There’s a full-page ad in the April 1924 issue of The Mentor magazine for Webster’s New International Dictionary, which includes an endorsement from Calvin Coolidge in which he states that the volume “has been the official reference and authority in my office here in Washington during my service as Vice President.” Which means it wasn’t a recent endorsement at the time, since Coolidge had been President since 1923.

The ad also states that thousands of new words had been added since the previous edition, and challenges you to identify 24 of them.

Here are those 24 sample words:

Czecho-Slovak
Murman Coast
daylight saving
junior college
capital ship
duvetyn
mirrorscope
Devil Dog
overhead
hot pursuit
mystery ship
kafirin
Air Council
marquisette
vitamin
Schick test
agrimotor
mudgun
broadcast
Esthonia
aerial cascade
narcism
rotogravure
plasmon

The words or phrases I find most interesting are the ones about new-fangled technologies that are now old, like “rotogravure” and “broadcast.” How amazing once were the inventions we now think ancient!

I recognized 13 of the 24. How about you?

I launched scottedelman.com on February 2, 2002, a little more than nine years ago. I felt it was way past time for me to have a personal presence online, as opposed to my presence as editor of Science Fiction Weekly, which has over the years morphed into Blastr. I’m no Web designer, so it looked pretty basic even then, with snippets of html taken from various sites I liked and cobbled together into something that while admittedly clunky was passable for my needs.

But what was passable nearly a decade ago soon looked primitive … and then embarrassingly dated.

For at least two years, I’ve been telling myself I needed to redesign the site, but whenever I started noodling around with it, I’d eventually be forced to admit that a) with everything else going on in my life, I didn’t really have the time to do it myself, and b) no matter how much I thought I had the ability, both technical and artistic, to design a functional and aesthetically pleasing site, I didn’t. I needed help!

And so I finally threw myself on the mercy of Jeremy Tolbert at Clockpunk Studios, who’d designed many of my friends’ sites, and now that he’s worked his magic, the all-new look of scottedelman.com goes live today.

I look forward to hearing what you guys think!

Allen Pierleoni, who runs the Sacramento Bee Book Club, has a column in the February 21 issue of Publishers Weekly about his experiences dealing with authors … and audiences.

Fans don’t come off as being happy. Well, the male fans anyway.

Here’s what Pierleoni had to say:

Fans run the gamut, too. Most are upbeat and seem glad to be members of the club. But the mostly male science fiction/fantasy readers who’ve attended events for Kim Stanley Robinson, Terry Brooks, and Greg Bear seem almost dour. In contrast are the female fans who flock to meetings that feature such authors as Diana Gabaldon, Rita Mae Brown, Perri O’Shaughnessy (the pseudonym for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy), Suzanne Brockman, and Karen Joy Fowler.

Are fans of Kim Stanley Robinson dour? And are fans of Karen Joy Fowler … not?

I wonder whether this is a difference only evident in fans who aren’t a part of organized fandom, that is, enthusiastic but non-convention-going readers. Fans, not faans.

What do you think? Because Pierleoni’s male/female observation isn’t a distinction I’ve ever noticed before.

Have you?

Been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to blog, so those of you who don’t follow my brief updates on Twitter or Facebook might be wondering whether I still live. I do. It’s just that I haven’t had the time for anything more than those short bursts.

But now that it’s the first day of a three-day weekend (even though that first day is almost at an end), I figured … time for something more. So let’s start with a treat, something I dug up to share with Sean Howe, who’s writing what I hope will be the definitive history of Marvel Comics in the ’70s.

Below is a redacted memo written during my Marvel staff days. It was written by … well … I’d rather not say … complaining about … well … I didn’t think the identity of that person needed to be clearly identified either … and was written during the year … well … that might give too much away. But I still think it’s interesting even with some of the embarrassing details left out.

Besides—those who really know their Marvel stuff from that period will be able to figure it all out anyway. If you really want to know, you should have to work for it, I say.

