The losses accrue and reminders are daily this time of year. Barry N. Malzberg died a year ago yesterday. We lost Carl Sagan twenty-nine years ago today. Both writers had an outsized influence on me. One, as a mentor, and writer whose subject matter and style resonated with me as no other writer before. The…
I. The Nine Planets The first time I experienced a sense of wonder was upon arriving home from the Franklin Township Public Library and tearing into the book I’d just checked out: a nonfiction astronomy by Franklyn M. Branley titled The Nine Planets. I was still learning to read, and I can clearly recall wondering…
Note: I’m cleaning up the blog for its 20th anniversary. This episode of my Vacation in the Golden Age only appeared on Medium, at a time when I was experimenting with that platform. I am moving here where it belongs. I wrote Episode 40 of this Vacation in the Golden Age in October 2012. Four years later,…
[Friends who don’t care about s.f., skip this post and get five minutes of your life back.] I’m halfway through Gardner Dozois’ The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction and I’ve made an interesting discovery. First, some background: Short fiction is my favorite form, whether reading or writing. I read…
If I am not mistaken, today is ANALOG/ASTOUNDING’s 79th birthday. For those who don’t know, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION is the longest continuously running science fiction magazine around. It started up in 1930 (when my Grandpa was 10 years old!) and is still going strong today. (In the 1960s, the name was changed to ANALOG). It is usually considered to…
The February 2009 issue of ASIMOV"S has a great "Reflections" essay by Robert Silverberg called, "It Wasn’t All That Easy", in which he talks about the the time when he was a young, would-be writer, seeing all of his heroes sell stories and become famous, while he collected rejection after rejection. He wondered if he’d ever…
I neglected to check the mail yesterday, but when I went out to check it this morning, I found the March 2009 issue of ANALOG waiting for me. This issue contains the conclusion of Robert J. Sawyer’s serialized novel, Wake. Now I can take all 4 issues and read the whole thing straight through before the book hits…
A pleasant surprise when I got home today: I had in my mailbox the December issues of ASIMOV’S and ANALOG, both in their new size and format. I am particularly looking forward to relaxing to Part II of Robert J. Sawyer’s serial Wake.
First, congratulations to all the winners. This was my first time voting for the Hugos. One of the stories I voted for won a hugo, matociquala‘s “Tideline”. I also voted for Rob Sawyer’s Rollback, Stanley Schmidt for Best Editor, Short Form, and Barry N. Malzberg’s excellent Breakfast In the Ruins. None of these won, and…
I was up at around 5:30 AM in order to catch a flight to Boston for Readercon. For all of my non-sf friends, Readercon is a s.f. convention not quite like any other. As the name alludes to, it is almost exclusively about written science fiction. It is also attended by the Best of the…
I head up to Boston for Readercon early Friday morning. Alas, I am only able to stay through early Saturday evening. Given my short stay, here is my tentative schedule of events that I am hoping to attend while there. Friday 11:00: Science Fiction as a Mirror for Reality 13:00: -Esque No More: Transcending Your…
It was reported over the weekend that Thomas M. Disch committed suicide over the holiday weekend. I read only one of his books, Camp Concentration way back in October 2000, while sitting in a jury pool in a Hollywood courthouse. I was never called to server that day. According to my list, I wasn’t that…