Trying to stay as clutter-free as I can, I picked up a stack of back issues of Brooklyn Magazine, and put them to the “How many of these things do I really need?” test.

First off, let me explain that I mean the Brooklyn Magazine which started publishing in 1978, and as far as I know ended in 1979, not the Brooklyn Magazine that’s currently alive and publishing.

As you can see from the first cover of the earlier Brooklyn Magazine and the most current cover I could find for the more recent incarnation, the new publication is a far classier production than we were ever able to put out.

Saying “we” implies I had a lot to do with the mag, but I didn’t. I wrote a book review for each issue, and did an interview with Fred Pohl, since The Way the Future Was was, after all, about growing up in Brooklyn. But other than that, all I ever had to do with the publishing of the magazine was when I’d pop in to say hello while walking from my apartment off Dahill Road in Bensonhurst to my favorite Chinese restaurant on 65th Street, which is how I discovered the magazine existed in the first place.

Yes, that’s right—as I walked from my apartment to pick up Chinese food one day, I noticed a storefront with the Brooklyn Magazine logo, went in and introduced myself to the editor before the first issue was published, and convinced him that he really needed my book reviews to be a part of it all. (more…)

I just woke from a bad dream about John Kessel, and now I can’t get back to sleep.

I was at a Nebula Awards ceremony, seated one table away from John. He was called upon to say a few words about science fiction poetry (and thinking about it now, I have no idea why, since there are so many other topics in which he’s more of an expert), but instead of rising and walking to the podium, he just sat there, mumbled a word or two, and fell silent. Maybe he’s forgotten his speech, I thought, and so with one of my feet, I slid over a copy of a recent volume of the Nebula Awards anthology which I just happened to have at the banquet and which just happened to have an essay of his in it. I figured it might remind him of what he wanted to say. But though I pushed the book at him, bumping it into one of his feet, he didn’t respond, and his chin dropped to his chest, and I got worried.

As the silence grew, and no one did anything, I got up and knelt by John, calling his name. He didn’t respond, and so I pressed my fingers against his throat, searching for a pulse. I waited, unsure whether I could feel anything. First I thought there was a pulse, then I thought there wasn’t. But in either case, since he wasn’t telling me to get my hand off his throat, I knew something was very wrong.

Strangely, no one else had yet taken any action (they all just sat there!), and I pulled John to the floor, stretched him out, and called for someone to get a doctor. I shouted John’s name over and over, thinking that I’d better start CPR, since no one else seemed to be doing anything. I kept shouting his name as I woke, and found myself in bed, thankful it was only a dream.

And then I lay there, thinking … even though it’s 4:45 a.m., and I need lots more sleep for the day to come, there’s no way I’m getting it now.

Until I thought … maybe if I wrote about the dream and shared it with you, my mood might pass, and I could fall back to sleep.

So that’s what I’m trying. I’ll let you know later if it works.

Meanwhile, I hope John’s okay. And I’m sure glad I don’t believe in omens.

I didn’t get to go to the first Worldcon I’d hoped I would. That’s because the first Worldcon I wanted to attend was Dallas in ’73 and the 1973 Worldcon was instead held in Toronto. Which explains a lot. But not everything.

Come to think of it, I didn’t get to the first comic convention I wanted to either. That would have been the 1969 July 4th weekend con run by Phil Seuling at the Statler Hilton Hotel. But my parents didn’t think I was old enough to wander off to Manhattan on my own while they were at a bungalow colony out in the country. So I had to wait until ’70 for what was to be my first con of any kind.

When I got there, I looked something like in the photo below, which shows me a year later at Seuling’s ’71 con, snapped as I sat in the front row (as always), with Phil at the podium.

But back to my first (almost) Worldcon. I was a supporting member of Dallascon, and I’ve got the membership card to prove it, signed by Tom Reamy, chairman of the “Big D in ’73” bid. In addition to the neat card with that wonderful George Barr artwork, I also received copies of The Dallascon Bulletin, more magazine than progress report.

But the Dallas Worldcon bid collapsed, and since I wasn’t in the loop back then (I don’t think I was even aware yet that there was a loop), I have no idea why. (more…)

My zombie stories have been getting reprinted a LOT lately, so much so that I’m losing track of them the same way a zombie loses track of how many fingers it has left. Well … not exactly in that same way. But I had forgotten that one of my stories was going to be reprinted this October in Z: Zombie Stories until the cover started popping up online.

Though you can’t necessarily tell by that cover, the book—edited by Jeremy Lassen and to be published by Night Shade Books—is meant to be a YA title, as the following blurb explains:

When the zombie apocalypse comes, it’s not just the crusty old folks who must struggle against the undead. It’s the young people. What happens when you come of age during the zombie apocalypse?

And just to show I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d forgotten all about this—I only think, but I’m not 100% sure, that the tale being reprinted here is “The Human Race.” I wouldn’t be able say for sure unless I went to the trouble of digging out my contract. But since I don’t really have time for that, I think I’ll just wait for my contributor’s copy to show up and fill you in on the details then …

How much did I love Robert Shearman’s short story collection Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical? So much so that I took my time reading it. You might think that if you really love a writer’s work you’d gobble down all his stories as quickly as possible, but no, I wanted this to last. Now it’s done and I’m wishing the book had been longer. Much longer.

