Any author of medieval or renaissance fantasy who proclaims that there are few women in his fantasy because everyday historical women had constrained roles does not know a damned thing about what everyday historical women did, and managed, and accomplished. He does not know how households were run, or estates were managed, and he should [...]
If the summer bounty in eggplants is making you wonder how the hell people eat these things, here’s the easiest tastiest thing I know of to do with one. Much less fuss than eggplant parmigiana, though that is also delicious… So the trick is no more than one tablespoon of tahini per eggplant. That’s enough [...]
I just got my contributor’s copy of Digital Rapture, which reprints my story “The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe.” Isn’t it pretty? It’s edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, and the ToC is kind of amazing–stories of the singularity ranging from Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million” to “The Server and the Dragon” by [...]
Item! I have a new story up at Tor.com today. “Faster Gun.“ It’s hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, and a hundred times too big to be a ship. It looks like nothing anyone ever saw. And it’s crashed just outside Tombstone with something alive inside. And John Henry Holliday is just the man [...]
Just a brief note to say that I’ll be appearing as a guest on WNPR’s “Where We Live” program, hosted by John Dankosky, tomorrow morning (that’s 8/8/12) at 9 am EDT. We’ll be talking about innovation to solve the problems for cities of the future, along with Daryl Oster, William Erwin, and Nataly Gattegno. You [...]
Further pursuant to the question of post-traumatic issues… …the specific thing I am talking about is not the portrayal of or acknowledgement of these issues, because cod knows I can’t bloody write a book without somebody with PTSD in it. I barely know how non-traumatized people operate; their brains are different from mine. True fact, [...]
I blame Donald Bellisario*. Not in a bad way, exactly–but Magnum, P.I. started a trend. It hardly seems like something that would signify now, but Magnum (Which made Tom Selleck THE sex symbol of the early 80s) was groundbreaking because the protagonist was a Vietnam vet, with a certain amount of attendant damage–him and his [...]
INT: A CREEPY WAREHOUSE. For reasons that are not immediately obvious, the stacks of boxes and a rusty, paint-peeled forklift are wreathed in coils of mist. Ringing footsteps echo through the space, along with the rhythmic sound of heavy breathing. As the camera pulls back, we discover our hero, DIRK POWER, standing amid the swirling [...]