tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57407870636498894802011-11-27T17:00:34.223-05:00Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.comBlogger2121100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-62264202751164674612009-01-26T08:59:00.003-05:002009-01-26T09:14:25.382-05:00

Fellow Mammals:If all goes well, this will be my last posting on blogger. I have heard your grumbles. I have overheard the prayers offered on my behalf when I went to blogger in the first place. I have taken pity on those of failing eyesight, for whom stark white-on-black is not the nifty-cool computer-screen font I remember from sixties science fiction films, but a migraine-inducing poke in

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-45782742661795836762009-01-24T17:37:00.002-05:002009-01-24T17:42:06.368-05:00

Regular visitors to rifters.com know that most of the stuff I've ever published is freely available in a variety of e-formats on this site (and on some others). I'm a bit worried that this may not be a sustainable approach over the long haul (especially in times of global economic meltdown), but so far the counterintuitive-yet-undeniable truth is that going the Creative Commons route has only

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-74537364179617995892009-01-22T11:32:00.004-05:002009-01-23T12:23:52.038-05:00

Anyone out there know someone in Toronto with a used treadmill (or elliptical trainer, I guess) to unload for a reasonable price? I can always go the Craigslist route, but I'd rather do business with someone one of you folks personally vouched for. It's important to have someone other than me to blame, in the event I get hosed.Anyone?

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-88992981241779596522009-01-20T16:24:00.006-05:002009-01-21T09:52:33.105-05:00

It's pretty hard to escape a feeling of pervasive optimism today. We have witnessed perhaps the first-ever presidential inaugural address to contain the phrase "data and statistics". We heard Obama add "nonbelievers" to the usual Christian-Jew-Muslim litany trotted out in deference to the diversity of the melting pot. We heard the most powerful noncorporate person on the planet speak of

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-50844292801324088192009-01-18T15:54:00.008-05:002009-01-20T19:20:36.061-05:00

In this particular business, the standard components of a novel pitch are the first three chapters plus two, maybe three pages of synopsis for the rest of the story. The pitch I just sent to my agent— the latest iteration thereof, at least— contains 36 pages of prose; 27 pages of "synopsis"; a two-page bullet-pointed executive summary of thematic arguments; and proposed jacket text, to be

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-54239009554650136282009-01-09T19:28:00.001-05:002009-01-09T19:31:04.070-05:00

Tendonitis, they tell me: chronic, and calcified, and apparently dating from the time I dislocated my shoulder while surf-kayaking in 1991. Now, after almost two decades of peaceful dormancy the fucker decides to wake up and turn me into the One-Armed Wonder throughout the holidays— apparently provoked by too many lame-ass bench presses and one catalytic arm-flail while avoiding a faceplant on

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-63388622584944283062009-01-07T22:28:00.008-05:002009-01-09T19:13:10.470-05:00

Most of you probably know about Turing machines: hypothetical gizmos built of paper punch-tape, read-write heads, and imagination, which can — step by laborious step — emulate the operation of any computer. And some of you may be old enough to remember the Sinclair ZX-80— a sad little personal computer so primitive that it couldn't even run its video display and its keyboard at the same time (

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-41448500696398439932009-01-03T19:56:00.005-05:002009-01-03T20:04:52.622-05:00

Some of you may remember this scene at the very end of Starfish — the moment when the chrysalis splits open and Lenie Clarke Mk 2 emerges to wreak vengeance on the world:A slender, translucent tentacle wraps softly around her wrist. It fades away into a distance utterly black to most, slate gray to Lenie Clarke. She brings it to her. Its swollen tip fires sticky threads at her fingers.She brushes

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-53257911368585677262009-01-02T20:43:00.008-05:002009-01-03T12:55:55.505-05:00

...Not with a Bang but with a Rant.Christmastime in the Watts household has always been a time for impotent fury. It is a time to reconnect with old friends seen only during this special season, career biologists who stuck it out and stayed the course and got good steady jobs at universities and federal labs. It is a time to be reminded anew of the price these people pay for their steady

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-74391672768135638622008-12-26T12:32:00.002-05:002008-12-26T12:38:25.880-05:00

Just for the next little while I'm commandeering the 'crawl for social event planning, since not everyone is on facebook and I don't have the time to set up an actual forum. I assure you this will not become a habit. Local real estate values will be restored shortly.In the meantime, though, this is how the next few days are looking:Dec 27, noon through whenever: "Cowboy Bebop" (brought to you

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-2840658273981329882008-12-24T10:30:00.002-05:002008-12-24T10:36:52.242-05:00

Sorry for the extended silence. Sorry also for the preponderance of personal over sciencey news lately, despite the many and varied worldchanging links you've been sending to get me back on the track (this recent study, for instance, which details a case of blindsight so extreme even I had to read it twice. Which is about once for every ten of you who forwarded the link.) Don't expect much to

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-63029869797646649202008-12-07T13:55:00.003-05:002008-12-07T14:22:03.396-05:00

First up we have Alejandro Terán's Alienesque cover for the Spanish edition of Blindsight, coming out, oh, I don't know, probably next year sometime. Next we have Franz Vohwinkel's cover for the German mass-market edition of βehemoth (thanks to "Useless Surfer" for pointing it out), which is evidently being called "Waves" over in Deutschland. And finally, an unknown artist's cover for Prime's

