Stories & Rants
Stories
Unsportsmanlike
Conduct
scifi.com September 4, 2003
An alien encounter turns on the meaning of fair play.
This story came about as a result of long, jetlagged nights in Australia, watching cricket happening in yet another time zone (say, Sri Lanka) and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. It kept occuring to me that a sporting event would be a great gateway into an alien culture, because the repetition of rule-governed events would be much easier to decode than the free-for-all that is natural language.
I've always been a big fan of sf stories in which alien languages are actually hard to figure out, instead of trivially easy. There is no stupider gadget in sf than the "universal translator." Languages are among the most complex and subtle inventions of humanity, and the idea that the language of another unknown species could be decoded in real time by something the size of a lapen pin shows complete contempt for information science, linguistics, and a whole lot of potential plot points. On our own planet, the history of contact between cultures is one of constant miscommunication, and that's what makes it interesting.
Of course, my Aussie wife says this story is secretly about how cricket is better than baseball, a point about which I am agnostic. Cricket is a beautiful game, though. I guess the fact that it's been played for about 800 years (!) has something to do with its stately pace and elegant geometries.
Anyway, click here for the story.
Non-Disclosure
Agreement
scifi.com October 3, 2001
A visual effects artist makes a deal with the devil.
A lot of my friends work in the visual effects industry, and they're always saying weird things. For example: My friend Ray, who worked on the Matrix, was swimming in the Atlantic with me one day. Out where we were, the waves were huge but not breaking. When a light rain started to fall, the awesome swells were dotted with raindrops. So Ray says, "Wow, I'd really like to get the algorithms for this." Uh, yeah.
So this story is about the numbers behind the world of appearances, and the proprietary info on good and evil.
Click here for the story.
Rants
On
Ghostwriting
from BookForum Fall 2000
This is my tell-all-that-I-can-tell-without-getting-sued essay about writing under other peoples' names. Celebrity people, rich people, lazy people. Almost by definition, people with less writing ability and more money than me. Bitter? Never.
Eclipse in the Outback
unpublished, December 2002
This is my geeky travelogue about driving into the Australian outback to see a total eclipse. Because that's just the sort of thing that sf writers do.
The Front of the Can
unpublished, May 2001
My copy-editorial take on the Election of 2000, and the packaging of V-8.