Chris McGowan (1)

I grew up in California and currently live in Rio de Janeiro. I blog for the Huffington Post about culture, politics, environmental issues, and Brazil (my second country).

In the past, I penned articles about culture, the arts, and ecology for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine, Pulse!, Musician, and the L.A. Reader, among other publications. I was a longtime columnist for Billboard, and their first writer to extensively cover world music and digital media. During that time, I wrote "Entertainment in the Cyber Zone: Exploring the Interactive Universe of Multimedia" (Random House).

I co-authored the book "The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil," which has been translated into French, German and Japanese versions. The 3rd U.S. edition will be published by Temple University Press in December, 2008.

I'm also the author of the novel, "The Big God Network": "J.C. McGowan's science-fiction debut The Big God Network blends the wry humor of Kurt Vonnegut with the cosmic scope of Carl Sagan and the edgy near-future scenarios of William Gibson. The novel explores the clash of culture and religion in cyberspace and post-America; the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and higher powers; and the socio-cultural impact of "virtual life" on our existence, as it takes us on an imaginative, breathless ride through Bali, Tokyo, California, and exotic virtual worlds that range from the fantasy realm of Nigh Errant to the erotic Yabyum Palace to the evangelical Church of the Good Citizen."