A New Year's post-mortem


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Young Geoffrey basks in Watts of praise
Accepts correction from a tabby
(and apologizes for the really second-rate word-play two lines up)
"I'm not generally given to flattery. That was just one damned eloquent piece of commentary." - Peter Watts, to me. (Yes, that Peter Watts.)

Yes, I feel flattered again and am struggling with the urge to tell ( Read more... )

Peter Watts, arguably the best hard science fiction writer in the game today, thinks my analysis of the recent G20 imbroglio "makes a scary kind of sense" and quotes me fairly extensively to explain why he does.

I don't know that I should admit to being more pleased by this recognition than I was when I received a cheque from the Globe and Mail ( Read more... )

In the long and storied SF tradition that sees such devices as Ursula K. le Guin's ansible become, in effect, an open-source idea, free to be modified, played with, argued about or even just used as a word to indicate "faster-than-light communication", rather than locked-down and copyrighted as le Guin's personal play-thing, "The Things" is Peter ( Read more... )

"In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face." - Peter Watts, December 11, 2009
Peter Watts, one of my favourite writers - and possibly the best hard SF writer on the scene today - was beaten up and arrested by U.S. border guards while attempting to cross ( Read more... )

Vampires! Big Pharma!

The horror! The horror!

Anyone who is interested in science fiction, dead-pan satire, the evils of "big pharma" or, well, actually plausible vampires really ought to check out this slide-show. (But be warned, it's 15 or 20 minutes long.)

Peter Watts' fiction is arguably a little bleaker than the tongue-in-cheek presentation ( Read more... )