If you’ve wondered why I’ve been unusually silent for the past week and a half, I have a very good reason. I was on vacation.

In Machu Picchu!

And while I was there—and at the fortress at Ollantaytambo, and by Intipunku, the Sun Gate (from which you can, below, see Machu Picchu way off in the distance)—I oddly found myself thinking The Great Gatsby.

I’ll have more to share about the experience later, once I’ve recovered and had time to process it all, but for now, I just want to say—remember that passage a few paragraphs from the end of The Great Gatsby, the section that speaks of finally finding a thing “commensurate to his capacity for wonder”?

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Though the analogy made there isn’t an exact match for what I felt as I clambered over the ancient stones and walked the Inca Trail, I was indeed feeling a sense of wonder, and also feeling that here was something truly worthy of that wonder. We so often say that things are awe-inspiring when they’re not really inspiring awe. But in this case, I was filled with awe, positively gobsmacked by it.

Didn’t expect to be thinking of Jay Gatsby as I fought off altitude sickness. But there you have it.

More thoughts and pics to follow later!

(And, yes, that is a ukulele in my hands.)

I just ran across a post Eileen Gunn made on GEnie—remember GEnie?—back on October 28, 1994. I’d printed it out on a sheet of paper—remember paper?—so I’d be sure to remember it.

She shared two quotes she kept taped by her computer back then, and since she passed them on to us all in 1994, I don’t think she’d mind if I passed them on again in 2012.

First, here’s what Gertrude Stein had to say about art, as given to Eileen by Avram Davidson:

Art has no function. It is not necessary. It has nothing to do with what anyone wants you to do or wants it to be, nothing but you and itself. The work generates itself and ideas and progress and learning come out of doing the work in a particular way. Creative art is a learning process for the artist and not a description of what is already known.

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work. The work needs concentration and one is often exhausted by it. It takes so much effort just to begin and although going on is mostly a pleasure it is also a great effort. The only thing for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work.

But really there is no choice. Nobody chooses. The only thing left for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen work in spite of everything and regardless of anything because when living draws to its end there are no excuses he can make to himself or to anyone else for not having done it. Either he did do it or he did not do it and very often he did not. Alas very often he did not.

Quote number two comes from Bruce Sterling: (more…)

I bought a ukulele five months ago today, and to the dismay of some, I’ve been letting you all share in my progress (or lack thereof), checking in at three months (with “Teddy Bears Picnic“) and four months (with “Side by Side,” “Why Don’t Women Like Me?,” and “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue“).

For my five-month performance, I’ve decided to go with George Formby’s “When I’m Cleaning Windows,” even though I’m in no way ready for it, because a) I’ve fallen madly in love with Formby, and b) I’ve read that, “If you play the ukulele in England then everyone who sees you will ask if you can play ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows.'” So I’d better start figuring it out then, eh?

A word of warning for those familiar with Formby—there’s no attempt at a solo below, as I’m a long way off from taking a stab at that. But let this be a testament to how far a guy can get in his first five months … plus something to look back on and chart my progress with once I’ve really figured out what I’m doing.

And so, here’s my first ragged stab at a classic.

Artist Tony DeZuniga needs your help.

DeZuniga, who co-created Jonah Hex and has been responsible for thousands of beautiful images, is in critical condition in a hospital in the Philippines, and his family has reached out to the comics community.

His wife Tina has said:

It’s really tough since Tony doesn’t have insurance here. The medication is very expensive and hospital bill is paid cash 90% Our daily bill is around $1,500 even if we have some money it’s drained out already. I have a house here but the process of getting a loan would take time and I can’t be gone long away from the hospital.

As for Tony’s condition, I will give you a brief history and update – he had a stroke in the morning of Tuesday last week (we’re 16 hours ahead) The stroke damaged the brain. it has bleeding inside and they need to open up the brain but with so much medication they were able to stop the bleeding but the brain was swollen so they need to take the pressure out so they need to insert a tube to release the pressure but since I don’t want them to open up it created an hernia. His condition is so unstable. He got infection that they need to treat, his pneumonia, need to be watched because he’s having problem breathing and blood pressure on top of the heart. With too much medications his stomach bleeds. One on top of the other. Anyway. Any little help will be greatly appreciated.

