The Michael Canfield Channel

Stuff I hate (part 2 of a series)

Awards.

A for instance: After Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, and more, Scorcese gets a directing Oscar(TM) for a tedious and ridiculous self-parody "The Departed" with featured an embarrassing performance by Jackie "The Joker" Nicholson, denouement of bullets-to-the-head that is executed (excuse the pun) seemingly without the slightest awareness of its own absurdity.

So that two things I hate. Awards (because they are often for something else -- which will be the case if Chabon wins the Hugo this year) and "The Departed."

Stuff I hate (part 1 of a series)

Finding I left kleenex in a pocket after doing laundry.

"Napoleon ... with dragons!"

"The American Revolution ... with dragons!"

"Apollo 13 ... with dragons!"

"The Holocaust ... with warlocks!"

"The Cold War ... with aliens!"

Dumb Idea Rejected by Apathy

Link: Garcia Marquez hometown rejects name change |Reuters.com.

Life did not imitate art on Sunday when this town where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born and first heard the ghost stories that would inform the "magical realism" of his novels, rejected a proposal to change its name to honor him.

[snip]

After the polls closed in the late afternoon, Sanchez said more than 90 percent of the votes cast were in favor of the proposal. "But turnout was not high enough for the vote to count," he conceded.

Classic Pulp

Slate commissioned these 6 magnificent Lurid new covers for classic books.

Book Club Podcast

Anna of Delta Park Project, famous for their funny pop culture podcast and a LOST (the TV show) has started a book club. First up in Allende's The House of the Spirits, soon to be followed by Hotel New Hampshire, The Year of Magical Thinking, and The Executioner's Song, all of which are on my someday lists, so I may join up. Link: Anna's Book Club - a monthly book club podcast.

Fair Use: Art is Art Edition

From The Beatles by Bob Spitz:

Stuart [Sutcliffe] may well have been the natural choice, but his decision to play music perplexed his fellow artists. Bill Harry, for one, remembers the irritation he felt when Stuart flashed the new bass as though exhibiting a finished oil painting. "I said to him, 'What the bloody  hell are you doing?'" Harry recalls. "'You're passionate about art, not music!'" Stuart shook off such concern with bemused regard. To Harry's objection, he responded soothingly: "Not, it's all right. I think it's art." He had decided to dedicate himself to the band with "as much seriousness and intensity" as he approached painting. "And anyway," Stuart told him, "they're going to be the greatest. I want to be a part of it."

Fair Use, An Embarrassment of Deities Edition:

From Robert E. Howard's "Black Colossus":

The Kothians had long since abandoned the worship of Mitra, forgetting the attributes of the universal Hyborian god. Yasmela had a vague idea that, being very ancient, it followed that the deity was very terrible. Ishtar was much to be feared, and all the gods of Koth. Kothian culture and religion had suffered from a subtle admixture of Shemite and Stygian strains. The simple ways of the Hyborians had become modified to a large extent by the sensual, luxurious, yet despotic habits of the East.

"Will Mitra aid me?" Yasmela caught Vateesa's wrist in her eagerness. "We have worshipped Ishtar so long----"

Fair Use, Editorial Matter Edition

From editor George Bennet's introduction to Great Tales of Action and Adventure (Dell, 1958):

A surprising amount of literature appeals equally to young and old: from books like Gulliver's Travels to poems like Walter de la Mare's The Listeners and Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. To appeal to both young and old a story must have a special quality. Perhaps it is the quality of wonder, or of delight. It is as if we were in another dimension, as if we were looking at another world, a world both like and unlike our own, a world of surprise.

CRYSTAL RAIN by Tobias S. Buckell - Excerpts

Tobias Buckell is giving away a generous chunk of his first novel "Crystal Rain." The first  15 chapters are now available, with more to follow until the entire first 1/3 of the book is posted here: Link. (There's also a map, how cool is that?)

Tags: Books  Reading Science Fiction

Did Oprah Sandbag Nan Talese?

Link: NYO - Observatory.

“I was asked to go onto a program that was going to have James on it, and then I was going to be joined by Frank Rich and Richard Cohen to talk about ‘Truth in America.’ That was the program,” Ms. Talese said by phone this past weekend. As she was walking onto the set of the special live broadcast, however, she was informed that the theme of the show had been changed to something called “The James Frey Controversy.” Ms. Talese was surprised.