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-49510955168563394762008-12-06T11:13:00.002-05:002008-12-06T11:20:26.337-05:00

It's credibility of a sort, I guess. The Sydney Morning Herald has just published a John Birmingham piece which jumps off from the teenybopper suckfest "Twilight" to dip its toes in the whole pop-culture vampire mystique. And what should appear, mixed in with all the Buffy and True Blood callouts, but a whole paragraph devoted to the vampires of Blindsight:In author Peter Watts's hard-science

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-13318716790996281252008-12-02T11:13:00.011-05:002008-12-02T17:14:24.074-05:00

Of course she had me before she even appeared on stage, before we froze our asses off in the wind and freezing rain waiting for the doors to open, before I ever heard "Astronaut". She had me months before she dedicated "Oasis" (the peppiest date-rape-and-abortion song evar) to Sarah Palin. She probably owned me from the moment I first heard the Dresden Dolls' "Sex Changes" last spring, a song I

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-4905021954466942422008-11-29T11:26:00.002-05:002008-11-29T11:48:26.109-05:00

At least, that is evidently the opinion of the net nanny at the Marriott Residence Inn, Woodlands, TX— which, Madeline tells me, blocks access to the 'crawl because it is "harmful to children".Certainly we appear to get under the skin of some folks, judging by the bleats of outrage that pop up in the comments now and then. The occasional post may have ticked off a parent or two. But harmful to

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-317227632025372062008-11-28T09:45:00.005-05:002008-11-28T10:19:34.370-05:00

From the outline for Intelligent Design, a near-future Crichtonesque (except, you know, well-written) novel currently languishing on my back burner:Nate Hochachka arrives on Baffin Island under complete news blackout. He has no idea why CSIS wants him here: he's freshly-minted faculty at the University of British Columbia, still paying off his student loans and trying to come to terms with the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-12687963484858290172008-11-27T20:41:00.003-05:002008-11-27T21:12:39.541-05:00

Thank you all, for your thoughts on the best Hollywood faces to graft onto my characters. There are some great suggestions there; some head-slappingly perfect, some popular but utterly mysterious (Ellen Page as Lenie? What am I missing?), and some of limited utility but nonetheless entertaining. I will steal shamelessly from you all.But in the meantime there's this other thing I have to do for

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-27615983717702773692008-11-20T12:04:00.002-05:002008-11-20T12:27:31.446-05:00

Calling out for some suggestions here.I seem to be juggling a small spate of interviews/online discussions at the moment, one of which is a long-overdue contribution to something called "My Book, the Movie". This is an ongoing blog in which various authors dream a bit about who they'd like to see direct/star in/roach-wrangle movie adaptations of their novels. The closest I ever got to a serious

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-37158209407816478102008-11-17T14:17:00.004-05:002008-11-19T16:33:00.417-05:00

Here's a fascinating possibility: that people with religious beliefs are better at pattern-matching than those without.The empirical findings are out of the Netherlands (popsci summary here), and are phrased much more conservatively: when presented with visual stimuli containing two levels of resolution (for example, a big square consisting of a bunch of little rectangles) "Calvinists showed a

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-55989780071272581802008-11-14T17:54:00.004-05:002008-11-14T18:35:10.663-05:00

You know, we're not on the cutting edge any more with this whole value-of-consciousness riff. Just a couple of years ago, the idea that sentience isn't worth the trouble seemed a pretty radical proposition. But in the years since Blindsight came out1 we've seen top-flight journals publishing research showing that consciousness impedes complex problem-solving; we've seen review papers suggesting

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-84937815229011947372008-11-08T16:33:00.002-05:002008-11-08T16:40:41.063-05:00

Two weeks of edits. Two weeks of no exercise, skipped meals, late nights, and cats who either don't understand that a 3:00 a.m. feeding should allow them to wait a little past their usual 8:00 a.m. breakfast slot while their exhausted can opener tries to sleep in a bit, or who simply reject that premise on general principles. Merciless hungry claws hooked through my internasal septum at 8:05

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-10787025650801733402008-11-05T01:16:00.009-05:002008-11-06T17:29:08.505-05:00

I was on the other side of the camera that took this picture, blocking the view of a big honking flatscreen monitor which showed the United States morphing magically into a place I would actually like to live:It was a brief and unfamiliar moment of happiness, so very long in coming: one of the good guys rising to take the reins for a change, delivering an inspirational and almost1 flawless

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-90136917862769414362008-11-03T22:28:00.006-05:002008-11-03T22:44:24.634-05:00

Okay, which one of you jokers is responsible for the following promotional offer appearing in my in-box?Subject: Promote Your Christian BookChristian Book Marketing is a division of Awesome God Publications. Awesome God Publications has been actively serving the Christian community since 1998. Through our years of experience in dealing with Christian books and publishers we have determined a

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-86608100836593676302008-11-01T00:14:00.003-04:002008-11-01T00:33:12.453-04:00

I met Toronto's mayor last night. The satanic Dave Nickle and I ended up at the Duke of Richmond, in the wake of a late city council meeting he'd been covering. Dave was buying, having racked up a whole evening's worth of Blood Beers on account of all the snails he'd stepped on during our morning runs. We had a few, and watched the floor show: a barrister who'd had a few more, and was

