Voyage to Atlantus (sic) and Back

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It's Thursday, it's hot, and frankly my dear I don't give a damn.  So I'm going down the Shore (as we say in these parts), rather than waste my day writing brilliant fiction you'd love to read.  "Let's spend a day being perfectly predictable," I said to Marianne.  "We'll drive to Sunset Beach" (where the concrete ship Atlantus -- that's how they spelled it -- above, sank) "and have lunch.  Then we'll go to the beach in Cape May Point to swim and look for beach glass and do nothing constructive for several hours.  After which, we'll go to the schooner American and order drinks (a martini for me) and a few plates of raw oysters.  Then we'll go to the market at the Lobster House and buy seafood for dinner.  And so home, possibly pausing en route to buy some fresh corn from a farm stand."

Rather than saying "But that's what we do every time," Marianne replied, "Okay."

We are well suited to each other, she and I.

And Tom Purdom chided me . . .

Gently, of course, because he is a gentleman, Tom Purdom called me on a point of fact and a point of nuance for yesterday's post.  The point of fact was that Franco was never overthrown.  He died peacefully, alas.  It was careless of me to imply otherwise.  But because the image of Tom Purdom, rapier in hand, slaying the monsters of histories is astonishingly cool, I'm going to pretend otherwise.

Factually, mind you, Tom is unerringly right.  Always.  Where he says one thing and I another, you should trust him unfailingly .

The point of nuance he wanted made was that the credit claimed devolved not to him but to all science fiction writers, myself (even) included.  But, that being the point of what he wrote, I'm not willing to steal his insight.  If you want to know what he actually meant, you'll have to read his essay.  Here.

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