What do Wyldstyle, Rodin, and Lao Tzu have in common?

I got the kind of email this morning that every writer likes to see: an acceptance for publication. That makes today a good day. 

This new piece will appear in LEGO and Philosophy, due out next year, the latest in a series of pop culture and philosophy books I’ve been following with interest from the beginning. Another volume I’m looking forward to in 2016 is The Ultimate Star Trek and Philosophy, in celebration of Star Trek’s 50th anniversary. I have an essay in that one on Kant, Confucius, and the Prime Directive, written with my friend and co-author, Alejandro Bárcenas. Alejandro also contributed a chapter to The Daily Show and Philosophy, which goes to show that this series has the versatility to address almost anything, from major cultural landmarks (Star Wars) to passing fads (Twilight) to passing fads that have become cultural icons (The Daily Show).

What sets the LEGO book apart from all the rest is that the source material isn’t a text. We do have texts to go with it now, most famously the blockbuster movie, but that’s only a recent development. The call for papers solicited “works focusing on the many aspects of the multimedia LEGO phenomenon,” so, yeah, there’s text there. We’re talking cartoons, video games, advertising strategies, even theme parks, but first and foremost this philosophy book is about the toy. Not a text. A bunch of plastic.

So when I got the call for papers, two thoughts struck me almost at once. First, “Hey! Awesome! I love Legos. I should write something.” Then, about a millisecond later, “Wait, what’s there to write about?” I couldn’t see anything to agree or disagree with. How could I? LEGO would have say something. 

Okay, as a commercial product it says, “Buy more of me!” But in a free market economy everything says that. As a toy LEGO speaks to the gender norms being pushed on children, but so does virtually everything in the toy store. What does this toy say that only it says, in a way that only it can say it?

The more I thought about it, the more unsuitable LEGO seemed for a philosophy book. After sidewalk chalk it’s about as close to a blank slate as a toy can get. 

And that was it. That was the realization I needed. At its best LEGO says nothing. It says nothing, and it says it better than just about anything else you can find in the toy aisle. That’s why there’s so little need for improvement. It’s the ultimate expression of possibility. It’s inexhaustible. No matter what you take from it, it can always give more.

There’s one other philosophical concept that’s described this way, as an inexhaustible source of infinite potential: the dao. So that’s the subject of my chapter. It’s called “The Brick, the Plate, and the Uncarved Block: LEGO as an Expression of the Dao.” 

Now then, what do Wyldstyle, Rodin, and the legendary sage Lao Tzu** have in common? An appreciation for infinite possibility. I’ll close this post with the Rodin quote I’ll use to open the book chapter. Rodin was asked for the secret to sculpting his many masterpieces. His answer: “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

Has he said nothing about sculpture, or has he said everything?

* In the philosophical sense, not the extreme BASE jumper’s sense. Or maybe you figured that out on your own.

** If you want to write me an email telling me to correct this spelling to Laozi, since I spelled dao with a D and not a T, give yourself a pat on the back.

Things that make me go hmm.

An article today on Digital Book World has got me thinking. Here's the centerpiece of it:

At Jellybooks, we recently developed a piece of code called candy.js, which is embedded inside an ebook to track how users actually read. Penguin Random House UK was among our earliest partners in a pilot program of the technology, and the insights we gathered were fascinating. The question now becomes what story this data tells us and what impact it might have.

Okay, that's a question, but it's not the question. The first question that pops into my head is, "Hey, who asked me for permission?"

Maybe they did ask, and maybe I gave it. I never read those big, long user agreement things. I accept whatever terms iTunes offers me because I can't listen to my music unless I accept. (Yes, I'm old-fashioned; I pay for things, I don't pirate them.) Maybe there was one of those "I agree" buttons to click whenever I bought my Kindle. I don't know; I'm faced with far too many of those buttons to remember which sites and gadgets had one.

Plenty of people will ask all the necessary questions about user privacy and all that good stuff. I'm going to ask the question of consent. Because the mere fact that I click "I agree" doesn't imply consent; it just implies that whoever wrote the terms and conditions has covered their ass.