Steven D. Levitt Finds "One more reason to love Oprah"

But I can't buy it. The only reason I can see for Oprah's 180 on James Frey - after defending him on Larry King - is that she felt the backlash swelling among her fans.  Link: Freakonomics Blog.
This whole controversy could mean tough times for the memoir industry. Memoirists have been making shit up for years since the demise of fiction's primacy under the rubric of "emotional truth".  Frey got a little too greedy in his exaggerations, now publishers appear to be expected to vet books the way journalism is vetted.* (Sometimes vetted anyway. Hunter S. Thompson made up stuff up too.) All because some readers were foolish enough to expect that books labeled as nonfiction should contain no fiction. Foolish foolish public spoiling the fun. But sarcasm aside, the inability to sell one's fiction for the higher advances memoirs offer seems to me too poor an excuse to represent fiction as fact.

__

*Or maybe not, Via Maud Newton, here's a Wall Street Journal Article: Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly.

CELL by Stephen King

Picked this up from my local supermarket which offered it at a deep discount. Enjoyed it immensely, as I have done with the two most recent King's before it, The Colorado Kid, and the final volume of The Dark Tower. I suspect that those who will be disappointed with the way those ended will be disappointed with this one as well, but for me, they represent a sophistication in King's evolving story-telling technique that I find enjoyable and welcome.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing Writing fiction

Guaranteed Good Read

Shocklines is selling Corpse Blossoms (which includes my story "Wednesday") under its Guaranteed Good Read Promotion - meaning a full refund if you are not satisfied with your purchase.
Also, to purchase single issues of Black Gate #9 featuring my story "The Whited Child" go to Project Pulp.

Fair Use: Weird Western Edition

From Tim Pratt's The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl:

Jonathan lay awake in the Pigeonhole, where the day's old heat went to die, listening to the whispering in the corners of the room.

And from Tom Piccirilli's Grave Men:

Priest snapped awake in his seat, reaching for his knife. He had a mouthful of blood from biting his tongue, and the taste only reminded him of murder.

And Loren Estleman's The Master Executioner:

On the last day of May 1866, a trooper named Ervine,walking punishment detail at Fort Riley with a log over one shoulder for reporting to duty drunk, threw his log at a guard, crushing the man's skull, stole a horse, and rode forty miles to a stagecoach stop in Washington County, where he raped a backward serving girl and stole a fresh mount.

Tags: Books  Reading 

Writing the Other

From Aqueduct Press, a writing book by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, which grew out of their workshop of the same name. A bargain at only $9! Editorial material:

During the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop attended by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong, horribly, offensively wrong, and so it is better not even to try. This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences. In the course of writing the essay, however, she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual preference, and age differ significantly from their own. Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers’ skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about "getting it wrong."

Fair Use: Clintonian Edition

From My Life by Bill Clinton: 

Some of the charges and antics would have been funny except for the tragedy involved. One of the loudest and most sanctimonious of the "Foster was murdered crowd" was Republican congressman Dan Burton of Indiana. In a attempt to prove that Vince couldn't have killed himself, Burton went out in his backyard and shot a revolver into a watermelon. It was nutty. I never could figure out what Burton was trying to prove.

Fair Use: Quiet Horror Edition

The opening sentence of the opening story in Corpse Blossoms, Ward Cary Parker's "White Shrouds of Memory":

He had just decided to go to bed when the woman landed in his tangerine tree.

Tags: Books  Reading Horror

Susie Bright on J.T. Leroy

from The Huffington Post

[snip] There are people out there who think that outrage like mine is overblown. Some have said this is simply a story about a talented author using a pseudonym which disguises their gender.

That's horseshit. If Emily Albert had sent me those first short stories in her own name, I would have read them all the same. I publish authors all the time who have a very different life than their characters. My hat is off to them, they have my every respect. Their research and credibility are on the line, and they live up to it.

Emily didn't have to con me to get me to pay attention to her writing. But by portraying herself as the Little Cripple Boy, who'd choke back the tears as he asked me for a match, she set up the dynamic that determined the rest of our relationship:

Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell

I've read Toby Buckell's first novel, and can happily report it bowled me over. Growing up, I loved the swashbuckling interplanetary tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, unfortunately these haven't held up, particularly, for me as I've grown up. Buckell brings a post-colonial perspective to all his fiction, and here pulls off the rather deft feat of writing a romance (in the Haggard, Doyle, Burroughs sense) that, while including all the elements of great adventures tales - action, mystery, vivid settings - never feels like a retread, never bows to the stereotyping sometimes found in older examples of its kind (and not only there, but, all too often, found in current examples of genre fiction). Buckell does what good genre writers have always done, takes what he loves and makes it his own. Also, Buckell has always managed to fill his short fiction with larger-than-life characters; "Crystal Rain" adds John de Brun to their number, and I especially delighted in the return of "Pepper" from "The Fish Merchant" who appears here as well, mysterious and compelling as ever. I admit my bias here, Toby is a friend, but you can do a lot things than to ignore my bias, take up this adventure and dive into its lush pleasures. Click the image to order from Amazon:

Tags: Books  Science Fiction

US Gov to Investigate Hyper Drive Based on Heim's Quantum Theory

Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Welcome to Mars express: only a three hour trip. [snip] ... if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached ...

