Every once in a while, a book’s ideas and presentation will wake me from sound sleep and make me fumble out of bed and grab coffee at an odd hour. This does not happen often anymore; as a writer I am often ever-so-slightly distanced by being able to see the bones of a book. But …
Reading Recommendation: Overstory, by Richard Powers Read More »
I finished reading 2140 the day that the United States announced it would pull out of the Paris agreement on Climate Change.  I believe today may go down in history as the day we lost global political power and destroyed the global good will of other nations towards us, and maybe worse. But that’s a different blog …
Reading Recommendation: New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson Read More »
I am writing this from a coffee shop in DC.  One of the reasons I came here at this time was to participate in the March for Science right here in the capital. The March I ran into three friends, fellow writer Brenda Clough and her husband Larry Clough, and another fellow writer, Chris Cevasco. What a …
This is the seventh, and probably next to last, of my posts about POST.  We’re funded, which is great news.  $3778 out of $3500.  Now every new backer helps make the Kickstarter an even better deal. We have four days left. Three of my friends put in stories that are in the stretch goals, and I know …
E. O. Wilson’s Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life is one of the best books I’ve read on the future of Earth. He states the problem clearly….after beginning with an apt description of what we (mankind) are like and then stating that we have little time to spend on the wrong trajectory, he says: “Meanwhile, we thrash about, …
Reading Recommendation: Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life Read More »
I just finished the audiobook of Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Water Knife.” Nicely done! Paolo has always truly good at warning — which is one of the big jobs science fiction does well. In this case, he’s warning about a future that feels very real, a dry and thirsty future where fresh water represents power. He writes …
Reading Recommendation: The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi Read More »
I spent the last week vacationing in the Mexican Riviera Maya, which runs from Cancun west along the Caribbean sea. The first time I came here, in 1998, a long somewhat sleepy highway ran along the coast and hand-made signs led to beach locations. We stayed in a small hotel, the Blue Parrot Inn in Playa …
Somewhere around a dozen years ago, I was sitting in a bar in Eastern Washington. It could have been Lake Chelan or Yakima. I really don’t remember. But I do remember meeting two cowboys. Real cowboys (we still have them in the west). They weren’t talking about herds of cows over their beers.  They were talking …
I live in Washington State, and all the news for the last two weeks has been the unthinkable Oso mudslide. Slides are not unusual here, although I have never heard of one with this much destructive force. It got me reflecting about the relationship between earth and water. The desert near my parent’s home in …
Every year, we science fiction fans are given the opportunity to vote on a host city for a future World Science Fiction convention. This year, the vote will be between Kansas City and Shanghai.  I’m certain that I’ll be voting for Kansas City. I’d LOVE to see the Great Wall, but I’ve seen pictures of …
Backing into Eden Chapter 18: The Element of Air Read More »
