When I was in Portland a couple of weeks ago Spine and I talked a bit about science fiction. We went to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle and hung out with some his SF-friendly pals and Spine admitted that his knowledge of SF was sorely lacking. So I told him that I would buy him a SF book and as long as he read it, I would buy him another, and so on. We poured over the emabarrassing riches of SF books at Powell's and settled upon Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle as Spine's first foray into the genre. When he has finished that, I will have Powell's send him another one. I don't know which book will be next, but you can bet it is on this list.

Speaking of SF, the World SF Con is coming up in Boston and I'm thinking it might be fun to go--or it could be lame. bOING bOING's Cory Doctorow will be there as will Making Light's Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've never been to a Hugo Award ceremony and that might be cool. Anyone want to go?

UPDATE: I've been looking that list over and was shocked to discover Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight coming in at #38. I don't want to start a whole discussion about the differences between science fiction and fantasy, but if Dragonflight isn't fantasy, what is? I don't see Tolkien on this list so the author must think McCaffrey's work counts as SF. Hmmm.

UPDATE #2: Read this great Popular Science article about the difficulties currently facing SF writers w/r/t predicting the future. Upshot: the Singularity is in the way.
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