Category: Groovy Things

Twin Peaks is the Twin Peaks-iest. I thought about reading for a while, but instead I poked around on the internet. I’m reminded that Facebook is the worst. C’mon cosmic mojo! It’s a weird week and it’s only Tuesday (Wednesday?).

I picked up this book, UNIVERSAL HARVESTER, from the library based on this blogpost about it. Which I found by noodling around on the internet.

Counterfeit Monkey. A text adventure game. Sort of like THE PRISONER. Only it’s chockablock full of wordplay and puns. If you’re into that kind of thing.

“Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil.” The rest of this Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote is worth reading.

No one does worst-case scenarios like science fiction writers. If you want some doom and gloom, Charlie Stross serves up a pretty big dose.

Back in the early aughts, I played this weird puzzle game called THE STONE. Someone’s recreated it entirely here.

The smoke blew away in the wind and the rain. No Mary Poppins though. Some people were reading books but I couldn’t quite see the covers. Damn. A lot of hustle and bustle while staying in one place. Some accordion is being played. Somewhere. (I know where.)

Prospect: This SF movie looks pretty great.

This Bowie Book Club podcast predates the #bowiebookclub on Twitter. I’ll get around to listening to some of this eventually.

An article about the language of Easter Island. Can’t get much more esoteric and weird than that!

Powell’s Books staff all do a top five books every year. Here’s 2017. There’s a ton of books! Pretty sure you can find something you’ll like in here.

I’ve been trying out this Mastodon thing a little bit here. It’s interesting. I’m not really sure I understand or if it’ll catch on. But it’s sort of fun noodling around with it. This ones sort of a book chat instance called Bookwitty.

Smoke everywhere (or at least nearby). The clocks will be the ruin of us all. Delirious, delicious in the sunshine. Small children trying to defenestrate.

I like every other RPG book Zak Smith has worked on. Probably be buying this one too.

Been thinking about joining one of Portland’s Neighborhood Emergency Teams…

The Tip Off. This looks like a pretty good podcast about (or of?) investigative journalism.

The LeVar Burton Reads podcast is really, really good, yall.

This guy, Shuja Haider, is a pretty smart writer. Worth checking out.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum shouted a lot. Just saying. A new coffee pot makes delicious coffee. Driving all over Hell’s half acre. It’s for a good cause! Shooting up aliens.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). A couple friends swear by this… I don’t know…

“10 Weirdest Science Fiction Novels That You’ve Never Read.” Man, I just can’t resist lists like this. But this does look like a great list of books. All of these books look super bonkers and great.

Standard Ebooks wants to make ebooks great again for the first time, I gather. I wish them well! They’ve got a nice collection of public domain works.

Here’s another Dwarf Fortress thing. It just seems to inspire so much creativity in people.

Bone-Grubber’s Gamble. A fun little writing game for two.

The sun came out. No more tears at the bus stop. All the tiny words just kept looming. Sometimes you hate where you’re from and you want everyone to know. Or maybe you don’t realize, but everyone else does?

I want to get behind this microblog thing, but I’m having a hard time coming up with a use for it…

SHADOWBAHN by Steven Erickson. I love the name of this book. It sounds pretty good too. (nytimes link)

I can get behind this comic , MICHAEL CRAY, where an assassin hunts down evil alternate universe versions of the Justice League.

“Panther’s Rage,” the comic the BLACK PANTHER movie is loosely based on, is pretty good. I’m reading it through the Marvel Unlimited app.

My friend Alex has a radio show on Freeform Portland. He’s put some of his shows up on Mixcloud. Good stuff!

You know it’s bad, when you’re asking a quasi-stranger at the bus stop for life advice.

Because sometimes you really need to look at some axolotls.

“In the Maze” by Dayna Tortorici. She grapples with what 2016 means for men and women and her personal reaction to it. Feels emotionally honest. Thought-provoking.

Robin Sloan chats with Warren Ellis. (I haven’t read it yet, but it’s bound to be interesting.)

++Speaking of Warren Ellis, his email newsletter is pretty much always worth reading. (Now if only Gmail would stop dumping it in the “Promotions” category.)

It’s a list. But these comics look pretty good. I can vouch for THE GIRL FROM THE OTHER SIDE.

Sometimes you’re an aardvark, but you think you’re a wombat.

Boy, it sure is good to see RU Sirius still kicking around.

Chess AIs are getting weird. (It’s YouTube.)

Some new, beautiful editions of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

Future Fossils podcast. A pretty inspiring conversation with Jamaica Stevens, a woman I’d never heard of, but who’s thinking some Big Thoughts.

These Australian science fiction movies look pretty great.

A drop in the vast internet ocean.

Ooooh, cool AR stuff.

Voyages in sentence space. Pretty cool procedurally generated “sentence gradients”.

There’s like three cool things on Twitter. #bowiebookclub is one of them.

I dig the aesthetic in this mystery game set in 1924 San Francisco.

How propagandists undermine scientific research/conclusions. It’s good to be aware of this stuff.

Yeah, I also have a ton of things open on my phone’s browser too…

Samuel R Delany is an amazing science fiction writer. Check out this review of his book NOVA.

A very mysterious game about a boat! What’s not to love.

James Baldwin’s really bubbling up all over the place these days. That’s all to the good. A brilliant writer, his work still vital and relevant today.

Ta-Nahesi Coates is one of our best contemporary writers. Based on the two books I’ve read in this list, I’d say they’re probably all worth reading.

Ishmael Reed’s MUMBO JUMBO has some fierce, unrelenting language. Amazing stuff.

Click, clicky, click. (Or tap, tappy, tap.)

Abigail Nussbaum writes some pretty great stuff about movies, tv, games, and etc. Check it out.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database: If you ever want to know about some old (or new) SF or fantasy writer. (I thought this book by David Bunch looked interesting, but I have no recollection about where I heard about it.)

A brief post about Pynchon that get a little bit at why I really enjoy his stuff. Entropy, cybernetics, Norbert Wiener.

I’ve been reading Steven Shaviro’s blog for a long time. He’s always got fascinating things to say about science fiction books and movies. I’ve had this tab open for a while, as you can see from the post title (“Favorite SF of 2016”). (Sadly, he left UW right before I got there.)

A great anecdote about a kid meeting their favorite author. If you need to restore your faith in humanity a little, this is a good one.