Rare Indeed

Phillip K. Dick is one of my all time favourite science fiction authors.

The past decade has been a bit of a party as so many of his books have been turned into film.  Not always the best effort, but considering the general dearth of well done big screen science fiction, his stories rank in the upper 20%. A good story is a good story, no matter how crappy the Hollywood treatment.

So, I won't bother name dropping here - if you haven't heard of Dick and you're want to finding out what stories he has written that you already know, hit the Google or Wikipedia.

Instead, I offer you this rare Philip K. Dick interview.

This almost 2 hours long audio interview from '79 (yes my young followers, something incredible *did* happen before the 80's) comes complete with book cover slide show, thanks to some eager YouTube uploader.

Two hours of this guy represents a fairly significant life altering event. Be sure to allocate your time wisely.

I have not listened to the interview in its entirety.  I'd love to have it as a podcast though. Is that possible?

Readback

I haven't had a page view in over a month now.  I guess it's safe to say I'm not promoting this blog as well as I could be.  All sarcasm aside, I still haven't found a focus so I'm just throwing out a bunch of stuff, trying to find my pace or a pattern or a sign or for something to stick to the wall.

Eventually, this will be the world's most famous blog.  In the near future, when you all come to depend on it for your very survival, you'll have lots to read. In the meantime, I choose to believe that you are not leaving me any FEEDback in the comments, because you are actually leaving me READback by following my links and reading what you find there.

Clever move, you. I almost missed it.

Moving on, today's link is a collection of 40 free tools for authors by Piotr Kowalczyk. I don't recall where I came across this originally but no doubt you can find other interesting and related material there.

The article is a year old and aimed directly at ebook authors. Some of the products on this list have changed significantly, while others are not tools that help you "do writing". Others are obvious - Microsoft Word et al.

Still worth a look. There are gems like Calibre which I use regularly and Sigil which I am eager to try out. Just reading the list may provoke ideas.

Ooooo...provocation. Now there's something I can get behind.

Fact Check

Being Canadian has been difficult over the past year. As the first year of Stephen Harper's reign of terror comes to and end, I think I have a better understanding of how my American friends did during the reign of error, under George W. Bush.

But I must admit, it's a tenuous understanding at best.

For those of us trying to make sense of the political ebb and flow washing over our southern cousin, a weekly read of the Tampa Bay Times' PolitiFact.com helps to sort out the outrageous claims and downright lies that American politicians seem to get away with.

Fascinating, humorous, scary.