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…
Tag: Hey Fanboy!
I was 6 when _2001_ premiered; 15 for _Star Wars_. I keep a set of weird-looking dice in my briefcase. Nuf said?
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…
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…
There’s WATER on ‘ing MARS.
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks…
Natural Machines
A number of years ago, I got into a cocktail-party argument (or its boho-pomo equivalent, since we were in San Francisco in the 1980s) with someone who decried the “unnaturalness” of spaceflight. Her thesis, IIRC, was that humans were somehow…
Torah Nerds, Unite!
Some people say that the Torah can only be meaningful if the events depicted therein are true. In other words, if 600,000 people didn’t march through the Sinai Peninsula; if the plagues were just a mythologization of natural disasters; if…
Stephen3PO
The writers’ strike wears on, but our nerves don’t thanks to those daring and resourceful folks at Operation Facestrong. Long may it wave.
“I Seen It Too!”
WAITING FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD with Sputnik at the Shoreline, c. 1989ish, one of us began the following conversation: “For example, that guy over there with the ‘I Climbed Lassen’ T-shirt.” “Yeah.” “Well, he obviously wants everyone to think that…
Librarians Are Hiding Something
Stephen said it, I believe it, and that’s good enough for anyone. (P.S. to the Incomparable Bird of Paradox himself: Good to see “your back”.
37 Years Ago Today
“But the Eagle has landed; tell your children whenTime won’t drive us down to dust again.”— Leslie Fish, Hope Eyrie One of the most embarrassing things which ever happened to me was falling asleep for the 90 or so seconds…