For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
It’s been a funny winter, here in the Boston area. Here it is, mid-February, and we still haven’t had a proper snowfall. On the other hand, yesterday was a carnival of sleet, sleet mixed with snow, and freezing sleet. Last night and today, everything was ice—including the snowplow ridges at the ends of the driveways. Ours was no treat to get out of, but we were better off than a neighbor who decided to drive over the ridge.
Here is the result, caught by my cell phone camera.
Back in the mid 1980s, my novel The Infinity Link first saw print. The main character, a young woman named Mozy, had her complete mind and personality uploaded to a spacecraft that was going to investigate alien visitors in the solar system. (Side note: The novel took me five and a half years to write, a record I hoped never to match. I just exceeded it, with Sunborn.)
The other day, I was reading in the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly an article about computer backup systems. One of them is called Mozy. Writer James Fallows says, “Mozy mirrors your computer’s data not on a detachable drive or another machine but somewhere in the galactic cloud of Internet storage.” Now, that coincidence struck me as being pretty cool. If it’s not a coincidence, that would be even more cool. I emailed the company and asked them where their name came from. I’ll let you know what they say.
One of the reasons I haven’t been around much lately is that I had a homeowner’s emergency to deal with—not my own home, but my in-laws’ apartment not too far from us. Frigid temperatures, frozen pipes, and a croaked boiler all contributed to the fun. Nobody was there at the time—they live in Puerto Rico, but are using this as the first step to living closer as the trials of the senior years creep in. It’s a lovely, quaint old apartment. And by quaint, I mean drafty and poorly insulated, as a part of its charm. Dealing with this took a surprising amount of time and energy, starting with a couple of hours with the shop-vac, sucking water up out of the basement. That was just for starters.
One good thing about the cold temperatures, though. It’s eased my fears that global warming is coming at us like a runaway freight train. Maybe it’s only coming at us like a lumbering freight train.
I probably ought to let people know where I’m going to be appearing in the near future. (Other than at the supermarket, I mean.) It sort of defeats the publicity angle if I don’t let anyone know.
This coming weekend, I’ll be at a small convention called Vericon, held at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. In conjunction with that, I’ll be signing books at the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square. (Saturday Jan. 27, at 1:00 p.m.) According the schedule, I’ll be signing along with Marie Brennan. I don’t know her, so this will be a chance to make a new acquaintance.
The weekend of Feb. 16-18, I’ll be at Boskone, New England’s largest regional convention. That’s in Boston, at the Westin Waterfront. I don’t know my schedule there yet.
Starting on March 19, I’ll be teaming up once more with Craig Shaw Gardner to teach “The Ultimate SF Workshop,” in the basement of Pandemonium Books and Games, in Cambridge. It’s a 10-week intensive workshop for people who are really serious about learning the craft of SF writing. We ran our first workshop last fall, and it was very successful. Terrific group of writers, many of whom I definitely expect to see in print one day soon.
In April, during the school spring break, we’re hoping to run a workshop strictly for teens. More on that later.
The weekend of May 11-13, tentatively, maybe, if I can afford New York City prices, I’ll join a horde of other writers, editors, agents, etc., for the Nebula Awards weekend.
Later in May, I’ll be teaching for the second year at the New England Young Writers Conference, at Bread Loaf in Vermont.
In July, I plan to be at Readercon, near Boston.
You know, I’d better put all this information up on my web site right now while I’m thinking of it. Excuse me while I go fire up Dreamweaver….
I wrote earlier how I had been tapped to play a small role in a very small indie film. My role? Pops, the homeless man with his ear to the street. Well, they had the premier screening for cast and families the other night, and—yep—there I was. For about, oh, twenty seconds or so. Maybe thirty. I thought I was pretty convincing as a scruffy homeless man, and we’ll just leave it at that and not think about how little it took to make me appear that way. (Wearing entirely clothes from my own wardrobe!)
The film is called Children of the Street. It’s an earnest work that actually tells an important story about runaways and homelessness. (Very rough around the edges, and clearly shot on a budget of approximately zero—but still, it was rewarding to be in.) I got an email from someone at our church today, saying he’d gone to see the public showing (not knowing I was in it), and was quite surprised by the homeless guy!
Maybe it will show up online someday. If so, you’ll hear it first here.
This won’t be news to any of you who have kids in college, or who are in college yourself, but it sure came as a jolt to me: When you’re applying for financial aid for colleges and universities, you basically have to do your income tax return, BANG, at the start of the year, instead of waiting to go into a panic the first and second weeks in April. That’s what I’ve been busy doing, and am still doing. No doubt it’s good discipline. It better be; it looks like I’m going to be doing this every year for at least the next seven years.
