In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.
Godzilla. The big, green G-man has had a profound influence on my creative endeavors and imagination since I was blueberry-avoiding kid.
Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from ancestors to progeny be clearly discerned.
If I could change one thing about myself I'd be less highly strung. I find my sensibility quite high maintenance.
If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic.
Real change occurs from the bottom up; it occurs person to person, and it almost always occurs in small groups and locales and then bubbles up and aggregates to larger vectors of change.
Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future.
There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is - certainly is one of them. But it's low on my list.
In the future, 'the networked' will sometimes form alliances with the Silicon Valley companies against Congress, but sometimes we are going to want and need to target our campaigns for change at the companies themselves.
Writers are a product of where we come from, but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.
Obama can't change his cool disposition, though it would be nice if he lost the vaguely grudging air he gives off that problems of management get in the way of ideas.
Where did the inspiring Obama of the campaign go, that Facebook pied piper who friended the whole world with this update: 'Change you can believe in.' What happened to him?
An overzealous parent is just one example of the kind of Problem Mom or Dad who pops up at track meets, threatening to put a damper on the day.
My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.
To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
I had several near death experiences or very, you know, close calls, if you may, in Iraq. You know, there was an incident where I was nearly kidnapped.
Death is the one predator we can't escape. But vampires have found the loophole so many of us crave. I think that's the allure of vampirism.
In shuttering Yucca Mountain, Obama makes it extremely likely that nuclear power in the United States will continue its long, slow, and extremely welcome death.
The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users.
How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.
Spend hundreds of millions; talk endlessly about issues; present 12-point plans for education, the economy, and the environment. But in the end, the election of our next president can turn on a gaffe.
