01-08-10: NPR Morning Edition Report: Authors Find Fertile Mix Of Science And Religion
Here's where I thank readers and listeners for their support of NPR, which in turn, supports me, and thus, this column. If you want this stuff to keep coming, and I have a lot of great material in the hopper, then the best way to assure that is to go to the NPR websites for the "Science and Religion" report and enter your comments. I'm finishing up the first podcast week of this year with a high-quality MP3 version of the report that recently ran on Morning Edition — on January 1, 2010. Nice way to start the year!
One of the nice things about this report was that it came together after I'd already interviewed Karen Armstrong. I really like her work, it's utterly fascinating. She has a way of synthesizing history and the philosophy behind history that makes her work compulsively readable and consistently entertaining.
But in my queue after 'The Case for God' was 'The Year of the Flood,' and it was only after I'd done the interview with Armstrong that I noticed Margaret Atwood's credit to Armstrong in the back of 'The Year of the Flood,' her sequel to 'Oryx and Crake.' I'd actually read 'Oryx and Crake' before the Armstrong book. I thought that the Armstrong would be a good between-books palate-cleanser.
01-07-10: Thomas Frank and the Populists of the GOP : "The Demented Logic of American Politics"
We apparently live in a world where the past, say, 30 years, can be swept aside with a few bracing words. Thomas Frank, author of 'What's the Matter With Kansas?' and 'The Wrecking Crew', alas, has a tendency to remember what so many would prefer to forget.
In Thomas Frank's latest column for the Wall Street Journal, "Watch Out for GOP Populism," Frank takes aim at Republican Representative Paul Ryan, who authored an article for Forbes Magazine titled, "Down with Big Business." Yes, you read that right. Of course, when you get to the heart of what he wants, it's kind of a "Freedom from Freedom" song. Frank and I start with Rep. Ryan, but, like the populists in the GOP, we really relish our freedom of speech, which you can hear by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
01-06-10: Lou Anders Looks Ahead : The Very Near Future of Science Fiction
As the year unfolds, I thought I'd take the time to check in with Lou Anders of Pyr Books, and talk to him about Ebooks, fantasy, and the near future of science fiction. The near future of Pyr is of course bright. SFReviews.net chose Pyr as their "Publisher of the Decade 2000-2009," as opposed, I guess to the actual decade per the late Arthur C. Clarke. Well, it's ten years, and that's twice what we've got left according to the eternal estimate that, "We've got five years!"
Well, if we do indeed have only five years, you can bet that those years will involve Pyr publishing a lot of fantasy, along with everyone else. In our conversation, Lou and I stgart out with the fantasy, but I had an Ebook bee in my bonnet, as well as a "The Kindle design is really sucky" bee to keep the first one company.
01-05-10: A 2009 Interview With Michael Anissimov: One Less Year Between the Singularity Summit and the Singularity Itself
Michael Anissimov
I've just been reading up, over those pesky Internets, on the ways in which humans are ever so predictable. You know the old saws. I was still in elementary school when I read a book about 'Parkinson's Law' from Cyril Northcote Parkinson ("Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.") in a tattered paperback I bought at the swap meet. It is of course true. (Today's column is an excellent example, which I type at the last possible minute, it having taken me most of the holiday weekend to figure out what I was going to write and then get round to doing so.)
Then there is, of course, another tattered paperback of my youth, 'The Peter Principle,' from Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of the same name: "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." We need look no farther than our leaders in government to see this at work, but the business world provides plenty of fodder as well. Academia. Entertainment. Wait, where does this not apply?
There is however, another law, pertinent to those of us interested in the future, and relevant to that Big Ol' Boogeyman, The Singularity. That is the Maes-Garreau law, which states that predictions about a favorable future technology will fall just within the expected lifespan of the person making it. And thus the ants look up.
Joining this ant in looking up at the foot that is rapidly descending towards the remains of our Roadside Picnic is Michael Annisimov of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It's both frightening and kind of funny to think that every Singularity summit marks one less utterly-irrelevant-to-those-whom-it-describes convocation of ants hoping to communicate with shoe leather. I just hope we figure out something that will interest the shoe leather. Here's what we have — just follow this link to the MP3 audio file.
Brian Evenson
01-04-10: A 2009 Interview with Brian Evenson
"I think it's very useful for a writer to see their language from the outside."
—Brian Evenson
Brian Evenson bridges the unbridgeable, closing the gap between surreal fantasy and literary fiction with novels like 'Last Days' and 'Open Curtain' and story collections like 'Fugue State' and 'The Din of Celestial Birds.' You can see the two sides of the gap in just about any of his works. You find prose so clean a stripped down it seems to have had its skin surgically removed (that's the literary aspect and appeal) immersed in a dark vision of religious intensity. Call it burning bush noir, if you like. Evenson strips power and life raw, in the way that anatomical drawings can have an edge of horror. The truth hurts. A lot.
