Archive for the ‘SF’ Category

D.C. launch party TONIGHT for The Machinery of Light

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

I’ll be setting off smoke bombs and firing lasers as I hit the stage tonight flanked by feline units Ajax and Captain Zoom. Zoom will be on drums, Ajax will be manning the bass, and I’ll be on guitar as we thrash our way through…

Sorry. Wrong event.

Here’s what’s going to happen. Really.

7 p.m. Reading at BORDERS, 1828 L Street
to be followed by..
Afterparty at the SCIENCE CLUB, 1136 19th Street

This will be my first reading in D.C. in two years, so I’m super-psyched. See you there!

THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT gets baked

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Balticon was a roaring success, and the book launch party I co-hosted with fellow scribes Benjamin Tate, Laura Anne Gilman, Jeri Smith-Ready, and Patricia Bray was apparently THE place to be at the con Saturday night.

Particularly awesome was the cake that Jeri brought. . . as you can see, it’s got all our book covers on it. My writing never tasted so damn good.

Meanwhile, if you live in the Washington D.C. area, don’t forget about the June 2nd launch tomorrow night! 7 p.m. at Borders 1828 L Street NW, followed by an afterparty at the Science Club. See ya there…

The Autumn Rain trilogy concludes

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

In stores today.

Where I get my ideas

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Like any SF author, I’m often being asked this question. Unlike Harlan Ellison and some others, I’m not inclined to get snitty about it. Why should I? It’s a serious question. I’ve spoken at length about how the research that kicked off the Autumn Rain trilogy was triggered by reading some of the U.S. military’s thoughts on the impending weaponization of space.  But if you ever want to fish for off-the-wall ideas, or just blow your mind before breakfast, there are three sites that can always be relied on to deliver the goods:

1.  Stardrive.org The brainchild of maverick physicist Jack Sarfatti, this is dedicated to a discussion of the technologies which would be needed to allow mankind to expand on an interstellar basis.  Cited in the late Robert Anton Wilson’s brilliant Cosmic Trigger, Sarfatti studied under Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, and recently authored a groundbreaking paper with NASA scientist Creon Levit that may cast dark energy in a new light. And he’s easily the most entertaining conversationalist in all of North Beach.

2.  Clifford Pickover’s Reality Carnival:  Where Cliff finds time to write the scores of books he’s written is beyond me; his daily list of news items would make a book in itself.  And when he’s not sifting for online weirdness (or keeping an eye on the good folks at Wikipedia with his blog Wikidumper), he’s pushing the frontiers of mathematics:  he’s mapped out key features of the Mandelbrot set, and has credited with dozens of patents as well.  (I’m credited with the same number of patents as my cats are, a fact I find somewhat more grating than they do.)

3.  Edge.org Legendary literary agent John Brockman embodies the intersection of edgy science and big publishing money.  And his Edge Foundation is the place to go to see the world’s scientists on display in a slightly more informal setting than one usually spots them in.  Kinda like the Ted Lectures, only you don’t need to sit there and watch the videos.  Which doesn’t mean it can’t be dramatic:  check out this shoot-out at high noon between Lee Smolin and Leonard Susskind on the anthropic principle.

Meanwhile, four days till MACHINERY OF LIGHT!!!!

THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT trailer!

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Two weeks out from launch, and here we go….

Pitch Black

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

My reaction to (re)watching Pitch Black is over at Suvudu, the Bantam/Del Rey website. So check it out.

(For a recap of my previous thoughts on the Riddick-verse, see here and here.)

The best spaceships in written SF

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

My analysis of Pitch Black is going to have to wait another day, as my thoughts on another weighty topic have appeared in SF Signal, alongside those of Alastair Reynolds and Allen Steele, among others. Thanks to John De Nardo for the invite. . .