There's a moral problem I pose to my ethics classes. A guy named Tom has the opportunity to peep into the ladies' changing room at Victoria's Secret. Let's say by hypothesis that he can do so without being caught, that he'll enjoy it if he peeps and he'll be frustrated if he doesn't. Now, should he peep?

If you're an ethical egoist, you believe "morally right" means "whatever is in my own best interest," and then you'll say he should peep. (It's in his best interest so long as he doesn't get caught, and in this case we'll guarantee he can't get caught.) If you're a utilitarian, you believe "morally right" means "whatever is in everyone's collective best interests," and then it looks like you still might be committed to saying Tom ought to peep. (So long as no one finds out it's hard to say anyone was harmed, so in this case the "everyone" of "everyone's collective best interests" is reduced to Tom alone.)

Most of my students will say they agree with utilitarianism until I give them this problem. Then they have second thoughts. Maybe you do too, and if not, I can make it worse. What if Tom has some weird X-Man mutant power that allows him to see breast cancer with 100% accuracy. His voyeurism is now potentially life-saving. (This makes him the skeeviest X-Man ever, I know.) If he enjoys peeping and he can find some way to anonymously deliver life-saving information to some of the women he peeps on, does that justify his voyeurism?

No doubt Jellybooks intends its candy.js to benefit me and other readers (as well as itself, of course; it doesn't write code for free). Even if this hidden code benefits me -- even if it gets me cheaper books, makes it easier for me to find better books, and allows me to read more of them -- it's still a violation of consent. Even if I clicked "I agree" to some great big Terms of Use thing, that doesn't constitute consent yet. It's only consent if I'm given a range of alternatives -- such as, I can still read my e-book but no one gets to peep.

In which I make a brief foray into moral philosophy and mock the state of Kansas

"Science? Huh. I think I've heard of that."

One of the big events at San Diego Comic Con was the newest footage from Batman v. Superman. With it came lots of speculation about the film (which I don't care about) and some interesting reflection on the characters (which I do). The one I saw bouncing around Twitter came from Joshua Rivera at Business Insider. Rivera says Zack Snyder and company have missed the point of Superman. 

There are two popular explanations for why Superman can't succeed in modern movies: 1. He's too powerful; and 2. He's not interesting, because he's just a big ol' goodie two-shoes.

This is a pretty good summation of my own view, not of Superman as a character but of the stories writers tend to want to tell about him. Bo-ring.

Rivera adds:

People are often skeptical that a Superman movie can be good because stories need conflict, and conflict seems pretty hard to come by when your hero is a person who always does the right thing and can't be hurt. That, however, is a reductive way of looking at the character and the secret to why Superman stories are so great: They're never really about him. They're about us.

This last point is the really important one, and it's one I wish more people would notice. The thing is, it’s not unique to Superman. All good superhero stories are really about us. They’re about what we would do if we were given the same power. That’s why Peter Parker gets bullied, why Bruce Wayne loses his parents, and why Steve Rogers is frail. It’s why one of the major tropes is that the heroes get their powers because of a freak accident. Their powers are actually injuries. These heroes suffer from problems that could happen to any one of us, and have happened to many of us.

Superman is actually one of few exceptions to that rule. Most of the best-known heroes are victims of injustice, cruelty, and bad luck. The fact that they rise above it is what makes them heroic. They do what we hope we can do ourselves.

So here’s Rivera again:

Superman isn't good or special because he's an alien who crashes on Earth and ends up being incredibly powerful. He's special because after all that* he becomes someone who always does the right thing because he was raised by a couple of decent people from Kansas. That's it.

*Emphasis mine.

Okay, let's examine what follows from that. Superman is special because he could be the bully but he chooses not to be. He’s special in the way a kindergarten teacher is special for not beating up all the children, despite the fact that she’s vastly more powerful than they are in every respect.

Dude, if this is your super power, I’m not interested.

I have a Lex Luthor story I’ll have to indulge in later, but for now I’ll stay on message. Rivera says, ““To make a good Superman story, you have to embrace a few unpopular notions about what makes good superhero stories,” the most important of which is that you don’t have to get dark and gritty like Batman; “fighting for good because it's the right thing to do is a compelling enough reason.”

