Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 162 entries, all of them here in full.
March 21, 2017 · 1,361 words
Revisiting the Classics: Podkayne of Mars
I’m not sure how many people would actually consider Podkayne of Mars a classic, but it is Heinlein, after all . . . and besides, nobody would read a blog series titled Revisiting the Flops. I’d read Podkayne when I was a teenager, didn’t care for it, and never picked it up again until the other week, when […]
Read entry →March 15, 2017 · 218 words
Victory for the Oxford Comma
I stand proudly with the Oxford comma, as it stands for reason, clarity, and mitigates against incertitude. (Try reading that sentence without the Oxford comma and see where it gets you.) I am pleased to know that the US Court of Appeals agrees with me, insofar as they ruled that a missing Oxford comma was […]
Read entry →March 9, 2017 · 302 words
Enter the Inferno
The Dopes came. We died. All the while the horror of the rite went on, swirling and reflecting off the gold leafed walls, not a cultist in sight. Peterson’s eyes stayed open and blinking. Steam-links were threaded into his still-quivering muscles, crimped through incisions into his bones; pistons and cylinders shoved u
Read entry →March 5, 2017 · 244 words
O’erwhelmed
I have been hacking my way not through a jungle, but through a half-dozen or more jungles. Jungles with names like IRS, Conservancy District, Ebooks, Travel, Training, Weed Combustion, Copy-Edits, Tractor Repair, Auto Sale, Deadlines, and others that discretion bids me not mention. And now I seem to be coming down with
Read entry →February 21, 2017 · 460 words
Lovecraft’s Nightmares
H.P. Lovecraft was notoriously afraid of fish. (As well as Jews, Italians, Irish, Negroes, and immigrants generally.) But Lovecraft was afraid of ordinary fish. Cod, for example, or maybe prawns. What he didn’t know was that the sea was full of stuff that would have caused him to shriek, gibber, and drop away in a dead
Read entry →February 17, 2017 · 142 words
Totally Not a Game
An Indonesian woman arrested for suspected involvement in the killing of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s half-brother in Malaysia was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank, Indonesia’s national police chief has said, citing information received from Malaysian authorities. Tito Karnavian told r
Read entry →February 15, 2017 · 617 words
My Boskone Schedule
I’ll be in Boston this weekend for Boskone 54, one of my favorite conventions. It’s large, it’s literate, it has a very large percentage of professional attendees, and even after all these years it’s still about the books, which is clear the second you walk into the large dealer room, with table after table of (often [
Read entry →February 14, 2017 · 46 words
Valentine Special
I’ve written a long Valentine’s Day love letter to Croyd Crenson, Roger Zelazny’s character in the Wild Cards series, thus kicking off a new series, “My Favorite Wild Cards Character (that I didn’t create).” And while you’re visiting, check out the other content at wildcardsworld.com.
Read entry →February 11, 2017 · 418 words
An Imaginary Conversation in Which I Triumph Totally
As opposed to “an actual conversation,” here’s one I wish I could have. With any number of writers. ME: I enjoyed your new novel, but there was one part that puzzled me. HIM: What was that? ME: The part about the squidlike alien beings who were fans of Sonic Youth. I mean, the book’s set […]
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