Pixel Scroll 10/2/22 Call Me Ishpixel

(1) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Meg Elison and Clay McLeod Chapman on Wednesday, October 12, 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Meg Elison

Meg Elison is a Philip K. Dick and Locus award winning author, as well as a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise finalist. A prolific short story writer and essayist, Elison has been published in Slate, McSweeney’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Clay McLeod Chapman

Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, and for film and television. His upcoming novel Ghost Eaters hit shelves on September 20th, from Quirk Books. He lives in Brooklyn.

Masks welcome at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. (Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs).

(2) THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] This somber new three part documentary by film maker Ken Burns is among the most sobering, heartbreaking, and horrifying indictments of humanity that I have ever encountered. It was extremely difficult to watch but, as an American Jew, mere hours away from the start of Yom Kippur, I remain struck by the similarities between the rise in Fascism in the early nineteen thirties, leading to the beginnings of Nazism in Germany, and the attempted decimation of the Jewish people in Europe and throughout the world, with the repellant echoes of both racial and religious intolerance, and the mounting hatred and suspicion of the Jewish communities and population residing presently in my own country of birth, these United States.

I am reminded of the disturbing adage that “those who forget the lessons (and atrocities against mankind) of the past are condemned to repeat them. While I have struggled these many years to keep my observations and postings limited to appreciations of films, music, and the arts, I can no longer, in clean conscience, remain silent as the clear signs of domestic and international Fascism are once again on the rise.

Perhaps these concerns have no place in this setting and personalized forum, but I can no longer keep silent as the horrific remnants of Nazism and racial genocide reach out their despicable tentacles from the graves of millions once more, threatening to consume both America and our planet in the decimation of freedom by the frightened zealots of bigotry, stupidity, and arrogance.

The warning signs are unmistakable as fear and hatred threaten enlightenment, while intolerance escalates alarmingly among those broadcasting their supposed patriotism as an end to democracy in what was once proclaimed as “The Land of the Free, and The Home of the Brave.” Intolerance must not be permitted to cloak itself yet again in the guise of patriotism to the detriment of free thought and speech.

We alone are responsible for the course and degree of our own success or failure. No other people or group can truly symbolize or camouflage our personal dissatisfactions. To hide our grievances and individual frailty beneath the cloak of blame is not only dishonest, but cowardly. For America to thrive and endure, freedom of expression, as well as the embrace and cultivation of our differences, is essential if we are, indeed, to survive the smoldering, unforgiving passage of time.

Never Again …

(3) NEW WSJ SF CRITIC. Liz Braswell has begun her reign as the Wall Street Journal’s science fiction and fantasy columnist. The WSJ is paywalled, however, here is the beginning of her current piece, “Science Fiction & Fantasy: Global Myths, Brave New Worlds”.

As a lifelong reader of all things folklorish and fantastical, like many of my American contemporaries, I grew up on a diet of European tales and legends—a satisfying but ultimately limited fare. These days readers have an enormous range of stories to delight them as contemporary fantasy engages with an ever-widening pool of cultural sources that encompass the world’s collective mythologies. This season publishers have presented readers with a veritable feast for the imaginative mind….

(4) HE DRAWS THEM IN. “Illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis Wins Klaus Flugge Prize” reports Publishing Perspectives. “When a parent walks the aisles of a bookstore, it’s not a book’s story that grabs them. It may not even be the title. It’s the artwork.”

Illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis has won the 2022 Klaus Flugge Prize for Pierre’s New Hair, illustrator Joseph Namara Hollis, editor Emilia Will, designer Jade Wheaton (Tate Museum).

The book is described as being “about a bear obsessed with looking good but also desperate to show the world his roller-skating flair.”

In accepting the award—which is personally funded by Klaus Flugge rather than by the Andersen Press that Flugge founded—Hollis is quoted, saying, “Winning  the Klaus Flugge Prize is invigorating.

… Hollis wins the program’s purse of £5,000 (US$5,555) and helps bring needed attention to the work of illustrators—like translators, far too often overlooked for their critical importance to publishing. …

(5) MIGHTY STEEDS. File 770’s coverage of the National Toy Hall of Fame and the comments from Breyer horse fan Cat Rambo and Masters of the Universe fan Cora Buhlert caught the eye of the Breyer History Diva: “Test Color Bears and Other Dreams”.

