The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

And on the Eighth Day, God Said, ‘Everybody Should Buy Evan Sayet’s Book’

“Not liking something doesn’t mean that that something doesn’t exist. If it did, then there’d be no such thing as a Jennifer Aniston movie.” — Evan Sayet, from his new book Ten years ago, I credited Evan Sayet with having written “the most important book since Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type,” and now he’s topped […]

David Drake, RIP

— by Wombat-socho Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt. Has it really been two years since I posted this? I guess it has. Twitter has had a fair chunk of tweets over the last day or two devoted to mourning David Drake, whose impact on science fiction, fantasy, and horror cannot be overstated. There is […]

The High Price of Forgetting

“The dullards and malcontents among us are always anxious to acquire by coercion and bullying what they cannot gain by merit. Because of this, their simple-minded doctrine is attractive for a certain type of disaffected bureaucrat.” — Stanley K. Ridgley When I was young (says the Baby Boomer, because you callow punks don’t know this […]

The Annual Admiral of the Ocean Sea Appreciation Post

— compiled by Wombat-socho This is the day when we remember the brave Genoese navigator who talked Queen Isabella of Spain into financing an expedition intended to sail west across the Atlantic to the Indies and their fabulous spices, avoiding obstreperous Moors and well-armed Portuguese. As we all know now, there were some sizable continents […]

Science Fiction, Gatekeeping, And Why Awards Are Useless

— by Wombat-socho First, let me give a shoutout to Son of Silvercon‘s Guest of Honor, Maggie Hogarth, who has a new book dropping at the end of July, An Exile Aboard Ship. It’s the start of a new series set in her Peltedverse, which has a lot of cool aliens in it, and if […]

Gone To The Dogs

— by Wombat-socho O, the shame. O, the embarrassment. While compiling the last book post, I inadvertently omitted The Best Tweets From Actuary Problem Dog, originally recommended by In The Mailbox’s Favorite Actuary, Mary Pat (“Meep”) Campbell. While this may seem to be an extremely niche joke book, a lot of what Actuary Problem Dog […]

A Book Post For Hanukkah

— by Wombat-socho You know it’s been too long since the last book post when you have to go back and look at the archives to see when you did the last one and what you covered. I’ll try to do better next year, if I can pry myself away from the damn video games… […]

The Annual Admiral Of The Ocean Sea Appreciation Post

— by Wombat-socho Well, actually, Stacy did a damn fine job already talking about Almirante Colombo and why he still triggers the uneducated wokies among us, so I’ll confine myself to posting some pertinent memes by folks on the Intertubes, recommending some books, and mourning a couple of folks who are no longer with us. […]

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