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On Saturday, April 30, 2011, I read my short story “Are We Not a New People?,” which had originally appeared in the anthology Zombie Apocalypse. The faceless woman who introduces me is Martel Sardina. As for what you see me tossing to the audience before I begin, those are glow-in-the-dark zombie finger puppets, some of which I’d already given out before the reading began.
On April 10 at Ad Astra 2011, I read my short story “The Only Wish Ever to Come True,” which had originally been published in Talebones magazine. I shared the hour with Matthew Johnson, seen sitting next to me, waiting his turn to read.
Ad Astra 2011 was so overflowing with Guests of Honor (since it was the con’s 30th year, the committee attempted to bring back every previous Guest of Honor) that rather than have us give Guest of Honor speeches or be interviewed individually, the con doubled (and sometimes tripled) us up for low-key chats. Here’s Kathryn Cramer and I rambling on for what’s hopefully an entertaining hour.
(And please forgive the ambient noise seeping through from the hallway. It took awhile before an audience member thought to shut the doors. But I think you’ll be able to understand us throughout anyway.)
I appeared on the panel “The Moral Distance Between the Author and the Work” at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, along with Eric Flint, Nancy Kress, Paul Witcover, Kathryn Cramer, and Jack Skillingstead. The room was packed, with several hundred people present, and the discussion grew so lively near the end that we almost failed to yield the room.
Here’s how the panel, which is embedded in four parts below, was described in the Pocket Program:
What do we make of good art by bad people, or at least people of whom we disapprove? Richard Wagner was a particularly vile anti-Semite, but he still wrote “Kill Da Wabbit!” and other great music. Should we listen? The official Nazi film industry made one very good fantasy film (BARON MUNCHAUSEN, to which the Terry Gilliam version owes a good deal). Should we watch this? What about an author who is a convicted child molester? Should we read his novel? CAN we read it for itself? Is it possible to truly experience any form of art as a thing until itself, rather than the product of its creator?
While at Aussiecon4 in 2010, I took part in the “Vampire vs. Zombie Smackdown,” in which I’m joined by George R.R. Martin, Foz Meadows, Narrelle M Harris, Felicity Dowker, and Chuck McKenzie.
Which side won? Once you’ve watched the panel, which is embedded in four parts below, you decide.
While at my favorite convention in 2010, I read my short story “Tell Me Like You Done Before,” which can be found in my collection of zombie stories, What Will Come After.
If you’re up to finding out what happened to George and Lenny after John Steinbeck got through with them, check out my reading below, which is embedded in three parts!
Back at the 1999 Philcon, Paul Levinson, who was then the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, approached me and asked if I would act as Toastmaster for the following year’s Nebula Awards ceremony in New York. Ham that I am, I immediately accepted. The video below, the first of five clips available from that night, shows how I repaid Paul for that honor.
Back in 1993, long before I started working for the Syfy Channel, I was on the SCI FI Channel.
SCI FI Buzz, which was then the Channel’s equivalent of 60 Minutes, did a short feature highlighting me on the occasion of the first anniversary of <em>Science Fiction Age magazine. It was taped at ConFrancisco, the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, and ran in December of that year.
I don’t know how you’ll feel about watching this, but I wince a little, not just because there’s a little bit more of me, but also because there’s a little bit less.
More, because I was heavier then. Less, because I was trying so hard to present myself as a calm talking head and not bounce around in my chair or talk with my hands that I seem more subdued than my usual bouncy self. I was trying to be too cool about it all. I appear too coy and sedate, and with the quiet manner of speech on display here, I remind myself of Jason Alexander playing George Costanza.
You might feel differently. In fact, I hope you feel differently. But however you feel, the clip is too good a piece of history not to share.
I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. I found the tape recently and discovered to my horror that in 1975, I recorded over the first 31 minutes of the interview with a second interview with Steve Gerber. All that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.
Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the 19-year-old me who’d reused the tape!
I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice my high school classmate Eric Shalit.
