If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year.

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

The Magician's Land is a triumphant climax to the best fantasy trilogy of the decade.

I'm a fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberal, and I think fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberalism is an ideological stance that needs defending-if necessary, with a hob-nailed boot-kick to the bollocks of budding totalitarianism.

More often than not, piracy is a symptom of an under-provisioned market.

If I was a Marxist I'd call it the crisis of capitalism. Even though I'm not a Marxist, that seems like a not unreasonable term for the widening gap between the rich and poor that we're seeing.

I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.