Monthly Archives: June 2008

Where Real Writers Work

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The desk and chair Charles Dickens used while writing Great Expectations sold for £433,250 at auction in early June. It is the original of the desk shown in Filde’s drawing known as “The Empty Chair” and upon it were written Dickens’ last works.

When I looked at “The Empty Chair” I immediately wondered: How did Dickens ever get any work done in such a neat room? Impossible. Someone must have cleaned it up before they let the artist in. I don’t know any writer who could even begin to work in such a sanitized environment.

Certainly Dickens’ contemporary Mark Twain didn’t. Go to the interactive map of Mark Twain’s House. Click on the Third Floor “Billiard Room” to see where Samuel Clemens did Mark Twain’s work. Even now that it’s a museum, the curators haven’t forgotten to spread around some clutter to simulate the great man at work. (While you’re there, click on the First Floor “Entrance Hall” and look at the three-story spiral staircase. Legend holds that whoever seeks to be a writer should touch the staircase’s mahogany railing. Now wipe the fingerprint off of your monitor.)

Thanks to Google, it’s easy to find lots of photos of science fiction writers’ offices to illustrate the same point. A collection of links appears after the jump.

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Will BEA Escape from LA?

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Book Expo America drew around 5,800 “pure book buyers” to the Los Angeles Convention Center on the last weekend in May, which was down 900 from the year before. Some major sf authors attended and signed their books, and the graphic novel venue got good press. But will the party ever be back in LA?

Saturday at the BEA there was a short work-stoppage by the catering union over a dispute with the venue, having the unhappy effect of forcing the BEA staff to serve lunch. Lance Fensterman, Vice President of Reed Exhibitions, commented: “L.A. was a challenge on a few fronts and then as my entire team and I were serving chicken dinners to 1,000 people, it really didn’t leave me with a great taste in my mouth.”

Then the Los Angeles Times ran an article on June 2, quoting an exhibitor:

“BookExpo has been getting less important,” said City Lights’ Katzenberger, explaining that the rise of the Internet and other innovations over the last 15 years or so had begun to eclipse personal meetings and the physical showing of upcoming books, which is a primary purpose of BEA. “Nobody’s really sure what it is now. But people keep coming,” she said.

BEA still has one year on its contract with LA. The BEA site shows they will meet in New York in 2009, Washington, D.C. in 2010, and Las Vegas in 2011. I asked the Convention Center’s media contact via e-mail whether BEA’s return to LA is scheduled or merely expected some year in the future, and the reply did not furnish the information.

[Thanks to John Mansfield for the link.]

Pratchett and God

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“TERRY PRATCHETT, the fantasy writer suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has suggested he may have found God after years of atheism,” begins the article posted in Times Online on June 8, quoting an interview given to the News Review. “Previously, Pratchett has said he was ‘rather angry with God for not existing’.”

Is the Times giving this story an overly aggressive slant? Pratchett’s quotes don’t read to me like an unqualified endorsement of the Deity. But something has changed.

Is the Emperor Naked?

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SF Signal’s JP Frantz has posted Why I Stopped Reading: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, an iconoclastic slam against the Hugo-nominated and Nebula-winning novel. (I won’t call it a review – he didn’t finish reading the book, remember?)

I’ve been waiting for the Best Novel Hugo debate to “go negative,” as it’s termed in election-year jargon. And that choice of jargon is no coincidence, for this category turned into a campaign the moment the other four nominees (McDonald, Sawyer, Scalzi, and Stross) offered free electronic copies of their novels to 2008 Worldcon members, an unprecedented move. (We still have to buy Chabon’s.)

That brilliant gamble can only pay off if people like one of their books better than Chabon’s, and I’m sure they’ve anxiously been waiting for any sign they’re gaining traction against the perceived front-runner (thus playing Obama to Chabon’s Clinton?)

And they ought to worry. These are the same Hugo voters who gave a Neal Stephenson novel the award a couple of years ago. Those people might do anything!

Bruce Dane Hospitalized

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David Klaus reports: “On Monday, June 2nd long-time Colorado (and formerly Arizona/California) science fiction convention fan, filk musician, and Worldcon volunteer Bruce Dane, already ill with degenerative disc disease, fell while taking his youngest daughter to a movie and was paralyzed ‘from the nipples down,’ according to his former wife, Michelle.”

David gives more details, and an address for sending cards, below

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Potter Prequel Sold at Auction

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Potter Prequel at auctionThe BBC reports an 800-word mini-prequel to the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling was sold today at auction for $49,323/ £ 25,000.

“That’s $59/ £ 30 per word,” explains David Klaus, who sent me this story. “Jack Williamson, who got 1/4 cent/word for his first story from Hugo Gernsback after threatening a lawsuit to get his money, must be a veritable whirligig in his grave.”

The auction raised money for English PEN, which promotes understanding through literature, and Dyslexia Action. Organizers asked 13 authors, including Rowling, Nick Hornby and Doris Lessing, to create work for the sale.