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by James Patrick Kelly James Patrick Kelly discusses the dramatic beginnings of his latest Asimov’s novelette “In the Dark,” now available in our [September/October issue, on sale now!] Credit: Bill Clemente There’s an annual conference that I like to attend called the International Conference on the Fantastic (ICFA). It takes place in March in Orlando, Florida. While it started as an academic conference, over time the organizers began to welcome …

With this work by Anthony Domenick, we continue to highlight original fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry from writers who either published their first book at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish a book. Writers interested in submitting work should see our guidelines. (For Gina Marie Smith, whose capacity for empathy embraced the possibility of enduring the unendurable) Strong Son of God, immortal Love Whom we, that have …

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In September I’m trialing a new challenge. I’m calling it the IMPOSSIBLE 30. It’s actually not that IMPOSSIBLE. It’s a simple baseline. So here’s the challenge: 30 Days Oh, and sometime during the month – knock one thing off your impossible. That’s all. Free to join. It starts this Sunday (on the 1st). Just click... continue reading >

Via NASAPlanet generation is a topic I keep coming back to, trying to develop the perfect formula. This post has been percolating for well over a year at this point, long enough that I had actually forgotten the contents of my prior attempts (see here, here, here and here)I have been fiddling around with this idea for a very long while now (I think this is a year+ draft?), and …

This time-lapse drone video following the climbing route up Mount Everest does more to make clear the sheer scale of Everest, and in greater detail, than the eponymous 1998 documentary I first saw in an IMAX theatre—which wasn’t exactly a slouch. This video, however, uses a commercially available drone that starts at around C$2,750 (and it’s no coincidence that it was posted by the drone manufacturer, because oh lord does …

With brevity, my operational view on structured concurrency is the management of a tree structure of tasks. It doesn't matter what color the function is, this task tree can be fully controlled by a parent, child interface. You can cancel children tasks, bubble exceptions up to the root task, catch them from raising exceptions, or even restart them when they fail. While this might sound a little abstract, I wanted …

Here’s the text and images from my talk at Wuthering Bytes 2024. Credits / links are here. This isn’t exactly what I said, I was distracted by a talking robot at one point for one thing I had a really lovely time and met lots of interesting people. Thanks for asking me to speak Andrew. I had a big fight with WordPress over the formatting here and it still looks …

Hello! I am dipping my toe back in the water – just to see how it feels. My last post on Heavenali was in mid June, and at the beginning of July I stopped reading other blog posts and announced on social media that I would be taking a break. Although I didn’t put a time scale on it – I had the vague idea of coming back at the …

First game of the season! My options were thus: a 1730 kick off at Crawley for the Blackpool match; or Chase away at Clitheroe, which coincided with a food festival and the launch of a real ale trail. I briefly considered incorporating a trip to Brighton into the Crawley weekender but decided the cost would be ridiculous – and news of the food fest and real ale trail in Clitheroe …

The Open Web Advocacy (OWA) initiative in their recent blog post Apple adopts 6 of OWA's Choice Architecture Recommendations highlighted the six recommendations that Apple has adopted from the group's recommendations to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act in relation to browser defaults and choice screens. In parallel, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a Market Investigation Reference into mobile browsers and cloud gaming and have recently …

Why do governments go after companies and executives of services of more weakly encrypted tools? It’s very hard, this early, to pierce through what’s going on with the French authorities’ arrest of Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram — but that doesn’t stop people from having pet theories. Was it retaliation from the US and the FBI for not backdooring Telegram? Was it a favor to Durov so he could …

You know that thing where your memory starts playing tricks on you? Yeah? Well, recently I was playing a 2CD compilation, Northern Soul Underground. It’s a great set, with the focus on the early ‘soul’ years, and I love the fact that the cover proclaims that the ’50 Soulful Rarities’ include The Profiles, Squires, Drapers and Laddins. I bet that got people rushing to the shops. Anyway, the second CD …

It’s been a minute, as they say. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve published on other platforms: Does Anyone Still Write Letters? (Other Than Me, That Is.) (Medium gift link) What I Like About American English (An Open Letter to Our Friends Across the Pond) (Medium gift link) And speaking of American vs. British English, here’s Bamboozled by Bits and Bobs (Substack) * What you need to know about some …