Journal Entry #57
January 15, 2010
Within a few hours after the earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, Pat Robertson was claiming that it was God’s punishment against the Haitians for kicking Napoleon and the French slave holders out of Haiti two centuries ago. I don’t suppose that even deserves comment. And Limbaugh is urging people not to contribute to the rescue effort, apparently because the money will not get where it’s supposed to. That probably doesn’t need a response either.
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I mentioned earlier that my wife had given me a copy of Robert Hazen’s Genesis for Christmas. I’m about halfway through, and am coming to the conclusion that I’ve had it all wrong in the Alex Benedict novels, where the vast majority of biozone worlds are sterile. If Hazen has it right, and if he doesn’t throw a roundhouse curve between now and the last chapter, it looks as if the development of life is almost inevitable wherever we have liquid water, and the environment is reasonably stable. There appears to be at least a decent chance that we’ve had --or may have-- life on Mars, beneath the seas on Europa, and in some other places in the solar system.
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John Adams will be introducing a new SF magazine, Lightspeed, in June. I’ve promised a story, “the Cassandra Project,” for the premier issue and am now working on it. Turns out that Apollo 11 wasn’t the first landing on the moon. (Love those conspiracies.)
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My convention and event schedule so far: I’ll be at Con DFW in Dallas the weekend of February 12; the Crossroads Festival on the campus of Mercer University in Macon, GA, February 27; I-Con in Stony Brook, NY, the weekend of March 26; and Readercon in Boston from July 8-11. If you get to any of them, please come by and say hello.
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I’ve been a subscriber to The Atlantic since about 1972. It’s probably my favorite magazine, despite the fact they’ve never been aware that science fiction exists. Until the current issue. Christopher Hitchens has written a review of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, in which he confesses that he had always “disliked and distrusted so-called science fiction.” I doubt he’s actually changed his mind on that score. He seems to think SF is primarily dueling starships and hungry aliens. But he seems to have found much to admire in Ballard’s work.
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I’ve mentioned elsewhere Dan Heisman’s Looking for Trouble as a helpful guide for anyone who wants to improve his chess game. Dan’s written a new book: The Improving Chess Thinker. I haven’t seen it, but judging by what I’ve seen of the earlier effort, it should be a valuable addition to the chess player’s library. The author has a talent for getting to the point and delivering clear explanations.
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This evening we’re headed for the Island Theater to watch our local thespians perform “Witness for the Prosecution.”