Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 102

World changing: top down or bottom up? – by Margaret Ball

*I know a lot of you also read over at Mad Genius Club, but most don’t. I though this post from Margaret Ball three days ago needed wider exposure – SAH*

World changing: top down or bottom up? – by Margaret Ball

My flimsy excuse for posting this on a writing blog is that one thing science fiction writers do, a lot, is invent strange cultures and describe how they change. And too often the changes are not convincing; they amount to everybody saying, “Oh, now that you explain it, I can s...

Book Promo and Vignettes by by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMM...

Cross Your Fingers

I’m going to attempt a quick house cleaning, and would like not to end up very sick again, so…. cross your fingers for me.

Meanwhile, I leave you with one of the funniest cross over funnies EVER:

Oh, quick business: the certificates for those who contributed have gone out, as has the sound file for “Moose and squirrel.”

If you didn’t receive, ping me in the book promo email with “Did not receive” and I’ll correct. (We had a heck of a time with spam filters.) BUT check your...

January 6th

How eager was I to write a January 6th post?

So eager that I came downstairs to write a blog and promptly fell asleep for three hours, even though I actually slept well last night.

Okay, that might have more to do with the fact that I am actually, in point of fact, still recovering from “the cold that keeps coming back” whatever the heck that bug is. Dan says I didn’t cough less last night, so all I can say is I must have slept through it? But I am coughing less during the days, which ...

Infection

This last week Pope Benedict died and also — for a short story — I found myself researching Denver in the 1920s.

Also, sometime in the last few months, an idiot lib asked for “amnesty” for what they did over the covidiocy.

All of these fell into the vat of squirm that is my head, and from it emerged the thought: We are all tainted.

No, seriously, we are all tainted. It’s impossible not to be. (Which is why the church chose men with strong shoulders to take on the sins of others in c...

Coming Back To You

We humans like tidy stories and clear lines.

But life isn’t like that. Live is complicated and confusing, it has self returns, and winding paths.

Our republic can get lost all over the place. It has. You can say it was lost almost as soon as it was founded, and things crept in that should never have. But with al that, all the flaws and warts, and the last hundred years marred by statist idiots (to be fair it is almost impossible to escape the infection of the age and the twentieth cen...

The Futures We Escaped

I moan a lot over the futures we wish we had. Flying cars Halfway across the world being not much more than flying to the next city in time or cost. Unlimited energy.

And I yield to no one — except maybe Jeff Greason — in my wish that we already had the space colonies Heinlein wrote about. (Though let’s be honest, he was on an extremely accelerated/non-plausible time line for the same reason the Greenies are — to keep the attention of kids for whom the future is maybe 20 years. You have t...

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare -Riding the Catastrophic Change Wave part VI

It was the strangest of timelines, it was the clownworldiest of time lines.

It always amuses me — except when it infuriates me, because it’s used as an excuse not to actually listen to what I’m saying — when people tell me I’m a raging optimist. It amuses me because I’m the person most likely to see the worst case scenario in any situation. In fact I’m so likely to spiral down for absolutely no reason anyone else can see that I have built routines into my thinking to examine them for th...

New Year Book Promo and Vignettes by by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

*So I forgot New Year’s was Sunday. And Amazon finally stopped futzing with Through Fire and it went through. So, today we have book promo. Tomorrow the conclusion of my deep dive into what we’re facing, which honestly probably will amount to “Brace” but hey. Anyway, new year new books. – SAH*

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months ...

Green Shoots — Riding the Catastrophic Wave of Change, part VI

Before I begin the post proper, an argh and an explanation on why I call this a catastrophic wave of change (As opposed to say the changes mid nineteenth to mid twentieth century.

The ARGH: Amazon on the last day of the year has invented a new and heretofore unheard of brand of stupid. Last night I uploaded all of Through Fire, ebook and paper. Normally they gag on paper. When it’s a rights thing, they gag on all of them. Today? Today they published the paper without a burp, but are hol...