This is almost true, but I think the most important point is missing. The only interesting stories you can tell about Superman are the moral quandaries. The 1978 film Superman is the perfect case in point. Lex Luthor fires nuclear missiles at both coasts. Superman wants to save Lois Lane in California, but he made a promise to stop the missile aimed at New Jersey first. A tough moral choice.

Compare that to 2013’s Man of Steel. General Zod wants to destroy all life on Earth, and the only solution Superman can think of is to beat the bejeezus out of him. I thought the solution was obvious: “Hey, Zod, I love the idea of bringing our people back from beyond the brink of destruction. Count me in. The thing is, Mars is right next door. Let’s rebuild Krypton there, where we won’t have to kill anyone.”

Why doesn’t Superman take the obvious nonviolent solution? The only reason I can think of is that he was raised in Kansas, where the state Board of Education has rendered the science curriculum so anemic that Clark Kent was never taught that Mars exists.

Here’s the upshot: fighting for good because it's the right thing to do is not compelling enough to give us a decent story. There's a long-standing rule in moral philosophy (attributed to Immanuel Kant, if you want to know) that says "ought implies can." If it's ever the case that you ought to do X, it must be the case that you're capable of doing X. And if Superman can do almost anything, the question of ought is the only one worth answering.

It's all happening!

The giant robot battle is coming! Finally!

US-based MegaBots builds giant piloted robots. So does Japan's Suidobashi Juko. Don't ask why; I think all the engineers are just Gundam fans with a lot of time on their hands. There's really only one practical purpose: to make the robots do battle, to prove which one is mightiest.

And now, at long last, that's going to happen. MegaBots issued the challenge and Suidobashi doubled down: they're going to fight, but it's got to be melee combat. The video reply is priceless:

Megabots, thank you for issuing the video. On behalf of Japan, we accept your challenge. But on one condition: That melee combat be a part of the fight. Organize the duel, Megabots, and we'll be there to battle it out. This duel stands to go down in history as the world's first giant robot battle.

As I said in a recent interview, my favorite cartoon growing up was TranZor Z. To be honest, it's not great. It was the premise that hooked me: a boy has this hovercraft in his garage, which in fact is the brain/cockpit of the giant robot TranZor Z. The plot of every single episode is basically summed up in the opening credits. Boy flies hovercraft, boy pilots giant walking death machine, boy fights monster of the week. That was the formula and I loved it.

MegaBots and Suidobashi are taking one epic metal-booted step toward making the dream come true.  I'm going to wait to see who's the last robot standing, then call the winner and ask what kind of financing they need to turn the cockpit into a hovercraft I can park in my garage.

My Fourth of July Tribute

Okay, so Captain America’s shield is made of vibranium, right? That’s why the mighty Thor can smite it with his hammer and have none of the energy transfer through. Because otherwise Cap would be liquefied, since his only super power is being 1/10,000th as tough as Thor. Got it.

 But then why should the bad guys mind getting hit with the shield? It absorbs all the impact energy, right? That’s the only reason it’s useful. Which means Cap should be able to punch me in the face with it all day and it wouldn’t hurt.

 Solution #1, from a comic über-geek I know: it’s not vibranium, it’s a vibranium alloy. How exactly does this allow energy to transfer into a bad guy’s face but not into Cap’s arm? My über-geek doesn’t know. He’s just nitpicking.

 Solution #2, from an honest-to-god physicist who asks, “if you take the energy of Thor’s hammer striking Captain America’s shield, there’s a large amount of kinetic energy in the hammer that is transferred to vibrational energy in the shield. If the vibranium absorbs it, that energy has to go some place, and where does it go?” His answer? It becomes light:

In the first Avengers film …when Thor strikes Cap’s shield… you see this enormous blast of light in the visible and ultraviolet part of the spectrum. So the vibrational energy is being transformed into light energy, which then radiates out from the shield.

 Okay, so this solves the conservation of energy problem, but it hardly explains why getting hit by the shield hurts. When it hits me it should light me up, not knock me out.