…A discussion about Breyer on a Science-Fiction Fandom news web site!?! If some of the names are not familiar to you, Cat Rambo was President of the SFWA from 2015-2019, and Cora Buhlert just won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer….

(6) MEMORY LANE.  

1972 [By Cat Eldridge.] Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel (1972)

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that I am very fond of British Country  House mysteries, be the written form such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (which yes I know has became several excellent filmed versions including one with the beloved David Suchet) or filmed works such as Robert Altman’s rather good Gosford Park.  

Fifty years ago this year, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied in Tinsel was published by the Collins Crime Club. It was the twenty-seventh novel to feature Inspector Roderick Alleyn.  It was late in the series, so there would only be five more as she’d live but a decade more. 

(Lovely title, eh? Guaranteed to catch the eye of the shopper in a bookstore nigh unto Christmastime when they’re desperately shopping for that mystery lover they’re buying for as you can see from the image below with its excellent design on the Collins Crime Club edition. Very Christmasy I’d say.)

In a brief recapping that really has no spoilers to speak of, his wife Troy Alleyn is at Hilary Bill-Tasman’s manor for Christmas time to paint a portrait of her husband and, while she’s there take part in the Christmas festivities that includes a Pageant along with the other guests who being in a Marsh novel are, to put it mildly, rather eccentric. Troy is enjoying these festivities until one of the Pageant’s players wanders off into the bitterly cold, snowy night. So her husband, Sir Roderick Alleyn is called upon to figure out what happened.

I liked it. It is a light affair I grant you, but it is a perfectly done Christmas Manor House mystery that any fan of Golden Age mysteries will no doubt enjoy very much. 

For reasons I’ve never figured out, she is considered a second rate mystery author when compared to Agatha Christie when I think is very, very unfair. (Reviews of her writings are often exceedingly harsh.) She’s just as good a writer as Christie was. I wonder if a large part of that bias was based in her not being properly British as she from New Zealand originally. British readers and critics can be harshly xenophobic.

The Blackstone edition audio version as narrated by Wanda McCaddon is available to Audible members for free. Need I say that’ll I will be listening to it? It’ll be interesting to see how it comes across as an audio drama. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 2, 1911 Jack Finney. Author of many novels but only a limited number of them genre, to wit The Body SnatchersTime and Again and From Time to Time. He would publish About Time, a short story collection which has the time stories, “The Third Level” and “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime”. The film version of The Body Snatchers was nominated for a Hugo at Seacon ‘79. He has a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. (Died 1995.)
  • Born October 2, 1919 Edward Wellen. Mostly remembered for the most excellent mysteries he wrote in great number that showed up in the Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and other outlets. He’s here because he wrote an ongoing column in Galaxy called Spoofs with first one in July entitled “Origins of Galactic Slang”. It was followed by similar Galactic Origins well call them for lack of a better term spoofs over the following decade. He wrote a fair amount of short fiction, all if it quite good, most, if not all, is collected in two digital Golden Age Metapacks. (Died 2011.)
  • Born October 2, 1932 Edmund Crispin. He’s well remembered and definitely still read for his most excellent Gervase Fen mystery series. It turns out that he was the editor of the Best SF anthology series that ran off and on between 1955 and 1972. Writers such as Kuttner, Moore, Blish, Bradbury and Von Vogt had stories there. These anthologies alas to my knowledge are not available digitally or in hard copy.  (Died 1978.)
  • Born October 2, 1944 Vernor Vinge, 78. Winner of five Hugo Awards, though what I consider his best series, the Realtime/Bobble series, was not one of them. And he won the Robert Heinlein Award in 2020. I’m also very fond of his short fiction, much of which is collected in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. 
  • Born October 2, 1948 Avery Brooks, 74. Obviously he’s got his Birthday write-up for being Benjamin Sisko on Deep Space Nine, but I’m going to note his superb work also as Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk which are aren’t even tangentially genre adjacent. He retired from acting after DS9 but is an active tenured theater professor at Rutgers. 
  • Born October 2, 1950 Ian McNeice, 72. Prime Minister Churchill / Emperor Winston Churchill on Doctor Who in “The Beast Below,” “Victory of the Daleks,”  “The Pandorica Opens,” and “The Wedding of River Song,” all Eleventh Doctor stories. He was an absolutely perfect Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Frank Herbert’s Dune and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune series. And he voiced Kwaltz in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 
  • Born October 2, 1953 Walter Jon Williams, 69. The last thing I read by him was his most excellent Dagmar Shaw series which I highly recommend. I also like his Metropolitan novels, be that SF or fantasy, as well as his Hardwired series. I’m surprised how few Awards that he’s won, just three with two Nebulas, both for shorter works, “Daddy’s World” and “The Green Leopard Plaque”, plus a Sidewise Award for “Foreign Devils”.
  • Born October 2, 1954 Diane Carey, 68. A major contributor to the Trek multiverse of novel. I mean really, really major contributor. I learned there are lines of Trek novels that I never knew existed. She uses three pen names (Lydia Gregory, Diane Carey, and D. L. Carey) which helps when you’re pumping out a lot of product. She has novels in the Original Series, Next GenerationDeep Space Nineand EnterpriseSo nothing surprising there you say. Then under Diane Carey, she has the New Earth series and there’s at three other series which extrapolate off the existing series. She also did a novel about Kirk as a cadet at Starfleet Academy. 

