Reading and Writing Archives
August 19, 2007
■ Philip K. Dick: How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later [#]
August 12, 2007
■ “His “self-replicating automata,” engraved with his signature alias “Arctic Pole,” dealt brutally with the delicate workings of one hundred and fifty machines in the cotton mills which are the pride of our city, stripping them for parts and building more of themselves.” [#]
July 17, 2007
■ “The night he was beaten near to death is Dexter’s signature biographical moment — the instant in time when his already colorful life story entered the realm of myth.” [#]
June 12, 2007
■ “ This page is about creating fantasy worlds. In particular, it is about creating such worlds as part of the process of writing fiction.” [#]
May 29, 2007
■ Buffy teaches us how to write a cliffhanger [#]
April 5, 2007
■ “As books go digital, new questions, both philosophical and commercial, arise. How, physically, will people read books in future? Will technology “unbind” books, as it has unbundled other media, such as music albums? Will reading habits change as a result? What happens when books are interlinked? And what is a book anyway?” [#]
April 3, 2007
■ “Watts noticed that Bookscan numbers nearly tripled afterwards, and it was recently announced that the novel was nominated for a Hugo, something he said likely wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the CC release.” [#]
February 15, 2007
■ “My father turned me on to an enjoyable way to improve at a foreign language: read Harry Potter in translation.” (And article that led to this more in-depth piece talking about the role of fiction reading in language learning. And, while I’m tossing out links on the topic, Lifehacker has a nice collection of tips on language learning.) [#]
January 13, 2007
■ Geek to Live: Turn your blog into a book, part I - Lifehacker [#]
January 4, 2007
■ Writers Dreamtools: Presenting a walk through history by decade. Very cool. [#]
January 2, 2007
■ On This Day Pre-Y2K: “This section of kshay.com offers a real-world glimpse into what people concerned about the Y2K bug were actually saying on the Internet.” Dang, I remember writing these sorts of story. Even then, though, I was pretty much on the skeptical side … [#]
December 16, 2006
■ Books of the year: ‘Books of the year’ by | Prospect Magazine January 2007 issue 130 [#]
■ “After reading about his stunning upset, I sent Jed an email saying that I’d like to interview him. He agreed, but suggested that, before we talked, in order to understand his competitive eating career more completely, I should find a copy of an out-of-print children’s book called The Doughnut Dropout.” [#]
November 20, 2006
■ The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002. Discuss. [#]
November 10, 2006
■ “Alan Moore is to feature in a forthcoming episode of The Simpsons.” [#]
November 8, 2006
■ “Few people know that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ novels. You overspend on one, and, just when you begin to dig yourself out, the next installment comes along. Public libraries began during the Depression as a government measure against this very problem.” [#]
October 25, 2006
■ “Firstly, let me tackle the reason for the decline in the SF/F readership over time as a proportion of written fiction. I don’t have quantitative data to hand, but I believe we can attribute it to the fact that the civilization we live in is changing so rapidly that we’re all exposed to rapid technological change all the time.” [#]
October 23, 2006
■ Glide Magazine Features - Chuck Klosterman: Articulating the Unintelligible: Klosterman can be irritating at times, but I’ll generally read anything of his I come across. This is a pretty good interview with him. (Oddly enough, I first heard of Klosterman through this takedown piece, which is not only freakin’ hilarious, but the most bizarre overreaction I’ve ever read.) [#]
■ “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die”: I’m not sure if I’m surprised that there’s only a dozen or so “pre-1700” books, or surprised that there even that many.. There was about 2,000 books available to a literate Englishman in 1600, so figure the editors picked something like .6 percent of the possible titles. [#]
October 5, 2006
■ Charlie Stross opens his friends-only livejournal so so we can see how book covers come together. (Stross’ main website is always worth a look, btw.) [#]