 Solution #3, from a physicist and comic geek: vibranium is part battery, part capacitor, part indestructible shield stuff. When all that impact energy hits the shield,  

the atomic bonds in the shield… must be able to store that energy in some form. […] If the energy is being stored in the bonds between the shield’s atoms, that could explain the variability in the shield’s physical characteristics…

 …you know, so that sometimes it hits something and sticks into it like a blade, but other times it caroms around like a pool ball.

 I kinda like this explanation. The only problem is that nobody ever mentions it. Like, not even once. If Howard Stark created the shield, surely he ought to have figured this out.

 So, for this Fourth of July, I give you Solution #4: vibranium is a perfect reflector. We have to take some liberties with Newton’s third law, but basically it’s like this: in the case of an ordinary shield (or any other physical object) every time something hits the shield, the shield hits back. That’s the third law at work: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Some things, like billiard balls, are good at reflecting the energy back without absorbing a whole lot of it into themselves. Other things, like eggs, aren’t. Thus eggs are fragile and billiard balls are both hard and bouncy. So here’s my pet theory:

billiard ball : egg :: vibranium : everything else

Vibranium must be the billiard ball multiplied to the power of billiard ball. It’s so good at reflecting energy that every time an object transfers equal and opposite reaction energy into it, the vibranium transfers that energy back too. It must do this so efficiently that all impact energy is reflected back out, smashing the bejeezus out of whatever’s on the receiving end.

 Like I said, I’m taking liberties here, but Solution #4 explains why the mighty Mjolnir doesn’t shatter Cap’s arm and explains why it still hurts to get clocked by the shield. In fact, it even explains why Captain America hits so much harder than you’d think he could (given his relative power level on the team): the action his shield puts into your face is actually made worse by the equal and opposite reaction your face puts into the shield.

Comicpalooza debrief

Probably the best thing that’s going to happen to me this year: I shook hands with Peter Mayhew. That’s right, Chewbacca himself.

There was serious star power in Houston this weekend. I saw Stan Lee, George Takei, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Larry “the Soup Nazi” Thomas. I talked to Barry Bostwick and Nell Campbell, whose names you’ll know well if you were a Rocky Horror Picture Show kid like me. I was in the same room with Rosario Dawson, which is enough to make me swoon.

I met fans too, of course, and signed a few books, and spoke on a couple of panels, and met some great authors that way. I’d known the name Rachael Acks already, mostly because I absolutely love her "Suffering for Charity" movie reviews. It was great to talk geology and feminism with her on two different panels.

It was during an autographing session that I had one of those chance meetings that make a con like this a truly special event. There I am, sitting next to Jonathan Maberry, a Seriously Big Deal in the world of comics, science fiction, and horror. He sees I’m in a cast and asks me how I hurt myself.

“Jujutsu,” I say.

“Oh, what style?” he asks.

“Brazilian.”

“Oh, cool. I did Shinowara-ryu jujutsu for fifty-one years.”

Wow.

Look, I’ve been in martial arts for twenty-two years. Every now and then I meet someone who’s been training longer than I have, but I almost never meet someone who’s been in it more than twice as long as I have. Much less someone who also nerds out on comics and sci fi stuff. Much less someone who’s kicking more ass with his pen than he is with his sword.

The two martial artists take their fighting stances.

So Jonathan Maberry and I spent an hour on Saturday afternoon talking about martial arts and the writing biz. It was the best hour I’ve spent at one of these things. I ran into him again on Sunday, and he told me Daughter of the Sword would be his in-flight reading on the way home. How cool is that?

Jonathan, please don’t be offended if I say it’s almost as cool as shaking hands with Peter Mayhew. The only reason he outranks you is that Chewbacca outranks everyone in everything.

No, I didn't drown

The question I've been answering most since my return from Comicpalooza is, are you okay?

The weather was absolutely nuts on Monday, including tornado warnings in my own city of Austin. Flash floods between here and Houston resulted in several fatalities, and some people are still missing. But the worst damage we saw at my house was one unhappy black Lab, who had to wear his Thundershirt because he’s terrified of storms. He looks happy in this picture, but only because his people came back home to rescue him.

