Imagine participating in a political landscape where you run a blood drive so that you can use the blood to douse the offices of the ministers you oppose, as part of your effort to drive them out of office. No, really. And better: The next day, they will collect 1,000 more liters and target the prime minister’s residence, the demonstrators said. You know, I just don’t really know what to say about that except that sometimes the real world really does make the job of the speculative fiction writer a little more demanding.
Month: March 2010
One Up, One Down, Part 1
I have resolved not to whine and bitch without mentioning something positive. Sometimes this means telling two stories, but I think today’s example fits both. Man, delivery guys… I know their jobs are not so fun or easy, but sometimes, they just drive me crazy. The guy dropping off my box of Emart groceries called me so many times during class that although my phone was on silent mode, I finally had to pull out the battery. When I called him after my class ended, to confirm that he’d delivered the box where it was supposed to go, he yelled …
On Being Human
Note: I wrote this about a week ago, but I got too busy to copy the final version from my netbook to this site. I finally have a free minute, during a class preparation break, so here you go. Posting will be slow for a while, till I’ve built up that momentum so crucial to propelling myself through the semester. I figure it’ll be about a week till things are back to normal, in terms of my free time. Having torn through both of the extant seasons of the British TV series Being Human, I can say I really like …
Had a “Expat Bad Day”
One of those days, you know. Probably the kind everyone who’s lived abroad can remember having felt, when everything one dislikes about the place one is staying decides to up and slap one in the face. Everything. We’ll just say that the bus driver didn’t break my foot, that the name of the building I live in is finally going to be changed — finally, after I asked twice, so that ordering groceries online won’t involve a dozen phone calls explaining that, yes, some morons decided to give no formal Korean name to the new building and it ended up …
Sychophany and Other Bewildering Behaviours
Some behaviours I find baffling, but I can understand (or at least I can rationalize) after a moment’s reflection. For example, the other day I was taking a bus home, and noticed that all the women getting off the bus were immediately running off into the dark. I am not exaggerating. Four women got off the bus, each at a different stop. Each one ran away from the bus, presumably toward home. They ran in sneakers and in high heels alike; they ran not only when the bus stop was poorly-lit, but also when it was very well-lit. I momentarily …
The Law of the Handicap of a Head Start
Flipping through Shine, I ran across an interesting mention (in the introduction to Lavie Tidhar’s contribution) of Jan Romein’s notion of Wet van de remmende voorsprong, or, in English, the “Law of the Handicap of a Head Start.” It struck me that the Korean internet (a subject about which I recently posted) is a wonderful demonstration of both sides of this notion: the benefit of a late start, and the handicaps that a head start can introduce into a system. The link above details several of the handicaps: the dependency on Windows, ActiveX, and even Internet Explorer 6.0, as well …
Shiny!
oh my word, these pages, full of stars: how they Shine! The stars to which I refer are, of course, bright and shiny ideas about this future we’re tumbling toward, and not the authors, of which I am one. Just got my contributors’ copies of Shine, the new anthology of optimistic SF edited by Jetse de Vries that Amazon says is coming out on March 30th. I’ve only read a little of it, but it looks like a hell of a ride! If you want on, you can preorder it at a bunch of places: Jetse has links for all …
Essays on Pop Culture
Some interesting essays, available for a limited time, are available here. I liked the one by Nick Mamatas on Hurley, the character in Lost. Missed one by Kristine Kathryn Rusch which I wish I’d caught. Worth going back and looking every once in a while!
Outsider Writing
Now that I’m back in Korea, and have a free morning, I’m just catching up on some blogs and fiction online and so on. I ran across a very interesting post at Aliette de Bodard’s blog, titled, Writing cultures: insider vs. outsider, about the various advantages and pitfalls faced by authors writing about a specific culture either as an insider, or as an outsider, for a Western audience (as in the dominant SF-reading audience, for example). It’s worth a read, including the comments, especially if you’re interested in my thoughts on the subject.
Launch Pad Open to Applications
I blogged about my experience at Launch Pad here before, and most recently discussed it with a group of other participants here, but I just want to highly, highly recommend that anyone working in science-popularization, in SF media or literature, who would like to have her or his mind blown a bunch of times in a week, getting not just an intensive course in astronomy but also in communicating science to nonscientists, learning about how to approach research, and hanging out with what will be, if you’re as lucky as I was, a stunningly wonderful group of people, you should …