After 5,000 online nominations, 60,000 votes and parsing by some of the genre's brightest and most knowledgeable critics and scholars, NPR has published its list of the 100 most vote-gettingest SF...
It was with mixed feelings a few months ago that I decided to close down my second website, The Law & Science Fiction. (Now housed here). I opened up the place a bit over two years ago because ...
. . . is going to be made into a film. This is a novella that was written by Bradley Denton in the 80's. I'm pretty sure it won something, like one of the various flavors of Campbell Award. A v...
If it feels like I've been away for a while, then you're obviously paying attention. Over the last few weeks I have been on the road a bunch for work, my laundry room burned down (well, kind of) ...
Here's something new; a Pakistani "science fiction" movie. I use the quotes because it is more in the vein of apocalyptic fiction, but I personally have never really had a problem putting the two...
There has been a lot of talk about Matt Damon's upcoming new SF film (from a Philip K. Dick story), The Adjustment Bureau. Personally I love some of Damon's films; those films of his that are dark...
Oscar's Mexican Food, 3061 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95818-4347, (916) 443-8310. 2.5/5 stars. Some things done well, others, not so much. Oscar's Mexican Food is a little ten-seat border ...
I was not aware until now, but apparently Margaret Atwood is putting the final touches on a volume called "In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination." Every time she speaks about SF, to my ea...
Here is an interesting blog article about prisoner's use of genre fiction. I guess there are a few locked up hopeless romantics out there! Tho a part of me wonders if the only other SFF books in...
There are some interesting things at Sundance this year. And, well, some schlocky and some stupid looking things. Decide for yourself: Look here Shame iO9 can't get their act together and fix th...
I have another blog site called The Law & Science Fiction that I am particularly proud of, but it's kind of a pain in the butt having two blogs to update. I wind up ignoring that one for this...
I am such a bad daddy. After reading my daughter her story tonight I told her to go tell her mother she was ready for bed. She resisted, so I told momma. Binks hid behind my bed so momma couldn...
Here is a short I found online. Not much happens in it, and there is no dialogue, but it is beautifully done. Maybe one day filmmaking truly be one of those things that anyone with a computer, a...
I swear it feels like they do this a few times per year. Wasn't I just reading about banned books on everyone's blog a few months ago? And really, are there so many banned books out there that i...
The first step in deciding who the winners of the 2011 Hugo Awards (as well as the John W. Campbell Award for the best new author) has taken place. Here you can find information about the premini...
According to this report Borders is delaying and attempting to restructure payments to vendors - not a good sign. The article says that they may sell off some (more) assets, and that they may not...
Here is a great article about this most hated of traitorous networks. I'm not sure that I agree with the author's premise though; I think that SyFy and it's predecessor, SciFi, have always hated ...
Here. This was published by Salon.com. Anyone up for a roadtrip?
I've groaned a few times in the past about the increasing power of media giants like Amazon, and the way they appear to be trying to completely dominate all links in the publishing chain. Here is...
Hope everyone has a great holiday. My kids are beside themselves with joy today. Lots of presents, family and soda for them, and that's pretty much all that they need. They really help me to re...
I've always wondered how much money a high-traffic blog is capable of earning it's owners. I still don't know, but earlier today I found this article saying that someone had bought the domain "sci...
A collection of the worst SF covers out there. Definitely worth a glance or two. http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/
I just finished reading Stephen Barnes' terrorism/thriller Directive 51. A review will be forthcoming on the OBR shortly, so keep an eye out for it. It's a big book and it's about a lot of thing...
Here is the list of the 2010 Hugo winners. Unfortunately I did not do too good on my promise to review everything that was up for the award. Oh well. Wish me better luck in 2011! Moon was a g...
I know I have been negligent lately, when it comes to keeping this blog updated. All I can say is that work has been crushing; an average of three days out of town per week for the last 10 weeks....
You know that SF publishing is getting tough when . . . This has got to be the most pathetic marketing attempt I have ever heard of. It's a good thing that the author has such a level head. Appa...
In the ephemeral annals of legal-related SF, Larry Niven's short novel The Patchwork Girl is a rare find indeed. Not only does it provide a Sherlock Holmes style murder mystery and police investi...
Here is a link to all of the Hugo Award Nominees that are currently available for free. Enjoy! FYI, these are the 2009 nominees that are being decided at the 2010 WorldCon, AussieCon, which is c...
Though I went to SF convetnions in Washington DC occasionally when I was a boy, I am not much of a convention guy now. I go to a local con here in Sacramento[caption id="" align="alignright" width...
I recently found a zombie story with a legal issue in it. The story was called . . . Dead Men Working In the Cane Fields, by W. B. Seabrook. This is the story of a man who has been confronted wi...
This is a post I had on a former blog from 12/11/2007. I liked it, and that blog is sure to get wiped out by hackers at some point; it's old and the security is years out of date. Thought I'd mo...
