John Scalzi’s “Fuzzy Nation”
John Scalzi is definitely one of my favorite sci-fi authors. While I enjoy books that leaving me thinking, head-scratching, pondering serious questions and sometimes collapsing all of those mental states around a quantum mechanics problem centered in the harder sci-fi, Scalzi’s books are uniquely hopeful. I wouldn’t go so far as to call his writing [...]
Scalzi/Wheaton Book Of Awesomeness
One of my summer projects was to spend more time writing, and I used a variety of writing contests (Erika Napoletano, ESPN/Stymie and Scalzi/Wheaton) to force action on that thought. I think I had the most fun working on the Scalzi/Wheaton fanfic contest, mostly because it was the first time I’d written science fiction, fan [...]
Robert Heinlein Had His Bad Days, Too
Robert Heinlein was the first science fiction author that I read. Not read as in one book or one story, but read as in going to the library (pre-Amazon days), finding every single piece of his work, and checking them all out early in the summer and using those long, hot days by the YMCA [...]
8 Track Tapes Make Me Laugh
8 track tapes make me laugh. Anything involving 8 track tape references makes me laugh. Whoever invented the format thought it would be OK to fade songs in and out so they fit the impossibly short lengths of the tape loop. The player moves the heads between track pairs, ensuring that you’ll never approach any [...]
“Don’t Touch My Stuff” FanFic Entry
It’s been exactly a month since I was last employed full-time. One of my goals for the inter-gig session was to spend more time writing, and branching out from snarky blog entries and technical content in particular. I entered two short stories in the ESPN/Stymie Magazine sports fiction contest, and then only two days into [...]
Wheaton Unicorn Kitty Versus John Scalzi Orc
My wonderful wife and I often conclude a rather improbable, highly entertaining or four sigma to the right of center story with “You just can’t make this shit up.” For instance: What if Wil Wheaton, recently joining the ranks of my favorite authors, was riding a unicorn kitten (not a unicorn chaser, mind you, but [...]
“Old Man’s War” Triology Plus One
Once I hit cruising altitude on any vacation, I can typically read a sci-fi book a day. That rate of consumption assumes ample idle time by some body of water (bathtubs included) for reading and ruminating along with the complete lack of late-night calls or slide tweaking. The hallmarks of a real vacation, in other [...]