Thought you’d all (well, all who are fanatics for that time period in Marvel’s history) would enjoy yet another peek behind the scenes …

My books have run the gamut from a a Lambda Award-nominated vampire novel to collections of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories to unauthorized wrestling biographies of Chyna and Steve Austin.

I’ve been going to science fiction, comics, horror, and fantasy conventions since I was 15, and after all those years am now replicating in podcast form one of my favorite parts of any con — good conversation with good friends over good food.

I started out editing magazines made out of dead trees more than 30 years ago. These days, I’m editing electronic bytes. But whether forged of paper or pixels, words still remain words.

While we’re all celebrating the fact that the Comics Code is dead, here’s a document that takes me back to when it was very much alive. Let’s see how different things used to be, shall we?

Among the many facts we’re told by a July 20, 1976 newsletter put out by the Comics Magazine Association of America is that “there are now only about 400 wholesalers (against more than 700 not that long ago).” Horrors!

What else was new? “Veteran artist Joe Kubert has opened a school of Cartoon and Graphic Art, to train artists for comics, featuring a two-year course.” Wonder how that worked out?

Plus, “Publishers Weekly reports that sales of books in the first quarter of 1976 were better than in the first quarter of 1975.” (What? No info on how ebooks did during those years?)

Check out the whole thing below.

I wish I could remember courtesy of whose Twitter feed I found out about the 1881 book, The Agony Column of The Times: 1800-1870, because I’m finding it fascinating, and am very grateful.

The book (which I downloaded here) is filled with evidence of how little we’ve changed over the centuries, how people are filled with love and longing and loss (and hope, too!) whatever the year.

I’ve always enjoyed reading classified ads detailing missed connections of those who smiled at each other on the subway, passed in a supermarket, nodded in the street, and then went on, with no word spoken, and nothing exchanged but a dream that enflamed a regret. And so they placed an ad describing the encounter, hoping their possible future could be found.

All such ads I’d seen up until now have been contemporary, but here’s an example from just over 210 years ago.

A Gentlemen wrote to a Lady on December, 18, 1800:

If the lady who a Gentleman handed into her carriage from Covent Garden Theater, on Wednesday, the third of this month, will oblige the Advertiser with a line to Z. Z., Spring Garden Coffee House, saying if married or single, she will quiet the mind of a young Nobleman, who has tried, but in vain, to find the Lady. The carriage was ordered to Bond Street. The Lady may depend on honour and secrecy. Nothing but the most honourable interview is intended. The Lady was in mourning, and sufficiently cloathed to distinguish her for possessing every virtue and charm that man could desire in a female that he would make choice of for a Wife. Deception will be detected, as the Lady’s person can never be forgot.

Did he find her? Did she answer? And if she did answer, how did it go? We’ll never know, unless as I move forward through the book, I discover a follow-up notice.

Such poignancy can be beautiful. And heartbreaking.

As heartbreaking as stories without endings.

I know I was a pretty annoying comic book fan, as my previous posts easily prove. But I’d forgotten how annoying I was when I first became a comic book professional.

As a fan, I was always bothering the pros for sketches, autographs, and behind-the-scenes info. But once I became a pro myself, that pestering was instead directed toward the other pros who were now my bosses.

Pros like … Stan Lee.

I’ve been going through my stash of Marvel memos to pick out ones that might be useful to Sean Howe (who definitely needs a Marvel nickname), who’s writing a history of Marvel in the ’70s, and while doing this I came across one of my many suggestions to Stan. I had the bizarre idea that we could start a Dial-a-Superhero service than would allow fans to hear pre-recorded messages from Marvel’s greatest.

Check out my note to Stan below.

Stan’s response? Take a look.

He liked the idea, and asked me to see if I could make it happen.

I couldn’t.

Why? After all these years, I no longer remember whether I reached out to an existing company that already knew how to provide such services and was rebuffed, or if some other reason prevented the concept from coming together. But consider yourself lucky.

And if you think that was the craziest thing I ever suggested to Stan, well, all I can say is … you’ll see.

You’ll see.