My Walkaway book-tour is basically over, but I'm taking a little victory lap tonight at my local library, the Buena Vista Branch of the Burbank Public Library. Hope to see you there! Read the rest

Today at the Usenix Security conference, a group of University of Washington researchers will present a paper showing how they wrote a piece of malware that attacks common gene-sequencing devices and encoded it into a strand of DNA: gene sequencers that read the malware are corrupted by it, giving control to the attackers. Read the rest

Chiba-based sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki carves wonderful, weird figures out of wood; the interstitial images that document his process are a fascinating glimpse into the way his imagination manifests itself in his medium. Read the rest

It's been decades since I first discovered my love of science fiction on a school trip to the "Spaced Out Library," the public science fiction reference collection founded by Judith Merril -- that day, I met both Merril (who went on to be a mentor to me) and Lorna Toolis, who has just stepped down as head of the library, which grew in stature and changed names, becoming the Merril Collection of Science Fiction. Read the rest

Dragon Con's Dragon Award ballot was just published and I'm delighted to learn that my novel Walkaway is a finalist in the "Best Apocalyptic Novel" category, along with Daniel Humphreys' A Place Outside the Wild, Omar El Akkad's American War, Declan Finn and Allan Yoskowitz's Codename: Unsub, N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate, Rick Heinz's The Seventh Age: Dawn, and J.F. Holmes's ZK: Falling. Read the rest

With pre-orders open for the graphic novel collecting William Gibson's amazing comic book Archangel, and a linked novel on the way that ties the 2016 election to the world of The Peripheral, William Gibson has conducted a fascinating interview with Vulture on the surge in popularity in dystopian literature. Read the rest

Jules Yap takes to Ikeahackers to describe how you can use four Knuff magazine boxes to form a storage-top for a small-apartment-sized coffee table, using an Ikea stool for your base. Read the rest

Lexi Alexander is the German-Palestinian world kickboxing champ who moved to the US when Chuck Norris helped her get a Green Card; after helping the US Army develop its unarmed combat training program and working as a stuntwoman, she became a virtuoso action-film director, starting with indie movies and working her way up to directing Punisher: War Zone, making her the first -- and, as of now, only -- woman to direct a Marvel adaptation. Read the rest

Before Laurie Penny was a brilliant young feminist novelist, she was a brilliant young essayist, blazing through the British (and then the world's) media with column after column that skewered social ills on what Warren Ellis aptly dubbed her "red pen of justice."

Collectors Weekly's feature on "headbages" tells the story of the 1000+ badge collection of bike-mechanic-turned-evolutionary-biologist Jeffrey Conner, who published a book on the subject, featuring an alphabetic index of photos from his collection.

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Conversations with People Who Hate Me is a new podcast from the Welcome to Night Vale folks in which Dylan Marron, who voices Carlos the Scientist on Night Vale, tracks down the people who troll him online and has long, thoughtful, substantive (and funny!) discussions about where they're coming from. Read the rest

Geoff Ryman -- the brilliant science fiction author who curated last year's 100 AFRICAN WRITERS OF SFF project, continues to publish and curate excellent, exciting science fiction from across Africa. Read the rest

I'm making the final(ish*) stop of my Walkaway tour at Defcon this weekend in Las Vegas, giving a speech on Saturday in Track 2 at 10AM called $BIGNUM steps forward, $TRUMPNUM steps back: how can we tell if we're winning?, followed by a book-signing at the No Starch Press table in the exhibitors' hall. Read the rest

In Paper Girls, the celebrated comics creator Brian K Vaughan (Saga, Y: The Last Man, etc) teams up with Cliff Chiang to tell a story that's like an all-girl Stranger Things, with time-travel. Read the rest

Ladder lockdown is a metal tray with super-grippy patches on its underside; set it down on any surface (including ice!) and then set your ladder's feet in the tray and cinch it in place and the ladder won't "kick out" and injure you and your loved ones. Read the rest

Machinist/sculptor Chris Bathgate (previously) continues his run of collaborations on small, gorgeous kinetic sculptures and fidget toys with the "Netsuke Hybrid Vessel Bead," a collaboration with Revolve Makers. Read the rest

There are three more stops on my tour for Walkaway: tomorrow at San Diego Comic-Con, next weekend at Defcon 25 in Las Vegas, and August 10th at the Burbank Public Library. Read the rest