Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 34

Reading Recommendation: Non-Zero Probabilities, by N.K. Jemisin

This was my walking-the-dog story today – I listened via podcast, but it is also available in print from Clarkesworld. I figured there must be a reason it is on both the Hugo and Nebula ballots, and it actually is a delightful short.  It's subtle, different (yeah!), and quite well-written.  If you haven't read or heard it yet, I highly recommend that you wonder off and do so.

The iPad: After Week Two

This is just a quick update, and then I'll do my next iPad piece in John DeNardo's Mind Meld on the topic next week, returning this blog to it's regularly scheduled programming.

I still love the iPad. 

Promised experiment on reading:  Not as good as the Kindle, but it is readable.  Hint:  turn down the screen brightness to save your eyes.  I have one book I'm reading on both the iPad and as a physical book (don't ask) and I am going to the physical book when I can.  I don't have the same...

The iPad: After Week 1

I've had my iPad for a week now, and I promised I'd blog about it.  So here's blog #1.

In general, I like it a lot.  I love Scrabble (I know – BORING – but I do).  Maybe it's the writer in me.  The household teenager takes it for Tetris.  Clearly a casual gaming hit.

There is no real newspaper yet.  There's BBC news which is well-done but not updated as often as I want (doesn't replace the morning paper).   There's a tiny version of the NYT, but no full version.  It does give me hope though – t...

Reading Recommendation: The Love We Share Without Knowing, by Christopher Barzak

I just finished this book as my reward for a long (and pleasant) convention and getting 5K or more words done as well.  After I read the last page, I realized I had been putting it off because I didn't wanted to get to the end.  It's so magical and sweet and faintly sad I loved being inside it.   It was deeply satisfying.  Not in the way that I usually enjoy books.  It has no real visible plot, no single protagonist.  It is elegantly structured, and beautifully written, and tender.  I might d...

Norwescon Schedule

For those of you who will be around Norwescon this weekend, here's where you can for sure find me:

Friday, 9:00 a.m., Cascade 7

Climate Change in the 21st Century

There is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any time during the last 650,000 years. Climate alterations are expected to be serious: more intense storms, more pronounced droughts, coastal areas more severely eroded by rising seas. At the high end of the predictions, the world could face abrupt, catastrophic, and irreversible...

Arundhati Roy: The Woman of True Words

Arundhati Roy came to Seattle last night and spoke to a sold-out crowd at Town Hall.  The rest of my family stayed home in an odd resonance:  the family teenager was putting the finishing touches on a school project about Gandhi.  If they don't yet, schoolchildren will be studying Arundhati.  For those who don't yet know her name, she is a the Booker Prize winning author of "The God of Small Things," an international bestselling novel.  Instead of using her new fame and her gift with words...

Reading Recommendation: Bridesicle by Will McIntosh

Nice.  I listened to the Starship Sofa podcast.  It's also available as a PDF from the Asimov's site (at least for now – it's a nebula nominated work).  I almost didn't even try to get through it because the title just wasn't very attractive to me, but the story is quite moving.  It turned out to be one of the stories I stayed out for an extra long walk to get finished in one session.  The dog didn't mind.

Reading Recommendation: Flesh and Fire, by Laura Anne Gilman

Flesh and Fire: Book One of The Vineart War is one of most unique new fantasy worlds I've read in a long time, full of new ideas to clothe another of my favorite things:  coming of age stories. I highly recommend this to anyone who loves award-winning fantasy like Lois McMaster Bujold's "Curse of Chalion."  The world is as deep and nice as Chalion, if a bit less complex.  A fast, fun read that will entertain you, and the writing is nicely done and smooth.

Longevity

My newest Futurismic column looks at longevity.  This is feeding a bit off of a question I asked the twitterverse (and the land of Facebook) about whether or not people would want to live to be 150 (assuming no negative consequences to us or our progeny or the earth).  Pretty much everybody said yes.

I've to change a few things to get to 150, or else the world around me has to give me more options.  But I just played "The Longevity Game" and clocked in as likely to live to 89. So there's 40...

Broadband: How We Thirst

 As many of you know, I have other hats besides writer/speaker/futurist.  I work for a city as the Chief Information Officer, or CIO.  That means I'm responsible for all of the phones and computers and communications – people and budgets and decisions.

We are one of many cities competing to have Google choose our community to build a new high-speed internet connection.  Cities have renamed themselves.  Some city leaders have jumped in freezing water, and others have given streets new...