Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 14

Neither Nor

I had a disturbed night, mostly because we ate late which leads to heartburn. In the middle of the night feeling a bit exhausted and out of sorts, I gave up sleeping for a while, and tried to read a Pride and Prejudice Fanfic (because low braining function required.)

And then on page three it kicked me in the teeth.

Look, I’m quite willing and ready to wink at all sorts of anachronisms and just plain unmitigated stupidity in those because they’re usually an entry point to writing and ...

Public Un-Safety

Two days ago, I ran across this on twitter:

Again, the “if you disagree with me” “you make me feel unsafe.”

It is on the face of it a totally nonsensical claim. I’ve hung out with plenty of people with whom I disagreed violently, as for instance the late Eric Flint and my brother, and I’ve yet to be attacked or killed by them. And I’ve certainly neither attacked them nor killed them.

It is possible to have completely opposite ideas of how society or life in general should be run ...

The Science is Unsettled by Torpenhow-Hill

The Science is Unsettled by Torpenhow-Hill

There is an uproar in the science community at the moment over the budget cuts that President Trump is proposing.  Apparently all the colleges will be closing and people will die.  How bad is it?  A bit of AI fu (because I refuse to dirty my internet with MSNBC or that ilk) finds:

            “President Donald Trump has proposed significant cuts to federal research spending for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. The proposed budg...

Oh When The Odds Go Marching In

We live in profoundly weird times, in case you haven’t yet looked out the window this morning.

And I don’t say this (only) because this post is coming to you as we careen through America’s big beautiful highways in excess of seventy miles per hour, with my laptop on my lap and my fingers making with the words as I look out at the unusually green Western US landscape.

I won’t be home for at least a week (what are we doing? We don’t know. We might be looking for a home, except for a relu...

The End of The Con

It starts in the dark
As soon as night falls
One by one
Two by two
People say their final goodbyes
And depart to their cars
Leaving behind the knots of conversation
The groups of friends in
Convivial talk

It’s all “Yeah, work tomorrow”
And “Early flight.”
Or “Long drive.”

Groups close around their absence
The other members making the most
Of a final reminiscence
A last joke
A shared meal

Then in the night, while most sleep
One by one and two by two
With their bags
Their stachels
And that special picture ...

No Promo Tomorrow

Promo Monday

I’ll be at the Kafe klatch, if you haven’t had a chance to catch up with me otherwise.

And since I don’t leave till Monday morning, feel free to let me know if you want to join the informal, unorganized, secondary Huns dinner to take place tomorrow night at City Cafe. I’ll be out of my con persona and probably very quiet, but it is what it is.

Anyway. It’s been a good con, but exhausting. Sorry if we ran away after my reading. There were a couple of you I wished to speak t...

Who Let The Memes Out?

That Seventies Cover has a Blurb Now!

Mostly just happy I have a blurb, and wanting to share. Also feeling guilty and stupid this isn’t out (or fully revised) yet.

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publiu...

The Trip, the Stickers and– ArGH

We’re currently at the Liberty con hotel, but we’re not out in public. You might have caught a glimpse of us running one way and then the other, as we brought stuff in, grabbed dinner, came back to the room.

But Sarah, you’ll say, what’s the point of being there and not there?

The thing is by the time we got in I was feeling extremely tired. To explain: at the doctor’s appointment, there was a discovery that I’m in fact still dragging the sinus infection I got 9 months ago.

This sh...

Iran So Far Away

So, are the idiots on Twitter and elsewhere claiming that Iran is “just” Israel’s fight and that we shouldn’t be fighting Israel’s battles and blah blah blah idiots, evil, or simply Russian operatives?

Because at this point all the wounded bear can do to defend its client and proxy Iran is to try to undermine American effort.

I’m probably wasting effort preaching to the fish, but here goes:

You ignorant or malicious idiots, listen up: In Iran’s chants, Israel is the LITTLE Satan, we...