I will be at a convention called I-CON this weekend, March 24-26, at Stony Brook University on Long Island. If you’re going to be there, please stop and say hello. I’m scheduled to do a book signing at 8:00 p.m. on Friday evening, and will be participating on some panels throughout the weekend.
Other featured guests include George Takei, Kevin Sorbo, Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Terry Brooks, and—last but far from least—Tom Doherty, founder and publisher of Tor Books, book marketing genius, and one heck of a nice guy. If any of these people want to hang out at the same parties where I hang out, that’s fine with me!
What? Galactica—again? Yes, this time I had the page proofs for the mass market paperback edition to correct. (We won’t mention that the proofs were mailed by mistake to Craig Gardner, who wrote the second book, and who fortunately lives just a few blocks away.) This meant reading through the book again—actually, for the first time since I corrected the proofs for the trade edition. Why should I have to do this? you might ask. Well, partly because the typesetting has been adjusted for the smaller page size, and sometimes errors are introduced when that’s done. But mainly it’s to catch all the stupid mistakes we missed the first time around. Yes, it’s true.
I know this makes it sound like we’re careless when the first edition goes out, but that’s not true. It’s amazing how many errors can sneak by multiple proofreaders (including yours truly), who are all doing their best to catch the little buggers. And then there are the occasional infelicitous phrasings or word choices that any one of said proofreaders (including yours truly) should have caught—but didn’t. Things like the phrase “for a moment” appearing three times in a paragraph. Yeesh.
So it’s done. And you know what? I really liked reading the book. I consider this a positive sign.
Oh—the wrestling. Alexandra placed third in the Ohio state girls tournament in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. It wasn’t a huge field. But lemme tell you, some of those girls who are wrestling in Ohio are tough hombres! (You should forgive the expression.) I’ll try to snag a few stills off the video we shot and get them up soon.
With my sister Nancy as tour guide, we also visited the campus of Kenyon College, which is right down the road from where the tourney was held. We admired their fantastic new athletic Taj Mahal, and sought out advice and info from fellow SF author/biology professor Joan Slonczewski.
We arrived home, well after midnight on Sunday night, exhausted but happy—greeted by wife and other daughter, and dinner laid out on the table! Who could ask for more?
There’s a short dramatic work that had to be declared ineligible for the Nebula for technical reasons*, but it’s a lot of fun to watch (free online), and at the same time delivers a punch. It’s called The Old Negro Space Program, and was created as a labor of love by its…creator…a fellow named Andy Bobrow. Give it a look. It’s only ten minutes long, and is a very witty ten minutes.
*By technical reasons, what I mean is, the rules** said it wasn’t eligible. I’m not discounting the possibility that the rules are screwy. (I’m on the committee charged with interpreting the rules, so I’m allowed to say things like that. Though come to think of it, so is anyone else.)
**If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, you could always settle in with the Nebula Rules, which you can read online 24/7, at the link I just gave.
Finalists for this year’s Nebula Awards have been announced. They are:
Novel Air by Geoff Ryman, Camouflage by Joe Haldeman, Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Polaris by Jack McDevitt, and Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright
Novella “Clay’s Pride” by Bud Sparhawk, “Identity Theft” by Robert J. Sawyer, “Left of the Dial” by Paul Witcover, “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link, and “The Tribes of Bela” by Albert Cowdrey
Novelette “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link, “Flat Diane” by Daniel Abraham, “Men Are Trouble” by Jim Kelly, “Nirvana High” by Eileen Gunn and Leslie What, and “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi
Short Story “Born-Again” by K.D. Wentworth, “The End of the World as We Know It” by Dale Bailey, “I Live With You” by Carol Emshwiller, “My Mother, Dancing” by Nancy Kress, “Singing My Sister Down” by Margo Lanagan, “Still Life With Boobs” by Anne Harris, and “There’s a Hole in the City” by Richard Bowes
Script “Act of Contrition”/”You Can’t Go Home Again” by Carla Robinson, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, (2-part episode of Battlestar Galactica); and Serenity by Joss Whedon
Not a Nebula, but to be awarded at the same time, the first annual award for outstanding Young Adult SF or fantasy novel:
Andre Norton Award The Amethyst Road by Louise Spiegler, Siberia by Ann Halam, Stormwitch by Susan Vaught, and Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie by Holly Black
The Nebula and the Andre Norton Awards are voted on and conferred by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Winners will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet in Tempe, Ariz., on May 6. (I won’t be there, I’m sorry to say, but best wishes to all the nominees.)
If you look at the same list at SFWA.org, you’ll find links to online copies of many of the shorter works.
Having escaped from the den of mind-control aliens [brushing the dust off my sleeves], I am now on to cheerier subjects. In case you haven’t kept up with progress in space entrepreneurship, there’s a series of articles at CNNMoney.com on the prospects for profit-making enterprises in space—including cheaper delivery to orbit, carbon nanotubes and space elevators, and industrial and tourist parks.
This is a great reason to exercise and eat right—so we can live long enough to see this stuff happen, and maybe catch a ride topside for a firsthand look at space!
Or controlled by one. That seems the best explanation, to me.
I just finished reading an SF novel by Timothy Zahn called, Night Train to Rigel, an entertaining yarn about mystery and intrigue aboard an interstellar train. At the risk of giving away a teensy bit of the plot, I’ll reveal here that one aspect of the story involves alien mind control over important leaders. Not in itself a new idea, but it works well in the context.
