An Aside: Anime, Space Operas, and Space Westerns

I was watching the first few episodes of Gundam Wing the other day and I started to think about how prevalent space operas and space westerns are in Japanese animation. I can name half a dozen Anime shows that fit into the space opera or space western categories: Gundam Wing, Crest of the Stars/Banner of […]

Traditional SF vs. Literary SF: Which is better?

Larry of OF Blog of the Fallen recently wrote a retort to the Crotchedy Old Fan’s blog post about why traditional science fiction is better than the “literary” vein. I’ve not read the Crotchedy Old Fan’s post, and briefly scanned Larry’s, but having seen the question, I have to wonder: can such a determination actually […]

Science Fiction Withdrawals (or How to Survive When Your Favorite Series Ends)

Battlestar Galactica is over, and it’s not the first of its kind–i.e. a great show–that has come to a grinding halt, leaving fans with nothing to fill the void. Oh, sure, when BSG ended we had loads of science fiction shows: Dollhouse, Fringe, Knight Rider, Life On Mars, Kings, Primeval, and a whole bunch of […]

AmazonFail: Another Company Being Stupid

It’s apparently been going on for a few weeks, but it’s only just exploded in epic proportions in the blogosphere in the last day or so (as far as I know). What is it? I’ll give you the short version: Amazon essentially changed he way they list books on their best seller’s list, search feature, […]

Nine Reasons Why Airports Should Offer Free Wireless

…or at least dirt-freaking-cheap wireless that doesn’t require you to pay for twenty-four hours of service when you’re only going to use, at most, a few hours… With all my airport problems over the weekend, I figure this is a most fitting list to place here. I wrote it while in the airport (or in […]

Bringing the Ball To You: The Audience

Some formal complaints have been made and some things I fiddled with turned out to basically be as useless as I thought they would be (I’m looking at you Adsense). The honest truth is, I’m finding ads to be wholly insufficient.  I’d love to have more relevant ones (such as the occasional ad from publishers). […]