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-39293006436338562502008-10-22T16:45:00.004-04:002008-10-22T17:03:47.172-04:00

Seriously, people; there are a couple of major reveals in this bit. You really don't want to read it if you're averse to spoilers about Dumbspeech.Really, you don't want to be here. This is for Colbert Platinum members only.Fine, then.You'll pick many a bean...Good News for Modern Man:Sometimes the voices argued amongst themselves, included him as an afterthought if at all. They told him he

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-91837274596752003302008-10-22T16:19:00.002-04:002008-10-22T16:29:24.567-04:00

My buddy (and fellow author) Brent Hayward sent me this photographic evidence from Poland: evidently I've made it into the bookstores at Warsaw International Airport. I don't whether to be pleased by this news (there was a whole stack!) or depressed (they hadn't sold any of them; there was a whole stack…) Either way, though, this is the first time I've seen what the back of that edition looks

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-92007884768427592192008-10-16T22:44:00.004-04:002008-10-16T22:58:55.048-04:00

Meet Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, the bacterium that does it all: fix carbon, fix nitrogen, synthesize all essential amino acids, locomote — an organism that can exist totally independent of other life. It doesn't even need the sun. This fucker basically lives on sulfur, rock, and electrons*.It's an obligate anaerobe, without even the most rudimentary oxygen resistance. A bug like

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-81706229112005794072008-10-14T13:04:00.004-04:002008-10-14T16:52:54.134-04:00

I stumbled upon the premiere of this new television show last night. It contained the eponymous line, which is a bit pithier than the usual prime-time broadcast dialog. Even cooler, this line was a quote from a psychopathic assassin named Edward who'd recently been upbraided by his boss for gratuitously killing his target; in a nice subversion of expectation, the boss's real objection was that

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-71430413588488675702008-10-10T23:53:00.003-04:002008-10-11T12:05:01.594-04:00

I've gone back and posted a coda at the end of Wednesday's fear and religion entry; the recent hysteria at Republican rallies is chillingly consistent with Oxley et al's findings that Conservative=Fearful. But let's move on to fear and horror of a more existential sort, the kind you might find in the shadow of a black supergiant half a half lightyear into the Oort:These are a couple of cover

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-65129799399354851472008-10-09T16:30:00.001-04:002008-10-09T16:31:35.522-04:00

Courtesy of the Shoe-On-Other-Foot Dept...

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-28869557568724594382008-10-08T12:47:00.016-04:002008-10-12T23:18:06.874-04:00

Here's a question for you. Why hasn't natural selection driven the religious right to extinction?You should forgive me for asking. After all, here is a group of people who base their lives on patently absurd superstitions that fly in the face of empirical evidence. It's as if I suddenly chose to believe that I could walk off the edges of cliffs with impunity; you would not expect me to live

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-84624538026439786672008-10-03T12:45:00.002-04:002008-10-03T12:54:12.702-04:00

I was plenty pleased when little porridges of cultured neurons took their first baby steps towards running flight simulators or operating robots in the lab; I was downright smug when folks noticed that I'd got there first. Now, though, researchers from the Missouri University of Science and Technology are planning on putting head cheeses in charge of real-world power grids in half a dozen

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-35732700803629983862008-10-02T13:50:00.004-04:002008-10-02T14:17:05.320-04:00

For decades now, experts from all walks have provided sage wisdom about the need to save for my declining years. We no longer live in a word of services, they've told me. We live in a world of ownership. It is not enough to save. You must invest. And this can sometimes be hard to hear — because although it's hard to argue against saving for one's old age, your average hard-sf author is

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-75572098210072580232008-09-28T17:15:00.003-04:002008-09-28T17:43:30.017-04:00

Yeah, I know. Merciful extended silence again.Not that there's nothing to talk about. There's a paper just out in Consciousness & Cognition which purports to prove that logical thinking requires consciousness (which would seem to contradict other findings, but I haven't read the paper yet so who knows). I've been ruminating on the inherent and hardwired dumbness of electorates throughout this

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-55790234178067235162008-09-19T19:01:00.005-04:002008-09-19T19:12:19.151-04:00

Aye me hearties, be ye rememberin' that time in Blindsight when Rorschach, she be putting the sun in scurvy Szpindel's eyes?"Argh, I be seein' naught," Szpindel be sayin', his timbers a'shiver."It be the EM fields," James be barking. "That be how they signal. The briney deep, she be fulla words, she be—""I be seeing naught," Szpindel be saying. "I be blind as the skipper with his patch on the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-32692827810364370352008-09-18T15:42:00.007-04:002008-09-19T16:34:59.048-04:00

A couple of you asked about my offhand reference to an Israeli book deal a few days back. It now appears to be a go. Blindsight, by Peter Watts, is being translated into Hebrew by Kitdmat Eden, of which I know little beyond the fact that they put out some very nice cover designs. Or rather,is being is being translated into Hebrew by Kitdmat Eden, of which I know little beyond the fact that they

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-78274326840747642772008-09-16T13:36:00.007-04:002008-09-16T15:15:48.234-04:00

Or at least, I might be. Depends on how many people sign up. We're talking Wednesday evenings, between October 1 and November 19: eight two-and-a-half hour sessions covering the hallmarks of the genre, tips and techniques on research and world-building, plot construction, character development— you know the list. It will be hands-on. You will write. I will read your writing, and provide all

