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I never met Jay Lake. I stumbled across Green when it came out in trade paper in 2011, and loved it. Aside from reading the sequels and other books by Jay, I started following his blog. It was at times heartbreaking to read about his travails with cancer. Yet he was also inspiring with his battling spirit (always with a degree of cheer, even when it must’ve been bravado). When he crowdfunded the sequencing of his genome and registered for NIH drug trials—the NIH loved that he had the sequencing done, what an opportunity!...

Photo by me. Last night, on impulse from a friend’s suggestion, I had the immense pleasure of attending the main concert for this year’s MalherFest. Historically I haven’t been the biggest Mahler aficionado, but last night did about all that’s possible to make me a convert. The orchestra itself, comprised of mostly local musicians with a few flying in from around the country, was quite wonderful. When I lived in Chicago, I went several times to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra....

If you’re a science fiction fan like I am, here’s a new reading list: Novel Winner: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK) Nominees: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Marian Wood) The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review) Fire with Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen) Hild, Nicola Griffith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island) A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer) The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker (Harper)...

Because Facebook wants you to be dysfunctional.

Piggies are for saving! My piggy is Instapaper, Pinboard and Evernote, where I bookmark all the things that my ADD head says, “Oh I’ll want to read this later.” But when does later come? I think it’s tomorrow, and when I realize that, I figure heck! What was I worried about? I can look at that tomorrow? So when does tomorrow actually arrive? And then I realize that it never comes....