Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Taking care of my hands

The main drawback of spending eight hours a day typing is the increasing finger and hands pain.
This is a real problem.

Cracking the joints is counterproductive – in the long run, it can have very bad consequences.

workraveicoSo, apart from firing up WorkRave and timing my daily routine to minimize traumas, I’m currently going through my old massage handbooks to find a few quick and easy solutions.
Granted, arthritis cannot be solved by simple massages, but at least a symptomatic solution can be found.
This is not my first post on the subject, but I think the matter can be of interest to writers and intensive keyboard users out there.
So, here goes. Continue reading →


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Between the desert and the deep blue sea

dune-cover1I’m going through the final push on the first draft of my new novel, a science fiction work that has gone under the working title of Matter/Energy, and later under the tentative title of Nothing Exists Alone.
It’s a big, sprawling hard SF story, which touches upon politics, and environmental sciences, while telling basically a (hopefully!) thrilling adventure yarn. It connects closely with my passion for oceanography, and takes place almost entirely beneath the sea.

And during the weekend I went back to Frank Herbert’s Dune, because I needed to fine tune my writing1 – and Herbert’s novel is a prime example of what I’d like to do, in terms of economy of writing.
Even though I’ll never be as good as Frank Herbert, of course. Continue reading →


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The politics of dancing

Boris+Vallejo+-+Conan+ouvrant+une+bouteilleAnd so the old story popped up again – the fact that certain genres and certain types of stories have an innate ideological color.
Stuff like, basically, “sword & sorcery is right wing literature“1.

I find the notion scary enough when expressed by people that usually do not read the genres they are politically or ideologically tagging. The thing becomes absolutely creepy when it’s writers that say stuff like that.

Is fantasy really intrinsically ‘fascist‘, horror ‘misogynistic’, science fiction ‘libertarian’ (whatever that means), steampunk ‘reactionary’…
Always and no matter what?
Isn’t it a little unlikely? Continue reading →


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Other People’s Pulps – Emilio Salgari

Emilio Salgari, the famous Italian writer of &...

Emilio Salgari, the famous Italian writer of “Sandokan”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night I thought about Emilio Salgari.
For my generation – and for three generations before mine – Salgari was the name of adventure well before Indiana Jones started plying his trade.

At the turn of the last century, Salgari was stranded in Turin, former capital of Italy but hardly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Trapped in a rather anonymous office job as a clerk, Salgari dreamed up exotic adventures and put them to paper.

Back when I was a kid I did not like Salgari very much – his were the sort of books that old aunts with fake smiles pushed on you saying “You will absolutely love this story!”, and making it clear that anything less than absolute love for Sandokan, or Jolanda, would cause no end of grief in the family.
So sue me, I did not love him that much – and yet no one was any worse for it. Continue reading →


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The end of the Empire

british_empire_board_game_boxMy course on the British Empire and its Controversies, held by the teachers and researchers of Exeter University and hosted by Futurelearn ends this week.

It’s been a great learning experience – fun, thought-provoking and all-around satisfying.
As part of the last installment, I have to write a 300-words-minimum essay.

“We’d like you to write a minimum of 300 words about what you think the legacy of the British Empire has been.”

And I thought… why not start and think about it and jot down some notes here? Continue reading →