Saturday, March 01, 2008

Sci Fi is sucking me in

Ok ... I will admit to the fact that I'm a complete sci fi junkie, but in the course of the last 10 years, I've read very little of it, simply because I have had no time. The internet became a huge time spender (I don't waste time on the internet, I learn). However, I have discovered that the biggest time wasters are stupid computer games. I can get myself lost in these games for much too long.

And, I was reading quite a lot of non-fiction. Mostly Christian-based study stuff. Those books aren't something to curl up with in bed, but I would read until I was pooped and then drop into nanaland.

Because I wasn't spending hours in bookstores looking at the new sci fi that was coming out, I was losing touch with what was good. I have no friends that read this stuff anymore and no one is telling me what to find on the shelves. It was alright. I didn't have time for it anyway, right? Right.

Slowly but surely, sci fi has found me again. I'm addicted to several RSS feeds. I have a terrific feed reader and one of those addictions is boingboing.net (A Directory of Wonderful Things). They popped a relatively new author (since I quit reading scifi) at me in Elizabeth Bear. I've been reading her blog and an online book that she authors with others. Then, I discovered tor.com which offers me a terrific book each week in pdf form.

Why do I love sci fi? Because it gives me new and different ways of looking at life on earth. It continues to ask the question: "What if?"

What if things were not as we assume they are?

Answering that question always expands the limited way that we think. And I like having my mind pushed in new directions.

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