Free content - particularly in the audio fiction space - suddenly seems a lot less of a perpetual free lunch than it did six months ago, and it’s got a lot of folks freaking out in my corner of the Internet. Providers are dropping like flies this year! Matthew Wayne Selznick and J.C. [...]
21 Comments »Filed under:
Autodidact,
Career,
Creativity,
Down From Ten,
Idle Musings,
LinuxJournal,
Personal,
Podcasting,
Sculpting God,
Unsavory Excursions,
WritingPosted on March 1st, 2010
Demographic disclosure: I am an American who likes good adult (note the lack of euphemistic quotation marks) entertainment, and I am disgusted and ashamed at what thirty years of cultural conservatism has done to my country. Perhaps I’d better back up and explain…
This post is my first in a dialogue with Scott Roche about whether or not science and religion are truly competing for the same intellectual and spiritual space in the world. Read Scott’s opening post here.
Twitter is a mischievous little meme. On that innocent network yesterday, I noticed fellow podcast novelist, and [...]
Stopping in quickly during a break in my hectic production and writing schedules to drop a handful of links that have recently blown me away in one way or another.
First, the coolest biomedical news this year: Synthetic arteries have arrived.
Second, some really cool news on dog evolution from two fronts. There’s an article discussing [...]
For those of you not following along, in the current book of The Antithesis Progression, one character is using a hormone cocktail on another as a chemical leash. I’ve gotten some questions about what these weaponized chemicals are supposed to accomplish, how they’re supposed to work, and whether they’re a good choice for the [...]
Of the complicated pile of…legacy…that we have to untangle from the cultural madness we Americans indulged in during the Naughties (that’s the ‘00 decade, where pretty much every public figure engaged with politics, public policy, economics, social action, environmentalism, culture wars, and foreign policy acted impulsively, childishly, and shamefully), perhaps none is more irritating than [...]
by Gail Carriger
[In honor of her new book Soulless, which impressed me with its groundedness in the Victorian world, I asked author Gail Carriger to blog about the art of finding good research sources for Steampunk writing. This is her contribution - thank you very much, Ms. Carriger! -JDS]
I’ve said it before and I’ll [...]
Are the New Atheists Bad for Science?
By J. Daniel Sawyer
In an article on Beliefnet this week, Michael Ruse argues that the “new atheists” are a “bloody disaster.” He argues using a mixture of caricatures, complaints, and criticisms, so before I go into why I think the man is full of organic fertilizer on the [...]
Six Parsecs, to be exact. I’ve been officially nominated for the Parsec awards in six categories - three for The Antithesis Progression and three for Sculpting God.
For Predestination, I’ve been nominated for:
Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novel Form)
Best Audio Drama (Long Form including Independents)
Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team
And for Sculpting God, I’ve been nominated for:
Best [...]
Those of you who listened to Predestination heard Christiana Ellis’s voice playing bit parts — when you listen to Down From Ten you’ll hear her as one of the main characters. But when you listen to her podcasts - Shallow Thoughts, Space Casey, or Nina Kimberley - you’ll be holding your sides.
Which is what [...]
Well, my friends (and enemies, and trespassers), I’ve just sold my first article that’s NOT about Linux. My essay “As The Gods Themselves…” about science fiction, religion, and the singularity is now online and available for download in PDF and MP3 format at The Journal Sci Phi.
If you enjoy world religions, are [...]
I was interviewed this week on The Dead Robots Society, where we discussed Predestination, producing full cast audiobooks, and the glorious delirium of writing. Hear it all here
by J. Daniel Sawyer
Thanks to Amy Gahran for sparking the idea
Literacy is like heroin - it’s habit-forming. The more people try out the habit, the more likely they are to retain it. Exposure to books breeds consumption of books, which is good, because the act of reading requires deliberate commitment. This is important to keep [...]
Some highlights and lowlights of 2008
This year, particularly the second half, has seen a lot of people turn very pessimistic about, well, everything. Yeah, the economy’s slowing down. Yeah, people like me are scrambling just to make ends meet - when money goes slow everywhere, it hits the arts hard. And yeah, [...]
He brought us Ray Bradbury, and The Ackermansion. He outlived many of the writers whose careers he helped start or who he helped keep in paychecks during dry spells - writers like Robert A. Heinlein, and Theodore Sturgeon, who he helped find jobs writing what was then considered erotica under pen names, so they [...]