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-47340873619430984152008-09-15T17:27:00.002-04:002008-09-15T17:38:01.326-04:00

You may remember the case a few years back of the Floridian hypersexual pedophile whose depravity hailed from a brain tumor; the dude (rightly) got off, since he wasn't culpable for the wiring in his head. You may even remember me taking the next step (scroll down to June 30th on the right-hand side), and remarking that the tumor didn't really make a difference— nobody is responsible for the way

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-82236518877487420312008-09-12T17:34:00.004-04:002008-09-12T18:11:09.100-04:00

I was not at DragonCon this year. Actually, I have never been to DragonCon. But Aaron Douglas (aka deck chief Galen Tyrol*) was. And I'll have you know that he actually requested, nay, even demanded the books you see in his hands, thanks to some subtle psychological manipulation by one adrienne everitt the week before when he was up here in TO. So she brought him the books, and I believe they

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-58413240270534162332008-09-10T12:56:00.006-04:002008-09-10T13:22:46.523-04:00

So why have I been so silent lately? It's not as though there's been any recent shortage of events worthy of scorn. Sarah Palin brought home the Moron Vote— that most vital of American voting demographics— to the Republicans. The craven cocksucking cowards leading every major Canadian political party got together and decided to exclude the Green Party from pre-election debate, lest the whole

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-41693549253520137012008-08-25T11:33:00.002-04:002008-08-26T08:09:52.560-04:00

Strange Horizons has just posted this bipartite piece on Scott Bakker's Neuropath and my own Blindsight. It's billed as a review, but it doesn't read as one so much as a brief comparative essay on the thematic focii of the two novels. The reviewer— one Nader Elhefnawy, visiting professor of Literature out of U. Miami— regards the books as exemplars of sf's "new direction", a course also being

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-27543312928771163492008-08-22T18:12:00.004-04:002008-08-22T18:24:12.069-04:00

Well, this is interesting. Intel has leapfrogged MIT on the whole magnetic-resonance schtick. They can wirelessly light a 60-watt bulb from almost a meter away, wasting only 25% of the broadcast energy in transit. This is a good thing, because "…the human body is not affected by magnetic fields," Josh Smith from Intel reassures us. "It is affected by electric fields. So what we are doing is

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-64898632253468082692008-08-19T13:51:00.005-04:002008-08-19T14:52:30.256-04:00

So much happened during my absence on the Island. Worldcon, for one. For another, a big honking propane storage facility blew up in the northwestern 'burbs of Greater Toronto, provoking howls of outrage from concerned citizens who wanted to know how such a dangerous facility ended up in the heart of a residential area. (And am I the only person who thinks that that's exactly where all such

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-79955344127743506512008-08-13T19:03:00.006-04:002008-08-18T13:13:30.181-04:00

I have it on reasonably good authority that David Hartwell, during a panel on upcoming Tor titles at last week's Worldcon, announced that he had sent me a contract for a new novel and was awaiting my response.Technically this might be true. In terms of the take-home message, however — i.e. the reasonable inference that I'm still in bed with Tor, and that another Peter Watts novel is imminent or

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-39674376765503046862008-08-12T19:20:00.005-04:002008-08-12T20:41:19.925-04:00

Ślepowidzenie is out in Poland. The cover makes it look kinda like a Jules Verne retread, and I mean that in a good way; in terms of literal, technical detail it gets pretty much everything wrong, but in terms of thematic ambience (and basic artistic skill) it rules.This is just as well, because I was never consulted on this cover despite a clause in the contract stipulating that I would be (a

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-13067565726084791172008-08-10T20:56:00.003-04:002008-08-10T21:01:28.174-04:00

It takes a while sometimes for electrons to get all the way out here to Gibralter Point, but my understanding is that Elizabeth won the short-story Hugo last night for "Tideline". And though I hate her for her talent and her characters, I also love her for her talent and her character.So, way to go, Ursabelle. Another rock face scaled.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-91589731814063263012008-08-09T22:10:00.005-04:002008-08-09T22:31:16.157-04:00

I have dropped off the face of Toronto for the next week, returning to the magical land of orange tabby and slate-grey cats Gibralter Point, and to an annual writing retreat that I haven't attended for a few years now. My primary goal is to finally hammer those fiblets I've been dribbling into a coherent story. You might be surprised, given how sparsely I've been rationing the suckers out, but

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-50195656233962947422008-08-06T21:07:00.005-04:002008-08-06T21:36:20.747-04:00

Well, they suckered me. After I'd heard so much about the vaunted FX of Nine Inch Nails' live show, Reznor et al stomped through an opening assortment of Slip and Year Zero tracks against a competent-but-hardly groundbreaking backdrop of coloured spotlights and dry-ice vapor. Four or five songs in, I was resigning myself to merely settling for the best industrial noise this side of Eraserhead

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-42583404959734528042008-08-05T15:07:00.005-04:002008-08-22T20:35:29.533-04:00

A few years back — before he ascended into Heaven with the angels — Cory Doctorow submitted a nifty little story to the Gibralter Point writing workshop (an annual affair for which, come to think of it, I am about to depart this very weekend). I don't remember the title, but one of the central characters was this geeky pudgeball who, by hacking his own metabolic software, morphed into a ripped

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-3798603321946040002008-08-02T10:17:00.005-04:002008-08-05T15:26:57.733-04:00

