February 2015 – Page 2 – Obsidian Wings archive

ISIS AUMF

September 13, 2025February 11, 2015 by russell

by russell good idea? bad idea? nothingburger? don't know what i think about it yet, just putting it out there for y'all to discuss. have at it.

The science fiction awards season

September 13, 2025February 11, 2015 by SuperUser

by Doctor Science

I’m eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards (closes March 10) and to vote as a subscriber for the Locus Awards (closes April 15). I generally take the Locus Recommended Reading List as my starting point. The LRRL is notable this year for not including The Martian (it would be under “first novel”), which I expect to be on the Hugo ballot and may well win. Yeah, it’s not all that well-written, but it hits a primal Science! Fiction! button that doesn’t get punched very much these days.

Under the cut are the LRRL for the novel categories. Books that have been read (or attempted) by members of the Science household are grayed out. Of the others, are there any to which you-all would particularly like to direct our attention? We certainly can’t read them all before the Hugo Noms are due …

I’m particularly interested in recommendations for works published as e-books, because Locus frankly admits that they have no idea how to even find the good stuff in the e-book torrent.

Is there any reality in these two romance tropes?

September 13, 2025February 10, 2015 by SuperUser

by Doctor Science So, I read a lot of fanfiction, a lot of which is romance by amateur and even amateurish writers, many of whom are young (under 25) or very young (under 18). There are two tropes that seem to me have become more popular in the past 5 years or so, and I … Read more

commenting woes

September 13, 2025February 9, 2015 by liberal japonicus

by liberal japonicus Two people have written in and said that they are having problems with the captcha system. I'll see what's up and put a ticket in. It would help if folks who could comment could just add one to this post. Pithy one-liners preferred. UPDATE: a number of emails to the kitty looks … Read more

Your Immortality of the Crab Open Thread

September 13, 2025February 8, 2015 by SuperUser

by Doctor Science Today while link-hopping around Wikipedia, as you do, I learned that “thinking about the immortality of the crab” is a Spanish idiom meaning “daydreaming”. Actually, I would say that the best English translation is “woolgathering” — a much less intellectual and sophisticated idiom, though an old one, dating from 1550. But in … Read more

The Japanese Cheney

September 13, 2025February 5, 2015 by liberal japonicus

by liberal japonicus In Japan, the idiots are leading the government. Japan had been secretly negotiating for the return of the prisoners for months after both men were abducted in Syria last year. Then, on January 17, Abe delivered a speech in Cairo. According to insiders at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Abe went off-script from the speech … Read more