Sturgeon’s Law

In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Sturgeon’s Law is the fourth of twelve general-purpose thinking tools that Daniel Dennett presents in the book’s opening section. Sturgeon’s Law states that 90% of everything is crap. The maxim is attributed to the science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon. In the 1950s he defended science fiction against …

Review: William Gibson’s Agency

I got bogged down the past two weeks with work, university, and other things but I am back today with a short review of William Gibson’s latest novel Agency. Agency is set in the same fictional future as his 2014 novel The Peripheral. Well, at least part of it is. To explain more would be …

Can a robot write a novel?

Last week an article about the bestselling Austrian/German author Daniel Kehlmann caught my eye. Kehlmann is probably best known for Measuring the World (original title: Die Vermessung der Welt) a historical novel / buddy book about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and geographer Alexander von Humboldt. In his newest book to be released in March, Kehlmann …

The Grand Master of science fiction is back

Scrolling through my news feed this morning I was thrilled to learn of a new posthumous novel by Robert A. Heinlein. According to my sources, The Pursuit of the Pankera is a parallel novel to Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast published in 1980. My well-worn copy is this post’s photo. Apparently the first third …