I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas (where applicable) and a wonderful weekend (where applicable) and whatever kind of positive sentiment that is as close to universal as possible.

I haven’t renewed anything this week, mainly on the grounds that I’m at my mom’s house and it’s hard to concentrate with a Yorkshire terrier begging for my attention every third minute. On the plus side, I just finished a piece of nonfiction that would make very good reading for anyone looking to write or enjoy science fiction, a popular science book called We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson. I’m not one to argue that a writer must have a grounding in science or engineering to write good science fiction, but I am one to argue that learning about such things is excellent fuel for the imagination. Yeah, ideas are cheap, but that doesn’t mean a writer should ignore any opportunity to find one. Tap water’s pretty cheap, too, but that doesn’t mean you should leave the faucet on all night.

A writer’s prompt I thought of while I was reading:

Physicists discover the most fundamental building block of the universe. Maybe it’s a wave or a particle or a wrinkle in space time or all of those things because the quantums are totally bonkers. It also turns out that this thing is sentient.

Here in a little bit I’m going to start We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I’m not sure if I’ll get any good science fiction ideas out of that one, but you never know! Sociological science fiction is a fine and noble thing, and moreover, it’s important for any writer to read as broadly as possible. It can only help.

(This also is true if you’re not, you know, actually a writer.)

Anyhoo, I’ll be back next week with a review of something or other. I think I’ve got an interesting one lined up for you. It’ll be the last one of 2017! That’s bananas!