It’s high time I ran a sale. The audiobook of Eternity’s End is on special at Chirpbooks for a limited time, for just $1.99. That’s crazy cheap for a 22-hour audiobook read by a Grammy-winning narrator. It’s one of my favorites. (Warning, one reviewer didn’t like it because there’s some mild swearing in it.) While you’re there, you can pick up some of the Chaos books on sale, as well. They even put together a special bundle.
It’s been a while since I had an interview, but now that’s changed. I recently had a talk with JR Handley of the Blasters and Blades video podcast. It was good fun, and I hope I gave some interesting nuggets of wisdom. Or at least interest.
You can see it on YouTube. (BTW, this is me being animated! I might have to switch to decaf.)
Edit: The email of this post completely stripped out the YouTube video. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/LJsLwvqB2Ok
Rebuilding the front porch just didn’t seem like enough. After all, the porch had only been needed for the last ten or fifteen years. The roof has definitely been on the to-do list for longer than that. And now… it’s done! K’ching!
I was just going through the In Memoriam list on the website for the upcoming Glasgow 2024 Worldcon. I was shocked by all the names of folk whose passing I completely missed in the last year. This is the consequence of not paying enough attention to the news of my own field, and for that matter to social media. I have been staying away from all that for what seemed good and proper reasons, but clearly that has come at a cost. Here are just some of those on the list, people I knew and liked, or whose work I admired even if I didn’t know them personally. Though I just learned of many of these passings quite recently, I’d like to acknowledge them now.
John R. Douglas, editor, and one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet. Long overdue condolences to Ginjer Buchanan, also an editor, and one of the sweetest ladies you could hope to meet.
Michael F. Flynn, writer whose work I admired
D.G. Compton, writer whose work I admired
Michael Bishop, writer whose work I admired
Jim Hosek, writer, veterinarian, and tireless public servant for SFWA, as the Nebula Awards Commissioner. As a member of the rules committee, I worked with him for years. What a great guy.
Terry Bisson, writer whose work I admired
Tom Purdom, writer who was one of the first to give me a warm welcome to SFWA
Howard Waldrop, writer whose work I admired
Theodore Krulik, writer I knew from pleasant conversations at con banquets
Christopher Priest, writer whose work I admired
Steve Miller, writer whose work I admired and whose generosity to others was remarkable; I wish I’d gotten to know him better. Also, my wife and daughter are huge fans of the Lee & Miller oeuvre. Condolences to Sharon Lee.
Brian M. Stableford, writer whose work I admired
Vernor Vinge, writer whose work was so influential to so many of us, it’s hard to overstate it; also, from my one in-person time with him, a lovely gentleman.
Deb Geisler, a Boston-area fan, extremely active with cons and NESFA Press, and probably more than anyone else in the fan community, welcoming and gracious to me. Also, like me, grew up in northern Ohio. Condolences to her husband Michael.
I am both sobered and saddened at the losses, and amazed at all these humans I am privileged to have had some connection with, whether it just was from their work, or from personal interaction.
Finally, finally, accountability to the rule of law! I am amazed that the verdict came so quickly. The evidence must have been pretty damning in the jury’s eyes. A day of hope for democracy.
For six weeks now, I’ve been gulping a pile of Chinese herbs from my potions master that look like this, dissolved in hot water, twice a day. Yum. (No, not yum. Gaghh.) So how’s it going? Is it working? I’m glad you asked. Reports from my crack team of observers say that I appear to have more energy, more focus, more life. Myself, I can’t tell! But I believe them, and I’ll take the win. Also, my years-long morning cough has largely gone away. I feel subjectively that I’m less short of breath when I exert myself. Does that mean it’s working? I hope so.
Empirical evidence is less clear. My O2 readings are about the same—dipping down when I exercise and coming back up, as always. I’m using the same amount of supplemental oxygen. I won’t have pulmonary function tests at the docs until August, and then we should know if this regimen is working in a measurable way. Fingers crossed.
Though I had high hopes for better on the O2 end of things, I am encouraged by the energy, and the other things. Keep on kiting!
Magical. Almost supernatural, and yet Nature at its most astounding. In an instant, the world was turned inside out. The blazing corona around the darkened sun took my breath away. (And this was viewing through a thin layer of cloud. I can only imagine if the sky had been clear.) Just before totality, the horizon glowed with a 360-degree sunset. The air turned cold. Transcendent might not be too strong a word for the feeling when the sun winked out and the corona appeared.