We sleep. The chimp makes grudging corrections to a myriad small trajectories. I set the alarm to wake me every few weeks, burn a little more of my candle in case the AI tries to pull another fast one; but for now, it seems to be behaving itself. 428 jumps towards us in the stop-motion increments of a life's moments, strung like beads along an infinite string. The factory floor slews to

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-28617980694812118622008-07-28T18:53:00.002-04:002008-07-28T19:13:35.112-04:00

Nature published "Hillcrest v. Velikovsky" last week — and the very next day, this cog-sci dude named Mike Meadon posted an erudite and outraged blog entry on the insanity of the kind of world we live in, that such things could actually happen. Evidently he didn't realize that the work was fiction (until the famous PZ Meyers gently pointed it out). And to give the man his due, his subsequent

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-27636861824468881042008-07-16T15:20:00.003-04:002008-07-16T15:29:21.482-04:00

So the folks over at SF Signal approached me to answer their latest Mind Meld question, to wit, "Which science fiction or fantasy novels, past and present, do you consider to be the most controversial? Why?" And I answered, but I composed my answer during a couple of spare moments during Polaris, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Doubletree Hotel while that leashed slave chick I mentioned

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-9751370368369462512008-07-15T14:36:00.002-04:002008-07-15T15:18:25.371-04:00

One guess as to which of those elements I found hotter.Yup, there's a whole different clientele that shows up at these Polaris things compared to, say, the more literary (those red-staters among us might say "effete") affairs like Readercon. Out of the ten panels I sat on, only three had a literary focus; the rest were all media. And because books is what I do, I'm guessing that such panels

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-86977929168352296032008-07-10T10:49:00.005-04:002008-07-10T11:11:41.609-04:00

So. A mere four days before Polaris is scheduled to begin, I drop them a line to ask what events I'm scheduled for. Oops, say they, I guess we forgot to tell you. You're scheduled for ten events. You're moderating five of them. Guess you'd better start preparing, huh?It gets better. Some of the panels I'm moderating only have one other panelist. Normally, you'd think that any subject that

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-60194540504746042102008-07-10T00:54:00.004-04:002008-07-10T12:04:41.672-04:00

Self-loathing giant squid. Bad-ass fucking fractals. If Randy Newman did the theme for The Passion of the Christ. A furry old lobster and a creepy doll. GLaDOS. An extended dance remix of a contest for the world's best pants. Tom Cruise.Oh, and your brains.I just had front-table seating at Jonathan Coulton's first-ever Canadian appearance, backed up by two guys called Paul and Storm who I'd

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-31670482015607586102008-07-04T12:59:00.003-04:002008-07-08T12:38:13.889-04:00

…but not much more than that. I am not dead, but I am snowed under by a variety of contractual and literary obligations, and if anyone out there really wants to free up enough of my time for more frequent postings here on the ol' 'crawl, they'll show me an easy way to calculate the variance of a population estimate based on stratified strip transects of unequal length, when y along each transect

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-78875666480383873232008-06-24T11:42:00.005-04:002008-06-24T12:20:16.662-04:00

Just a few days ago, I got a rather odd piece of e-mail apparently meant for me even though the salutation read "Dear Mr. Kelly". At least, if it wasn't meant for me, there's some other author out there whose writing is "not a fun place to be", and in which the ocean plays a prominent role. Which, come to think of it, is not especially unlikely.Anyway, I endeavored to answer this guy's

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-63669032554578134442008-06-20T16:21:00.002-04:002008-06-20T16:26:12.334-04:00

We are the cavemen. We are the Ancients, the Progenitors, the blue-collared steel monkeys; a thousand interstellar expressways in a thousand derivative works of historical fiction rose by our hands. We're the plot devices to let careless storytellers off the hook. We spin webs across the galaxy and conveniently disappear, millions of years before the real heroes arrive on stage. Oh, I've

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-91087042344827255772008-06-17T13:46:00.004-04:002008-06-17T14:03:29.805-04:00

This started out as a post about a recently-reported negative correlation between IQ and religious belief (thanks to Craig McGill for the link). It was going to be relatively restrained by local standards; while it's hard to resist the temptation to rub one's hands at yet more evidence that only Stupid People Have Imaginary Friends, I'd have voiced reservations over the unwarranted conflation of

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-6763835974130647362008-06-15T12:34:00.003-04:002008-06-15T12:56:55.374-04:00

Just came across this cover art for the upcoming German edition of Maelstrom. It is beautiful, but wrong.The feel of the piece is great, don't get me wrong. Technically, it's terrific. It even evokes a couple of specific scenes from the very top of the tale. But I'm not quite sure where Lenie Clarke is. Perhaps she was eaten by that Alien V. Predator hybrid down in the lower left corner.I'd

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-38021086357667632112008-06-12T21:49:00.003-04:002008-06-12T22:08:36.761-04:00

So the CBC pushed, as bullies are wont to do; only this time the rights holders of the iconic "Hockey Night In Canada" pushed back. Now, the game's afoot; Stephen Colbert has promised to make a habit of singing the newly-freed HNiC "while punching beavers in the face!" (oh, and — non sequiters within non sequiters here, but was that Jonathan Coulton backing up Hodgeman on "The Daily Show" the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-45060360244635356802008-06-08T12:01:00.003-04:002008-06-08T12:07:17.292-04:00

