According to Famous Monsters, Kage Baker is dead. She created a wonderful world of time travel at The Company, and according to hints at her formerly author maintained home page there may still be some stories to come from that universe. If you are not yet familiar with Dr. Zeus Inc., otherwise known as The Company, you have some excellent reading ahead of you.
Congratulations to Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, who announced their upcoming wedding on Neil’s blog today.
Mur Lafferty has a blog posting today about a special fund raiser to help Spider and Jeanne Robinson; she has cancer, and 100% of the money collected for this ebooks sales will go directly to the medical expenses. You only have until tomorrow to contribute, so please respond quickly.
Weather is moving in, so I may not get to see Avatar in my local theater on opening day. But since William Gibson inspired me to post some music yesterday, I thought it might to be fun to post a bit more today, this time recommended by Wil Wheaton from his Radio Free Burrito podcast. The band Monsters from Mars may not be posting many new tracks these days, but I sure like the old ones.
I just noticed that John Scalzi posted some of his favorite music videos today as well, and there are some great tunes there.
Speaking of old audio tracks, anyone remember Lord Buckley? With his classic poems from Hipsters, Flipsters, and Finger Poppin Daddies, knock me your lobes, to The Naz, to Gods Own Drunk, and many more, he was the precursor that ushered in everyone from William Burroughs to Lenny Bruce around 1950 or so (Buckley started recording about 1940). In the process, he singlehandedly invented the language of the Beat Generation, and introduced Jack Kerouac to stream of consciousness poetry, Allen Ginsberg to free-form rhyme, and cheered on Neal Cassady as he also created a unique variation on what it was to be an American Beat. Neal never wrote anything, as near as I can remember; he was just the quiet center around which everyone else kept writing, and doing, and evolving, using him for their inspiration.
What could be better than a new Harry Turtledove story? A new Harry Turtledove story you can read online for free thanks to TOR and the author. Another in the online series of science fiction they continue to present there. For more free reading, swing by Peggy’s Free Science Fiction with Biology Directory. For years her Biology in Science Fiction blog has been a great place to learn and be entertained, and it looks like she has been working on the directory for a while now.
There is a reason I follow science fiction authors on Twitter. One example is Lilith Saintcrow, or @lilithsaintcrow in Twit Speak. In a single screens worth of entries she referenced the Symphony of Science, which is echoed in Sagans Latest Music, an ethical discourse on the difference between Kindness, Morals, and Justice, a serious Netiquette site called One Geek To Another, a report on gender-based evolutionary size tactics and why they work, an a news story indicating that Bush used PsyOps on the American public as a way to distract us from what he was doing. 10 posts, 6 ways to tie your brain in a knot; you got to love the web, and the people like her that contribute to it!