This was my first-ever experience of a total eclipse. (Once, in the 70s, I was on the wrong side of a half-mile band of ocean separating me from the view of totality. Sorry, man, what a bummer.) It made totally worthwhile getting up at 3 a.m. to drive—ahead of the rush of thousands of others from Massachusetts—to Burlington, Vermont to watch the event. We arrived plenty early and found parking. We had the Mothership, and our dog McDuff, and we relaxed in comfort while we waited. Well, aside from shortness of sleep. But you can sleep when you’re dead, man.
The closest I have come to this in the past was our viewing in person of the launch of space shuttle Atlantis, in 2010, along with a group of fellow SF authors. In that event, the most memorable single element was the nova-like blaze of fire under the tail of the spaceship. That, like this, could not be conveyed by a photograph, much less my amateur video. In this case, I couldn’t even get a picture that registered what we were seeing at all.
Here’s a NASA photo from Dallas, TX, that did a better job (NASA/Keegan Barber):
When I watched the shuttle launch, I was in spine-tingling awe of the power of human striving against the bonds of the Earth. In this case, I was in transcendent awe of the majesty of our life-giving sun and our moon, and the stupendous coincidence or design of our Earth/Moon/Sun system boasting the perfect geometry of lunar size and distance such that the moon precisely covers the disk of the sun. What magnificent art is that astonishing corona, if art it is. Either way, it is breathtaking. And humbling.
I now understand why people say once you’ve seen a total eclipse, you want to keep on seeking them out. Even after surviving the two-hundred-mile traffic jam returning home (oh, for a flying car!). The next one on U.S. soil won’t be for twenty years, so maybe I have some international travel to look forward to! Zounds!
Ironically, this event was visible from my hometown of Huron, Ohio. If I’d been in the house I grew up in, I could have stepped out into the backyard. Same for my mom, God rest her soul, who grew up on a farm in Wooster, Ohio. Sometimes the spacetime continuum is in need of a little tweaking.
Once there was a man who had pulmonary fibrosis, a disease of unknown cause and poor prognosis—and his very kind and very smart doctors who knew the disease well looked at him sympathetically, and with open hands said, “We’re really sorry, but we’ve got nothin’. This disease has no cure.” Well, short of opening him up like a clamshell and putting an even more unlucky person’s lungs into him—and then stitching him up and putting him on antirejection drugs for the rest of his life. If that were me, I would find the prospect both daunting and discouraging. Oh, wait. That is me.
Fast forward a little. One day he—okay, I—read a letter in the Pulmonary Fibrosis Newsletter from a patient who, more or less in desperation, had turned to Chinese herbal medicine—and after eight years of decline, is now improving. Not just feeling better, but showing better numbers in the pulmonologists’ tests. This person included the Chinese herbalist’s phone number; he’s in the Seattle area, but consults by phone. So I thought, what have I got to lose, I’ll give him a call.
Forward again. I’m just starting an intensive regimen of Chinese herbal medicine, while continuing all my other medications. Herbalist Bob says he is currently treating around five patients with PF, and all are improving. The treatment is expensive, and of course not covered by insurance. It’s accompanied by an alarmingly extreme high-meat-protein diet. The idea is to lose weight and improve the circulatory system. If I’m measurably better in four months, we’ll know it’s working. If not, it was worth a try. (While I have some doubts about the diet part, this guy is mostly about the herbs and the state of blood flow throughout the body, especially in the lungs. He doesn’t talk about chi, or energy flow, or meridians, or any of that stuff, which I find mildly reassuring.) All the herbs come from Taiwan and are tested at multiple points along the way. I’ve just had my first dose, and they don’t taste too bad.
I’m calling this story Tales of the Kite because kites make me think of Chinese lore, and also because I sometimes feel like a kite rising and dipping on the wind, anchored only by the most tenuous of threads of faith, hope, and really tiresome exercises.
Is this a risk? I suppose it is. But the alternative is certain slow decline. Herbalist Bob thinks he can get me off supplemental oxygen, and maybe fix my allergies, and wouldn’t that be great?
The journey begins with a risk. A calculated, Vulcan risk.
If you subscribe to this blog, you might have missed notifications for the last umpty-ump posts. In which case, you might have missed a whole run of The Ponce Chronicles, which I know you don’t want to miss out on. (Something was broken, but now it’s fixed–I think.) Here’s a good place to come into the story, if you want to catch up:
