The Hieroglyph anthology was born in Arizona and nurtured at ASU, at the Center for Science and the Imagination. The center is an academic effort to mash up SF writers and scientists and see what comes out. Hieroglyph is one child of the center. This anthology of ambitious near-future SF was goosed along by Neal Stephenson’s poke at society about how much trouble we have building big things, or “moonshot projects”. We writers chatted together on a board that included scientists, and had a grand time writing about big ideas.

There are two events coming soon….

There’s one on October 22nd at the Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix, Arizona.  It’s going to be a fun series of short talks about the big ideas in the book, and the cast of writers will be awesome.  I’ll be there (and yes, I’ll talk!).  Madeline Ashby,  Kim Stanley Robinson, James L. Cambias, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Karl Schroeder will also all be on stage, as well as the editors Kathryn Cramer and Ed Finn, and physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies. That’s a lot of smart, fun people in the room with a lot of big ideas. It’s essentially free if you buy the book and you get a second person in for $5.00 if it sounds like date-night.  You really do want to the book — there are some great stories in Hieroglyph, and a lot of big-idea optimistic thinking as well.  If you’re going, tickets will be available at the door if it doesn’t sell out, but it might be smarter to get them in advance.

In Seattle, there are rumors that a few tickets might be had if you stand in line outside of the sold-out Town Hall event there on Sunday the 26th, where Neal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow will hold a conversation about the future.  Town Hall is an amazing venue that hosts talks about a ton of culturally relevant ideas. I’ve been to about a dozen events there, and liked every one of them.