Ada Palmer — novelist, singer, historian — just dropped a 10,000 word essay on the nature of progress and historical change that has provided some of the most significant perspective on our own strange moment that I've yet to read — and in so doing, has provided a set of mental tools for figuring out how to survive 2017 and beyond.
Here's this year's complete Boing Boing Gift Guide: more than a hundred great ideas for prezzies: technology, toys, books and more. Scroll down and buy things, mutants! Many of the items use Amazon Affiliate links that help us make ends meet at Boing Boing, the world's greatest neurozine. — Read the rest
When we got to rounding up our favorite books for our annual Gift Guide, we found that there were simply too many this time to throw in the Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukah/Yule/Solstice/Nonspecific Winter Celebration/New Year/Chalica hopper along with the tech and toys.
It's almost as if 2016 made the traditional way of learning more about our world — and of sharing dreams of other worlds — somehow more enticing. — Read the rest
Niall from the online speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons writes, "Our annual fund drive has just 6 days to run, and we still need to raise at least $3,000! Why should you, the fine readers of Boing Boing, consider donating this year?"
I'm flying into Kansas City for part of Midamericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, and while there, I'll be on panels, give a reading, and sit down with fans for a kaffeeklatsch.
Some of Neil Gaiman's finest work has sprung from classical mythology, from American Gods to Odd and the Frost Giants: now, in a new nonfiction book for WW Norton, Gaiman will retell the Norse myths in novelistic style.
Ada Palmer -- historian, musician, librettist
-- debuts as a novelist today with a book called Too Like the Lightning, a book more
intricate, more plausible, more significant than any debut I
can recall.
I wrote about sf writer and historian Ada Palmer's music before — heart-stoppingly beautiful music about space and Icelandic gods — and now's your chance to help bring more of it to life.
Sassafrass is a choral folk group who perform heartstoppingly beautiful songs. The songs are composed by Ada Palmer, who also happens to be a talented fiction writer (with several novels forthcoming from Tor Books) and an outstanding academic historian, so the songs (and their accompanying notes) are not only brilliantly written, they are also historically accurate, informative, even educational. — Read the rest
