Monthly Archives: December 2010

Words on a Fertile Shore: The Evolution of Science Fiction and Fantasy Language

Posted on December 28, 2010 by

While eating delicious (and incredibly over-filling) holiday meals this weekend, I found myself thinking about Google Labs’ new Ngram Viewer. In my day job I deal with statistics, semantics, ontologies, and computational linguistics all day long. Which makes the Ngram … Continue reading →

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The Future is Now: Is Hatsune Miku William Gibson’s Idoru made real?

Posted on December 21, 2010 by

There’s a new top-selling vocalist in the J-Pop genre: Hatsune Miku’s voice has been featured on gold-selling albums with Japanese bands like Supercell and Livetune (all links are to web sites in Japanese). Her singing has graced anime credits, and … Continue reading →

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A Holiday Gift Guide for the Genre-inclined

Posted on December 15, 2010 by

If you’re like me, then you probably haven’t started your holiday shopping yet. If that’s the case, then let me borrow from Douglas Adams and offer some advice: DON’T PANIC! (I hope those letters are friendly on your display). Regardless … Continue reading →

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Where Do We Go from Here? Utopia in Contemporary Science Fiction

Posted on December 8, 2010 by

Over the weekend, science fiction author Charles Stross posted a call for more utopian speculation in contemporary science fiction. I was weaned on Huxley, Wells, Skinner, and Orwell, and so Charles’ call got me thinking: why has the utopian sub-genre … Continue reading →

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