The World’s Oldest Honorable Profession

My apologies to regular readers who come around here for the creativity and not the politics. Please skip this post if you are not interested in a powerfully worded opinion. Buckets of digital ink have already been spilt online over the debacle of FOTSA and SESTA and the seizure of …

2014, Here We Come

Rather than a retrospective on the past year, I thought I’d kick off the new year in its wee hours with a look forward at the wider world. In The Princess Bride, Fezzik the Giant says to Inigo: “I hope we win.” It’s my favorite line from that movie. A …

Unsuitable for Children?

So, Megan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal is concerned about the darkness in YA literature. It seems that such stories (written, as they are, for teenagers) might introduce unnecessary dreariness and misery into the otherwise sunny time of adolescence. It raises the obvious question: At what age does …

Steampunk Education, part 1

So, with Steamcon coming soon, and me sitting on a couple panels, I’ve got to bone up on a genre that I’ve hereto only been passingly familiar with. This involves an extensive reading list, which I’m honestly not going to have time for. Fortunately, I’m not giving a talk on …