Toads Go Viral!

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Yesterday, Marianne was interviewed at the Toad Watch by a local television station.  Exactly one sentence made it into the item, which was aired late last night.  She's been fielding congratulations ever since.

There's just something glamorous about toads, I guess.  The Toad Watch is getting covered by everything from the Roxborough Review to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.   You can read the SPI piece here.


Lois Lane is dead . . .

The latest Ansible notes that Joanne Segal died on February 12 at age 93.  Ms. Segal posed for Lois Lane in the original Superman comic and married its co-creator Jerry Siegel.

So any new Superman comic book featuring Lois Lane will be necessarily a work of fiction.


And as always . . .

I'll be on the road tomorrow, so my next update will probably be sometime in the evening.  That's assuming that something strange and bloggable happens to me between now and then.

But when has it not?

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 64

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(the story continued)

"Why are you surrendering when a tenth of what I've seen today would destroy humanity forever?"

"My good sir!" the Ski head said.  "It wouldn't be fair."

"Since when are wars fought fair?"

. . .  giggled.  "It wouldn't be fair."

The ending of the story was written telegraphically because as I tied it up, I realized it had been done before.  By Larry Niven perhaps?  Anyway, it had been done, and well, and so I couldn't revamp and improve the story toward eventual publication.

Plagiarism just wouldn't be sporting.

And another attempt:

2.  At age 17, he fell in love with a princess.  That he was a commoner was not the barrier it would have been in prior centuries.  All that was required was money.  He had no money.  Besotted with love, he set out to get it.  He was already working three jobs and making art from moments snatched from the day.  So he thought of Thoreau's advice -- "Simplify, simplify, simplify!"  He sold his furniture.  He sold his shoes.  He sold his books and rugs and alarm clock and pencils.  He sold all the clothes but those he was wearing.

And it wasn't enough.  His love, his life, was married to a condom manufacturer.

Still he simplified, still he [something].  "Let nothing remain but the essential!" he cried.  "Let nothing show but my love."

Okay, this one is going pretty good.  We'll see if it wraps up well.

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R. A. Lafferty, Saved from Drowning

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Because I once wrote the introduction to the R. A. Lafferty collection Iron Tears, a fan of the great man contacted me to see if I had any idea where he could get ahold of a copy.  So I did a little research and discovered that every single book Lafferty ever published is out of print.  Let me repeat that.  Everything ever written by one of American literature's greatest short fiction writers is out of print.  Which means, as a book dealer friend told me, that a copy of Iron Tears would probably go for a couple hundred bucks.  The cheapest anybody is offering the Ace paperback of Nine Hundred Grandmothers for is fifty dollars!  Eek.

It appears that the Lafferty estate was systematically withdrawing his works from print preparatory to offering the collective copyright for sale.  I poked around and found the following statement by Elizabeth Kennington, the executor for the estate:

On May 1 the Lafferty Estate tentatively plans to sell the rights to the entire literary output of the science fiction writer, R.A. Lafferty, to the Locus Science Fiction Foundation for $70,000 plus 50% of any future profit from the Lafferty rights in excess of $30,000 in any single year. The sale will proceed unless someone makes a more favorable offer.

The Locus Foundation is the legal entity which owns Locus Magazine, and has a mandate to perform good works in the service of science fiction.  So this is welcome news.  I have no idea what they plan to do with the dozens of novels and hundreds of stories they've just acquired -- presumably they'll tell us when the deal is finalized in May.  But I can't think of anybody I'd trust more with the rights.

Incidentally, if you've got any duplicate Lafferty books, this is probably a good time to place them on eBay.


Above:  Me standing before one of the worst portraits of Yuri Gagarin ever committed to canvas.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 63

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December 13, 2008

For some reason I was thinking about Kuiper Belt objects, such as Quaoar.  Also the James Webb Space Telescope.  The [mention Vinge]? suggests that I was toying with writing an essay.

I cannot make sense of the top line, though clearly it's related.

The circles below were doodles when I was thinking of writing a series of stories on plates and then firing them in one of those do-it-yourself-kiln places.  I was looking for subjects that would naturally lend themselves to circles.

Most commonly, I toy with the notion of writing planet stories on plates.  So far, I've been stopped by my lack of artistic talent and the fact that the plates would look a lot better if lightly background-painted as actual planets.

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APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

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I'm adding a new feature to the blog.  From now on, every Sunday I'm going to post an up-to-date list of all scheduled upcoming appearances.

Here's the first:

April 22-24      Norwescon

                         Sea-Tac, WA

May 19-22      Nebula Awards

                        Washington, DC

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

August 19-21   Renovation (Worldcon)

                         Reno, NV

Sept. 21            KGB Bar (reading)

                         NYC  

And in 2012 . . .

Aug. 31- Sept. 2   Chicon 7

                             Chicago

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The First Day of April

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This being April First, I of course thought of playing an April Fool's Day prank on my blog.  But I decided against it.  I am, after all, too mature for that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, God is not.  I woke up this morning and discovered that it was snowing.

Above:  My back yard.  In springtime!

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 62

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Sket

Against all expectations, the signing of the peace protocols with the Ski went well.  Their armada, though still clearly superior to the human forces, parted to make room for our ambassador.  Their head admiral was waiting, dapper in his dress whites.  His officers smirked from two lines to either side.

"Don't show fear," the Old Man growled.  We'd just passed through parsec after parsec of the Ski forces.  One tenth of what we'd seen would crush the human forces forever.

And yet they were suing for peace.

"The battle of Sedna," their admiral said.  "Brilliant.  The pincer movement between Uranus and Pluto?  Beyond textbook.  The guerrilla movements on Luna?  Simply more than anyone could expect.  You won fair and square."

The Old Man looked left, looked right.  There were weapons in this row that could turn planet Earth to dust.  He asked the question none of the rest of us dared:


(to be concluded in two days)

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