My gut feeling is that SF as we know it today is actually a heavily propagandized field that grew out of a specific set of cultural trends running in the USA and Europe between 1918 and 1950, during the post-imperial modernization period.

In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.

Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.

I was an early adopter: have been on the internet continuously since late 1989, barring a six-month loss of access in the early 90s.

Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that's just scratching the surface.