Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 58
June 17, 2013
Dame Judi Dench does swear word embroidery
Day. Made.
“Dame Judi Dench does needlework embroidery during movie shoots. And the embroidery is all swear words.
‘She makes these like needlework embroideries on set in the tedium of filming’, says MacFadyen, ‘but they are all: ‘You Are a Cunt’”
June 14, 2013
Hurricane Fever: solid draft achieved
I’m sitting here in my sister’s backyard, watching the twins chase a medicine ball around while a neighbor’s pug loses its mind about the affront of kids playing just on the other side of a fence.
I tried to finish a good draft of my latest novel, Hurricane Fever (due out from Tor sometime in 2014) by Tuesday of this week because I knew the road trip taking me from Ohio to Newport, RI was coming.
But I came up short. I was close enough it was frustrating, as I knew a day of hard work was all th...
June 13, 2013
Nigerian cook survives 2 days under sea in shipwreck air bubble
Amazing story:
“After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.”
(Via Nigerian cook survives 2 days under sea in shipwreck air bubble.)
After one of the hurricanes in the islands I talked to someone who’d lost his boat with a cat aboard it. He dove the wreck a few days later to get personal effects.
He found the cat hiding in an air bubble.
He...
A glimpse at the racism lurking around science fiction
Amal El-Mohtar grabs a screenshot of notorious misogynist, racist Theodore Beale, who calls himself ‘Vox Day’ who recently blogged some horrible things (and threats) about SF writer N.J. Jemisin (Jim Hines has more context for you here). Beale ran for president of SFWA recently, and is an exemplar of the sort of science fiction fan who sends me hate mail fairly often for the type of books I write. Amal quotes the threats and hate Beale has here:
“However, Mr Beale has repeatedly and aggressive...
Earth on edge of Goldilock’s zone, not center, could have been like Venus
Interesting:
“If the latest models are accurate, Earth and Venus really might have been twins, had the orbit of one been just a tiny bit different. But rather than two clement Earths, there might have been two infernal Venuses. That’s a doubly humbling thought.”
(Via Is Earth’s orbit scarily close to Venus’s sultry zone? – opinion – 13 June 2013 – New Scientist.)
China’s Shenzhou-10 docks with Tiangong-1
China has docked to their mini-space station. There are currently 9 hours now in orbit! Two space stations!
“The three member crew of Shenzhou-10 docked with the Tiangong-1 space module at 05:11 UTC on Thursday, marking the start of 12 days of docked operations. The arrival of the Chinese spacecraft occurred without the fanfare of previous missions, with no live coverage and just one official line of success from China.”
(Via China’s Shenzhou-10 successfully docks with Tiangong-1 | NASASpaceFli...
Anthology Wastelands, which includes my short story Waiting for the Zephyr, launches in UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc
It was some amazing company to be in back when Wastelands launched here in the US, so I’m excited to see that it’s spreading elsewhere:
Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon – these are our guides through the Wastelands… From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity.
Gathering toget...
June 12, 2013
BSG Larping article is interesting
The Swedes take LARPing very seriously. Including government grants for some. I expect to see LARPing cross into the mainstream with the advent of commonly used augmented reality soon (writing a novel about it sometime next year, if reality doesn’t blow my scoop)…
“With dozens of staff, over a million Swedish kronor ($160,000), and a retired naval destroyer, a team of designers hosted a live action role-playing game — commonly known as a larp — that would put many historical reenactments to sh...
Abaddon’s Gate is out… goes into my to-read pile
“The books in The Expanse series have all been terrific reads. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write under the pseudonym James S.A. Corey, have said their writing style is basically ‘make it awesome.’ The latest book in the series, Abaddon’s Gate, more than achieves that goal, adding to the reputation they’ve achieved thus far.”
(Via Abaddon’s Gate is literary space opera at its absolute best.)
I’ve read the first two in this series and find them excellent.
June 11, 2013
Our pale blue marble
The sense of wonder that is our planet, when looked at from space. Amazing little documentary:
OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.
