Locus Online’s traditional April Fools gag blew up the internet and scorched the editors on the same morning, none of them having eyeballed in advance Lawrence Person’s attempt (as “L. Ron Creepweans”) to parody feminists and Islam alike. When Locus Online tried to calm the waters by taking down the post, Person billboarded it on his own site still festooned with the Locus logo. Thousands rushed to see, like the folks who spot an orange cone on the highway and slow to look for bodies.

The Hugo nominations, which are ordinarily the top story of the month they’re announced, couldn’t compete with that.

Neither could the murder conviction of Christian Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, who killed LASFS member John Sohus in 1985.

Here are the Top 10 posts for April 2013 according to Google Analytics:

1. April Fails Day
2. Terry Pratchett’s Coat of Arms
3. 2013 Hugo Award Nominations
4. Christian Gerhartsreiter (tag)
5. Seen Nick Vanover?
6. John Sohus (tag)
7. Ellison Recovering From Spill
8. Ed Kramer (tag)
9. Roger Ebert (1942-2013)
10. Fox News on Kramer’s Jail Stay

If the Gerhartsreiter/Sohus duo and the two Kramer items are counted as one, two more posts move into the Top 10 — Allyn Cadogan Passes Away, and SF Writer Stamps Delayed.