Mile Zero
No matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and
opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of
my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other
publications.
February 29, 2008
The Jury's Still Out on Tracy Hickman
Wired's Geekdad blog has a podcast, if my RSS reader is to be believed. I didn't listen to it (I think the blog itself is annoying), but this description of Episode 13 caught my eye:
The GeekDads are joined by Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary web comic, to talk about green toys, Doctor Who, and why Mormons make such great sci-fi writers.Maybe that's tongue in cheek. But assuming that it's not, and assuming that someone could statistically show that Mormonism is somehow conducive to good science fiction... well, it is a religion invented wholesale by a con man who claimed to have dug up and translated a set of carved tablets written in ancient Egyptian by migratory Israelites in Palmyra, New York, thanks to the powers of a magic rock in his hat.
No particular offense to the Mormons, because all religions are pretty crazy when you think about it, but that does sound like the product of a fertile imagination. Aliens and wizards might not be a real leap, growing up around that.
