An Apology to My Suitcase [As Occasioned by Our Recent Vacation]
My dear suitcase, I am deeply sorry that we must part, but the debilitating effects of your last flights make it impossible for us to travel together any longer. I understand that you had no control...
View ArticleBurned
As I write this, the largest active forest fire in the United States is burning through the mountains some twenty odd miles to the northeast of Cedar City, having consumed more than 70,000 acres of...
View ArticleThe Civility Problem
There have been more and more appeals for civility in politics and public discourse, in the media, and almost everywhere… and from what I can see, matters are not getting any better, and in some areas...
View ArticleSan Francisco Comic Con Appearance
Although I’m not doing as many conventions this year, I will be at the San Francisco Comic Con, held at the Moscone Center West on September 1-3. You can find me at the Bard’s Tower Booth with an...
View ArticleStory Agendas
The other day I read a reader review of one of my books, a review that summarized the book as “a good story ruined by an agenda.” I had to shake my head at the naiveté/ignorance of the reader. The...
View ArticleCongressional Selfishness
Just last week, the House of Representatives was dealing with the massive Defense appropriations bill. The Pentagon had proposed an actual common sense measure that would have required Congress to look...
View ArticleMissing Prices in Fantasy?
The other day I was trying to work out price equivalences for certain goods and services in a forthcoming Imager Portfolio book when I suddenly – and clearly, very belatedly – realized how seldom...
View ArticleThe Anger Problem
As I noted earlier, there is growing incivility in the United States, and that includes the rapid resurgence of hate groups. Why are so many people so angry? One reason often postulated is that the...
View ArticleEntertainment Escapism – F&SF
While I’m anything but a television or cinema or gaming addict, I can’t help but notice a growing trend in what I’d classify as the field of “video entertainment” – the enormous growth of fantasy and...
View ArticleArticle 0
Over our recent vacation, I actually did get in some reading, some of which I found intriguing and enjoyable, including Aliete de Bodard’s The House of Binding Thorns, which I suspect contains more...
View ArticleAttacking the Symptoms
The recent debacle in Congress over the Affordable Healthcare Act is all too representative of an ever greater societal problem – the fact that far too much legislation and too many governmental...
View ArticleWriting for Hire?
Over the years, fans and even other writers have suggested ideas that might fit in my series, and I’ve always nodded politely and said kind words, but I’ve never taken up any of those ideas. Nor have I...
View ArticlePlot?
Starting with Aristotle, there’s been a great deal of controversy about what “plot” means. Aristotle called plot “the arrangement of incidents,” incorporating a beginning, middle, and an end. My...
View ArticleLanguage and Culture
In an article recently republished on Tor.com, the linguist David J. Peterson took dead aim the underlying premise of Jack Vance’s The Languages of Pao. Vance postulated that language influences...
View ArticleGroupthink?
Human beings are social. Most of us form groups. The problem is that while some groups are helpful and socially beneficial, others are socially toxic, and when a socially toxic group becomes powerful...
View ArticleSan Francisco Comic Con Appearance Cancelled
My previously scheduled appearance at the San Francisco Comic Con has been cancelled. This was not my doing, but occurred, as I’ve been told, because the Comic Con was unable to handle a number of...
View ArticleMass Market Paperbacks – The Death Spiral
The other day I got a striking reminder that the distribution of mass market paperback books, at least in the fantasy and science fiction field, is getting close to a death spiral (perhaps I’m...
View ArticlePriorities?
This coming week classes will begin at the local university, and with those classes come expenses, tuition, fees, room and board, and, of course, textbooks. Except, unfortunately, more and more...
View ArticleReality…
Reality doesn’t care what you believe. Or as Daniel Patrick Moynihan [and quite a few others] said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.” Put another way, just because you...
View ArticleOne Thousand
For what little it’s worth, I’ve now posted over 1,000 entries just in the “Blog Entry” section, the first one being in March of 2007. That doesn’t count the less frequent entries in the other sections...
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