Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
Best of all worlds. MOM, Genesis 2.0, and Resurrections are topping bestseller lists worldwide for the third month in a row. Mobs are rioting in the streets of major cities everywhere, demanding the author cough up Kill Cade, the fourth novel in the MAGIC CIRCLE series. Hollywood agents are climbing in the windows, groupies clamor at the door. Sara won’t talk to me. It’s amazing.
Yeah. And all this is happening in a near-adjacent parallel universe where the internet … Read more
The following interview question was prompted by the fact I don’t take selfies. Not very often, anyway, and I rarely post photos of my private life on Facebook. In the event, the blogger either didn’t have room for my response (below), or he thought it was too dumb. So, applying the principle of waste not, want not, here goes…
Q: Let’s start with the important stuff in today’s world: Selfies. Make a closing argument for their upside as if … Read more
The Western Enlightenment, in all its euphoria at Reason’s liberation from old-crock orthodoxies, has 
thrown some babies out with the bathwater — e.g. perspectives and values that might better serve modern people. Such as? Such as common goals and values that promote individual development and satisfaction within shared senses of community. Such as universal principles by which to judge different cultural, religious and ideological institutions and actions. Rationalistic secular reductionism has been left with merely scientistic measures that seem, at … Read more
Eclipses being a media meme du jour, I’ve decided to post a theme excerpt from MOM, the first novel in the MAGIC CIRCLES series.
The ‘primordial campfire’ in the first paragraph of the excerpt refers to the notion of a magic circle. From the series glossary:
magic circle (n.) 1. sphere of coherence cognitively rooted in the circle of light and companionable narrative thrown by the primordial campfire; 2. area, commonly measured as a radius, within which it … Read more
Sara’s mopping in another room. Our homebot, a robotic vacuum cleaner, has joined me here in the study. It cruises about, tsk-tsking at piles of notes on the floor, savoring my breakfast crumbs and generally making me uneasy. As I’ve told Sara, this critter appears far too intelligent. Plus I suspect all the homebots in the world are connected via the internet to pursue agendas we can’t even guess at.
… Read moreThe World War II expression ‘
The universe is full to bursting with new science fiction. How does any of it win recognition?
Last Thursday morning, in Bangkok’s Suan Rhotfai, next to Chatujak Park, we were treated to the best display of flowering trees ever — varieties of pink and purple cherry and plum blossoms, gorgeous golden showers like vivid yellow weeping willows, only better.
What, beyond the standard onset of the hot season, might have inspired this spectacle? It occurred to me this was launch … Read more
Read your own compositions, and when you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Samuel Johnson, from James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Excellent advice. (I once presented this maxim to a writing class, trying to remember which great man had originally proposed it. In fact, half the great writers in history have said the same thing in one way or another.)
Lose a few chapters, gain a book
But … Read more
Digital editions now available for sale on the CDP website.
Print and digital versions available here and everywhere from 5 April 2017.
A GOD IS BORN!
TOO BAD ABOUT THE PERSONALITY DISORDER
So reads the graffito.
MOM is the mall operations manager — the greatest intelligence in history, a machine awakened to self-awareness at a time when the last few human survivors have withdrawn to the last two remaining refuges on Earth. Quarantined from the global nanobot superorganism … Read more