Here I am with Tony, a great artist and a great guy, back in 2008. (more…)

I’ve been resting my head on these guys for decades. Well … not continuously. I do have other pillowcases, you know!

But I only noticed last night—after many, many years—that these other guys were on the flip side!

How is it that so much time has gone by without me ever noticing this before?

I say it’s all Wendy and Marvin’s fault!

The 200th issue of the Paris Review features an interview with Terry Southern (who, among many other things, wrote the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove) that’s been in the works for 35 years. Southern was interviewed in 1967, but never got around to approving the transcript, and since the magazine allows its interviewees that privilege, it never saw print.

The interview has only recently been discovered, and I find these thoughts of Southern’s prescient:

In five years television screens will be half the size of a movie screen, they’ll occupy a whole wall. And people will just sit there. They’re not going to leave the house except to see something groovy, something that they can’t see at home.

The great future, not for creative writers, but for professional writers, is in television, because pay television is going to come in, and that will take the place of the art movies that exist now, and ordinary television will take the place of what now exists in movies. In twenty years, the movies that compete with TV and pay TV will have to be pretty far out. Otherwise people will simply hang with the tube.

So not only did he foresee the coming age of quality pay television—with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and the like—but also the massive screens on which we’d watch them all.

I just noticed that when I redesigned my site early last year, a special set of photos disappeared. But they are too good to remain MIA. And so …

One evening in Toronto back at Torcon 3—the 2003 World Science Fiction Convention—I needed to step away from the parties for a moment, and my kindly boss asked if he could borrow my camera until my return.

“Sure,” I said, feeling that if I couldn’t trust my boss, who could I trust?

But when the camera was returned, this is what I saw—plus a couple of dozen pics of science fiction’s finest giving me the finger.

View them at your peril, for your opinion of these kindly souls may change forever!

Irene uncovered a 1964 Disneyland brochure that makes me wish I’d been able to get there back when I was nine years old. Seems like there’ve been a few changes since then …

The artifact’s only a single sheet of paper, folded in thirds, and here’s how the cover looks.

Once you open it up, you see this map inside. (more…)

My short story, “A Test of Faith for a Couple of True Believers,” has just been published in the Spring 2012 issue of Space and Time.

And I see I my first appearance in Space and Time was back in 1982. Gulp!

As for what’s next—expect to see “The Trembling Living Wire” at Electric Velocipede, “Thing That Never Happened” in an upcoming issue of PostScripts, and “An Extraordinary Man” in the anthology The Monkey’s Other Paw: Revived Classic Stories of Dread and the Dead.

And that’s it for my pipeline of unsold and unpublished stories … so I’d better get writing!

As those who heard me whining during last weekend’s World Horror Convention know, it didn’t take long before I began showing symptoms of ukulele withdrawal, which amazed me, since I’d only taken up the instrument a little more than four months earlier. But after having practiced at least a little bit every day since Black Friday, my fingers were twitchy, and I could feel my muscle memory developing Alzheimer’s.

I almost bought a cheap, bottom-of-the -line uke last Thursday so I could practice while in Salt Lake City, but I never could figure out the transit system enough to make it to the music store about four miles away from the con hotel. But while searching online, I found something even closer—Intermountain Guitar and Banjo, which specializes in vintage instruments. The shop is only open by appointment, so I reached out to the owners, explaining that though I was a newbie, all of my UK ukulele friends figured I needed to get a banjolele so I could better channel George Formby, and that though I wasn’t likely to buy that day, I did plan to make a purchase sometime over the next year.

Leo Coulson, the uke expert, said sure, drop on by. And so even though I didn’t get a uke during my trip, I did get in about an hour of practice, because he pulled out these beauties and let me strum away.

From left to right, we’ve got: a 1920s S. S. Stewart, ‘Majestic-Style’ Banjo-Uke, 8″ rim with full resonator ($1,200); a late 1920s Slingerland Maybell Banjo-Uke, natural curly maple neck & 8″ rim ($395 ); a 1920s Banner Blue Banjo-Uke, decorative 8″ rim, 14″ scale, walnut neck & back ($750 ); a 1929 Gibson UB-1 Banjo-Uke; 6″ rim, Hunleth Music Co. tag, ($600) (more…)