The Immortal Bud Sparhawk

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Very quickly, because I've got to do taxes . . .

Above is a snap from the dinner after last Friday's Philly Fantastic reading by Bud Sparhawk. (Bud's the bemused-looking one at the center.)

One thing most people don't know about the reading series is that afterwards we go out to dinner. And usually the group is so small that an audience member can invite him- or herself along and for the price of a meal get to hobnob with the glitterati. Pretty good deal!


Oh, and check this out . . .

The tech guys keep getting closer to making wearable computers seem sensible. Here's the latest version thrown together with off-the-shelf components. It opens a little slow, but hang in there:




I do think Ms Maes slings the word "genius" about a little loosely, though. Remember when you had to be Einstein or Picasso to get that title?

Still, a neat hack.

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The Few, the Proud . . . the TOAD WATCH!

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Last night I joined Marianne on toad patrol. Every spring, when the weather starts to get warm, you see, a young toad's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Unfortunately for local toads, the path to their mating territory at the old Roxborough Reservoir requires them to cross a road which has been increasingly busy of recent years, resulting in a real-life version of Frogger. As a result, the local toad population has been crashing.

So every night while the season is on, the road is closed and Marianne and her brave compeers go out to find the small creatures and usher them safely across. Alas, the road cannot be completely closed to cars (there are people who live on it), and so a significant fraction don't make it across. But the carnage is greatly reduced.

It's fun, in a weird way.

And what have I learned from the experience? It helps to bring along a thermos of something hot to drink and (if you end up standing at the barricades, turning away cars) something to read.


Oh, and incidentally . . .

There's a lot going on these days, so I think I'm going to be blogging daily this week. This isn't a change of guaranteed frequency, though. That's still Monday and Friday.

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In Which I Invent A New Drink

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Brace yourselves! I was in Penzey's the other day and discovered that they sell juniper berries. Reasoning (correctly as it turns out) that a couple of them would bring out the juniper flavor of gin, I brought home a four ounce bottle and promptly created a new variant on the martini.

I call it -- for obvious reasons -- THE COMEDIAN!

Here's the recipe:

Comedian

Six parts gin

One part Noilly Pratt dry vermouth

Two juniper berries

One crescent slice of lemon peel

Shake with ice and serve stingingly cold.

Be aware, however, that Noilly Pratt has recently changed their formula, turning the dry vermouth that was legendary for its compatibility with the martini into just another aperitif. Be sure to get the real stuff -- Noilly Pratt classic.

To the right: The Comedian expresses his opinion of Noilly Pratt's meddling with perfection.

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Even More Edinburgh Elegance

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Remember last Wednesday's photo of the Burke & Hare Strip Bar? I'll bet you were wondering what kind of business would be right next door to it. Well, wonder no more! It's The 3 Stooges Barber Shop!

You have to wonder what sort of person thinks: Getting my hair cut by the Three Stooges? Sounds great!


And in unrelated news . . .

Kathryn Cramer has posted the contents list of her and David Hartwell's best of the year volume, and it includes my story, "The Scarecrow's Boy."

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The Story Race

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Here's something nifty. It's an old list which Marianne found when we were moving everything out of the living room and dining room to make way for the plasterers. Who were needed because the ceiling fell down. Which . . . look, it's complicated. So let's just cut to the race.

Many long years ago, in the good old days when mastodons roamed the earth and food was plentiful and summers lasted forever and my son Sean was a little boy, I resolved to make up a story for him every night -- or as close to it as I could manage. Because you're never always up to making up a good story.

To keep me focused on the task, I created the institution of the Story Race. Every night when I made up a story, I wrote down the title. Every night I had to resort to a storybook, I wrote down the date. If I reached twenty days of stories first, Sean got one free Nintendo game rental, which was a very big deal back then. Twenty days of failure would net him one dollar. (The imbalance of value was so that he wouldn't be rooting against me.)

Above is one of the Story Race lists. As you can see, I always won. And here are the titles of the stories I told:

1. Comet Jack, the Giant Rider
2. Prisoner of Waldo
3. ROTTEN KIDS!!!
4. Arrested: A True Story
5. Smurgatroyd Goes to the Beach
6. JimJim the Pirate
7. Geese Are Never Silly
8. The Runaway Teevee
9. Alligator Express
10. Good Ladybugs Make Good Neighbors
11. Jack, Who Wasn't a Thief
12. How Smart, How Wise, How Like a Goose!
13. 3 Little Triceratops
14. Angry Buses
15. The Hungriest Boy in the World
16. Voyage to the Top of the Refrigerator
17. Hey Diddle Diddle
18. The Strongest Mouse in the World
19. The Magnetic Man
20. Piggy to the Rescue!

And only six nights when I was so tired I couldn't come up with something! Not bad at all. I believe that I made up hundreds of stories before the kid outgrew the need for them.

There are a couple of those stories that Marianne's been after me for over fifteen years to write down. Maybe I'll do that after the current novel's done. We'll see.

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Am I HAPPY?

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Okay, I've started getting congratulations from my friends, so it seems the news is officially out . . . I've been nominated for the Hugo in the short story category for "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled..."

People ask me occasionally, doesn't the thrill of being nominated lessen after winning the award five times?

The answer to which is: No, no, no, no, and no.

Here's the short story slate:

Best Short Story (448 Ballots Cast)

‘‘26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’’ by Kij Johnson (Asimov's Jul 2008)
‘‘Article of Faith’’ by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe Oct 2008)
‘‘Evil Robot Monkey’’ by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of NewScience Fiction, Volume Two)
‘‘Exhalation’’ by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
‘‘From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled’’ by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Feb 2008)


And . . . oh, bugger, I'm up against Mike Resnick again. Which is unfortunate because Mike has this superstitious belief that I always win. Which is far, far, far from true. In fact, I think I looked it up once and determined that I had never won when I was up against him.

Well, there's a bright side to this. I get to recount the tradition Mike and I have established in such situations. Before the ceremony, I go up to him and say something like, "Mike, since it will have no effect whatsoever on the outcome -- I hope your story wins."

And he replies, "On exactly the same conditions, I hope your story wins."

Congratulations to everyone! I'm happy for us all.

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The Elegance of Old Edinburgh

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This Wednesday's postcard from Great Britain is a special treat for the literary among us.  If you don't see why this is so amusing . . . well, there's always Google.

A Conversation With Marianne . . .

"So there's a Website which is doing a March Madness thing, pitting new fantasy novels against each other and letting the fans vote on them.  The Dragons of Babel just made it through the first round."

"Well, that's good."

"I dunno.  Maybe it would have been better if it had lost the first round and that was it."

"I see what you mean."

I have an aversion to the whole let's-drop-these-books-in-a-bottle-and-make-them-fight-like-two-scorpions thing because . . . well, because it's nonsense.  Right now my novel is up against Niven and Pournelle's Escape from Hell, which I haven't read yet.  But I quite enjoyed Inferno, the book to which it is a sequel.  So I wouldn't get any pleasure out of besting (if I did) what is presumably a worthy book.

Still.  I can remember what simple fun the competition would have seemed to me before I had a dog in the fight.  A great opportunity to gossip about books I liked.  So, what the heck, the site hosting the enterprise is Bookspot Central and you can access the thing here.

Just don't tell me when I drop out of the competition, okay?

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