Category Archives: Society

Traveler seeks home; speaker seeks voice; leaper seeks faith

The spousal unit recently shared on Twitter a post I wrote back in 2007 about surveillance, privacy, governmental overreach, and Cory Doctorow’s wonderful book, LITTLE BROTHER. It got me to thinking about who I used to be, and who I am now.

image source: istockphoto.com

I have found it hard to speak publicly, since leaving the day job–both in my fiction, and here on the blog. That didn’t used to be the case, and my post about Cory’s book reminded me of this.

Part of it was learned behavior. As a consultant, you can’t afford to be noisy and opinionated. Tact is critical, if you want to keep your job. Now I don’t need tact! Yay! So I’m having to unlearn that habit.

But there’s something deeper going on, as well. To be a good writer, you have to be both entertaining and truthful about important things. Yeah; OK. But I don’t know anymore how to boil my experiences and observations down into good narrative. My thoughts feel disorganized and interdependent and nonlinear, and the twined coils of multiple humiliations and disappointments run through them. It’s hard to expose these to the air.

Continue reading Traveler seeks home; speaker seeks voice; leaper seeks faith

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Howling at the moon


blog pic answeringHere’s one for you to ponder. This morning I answered a call on the house phone. Like many families, we all have our own cell phones, but we’ve kept the landline for emergencies, so mostly what we get there are calls from my family members (who are used to reaching us there from decades of experience), and solicitations.

A male voice on the phone asked for my older (21-year-old) daughter by name. It sounded like a young man, and (while this isn’t a sure thing), his accent was Midwestern white guy. She is currently away at college, and all her friends know this. It’s almost unheard-of for her to ever get calls on the landline, even when she is home. It seemed unlikely he was someone who knew her.

Here is (approximately) how the conversation went.

Continue reading Howling at the moon

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Coming to New Mexico: A Petri Town for Tech Testing

Here’s something interesting: CBS News reports that a technology company wants to get its research out of the lab and into the real world. The company is Pegasus Global Holdings, and they intend to build an uninhabited modern replica city in which they can test new technologies.

“A Washington, D.C.-based technology company announced plans Tuesday to build the state’s newest ghost town, a 20-square-mile model metropolis that will be used to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks and smart-grid cyber security systems.

“Although no one will live there, the replica city will be modeled after a typical American town of 35,000 people, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new.”

This just calls out for a story to be set there, doesn’t it?

(image courtesy of David Szondy’s Future City)

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Info Miner Strikes a Rich Vein: The Cascadia Subduction Zone

I was (OK–I admit it; *toe scuff*) ego-surfing around the internet and came across a find: the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It’s a quarterly literary magazine that…well, I’ll let them tell you:

The Cascadia Subduction Zone aims to bring reviews, criticism, interviews, intelligent essays, and flashes of creative artwork (visual and written) to a readership hungry for discussion of work by not only men but also women.

I haven’t read their review of UP AGAINST IT yet (and of course I could end up in a quivering puddle of angst when I do *writer brain; sigh*), but regardless of what they think of my own work, I LOVE the fact that there are people out in the world who are casting their gaze onto works by women.

Speaking of which, I was delighted to see that CSZ reviews Andrea Hairston’s fine new fantasy novel, REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE (which by the way, you should definitely go out right now and buy). She’s a writer who deserves a broad readership. Check her out.

In CSZ’s words, here is their mission:

The relationship between readers and reviewers interests us. We want to bring attention to work critics largely ignore and offer a wider, less narrowly conceived view of the literary sphere. In short, we will review work that interests us, regardless of its genre or the gender of its author. We will blur the boundaries between critical analysis, review, poetry, fiction, and visual arts. And we will do our best to offer our readers a forum for discussion that takes the work of women as vital and central rather than marginal. What we see, what we talk about, and how we talk about it matters. Seeing, recognizing, and understanding is what makes the world we live in. And the world we live in is, itself, a sort of subduction zone writ large. Pretending that the literary world has not changed and is not changing is like telling oneself that Earth is a solid, eternally stable ball of rock.

Well said, and goddess-speed.

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To the Moon, A NYTimes Look-Back 50 Years Later

This is very belated, but here’s a terrific article on the 1960s space race in the New York Times: Looking Back at the Apollo Mission, 50 Years Later.

I’ve written here about my own memories of those years. It was a high-water mark for the human race, in my opinion. I share the view of Stephen Hawking and others that ultimately we must reach beyond our own world, if we are to survive as a species.

I feel sad that we face the end of an era, with the retirement of the space shuttles. But I remain optimistic that a new space program will arise eventually. I think the riki-tiki pull of space will be impossible to ignore, over time.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking by it.

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