The kind folks over at The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas PodCast have done a podcast on my first novel Jumper (Tor 1992). Their mission is the discussion of “Old School” Science Fiction and Fantasy, both good and bad. It’s a weird thing that 1992 qualifies as “old” SF nowadays.

I just listened to it and had to blog about it. It’s like one of those (rare) times when you’re about to walk around a corner and you hear people talking about you so instead of scuffing your feet and clearing your throat, you stop, lean nonchalantly against the wall, and shamelessly evesdrop.

Of course when you do this in the real world, the next line is, “Too bad he’s such an asshole.” Fortunately, they mostly loved it.

I did know this was coming up as one of the ‘casters, Summer Brooks, introduced herself to my editor at World Fantasy (and then Beth dragged her over to me) and talked about it. Sometime later, we may do an interview.

They also discuss the upcoming movie staring Samuel Jackson, Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Jamie Bell, and Diane Lane, though you can learn a lot more about that here.

WARNING: Lots of spoilers in the podcast so if you haven’t read the book yet, wait until you have. OTHER WARNING: It’s 30 minutes long.

We live, historically speaking, very private lives. The first world may be the first place where, for example, almost all children sleep in different rooms than their parents. Before, say, 1700, most extended families slept in the same room. (In some cultures, along with some of the livestock.) In the 100,000 years since, as a species, we walked out of Africa, we have lived most of our intimate lives in each other’s presence. But now, one’s closest friends do not really know things about us that everyone would have known three hundred years ago, and that in rural India or Central Africa, everyone knows about each other now.

I came to understand a little more about the Asian concept of face when I began to see it as linked to privacy. My Chinese students lived eight to a dorm room and so had, as most of their families did, very little privacy. Which means that there is a lot of etiquette of eye-averting. When everyone lives together, there are things you look away from. ‘Privacy’ is a Western concept. Chinese history is about 6000 years old, but they had no word for privacy until is was introduced from the West about 100 years ago. I asked a student one time where one could be private. After a long moment wrestling with the idea, she pointed to her forehead. In her head. So when someone loses face, it often resembles the feeling we get when someone inadvertently walks into the bathroom on you.

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‘The Road to Escondido’ is a collaboration between Eric Clapton and JJ Cale that came out last week.

I’m listening to it as I type, and liking it a lot.

Go to:

Clapton’s Official Site

Click on the pic of the Victrola at the top, labelled ‘New Music’.

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NSMS 550
ST: Societal Implications of Nanotechnology
Albuquerque/Main Campus
Topics Schedule Type
3.000 Credits

Laura and I went back to college today, sitting in on a talk by a visiting ethicist, Rosalyn W. Berne, speaking to the above graduate level class (taught by Dr. Kirsty Mills).

Berne is currently focused directly on nanoscience and nanotechnology investigators, to understand the formulation of their personal motivations, beliefs, aspirations and goals, as well as the development of individual ethical frameworks, as these are connected to their research in nanotechnology.

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You, of course, already know of the legendary Los Blues Guys, the band that nearly everyone was in, a decade or so ago.

I’d like to tell you the most important thing about Los Blues Guys:

We didn’t suck nearly as bad as you remember.

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This administration has fought aggressively against oversight of their corporate cronies, chief among them Halliburton, whose share price has soared as billion-dollar contracts have been thrown at them. And now we are learning that Halliburton has been providing contaminated water to our soldiers over there.

(image via NASA: Saturn eclipsing the sun, taken by the Cassini probe. In the larger image, you can see Earth just outside the main rings, to the left of the planet.)

(Also, an apology to Caroline, for encroaching on your Saturday. Yesterday I procrastinated, and then we had unexpected visitors for dinner, so I didn’t get my post out on time.)

