"‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is."

John le Carré (via slowrain)

"Get coffee. Stare at the screen. Write a bunch of things that aren’t any good. Then comes that moment when I’ll say, ‘That’s still not any good.’"

Dave Barry, talking about how he writes. (via 1st BOOKS)

Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale →

The Onion, of course. This is absolutely perfect. (via epippen)

"As another high school English teacher, here’s my take: Unlike ‘awesome’, ‘epic’ isn’t a particularly useful word in its main sense. (And it never meant “truly amazing.”) When did anyone describe anything as epic besides the Odyssey and the occasional really long movie? As an English teacher, this slang redefinition is a boon. Since ‘epic’ now means “really cool in a beyond-other-things sort of way”, when you do teach a REAL epic, it will automatically be cool, because it is, by definition, epic. And when the kids read it, and realize that what happens to the main character is even more epic than anything they’ve ever called epic, the book will be even better to them."

craigiest on reddit. (via dailymeh)

Previously on Lost : What?

Lost returns Feb. 2. Cannot wait. (via johnaugust, via chriszabriskie)

Classic. I can’t wait for it to snow. (via theroomaboveher)

"Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It’s a scream. It’s written like this: “I checked out with K19 on Abadabaran III, and stepped out through the crummaliote hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Bryllis ran swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored mountains. The Bryllis shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough. He was right.” They pay brisk money for this crap?"

Mystery writer Raymond Chandler, writing a letter to his friend H.N Swanson in 1953. Honestly Chandler’s fake-SF is better than a lot of the real stuff.

The Fiction Generator →

Trying to come up with a great idea for your next SF/fantasy story? Check out this handy chart. One caveat, though — all the protagonists are male, so some gender-switching might be in order.

(via natsura)

More book titles, if they were written today →

You know, as a new title for the Bible, “A Million Little Signs and Wonders” doesn’t sounds half bad.

Robot Programmed to Love Traps Woman in Lab, Hugs Her Repeatedly →

Basically the headline says it all. It won’t be Terminators that take us down — just out-of-control robots intent on hugging.

Via dailymeh, via dirty.ru.

Piper Palin fixes her brother’s hair. Piper Palin for president!!

"They wind up in London’s crowded Waterloo station where they have to dodge bullets from a CIA sniper, that of course is the sort of thing which happens to us all the time. But there are inaccuracies. The Guardian stylebook clearly states that if you are under a hail of bullets in a public place from an assassin run by a deniable intelligence unit, you have to duck into the nearest internet cafe and start blogging about it to keep the readers informed."

From The Guardian’s review of The Borne Ultimatum, via here.

So in 20 years will science textbooks contain a screenshot of this tweet announcing water on Mars? →

(Not that the kids will be using textbooks, anyway, when they can just look everything up on Wikipedia. Also, “FTW.” Hee.)