141: August 2026

It's been a hot, wet summer, the kind that brings thunder and multiple tornado warnings in the same week. I've been neglecting the garden a little, but in my defense it's been either too hot or too damp to do much of anything. Sometimes you have to just let the wildflowers grow wild. I'll start weeding again in September as the soil starts to dry out.

What I wrote:

We're back on a regular writing schedule after turning in the book chapter last month! For Seeing & Believing, I wrote reviews of The Samurai and The Prisoner, Tony, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and The Dog Stars.

What I talked about:

I also returned to the Authorized podcast to discuss Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye, a very weird pop cultural artifact. It was written as a companion to the original Star Wars and intended to be the basis for a low-budget movie sequel, should Star Wars somehow not take off. Obviously Star Wars did, but if the universe had turned out differently, all we might have had was one big-budget movie followed by a low-budget adaptation of a sort-of original novel that features a swamp planet, an Indiana Jones-style plot to steal an artifact from an ancient temple, and Luke and Leia as love interests. Oh yeah, and it's racist and sexist as hell. Glad we ended up in the alternate universe where this didn't end up being the sum total of the Star Wars legacy.