Jeff Ford reacts to Jonathan Lethem’s geniushood and Matt Cheney’s reaction to it: He feels that, although Lethem deserves the recognition for his fine work, the Award would do better to have been bestowed on a writer who has not yet “made it” and could better use the money. I congratulate Lethem. He’s written some …
Over at the new and improved Strange Horizons review section (which has an RSS feed even), Greg Beatty praises Kate Wilhelm’s Storyteller. Oh, but this is a lovely book. Everyone who wants to understand science fiction as a community will want a copy. Many people who want to become professional writers, or better writers, will …
Attention: consuming any of the following material may make you a target of chicken haulers. So, yesterday on the drive home from work, I hit town and some slight rush hour traffic with it. I’m a car behind a semi, but the car in front of me isn’t very tall and so I have a …
Alan has Walter Benjamin’s "The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses." Theses which are truly fabulous. I like number 10 (actually, I like them all): X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight. The more times the merrier, right?
I’ve put in a ticket with Typepad because the RSS feed doesn’t seem to be working (any tips from Typepad users appreciated), but hopefully that will magically right itself soon. Also, there’s now a new Livejournal feed, courtesy of the industrious JEL (much appreciated), which you can find by scrolling down on the lefthand column …
The National Book Festival will be held Saturday in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post is hosting online author chats all this week. You can find a schedule here. I think it’s a sad commentary on the state of our world that bourbon even needs to advertise on television. Anne at the Vertical blog chooses her …
Mr. Christopher Rowe recently went back to college, as many of you know. Yesterday morning he had to get up early to write a one pager of thoughts on Hurricane Katrina for his anthro class. He saw fit to include one of my favorite CVR anecdotes and I asked him if I could run it …
You may assume I’m predisposed to like a book like The Girl in the Glass. It features some of my very favorite things–both as pieces of reality and fictional constructs–including but not limited to the Spiritualist movement, Coney Island freaks, magicians, butterflies, stylish con men, a witty girl, at least a few monsters, a murder …
When Alex Trebec drops a "Git R Done" at the top of Jeopardy, the phrase has officially "jumped the shark." (Unless on your TV it actually continued into the bizarro world edition where all the questions focused on Redneck Lore.) In happy/sad news, on the way home I heard a song unmistakably sung by Rob …
That’s right, it’s Tuesday. (Thinking about doing something similar with Veronica Mars, btw; anybody in?) This week’s episode is "Fight Face." Sez the WB: Rory (Alexis Bledel) begins serving her 300 hours of community service and finds that life on a road crew is not pretty. Lorelai and Luke try to decide whether they will …