Monthly Archives: May 2009

Last Sunday’s New York Times featured an article about A.I. titled “The Future of Artificial Intelligence” (www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/weekinreview/24markoff.html?hpw)  that mentioned Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near (2006), certainly one of my oddball favorite books. (One disclaimer: It’s too long and I couldn’t … Continue reading →

So right now I’m into Marcel Theroux’s new novel, Far North, coming out next month. It has much in common with several other post-apocalyptic novels floating in the literary air lately: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, … Continue reading →

The following review appeared in the Dallas Morning News, 5 April 2009. The first half of the book is compelling and odd: You know something is up, but aren’t quite sure what it is and or what to foresee coming … Continue reading →

After watching the big-budget drivel that is A Night at the Museum you can’t blame Ben Stiller for wanting to do a film like Tropic Thunder, which seems underrated because only two things from this movie got much press: 1) … Continue reading →

So I realize that Facebook now has over 8.9 billion users and is spicing up the lives of so many by reconnecting them to all those people in high school that Lord knows we should never forget or move on … Continue reading →

The following review appeared in the Dallas Morning News, 1 March 2009. I liked the novel, although the misery level was rather high. I received a condescending email from presumably the author’s agent, complaining that I didn’t gush about the … Continue reading →

So part of the charm of having satellite TV is watching films (usually late at night, when I can’t sleep) that I would never see in the theatre, but what the heck. Who made this movie The Strangers, and why? … Continue reading →

So a couple weeks back I was in the desert of West Texas near Big Bend National Park, staying at the house of park ranger Marcos Paredes, who was the model for one of Nevada Barr’s characters in her new … Continue reading →

While doing research on a pandemic angle of a novel I’m writing, I stumbled across two nonfiction books that offer some useful context for the recent outbreak of Swine Flu: John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The story of the … Continue reading →