Watts walks

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Congratulations to Peter Watts, who is now a free man, thanks to a suspended sentence that brings his ordeal to an end. He’s a convicted felon now, of course, but that’s what a guilty verdict does to your criminal record, even if the statute in question was poorly worded and the border guards were made to look silly in court. It’s an utter travesty that the whole thing got as far as it did.  The main thing is he won’t be serving any jailtime, and can get back to doing what he does best:  writing.

And speaking of, you really should go and get a copy of the Dozois/Strahan anthology The New Space Opera 2, and read Watts’ story “The Island”, which has now been nominated for both a Hugo and a Locus, and is one of the best stories I’ve read in years.  You know those stargates that always get conveniently scattered around the galaxy in space opera?  Well, this is the story of the poor fucks who have to cruise out into the empty at sub-light speeds and build the damn things.  And then switch ‘em on, wondering what the hell is going to come out….

Richard Morgan, Crysis 2, and the PR jackpot

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Richard Morgan triggered more than a little stir in the gaming community earlier this week, when he celebrated his winning the Crysis sequel job by doing a drive-by on the writing in various other games . . . Halo is “full of bullshit archetypal characters” . . . Arkham Asylum features “the stupid girl with big tits” . . . Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 2 is “just a bunch of mission levels” . .  you get the idea.   Predictably, the gaming community reacted like a bee hive getting poked with a stick.

The key word being:  predictably.

Richard knows what he’s doing, of course. Indeed, he does it every time he embarks on a new venture in his career, the last one being when he announced the release of his first fantasy novel by digging up the corpse of J.R.R. Tolkein and sodomizing it.  I exaggerate….but judging from the way Tolkein’s legions reacted to his criticism that Lord of the Rings was essentially a puerile piece of crap, you’d have think that’s exactly what happened.

But all that was going on was Richard getting more attention for his book.  Same way he just got that much more attention for the Crysis sequel.  Knowing him, he’ll probably do a pretty good job with it too . . unlike a lot of writers with a genius for self-promotion, Richard actually delivers the goods, as anyone who’s read ALTERED CARBON can tell you.

And he picks his targets carefully.  Were he to pen a mainstream novel, he’d have an article in the Guardian about how Hemingway was too drunk to write his way out of a paper bag.  If he writes a scifi movie script, we’ll have a rant about how everything from Star Wars on sucks balls.  Part of it may just be the natural ambition of a writer who wants to take everything he does to the next level.  But most of it’s a matter of page-views and eyeballs.  Looking at the man’s career thus far, it’s kinda hard to argue with the results.

WillyCon XII GoH debrief

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Science fiction is alive and well in Nebraska, folks…..WillyCon XII rocked from start to finish. And next year the guest of honor is none other than Harry Turtledove, so I’m starting to feel like I’ve hit the big time at last. Highlights of the con include:photo

–the Trivia contest Friday night. (Yet neither team knew what the Ultimate Destination of the Necromongers was . . . . wtf???  C’mon guys!! )
–meeting Sarah Clemens, artist guest of honor, and creator of the dangerous cat/dragon combo Loki and Magnus
–doing the first reading from MIRRORED HEAVENS in a while  . . it was good to revisit that spaceplane scene, which I wrote in winter of early 2005 and am still enjoying the fuck out of half a decade later
–the writing workshop.  Leaving aside the irony of having *me* teach a writing workshop, it’s always cool to be able to pay it forward.  Some of those folks will break in if they stop for nothing in the meantime.
–getting a chance to talk to the students in the Wayne State College Science Fiction and Fantasy Club.  I went to a school ten times the size of WSC, with nowhere near as vibrant a SF presence.
–almost getting the chance to get a look at a mint copy of the now out-of-print D&D classic Lost Castle of Zagyg. . . almost!  But the owner was a little late back from Sioux Falls . . sigh . . .

Special thanks to Ron Vick, Sr., who’s guided the SF club at Wayne State for more than a decade now, and is very much the hub of the whole scene.  A truly fab weekend.