I just realized I never linked to this: Mur Lafferty’s podcast interview of me and others at Worldcon.

(Thanks to Carrie for setting this up, and indeed reminding me it was up)

Carrie has a worst-first-lines competition.  Limit of three entries per person, and I’ve already used it up.  I’m very pleased with:

CLIPCLOP CLIPCLOP clipclop clipclop went Cowboy Dan’s horse as it decelerated into an empty parking spot out front of the Last Chance Saloon.

Anyway, once I start doing one of these things I can’t stop, I binge and binge until I feel bloated and sick and ashamed; so the comments here are for overflow.  Anyone under a similar compulsion can feel free to post here or there or both.  No prizes here and no point because that’s how life is.

Incidentally, I genuinely rather like Bulwer-Lytton, and I don’t think It was a dark and stormy night. . . is nearly as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

So I didn’t win the Campbell, not even nowhere close.  On the other hand, I did win a bet with my editor that it would go to David Anthony Durham (to whom, congratulations).  Getting to say I told you so was a fairly satisfactory substitute for winning.

I did several interviews, including one with the very erudite Matthew Surridge, which is here.

I heard Faye Ringel tell a story about a British writer trying his hand at a western, in which, knowing that coyotes were the kind of thing that appeared in westerns but not exactly what they were, he wrote in a flock of them, circling overhead.  That was probably the high point of the weekend.

Anyone going to WorldCon? I am.

I will be doing the following:

• “Making up the Facts as We Go Along” –  “How do we write hard SF in fields where there’s still uncertainty about interpreting the data? Can we claim as rigorous a trope like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which is just that: one of many interpretations among many?
  • Friday, 5.00 p.m., Room P-518A, with Daniel P. Dern, John Helfers, Paddy Forde, Jordan Jackson
  • [Why am I on this panel when I don’t know anything about science and don’t write hard SF or anything remotely close to it? I don’t know. A computer assigned me to it, or possibly some sort of Sorting Hat. I suspect everyone else is some sort of physicist or something; I will be there as a representative of the Pig-Ignorant Community.]
• Signing.
  • Saturday, 10.00 a.m, Room P-Autographs.
• “Weird Tales” — As in the magazine.
  • Saturday, 11.00 a.m., Room P-524C, with Ann VanderMeer, Stephen Segal, others.
• “Stroll with the Stars”
  • Sunday, 9.00 a.m., meet at Riopelle Fountain outside the Palais (corner of Ave Viger & Rue de
    Bleury).  With Farah Mendlesohn, Lou Anders, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paul Cornell, Stu Segal, John Picacio.
  • The idea here is that we all go for a briefish walk. Adventure and excitement ensue.
• “The Anti-Workshop Panel; You don’t have to Go to Clarion/Odyssey to have a Career in Genre” — “Does going to one or more of the writing workshops help your career? Some writers have a very successful career without
  attending one.”
  • Sunday, 10.00 a.m, Room P-522B, with Camille Alexa, Jay Lake, Lawrence M. Schoen.
  • [I have never attended a workshop of any kind. On the other hand maybe I probably should have. Who knows?]
• “How much History does a Fantasy Writer Need to Know?” — “Should a fantasy writer have a degree in medieval studies? Fantasy writers discuss how much historical knowledge is required for their work.”
  • Sunday at 5.00 p.m.,  Room P-512BF, with Ellen Kushner, Faye Ringel, P. C. Hodgell.
  • [Exactly the amount of historical knowledge I happen to have, and no more]. 

yes yes alright yes i know i know i haven’t touched this thing in months.  But who has time for blogs anyway? I speak through my deeds.

on the other hand here and here is a very good interview with the very wonderful juliet ulman

They’ve made a Mike Tyson movie, apparently.

The central event in Tyson’s life, of course, is his encounter with the philosopher Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, who was at the time 77 years old:

“At yet another party [Ayer] had befriended [Fernando Sanchez, a fashionable designer]. Ayer was now standing near the entrance to the great white living-room of Sanchez’s West 57th Street apartment, chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model called Naomi Campbell, then just beginning her career. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.” Ayer stood his ground. “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.” Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out.”

The ideal Tyson biopic would introduce this story about thirty minutes into its run time, and after it the camera would, as if embarrassed, slowly withdraw from Tyson; and for the rest of the film it would follow Ayer instead, from a respectful distance.

Help! Internet!

All my bananas have gone brown and mushy, and it’s raining outside.  I have some pears but I want bananas instead.  How do I transmute stale bananas and/or pears into fresh bananas? 

Secondly, iTunes keeps crashing when I try to add new music.

I have an alembic of aqua regia, a small pouch of antimony, some cinnabar, a live toad and a Hand of Glory, if any of that helps. No mandrake root, no bat wing.

Any suggestions appreciated.

This is Sarah not-so-secretly posting on the blog to let you know that we’re giving away books in celebration of the news that Thunderer has been shortlisted for the 2009 Locus award for first novel. Go to the homepage to enter!

Tilt-shift; best actually-existing photographic gimmick, or best possible photographic gimmick?

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Elliot Abrams explains how the Iranians won’t really mind if we launch airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities:

We are not talking about the Americans killing civilians, bombing cities, destroying mosques, hospitals, schools. No, no, no – we’re talking about nuclear facilities which most Iranians know very little about, have not seen, will not see, some quite well hidden.

So they wake up in the morning and find out that the United States if attacking those facilities and, presumably with some good messaging about why we’re doing it and why we are not against the people of Iran.

It’s not clear to me that the reaction let’s go to war with the Americans, but rather, perhaps, how did we get into this mess? Why did those guys, the very unpopular ayatollahs in a country 70 percent of whose population is under the age of 30, why did those old guys get us into this mess.

Suppose Iran decided to bomb an American military base, on American soil.  How good would Iranian messaging have to be, do you presume, for American popular reaction to be, “Well, who cares, they only killed a bunch of soldiers.  Maybe these guys have a point.”  I presume that that messaging would have to be really quite good.