Tags: Space Science

Fair Use XV

From Laura Lippman's "The Shoeshine Man's Regrets" reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

But when he glanced around, apparently expecting some sort of affirmation for his boorishness, all he saw were shocked and disapproving faces.

With the curious logic of the disgraced, Weejun upped the ante, kicking the man's shoeshine kit so its contents spilled across the sidewalk.

Great short story.

Fair Use: Cosmic Holiday-Decoration Simile Edition

The planet hung in the blackness of space like a jeweled ornament on a celestial Christmas tree. - from Star Trek #80: The Joy Machine, A novel by James Gunn based on the story by Theodore Sturgeon.

Philip Pullman’s secular fantasy for young adults

"Far from Narnia" a nice article by Laura Miller in The New Yorker, explorer the human need for stories and the uses of fantasic elements in fiction.

Tags: Books Religion Skepticism

Fair Use Holiday Edition

Marley was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it.  And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.  Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed  hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Fair Use XIV

Gibbon (chapter 6):   

The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own powers: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind.

Fair Use XIII

Gibbon (Chap V):

The power of the sword is more sensibly felt in an extensive monarchy than in a small  community. It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no state, without being soon exhausted, can mantain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

Robert Sheckley (1928-2005)

SFWA

Fair Use XII

Again from Full Moon by P.G. Wodehouse, which I did finished a while ago, but from which I am still collecting quotations by which to live:

It is a truism to say that the best-laid plans are often disarranged and sometimes even defeated by the occurrence of some small unforeseen hitch in the programme. The poet Burns, it will be remembered, specifically warns the public to budget for this possibility.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing

Daikaiju! 2: TOC

Daikaiju! 2. My story "Attack of the 50ft Cosmonaut" will appear from this the Oz-based concern sometime soon,  here's a link the list of contributors:  Daikaiju! 2 contributors.

Tags: Books  Reading Science Fiction Daikaiju

Fair Use XI

Some declarative sentences from P.G. Wodehouse's Full Moon:

"It's all perfectly on the level. My name is Lister. Miss Garland and I are engaged. And this blighted Wedge woman is keeping her under lock and key and watching her every move. A devil of a female. What she needs is a spoonful of arsenic in her soup one of these evenings. You couldn't attend to that, I suppose?" he said genially, for now that everything was going so smoothly he was in a merry mood.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing

Fair Use X

From Chapter III of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol. I 1776):

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. * A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.

Tags: Books  Reading Writing

Fair Use IX

Today an extended passage from Chapter II Volume I of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire :

The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. 

Fair Use VIII

From the first chapter of P.G. Wodehouse's Full Moon:

Lord Emsworth gave a quick, convulsive leap, then became strangely rigid. Like so many fathers of the English upper classes, he was somewhat allergic to younger sons, and was never at his happiest when entertaining the one whom unkind Fate had added to his quiver. Freddie, when at Blandings, had a way of mooning and looking like a bored and despairing sheep, with glassy eyes staring out over an eleven-inch cigarette holder, which had always been enough to bring a black frost into this Eden of his.

Tags: Books  Reading  Writing

Fair Use VII

From the soon to be missed Scifi.com, Gerald Kersh's "The Queen of Pig Island":

The story of the Baroness von Wagner, that came to its sordid and bloody end after she, with certain others, had tried to make an earthly paradise on a desert island, was so fantastic that if it had not first been published as news, even the editors of the sensational crime magazines would have thought twice before publishing it.

Tags: Fiction Books

Favorite Stories in BASS 2005

Best American Short Stories 2005. For the first time in a long time I finished most of the stories in an entire collection. These are my very favorites, the cream of the cream, listed in the order they appear in the book:

"Until Gwen" Dennis Lehane
"Old Friends" Thomas McGuane
"Death Defier" Tom Bissell
"Anda's Game" Cory Doctorow
"The Cousins" Joyce Carol Oates
"Natasha" David Bezmozgis
"Hart and Boot" Tim Pratt

Tags: Books Reading Writing

Fair Use VI

Am nearing the end of the Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon. I'll post a list of my favorites soon. Today's quote is from one of those favorites, Tim Pratt's "Hart and Boot":

The man's head and torso emerged from a hole in the ground, just a few feet from the rock where Pearl Hart sat smoking her last cigarette.

