ABCnews included quotes from an interview with me for the story, “9 Sensational Sci-Fi Ideas That Came True: Predicting Crime, Flying Cars, Space Tourism first appeared in Science Fiction” by Ki Mae Heusner.

My regular monthly column, Today’s Tomorrow’s, came out today.  This time I wrote about space elevators.  See Riding the Wire:  Space Elevators over at Futurismic, which you should all be reading (for way more than my column).  I also got to talk about local filker and physicist (what better mix is there in the world?) Jordin Kare in the column.

I had a lovely lunch with an organizer for a reading I’ll be doing Friday, at the Redmond Association for the Spoken Word, or RASP.

Now, the rest of the day has been a craze of meetings at work and bill paying and dinner ingredient buying.  In other words, perfectly ordinary and a bit stressful since there is NEVER enough time in any day to get everything done.  But these things all made me smile.

We often think our stories need to be big – to be about saving the whole world from aliens or throwing the one ring into a lake of fire.  This is as strong a story, humanity writ strong, all inside the stakes of a single poor family unlikely to ever be noticed by the world at large.  And it works extraordinary well.

And did I say the dialogue is awesome?  I want to write dialogue that real.  I really do.  I want to write words that fall out of characters mouths full of personality and toughness and setting, that aren’t wasted or superfluous and yet all sound natural.

There is also a book, by Daniel Woodrell. I read the opening (available on the films main website), and ordered the book.  It’s voicy, which is also something I would say about the movie.

You can watch the trailer on IMDB. It’s not sf, not genre fiction at all, but it is about being human, which is something the best genre fiction is also about.

Now, I write science fiction for a reason – I love it to the core.  I love thinking about technology and people and the future.  I have loved reading science fiction since I was a wee one (as I was reminded today by a friendly ghost from my past on Facebook).  Ted’s writing has never failed to give me that sense of wonder I crave when I start a new story.

We live in a time full of brilliant sf that is often overlooked by people outside of the genre, although the wonderful reception that Paolo Bacigalupi’s”Windup Girl” has received tells me there is hope for our best to do well in the general reading populace.  I hope a lot of people order this and love it – I’m sure it will be worth it.

Anyway, I loved Robert Sawyer’s WWW: Wake, which I recommended long before it got noticed for awards.  Well, the sequel came out this year, and I loved it, too.  It pretty much hits all of the things I read SF for.  Sawyer has taken a geeky topic (Emergent AI) and explored a lot of the relevant details and conundrums.  While he is a tiny bit heavy-handed on the conversations, I didn’t mind – they’re conversations I love to engage in.

So…if you like geeky, techie books with a good message, you’ll love WWW:Watch.   I, for one, am sick of reading about the apocalypse – zombies, disasters, 2012, and climate change with no win.  I ended up happy, smiling, and well-entertained by this book, which portrayed a future with more good choices and possibilities in it.

Almost anything else I’d say would be a spoiler…so just go listen to or read these….

Paolo gets a lot of points from me on world-building.  I believed this place and time. Of particular interest, I believe that we have come to a world where the balance of power is affected by corporations at least as much as by governments.  This book captures that, although it isn’t “about” that.  I think the core of The Windup Girl is an appreciation for the plenty and abundance we have now, and a warning.  But then, most good science fiction books are warnings.

Small warnings for the reader:  Not for the faint of heart, and prepare to spend some time with this one – it is a bit of work to read, but the work pays off. Well.

We attended a great wine social event complete with excellently interesting science people at The Wine Loft last night.  I could have kept talking to them for hours.  Everyone was interesting and erudite.

I’m quite ready to jump back into The Creative Fire now, and I’m certain the book will be better for the workshopping.  I’ve workshopped three out of four of my published novels in this type of setting, and I think they are stronger for it.  There’s nothing like getting expert readers to brainstorm with you about your novel!  It was particularly important for this book because I’m taking on a pretty big challenge with the Creative Fire – I’m writing a hard science fiction book based partly on a musical.  More later -watch this spot.

Thanks to Sarah Castle for organizing and Charles Coleman Finlay for laying out the groundwork with Blue Heaven and Paul Melko for giving me a recommendation to Blue Heaven years ago.

As a reward for hard work, many of us went to see The Karate Kid this afternoon.  AWESOME!

Oh — and for those who are curious about the fire, it’s still burning.  But I believe the Kachinas were doing a rain dance in the Arizona Mountains.  Thunder just shook the house and the sky has been slowly spitting out its tears onto the fire.

This month, in my Today’s Tomorrow’s column at Futurismic, I chose the ocean to write about.  Almost all of the research scared me.   We can’t afford to destroy our oceans.  I think we do it because they look so big.  But even all that water can’t hide our sins against it.  There are too many sins now, too many bottlecaps and grocery bags and inflows of raw sewage.  Maybe that will be one small good to come from the horror caused by the spill.  The oil slicks are visible.

Today, we move to a new phase where a few people will have read each completed manuscript; the same dance only smaller and deeper.

If you want to follow some of the pictures and bits of info, the twitter hashtag for us this week is #SH2010.

On a more personal note, I have been drunk on sunshine.  Coming here from a dreary Seattle spring and being in woods with bright blue sky and the kind of forest that allows humans to walk easily anywhere without a machete is like falling into happiness.  In Seattle, this time of year means that an hour of sun makes us smile and a day makes us so giddy we start proposing to strangers on the street.  Four whole days of sun and warmth is something so close to heaven I have been sneaking outside at every opportunity.  Now that we’re switching gears to what amounts to a slower pace, I’m hopeful I will drift into working on a story I need to finish and doing some more futurist research.

For those following this post series, the fire is still burning in the ridges above the city, but there was less smoke yesterday and there is some containment.

It is really wonderful to be in the company of writers for so long.  It is like tribe.  It feeds the soul.

The top picture is Bill Shunn by sitting near where we ended our hike and dipped our toes into the water.

And the second picture is Sarah Castle (Kelly), who was our hike leader today.  She is also the fearless leader of the workshop.

For the evening, a few of us wandered up to the Lowell Observatory and observed M-5 and also the bright sparks of the fire against the night sky.