Category Archives: prose

hammer & sickle & stripes

Posted on Monday, 2002 May 06 by Anton

Today I started to read Neil Smith’s Forge of the Elders, and had to chuckle at the names of the spaceships of the American Soviet Socialist Republic: Dole, McCain, Hatch (“three misunderstood and martyred socialist statesmen who had made America … Continue reading →

Posted in politics, prose | Leave a comment

one among many

Posted on Friday, 2002 April 05 by Anton

Isaac Asimov (1920-92) died of AIDS, from a tainted transfusion in 1983. (Locus; Ansible.) Was he the most famous such victim? Bill Detty asks: was he more famous than Arthur Ashe?

Posted in prose, sciences | Leave a comment

robots.txt

Posted on Wednesday, 2002 March 27 by Anton

Ftrain: Robot Exclusion Protocol. A story about the Google of the future. (From Amygdala. Scroll down a bit to see a rant on Star Treks past and present.)

Posted in futures, prose | Leave a comment

manufacturing consensus

Posted on Sunday, 2002 March 17 by Anton

Vernor Vinge’s mind-expanding novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) contains numerous postings on “the Net of a Million Lies.” But unlike the Usenet of our time, most of the senders have institutional names, like Khurvark University or Sandor Arbitration. … Continue reading →

Posted in neep-neep, prose | Leave a comment

author, author!

Posted on Thursday, 2002 March 14 by Anton

Yesterday a stranger asked me out of the blue – perhaps because she saw a book in my hand – whether I happened to know the name of the author of the book Nigger which was recently mentioned on Oprah. … Continue reading →

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