Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
Collin Piprell 
Sara and I are having breakfast at Starbucks. Being a kee niaow species of curmudgeon, I’m complaining about everything from the prices to the clonish docking of people and their digital devices. Discerning impatience in her manner, I eventually desist.
“Give me a break,” she says, going on to explain that Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee; it sells a lifestyle experience, and I should dummy up about it, she’s trying to relax.
Ah, I reply. So we’re banking some sort of … Read more
The other day I went to meet the charming Ms. Weow at the new Dean & Deluca coffeeshop, a glitzy branch of the New York deli in what’s to be the ground floor of the Ritz Carleton Residences, still under construction.
On my way over, I phoned her to check that I had the correct location.
“Right at the Chong Nongsri BTS Station,” she said.
“West side or east?”
“Which way are you facing now?” she asked me.
“What do … Read more
Has anyone else noticed what’s happening with skirts and short-shorts around Bangkok? (Or are writers just unusually perceptive?) Are there such things as benign epidemics?
Haikus are so much easier to write than novels. Of course the commercial prospects, including their chances on the Big Screen, are even more uncertain. Whatever. Here’s what I’m going to call a mixed-media haiku.
A spiritual (to be sung with full chorus)
… Read moreGod is there in the hemlines
Ascending, praise be,
Heavenwards. Oh, Lord.
Not yet, eh? But soon. In the meantime: iPhone, iPad… Aye, yai-yai.
… Read more
And another stereotype bites the dust. The language mavens are getting feistier, siccing hit squads on people who annoy them, in this case those who post items saying how ending a sentence with a preposition is okay, pace gangs of tsking grammarians from another age roaming our streets. The problem is, say the Language Log hosts, they get the same darned thing, again and again, and they’re sick of it. From now on, in fact, offenders will themselves be … Read more
I wouldn’t normally bother commenting on this sort of thing, besides which I gather lots of other people have already expressed horror for a variety of reasons. (Though plenty of others applauded it, and that’s what alarms me.)
I believe exploding people can be funny; and, given the popular taste for gory entertainment, it’s hard to take offense merely on that score. What I do find disquieting is the blithe assumption, at least implicitly, that we’re all on the … Read more
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Steve Van Beek, prominent local writer, film-maker and river specialist has just sent me the following encouragement to get off my lazy butt (interview with Philip K. Dick’s daughter) and do more to promote my series of darkly comic futuristic novels (underway) that will clarify most important features of reality in rippingly entertaining fashion. (Some opinion has it that I write better novels than I do blurbs.) Certainly, Philip K. Dick is one of the most successful
I guess this is how it should be done, if you’re going to be a science-fiction writer with a blog.
My first visit, and Charlie Stross’s site leaves me feeling utterly inadequate. I’m going to erase my entire blogsite and leave a “So sorry” sign hanging there in its place. Damn.… Read more
“Alice” fans and critics (see my last post) likely fall into opposing iPad and Kindle/Sony camps. The former will view Alice as a new and improved kind of reading: “Great! It’s just like browsing the Internet.” The latter — i.e. those who actually enjoy extended reading — will view it with horror: “Whoa! This is just one more patch of digital quicksand.”
In the spirit of deteriorating attention spans and debilitated Muses, and because it’s way easier than writing … Read more
The future of the book
“Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch global design and innovation consultancy IDEO’s vision for the future of the book. What new experiences might be created by linking diverse discussions, what additional value could be created by connected readers to one another, and what innovative ways we might use to tell our favorite stories and build community around books?”
1. Alice. To say I resemble a Ludditic old fart is … Read more
