Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 83

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January 2, 2009

Write a book -- "The Book of Light"

This probably refers to a small lamp I got at Ikea, made of something like nine swiveling Lucite or Plexiglas squares.  If so, I wrote short-shorts which I then wrote on the leaves, as a sort of instruction manual for life, starting at birth and ending with death.    Unfortunately, the ink slowly removed itself from the surface.  Someday I'll take a diamond-tipped pen to the plastic and then wipe in paint to make the letters stand out.

D & S -- "Why are you so passionate just before I go to a social function?"

"You may not be technically a man, yet you are unquestionably a male.  Thus, the only way I can ensure your fidelity is to roger you so repeatedly that it will take hours for your fluids to replenish themselves."

"You are surprisingly frank."

"I could see the suspicions forming in your mind.  So I confirmed them.  Had I not, who knows what you might have done?"

Don't bother looking for this in Dancing With Bears.  I didn't use it.  It just wasn't a very good notion.

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APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

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Joanna Russ is, as all anticipated, dead.  God bless her.  May her memory remain green and her books regularly return to print.

Meanwhile, I have added another convention to my schedule -- this one in Pittsburgh!  I love that city.  People who have never been there think I'm joking when I say that.

May 19-22      Nebula Awards

                        Washington, DC

                        (There's going to be a group signing, and this is the first event 

                         I'll be attending at which copies of Dancing With Bears

                         will be available)

May 27-30       Balticon

                        Baltimore, MD

                   

June 7              New York Review of Science Fiction Reading

                        NYC

July 15-17        Readercon

                        Burlington, MA

July 22             Philadelphia Fantastic (reading)

                        Moonstone Arts, Philadelphia

July 23-24     Confluence

                         Pittsburgh, PA

August 19-21   Renovation (Worldcon)

                         Reno, NV

Sept. 21            KGB Bar (reading)

                         NYC  

And in 2012 . . .

Aug. 31- Sept. 2   Chicon 7

                             Chicago

Above:  Greetings from the future!  On a typical Twenty-First Century Saturday in April, you can expect crowds of from 100,000 to 150,000 people on Broad Street in Philadelphia.

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Zen Globe

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Marianne and I are working on another project.  The above is only an interim state.  However, I put it in the garden and photographed it because, glowing in the sunlight, it was so obviously a zen globe.

This must be what the globe in the Buddha's office looks like.


And because I like you guys . . .

I'm posting this link just in case you have a strong yen to spend Labor Day in Argonia, Kansas, and are looking for an excuse.  Click here.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 82

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A doodle, a snatch of random mercantile prose, and what appears to be a rather old calling card for Wonderland, a "head shop" as they used to be called, which opened sometime in the early 1970s and, mirabile dictu, is still going today.  From the coloration, I'd guess that it had been underneath a bookshelf or such for a few decades when I found it and pasted it in.

I used to buy underground comix at Wonderland.  I remember how depressing it was when the genre died out and one by one the congeries of small odd shops I could find 'em in, stopped carrying them.

I never bought any drug paraphernalia there, though.  That's a good way to get yourself on somebody's watch list.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 81

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"God's Own Martini"

An earthly martini is comprised of gin (never vodka!), vermouth, and a dash of bitters.  A celestial martini is compiled from raw experience, human warmth, and a dash of suffering.  Drink down the one and then the other.  Which do you prefer?  A

I have no idea why I abandoned that so abruptly.  The title was great!  And the illo of a "happy martini" was pleasantly pixilated.

Down at the bottom was a first draft for a business-related letter.  It's censored for privacy, but that's all.  Nothing scandalous, alas.  I appear to lead a disappointingly respectable life.  How on earth could that have ever happened to the young rapscallion I once was?

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Joanna Russ and the Art of Love

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The news flashed through the field almost instantly yesterday:  Joanna Russ has been hospitalized after a series of strokes.  Her friends are not optimistic.

This is terrible news.

Joanna was for the longest time one of the intellectual centers of science fiction.  Her knowledge of the genre was encyclopedia, she knew everybody, and her reviews were the most insightful in the field.  She wrote some of the most challenging and exhilarating fiction any of our kind has ever made.

There was some ferocious anger directed at her, back in the day, because her last several novels were, among other things, implicit criticisms of genre SF.  You're being soft-headed and lazy, they said.  You're not willing to do the hard work of thinking things through honestly.

But only by implication.  Only by example.

If you go back and look at her reviews and criticism, the one thing that comes through strongest is how much she loved science fiction.  How thrilled she was as a new writer to meet her heroes.  How she refrained from ad hominem attacks.  How full of praise she was for good work of all kinds.  What a force she was for the betterment of our literature.

All of Joanna's career was defined by her love of science fiction -- of what it was and of what it could be.  We should remember that always.

And we should reread her work regularly.

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Tom Bob and Me

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In today's episode of Fantomas, the great criminal appears in disguise as:

TOM BOB

détective américain

That's what it says on his calling card.  Pretty damn cool.  Nobody does Americans quite the way that the French do.




And continuing my efforts to make the world a more interesting place . . .


I'm adding a flourish to my readings.  I already make it a habit to sign and date the typescript I read from and then leave it behind for whoever wants it.  And now . . .


Last weekend, I was chatting with Nancy Kress and Eileen Gunn in the bar with a partial draft of "Of Finest Scarlet Was Her Gown," one of the three stories I'm currently working most intently on, open before me.  Idly, I dipped a finger into the wine and drew a candle on page 1.


When I got home and transferred all my scribbled changes onto a more current draft yesterday, I started to dump the old typescript in the trash and stopped.  It was just so very artifacty, I couldn't throw it out.  So I signed and dated it and set it aside.


My plan now is to bring it with me, the first time I do a public reading of the story and leave it behind for whoever wants it.  Presumably I'll do the same with other stories.  Those of you who like to collect manuscripts and such might want to keep this in mind.


Can't say when that will be, though.  I have to finish the story first.


Above:  There it is, the distinguished thing.

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