Matt Ruff's Blog, page 53
May 27, 2010
May 25, 2010
Dr. Whomlet
It's Syfy meets the Lord Chamberlain's Men: David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet, now out on DVD:
Lisa and I both still prefer the Branagh Hamlet, but this was well done and worth putting in the Netflix queue. I only wish they could have gotten Vin Diesel to play Laertes.
Lisa and I both still prefer the Branagh Hamlet, but this was well done and worth putting in the Netflix queue. I only wish they could have gotten Vin Diesel to play Laertes.
May 21, 2010
The Mongoliad
Attention Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, and Mark Teppo fans:
The Mongoliad is a rip-roaring adventure tale set in 1241, a pivotal year in history, when Europe thought that the Mongol Horde was about to completely destroy their world. The Mongoliad is also the beginning of an experiment in storytelling, technology, and community-driven creativity.
Our story begins with a serial novel of sorts, which we will release over the course of about a year. Neal Stephenson created the w...
May 18, 2010
For that kind of money, I think I could learn to love Tolstoy
[Via Ta-Nehisi Coates] Ray Bradbury is interviewed in this season's Paris Review (teaser excerpt here, full interview only available in print).
INTERVIEWER: How important is it to you to follow your own instincts?
BRADBURY: Oh, God. It’s everything. I was offered the chance to write War and Peace for the screen a few decades ago. The American version with King Vidor directing. I turned it down. Everyone said, How could you do that? That’s ridiculous, it’s a great book! I said, Well, it...
May 10, 2010
May 5, 2010
Maybe I should have patented the idea
One of the Panopticon surveillance devices mentioned in Bad Monkeys is something called a Library Binding, which can be installed or implanted in a book (the exact nature of the mechanism is never described) and that, among other things, maintains a record of which pages the book is opened to, for how long. Spend an hour studying the phosgene gas recipe in the Golden Book of Chemistry, and Panopticon will know.
What makes this idea goofily paranoid is that it involves books with actual binding...
What makes this idea goofily paranoid is that it involves books with actual binding...
May 2, 2010
What's the frequency, Rupert?
Twelve hours after the attempted car bombing in Times Square, CNN is doing non-stop coverage/speculation about the story, while Fox & Friends is interviewing a guy in a George Washington costume about a national park closing in Pennsylvania. Weird.
April 23, 2010
So, yeah, about that Alton Brown baba ghanoush recipe...
...served with hot, fresh-baked pita bread, it is, as the kids say, MADE OF AWESOME.
Quick question for the hive-mind: Does tahini need to be refrigerated once the can is opened?
Quick question for the hive-mind: Does tahini need to be refrigerated once the can is opened?
April 22, 2010
Calvin College Festival, afterword
As noted previously, I spent part of last week at the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is a lit conference held biennially (in odd-numbered years, they have a Festival of Faith & Music), with about 2000 attendees. Although Calvin College is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, the festival is open to anyone with an interest, positive or negative, in religion and writing. Past guests have included Salman Rushdie and Elie Wiesel; Philip Pullma...
