How Fast Are You?

Another audio story I really liked recently was “The Things” by Peter Watts, as heard on the Clarkesworld Magazine podcast. It’s the story of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), told from the perspective of the shape-shifting, infectious alien. I don’t want to say much more about it, but if you haven’t seen movie in a while, watch it, then follow it up¹ with this story.

Mr. Watts is a biologist by trade, and his writing is always grounded in hard science, complete with exhaustive bibliographies. His stories are also pretty damned dark, which I love. I first discovered him through his Rifters series, Starfish, Maelstrom, and Behemoth, all of which are available online, are really dark, and chock full of good sciencey stuff.

His most recent novel, Blindsight, is also available online, and really baked my noodle². It’s an absolutely fascinating exploration on the nature of intelligence and self-awareness, and how the two are, to a certain extent, mutually exclusive. If you’re interested in cognition at all, it’s well worth your time. Plus, it’s got a space vampire.

Finally, Mr. Watts is also the fellow who produced the amazing dead-pan presentation “Vampire Domestication: Taming Yesterday’s Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow” which he first presented at a con in 2005. Again, if you’re interested in science, biology and/or vampires, well worth your time.

More audio fiction reviews to come, methinks.

I’ve been listening to a lot of short fiction audio stories lately¹, and I’d like to share one in particular with you: PodCastle’s recording of “Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes’ by Benjamin Rosenbaum” by Benjamin Rosenbaum. That’s not a typo, by the way; the author’s name is in the title itself, which will make sense when you hear the story.

This story first appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and it’s a real treat. I love stories that have alternate history, airships, swashed buckles, world-as-myth, and a wicked sense of humor. This story has all of that, plus well-informed philosophical musings on the nature of writing, imagination, causality, and our perceptions thereof.

Go listen to it on PodCastle, or you can read it for free online.

Words to live by:

The more you love, the more you can love and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

– Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love

Via Sooz.

See also:

Trying to make someone fall in love with you is about as pointless as trying to control who you fall in love with.

(source unknown)

Via Richard.

Because that’s the kind of reaction that Locke and Demosthenes’ blog would get in the world you and I inhabit. I mean, if I can’t get billions of readers, how could they?

(Yes, I know. I don’t have any readers because I never post anything good.¹ Still, I’m going to keep telling myself that I am the best blogger ever. Please be gentle with the fragile ecology of my delusions.)

From the ever acute and accurate xkcd.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that this post is really about me complaining that I don’t get enough visitors, and uses a reference that less than 0.00003% of the population will understand. I think I may have inadvertently put my finger on my problem, so to speak. Silly bald man.

I totally missed Mr. Ellis’ touching ode to Earth Day yesterday:

Wait, there’s more: [NSFW] http://tr.im/jxB5

Ingrateful Beauty Threatened

Know Celia, since thou art so proud,
‘Twas I that gave thee thy renown;
Thou hadst, in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties, liv’d unknown,
Had not my verse exhal’d thy name,
And with it imp’d the wings of fame.

That killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice, and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
Thou art my star, shin’st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrow’d sphere
Lightning on him that fix’d thee there.

Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made, I uncreate;
Let fools thy mystic forms adore,
I’ll know thee in thy mortal state;
Wise poets that wrapp’d Truth in tales,
Knew her themselves, through all her veils.

- Thomas Carew
Via Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos.

Today’s poetry moment is brought to you by Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos.

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- e.e. cummings

Quoth Mr. Ellis:

If love was all you need, then hugging people would have nutritional value. It doesn’t. However, killing and eating them does. QED.

Words to live by, my friends.

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth in 98 seconds. I must remember this song come December…

Via Warren Ellis.

In honor of National Religious Freedom Day, HFAYHD proudly presents Why We’re Here [PDF link] by Steve Ellis and writer Fred Van Lente, wherein we talking monkeys can learn our proper place in the universe, namely, ground to dust under the mountainous squamous tentacles of the Great Old Ones (alà Chick Tract.)

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Via Charlie Stross.