The crystal entrance of the banquet hall was fogged by a pattern of handprints arranged in a sort of herringbone. Above the doors, an arching pane of etched glass proclaimed the name of their destination: THE MINGLER. Adam whispered to Runa that "the Mingler" sounded like some back-alley fiend. Despite her black mood, Runa smirked, and replied that he wasn't exactly wrong about that. "It's a little bit like being strangled with small talk," she said. Excerpt from The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft   ..read more

I never write about characters in isolation. And I can't think about a novel that is about a character in isolation. It would be a very experimental novel. Very much a break with what we consider the novel to be doing. Generally novels are about situating characters within social settings, and obviously within initmate relationships, personal relationships and families as well. That's how I conceive of character. A character to me is someone who is engaged in one or more dynamics at a given time, and I can't actually imagine what it would be like to write about a character who was just on thei ..read more

Farley goes quiet. I let the silence build until it fills every corner of the room. It leaks into his ears and his chest and his bladder and his bowels and every dark place in his mind. Very few people are comfortable with silence. It's one thing to be on a plane or in a train carriage or in a waiting room and to ignore those around you, but not when you know someone is expecting you to answer. Excerpt from Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham This scene describes something most of us know already, but it does so in a vivid way. I have often in the past found myself facing this quandary ..read more

Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised," he wrote, "by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable." Later he added, "I will admit to feeling a little contempt for those who can't keep quiet." Excerpt from The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel   ..read more

it was not unusual for us to go days without finding anything to say to each other. The vast emotional distances between the individual members of a Scandinavian family are forged early and reinforced daily. Can you imagine growing up in a culture where you can never ask anyone anything about themselves? Where "How are you?" is considered a personal question that one is not obligated to answer. Where you are trained to always wait for others to first mention what is troubling them, even as you are trained to never mention what is troubling you. It must be a survival skill left over fro ..read more

After Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google closed their offices in Seattle, I asked my boss, "Are we the last holdouts?" This week he finally relented and now we're all working from home. However, in his enthusiasm for the work community vibe, he did -- first thing Monday morning -- suggest that we all join a video meeting throughout the day, just to get some face time. I rolled my eyes as I sat on my couch thinking that would never happen. Maybe he just wanted to get a sense that people were still busy, but -- honestly -- that would just be a distraction. I like the people I work wit ..read more

I never respond to invitations. It just smacks of desperation. The only event I am certain to attend is my funeral, and I hope to arrive very, very late. Excerpt from The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft ..read more

There were turtles every morning, tumbling in the surf as it crashed against the reefs. Floating above and beside them, we were all slaves to the spitting waves. All but one, who wanted not to join in. It hid from the bubbling rays of the sun, below on the sand beneath a jutting rock. Now and then, just to take stock, it peeked out to spy on the floaters nearby. A sympathetic smile before cresting away, taking the splashing noise and goggly eyes, we rode the current to other joys and swayed for a little while more before saying our goodbyes ..read more

Like the uncertainty principle, the Drake Equation has had a layer of interpretation laid over it that obscures what it really says. In short, it's a series of guesses: about how many stars exist in the galaxy, what fraction of those have earth-like planets, what fraction of those planets have intelligent life, what fraction of those life forms would want to make contact, and so on. Drake originally calculated that ten sociable civilizations existed in our galaxy. But again, that was just an informed guess, which led many scientists to renounce it as flatulent philosophizing. How on earth, for ..read more

I was stalling. I would have to interact with humans as an augmented human... I had imagined it as taking place from a distance, or in the spaces of a crowded transit ring. Interacting meant talking, and eye contact. I could already feel my performance capacity dropping. Excerpt from Artifical Condition by Martha Wella This is a series about a self-described "murder bot", an intelligent, self-aware machine that dislikes being around humans despite having an addiction for all of the media we create. Reviewers call Murder Bot "anti-social", although it clearly has a tendency to care ..read more