Flashforward

Robert Sawyer's novel takes a starting situation I found pretty interesting (due to an experiment gone wrong, everyone in the world gets a two minute glimpse of their lives 21 years in the future), and uses that as a springboard to examine the conflict between free will and determinism.

And it's soon to be a TV series. The book provides an excellent tapestry for a show, and so far it seems to be making changes that make it (a) less cerebral, and (b) more likely to sustain a 3+ season TV series.

Flashforward's inspired me to seek out other sci-fi novels with strong 'What if' premises and good characterisations. Anybody got any suggestions?

More linkage

In lieu of original content, I give you:

A pretty cool SF story about a wiki-driven democracy.

20 tips for achieving goals. One that I particularly like is, "Make it a rule to never skip 2 days in a row." And in related news, Lifehacker presents the idea of beta-testing your goals.

Got questions about biology? Ask a biologist.

Holy crap! 5 steps to building your own backyard hydrogen-fuel cell generator. You'll need solar panels, electrolyzers, steel piping, a gas tank, an inverter, and a few other cool bits and bobs, including a hydrogen sniffer. Which makes sense.

I'm off to play my first game of poker in 15 years tonight. The useful soyouwanna.com has a nice rundown on the rules of poker (warning: contains a lame and outdated Ross Perot joke).

This weekend, The Limit. I'm 28 pages from the end of my rewrite. Then the typing in and proofing commences. Hopefully it'll all be done by 17 March, when this year's Iron Game Chef competition begins.