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] …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
When writing a period piece, whether that period is past or present, getting your terminology right is essential to maintaining the illusion. It’s also one of the easiest things to miss on a revision. Lest you think the following rant is thoroughgoing self-righteousness, let me preemptively explain that it’s not. …
As we grow and learn about responsibility and darkness in the world, we often lose the ability to play at life, at love, and to take the kinds of risks that children take for fun every day. It’s an interesting paradox, because as our world gets freer and more prosperous, …
Today, I bring you physicist Brian Cox discussing the Large Hadron Collider and what it means for our understanding of the universe. Chock full of wonder, delight, and beauty – join me in marveling at the magnificence of the universe, and the fact that we are able to understand it …