Edward M. Lerner's Blog: SF and Nonsense, page 25

Short fiction. Shorter updates.

On 8/30, I shared a few short-fiction announcements, as parts of Con-fusion / Writing updates. Happily, more short-fiction news has accumulated and, well, there's no time like the -- holiday pun unavoidable -- present.

Science Fiction by Scientists , an anthology by astronomer, SF author, and good buddy Michael Brotherton, is hot off the presses (and in other editions, fresh from the electron mines). It contains, among many interesting things, my short story "Turing de Force." Like every tale i...

Buy-a-Book Saturday (heck, buy books all weekend)

Regularly since 2010, at about this time of year, I've posted about Buy-a-Book Saturday. That's my personal variation on Small Business Saturday: a day (specifically, the second day after Thanksgiving, and one day after retail's infamous Black Friday) on which holiday shoppers are especially encouraged to patronize small businesses. The big-box stores and Internet giants will do fine this holiday season. But will your neighborhood, non-chain shops and boutiques?

Why a buy-a-book variant? Becau...

2016 best reads

I read a lot: as research, to stay knowledgeable about the genre in which I write, and simply for enjoyment -- overlapping categories, to be sure. Continuing an annual tradition, I'm posting pre-holiday shopping season about the most notable books so far from this year's reading. (And, occasionally, the year's rereading. That a book not only elicits a reread, but still impresses on the second time around, is certainly a recommendation.) When I mention a book, I really enjoyed it and/or found...

Back to the future (and futures past)

I try to blog weekly, most often on Monday or Tuesday. Next Tuesday is, of course, the long-anticipated presidential election, and not the ideal time for posting one of my wholly non-political posts. (They're all non-political, if you hadn't noticed.)

So: today it is. And yet, this post -- while entirely non-political -- has its electoral echoes ...

And some quite personal remembrances, too.

Yesterday I attended an IEEE meeting (IEEE being the the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer...

Touch this poll with a ten-foot pole?

Everyone seems to want input and feedback these days -- and yes, I find that annoying, too -- but FWIW I solicit feedback less than once a year. If you're game, feedback does make for a more useful blog. A minute or two of your time should suffice.

Because it'd be helpful to know: What brings you? How do you come here? Are occasional updates re my books, stories, and articles a feature or a turn-off?

You'll find the anonymous, short (five questions, all multiple choice) survey here.

The survey...

Of food (sorta, kinda) and bargains

Last post, in A day (well, a week) in the life, I mentioned a few of the many things that "writing" entails besides, well, writing. Among my activities during the previous week had been prepping a guest post for Eating Authors. It's where psychologist -- and fellow SF author -- Lawrence M. Schoen asks writers about their most memorable meal.

That post is now up, and you can click through to read about my most memorable meal (and see a few kind words from Lawrence).

New topic. We're approaching...

A day (well, a week) in the life

What do writers do all day? You might suppose, write. Enter text into the computer. It even happens that way ... sometimes.

15 May 1989 Dilbert, by Scott Adams

In the past week, I've managed to produce a few thousand new words toward the novel in progress. (No, I'm not ready to talk about that.) Mostly my time went to:
 Recovering from the realization that a character in the novel had available a cleverer ploy than what I'd already written; rewriting to take that factor into account; rework...

Strange doings, from atoms to galaxies to homicidal grandchildren

Still playing catch-up here after last weekend's Capclave. So: for this week's post, I'm sharing -- with the most minimal of introduction -- a potpourri of physical-sciences news that I expect will appeal to regular SF and Nonsense visitors. (And if none of these links/headlines grabs you, well, I'll just have to live with that.)

From Phys.org, about the quantum-mechanical underpinnings of superconductivity: For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up...

Madala bosons. Cosmic space blobs. And sundry objects between

For today's post, let's visit a few thought- (and wow-) inducing news items of physics/astrophysics import ...

We'll begin at the (really) small end of the scale, pondering, from Cosmos, "Glimpses of the Madala boson: have we detected the dark Higgs?"

How the Higgs was foundAnd what, you may wonder, is a Madala boson? If it exists (and that's a [metaphorically] big if), the Madala boson would be the dark-matter counterpart to the property-of-mass-causing (in normal matter) Higgs boson first dis...

Psst! Dark Secret is book of the month (and for this month, a steal!)

Phoenix Pick is promoting my newly published novel, Dark Secret, as its October book of the month. BOTM status means that, in ebook formats, you can name your price. Even zero.

They're also offering a deeply discounted bundle of three of my novels: Dark Secret (the end of the world, and what comes next), Small Miracles (medical nanotech), and Fools' Experiments (AI and artificial life).

(For more about on any book, click the thumbnail cover at right.)

You'll want to check this out while the pro...