I recently stumbled across Karl Schroeder’s novel Lady of Mazes, and was absolutely blown away by it – read my review if you don’t believe me. He writes tightly plotted adventure stories set in some of the most amazing imagined worlds science fiction has to offer. He’s just been interviewed by John Scalzi, where you can read his thoughts on writing, world-building and the state of the genre at large. Go look.

The holiday season is upon us – which means an up-tick in the rabid fervour of advertisements to try to part us from our hard-earned cash. To distract yourself from their banal importuning, you could ruminate on recent research that indicates the rational and factual content of an ad is far less important than its creative and emotional content – at least as far as getting you to remember the product is concerned.

To follow on neatly from Jamais’ latest column on mutual surveillance, a judge has just ruled that the FBI can use your mobile phone as a ‘roving bug’ – provided they get a warrant first, of course. How long before the hacking communities get parity with this latest development? And how long before it gets misused, by either side?

Here’s one small upside to global warming, it will mean satellites experience less drag and thus stay in orbit longer. And here you might have thought global warming was a negative thing! Silly hippie…