Irene was going to New York to catch two performances at the Metropolitan Opera last weekend, so I decided to head north with her. Not because I also wanted to see Parsifal, but because the NYC ukulele contingent gathers the second Friday of every month for an open mic and jam session, which meant I’d be able to join them. So I tagged along, not wanting to miss a chance to strum with others.

We met for four hours Friday night at the Sage Theater on Seventh Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets, where each of us was to be given a shot at performing one song, and if time permitted after everyone had a turn, a second.

I chose “Makin’ Whoopee” and “Happy Go Lucky Me,” because I’d committed both songs to memory and had played each several times a day for the past few weeks. (I already shared “Makin’ Whoopee” with you here.) But I soon discovered that there’s a big difference between performing a song under your own roof with an audience consisting of your spouse and performing it in a theater on a stage under a spotlight in front of rows of strangers.

When I got on stage, I suddenly found that my fingers were stiffer than they ever were at home, my voice betrayed my nervousness, and the chords and lyrics I thought I had memorized occasionally fled. Regardless of that, I’m going to share those performances with you.

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February is long over, but March has been so busy, I’ve been unable until now to gather together the month’s dreams to see what kind of surreal sense they make when rubbing up against each other in one place. So here they are, including guess appearances from Barack Obama, Jim Parsons, Chip Delany, William Shatner, Justin Timberlake, and more.

February 2013


I found this note next to my bed — WORKING ON FILE FOR DEATH ROW GUY — but I have zero memory of the dream it represents. It’s lost!

 Feb 28

I dreamt I was at a zoo where the animals could wander freely, which seemed OK at first, but when the elephant got near, I thought … no.

 Feb 27 


I dreamt I got into a weird debate about eyewear in pop culture, which ended when I won the conversation by saying two words: Swifty Lazar. Feb 26 


I dreamt I was having dinner at ‪@NextRestaurant, talking to ‪@NickKokonas about my upcoming (really happening) lunch at Eleven Madison Park. Feb 26 


I dreamt I was heading to pick up a pig for a pig roast, only when I got there, I worried it was far too big to fit in the back of my Jeep.

 Feb 25 


I dreamt I rode a bus with my friend Allan, heading to deal with an inheritance of his. We arrived at a sunny beach in Miami … and I woke.

 Feb 25 


I dreamt that as I drove home in a stolen car, I stopped to have the oil changed and worried I’d get found out. But … why’d I stop then?

 Feb 25 


I dreamt I ran a publishing company and was addressing the troops, holding up one of Russ Cochran’s EC reprint books to explain a project.Feb 25 
 



I’ve lost one of my dreams, as my hastily scrawled middle-of-the-night note sparks no memory. What can DEPENDS ON HOW EVIL DECISION IS mean?

 Feb 24 


I dreamt Irene and I were watching Star Trek 2 live on TV on opening night, when she quickly shut it, saying “I know crap when I see it.”

 Feb 24 


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Since I just told you of the passing of Angel Arango, I thought I’d share my thoughts on first meeting him, and why it was a crime I hadn’t learned of him earlier.

The following originally appeared in the December 9, 2002 Science Fiction Weekly (issue #294), which merged with SCI FI Wire in 2009 and morphed into Blastr in 2010. (FYI—I’ve been editing sites for Syfy since—gulp!—2000.)

90 Miles and a Million Light-Years From Home

I just got back from a visit—a visit which a year ago I would have said was impossible—to Cuba. For citizens of the United States, such legal visits are not an easy thing to pull off. Travel under a General License is limited to six very narrow categories, and I was lucky enough to fall into one of them. So during the week of Thanksgiving, I—along with Locus publisher Charles N. Brown and Locus executive editor Jennifer A. Hall—went to Havana to research the current state of Cuban science fiction. We timed our trip to coincide with the conference Cubaficción 2002, so that we’d be able to meet with as many Cuban writers, artists, editors and fans as possible.

Modern science fiction started out as an American invention, but now that over three-quarters of a century has passed, it has developed a presence throughout the world. Listening to the international voices of SF can change the way we feel about all SF. Last year, for instance, I visited Chengdu, the capital city of the Szechuan province, to visit the headquarters of Science Fiction World magazine and discover how things are done in China. That experience was so enlightening that this year I decided to reach out to yet another foreign community of the fantastic to learn more about its unique flavor of SF. As it turns out, though Cuba is only 90 miles off our shores, compared to China it is a far more distant country.

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Angel Arango, one of the founding fathers of Cuban science fiction, died recently at age 86. We met in 2002, when I was lucky enough to attend Cubaficción in Havana. He’d been publishing science fiction since the ’60s, and seemed a piece of living history.

I took to him immediately, and looking back on it now, I suspect that, as he was the Jack Williamson of Cuba, my love for Jack bled over a bit into my feelings for Angel, which is what caused, I think, that instant connection. He’d seen a lot over his decades writing science fiction in that country, and I wanted to learn what his time had been like.