(8) WESTERCON ARCHIVES. [Item by Kevin Standlee.] The minutes of the 2022 Westercon Business Meeting, the current Westercon Bylaws as of the end of Westercon 74, and links to the video recordings of the Westercon 74 Business Meeting and the Committee of the Whole on 2024 Westercon Site Selection are now posted on the updated Westercon Business page at http://www.westercon.org/organization/business/

(9) LET THE DICE FLY. A profile of the makers of Rubikon in Variety: “Inspired by ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Rubikon’ Grapples With Questions of Morality”.

In Leni Lauritsch’s gritty sci-fi thriller “Rubikon,” the final frontier could well be humankind’s last refuge.

The film, which stars Julia Franz Richter, Georg Blagden (“Versailles”) and Mark Ivanir, screens in the Zurich Film Festival’s Focus Competition.

Set in a dark future in which a polluted and barely sustainable Earth is plagued by corporate armies battling for depleting resources as the wealthy live in air domes that protect them from the contaminated atmosphere, the story centers on three astronauts aboard the space station Rubikon, where scientists have developed a possible means of survival, a sustainable algae project to provide oxygen and food….

(10) WAIT A MINUTEMEN. “Hold fire: Re-enactors fear being targeted by NY gun law” – the Brooklyn Eagle has the story.

Some historical battle re-enactors in New York are holding their musket fire because of worries over the state’s new gun rules — an unplanned side effect of a law designed to protect the public’s safety.

The law that went into effect this month declares parks, government property and a long list of other “sensitive” places off limits to guns. The rules were geared more for semiautomatic pistols than flintlock weapons, but re-enactors who fear being arrested if they publicly re-stage battles from the colonial era to the Civil War are staying off the field.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration insists that historical battle re-enactments are still OK, and some have still taken place this month. But persistent skepticism among event organizers and participants has resulted in some cancellations, like an 18th century encampment and battle re-enactment planned for last weekend north of Saratoga Springs.

“We’ve been getting reports from units that were supposed to attend that they don’t feel comfortable transporting muskets or bringing muskets to the site,” said Harold Nicholson, a re-enactor involved in the event at Rogers Island. “And so at that point, we decided that it was probably best not to (go ahead).”

The consternation stems from a law quickly approved after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated New York’s requirement that people must demonstrate an unusual threat to their safety to qualify for a license to carry a handgun outside their homes.

Hochul and her fellow Democrats in control of the state Legislature responded with a law that set strict new licensing criteria and limited where handguns, shotguns and rifles can be carried. Some re-enactors looking at the letter of the law have concluded the old-style weapons they use could place them in the crosshairs of the new rules….

(11) WOULD YOU BUY IT FOR A QUARTER? Coinweek tells us that a “New Coin From CIT Features Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft”. It’s issued by Palau.

