Last night, Irene and I headed over to what was dubbed an Irish Fest of the Future, hosted by Tom Doyle and Beth Delany. Since we were asked to dress according to the theme, I adorned myself with little green men. As you can see in the photo below, in addition to green clothing and a brown derby, I wore Yoda, Braniac 5, and one of those cute aliens from Toy Story.

Also—you’ll note a certain green-haired wench on my arm … one who’s likely to smack me around for calling her a green-haired wench. (Thanks to Karen Wester Newton for the pic!)

The catalyst for the theme was that Tom’s a recent winner of the Writers of the Future competition, and will be heading to L.A. next month to take part in the awards ceremony. So last night, when he wasn’t leading us in singing “Fairytale of New York” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” he read the opening to his story.

St. Patrick’s Day may be over, but that’s no reason not join in the celebration now below! (more…)

Remember Richard Wilson? Some of you might, but alas, most probably don’t. Wilson won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1968 for “Mother to the World” (which got him a Hugo nomination, too), and I published his “The Nineteenth Century Spaceship” in Last Wave back in 1984. He died in 1987, and is now mostly forgotten except to the cognoscenti.

John Pelan of Ramble House is publishing a series of books collecting his short stories—the first volume of which is now on sale, and he got in touch with me to see whether I still had copies of the magazine he could use to help in reprinting that latter story.

But I’d hung on to more than just that. I also had our correspondence regarding that and other submissions. So I sent John scans of a batch of letters, including the one below, which teases with information about a collection editor Terry Carr was considering, one that never came to pass. (Carr also died in 1987.)

Ah, the land of Might-Have-Been! That letter is filled with many things which never came to pass.

For more Wilson, keep up with what Ramble House‘s publishing plans.

I received a copy of Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1950-1962 in the mail the other day. The book featured a cover photo of a Vonnegut I did not recognize and an essay on science fiction written by a Vonnegut I did not recognize either.

The photo caused some cognitive dissonance because of what was lacking—the curly hair, that mustache … and where was the cigarette? And as for the essay, well, he may have liked SF writers and editors, thinking them a jovial bunch, “generous and amusing souls,” as he put it, but he sure didn’t like the words on the page.

I’m sure I read the piece titled “Science Fiction” back in 1974 when it was reprinted in his collection Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, but I’d completely forgotten about it. Maybe you have, too. Or perhaps you’ve never read it. But in writing of the science fiction field of 1965, Vonnegut was quite dismissive:

Whatever it knows about science was fully revealed in Popular Mechanics by 1933. Whatever it knows about politics and economics and history can be found in the Information Please Almanac for 1941. Whatever it knows about the relationships between men and women derives from the clean and the pornographic versions of “Maggie and Jiggs.”

Oh, but he doesn’t hate all science fiction, though, because: (more…)

I only had a chance to make a single submission to Hardware, which billed itself as “The Magazine of Technophilia.” I apparently ran out of time to make further submissions, because I now see that Hardware only published two issues.

I remember very little about the magazine, but it must have been a decent market, because I see it published contributions by Paul Di Filippo, Robert Frazier, Bruce Boston, Jonathan V. Post, and other names you’d recognize.

All I ever sent editor Jimm Gall was one poem titled “Friends,” no copy of which currently exists. The rejection slip below is all that remains.

I’m not sure exactly when I received this rejection slip from Charlie Ryan, because for some reason my records don’t reflect any submissions to Galileo. But since the magazine was only published from 1977-1980, there’s a very small window during which this could have been generated. Also, since I’d never have sent him a horror story, my possible submissions were few.

In any case, here’s another example of a rejection slips from a dead magazine that should allow all you writers out there to revel in some schadenfreude.

Charlie went on to publish Aboriginal, yet another of his magazines I never cracked. I liked Charlie, and remember fondly a number of Indian dinners we shared during the earlier days of Readercon.

There haven’t been any such meals in quite awhile as our paths no longer cross—he’s gafiated and is now the editor of The Willimantic Chronicle.

As news of Anne McCaffrey’s death at 85 started coming out this afternoon and bouncing around Facebook and Twitter, most commented on her work, on the words on the page, but what first popped into my mind, even though, yes, the stories were wonderful, was instead a moment at the 2005 Nebula Awards weekend in Chicago.

Because of the ocean that stretched between us during our fannish and professional lives, even though I’ve attended hundreds of conventions over the years, I only got to chat with Anne McCaffrey a handful of times. But among those times were some of my favorite con experiences.

One took place that Chicago weekend, which included a moment with me, Anne, and Joe Haldeman that was captured below.

She’d been named a SFWA Grand Master that weekend, and was in high spirits. Even though I’m no longer sure exactly what led up to me and Joe each giving her a smooch, I do very much recall her smiling, laughing, joyful.