The Hugo award nominations were announced today for the upcoming Aussiecon, in the land down under (where it rains and apparently thunders, too). Typically a bunch of the shorter works get posted...
Silverberg has written a short story and a novel length version of this story. This is a review of the short story. It’s a very interesting look at the group dynamics of a prison population. Th...
Has anyone ever watched a Disney TV show called Phineas and Ferb? I've got a seven and a four year old who love it. Ive now watched a bunch of episodes with them and I was struck by how much SF ...
Those of you who have been here before can tell that the Book Review pages now have a radically different form. My brother and I have been working for a long time on this upgrade, and while thing...
About four years ago I sat down and started compiling a list of 3,000 SF stories that wanted to read, or in some cases reread, to include on an SF book review blog I had asked my brother to help m...
Someone has gone to an awful lot of trouble to archive as many (all?) of the book review blogs out there on the web. Called the 2d Annual Link-up Meme, this tool promises to raise the visibility ...
Bounty by T.L. Sherred is a microstory about vigilantism, and the right to bear arms as granted under the United States Constitution. In a full page advertisement printed in a mid-west newspaper ...
One site to rule them all. One site to find them. One site to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them. Any day now. I can feel it. There can be only one!
Kuttner & Moore's Two Handed Engine is one of the biggest draws in Greenberg and Olander's Criminal Justice Through Science Fiction, for sure. If this book were a shopping center, then this s...
Written in a pushy and immediate style reminiscent of the hack producers of Gernsbeck's day, with a low and sometimes scatological focus, Pg Wyal's A Jury Not of Peers is a story of the criminal s...
Before you ask I want to tell you that yes, this story is by that Steve Allen. This is the story of criminal punishment in the near future. In it psi ability has been discovered and everyone has...
A couple of punks, Poxie and Slick, were on their way to Albuquerque from Chicago in a run of the mill flying car. Safety regulations prohibited anyone from operating a flying car below four mete...
Courtroom dramas have a valuable place in SF, I think. The courtroom allows the author an excellent opportunity to explore ideas and themes, and its use adds quite a bit of drama and a feeling of...
Isaac Asimov did just about everything else in his long and varied career, so I suppose it was just a matter of time before I stumbled across a legal issue in his SF works. I had read his Hugo Aw...
A very rich woman and her trophy husband visit a "plasto-biology" facility called the Phoenix Breeding Ranch. The Ranch designs and makes all kinds of creatures for different uses. The couple, t...
As a lawyer who spends a lot of time on line with fellow book lovers I am frequently asked for my opinion on copyright matters. Sadly I am not an expert in the field. I know one or two of those ...
I've wondered for a long time exactly what it is that SF editors do for a living. I mean, I know what it is that they basically do, but there are a lot of questions I had about how they do their ...
I've wondered for a long time exactly what it is that SF editors do for a living. I mean, I know what it is that they basically do, but there are a lot of questions I had about how they do their ...
I read this book recently and reviewed it for my book review site. It is an amazing coming-of-age story about a young man who rebels against a repressive social system that prevents people from se...
I think for the first real article on this new blog that I should explain a bit about my background with the law, SF, and exactly what I will be discussing here. For the record, I am an insurance ...
Is it "memo" with e, like a backwards e-mail? Or it refers to the memory funcition of passes along knowledge. Although this computer is my ancillary brain, I suppose I can buy that. These thing...
A co-worker of mine had some extra tickets through a friend of his for the annual Monster Jam in Sacramento last Saturday. He invited me and my son to go with him and his buddy who bought the tic...
Occasionally I will see a listing for a book on eBay that says that the book I am considering is "remainder marked." Ive had a friend ask me lately what that meant, as she had encountered it too o...
I just watched it, and I thought it was good. I'm pretty sure that it was always written not as a bridge but to placate fans in between the long season breaks. And I personally don't care too much...
How many of you have ever read Herman Melville's Moby Dick? I don't think it was required reading for many people my age, as lit classes in high school during the 1980's were less concerned about...
One thing you should always remember in reading someone else's rating of a particular book, it is subjective. You will not be able to know the true condition of a book until you see it. Book dea...
Tomorrow is Halloween, and are my kids ready for it. The boy is going to be the blue Power Ranger and the girl is going to be a fairy. They have been wearing their costumes so much that I was af...
More book reviews are up. I think I'm going to try to pawn myself off as a real reviewer and see if anyone is willing to send me free books to review. Hmmmm. I'll have to put some thought into ...
The best goddam thing in this world is kids. Heh. Last night she was running all over the restaurant, getting under everybody's feet, but somehow managing to make everyone smile. I took her out...
Ive recently put a bunch of nuclear holocaust DVD's on my Netflix queue. Last night I got the first one, a movie from the 80's called Testament. It was much, much better than I thought it would ...