Now I’m a big fan of rewriting and reinterpreting mythology and fantasy. My initial ambition as a college freshman was to take Southeast Asian myths and rewrite them in the vein of Western European myths. I’m totally into China Miéville’s subversion of the fantasy genre and using it to explore the sometimes faulty assumptions we make about capitalism and Western Civ. I really liked Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, which is a version of Beowulf told from a quite-unexpected viewpoint, and even liked the movie that it became, “The 13th Warrior”. I sometimes think that this is what underlay my childhood obsesssion with Disney animated films. I grew up listening ad nauseam to the soundtrack of Disney’s “Robin Hood” where Robin Hood and Maid Marian are foxes, Little John is a bear, and King John and his brother Richard the Lion-Hearted are literally lions. (“Oo de lally!”) I was enchanted by “The Little Mermaid” and especially “Beauty and the Beast.” One of my more recent ambitions is to write a novel based on Middle Earth after it has been completely industrialized and paved over, dealing with issues of urban sprawl, pollution, and global capitalism. As for a more small scale project, I’m trying to write a story that is really “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “The Hobbit” mashed-up together and set on a nanotechnology-permeated, post-Roman Empire-like society.

Renowned writer Arthur C. Clarke comments on information overload. From slashdot.org, natch.

I've just been pondering how too many people disdain activists. Yes, I accept the fact that people have jobs and have families to take care of and sometimes they can't afford to be idealistic. Survival ends up coming first. There is nothing wrong with that. You can't help anybody if you're dead.

I am deathly afraid of having to lay all my cards out on the table.

Would you trust a doctor who doesn’t care about his health?

I should have been doing this all along, all this time. Though I suppose November was not truly barren. I've but to send the fruit of my labor out. I have no good reason to procrastinate.