While browsing Pearl River Market (a Chinese importer) in Chinatown/SOHO yesterday, I came across this banner hanging from the ceiling (click to enlarge): Underneath a meditative Buddha head is Herbert’s “Litany Against Fear,” which, you know, really does just kind of work as a Buddhist mantra.  Even if Herbert wrote it in the 1960′s and not in the Xin Dynasty.  Even if it was written as fiction.  So what if it’s from a science fiction novel about a future so far from now that humans think Earth is a myth?  I …

Here are some things I am grateful for: Having a wonderful girlfriend.  My family.  My late grandparents and relatives.  My friends.  My cat.  Having a couch.  Living in a great neighborhood.  Living near a supermarket, subway, and coffee shop.  Having mad h4ck0r skilz.  The writing community.  My writers group.  KGB.  My iPhone.  My cousin.  My plant collection.  The fact that my neck hasn’t been acting up lately.  This cup of sencha green tea I am slurping.  Agave nectar.  Barack Obama.  Having all my teeth.  Not needing glasses yet.  My college education.  …

Thirty-five years ago Frank Drake (of the famous Drake equation) and Carl Sagan (“billions and billions…”) came together and constructed a message to send to the stars.  They encoded it in a binary lattice whose dimensions were prime numbers.  And in the message they encoded a binary counting system, the structure of human DNA, the population of Earth at the time, and several other interesting things. Well, last week, on the 35th anniversary of that famous message, a scientist named Joe Davis did it again (Part I, Part II). He …

In the shameless self-promotion department, I hope you might check out my story, “The Spaces Between Things,” published in Electric Velocipede 17/18, and consider rec’ing it for a Nebula.  It’s about time travel and fetishes and war without technology and fireflies.  You can read it online here.  And you can recommend it here.

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present: Sarah Micklem, whose second novel, Wildfire, the sequel to Firethorn has recently been published by Scribner. She is working on the third book in the series. & Alisa Kwitney, whose most recent novels include, writing as Alisa Sheckley, The Better to Hold You and Moonburn, a two-part series about a young woman who contracts lycanthropy from her cheating husband. Her next project is a Vertigo graphic novel about a little old Jewish lady and the angel of death. Wednesday October 18th, …