Another encounter I remember fondly took place back in 1994 when I was editing Science Fiction Age and had been contacted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to help a young boy’s dream come true. He wanted to meet his science fiction idols, chief among them Anne. I reached out to her, and even though she had many demands on her time that weekend, she spent a couple of hours with the boy answering his questions and giving him writing advice.

It’s times like those I choose to spend my time thinking about tonight. There’ll be plenty of time for mourning later.

I’m going to write this post without digging into my old journals, notes, and memos, so I may end up being off on some of the dates, a point I want to get out of the way first thing. But the spirit of what I’m about to share with you is true, and I want you to hear it today even though I don’t have the time for that. I may someday write something longer and more detailed on the subject with all the i’s dotted, t’s crossed, and details revealed, but for now, this will have to do.

I edited Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000, but what very few people know is that I almost quit before the first issue ever appeared. (Or perhaps it was during the space between the first and second issue. I can no longer be sure without doing that research I mentioned.) And the reason for my possible resignation is a short story that’s just gotten published in the September/October issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a story which you’re only finally getting a chance to read nearly two decades later than you should have.

Sometime during 1992, before the first issue of Science Fiction Age was published, I read a submission titled “Anise” from writer Chris DeVito. I loved it, and sent out a contract immediately. If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, or if the name does mean something to you, but you only know Chris as the editor and publisher of the magazines such as Fuck Science Fiction or Proud Flesh, well … I still feel guilty about that.

Because “Anise” was NOT published in the second or third issue of SFA. Instead, the publishers overruled my decision due to the story’s explicit sexual content. I was told that maybe we could publish it a couple of years down the road, but not during the first year or two of our existence, when the chain stores were still paying close attention to the magazine’s content.

I was furious. (more…)

I arrived home from the Reno Worldcon late Monday night, and as you can tell by the absence of recent posts, I failed to live up to Edelman’s Schadenfreude Rule of Convention Reporting, which states that all blogging must occur while a con is still in progress, so you can see what you’re missing while it’s still going on. If you were following me on Twitter or Facebook, you got a taste of the action, but I was just having too much fun to pause to tell you about it here until my return.

Well, now I’m back, and it appears I still don’t (and won’t) have time for a lengthy con report, so these few highlights will have to stand in for the long weekend. Here are my 12 favorite Worldcon moments:

Singing along with Dr. Demento

I started listening to Dr. Demento’s warped radio show in the early ’80s, which is how I first learned about everything from “Fish Heads” to Weird Al. So I made sure to catch the opening night presentation of some of his most-requested songs, which he shared via audio and video clips. He also sang “Shaving Cream” live while hundreds of us in the audience sang along to the chorus, which, you’ll forgive me, had me a little giddy.

Never heard of “Shaving Cream”? Here’s Benny Bell’s original version of it from 1946. Now imagine 500-800 fen (I’m no good at counting crowds) singing along. If you weren’t there, you missed a good time.

Dinner with John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow

After yucking it up with Dr. Demento, I headed off with John and Cory for dinner at the Atlantis Steakhouse, where we dined on aged beef, had a great conversation, and realized that Renovation was the second consecutive Worldcon to be held in a city with legalized brothels. (What’s that? You don’t remember prostitution being legal in Melbourne. Well, it was.)

By the way, we only discussed this hypothetically. No. Really. I mean it. (more…)

Balticon 45 ran from Friday through Monday, but as usual for this local con, I only attended for a single day, Saturday. But on that day, I managed to squeeze in three panels, a reading, an autograph session, and on top of that—a durian feast!

My 1:00 p.m. panel, “Fantastic Books Presents,” was hosted by Ian Randal Strock, owner of (you guessed it) Fantastic Books, which published my collection of science fiction short stories, What We Still Talk About. While Ian explained why he does what he does, a few of his authors (me, Walter H. Hunt, and Daniel Kimmel) talked up our books, and actually managed to sell a few copies.

At 2:30, I read my short story “Goobers,” which originally appeared in The Book of More Flesh and was collected in my all-zombie collection What Will Come After. You were probably not there, but in case you wish you were, my performance has been preserved below.

Immediately following my reading, I rushed to the 3:00 p.m. panel, “Name-Droppers,” during which I was supposed to talk about my “personal contacts with the field’s departed giants,” along with Michael Swanwick and Ian Randal Strock. I shared anecdotes about my early encounters with Gordon Dickson, Nelson Bond, and Ted Sturgeon, while Michael talked about R. A. Lafferty and Ian discussed meeting Isaac Asimov. But mentioning only the dead turned out to be a bit depressing, so we moved on to sharing our stories of the living, too. (Including an extremely embarrassing encounter I had with Chip Delany when I was only 17.) (more…)

On August 30, 1971, I sent an early, clumsy, typo-riddled, poorly written short story (there should probably be further negative adjectives, but those are all I have energy for tonight) to editor Ted White at Amazing Science Fiction.

I received this rejection slip back. Even that was more than it deserved.