One side depicts the tentacled head of Cthulhu above the sea. Its tentacles are wrapped around a sailing ship, which is tiny in comparison; in the field incuse 2022.

The other side features numerous tangled tentacles, and between them the silhouette-like portrait of H.P. Lovecraft. Legend H. P. LOVECRAFT / 1890 / 1937. Above, the coat of arms of Palau with the circumscription REPUBLIC OF PALAU 20 $.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Kevin Standlee, Steve Vertlieb, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

Pixel Scroll 6/27/16 770 Sunset Scroll

(1) BREAKING IT DOWN. Damien G. Walter contemplates “Systems fiction: a novel way to think about the present” in The Guardian.

Weirdly enough, science fiction is not the best lens through which to examine science fiction. In the 80s, critic Tom LeClair came up with an alternative category for all the weird literary novels that veered into speculative territory: the systems novel. These books pick apart how the systems that keep society chugging along work: politics, economics, sex and gender dynamics, science, ideologies – all can be explored through fiction, especially experimental fiction. LeClair applied this tag specifically to Don DeLillo, but it can be expanded more widely: think Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan and Umberto Eco, among others….

“The future is here,” William Gibson famously said. “It’s just not evenly distributed.” And in these difficult times, the visionary possibilities of the systems novel can be comforting. When we’re in the capable hands of guides like Atwood, DeLillo and Robinson, these novels can be a profound reminder of human progress and potential. In the wake of the EU result, and ahead of the US elections, if you are feeling at all unsettled about the future – go read these books today.

(2) POST-BREXIT FASHION. Jim Mowatt’s FB page displayed a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted Remain” t-shirt, and I made an idle joke that the marathon runner should really be wearing a different slogan – which Alison Scott immediately made available (or that’s the impression I got).

i voted rhino

(3) WHAT’S UP WITH SFWA. Episode 3 of the SFWA Chat Hour features SFWA Board Members Jennifer Brozek and Matthew Johnson, CFO Bud Sparhawk, and President Cat Rambo.

Includes discussion of what the criteria for game writers will be like and when they’ll go out (hint: soon!). Also the usual books we like, writing advice, reports on the Locus Weekend, Stokercon and Origins, and ice cream vs. sherbet, in which we unanimously vote for ice cream.

 

(4) CAMESTROS FELAPTON. When not busily engaged arm-wrestling with Vox Day about their IQs, Camestros turns his talents to the visual arts.

(5) HORROR PODCAST. The Horror Writers Association recommends the Scary Out There podcast. The latest installment offers a dialog with Kaitlin Ward, the author of Bleeding Earth (Adaptive Books, February 2016). Listen to the episode here.

Hello Horror Fanatics! Today Scary Out There is sitting down with Kaitlin Ward, the author of Bleeding Earth (Adaptive Books, February 2016). Listen as Kaitlin discusses how she came up with the idea for Bleeding Earth, why it’s important for children and teens to read horror, what scary books she recommends, and more.

Kaitlin Ward grew up on a dairy farm in Monroe, New Hampshire, the same town where she lives today with her husband and son. Before settling back in her hometown, Kaitlin studied animal science at Cornell University. She co-founded the well-known blog, YA Highway, and by day she works at a company that sells coins. Bleeding Earth is her debut novel. Kaitlin’s new book, The Farm, will be released by Scholastic in 2017. Keep up with Kaitlin at kaitlin-ward.com and follow her on Twitter @Kaitlin_Ward.

Kaitlin recommends the following horror titles: Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics (Harlequin Teen, September 2016); Relic by Gretchen McNeil (HarperCollins/EpicReads Impulse, March 2016)

(6) FANS WHO SNORT. In the July/August Fantasy & Science Fiction, David Gerrold has a novelette called “The Thing on the Shelf” that begins as a report on the 2013 World Horror Convention, which hands out the Bram Stoker Award.

“The World Horror Convention was one of the better conventions I attended. Horror fans are clean, well-dressed, intelligent, polite, and enthusiastic. I have no idea why this is so. (Although I have to admit I was a little put off by the beautiful woman who came up to me and said she wanted to lick my Stoker. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, and I’m not up on this year’s crop of new slang terms.)”