The first "well, duh" law?

New Zealand just passed a law that's making headlines. It’s the first to declare that animals are "sentient"—that is, that they "can experience both positive and negative emotions, including pain and distress."

 Presumably this will be met with cries of "Finally!" from animal rights activists around the world, and cries of "Well, duh!" from everyone else who hasn’t been staying abreast of animal rights legislation but has ever met an animal before.

 Because for most of us this isn’t a big shock. To say a puppy is sentient is to say it’s capable of being happy and unhappy. That’s it. That’s the big reveal.

 "Well, duh," the modern philosopher says proudly. "We’ve been taking the whole sentience thing pretty seriously for a good two hundred years now." Jeremy Bentham, one of my philosophical role models*, said morality was grounded not in rationality but in sentience—that is, not in the ability to reason but rather the ability to suffer. Shocking stuff circa 1800, but these days his view is pretty intuitive. If I kick your puppy, which is worse: that I’ve injured and terrified the puppy, or that I’ve committed a property violation against you? Most people side with the puppy.

 So here’s what the big headline should have been: “New Zealand passes first law to catch up with where mainstream Western moral philosophy was two hundred years ago.”

 To which the Buddhists can smack their foreheads and say, "Yes, but two hundred years ago the big headline should have read, 'First mainstream Western moral philosopher catches up with where Buddhism was 2,300 years ago.'"

 To which the average caveman of 40,000 years ago can say—and maybe you want to say too—"Well, duh. Have you ever met a puppy? Did it have a very good poker face? Why do you people need all of these philosophers and lawyers just to tell you a puppy is capable of being happy and unhappy?"

 Well, duh.

*Bentham doesn’t make my list because of his philosophy. He’s my role model because he had himself taxidermized after death. In fact he’s still mounted, stuffed, and on display at the university where he taught. Honest. Every semester I tell my students this is what I want my family to do with me when I die: take me to the taxidermist, then to whoever does the animatronic stuff for Chuck E. Cheese. Stick me in the philosophy section of the library wherever I was teaching, and rig it up so that I can smile and wave when people come down to hang out with me and my favorite books.

Mystery solved: are we alone in the universe?

Okay, so here's the story that caught my attention: a renowned Japanese sword smith has forged a katana made enitrely from the iron of a meteorite. It's called the Tentetsutou, meaning Sword of Heavenly Metal.

Pretty badass, right? But you have to wonder why he made it. There's the obvious answer, of course: badassery is its own reward. But consider the following:  

Fact: Japan has been exploring space since 1969.

Fact: Japan stepped up its game in space exploration in 2003, and since then has landed spacecraft on an asteroid and on the moon. 

Fact: "Giant space monster invades Earth" has been a trope in Japanese movies and anime for as long as there has been Japanese space exploration.

Coincidence? You might think so. But when a renowned blacksmith forges the Sword of Heavenly Metal, there is only one reasonable conclusion to draw: there are giant space monsters, they are coming to invade Earth, Japanese astronomers discovered them years ago, and and also discovered their weakness: they can be killed, but only by a blade forged from the cosmically irradiated metal of deep space. 

We can only assume that there's a super secret training facility in some underground bunker deep beneath the streets of Tokyo. In it, hundreds of martial artists are training for the ultimate honor: to be given the Tentetsutou, and then to fight the aliens singlehandedly in a heroic last ditch effort to save humanity.

Obviously. It's the only reasonable conclusion.

And he's off!

I started the next novel this week!

That's all. Just wanted to say it.

Year in Review

2014 was a doozie.

I moved from upstate New York back home to Minnesota—a prescient choice, given the eight feet of snow New York got hammered with this winter. Minnesota is plenty cold, but at least we weren’t at risk of the roof caving in.

Then my partner and I uprooted our home and moved down to Texas. Right from the minute we got here, this seemed like a terrible choice. That was in August, when it was over 100° every damn day. Like, for a month. But now that it’s winter and I’m still riding my motorcycle, I can say I’m pretty happy with the decision. Longer, sunnier days make for a happier, sunnier Steve.

