Nope – its mine!
Its not easy writing about nothing. That’s what a cowpoke was saying as I entered the frame of a dream. Vaguely handsome, intensely laconic, he was balancing on a folding chair, learning backwards, his...
Category: Books
Infernal Schemes – In which Mr. Dowler meets the Iron Lady
Fiendish Schemes, J.W. Jeter Wonderful and delightfully well-written steam punk novel, which envisions an alternative past of steam power instead of internal combustion. Steam robots abound, fiendish schemes, sentient oceans which move where they...
What’s in a Name? About our blog name
The name of the blog comes from a spacecraft found in the Culture novels and short stories by Iain M. Banks. The Culture is a hybrid society featured in many of these novels. In...
I must be going to the wrong bookstores
In the dream, he is in a bookshop. It is a dark, filthy place, with a low ceiling and a drooping staircase that leads up to a small attic. The shelves bend their backs under the...
Stanislaw Lem, sci-fi politics and the power of weirdness
One of my top 5 writers is Polish Science Fiction writer Stanislaw Lem (1921 – 2006), perhaps best known for his amazing work, the 1961 Solaris, later made into a movie with George Clooney....
Decline of a newsroom
Wonderful photo-essay slideshow of the Philadelphia newsroom. Takes a few minutes to load. http://willsteacy.com/projects/deadline/
All fall down – the demise of traditional publishing and the rise of the independent author
Whither now publishing? Indeed! The list of old media companies slowly sinking grows longer. Time Warner is trying to sell its stable of ‘iconic’ magazines, People, InStyle, and Real Simple, among others, while retaining Time, Sports Illustrated and Forbes. Oh, but...
Big Bad Amazon
NY Times today ran an article on Amazon and the frightening prospect of Amazon not only selling ebooks, but actually making deals direct with authors. The nerve! And not even talking to the publishing...
Quelle Différence
I was recently researching a purchase of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), which are the 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally. I found the USA site first – ISBN...