But this will do in the meantime. Emotiv's brainwave-reading products made a brief appearance in last year's flash piece "Repeating the Past", which is set less than ten years from now, so it's nice to see they're still on track.I bet Stephen Hawking already has one.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-23993285202125768522008-06-05T17:23:00.003-04:002008-06-05T17:39:06.613-04:00

Screw this. I'm sick of being outnumbered by morons. I'm calling in reinforcements.Dix has got to have other parents, a father at least, he didn't get that Y chromo from me. I swallow my own disquiet and check the manifest; bring up the gene sequences; cross-reference.Huh. Only one: Kai. I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if the Chimp drew too many conclusions from our torrid little

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-44319754109500640972008-06-04T20:06:00.004-04:002008-06-04T20:11:00.180-04:00

bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored boredbored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored boredbored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-59598176193027817022008-06-03T20:43:00.004-04:002008-06-03T20:53:42.911-04:00

Morning uneventful, with the exception of a brief episode in which some doofus at the next table was heard to opine that "It's just a myth that we're running out of oil" and I practiced my inestimable skills at self-discipline by not throwing a bag of peanuts at his head. Got some writing done on "Pidgin" or "Tardigrade" or "Remus"— the Sunflowers story that the recent fiblets have been coming

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-84091513416931964852008-06-02T22:32:00.002-04:002008-06-02T22:35:57.609-04:00

We begin with an educational video on the Joys of Jury Duty so lame that just watching it made me feel like I was living an episode of The Simpsons. Inspirational music susurrating around the voices of really bad actors wearing head scarves and hard hats, all spouting variants of "When I was summoned for jury duty, I thought, why me? But now I know that there's nothing more exciting than

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-46751549628272088812008-06-01T21:46:00.003-04:002008-06-01T21:58:33.629-04:00

Heyne — publishers of the German editions of Blindsight, Starfish, and the eventually-to-be-released Maelstrom — have just closed the circle and made an offer on βehemoth, which they intend to release as a single volume as God (i.e. me) intended. I have instructed my former agent to accept their offer before they change their minds.So. Every one of my novels, already or soon-to-be translated

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-20580658209092185652008-06-01T13:15:00.003-04:002008-06-02T07:01:05.672-04:00

I can almost remember mortality. I lived each day as it came, at the rate of one second per second— because really, what else was there to do?I can almost imagine immortality: all of infinite entropy stretching out before you, more than worlds enough and time to scale any peak a mind might set for itself. What would it take, I wonder, to provoke such a being to haste? What need to hurry, with

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-23171788680122800872008-06-01T12:20:00.003-04:002008-06-01T12:31:17.651-04:00

So it turns out there's this Peter Watts page on Facebook, and it reports on the presence of this Peter Watts character who evidently joined Facebook on April 11 2008, and who posted cover art from my books and also posted, I'm guessing, that sepia-tinged photo of me from Readercon.The thing is, that person is not me.I did join Facebook briefly, back when I was with On Spec, because that was the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-25175941018171311322008-05-30T14:51:00.003-04:002008-05-30T15:03:30.328-04:00

So, my bud Dave Williams' The Mirrored Heavens is out, and garnering raves as well it should. And if you wander over to the appropriate Amazon page and click on the cover art, you'll see a blurb dead center of the spread, courtesy of Stephen Baxter.But once you get your hands on the actual book you'll see a whole different quote there, from me:And I don't know if they decided at the last moment

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-91433407907747035962008-05-29T17:36:00.004-04:002008-05-29T18:51:35.678-04:00

Those are the phonetics spoken by Tony Smith at the top of the latest issue of Starship Sofa, at least, and while I'm pretty sure that Aural Delights is the more accurate spelling, I'm betting the ambiguity is deliberate.I'm over there, anyway, in all my slightly-too-nasal vocal glory, nattering on for twenty minutes about conjoined supervillians and a neuro-legal rationale for killing twins. (

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-28452708031763106752008-05-27T15:57:00.006-04:002008-05-29T10:53:34.744-04:00

You sent us out here. We do this for you. We break this painstaking trail, crawl across the universe while time itself runs down; we spin the webs and tie the knots and open the doors, then scuttle away before the light of your coming turns us into plasma.Is it too much to ask, that you might talk to us now and then?I know about evolution, and engineering. I know how much you've changed over a

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-91698687305565507922008-05-24T12:51:00.003-04:002008-05-24T13:16:59.863-04:00

Been a significant gap between postings, I know. Chalk it up to a bit of work getting done (first installment of Reality, ReMastered goes live next week or the week after, I think), a lot of other work not getting done, and, once again, the ill-advised decision to buy a laptop from Dell which has brought me nothing but grief. (For those of you recently arrived at this blog: never, ever, ever

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-31885707238369809012008-05-24T10:45:00.002-04:002008-05-24T10:56:43.421-04:00

Evidently Michael Bay has been signed to adapt the Rifters trilogy, judging by this poster of Lenie and Kenny. I had not realized that Lubin was black. Nor that he propelled himself, er, anally. I guess this is the price one pays for movie adaptation.Thanks to one Matt Arnold for the coffee/saliva stains all over my keyboard.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-12522876811014936372008-05-13T21:08:00.003-04:002008-05-13T21:15:25.033-04:00

