There is a very interesting piece over on Deep Genre about girls and reading. Check it out and the comments. I’m still turning it over in my head, but I’ll have something more to say about it in a few days.…
In This Corner…
Recently I engaged in yet another cycle of debate with someone who insists that science is a religion.
This is a tiresome argument on one level because it is one with all sorts of things that fall under the category of “I know it when I see it.” But on another level, it’s a rather interesting question. Not that science itself, as practiced by people who understand it or appreciated by those who don’t practice it but at least have a grasp of its nature, is a religion, but certainly people make religions out of all sorts of things. So the question arises, what are the necessary and sufficient constituent elements of religion? …
The End of Hell
Yesterday, our reading group did the last canto of Dante’s Inferno. We reached the center, climbed the hairy haunch of Satan, and emerged to a place where above could be seen stars. I’m told each volume of the Commedia ends with stars.
There is in this final fabrication a very science-fictional scenario which can easily be read as a depiction of a singularity. All motion has ceased except for the flapping of Satan’s wings and the gnawing of his three mouths on the bodies of the ultimate betrayers, Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. (As in most other places in the Inferno, Dante mixed post Christian Era figures with Classical forms. …
2009
We begin with some quotes…
…It is always an impertinence to claim to write about a community. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Bikha Parekh
The solitary creator, dreaming his or her dream, unaided, seems to me to be the only artist we can trust. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Harlan Ellison, forward to The City On The Edge of Forever
…it was not logic that carried me on; as well one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather.Â
Roddenberry
…JANUARY 4, 2009Public Memorial Service for the Late “First Lady of Star Trek” Majel Barrett Roddenberry
Cast Members and Fans Come Out to Celebrate and Remember Roddenberry’s Life
WHO:
Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, son of Gene & Majel Roddenberry and CEO of Roddenberry Productions, will host cast members, family, friends and fans to celebrate the life of his late mother. Fans are invited to come and pay their respects with the family and share their fondest memories of the late Trek icon.WHAT:
Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry will hold a public memorial service for his late mother. Family, cast members, friends and fans will have an opportunity to remember the legendary “First Lady of Star Trek.”
Daryl Gregory
Hey, it seems that a buddy of mine is going to have an interview in January’s Locus Magazine.
We attended Clarion together, lo some 20 years ago, and Daryl was one of the ones I thought would catapult to the top of the field. He has the gift, the ability to rivet the reader, and get under your skin. I highly recommend his first novel, Pandemonium —first-rate stuff, keeps you thinking. Damned impressive first novel.
Daryl took many years off to raise his kids, but a few years ago I noticed his short stories appearing here and there. Now the novel. …
Koan
A note I jotted to myself sometime in the past. I don’t recall the circumstances, but the question posed feels universal.
…The spiritualists cringe and argue against any description of self-conscious life as mechanism, that any mere machine is necessarily only an accumulation of parts and processes that can never rise above its own origins. They offer in its place a description that makes of us a vessel to contain an essential self that is gifted from without, a near complete something that a priori transcends the mechanistic. From where? Choose your own myth of origin. But they all presume a Maker.Â
Chapter the Next
Yesterday, I stayed home from work again. Nothing to do. In a way, I like this. I’d go on contract with the company if I could, go in only when there was actually something to do. But it’s not that much money, so it’s a quandary.
On the other hand, I finished a chapter in a book that’s been teasing me for a couple of years. I’d walked away form it to write something else, and I’ve been finding it difficult to go back. I have a lot written—almost a third of it, at least—and I’m loathe to just give up on it, but with one thing or another I just haven’t been able to get any forward momentum.…
Procrastination
The end of 2008 approaches. 2009 is going to be…
Not more of the same, I sincerely hope. Mea culpa, I am procrastinating. I watch myself do it. I’m doing it now. I’m writing this instead of hammering out the classic fiction of the future.
I have tio admit, since the beginning of December I have been more and more depressed, which is a horrible, downward spiral, the likes of which I haven’t felt since I broke up with a woman I thought was going to be my wife, a long long time ago. I was a mere 24 then, contemplated ending it all, took a lot of long walks, and came out the other end determined to do better. …
Seekers and Sowhats
I don’t keep abreast of new television very well. I’ve drifted into a mental space wherein I’m dimly aware of new things. I hear about them on the radio or from friends or occasionally I see a notice on a website. But I’ve long since lost the habit of keeping track.
So when I started hearing about this new fantasy show, Legend of the Seeker, it seems that it was already airing and I’d heard nothing about it beforehand. I didn’t get much in the way detail from anyone, other than short recommendations (“Oh, you should see it, it’s good!”)…