Tags: Books  Writing

Fair Use V

From Tobias S. Buckell's Crystal Rain.These sentences are from the free excerpt on the novel's official site:

Oaxyctl ran through the jungle towards Brungstun in the double- shadowed light of the twin moons that peeked out from between a break in the rain clouds. He was so close to safety since making it out of the mountains, skirting well wide of Mafolie Pass and a few mongoose outposts along the way. He'd come too far not to make it now.

Tags: Books Science Fiction

Fair Use IV

Am still slightly over halfway through Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon. Today's quote is from Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game" second paragraph:

But when Anda was twelve, she met Liza the Organiza, whose avatar was female but had sensible tits and sensible armor and a bloody great sword that she was clearly very good with.

It's a great story, probably the most risky inclusion of all Chabon's genre picks. Because if any is, I suspect this one will be the most off-putting to non-genre readers. Fantasy and mystery the lit-snob will let slide if the packaging is sufficiently tasteful, but SF? SF about gaming? I'm also glad that the definition of an American short story is broad enough this year to include a piece by a Canadian writer living in London published in cyberspace. The world really is flat!

Fair Use III

Am slightly over halfway through Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon. Opening sentence of Tom Bissell's "Death Defier":

Graves had been sick for three days when, on the long, straight highway between Mazar and Kunduz, a dark blue truck coming toward them shed its rear wheel in a spray of orange-yellow sparks.

I don't know what scheme or plan Chabon used to order the stories in this anthology but it certainly isn't to bury weaker entries in the middle. Maybe it was to place longer stories in the middle. At 35 pages Bissell's is better an more substantial than most novels I've read this year, doing what fiction used to do and is what fiction is meant to do: it illuminates the world around us -- the whole world not just the bits of it that people who write and read fiction mill about in. Balzac, Dickens, Stephen Crane, Chekov did it, and in the century just passed, John O'Hara, Ring Lardner and others carried on the tradition. Based on serious scholarship I performed last week by seeing the movie Capote I'm guessing that this started to change at the beginning of the 1960's when Capote published his last masterpiece In Cold Blood, and narrative non-fiction began to supplant fiction in the role of examining the zeitgeist. It now may be turning back and Chabon's done a lot to say that yes, narrative fiction is a legitimate form, (as opposed to slice-of-life fiction). "Death Defier" appeared in a literary journal, not a mass-market slick as it would have a half-century ago, but at least it shows that the stories are out there, whether the market exists for them or not. 

Tag: Books

Fair Use II

To keep my goal to post here everyday I am resorting now to not-quite random sentences from my current reading - preferably without excessive punctuation commas especially. Today the opening sentences of The Rottweiler (2003) by the excellent Ruth Rendell.

The jaguar stood in a corner of the shop between a statue of some minor Greek deity and a jardiniere. Inez thought it said a lot about the world we live in that to most people when you said "jaguar" they took it to mean a car and not an animal.

Tag: Books

Fair Use I

To keep my goal to post here everyday I am resorting now to not-quite random sentences from my current reading - preferably with semicolons. First up, from page 13 of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol. I 1776):

Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers that on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

Tag: Books

The Man Who Was Thursday

I've been exploring BBC Radio- 7 which has tons - and I mean tons - of radio dramas and comedies to listen too.  Just started this week is a 13 episode adaptation of G.K. Chesterson's metaphysical spy novel. One of my favorite books.

Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma

Some detail on the project to write a thriller concerning the dangers of buying prescription drugs from Canada. Higher up's at PhRMA (aka The Drug Lobby) say that this project was "a screwball idea" - the product of one "rogue executive."
Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma - Los Angeles Times.

"She [the PhRMA executive] was intimately involved," says Spivak [one of two co-authors], who declined to identify the executive but made it clear that he regarded her input as lowbrow. She demanded that the terrorists be militant Muslims but that their motivation be greed, not politics. She insisted on lots of "frilly female stuff," Spivak says, "Harlequin Romance stuff" — but also that the book incorporate long polemical passages drawn from transcripts of congressional hearings. Spivak says he acceded to many of these demands because "PhRMA was the client." He adds that he had no doubt that the project was being followed by higher-ups at the lobbying group.

