Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.
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The Genre Debacle
Ever since I started digitizing my music library, I’ve struggled with the pronunciation of the word “genre.” I started out saying John Ree, perhaps imagining him as a pioneer in the field of music classification; sort of a spiritual ancestor to the Music Genome Project. Later, I adopted the slurred buzzing intonation that inhabits a…
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Oh, Heroes, What Have You Become?
I just finished watching the season finale of Heroes, and it seems like they’ve managed to botch things up once again. They continue to rely on the standby plot devices of “kill a main character” and “bring back an old bad guy” in lieu of truely creative writing. They also feel compelled to set up…
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The Religion of Science Fiction
Good science fiction authors are at the same time remarkably prophetic in their thinking and humorously influenced by their own time. I remember laughing aloud when one of the characters in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land began darning a sock. To me, it was hilarious that in a futuristic world with space travel, characters would…