Zombies and Sociobiology

Some might remember me posting a link regarding a call for papers on the zombie for an interdisciplinary collection? Well, today (Hallowe’en!) is the deadline, and even though I’m a good half-day ahead of the recipient, I got it tidied up and decided to send it off now. The gist of my proposal is that zombies work in a couple of ways: on one level, zombies are the ultimate tabula rasa — they don’t speak or seem to think, their motivations or internal experience (whatever it may be) is inscrutable, and thus they can be seen as figures for everything …

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[redacted] and the Blowfish

Yet more good writing-related news: the Machine of Death anthology is going to be illustrated, and (I think this is firm) I’m chuffed at who they’ve chosen to illustrate my little yakuza story! (Which some might remember is titled “Improperly Prepared Blowfish.”) (NOTE: I noticed that the guys over at Machine of Death is not publicizing names for a bit, so I’ll let them announce it first when things are finalized. But it’s cool!) The comics world is a foreign land to me, as is probably evident from the fact I used the word “comics” just now, but I had …

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What Todd and Peanut Have in Common

I changed schools a lot in elementary school, mostly just because my family moved around a lot. When we arrived in Prince Albert, a town in Northern Saskatchewan, I ended up at this small elementary school where one of my classmates was a kid named Todd. Now, this was in the fourth grade, when secondary sexual characteristics aren’t really, er, apparent yet. Todd had a somewhat girlish face, but was built big, and had short-ish (but not quite short) curly hair. And I guess it was for this reason that Todd was often ridiculed by classmates as a “girl.” I …

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Dhuluma No More Podcast

More writing squeeage — Starship Sofa, an excellent British SF podcast I’ve been listening to for a while now, will be podcasting “Dhuluma No More,” my most recent publication which appeared in Asimov’s SF. Now, I just need to get the manuscript tidied (ie. enter the copy-edits into my final text) and email it to Tony Smith at Starship Sofa. Apparently he’s got a hell of a lineup in addition to the stories he’s already podcast, including people like Bruce Sterling, Nancy Kress, Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, Norman Spinrad, and all kinds of other luminaries. So, yes, I am feeling …

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