Recently I was reading a profile in The New Yorker* of the science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, a contemporary of other such SF authors as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. LeGuin, Roger Zelazny, and Octavia Butler (who was, briefly, a student of Delany’s). Despite the fact that back in my younger days I read many, many books by authors from that era, I somehow managed never to read any of Delany’s work, although I’m quite familiar with his name. I’m going to guess that this is because our local library didn’t stock many Delany titles, since in those pre-Internet days of dead-tree books that you had to get from a bookstore, most of my reading material was of the borrowed variety. But I digress. Here’s how that New Yorker article started off:
Continue reading “So It’s Not Just Me Then”The Revenge of the Wal-Mart Chicken
Some years ago—never mind how long, precisely—while working for a lab in the small city of New Hartford in central New York, it happened that I was dispatched to our location in Herkimer, also known as “the Valley”, there to do some IT stuff. In those dark times, New Hartford had no Wal-Mart Super Center, but the Valley did; and so when my friend in the IT Department heard I was going to the Valley, he entreated me to pick him up a bag of “Wal-Mart Chicken” for lunch. Being the accommodating type, I readily assented; and so I did go down into the Valley, and I did do the IT stuff, and then I did head off to the Wal-Mart Super Center to get the Wal-Mart Chicken. Not being a regular Wal-Mart shopper, I did not know where to find said chicken. All this time later, I can’t recall exactly how it happened—bad advice from a store employee? Random wandering?—but I ended up in the frozen foods section, where, lo! There were bags of frozen chicken bearing the Wal-Mart name. And so I bought a bag of the frozen chicken and returned to New Hartford in triumph. Or did I? For as I entered the IT Department with the bag from Wal-Mart, my friend did make note:
Continue reading “The Revenge of the Wal-Mart Chicken”Neither A Review Of “Quantumania” Nor “Ambulance”
So if you live here in the U.S., or you just know stuff, then you are likely aware that we recently celebrated Independence Day. This typically involves things that go boom, i.e., fireworks, ranging from people setting off firecrackers in the street to window-rattling municipal displays. Oh, and also, frightened pets.
Continue reading “Neither A Review Of “Quantumania” Nor “Ambulance””Teaser Tuesday: “Perhaps the Stars”
So this week I was reading Perhaps the Stars, the final book of “Terra Ignota”:
The Bots are Back in Town
So a while back I had posted a series of spam comments that were unusual because they were much more relevant to the post on which the spam attempt had been made ― that is, they were generated by something that had clearly read the posts in question, and that equally clearly did not understand it. Those spam comments had then died down for a while, but now they’re back. And for some reason, almost all of them are on the “Dumpster Fire” series over at the animals’ blog. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading “The Bots are Back in Town”Teaser Tuesday: Still “The Will to Battle”
So this week I was still* reading the third book in the “Terra Ignota” series, The Will To Battle, by Ada Palmer:
Your Brain’s In Jeopardy, Baby (Oooh)
I don’t watch Jeopardy! anymore, because, among other reasons, we don’t have cable anymore; but I used to watch it, and once even attended a taping (in the latter part of the Alex Trebek days) with my parents and my aunt.
Continue reading “Your Brain’s In Jeopardy, Baby (Oooh)”
Random Rejections: Welsh Publishing Group
So this week I decided to ask the Gods of Randomness to pick a folder and position in my vast trove of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters, and lo! They told me I should look in the folder labeled “W” and find the seventh item therein, which, as it turns out, was in fact two items stapled together. Here’s the first one:
Continue reading “Random Rejections: Welsh Publishing Group”Teaser Tuesday: “The Will to Battle”
So this week I was reading the third book in the four-book “Terra Ignota” trilogy (just go with it), The Will To Battle, by Ada Palmer:
The Early Years: Jim Can’t Draw Cards Either
From the “It’s The Thought That Counts” Department, this is a card I apparently made for my parents back in elementary school. Can you guess what holiday it’s for?
Viscosity 