You can tell from the salacious, revealing costumes.Because in Nebraska, this is the most you can get away with.*Photo by Dan Brooks

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-59063506864155474052008-05-10T23:00:00.002-04:002008-05-10T23:13:27.786-04:00

From the Cyrillic side of the planet, the cover art for the Russian edition of Blindsight:Yes, that is me. I don't know if I'm supposed to be Sarasti, or Keeton, or just the author looming omnisciently over his creation. (My contact at Arabesque tells me that the incorporation of author photos into cover art might be an ongoing element of their sf line). But I think it's kind of cool. Even if

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-37835708619551625032008-05-07T18:06:00.003-04:002008-05-07T18:23:43.735-04:00

...Just outside Mordor.So. Where am I now?(Lars, if you're out there, I rescued a box turtle in your honour the other day. To commemorate, I carved your name into his plastron.)

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-37757376263943627742008-05-03T13:44:00.002-04:002008-05-03T14:03:14.762-04:00

So, the word is out on the subject of the revamped Starship Sofa. My reading of "Repeating the Past" is embedded near the end of their recent podcast; also, the press release reports that I'll be doing a "monthly" science-"fact" podcast called Reality, ReMastered. I can confirm this, sort of, although the monthliness may be a bit iffy. I'm working on the first one now, and will repeat as time

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-54346487321432440692008-05-02T16:14:00.002-04:002008-05-02T16:34:08.519-04:00

It is May 2nd. The middle of Spring. Two days ago, where I am now, it was 27°C. This is the most sheltered side of my cabin:This is the approach to my cabin:I have no exact numbers for you, but I can tell you that wind speed is strong enough to make the road's runoff flow directly uphill (at least in those sheltered little gulleys where the run-off hasn't simply frozen into two-lane

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-1991614522528703792008-04-29T21:35:00.004-04:002008-04-30T09:30:06.202-04:00

Two items:US Customs officials continue to ably occupy the niche of gate-keeping trolls with tiny dicks and/or withered vaginas, who seem to think that people might actually want to stay in their miserable dick-ass country a day longer than absolutely necessary.Nature has accepted another story of mine for their ongoing "Futures" series. This one's called "Hillcrest v. Velikovksy", and it draws

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-39901155089287443662008-04-27T19:13:00.003-04:002008-04-27T19:37:13.412-04:00

Packing now, to spend a month at a field research station in the so-called "Tornado Alley" of Nebraska — which is a nice coincidence, as those at last Thursday's reading will attest to the presence of a strong tornadoey element in the opening of the new novel. But I'm mainly just heading out to do some writing in a bona-fide desert environment (which also figures prominently in said novel), and

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-43551715834399639102008-04-25T15:56:00.003-04:002008-04-25T16:15:13.339-04:00

First, I am pleased and proud to announce that the Toronto Public Library does not overtly censor its public-access Internet terminals. True, if you enter "doggie snuff porn" or "bukkake" into the library's default search engine you get only a single hit — which, when clicked on, boots you into an endless log-in loop that keeps asking for password and ID until you get tired and go away. However

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-85426873678010481542008-04-23T23:30:00.007-04:002008-04-24T09:23:41.277-04:00

Blindsight is coming out as an audiobook from Recorded Books; check out the cover art by Leonard Likas (© Recorded Books, LLC):Notice anything unusual for a Watts-type book? Notice anything unusual for a story set a half light-year from the nearest star, set in the dark and shadowy borderlands of interstellar space?Notice the rich, radiant colors? WTF?Well, Leonard took his lead from the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-49965134923657301572008-04-22T10:45:00.003-04:002008-04-22T11:43:23.828-04:00

The Toronto Public Library's Big Honking Series On Speculative Fiction kicked off last night, as promised, with a panel discussion between Jim Gardiner, Karl Schroeder, and myself, with Mike Skeet proving more than up to the task as moderator. It was pretty well-attended, if I do say so myself. And it was fun. We kicked around many ideas, we took many questions from the audience, and — best of

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-67892121017164252242008-04-17T22:35:00.003-04:002008-04-17T22:43:19.279-04:00

So I won't try.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-64283009255733895652008-04-17T20:02:00.003-04:002008-04-17T23:28:48.644-04:00

The universe is not unfolding as it should. It is merely unfolding as it always has.It was a nice dream while it lasted: a grass-roots campaign, launched and promoted by the scientific community, supported by Nobel Laureates, endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pimped on science blogs far and wide: a debate among the three presidential candidates on science

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-3932192888270060592008-04-14T23:04:00.002-04:002008-04-15T08:36:41.566-04:00

Most of you here have read Blindsight. Some of you have made it almost to the end. A few have even got as far as the references (I know this, because some of you have asked me questions about them). And so you might remember that old study Libet did back in the nineties, in which it was shown that the body begins to act on a decision a full half-second before the conscious self is aware of

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-60788924286570560252008-04-14T00:09:00.002-04:002008-04-14T08:46:38.075-04:00

At least, the endorphin receptors in my head are still buzzing madly almost an hour after the encore ended. I kind of lost touch with Oysterband back in the early nineties, when they decided no one was listening to their lyrics anyway so they might as well just have fun and do covers of I Fought the Law. Except I was damn well listening to their lyrics, and their music, and I always thought I

