A FEW YEARS AGO, I began writing some short fantasies concerning a notable resident of the Land Beyond The Sunset: Prosatio Silban, ex-holyman turned freelance cook. At this writing, six stories are completed and undergoing revision, but the following flash…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
Live Long and Kosh — er, Prosper
IT’S NOT ALWAYS NEWS WHEN a rabbi writes a book — but when he writes about Vulcans, Ferengi and Klingons, it’s bound to raise at least one fascinated eyebrow (I’m looking at you, Spock). Rabbi Yonassan Gershom‘s Jewish Themes In…
Invasion of the Sound Creatures
TITANIC THINGS ARE LURCHING ABOUT your neighborhood with awful speed and clumsiness — and by the time you finish reading this, you’ll hear them too. I speak not of the consequences attending long-term medication, nor of some Lovecraftian horror rolling…
Paul Williams Support Fund
IF YOU PASSED THROUGH THE 1970s and ’80s, you likely read his Das Energi, his rock criticism, or his Philip K. Dick scholarship. Now he, like so many, needs our help.
Minute Mitzvah: Keep Your Word
(N.B.: If you’re not hip to things eth(n)ospiritual, you may want to skip this post. Otherwise, feel free to comment.) FOR ME, THE SECRET TO Jewish living can be summed up in two Hebrew words: “Na’aseh v’nishmah (We will do,…
Read This Book
THERE IS A Conversation THAT I’ve been having with a friend since we were both in high school, and the initial-cap in that word is due not to the colloquy’s duration but to its content. Its thesis is simple: that…
Pithyism #22
DON’T ABUSE THE HELP. AFTER all, you’re someone else’s. (A corollary to the police reporter’s “Don’t mock the damned — you may one day be one of them.”)
Re-Re-RE-Reads
SOME BOOKS ARE FINISHED IN a day; others, only when we are. If books are portable doorways, then stepping into a beloved-since-childhood instant Now every few years can sometimes tell us where we’ve been in the meanwhile. As one of…
Four Points of Contact
“IT IS THE NATURE OF religious belief knowledge to be compelling only to the believer knower.” So said Rabbi Micha Berger some years ago on Usenet’s soc.culture.jewish.moderated, and I have yet to see a better argument for pluralism and against…
Why Star Trek Worked — And Lord of the Rings Didn’t
THE ONLY THING THAT BUGGED me about the new Star Trek movie — and that only for the first 20 minutes — was that it didn’t look “retro” enough; as though Mr. Abrams’ idea of “early Star Trek” was taken…
Bad Form?
AS ONE STILL NEW TO the Serious Blogging Experience, I don’t know whether or not it’s tacky for one to link to nice things said about one by others on their blogs. If it is, skip to the previous post.…
Bookshelf: Larry Niven
ONE NICE THING ABOUT BEING laid up is the chance to reacquaint myself with some old childhood friends; e.g., Larry Niven and his Known Space series. For those who don’t know, Known Space is a 60-light-year-diameter bubble and a thousand…