Monthly Archives: July 2011

Kage Baker was big on lists. She loved the idea – both philosophical and neurological – of “permanent portable memory.” That’s often put forward as one the real paradigms of human advancement, the concept of maintaining memories outside of our … Continue reading →

Kage Baker loved the internet for the opportunity it gave her to talk to people on her own terms. She didn’t blog, because she didn’t feel she had the time – but she answered every email she received, she participated … Continue reading →

Kage Baker was always amused and mystified by what it turned out her audiences liked. She seldom saw it coming, and in fact considered her own judgement as to what would be a crowd-pleaser to be inexplicably poor. The letters … Continue reading →

Kage Baker was generally pretty scornful of American attempts at philosophers and metaphysicians. Thoreau, Emerson, Kerouac, Whitman … she found them all rather puerile and just a little too fraternity-minded. Being of both an historical and intellectual bent, she read … Continue reading →

Kage Baker had, for most of her life, a quiet sort of background faith that things would work out all right. She didn’t fret about enormous problems too much; she tried to keep her worrying down to a level where … Continue reading →

Kage Baker used to complain about the lack of humidity in California. She liked fog, she loved the smell of the sea, she liked her garden green. Living in the Los Angeles Basin, we grew up in what is technically … Continue reading →

Kage Baker, mostly, refused to speak on the telephone. This annoyed her friends and family, because they believed that she was almost always home. They were wrong – we just didn’t tell anyone when we went haring off, for the … Continue reading →

Kage Baker loved Santa Rosa plums above all other fruits of the earth. Even the enormous spectrum of apples was not so dear to her palette as this one, old-fashioned plum. Every summer saw a new steely-eyed hunt for them, … Continue reading →

Kage Baker loved The Marine Layer. That’s a fixture in coastal California – theoretically, it’s a meteorological phenomenon, but it happens so dependably it might as well be geography. Or architecture. In May and June, especially, the ocean edge of … Continue reading →

Kage Baker was fascinated by extinction. And cryptids. They sort of go hand in hand. She was well aware that all species go extinct eventually (so far anyway) and that most manage it without human intervention; but she was also … Continue reading →