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-36671269165156666122008-04-10T11:53:00.003-04:002008-04-11T08:38:27.016-04:00

Anna Davour, a Post-doc out of Queen's, has been hitting up various sf authors for informal bloggable interviews. This week was my moment in the sun. I say some nice things about the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and repeat my usual grumbling about Firefly.And if you're not satisfied with mere wordage— if any of you feel the need to encounter me face-to-face, if only to see for yourselves whether my

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-14318827924584105182008-04-10T11:42:00.003-04:002008-04-10T11:50:28.362-04:00

I dreamed last night that I kept hitting on Katee Sackhoff, and she kept turning me down. That's right: Starbuck, the antiMikey of sexual cereals, wouldn't even give me the time of day in my dreams.But I'm not going to go with the obvious subtext here, because I am desperate to give my imagination credit for more subtlety. What it's really telling me to do, I think, is to start collecting

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-7098839060515860242008-04-04T23:26:00.005-04:002008-04-05T00:22:46.839-04:00

Inspired by the synergy of my own stuffed, crusty, raw red nose and the long-awaited return of Battlestar Galactica (and if you haven't seen the season premiere yet, what are you wasting time here for? Get onto BitTorrent and start downloading right fucking now, do you hear me?), I am reminded of this little tech item sent courtesy of Alistair Blachford from UBC: the importance of mucous for the

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-70297509437102802672008-03-31T20:14:00.004-04:002008-04-01T14:12:18.032-04:00

This time I open my eyes to a familiar face I've never seen before: only a boy, early twenties perhaps, physiologically. His face is a little lopsided, the cheekbone flatter to the left than to right. His ears are too big. And while the eyes below his frown shine with their own bright intelligence, I know immediately that he is natural.I haven't spoken for millennia. My voice comes out a

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-59615517777435537312008-03-29T13:00:00.009-04:002008-04-01T15:10:29.222-04:00

Ninety percent of the world's charismatic megafauna is gone. Hormone disrupters are turning the fish off Lakeshore into hermaphrodites, if the tumors don't get them first. The Arctic is heading for ice-free status by 2030, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is a measly six kilometers away from disintegration, air pollution in this miserable dick-ass excuse for a country alone helps kill 16,000 people a year.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-19444424492221641082008-03-28T13:40:00.001-04:002008-03-28T13:45:20.445-04:00

Me, that is. Isn't it always?From: a few excerpts from the recent Locus interview have gone online. It's not the whole thing, but it's a taste.About: Puppy Buckets (whose name still makes me think of wood-chippers) likes Maelstrom. Maybe not as much as they liked Starfish, but then, a lot of people felt that way. And I'm not complaining about any exposure, given that the damn book's been out

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-30406987094959427452008-03-27T12:06:00.002-04:002008-03-27T13:36:46.116-04:00

This punch-happy little dude has been all over the net for the past week or so: easily the world's coolest crustacean even before then, insofar as how many lifeforms of any stripe can bash their furious little claws through the water so fast (accelerating at over 10,000G!) that the resulting cavitation bubbles heat up to several thousand degrees K? If their ferocious little chelipeds don't take

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-65920596737006815592008-03-21T15:20:00.003-04:002008-03-21T15:38:10.242-04:00

After endless harangues from various online sites telling me I couldn't view their fucking galleries until I installed the latest version of Flash, I overcame my usual aversion to so-called "upgrades" (MediaPlayer 11, anyone?) and complied.Now the Vampire Domestication talk (here, and here) is broken in Firefox (both 2 and Beta), Netscape, and Opera: a few seconds of click-ridden vocals and then

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-49910241459875640712008-03-18T22:51:00.003-04:002008-03-18T23:13:56.026-04:00

Sometimes, in defiance of entropy, little knots of complexity form in the universe and awaken. I have always found it deeply unjust that such knots, sooner or later, always stop. Each is unique, each cognizant, and if I were running things, the moment matter developed enough complexity to look around and start asking questions, well, it would have made it. It would go on forever. (Well, except

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-17318171138127781152008-03-18T11:52:00.004-04:002008-03-18T11:59:55.850-04:00

Anyone who rattles off phrases like "the fetid litterbox of his deranged and hostile cats" with such effortless abandon can wax my balls any time. Even if they got the whole bathrobe thing completely wrong.

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-85746625763404793042008-03-16T23:46:00.005-04:002008-03-17T00:20:30.920-04:00

I've just spent the weekend hanging out with a hundred assorted artists, scientists, activists, activist/scientists, scientist/artists, authors, game developers, journalists, journalist/scientists, scientist/authors, jactarviscidevthors, two Mars-rover robots with genetic programming, and a solar-powered car (which as far as I could tell, could only go downhill). Most of those interactions were

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5740787063649889480.post-60792963526736853322008-03-14T13:52:00.002-04:002008-03-14T13:56:36.775-04:00

The penguin chick bursts from the shellHis fetal bed has served him wellBut now, the newborn child will restWithin his windswept, treetop nest.Oh penguin child, oh fledgling fairStay snuggled in your jungle lairAnd when your mother comes to restYou'll suckle at her feathered breast.Heed not the snarl, fear not the roarThe beasties on the forest floorYou need not fear death's gnashing jawsOr

Peter Wattshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06160557746794936786noreply@blogger.com10