2014 was a good year for publishing too. In September YEAR OF THE DEMON came out in mass-market paperback. (Feel free to order it if you haven’t got it already!) DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD came out in Bulgarian and Italian, and the Italian edition of YEAR OF THE DEMON also came out. THE TIME TRAVELER’S ALMANAC is selling like hot cakes, which means plenty of people out there are reading my story, “The Most Important Thing in the World.”

On the philosophical side of philosofiction, October saw the arrival of PHILOSOPHY AND THE MARTIAL ARTS, with a chapter from Yours Truly. (In it I address the question of whether we martial artists are immoral or merely irrational for voluntarily inflicting so much unnecessary suffering on each other.) I also learned that my co-authored article on Kant, Confucius, and Captain Kirk will be included in the forthcoming STAR TREK AND PHILOSOPHY. Needless to say, I’m very excited about this book.

The biggest news on the writing front is all about the third installation of the Fated Blades, DISCIPLE OF THE WIND. 2014 saw it completed, then recognized as the biggest book yet, then trimmed down to fighting weight, then revised and edited, then copyedited and proofed, and now it’s ready to go. (Preorder now and you can be among the first to get it on April 7!)

There’s also a little surprise coming, courtesy of Kaida. I’ll keep you posted.

What else? I saw the Episode VII trailer and I’m hopeful that JJ Abrams can save the franchise. I saw The Hobbit: Battle of the Three Disappointments and I’m glad that franchise is dead and buried. The best thing I can say about that movie is that as fan fiction goes, it has really expensive special effects. Oh, and Martin Freeman is simply stellar in every scene he’s in, but at this point that almost goes without saying.

Actually, 2014 was a great year for movies all around. My favorites (in no kind of order): The Imitation Game, Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, American Hustle, X-Men: Days of Future Past, 20 Feet from Stardom, Godzilla, and Interstellar, plus the tons-o’-fun Guardians of the Galaxy and The LEGO Movie.

So yeah, big year! Hope yours was a good one too.

Comicpalooza

I’m looking forward to Comicpalooza 2015, in Houston over Labor Day weekend. The lineup of panels is looking great. I just got the prospective list from one of the organizers. None of this is set in stone, but if they do even half of these, it’s going to be a kick-ass con. Here’s just a handful of the potential panel topics.

For nerds, geeks, and fanboys:

• The Storytelling of Star Wars
• Harry Potter and the Future of Hogwarts
• Star Trek vs. Star Wars, It’s On
• Game of Thrones and Epic Fantasy

For aspiring writers:

• Writing Unforgettable Characters
• How to Create Believable Worlds
• What I Wish I’d Known as a New Writer

For lovers of fantasy fiction, strong female protagonists, and not-more-of-the-same-white-male-heroes-doing-everything:

• Urban Fantasy Author Roundtable
• Why We Love Urban Fantasy
• Multiculturalism in Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Gender in Fantasy Fiction

I’ll post more details here as soon as I get ‘em.

Nerdcool

Marvel Comics is launching a new Star Wars series, and issue 1 will have 30 different covers. Obviously I want all of them. Preferably as a massive wall covering in a massive room for my massive Star Wars collection.

Coolest of all is an amazing homage to the first appearance of the Punisher, with Boba Fett stepping in to reprise the role of Frank Castle. Check ‘em out:

Hmm... what's going on here?

I’ve been thinking about a quote from the latest

Daughter of the Sword

review:

“I am floored by how much I absolutely loved this book, and I’m completely astonished that more people haven’t already read it. 

Daughter of the Sword

is one of those rare gems that shines so bright, but really doesn’t get the attention it deserves.”

—Bookworm Blues

If it’s not too terribly egomaniacal to say it, I want to +1 that sentiment. Astonished is a pretty powerful word, but I’ll admit to being at least a little surprised that the Fated Blades books haven’t drawn more readers than they have.

All authors must feel this way now and again. Let’s face it: a lot of garbage reaches the NYT bestsellers list. Some of that garbage even gets made into a major motion picture, and sends piles of cash back home to an author who now gets to swim in a giant pool of money like Scrooge McDuck.