Review: Captain's Glory (Star Trek)

Shatner stumbles in Captain's Glory, print media's 920th attempt to adapt Denny Crane's previous incarnation from the screen. I have not read the book, for to do so would only influence my opinion and therefore pollute the journalistic integrity of this review. I am more interested in knowing who does read these books, as I have never met anyone who has, nor have I met anyone who has met anyone who has. And to what end are they read? Other questions, just as frightening, come to mind. Why are there no T.J. Hooker novels? There are Diagnosis Murder novels, there are Murder, She Wrote novels, as a child my nephew owned not one, but two Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels - both in German. Or, more provocatively yet, what if there are T.J. Hooker novels, only to be systematically hidden from me? The implications are mind-boggling. I have not been paid yet for my previous review so the conscience of capitalism compels I cut this one to the quick. - Garland D'Warhoone

The Right Reverend Deacon Dr. D'Warhoone asks that copies of T.J. Hooker novels to be considered for review be sent to: The-Narrows-off-Old-Bottom-Farm Road, Blueville,  Pancake Dinner Mountain, Oklahoma. 

Tag: Books Television Denny Crane William Shatner

Corpse Blossoms Update

Books: Not to long ago, and straight out of the blue, I received a complimentary email about my story "Wednesday" from a very talented writer, editor and bon homme* of my acquaintance. This friend happened to see the piece in advance of its publication in Corpse Blossoms and I was flattered he took the time out to write to me about it.

Corpse Blossoms will be out later in the year or early next year. As many may have heard, the editors of the book, RJ & Julia Sevin, live in New Orleans -- though they are safely away from the flooding, hoteling it in Houston, surviving, heads held high, like so many others. Despite all this they want people to know they are going ahead with the anthology. Signature sheets for the limited edition have already gone out, and this other kick-ass writer (one whom I don't know) has already signed his.

This anthology has stories by many of the best horror writers living: Steve Rasnic Tem, Tom Piccirilli, Bentley Little, Ramsey Campbell and many others. It's going to be (and I have no reason to lie to you, I've already been paid and spent the money) the horror collect of the year. It will win the Bram Stoker Award for best original anthology. It will sell out quick. How I got in, I'll never know. But forget about that. Don't delay on this one, you can pre-order now at the Publisher's SITE. Drop in and pay RJ and Julia a visit.

Peace out!

* Fr. noun: Good man. One possessing bonhomie. "That bonhommie which won the hearts of all who knew him." --Washington Irving,Oliver Goldsmith

Nice review of Flytrap #4

Link: [LitHaven.com] - News.

"Michael Canfield’s “Flight to L.A.” reminded me of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, both in style and character. Keep in mind that The Stranger is one of my favorite novels. Add this to the fact that the style of this story also reminded me of Donald Barthelme’s fiction, a person who just happens to be one of my favorite short fiction writers, then you could venture a guess to just how pretty damned impressed I was with this story. Like many great stories, the concept is simple: An apathetic character goes on a flight to L.A. and sits next to a self-important businessman who feels the need to impress others with how powerful he is. The story is both weird and sharply written, and intrigues the reader all the way through its downward spiral in the rabbit hole." -- Simon Owens

Recent Story Sales

  "Super-Villains" will appear this November (I believe) in the premier issue of SonAndFoe. This story is a special one to me. Written a while ago, it was a true breakthrough for me -- not in terms of technique or style or subject or anything like that -- but this is the piece I can specifically point to as the point where I decided -- fuck it -- I'm just going to do what I want to do from now on. I had a lot of fun writing it, and it's meant to be fun for you too (time will tell). I'm  happy an editor has finally decided to put it out in the world.

I also this week got word that another milestone story of mine will be appearing in an e-anthology, though I don't have many details yet. This was the 2nd or 3rd coherent sf or f story I ever completed, an homage to fifties movie sci-fi. How old is it. Let's just say "Attack of the 50ft. Cosmonaut" was not a historical when I wrote it. Details on publication will appear sometime at News: Daikaiju!2: Giant Monster E-Tales.

Books: Read Nick Hornby's 4th novel A Long Way Down this week and loved it, although I could have done without the middle section. Still, Hornby's ability to handle profound life questions with the lightest touch makes him a pleasure to read. I've read everything he's published in book form (fiction and non-fiction) except -- amazingly enough -- High Fidelity. In fact, just today, I passed up buying it yet again. I can't bring myself to do it, because then there will be no more Hornby for me to look forward too -- at least for another year or two. I can't stand the thought of that, being Hornby-less for the foreseeable future, so there High Fidelity rests, like an aluminum drum of emergency graham crackers in an ancient bomb shelter, never to be opened, but available just in case.

The new Flytrap is here! The new Flytrap is here!

Includes my "Flight to L.A." View the full TOC and then order it: Flytrap. A 'zine.