It also works well in the context of puzzling out the bizarrely un-American behavior of our current administration (and here I’m using “American” in the good sense—that is, standing for peace, justice, and equal rights under the law). Now, some of you probably think I’m just harping on the same old thing, and I suppose there’s some truth to that. But not without reasons. The most recent two are the failure of Congress to haul White House officials up on the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, and the recent article in the New Yorker about high-level condoning of abuse and torture of prisoners. Garrison Keillor, writing on Salon.com, has efficiently summarized the gist of the article, or you can read the entire article in the Feb 27 issue of the New Yorker. I couldn’t find the article online, but there’s an interesting Q&A with the author of the article, Jane Mayer.
It’s more of the same, of course, always more of the same. And now, today, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, comes news that Bush is yet again trying open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, this time by putting it into the federal budget package. No matter how many times we knock this madness down, it keeps popping up again like a weeble.
So I’m almost right there with Garrison Keillor—there’s more than enough reason to impeach the sonofabitch. Except…that would leave Dick Cheney in charge. And he’s the head alien pod-person. So I guess the only hope is to go after the aliens themselves, before they take control of more of us.
Before they…ohno they’re coming after mew#$f^zzzzzzzzzzz…….what’s that buzzing in my ear…?
What was I saying? Oh, I remember now. I like our president….
A fine remembrance of Octavia Butler appeared in the Washington Post.
I heard from a friend in Seattle—who isn’t even an SF reader—that a memorial reading is planned, in which many SF writers from the Northwest will take turns reading from her work. That seems very fitting.
Too much death and threat of death around lately. I have one dear friend whose husband is dying of cancer, and another good friend whose health is failing and whose life has been so hammered by legal and financial injustices that he is dependent upon charity for medical care.
We all know that life isn’t fair. But sometimes you really wonder.
Science fiction author Octavia Butler died last weekend, following a fall outside her home in the Seattle area. And the science fiction world, and all of the world, have lost another great treasure. She was the first black American woman to rise to prominence as a science fiction writer, and the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. She was also widely acknowledged to be one of the finest writers in the field, regardless of race, gender, or another other arbitrary distinction. By the time you read this, there will probably be a number of stories online, but the two I saw first were from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Chicago Tribune.
I never knew her personally. But I feel her loss as a blow to the community I’m a part of—really, two communities, the one of humanity, and the more narrowly defined one of science fiction lovers. It also makes me think once more about the fleeting nature of life on this world, and how it seems a shame to do anything but try to use our time well.
Well, I had a thoroughly pleasant time at Boskone. This took me a little by surprise, only because I was feeling all grumpy and not really in the mood to go out. I had to, though, because I was scheduled to be on panels. And once I got there and started seeing old friends, and making some new ones, I got into the spirit of it. I also thought this was the liveliest and most interesting Boskone I have seen in a number of years.
One pleasant result was encountering some fans who had already read Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries. The feedback was all good. Perhaps the nicest was from a young woman who happens to be a Commander in the US Navy, and who is about to become captain of a guided missile destroyer. She said she thought I’d captured the feel of the story very well—and I took that as significant praise, coming from someone who actually knows what it’s like to run a military vessel. (The only ones I have ever been aboard have been museums, rather like what Galactica was scheduled to become before the pesky Cylons interfered.)
An encouraging sidelight was hearing from one of my writing buddies that he’d met with his editor and confirmed the sale of a new trilogy. Earning a living as a writer is not easy for any of us, and he’s no exception. I don’t know if I should mention his name here, so I’ll just say that it rhymes with Craig Shaw Gardner, and his writing style is very similar. I’ll let him announce the details once everything’s been inked.
And finally, I came home to see an email from my editor, telling me that Galactica has sold to a British publisher and has had a book club sale. Given that my biggest rationale for writing the book was to get my name back in front of the public (I didn’t know then that I was going to enjoy Galactica so much), this is very good news indeed. More readers, and—who knows—maybe even a little more money, in the long run.
(Which reminds me of something I want to write about—readers versus money. But later. Remind me if I forget.)
I have finally received my copies of the audiobook edition of my novel Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries. It’s read by Jonathan Davis, and it sounds good! (Well, the first ten minutes sound good, which is what I’ve listened to.) If you enjoy audiobooks, you might like to give it a try. (It is abridged, I should point out.)
This is the first of my books to be put into audiobook format, so it’s a new experience for me. It’s also the first time I’ve had one of my books abridged, and that takes a little getting used to. The method was not, as I expected, to go through and remove phrases and shorten sentences. Instead, they simply removed entire sentences, probably about one in every four or five. I think it works okay, though to my (prejudiced) ear, there is something lost. Still, it’s instructive how much you can cut and still have it work. I don’t know who did the cutting.
Note, I’m still calling the novel “the Miniseries,” because that’s what it is, notwithstanding the fact that someone along the way—certainly without asking me—took that informative subtitle off the cover of the book. At first they changed it to “the original hit series,” and when I pointed out how misleading that was, they took it off, but didn’t restore “the Miniseries.” I hope no one is confused by the packaging into thinking that the novel reflects the series that followed. It doesn’t. Some future novel might, though.
, an entertaining yarn about mystery and intrigue aboard an interstellar train. At the risk of giving away a teensy bit of the plot, I’ll reveal here that one aspect of the story involves alien mind control over important leaders. Not in itself a new idea, but it works well in the context.