Edward M. Lerner's Blog: SF and Nonsense, page 47

Permit me a small woohoo!

A most satisfying day ...

Locus magazine's recommended reading list for 2012 was released today, with (we pause for a tasteful drum roll ...) Fate of Worlds among its chosen SF novels. Lots of great reading is to be found on that list ...

Also today, SF Site published Fate of Worlds: An Interview with Edward M. Lerner. It'd be hard not to be pleased by (from the intro to the interview):

"In August of 2012 came Niven and Lerner's capstone to both the Ringworld and Fleet series, Fate of Worlds, w...

Of products, people, and particulars

About the recently concluded annual Consumer Electronics Show, you can find viewpoints for and against most any product -- or soon-to-be product, or wannabe product -- that was on exhibit. I read several such articles; I'd bet you did, too. But the report I was most taken with? From PC World: "Why Windows RT is hurtling toward disaster." Here's the takeaway: "Microsoft and ARM rolled snake eyes at CES 2013. Windows RT was not out in full force at the show, and for all intents and purpose...

Techie tesserae

The crafting of believable futures -- a big chunk of my job description -- entails considering the many ways in which a society can change. Any science or technology experiencing a major advance -- and when is just one so fortunate? -- generally has many consequences. Consider the myriad myriads of impacts of ever faster, ever cheaper, ever more efficient electronic chips.

The better to imagine fictional futures, part of my routine involves keeping my finger on the pulse of science and tech (a...

Future(dr)ama

A fun aspect of writing technothrillers is seeing how close reality comes to my imagined (possible) futures.

Such as with augmented-reality glasses, tech that played an important role in 2009's Small Miracles (otherwise a nanotech novel). Google goggles, aka Project Glass, were a step toward what I'd envisioned, but not quite there. Their user interface relies on spoken commands and speech recognition, and often we would wish to do our networked tasks with a bit of privacy. So I was delighted...

Out with the odd (er, old)

The end of one year and the start of the next is always a time for ... journalistic excess. And so the past few weeks have offered more than their share of interesting (or mockable) articles.

How mockable? Well, Space.com reports an "Exclusive: Mars Rover Curiosity Featured in MAD Magazine."

Not mockable, per se, but entirely random: how about this archival image of the SR-71 Blackbird? I can't begin to guess why, on New Year's Eve, Space.com dredged up this photo. (The SR-71 fleet was retired...

SFnal New Year wishes

May the new year bring you new perspectives, exciting discoveries, and bold inspirations.

May this year see you safe from Armageddon, apocalypse, and disaster of all kinds, most especially vampires, zombies, and dreary dystopias.

May dark energy and dark matter finally be brought into the light.

May the qualifier be removed from the label of the newly discovered "Higgs-like boson."

Happy New Year!======================
from Edward M. Lerner's "SF and Nonsense"

Happy / Merry / Enjoy

Hourglass Nebula (because time flies)I'll be back next week.

======================
from Edward M. Lerner's "SF and Nonsense"

They *are* watching you

In recent months I've posted less often than previously about privacy concerns. That's not because threats to our privacy have abated -- far from it. Rather, I grew weary of there being so many encroachments.

The privacy-centric news -- and not just Internet regulation ITU-style (see my days-ago post, "Big Brother redux") -- continues to be discouraging ...
How would you feel about your DVR watching you -- not what you're viewing on your TV, but you -- and using what it sees to target you with...

Big Brother redux

I posted last week (The UN? Seriously?) about efforts afoot to put the Internet under the jurisdiction of International Telecommunication Union rules. The ITU at its just concluded meeting voted out a treaty to do just that. See "89 ITU members sign controversial UN telecom treaty."

"It won't regulate the Internet," the treaty's advocates say. Right.

When was the last time the US Congress was unanimous about anything? Last week! See "Congress declares opposition to UN takeover of the Internet....

The UN? Seriously?

With far less visibility or press interest than was afforded the recently concluded Doha round of climate talks ("Kyoto Protocol extended in contentious U.N. climate talks"), moves are afoot to transfer governance of the Internet from volunteer and not-for-profit organizations to the UN's own International Telecommunication Union. 

When? Right now! It's a main topic of conversation at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai (through December 14th).


Why? Because so...