I was catching up on a bunch of feeds this evening, and was struck by two posts on Boing Boing (1, 2) pointing to a couple of really terrific pieces of writing that have recently been made available free online:
“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang is available as an mp3 (approx 75 [...]
2001 and its sequels, Rendezvous with Rama, Hammer of God, Childhood’s End. The three laws. The communications satellite.
Arthur C. Clarke will be remembered far better by his works than by anything I could add here.
But as you consider his passing and read the many remembrances that will populate the sphere in the next days, [...]
An interesting perspective on blogging from Upstart Blogger, “What I learned about blogging from 1970’s science fiction.” Clearly, I know more about old school scifi than I do about blogging, so the story caught my eye.
1970’s science fiction, on television at least, was usually serial based. Each episode was shown at the same time, same [...]
Clive Thompson in Wired, on what we all knew all along:
Which brings me to my point. If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.
Almost as if Kevin Kelly at io9 heard my cries of anguish the other night, here is a list of 11 Classic Scifi Audiobooks.
One not mentioned that I’m enjoying right now is Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim. (Audible link.) I’m really tempted to pick up Jay Lake’s Mainspring on audio too.
We’ve been hearing rumors about this for awhile, but Gawker Media gets its geek on for 2008 with the launch of io9. Quite a deluge of posts, but IMHO pretty erratic content. Worth checking out is this list of “2008 Books That Make Us Hyper With Anticipation.”
Also interesting: Wired interview with io9 editor Annalee Newitz.
Brian tipped me off to a pretty cool new resource for lovers of fantastic fiction, Encyclopedia Fantastica.
It’s a wiki, meant to house “anything dealing with fantasy, fantasy fiction, fantasy fandom, or fantasy criticism. You can add authors, books, magazines, critical terms, fan terms, writing specific terms, website descriptions, blog descriptions, etc, etc.” From the intro:
Unlike [...]
Oh, newly purchased hard drive space, I hardly knew ye:
Now you can get 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and original Lost in Space episodes from the iTunes Music Store…
Ventus is one of those scifi books that I would typically never pick-up - hard/operatic SF suffering from very cheesy cover art and a front-cover blurb from Vernor Vinge. I had heard some rumblings around the ’sphere about Karl Schroeder’s latest, Lady of Mazes, and had added it to the maybe-when-in-paperback-or-at-the-library list. But then I [...]
Man. I just reread “Driftglass,” by Samuel R. Delany (as collected in Aye, and Gomorrah), and it is still one of the best stories I’ve ever read, skiffy or otherwise. He’s just one of those writers whose sentences are pitch-perfect, every time. Nothing is out of place or extraneous. Sigh.
(While we’re talking about love for [...]