I finally heard from the fellow whose small film I acted in about a year and a half ago (as Pops the Bum). He’s having a premier showing for the cast in a couple of weeks, and will be showing it in his theater (the Regent, in Arlington MA) a few times. And then he’s sending it off to some film festivals, to see if it generates any interest. Good luck to him!
Speaking of movies, my wife sent me a link to this interesting story in the NY Times about James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, currently in production. One more step in the gradual merging of live actors and CG animation. One interesting thing is that they’ve developed the technology to let them see some of the virtual world while they’re filming the actors. That has to help the director and others realize the vision they’re after.
And speaking of technology, our friend Youngmee referred us to this story about a pretty emotive and lifelike robot developed by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. Her name is EveR-2 Muse.
Since Sunborn (Chaos Chronicles Book 4) has been delayed until Winter 2008, it got pushed back on my editor’s desk while he dealt with a couple of other books. This is frustrating in that I haven’t heard any reaction to it yet, but at the same time it’s giving me some additional time to continue the editing at my end. So I’m still going through it, doing polish and cleaning, and fixing some problem spots pointed out to me by my intrepid writing group and by my wife. (Well, okay—I didn’t do diddly on it for about 3 weeks during the holidays—but I’m back to it now. When I’m not doing taxes; see other post on that.)
On the one hand, I feel pretty good about the way the book came out. On the other hand, I’m ready to kick it out the door and move on to something new. Like Chaos Book 5, which I’ve written the first page of, just to get it started. Or maybe finding a new business model for being an SF writer. I think I feel a post coming on that subject. Later, though.
What’s the point of being related to someone notable and distinguished if you can’t brag a little? (No, this isn’t about my kids.) I proudly direct you to the University of Miami web site, and an announcement about some newly endowed distinguished professorships. The first one on the list is my very own and only brother, known as Uncle Chuck to my daughters and Distinguished Professor of Psychology Charles S. Carver to others. Scroll down a little on that page and you’ll see his picture and credits. There’s a Nobel laureate on the distinguished list, too, but I don’t know him.
Here’s Chuck’s web page, or you can go straight to the pictures of his dog Calvin (be sure and check out the gallery if you’re into silly dog pictures).
I know I’ve been missing from these pages for a turrible long time. I’ve passed up any number of really interesting subjects that I wanted to write about. That’s because I’ve been banging my head against the Sunborn rewrite. I really am going to finish this book by the end of November, or die trying.
And now I must go. I’ll be in the garret, pounding…
Man, doesn’t the guy who owns this place ever come in and serve the guests? Or at least turn on the lights?
Oh wait, that’s me. Right, right. And I couldn’t even get in at first; my browser was feeding me the wrong login, and I didn’t see it.
Well, you probably wonder where I’ve been. I’m still here, still working on Sunborn. And finally finished with our local children’s theater’s run of Damn Yankees, which was loads of fun and loads of work and loads of time spent in the theater. I miss it, now that it’s over.
About a year ago, I wrote here that I was acting in a very small indie film being made here by the same guy who operates the theater where we hold our musicals. Pops the bum, if you please. (Take note, Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert.) Well, I can’t announce yet that the film is finished, because they never got the last scene shot before winter set in. But they’re planning to do that in about two weeks, and that will be my last performance of Pops the bum—at least until the sequel. (The last scene takes place in the street, and requires closing off the street and I believe engaging a few police cars and officers to appear in the scene, also. My part, as I understand it, will involve sitting slumped against a wall looking bewildered. An easy role for me.)
And yes, outside of all that, I’m plowing ahead through the hardest part of the rewrite—the long middle—which was the biggest mess in the first draft, and requires the most rethinking in the second. Making good progress. Not as fast as I would like, but steady.
So…I gotta get back to it. But first I have to say…
Twelve planets in the solar system? You’ve got to be kidding. (The International Astronomical Union, as you probably know, is proposing just that.) Ceres a planet? Anyone who read SF in the 50’s and 60’s knows perfectly well that Ceres is an asteroid, and very important to the economy of the future asteroid belt civilization. Planet, indeed. And Pluto and Charon both planets? Come on. Xena, now—I can see calling Xena a minor planet. But not opening up the Pandora’s box of a hundred planets called “plutons.”
Reconsider, guys. Everything Pluto-size and up should be a planet. Smaller stuff should be minor planets. Wouldn’t that really just be a heck of a lot easier? And think of this: we could keep the name Xena, and it wouldn’t be breaking with tradition on the naming of major planets. Go for it!