and the mystery anime I was recommended in Japan are not available from Netflix at present. Which means I need new stuff to watch on Friday nights after happy hour, when network tv sucks.
So, oh all-knowing Internet types, what should be on my Netflix queue? Serial…
drorzel | October 6, 2007It's as good an explanation as any for this:
I'm not sure what this particular bit of Engrish is advertising, but I like the poster. It was hanging on a wall in Kamakura when we visited there in the pouring rain.
The original image, and 140 other pictures from Kamakura, can be found in this Flickr photoset.
drorzel | October 4, 2007I got a rather odd email yesterday, with the Subject: header Help me identify a youtube video and solve my grandfather's mysterious death. That's eye-catching, to say the least, and the text of the message was also interesting:
There's a youtube video involved in my grandfather's odd circumstances of death. Please take a look at the attached picture and pass it along.
This frame belongs to the video I'm looking for and it's the only evidence that I have so far: it's a snapshot of the computer screen he was seeing when he died. If you ever saw the entire footage or recognize any detail of this…
drorzel | October 1, 2007A little while back, I asked for help identifying some anime recommended by a Japanese fan. I have subsequently found the business card on which he wrote the titles:
The first one looks like it is "Gurren-Lagann, so a shiny gold star for commenter Patrick.
the second one is a total mystery to me. I get "Ba Bu Ru squiggle GO!!" from that, and I'm not too sure about the "Bu." Anyway, any guidance you can provide would be welcome in comments.
drorzel | September 20, 2007On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving through rural New Hampshire, and had an odd experience that has become probably the most famous alien abduction story in the history of UFO folklore.
As it happens, they drove right past the town where SF author and Making Light blogger Jim Macdonald lives. Now, armed with a digital camera and a scientific mindset, Jim has set out to produce the definitive explanation of the Hill story, following published accounts step by step through the New Hampshire countryside.
It's a terrific piece of work, even in an incomplete state (he's still…
drorzel | September 17, 2007James Oliver Rigney, better known to the world by his Robert Jordan pseudonym, has passed away after a long illness. I didn't know him personally-- I met him very briefly once, at a signing-- but the Wheel of Time books were ridiculously important in my life. I met a great many friends through Robert Jordan fandom on Usenet, which helped keep me sane during graduate school. And Kate was among the people I met there, so I really owe him more than I can easily express.
Making Light has more, including links to a number of other tributes. Whatever you may think of the books (and this is neither…
drorzel | September 16, 2007The last night of the Worldcon in Yokohama, I wound up in a conversation with a couple of Japanese fans and another American. At the suggestion of the other American (whose name I forget-- sorry), we spent a while trading questions: we'd answer a question about the US, then they would answer a question about Japan, and so on.
Eventually, one of the Japanese fans asked "Why are there so many otaku in America?" I answered "Because Japanese anime is really good," (doing my bit for international relations) and that kicked off a general conversation about anime. After rattling off the paltry few…
drorzel | September 15, 2007In a comment to my Worldcon wrap-up, "fvngvs" asks a question following up on the science in SF panel:
So Chad, now that you've had some time to think about it, can you think of a list of books/stories with a really good treatment of science concepts?
It's a good question, and deserves a full post in response. It also probably deserves better than to be posted on a Saturday morning, when nobody's reading, but oh, well.
Anyway, the question stems from a question posed during the panel, asking for books or stories that do a particularly good job presenting some science concept or another. I…
drorzel | September 14, 2007Discussing Isaac Asimov's non-fiction a bit yesterday reminded me of my absolute favorite panel at Worldcon, Saturday's "Mundane or Transcendent?" with Cory Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Charlie Stross, and Robert Silverberg as moderator. They're all really smart people, and they're all good at turning phrases on the fly, so it was terrifically entertaining.
Some of the best stuff on the panel involved Cory Doctorow talking about Isaac Asimov's fiction, and putting it in a very different light. He argued that Foundation is really a story about the New Deal, and that the Laws of Robotics…
drorzel | September 13, 2007James Nicoll has a question about pop science:
Who today fills the niche of science popularizer once filled by people like Ley or Asimov? That is, who writes essays covering a wide range of the sciences, as opposed to covering one in detail for the public?
If you look in the comments, the second plugs Bill Bryson's science book, and you'll find me saying positive things about Natalie Angier's The Canon. (You'll also find me quibbling about Asmiov, but that's a side debate...)
They're not coming up with a whole lot over there, but surely ScienceBlogs readers have some ideas. So, are there…