Sunday, 24th of December, 2006

For some time, Benjamin Rosenbaum has been one of the brightest new sparks in the sf world, creating stories with equal parts mythical resonance, rigorous scientific speculation and empathy with the human condition. He can bring a strange mix of the Talmudic and scientific methods to the philosophical backgrounds of his stories, and his blog is often home for intense philosophical arguments involving such others as Ted Chiang and David Moles.
I’ve mentioned Jay Lake before in these pages, and in terms of range, Rosenbaum is certainly comparable.

In this post, I’m urging you to go and check out Ben R’s most recent story, online at Strange Horizons: The House Beyond Your Sky. It’s an immensely-far-future tale which is vintage Rosenbaum (as described above), and the less I say about it the better. However, Ben does have an illuminating blog post about the story, which includes a prologue which was removed from the final version, but which it wouldn’t hurt to read before you dive into the story.
It’s another short one, well worth taking a few minutes out for right now. It’s going to be hard to beat for short story of the year, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so (caveat: both of those links above are Jonathan Strahan, Perth editor with exemplary taste, but still.)

Sunday, 17th of December, 2006

Easily one of my favourite authors at the moment is Jay Lake, whose LiveJournal is a constant source of fascinating ruminations on (and discussions of) science fiction, writing, politics, morality, philosophy, child-rearing and more.

He’s been appearing in some Australian sf markets recently, and it’s lovely to see that Damien Broderick has got a new story of Jay’s up on the COSMOS Magazine site (COSMOS is a great newish Aussie science magazine that’s been featuring a new sf story every issue since the beginning. They now seem to be buying enough that they’re publishing a few exclusively on the web, like here).

This one’s a science fiction story, and a space opera at that, and it’s a beauty. And it’s short, so you can easily hop over there now. Go read The Dead Man’s Child.

Wednesday, 13th of December, 2006

You probably haven’t seen all of these.
They don’t include one that I was taught in my youth though:

Jane, where John had had “had”, had had “had had”. “Had had” had had the teacher’s approval.

Admittedly this one’s even better though:

“Wouldn’t the sentence ‘I want to put two hyphens between words Fish and And, and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign’ have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and and and and Chips, and after Chips?”

Mylo, whose music I can’t say I particularly appreciate, turns out to have a philosophical past, and he seems to pretty much have his head screwed on right too.