You often hear people say that a certain book seems to have been written for them alone, and though that’s a cliché, in this case, it felt very much the truth, because all of the stories in the collection dealt with love in one form or another, and I feel that all of my stories (yes, even my zombie ones) are love stories, too. As Ted Sturgeon wrote in his essay “Why So Much Syzygy?” (and as I quoted in the introduction to my own collection What We Still Talk About):

I think what I have been trying to do all these years is to investigate the matter of love, sexual and asexual. I investigate it by writing about it because …I don’t know what the hell I think until I tell somebody about it.

And so Shearman writes touching and funny and whimsical tales like the one about a couple who literally gave each other their hearts, and the one about a world in which the percentage of the love that you feel for each person you know can be measured, and then there’s the one about a man who heads off on a cruise to dispose of his late wife’s ashes only to learn, well, you’ll find out when you read it … and more.

And after all of these already amazing stories, one of which even got me verklempt, there comes a tour de force (I know, I feel that word is overused, too, but this time it truly is a tour de force) in which Shearman critiques all those other stories that came before. In the collection’s penultimate story, “Not About Love,” Shearman (yes, it’s a metafictional story is about Shearman himself) arrives at an awards ceremony where he is nominated for the very book you’re reading, and is assailed by the elderly patron after whom the award is named. (more…)

My zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses“—think Night of the Living Dead crossed with Romeo and Juliet—has never been performed, save for a star-studded reading during the 1998 Stoker Awards weekend. And by performed, I simply mean that since the work was on the final ballot that year, and all nominees got a chance to read a chunk of their work, and my play wouldn’t have been understood if multiple characters had been read in my voice alone, I dragooned a bunch of my friends on stage to read along with me.

Had you been there, you’d have seen Michael Marano, David Honigsberg, Ed Bryant, Nina Kirki Hoffman, Gordon van Gelder, and others (including me!) as zombies. Well, some of us anyway. Some were the last surviving humans on Manhattan Island in a post-apocalyptic future. But I’ve always wanted something more.

And while discussing the piece at Readercon last month—because people have been reading and talking about it again due to its inclusion in my all-zombie collection What Will Come After—I’ve decided to finally make that something more happen.

Here’s where you come in. I’m announcing the creation of the Blow the Top of Scott Edelman’s Head Off Really Cool Zombie Filmmaking Competition to encourage the creation of short videos based on sections of the play, with the winner (as judged by me) receiving $200 and my undying awe. (Zombie awe should always be undying, shouldn’t it?)

Here are the rules: (more…)

I wrote “These Words Are Haunted” in 1983, and by the time I sent it off to Fantasy Tales in 1987, it had already been rejected 13 times.

Luckily, the story was eventually accepted by Weirdbook and was published in its Spring 1992 issue. I loved that title so much I also used it as the title of my first collection.

Gee, I wonder whatever happened to that Steve Jones guy?

It’s that time again, when I gather together the previous month’s dream tweets and let them rub up against each other to see how surreal they look when that happens.

In July, I dreamt of Pete Seeger, Cee Lo Green, Joe Pesci, Sol Brodsky, James Patrick Kelly … and maybe even you. Let’s see, shall we?

July 2011

I lost one of my dreams due to illegible handwriting. I have no idea what “went under [illegible] several [illegible] not get away” means. 31 July

I dreamt I was about to interview Sarah Palin, only my office door was locked, and I couldn’t get in with her to retrieve my recorder. 31 July

I dreamt I sat in a chair next to my father, who was in bed watching bullfighting and episodes of I Love Lucy on TV and getting paid for it. 31 July

I dreamt I wandered at Clarion with James Patrick Kelly, engaged in an intense debate over which local restaurant served the best pancakes. 31 July

I dreamt I was the Matt Smith Doctor Who, shouting for a subway platform to be evacuated while demanding someone bring me an arc welder. 31 July

I dreamt I was still editing SF Age and interviewing a teenager to be my assistant. He surprised me by knowing secrets about Martin Goodman. 30 July

I dreamt I was slowly and carefully counting out and eating gummi bears one by one, but I lost count when I had to rescue a runaway train. 29 July

I dreamt I slid the paper sleeves containing lyrics off my LPs and stapled them together to research a singer … but I can’t remember who. 28 July

I dreamt I saw an old timey steam engine far in the distance which was suddenly here pulling out, and I rushed to say farewell to friends. 27 July

I dreamt I learned what Chris Meloni’s been up to since quitting L&O: SVU. I ordered a corned beef sandwich at a deli and he was my waiter! 26 July (more…)

I’ve always prided myself on knowing in my bones that it’s Spider-Man (with a hyphen) and Superman (without), and I recently gave somebody I know a smackdown for leaving out that all-important hyphen. But I see now that even Marvel itself got mixed up at first, as this page from Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spidey’s debut, remember?) proves.

The third paragraph refers to the web-slinger not just as “Spiderman,” but as “The Spiderman”—something that as a former Marvel Comics proofreader makes my skin crawl!

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the last time Marvel messed up … but at least now I understand why others might get it wrong, too.

I’d love to tell you details about The Asymptotical World, but I have no memory of the magazine at all … other than that I sent its editor/publisher Michael Gerardi half a dozen stories during the mid-’80s, selling him none of them.

Which means you won’t be learning anything today other than what I hope you’re learning with each installment in this series—to take some small comfort in the fact you’re still around … while these magazines that may have rejected you aren’t.