Blog

Movie time

Posted on by Patrick

Tonight I watched about half of Man of Steel and all of WALL•E. I had nev­er seen the for­mer; I saw the lat­ter at the cinema.

The end cred­its of WALL•E are a bet­ter movie than Man of Steel, IMHO.

Robert J. Sawyer reading

Posted on by Patrick

Tonight I went to Win­nipeg to the book launch for Robert J. Sawyer’s lat­est nov­el, Quan­tum Night. The read­ing was great, and the Q&A ses­sion after­wards with Stru­an Sin­clair was great. Eye-open­ing and packed with lit­tle tid­bits about the craft and the art of writ­ing, tid­bits that I’ll be mulling over for a while yet. Once I’ve had some time to process things—and sleep—I’ll return with a longer post.

For now, enjoy this pho­to of the author at work.

IMG_6863

Things that make me happy

Posted on by Patrick

It’s Men­tal Health Week here at the uni­ver­si­ty, and so all week there are lit­tle things to try to dri­ve away the win­ter blahs. (Though the big melt yes­ter­day helped my mind­set, if no one else’s.)

Today they had free soup in the Min­gling Area. All you had to do was write down some­thing that makes you hap­py. I did­n’t par­take, for a cou­ple rea­sons: I tend to leave things like that for the stu­dents, to make sure they have enough, and (less altru­is­ti­cal­ly) it was Thai chick­en soup day at the cof­fee shop. (Mmmm.)

But con­tem­plat­ing things that make me hap­py sound­ed like a good idea, and so here is a nec­es­sar­i­ly incom­plete list:

  • Sun­shine
  • Kath­leen
  • Tri­fle
  • The guy who, see­ing that my hands were full, opened the door for me, say­ing “I got it, bro” [1]
  • Writ­ing
  • Free soup
  • Hap­pi­ness
  • Star Wars
  • Spring­time (mud and all)
  • Read­ing
  • the Beef ‘n’ But­tons sub from Piz­za Express
  • Cycling
  • Friends

[1]: I think that might be one of the first times I’ve ever been called bro by some­one that isn’t my sister.

More jetpack envy?

Posted on by Patrick

From Daniel Han­dler’s review of Patrick deWit­t’s lat­est nov­el, Under­ma­jor­do­mo Minor, which I am cur­rent­ly read­ing and enjoying:

It is said, for instance, that Mar­garet Atwood does a take on sci­ence fic­tion and there­fore is a lit­er­ary writer instead of a sci­ence fic­tion writer, and then we won­der why there are so few sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers who write as well as Mar­garet Atwood, while the sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers glare at us and order anoth­er round. This is bad. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is sci­ence fic­tion and should not be dis­qual­i­fied as such on the grounds that it has good sen­tences and makes you think, as does the work of Patrick deWitt. There­fore, “Under­ma­jor­do­mo Minor” is a ter­rif­ic piece of genre writ­ing, and that’s that.

I’m a lit­tle irritated—perhaps unjust­ly so—at the sug­ges­tion that sci­ence fic­tion (and oth­er gen­res) can nev­er con­tain “good sen­tences” or “[make] you think”. I just can’t quite decide if Han­dler shares my irri­ta­tion; I’d like to think that he does. In either case, I’d point those that may hold that opin­ion at works like Michael Swan­wick­’s Sta­tions of the Tide or Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, to name two examples.

PS: If you haven’t read any­thing by deWitt, I high­ly rec­om­mend The Sis­ters Broth­ers and (even though I’m not yet done read­ing it) Under­ma­jor­do­mo Minor.

Tor.com is closing to short fiction

Posted on by Patrick

As of Jan­u­ary 7th, 2016, Tor.com will no longer accept unso­licit­ed short fic­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 7th Tor.com will close its short fic­tion sub­mis­sions sys­tem. Our ded­i­cat­ed edi­tors and read­ers will read through and respond to every­thing that is sub­mit­ted up to that point, but we do not plan to reopen in the fore­see­able future.

So if you’ve got some­thing that you’re plan­ning to send them, do it now.

If you miss the win­dow, well, there are plen­ty of oth­er fish in the sea. Or mar­kets in the æther, as the case may be.

(If you need me, I’ll be rum­mag­ing through my unpub­lished cor­pus, look­ing to see if I’ve got any­thing even close to ready.)