This, of course, leaves all of us who aren’t drowning in money to wonder why such garbage is outselling our beautiful works of earth-shattering genius.

Okay, so not quite that, either. But still, reviews for the Fated Blades have been pretty damn good. So why aren’t more people reading these books?

I don’t know. In one sense it doesn’t matter; my only game plan is to write the best book I know how to write, then write the next one.

But given all the senses that do matter, what I’m supposed to do now is tell you Christmas is coming and you should buy Daughter of the Sword and Year of the Demon for all your friends and relatives. So yeah, do that.

Better yet, pre-order Disciple of the Wind for all of them, since pre-orders can actually be more important than point-of-purchase sales.

Seriously, though, if you’re reading this -- if you even know this site exists -- then you’ve probably read my books. If you like them, then buying them for your friends tells my publisher that you want to see more of them. If you’re dead broke, just tell others to read the Fated Blades; advice from a friend still sells more books than any other advertising strategy.

And thanks!

One step closer to Armageddon

Our robot overlords are one step closer to world domination -- or if not a step, a wheel-rotation or something.  are now a real thing. You can even rent them, at an hourly rate less than you’d have to pay a real live human. Here they are in all their Dalekian glory:

I don’t know if they actually say, “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!” Maybe you have to pay extra for that. However, these definitely don’t look like cute R2D2ish buddies, do they? More like a disconcerting hybrid of warhead and rectal suppository.

At least they have the great weakness of the original Daleks: I don’t think these things can climb stairs.

Bookworm Blues says "It knocked my socks off!"

Daughter of the Sword collected its latest review, this time from Bookworm Blues. It’s a good one:

“It knocked my socks off. I couldn’t put it down…. Daughter of the Sword is an urban fantasy novel that is absolutely different than any other urban fantasy novel I’ve read before, written with an infectious passion, a soft touch, and an understanding that transcended its pages. This is a series to watch out for.”

“At its heart, this isn’t a book about swords and history, but about people. Shockingly real, incredibly alive, very captivating people in a country I really want to learn more about now.”

Thanks so much, Bookworm Sarah! Everyone else, you can read the complete review here.

RIP P.D. James (1920-2014)

P.D. James died yesterday at the ripe old age of 94. In the UK she’s best known for her many detective novels, but in the US I think she’s best known for her novel Children of Men, the basis for the absolutely brilliant film. Here’s her obituary from the BBC.

It's beginning to look a lot like Hoth

The holiday season must be upon us, because Anthony Herrera has just posted this year’s Star Wars-themes DIY paper snowflake patterns. My personal favorite is the Wampa, because nothing says Christmas like a giant snow monster. The Jabba and X-Wing patterns are really cool too.

Autographs!

I met a legend today

How many days do you get to say you shook hands with one of your role models? Today I met one of mine: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero, all books that set me on the path to writing science fiction.

He spoke at Book People today, Austin’s oldest indie bookstore. I got a shiny new copy of The Peripheral, his latest novel, and I also brought my shabby, yellowed, old-book-smelling copy of Neuromancer. Now I’ve got both of them autographed, the first-edition hardcover and the tattered paperback from 1986 that I’ve read and re-read more times than I can remember.

I don’t know whether it was my obsession with Japan that made me latch on to Gibson’s work, or whether it was Gibson’s novels that turned my Japanese fascination up to eleven. Either way, I was hooked. Now, the more I think about it, the more I come to understand what an influence he had on me. I’ve always credited Tolkien and Herbert for making me think seriously about world-building, but now I realize I was reading Gibson before I ever picked up Dune.

There’s this tiny throwaway line in Neuromancer that has always stayed with me: “Rent me a gun, Shin?” Case, the protagonist, asks this out of nowhere. That little line got me thinking: how many things would have to go wrong in a culture for unregistered gun rentals to become commonplace? It’s clear from the context that what Case is asking for isn’t legal, but it’s equally clear that this is no big deal. You need to shoot someone, you rent a gun for a few hours.

It’s a throwaway line, totally inessential to the plot, but what it does for the setting is enormous -- or it was for me, anyway. And today I got to shake hands with the guy that wrote it, and that makes today pretty good.