I was so lucky to get a chance to talk to Evenson at the recent World Fantasy Convention in San Jose. Evenson is actually a very nice and soft-spoken gentleman, very much as you might expect an academic to be. Of course, you might wonder if his area of expertise is flayed humanity or the humanities. It turns out that in the final judgment, something you'll find early and often in Evenson's fiction, there's not much of a difference. Humanity is best flayed and served cold in Evenson's fiction. You might expect that prose as consummately well-wrought as that of Evenson requires lots of revisions, and you'd be right. You can hear our conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheus : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
07-20-10: Commentary : Adam Elenbaas is Caught by 'Fishers of Men' : The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, July 10, 2010 : Alan Cheuse and Peter S. Beagle : "There are certain phrases I'm leery of using; one's "the creative process" and the other is "inspiration." ” Peter S. Beagle "Habit is the best thing for you if you're trying to write prose." ” Alan Cheuse
07-19-10: Commentary : Phil Cousineau is the 'Wordcatcher' : A Selectionary for Curious Mind
07-09-10: Commentary : Harlan Ellison's 'Deathbird Stories' : Back from the Dead and Ready to Party
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : Everything by Kevin Canty, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson by Kim Stanley Robinson, and Glorious by Bernice McFadden
07-07-10: Commentary : Kitchen Testing 'The New Vegetarian Epicure' and 'Get Cooking' : Lentil Power
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, June 26, 2010 : Mollie Katzen and Anna Thomas, Part Two : "'You should really write a cookbook,' and I thought, 'Yeah, that's a good idea...'"
07-06-10: Commentary : Anna Thomas Cooks Up 'Love Soup' : Recipes, Menus and Meals
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, June 26, 2010 : Mollie Katzen and Anna Thomas, Part One : Time to Get Cooking Because You Love Soup : "It makes a huge difference really, really, it does, to completely clean up when you're done."
07-05-10: Commentary : Abraham Verghese Will Not Be 'Cutting for Stone' : Stories of Spirit and Words of Comfort
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Abraham Verghese : "Literature has a wonderful ability to restore your imagination for the suffering of others."
07-02-10: Commentary : Sloane Crosley Asks 'How Did Get This Number' : Excellent Essays for the Short of Temper
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Live Interview With Sloane Crosley : We Did Not Mention the Title of Her Essay 'Fuck You, Columbus'
06-30-10: Commentary : Mark Charan Newton Enters 'City of Ruin' : Inspector Jeryd Rides Again
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Panel Discussion at SF in SF on June 12, 2010, with Seanan McGuire, Deborah Grabien and Terry Bisson : "Coke Black was just a horrible thing unleashed on an unsuspecting world."
06-29-10: Commentary : 'Twelve,' 'Thirteen,' Tongues of Serpents,' and 'The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack' : Historical SF & Horror Makes Rousing Summer Reading
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Seanan McGuire Interviewed at SF in SF, June 12, 2010 : "If I have my unbreakables, I can set my conditionals."
06-28-10: Commentary : Jennifer Egan Gets 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' : Revisiting the Novel Genre
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Conversation with Jennifer Egan : "The characters and the action led the way... I was led into the future not so much because I was thinking, 'I want to write about the future,' but more because I wanted to re-visit this particular person."
06-23-10: Commentary : Adam Langer Corrals 'The Thieves of Manhattan' : Lies, Balderdash and the Absolute, Unvarnished Truth
06-21-10: Commentary : Linda Greenlaw is 'Seaworthy' : Back to the Grand Banks in Not-So-Grand Style
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Linda Greenlaw : "Well, I call him up and tell him I'm going to the Grand Banks and he pretty much signs himself right up."
06-17-10: Commentary : Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud Lives 'A Life on Paper' : Translating the Ineffable
06-15-10: Commentary : Donald R. Burleson Whispers 'Wait for the Thunder' : Stories for a Stormy Night
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : Lucyby Laurence Gonzalez, Spies of the Balkansby Alan Furst, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
06-14-10: Commentary : James P. Othmer Drinks the 'Holy Water' : Backing Into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with Juliet Schor : "...We need to move to much more open, collaborative, sharing knowledge systems."
06-10-10: Commentary : Brett Easton Ellis Peers Inside 'Imperial Bedrooms' : Panic After the Year Zero
06-09-10: Commentary : Dan Dion and Paul Provenza Free the '!Satiristas!' : Bleeding the Comedians
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Conversation with Paul Provenza and Dan Dion : "I was raised to respect the printed word so much, when I was in school, I couldn't highlight books..."
06-08-10: Commentary : China Miéville Unleashes 'Kraken' : Comedy of Tentacles
06-03-10: Commentary : Justin Cronin Enters 'The Passage' : A girl who saves the world
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer, The Passage by Justin Cronin
06-02-10: Commentary : 'Animythical Tales' by Sarah Totton and 'Metrophilias' by Brendan Connell : Better Seeds
06-01-10: Commentary : The Return of The Agony Column : Logic, License and Habit
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Karl Marlantes : "..these are common human foibles and failings, it's just that they get magnified in a combat, war situation..."
