I’ve recently had a breakthrough of sorts regarding my novel vN. Basically, it involved the need to cut a lot of material. One thing that always bothered me about the journey my main character Amy takes is that it was a bit too long, and didn’t go enough exciting places. More importantly, the exciting places …
This year, I will again be a panelist at SFContario, Toronto’s only downtown SF convention. It takes place November 18-20, and in addition to being a panelist I will also be presenting an Aurora award for the Best Graphic Novel in English. (Hopefully I don’t have this same scratchy throat a month from now.) Here …
In a rare coincidence, two pieces of mine are up at SF Signal and Tor.com, respectively. Thanks to Paul and Bridget, the editors, for allowing me to rant at my leisure. The first is a piece on how to raise stakes for characters in post-Singularity or post-Scarcity novels. Snip: I belong to a genre writing …
Those who read my story “Ishin” in The Shine Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction might be interested in this piece by Noah Schachtman over at the Wired Danger Room blog. What I like about this piece is that it exposes how important research framing is to actual research — you have to decide what kind …
A story of mine originally published in Nature is now available online, and you can read it here. The bathroom. The toilet whines: ketone and oestrogen levels of the day’s users, medical flowcharts of drugs and dosage, the most recent ex-wife’s ovulation schedule. The chair had liked the most recent ex-wife: so fixated on the …
Today I had lunch at Yuzu with a friend from my Strategic Foresight & Innovation program. (I ate about half of a giant, fabulous bowl of hwaedupbap.) We were discussing our design theses. You see, in between polishing my novel and writing a study on the future of media, I’m also working on my second …
A friend linked me to this stunning gallery of photos at the Guardian of Detroit, in ruins. As noted in the margins, large swathes of Detroit now more closely resemble the set of a post-apocalyptic film than they do an actual city. Aged and beautiful buildings have been left to rot. Even the books are …
A rapist in every Jefferies tube: Detroit, design, and our dreams of space Read More »
Lan-Caihe is real, or so Will Sargent told me via Twitter, this evening while Squid and I were doing our best impersonations of Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole at a bar near my workplace. Will was, of course, referencing this story, in which a disease called Lan-Caihe (named for an eccentric Chinese deity whose sole …
Unless you’ve been on an Internet cleanse, you’ve probably already heard this news. Still, I feel like commemorating it here, mostly because I CALLED IT, and I get a healthy squirt of dopamine when the things I predict come true. Dave feels the same, and has a post on the subject with a snazzy photo …
These are the guidelines for Tesseracts 15, a Canadian anthology of genre fiction that is focusing on YA stories this year. I was really excited about submitting to this anthology, until I read the guidelines. (They’re available as a PDF on the website linked above.) Snip: If yours doesn’t fit, please don’t submit it. Whatever …
When your guidelines exclude a Hugo nominee, there’s a problem. Read More »