I’m not fully conversant with the details of his life—I’ll leave the telling of those to others—but I did want to note his passing, and to make sure you took a moment to think of him as well.

So I’d like to share what’s perhaps his most famous short story, “El planeta negro,” originally published in his 1966 collection of the same name. I’ve scanned the version below from the 1983 anthology Cuentros Cubanos de Ciencia Ficcion, a copy of which I picked up at a book stall during my time in Havana.
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Two months ago, Irene and I were lucky enough to be part of the initial seating at Range on the first of its pre-opening preview nights, which surprisingly resulted in me being interviewed by the foodie site Eater about the experience. Saturday night, we headed back to the Chevy Chase Pavilion with two other couples to see how Bryan Voltaggio’s newest enterprise was coming along … and to try a few of the dishes even we didn’t have room for the first time around.

We hadn’t intended to repeat ourselves, but there were a couple of dishes so good that eating at Range and not ordering them would rank as some sort of sin. So we once more ordered the cornbread with bacon marmalade, as well as the Brussels sprouts fried in bacon. (Are you noticing the bacony theme here?) The rich, smoky spread contrasted well with the light cornbread, and those Brussels sprouts … man! Never before have vegetables seemed as enticing as candy. Which is why we went through two orders.

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I had two dreams featuring a similar theme last night, and yes, I’m 100% sure they actually were two dreams, rather than a single dream shifting time and place, because I was awake between the two, getting up and scribbling down the initial dream before falling back asleep.

In the first, I was at a science fiction convention, only it was far classier than any science fiction convention I’ve ever been to. It was more like a classy Park Avenue cocktail party, with a bar, and waiters circulating with canapés, and someone tinkling away at a grand piano. As I wandered with drink in hand, I saw Chip Delany in the distance, and went over to greet him. Although in the dream he was still the age he is now in real life, he was trim the way he was in his youth, and filled with vigor, with no need of a cane.

“You once more look like a god,” I told him, amazed at his transformation.

We talked a bit about how he had gotten as fit again as he once had been, but then he seemed a bit miffed, and told me that he was a little upset I was talking about all that instead of asking after his child. So I apologized, for in the dream, he and his partner had recently adopted a baby, and I’d known that, knew the kid had health problems, and felt a bit embarrassed for not asking how he was doing. (more…)

I never met Edward Brinkerhoff Taylor, Jr., who died a few days ago at age 76, but I’ve got an idea he was a hoot.

I only know the man through his obituary that appeared in today’s edition of the Washington Post, which I read because, hey, I always read obituaries. I like seeing the shorthand of a life, and in this case, those final words made me laugh.

Because “despite his best efforts to the contrary,” Taylor “was honorably discharged from the Army,” owned “a series of convertibles bought and wrecked in his retirement” and regretted that he’d “outlived a number of the more venerable restaurants of the capital region and Midtown Manhattan, of which he was a habitual patron.”

I suspect, though I could be wrong, that Taylor had a hand in crafting his death notice, because of the wit that made it stand out from the other far more traditional notices which filled three pages today. Perhaps it’ll turn out that instead was due to his daughters having inherited his spark, but I’ll bet he gave them a few wry tips before lifting that glass of Tanqueray and saying, “end of story.”

Makes me want to start taking notes for that eventuality which I hope is still many decades off. Why leave it up to others, who in their attempts to be respectful might be far too circumspect to tell any sort of truth?

Earlier today, I told you about my hunt for a 30th anniversary gift that led me to purchase a page from Love Tales #73 (May 1957) for Irene, and it occurs to me you deserve to see the rest of the original art from that story,

Page 4 of “The Wrong Kind of Guy!,” drawn by John Tartaglione, has been hanging on Irene’s wall since 2006. Amazingly, I was able to find the splash page, page 2, and page 3 online as well, scanned and uploaded by their owners.

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Well, Valentine’s Day was this week, which means my thoughts turned to romance … romance comic books, that is. It reminded me of a dichotomy I noticed several years ago between the covers to romance novels and the covers to romance comics, a difference I’ve never seen anyone mention. And so I figure I should mention it to you here now so that you can go, “Oh, Scott, you dummy, where have you been, everyone already knows that!”

It started for me back in 2006, as Irene and I were approaching our 30th anniversary. I decided that, because of Irene’s love of both romance novels and comic books, I’d buy her the original art to a romance comic book cover for an anniversary gift. What I soon discovered, as I studied all the art then for sale from dealers, was that romance comic book cover art was terribly sad, and not at all suitable to celebrate three decades of love!

Somehow, even though our house has always been filled with both romance novels and comics, I’d never noticed this.

Take a look at the covers to a couple of random romance novels. (more…)

I heard back a little while ago from whoever runs the Pimsleur Approach Twitter feed in response to my contacting them about their company’s presumably unauthorized use of Isaac Asimov in its advertising.

Here’s what they had to say.

I’m happy to hear that the Good Doctor will be set free. Still waiting to hear back to my follow-up question asking what bizarre mix-up could have led to this happening in the first place, though—after all, Asimov didn’t get there on his own.