My love affair with science began in second grade, when one of my classmates’ dads took several of us to a local park one summer night to do some star gazing. He had a telescope set up; looking back, it was probably about a four-inch reflector. All I knew then was that it was big and black, and perched precariously on a tripod, and we weren’t supposed to touch it, but just step up on the foot stool, lean very carefully over the viewer, and peek through.
First he showed us Saturn. He pointed it out to the naked eye and told us that was a planet, and explained how a planet was different from a star. I remember looking at that faint white fleck about halfway up the sky. It was pretty unremarkable, really. Just another dot among many. But when I peered at that same fleck through a glass, I thought I was going to pee in my pants from excitement. It was no fleck — it was a world! With rings! And its own moons!

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Jack Williamson

Series
Legion of Space
1. The Legion of Space (1934)
2. The Cometeers (1936)
3. One against the Legion (1939)
Three from the Legion (omnibus) (1980)
4. The Queen of the Legion (1982)

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Dear [Name Withheld]:

A few days ago, while speaking before a mostly friendly group of colleagues, I uttered the sentence, “Texas was readmitted to the Union in 1870, and we haven’t caused any trouble since.”

I expected that sentence to elicit a chuckle, which it did . . . but what surprised me were the boos and hisses.

Wounded, I put a hand to my chest and asked, “Whatever can you be thinking of?”

But of course I knew. They were thinking of you.

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Steve and I talked about political blogging when he was starting up EatOurBrains, and he was able to gently steer me away from posting my pessimistic outlook at that time.I believed that the Dems would be allowed to take maybe 10 to 12 seats in Congress, maybe three Senate positions. The rest would be bluntly stolen, via blackboxes, voter suppression, and apathy. I thought the US was over with. Yep, I’m a paranoid idiot. Ain’t it terrible? The Dems have taken the House and, likely, the Senate. I’m soooo embarrassed that I was wrong. That said, I keep checking to see if there’s a cloud inside the silver lining. I do NOT believe that the authoritarian criminal assholes that have wrecked my beloved country for so long have given up the fight and things will now be flowers and bunnies in the meadow. We still have to deal with a broken media, a Supreme Court that’s a hair away from being dominated by theocrats, and monstrous corporations that care for nothing but profits, no matter who gets hurt or killed in the process. I feel good today, because I’d thought that our system was so broken that elections had become the kind of phony shows that the USSR used to have. Today, that’s not the case, especially if the Dems have the balls to force changes in the election system, so that complete and easy theft of national elections is simply not possible.

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I’m sitting here posting while surrounded by boxes. The moving van is coming in about twenty-five minutes. I’m looking for the perfect Latin phrase to describe my predicament, because it’s a lot more fun than actually dealing with the move.

People always said Latin was a dead language, but when I was a kid, there were people who still spoke it. They tended not to have kids and pass it on because they were priests and Cardinals. I’m not saying that none of them had kids, but I suspect if they did, they kept quiet about it and didn’t have a lot to do with the kid’s education. The Synod of Bishops stopped being in Latin in 1999 but the current Pope is fluent in it and Vatican documents are still issued in it. There is a person at the Vatican whose job it is to decide what the official Latin term is for stuff that wasn’t around when Latin was still spoken at home over the family dinner table. (The Latin for ‘spaceship’ is astronavis, and for ‘jumbo jet’ the term is aeronavis capacissima. I’m sure there are Latin words for cell phone and fax machine as well.)

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So 11-year-old daughter (formally known as the twilight ninja) came home with a sheep eye retina and parts of the eyelid. “Look how beautiful it is,” she said.

Update: Twilight Ninja wants me to point out that she was a party to the dissection of same eye of sheep.

Look guys, am I going to have to separate you two?* I’ll turn this Blog around in a minute and drive all the way back home. Don’t think I won’t. Don’t make me reach back there.

* Brad and Rory

Bradley sent me this letter after he saw my story about him in the World Fantasy Convention book:

*Sigh* All right. You know what happens when you’re bad. Back into the little dark room again, Rory. That’s right. The tiny one with the metal door and the grate on the floor, where you have to hunch over naked and hug your knees to wait for when the slits in the ceiling open and the wasps fly in. Go on, now. That’s a good boy. Stay in there for four or five days and maybe your nice friend Bradley won’t have to hurt you again.

He really is very nice, though.

Most of the time…….