He adds the following:

“At one con, a young fan saw my badge had the ‘Pro’ ribbon attached, so he leaned forward and read my name.  ‘I never heard of you,’ he said. ‘What did you write?’

I replied, “I wrote the novelization of Battle of the Planet of the Apes. I said it with deadpan pride.

He snorted and walked off, his way of showing how unimportant I was.”

(7) DININ’ GAIJIN. Liz Braswell tells the readers of Eating Authors about a memorable meal in Japan. The best part follows this excerpt.

My husband, my crazy-blond toddler, my sister Sabrina and I were in Japan for work and fun — the vacation of a lifetime. One night Scott took the baby and a colleague of his took Sabrina and me for a night out on the town. Mutsumi asked us where we wanted to go and of course we answered someplace super obscure no Americans have been to Japanese only please we’ll behave.

She very nicely obliged and led us through the labyrinth of streets, around and around and deeper and deeper into Tokyo. Most of the city doesn’t follow a grid system and buildings are addressed by age rather than specific location; were my sister and I by ourselves we never would have found our way in or out of the tiny neighborhood we eventually wound up in. And forget about stumbling upon the tiny, unmarked, second-floor restaurant where we were, indeed, the only gaijin.

Everything about the place was perfect: from the rustic tables and wooden shutters to the little button one presses to ring for a waiter—otherwise diners are left in perfect privacy. The sake came in hand-thrown cups, Mutsumi ordered for us, we behaved.

We wanted to stop drinking at one point, but apparently that would not have been behaving, so we continued….

(8) EXIT POLL. Nicholas Whyte ranks his Retro and regular Hugo picks in “My Hugo and #RetroHugos1941 votes: Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)”. In second place on his Retro Hugo ballot —

2) The Adventures of Superman: “The Baby from Krypton”

The only radio play in the mix (as opposed to two years ago, when we had four radio plays and a TV play than nobody had seen), it’s the origin story of Superman, and does what it says on the tin perfectly competently. Lara, Kal-El’s mother, is played by Agnes Moorehead, later Endora in Bewitched.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • June 27, 1927 — “Captain Kangaroo” Bob Keeshan
  • June 27, 1966 — J.J. Abrams

(10) SKIFFY AND FANTY. I tend not to cover podcasts — even with hearing aids I’m not able to listen to them effectively. I will say the blurb for this episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show makes it sound pretty irresistible: 298. Sphere (1998) — A Torture Cinema “Adventure”.

Eggs, squid, and bad dreams, oh my!  Our latest listener-directed Torture Cinema episode has finally arrived.  This time, we discuss the infamous adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Sphere starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, and more!  At least two of us have a bit of a rant about this movie, so you should expect some pure, unadulterated Skiffy and Fanty rage in this episode!

(11) AND SOMETHING BUT THE TRUTH. Alexandra Erin is right on the money about “Sad Boner Confessionals”.

You can tell you’re reading a Sad Boner Confessional when the language suggests a high wire act where the author is trying to achieve some delicate balance between “I’m a sensitive man” and “BUT I’M A MAN” and wants you to sympathize with the contortions he puts himself through as  a result. You can tell you’re reading a Sad Boner Confessional when a man is describing the worst trauma of a woman’s life purely in terms of what it means about him. You can tell you’re reading a Sad Boner Confessional when a man is telling you everything he’s learned from the mistakes he’s made but none of those things are accountability or personal responsibility. You can tell you’re reading a Sad Boner Confessional when all admissions of past sins have a sheen of humblebragging about them.

(12) LABYRINTH. The BBC article “Why Labyrinth is so memorable” talks about the advantages of real-time puppetry over computer animation. Chip Hitchcock comments, “They don’t discuss how/if the gap has been narrowed by motion capture; would be interesting to see discussion of this — or any input by Mary Robinette Kowal, who has done fascinating convention talks about the practice of puppetry and the theory behind it.”

Jim Henson’s beloved 1986 movie musical Labyrinth, one of only two non-Muppets films the legendary puppeteer directed, is famous for several reasons.

