Why I Hate TV and Maybe You Should Too

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu is a fascinating historical review of how the television and advertising industries grew up and eventually got in bed together. Wu makes the case that our attention spans have been bought and sold as commodities, often without our knowledge or understanding. He’s a fine storyteller who offers many provocative […]

Iris Murdoch on Love, Justice and Truth

Originally posted on Phil Ebersole's Blog:
I recently read Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, a collection of philosophical writings by the late Iris Murdoch from 1951 to 1986. I bought the book because I enjoyed her novels, although I admit don’t remember the plots of any of them clearly, and because of praise…

Something Old and New for April 2019

I love philosophy. And I adore used books. So imagine my delight when I found The Gospel According to Zen (editors Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr) at a library sale for an unbeatable price: Freeee!  This is a fabulous skinny (133 pages) volume of writings about Zen, God, faith, and religion, with the intriguing subtitle […]

Making History of an Alternate Kind

I’m happy to announce that my short story “The Winterberry” has just been reprinted in the new e-anthology Making History: Classic Alternate History Stories, edited by Rick Wilber. This book offers a classy selection of alt-hist yarns by some amazing writers, including Karen Joy Fowler, Gregory Benford, Harry Turtledove, Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn. Many […]

New Story and Other

I’m happy to announce that one of my short stories is in the brand new March/April 2019 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. F&SF is celebrating 70 years of publishing some of the genre’s finest tales. I’m thrilled to be among so many excellent authors, including my two great pals John Kessel and Rich […]

Strange and Strangers

Books and stories about writers are a dime a dozen. Movies about writers are not terribly uncommon. But a good TV show in this narrow genre is a rare find, which is why I’m ever so happy to recommend Bored to Death, an HBO original series about a struggling noir author who begins moonlighting as […]