Connie Willis is one of the most beloved science fiction writers of the past 40 years. As a writer she’s won many awards, for works often humorous but at times tragic, at times building human stories based on the weirdness of modern physics. She’s popular at conventions, excellent as a master of ceremonies (she does this for the Locus Awards every years, e.g. here), and obsessive about the news. She’s said that at conventions she keeps the TV in her room tuned to CNN all day. Continue reading
Here’s an oldie, not just for first being published in 1947 (see Wikipedia) but also for being one of the first science nonfiction books I ever read, back when I bought this copy in 1969.
(Seen here is the Bantam edition of April 1967, a reprint of the revised Viking edition of May 1961. Bantam’s is 340 pages.)
So I would have read this about the time I was in 9th grade and taking, what, high school algebra or geometry? This book doesn’t assume knowledge of those, and largely (but not entirely except in footnotes) avoids equations — just as Isaac Asimov’s popular science fiction, and essays in F&SF, did.
A key aspect of (good) science fiction is that it takes a long term view, of the species, of the universe, as so few individual people do.
I’m going to begin a series of posts capturing photos of some of the many sets of matching paperbacks that appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I began buying books, that I have acquired (some when published and some over time).
This week’s story being consider by the Facebook Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction group, for its reading of the big Gardner Dozois book shown here, is the second story in that book, a 1988 novella by Walter Jon Williams called “Surfacing.” It’s about 60 pages in a typical book, fewer pages in this anthology with its tiny print. In this post I’m also reviewing two other notable stories by Williams, from 1999 and 2003.
Quick post for this afternoon; I’m working a long post about the next story my Facebook reading group will address on Sunday, concerning a novella by Walter Jon Williams, and I’m taking the opportunity while revisiting these older stories by also rereading additional stories by the same authors. So tomorrow I’ll have a post about three stories by Walter Jon Williams.
For today, two Facebook memes. I’ve seen both before; they’re still apt. The first is about conspiracy theories.
How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion (Portfolio/Penguin, June 2022, 330pp)
Almost a decade ago I discovered two books by David McRaney, YOU ARE NOT SO SMART (2011) and YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB (2013) that were popularizations of the discoveries of psychology over the previous decade or two. All about cognitive biases, how people commit logical fallacies, how they use heuristics. From his books, and others of the past two decades by Dan Ariely, Tom Gilovich, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, and others, I’ve learned a great about the difference between what people believe is true and what actually is true – a theme that dovetails with the notions of science fiction that suggest humans do not or cannot perceive more than our immediate experience, that a larger reality is out there for us to discover, if we can just think our way to it.
When I opened Facebook this morning the first 10 items were all about the election results in Kansas (from news sources or friends citing them), in which an attempt to remove protections for abortion *failed* rather dramatically — by 60% over 37% or thereabouts. And here I just quoted this para from that Slate article about the New York Times, yesterday:
But most Americans—57 percent, according to Pew Research and 63 percent according to a more recent CNN poll—disapprove of the repeal of Roe. Treating the minority that embraces it with more curiosity and empathy than the majority who opposes it will lead it to skewed perceptions of the reality on the ground.
Thus, all today:
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Here’s an odd headline. What could this be about?
Slate, Savannah Jacobson, 1 Aug 2022: Why the New York Times’ Post-Roe Abortion Coverage Has Felt a Little Off, subtitled, “It’s the same problem that always plagues the Times.”
Links and Comments: Some Good News, and the FBI
Some recent news is actually quite good.
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