Fans of David Bowie will recall visions of the late musician wearing extremely tight trousers that fail to obscure an enormously large codpiece. Bowie wrote and performed all the songs, including the iconic Dance Magic Dance. He plays a nefarious, all-singing, all-dancing king of a fantasy world of goblins, castles and all manner of strange colourful creatures.

One of Labyrinth’s best-known scenes is a sensational finale that takes place on a set modelled on Escher staircases. It is also the production that brought a then-unknown, then-15-year-old Jennifer Connelly to the public’s attention.

… One of the first creatures she encounters in the Goblin King’s fantastical world is a dwarf named Hoggle: a morally dubious, Sméagol-esque character whose motives and allegiances are unclear. With a huge lumpy nose, spurts of shoulder-length white hair and a crinkled, finely detailed face, Hoggle is an amazing puppet, at once both magical and realistic.

His seemingly effortless facial and body movements required the collaboration of six people working in real time. The character’s large face contained 18 motors, which were manipulated off-frame by four crew members using remote controls. Diminutive actor Shari Weiser controlled Hoggle’s body and Brian Henson, Jim’s son, provided his voice.

(13) STOPWATCH. Are you worried about how long Suicide Squad will run? ScreenRant is going to tell you anyway.

Collider has heard from their sources that Suicide Squad runs approximately 130 minutes with credits. Its DCEU predecessors were both in the range of 2.5 hours, meaning Suicide Squad will be about 20 minutes shorter than either Man of Steel or Dawn of Justice. Considering the sheer amount of characters Ayer is working with, some may be concerned that Squad is actually too short, but a shade over two hours gives him plenty of time to flesh everything out. After all, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a lot on its plate and accomplished it all in 136 minutes.

(14) A DIFFERENT DICTIONARY. John G. Hartness, in Magical Words’ “Making Money Mondays” post, uses a commercial definition of “Fans v. True Fans”.

Now on to our main topic – fans. Now I’m not ever going to bash fans, because I love my fans. Hell, I love everybody’s fans, because I’m a fan myself. But what we want to talk about today is the concept of the True Fan, what they are, how best to interact with them, how to find them, how to keep them. Looking at that, it’s going to take more than one post, so this week we’ll talk about what a True Fan is, then later on ee’ll look at how to cultivate them, how to deal with them, and how to convert a Lesser Fan into a True Fan.

For the record, exactly ZERO of this material is anything I came up with. The concept of 1,000 True Fans was first put forth by Kevin Kelly in 2008 on his blog post here. He later references a couple of other folks who had similar ideas a little earlier, unbeknownst to him, but his site, with a tip of the hat to Seth Godin, who wrote the blog post that first turned me on to Kevin’s work.

Kelly postulates that any independent artist, that is any artist outside the big machine of superstar entertainment, needs to cultivate only 1,000 True Fans to survive. BTW, this whole blog post came out of a late-night conversation with AJ Hartley, where I claimed the number was 100. I’m bad at math. He defines a True Fan as someone who spends $100 per year on your work, and those thousand people then contribute to a $100,000 annual income, which is a pretty comfortable living in most places. At least that’s the rumor. I’m a writer, I don’t make anywhere near that kind of money.

So what’s a True Fan, and how do I get their hundred bucks? I assume that’s what you’re all asking. In this case, it’s usually a lot easier to show you than tell you….

(15) DON’T BE ALARMED. George R.R. Martin expressed gratitude about winning a Locus Award together with Gardner Dozois, and he couldn’t resist adding a punchline.

All kidding aside, I am very proud of OLD VENUS, and I know Gardner is as well. There are some terrific stories in there, and one that in any normal year would have been a surefire Hugo finalist. This is the third year in a row that one of the original anthologies that I’ve done with Gardner has won the Locus Award, and I can’t tell you how gratifying that is. Gardner and I both began our careers (a long time ago) with short fiction, and it pleases me no end to be able to provide a showcase for some of the extraordinary short stories, novelettes, and novellas still being written in this age of the series and the meganovel. If you don’t read anthologies, friends, you are missing out on some great stuff.

Oh, and before the crazy internet rumors start flying, I had better say that I was only kidding about OLD URANUS….

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peter J.]