Posted in Uncategorized on May 11, 2008 | No Comments »
I have been a television addict for over a half-century and seen more fantastic visions than Thomas de Quincey ever did as an opium addict. I’ve always planned my schedule around TV viewing and although I think of myself as a bookworm, I spend far more hours watching rather than reading and probably should consider [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on March 30, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Yesterday I discovered Playa Cofi Jukebox, an Internet radio station that lets listeners time travel back to any year from 1950-1982 to hear a rotation of the top 100 songs from that year. I immediately jumped to 1965 and was transported to my all-time favorite musical year. Go look at that link and see if [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on March 16, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Although I’m a lifelong atheist, I love movies about angels. Last night I saw a humdinger of an angel movie, Angel-A, a French film by Luc Besson, the guy who gave us The Fifth Element, The Messenger and Le Femme Nikita. Angel-A is a stunningly beautiful black and white film set in Paris. The cinematography [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on February 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »
There’s a major difference between science fiction and fantasy. Both work with the “What if…” hypothesis, but there should be a distinct difference in intent that the reader should recognize. The Sci-Fi writer might say, “What if we could travel to the planets?” Whereas the fantasy writer might say, “What if fairies lived in Central [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on February 12, 2008 | No Comments »
I was at my favorite Borders bookstore looking over the various subjects in their Science section when I got the idea I should go home and look on Amazon to see how their Science section stacks up. I love book shopping in bookstores but I love reading the reader reviews before buying a book. And [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Science fiction has always been about speculation, and some old SF writers even called it speculative fiction. Humans have always speculated about what’s possible, with what if scenarios, so even though the word science had not been invented, I believe there were science fiction “writers” since the dawn of time. We know the ancient Greeks [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 30, 2007 | 9 Comments »
I feel a certain amount of pride in the number of books I read and take a certain pleasure in thinking of myself as a bookworm, but I’m a total slacker when I compare myself to some people I found on the net while searching for Best Books of 2007. Take a look at Jason [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 30, 2007 | 2 Comments »
If you haven’t seen Juno, do not read beyond the first paragraph because I haven’t learned how to write a movie review that doesn’t give things away. I’m more interested in dissecting films. Subliminal philosophy and politics in pop culture inspires me to write more than helping people decide how to spend their [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 27, 2007 | No Comments »
Before the Internet if you wanted to read new science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) short stories your main venue was the newsstand. As sales of pulp magazines declined new sources of stories appeared in paperback and hard cover with original anthologies and book series like the classic Orbit edited by Damon Knight. For those of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on December 26, 2007 | No Comments »
On the Friday before Christmas I was practicing with my Nikon D50 camera at work learning how to use the RAW mode, a technique to maximize details. I’ve become the unofficial photographer even though I have limited photographic skills. This allows me to justify spending a bit of work time learning photography. Coincidentally that day, [...]
