Matt Ruff's Blog, page 57

The Mirage

A holiday update on my novel-in-progress: I now have a contract with HarperCollins and a deadline. The finished manuscript is due at the end of next year, which means barring delays (and/or the collapse of the publishing industry) it will be published sometime in late 2011 or early 2012. Sorry to take so long, but as we all know by now, I write slowly. You should still have time to read it before the Mayan calendar runs out.

I'm still not ready to go into detail about the plot, but in essence...

Ah, love

A recent post by nihilistic_kid inspired me to look up Patricia Highsmith's Wikipedia entry, which led me in turn to this Telegraph interview with Highsmith's former lover Marijane Meaker. Meaker describes how, following their final break-up, she and Highsmith purged their feelings by fictionally murdering one another:

Highsmith wrote a bitter book, The Cry of the Owl, killing off the character based on Meaker. "I am knifed to death - for several pages - at the end," chuckles Meaker, who...

A reminder that signed first editions make excellent holiday gifts

Because it's that time of year, I thought I would remind everybody that I've got first editions of Sewer, Gas & Electric, Set This House in Order, and Bad Monkeys for sale, and of course I'll be happy to custom-inscribe them to you or the lucky gift-recipient of your choice. Drop me an email here if you are interested.

[image error]

Zoo note

Lisa and I took advantage of a break in the rain on Saturday to hike up the hill to the Seattle Zoo. Despite it being a weekend the place was pretty empty, which we liked -- nothing like having your own private animal park to stroll around in. If you're in the area, and especially if you have a zoo pass, you may want to check it out. The snow leopard cubs (usually outside between noon and 3) are getting big, and you can just walk up and look at them now without waiting in line.

Stargate: SVU gets busy with the body-swapping

Last Friday's Stargate had the first use of body-swapping technology as a plot complicator. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, they've got this alien device on the show that's kind of like a plug-in desktop Zen garden. You place a magic stone on top of this lighted box, and somebody somewhere else in the universe does the same thing, and just like that, you take control of their body and they take control of yours--until someone moves one of the stones.

There are lots of interest...

V

Good popcorn TV. Some random thoughts:

* It's nice to see
* I'm not sure if it's the haircut or what, but they did something to give Morena Baccarin just a hint of uncanny valley, and it's very effective. She's still gorgeous but I can totally buy that she's an evil reptilian who wants to eat my family and my pets.

* The Syphillis Channel has been replaying episodes from the or...

The Day of the Triffids

John Wyndham meets cute (overload):

[image error]

The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary

Lisa enthuses over her newest research tool:

Browsing this work feels strangely like time-travel. All the words from Old English to 2003—obsolete and current, including slang and dialect—have been extracted from the Oxford English Dictionary and organized by their meanings and dates of use. This places each word within its historical context, revealing how ideas and meanings emerged and the different ways they’ve been expressed through time.

It took forty-four years to bring the HTOED to...

Last night on the TV

White Collar -- This is the new USA series, about a handsome, smart thief/con-man who becomes a "consultant" with the FBI in return for getting his slate cleaned. This set-up sounded kind of familiar, but Lisa and I decided to give it a try since USA is the network that brought us Burn Notice and Royal Pains, both of which we love. White Collar turns out to be really good too -- it is kind of familiar, but it's also very well written and I really like the characters.

Stargate: SVU -- White...

Does the universe have a birthdate?

Via jaylake , Andrew Wheeler notes that yesterday was the 6012th anniversary of God's creation of the Earth, according to James Ussher's chronology.

These days, of course, the enlightened view is that God did not create the Earth 6012 years ago, but rather that the universe sprang into existence for unknown and possibly unknowable reasons approximately 13.7 billion years ago.

But thinking about Archbishop Ussher got me wondering: Whether or not it could ever actually be calculated, does the uni...