It’s taken me a few days to write this post, as this hit me really hard. Two Tuesdays ago, June 4th, I had to say goodbye to my eldest cat Zoe. It has been such a hard loss that it has taken me this long to feel okay even writing a memorial post for her.
The night that we let her go, there was a powerful thunderstorm and the power went out. To me, it was as if the heavens themselves had opened up at Zoe’s passing.
Continue readingBook 7 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Getting closer to catching up.
Okay, so this is one of those books that I’ve meant to read for years and never quite got around to! I came close about a year ago, when I finally broke down and bought a copy… however, I left it on the floor next to the couch and a cat managed to puke on it. I only got around to getting a new copy a couple of months ago, and have finally read it.
The book in question is Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix.
As is clear from the title and the image, Horrorstör is a haunted house story set in what amounts to an Ikea! It is a quite entertaining story, though I wouldn’t exactly refer to it as “horror comedy” as it is referred to on Wikipedia.
Continue readingBook 6 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Way behind in reading now due to life, but working on it.
One of my big hangups in life is that I suffer from “already seen it” syndrome, as I just made up a name for it: if a story has permeated the public consciousness sufficiently and I am even familiar with a bastardized version of it, I am very unmotivated to visit the source material.
For this reason, in part, I had never gotten around to reading the novel that largely launched modern science fiction and horror, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The other reason I had never gotten around to reading it is because the printed versions of it, being an old public domain novel, have largely been very cheap and disposable, and I like pretty books.
But check out this Union Square & Co. deluxe edition!
This gorgeous edition includes lovely illustrations by John Coulthart, and finally convinced me to read the book.
There probably isn’t that much I can say about such a famous, hyper-analyzed book that hasn’t been said before, so I’ll share a few of my random observations.
Continue readingI’ve been hard at work in recent months on a new textbook on electromagnetic waves, and that has led me to dig deep into understanding a number of subjects, and their history, that I have only really casually considered in the past. One topic that jumped out at me is the phenomenon of so-called “anomalous” dispersion. This name indicates that it is different from “normal” dispersion, which is the phenomenon that causes a prism to break up white light into a rainbow, as illustrated on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover:
In a prism, the angle at which light is refracted by the glass depends on the frequency of light, i.e. its color. In normal dispersion, the higher frequency light (blue and violet) is refracted more strongly than the lower frequency light (red and yellow). In anomalous dispersion, roughly the opposite happens: lower frequencies are refracted more than higher frequencies!
I thought it would be fun to talk a bit about the history of anomalous dispersion, which gets at some of the physics of matter, and also allows me to share lots of pretty pictures taken by Robert Williams Wood, who studied the phenomenon in the early 1900s!
Continue readingRecently, I was interviewed for a LiveScience article about how cats land on their feet, and the article came out today! Here is the link for those who are interested in hearing me talk falling felines, yet again!
PS just a little reminder that my book on Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics is still out there, as is my more recent book on Invisibility!
Hi all, I’ve been rather overwhelmed with work lately (two PhD students defended, working on a textbook draft that is due in a few months, etc.), so I’ve been quite quiet here. I’ve got a few posts in the works, but I wanted to note that the audiobook version of Invisibility is 60% off at Audiobooks.com until May 10th!
I will be back in the near future with some more science and fiction blog posts.
PS: In case you’re wondering, I still get full royalties on the book even though it’s on deep discount!
Book 5 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Still behind in my reading, but have another that I will finish within a few days.
It doesn’t take me very long to read anything new by Ramsey Campbell — assuming I am aware that something has been released! As longtime readers of this blog are probably aware, Campbell is my favorite horror author, and one who in my opinion really demonstrates the literary potentials of horror. His writing is precise and subtle, and he is a master at conveying a mood with a careful choice of words.
So when I saw Fearful Implications, his latest compilation of short stories, had been released in 2023, it didn’t take me long to get it.
Before I talk about the stories, let me give a shoutout to the cover art by Ilan Sheady, which is clearly an homage to Henry Fuseli’s famous 1781 painting The Nightmare!
This is particularly apropos, because one of the stories in the collection is about fears of inadvertently copying the works of others! (Incidentally, read the linked Wikipedia article about The Nightmare, which may have inspired in turn some of the greatest writers of horror in history.)
Continue readingI just wanted to share a quick note that I just received the Italian edition of Invisibility, and it looks fantastic!
I am also happy to report that since the word “invisibility” is quite similar in Italian, they were able to keep my pun in my “Invisibibliography,” which is “Invisibibliographia.”
It’s been almost a year since Invisibility came out, so I’m taking the pinned post about it off my blog, though I will still discuss invisibility and the book whenever I have a good reason to. But otherwise on to new things!
Been rather busy lately, but wanted to drop a short note to let folks know that my friend Darlene has finally released a printed volume of The Story of Jasmine, her fantasy graphic novel (“comic” seems to reductive) that first appeared in Dragon Magazine for a short run in 1980 and she has been continuing in recent years!
I met Darlene for the first time back in 2019, when I ordered a copy of her very impressive, ahead-of-its-time card game Jasmine: The Battle for the Mid-Realm Collector Card Game. By a happy coincidence, Darlene lives relatively close to me, so we met up so that she could teach me the game, and we’ve been friends ever since! (And kept in regular contact during pandemic isolation to keep our sanity!)
Darlene has been continuing her story of Jasmine on Patreon for the past few years, and decided it was time to release a print version of the story so far. It is a charming and intriguing fantasy tale, and at the same time a wonderful part of fantasy history!
The link I shared above is for print-on-demand copies of Jasmine, but if you happen to be going to GaryCon this week, Darlene will be there with some copies available!
The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. 
Skulls in the Stars 