Since I’ve been raving about my iPad ever since I picked one up prior to the Melbourne Worldcon so I could leave my laptop home, I figure I owe it to you to now share some of its shortcomings, especially since I’ve had my nose rubbed in many of them today.

You see, the MacBook Pro on which I work all day has been failing recently, and though I’ve been able to keep it limping along, I finally had to admit defeat. So I boxed it up late this morning and sent it to NY for a diagnosis and overhaul. Which means I’ve been working all day attempting to use the iPad as my primary computer. And though it’s capable of doing most things, it can’t do all things.

Here’s what’s irritated me the most today while using my iPad not just for fun, but for work:

1) Since the iPad is unable to use Flash, I’m unable to use the iPad to view certain videos to decide whether they’re entertaining enough to share.

2) Even when I can see videos (when they’re on YouTube, for instance), I’m unable to grab embed code, since clicking on a YouTube video brings it up in the iPad app, which doesn’t offer that option.

3) It’s annoying not to be able to have several windows open in Safari at once to be viewed side by side. To shift from one site to another means backing out to a control panel with nine tiny screens stacked three by three, choosing one, and then reentering an active window.

4) Though I can view Twitter, I can’t seem to access lists that have been created by Twitter users. When I go to list links, I’m instead being redirected back to the Twitter feed of whoever created the list. (Or is that just me?)

5) Though I can save images from other sites to the iPad, I don’t seem to be able to load them directly from the iPad into the Content Management System I use, because the CMS won’t allow me to choose a file.

I’m sure there are other things the iPad can’t do for me to allow me to fully function, but those are the ones that disturbed me today. Luckily, I have other machines in the house that can handle those tasks when they pop up. But until a future iPad can be made to do those things, I can’t survive in a house with only an iPad. (FYI—I did post this entry via my iPad.)

Just thought you should know that though I like sipping it now and again, I haven’t completely drunk the Apple Kool-Aid.

Back in the ’70s, I submitted poetry to many literary magazines such as The Paris Review and, of course, Poetry, but my favorite of these was The Little Magazine, which I discovered while still in high school. It featured contributions from writers like Tom Disch and Chip Delany, and though it wasn’t a science fiction magazine, it seemed to me that in its sensibilities and DNA, it was.

I never received back anything more than a rejection slip in response to my many submissions, but at least they were always personally signed by one of the editors.

Note who signed this particular form reject.

Wonder whatever happened to that guy?

Last month seemed less rife with remembered dreams than other months, perhaps because it was once again a heavy convention month, leading to exhaustion, which resulted in my leaving dreams behind when I woke. But still, there were some, and they were once more filled with comic book and science fiction settings. And people.

Appearing in this month’s dreams were Julia Roberts, Rex Reed, Stone Cold Steve Austin, all the Glee kids, Adam-Troy Castro, John Barrowman, and who knows? Maybe you!

MAY 2011

I’ve lost one of my dreams, because I have no idea what my hastily scribbled middle-of-the-night note means: “did not eat cookies” May 31

I dreamt my son phoned to tell me he was in a fender bender, which was only odd as a dream because in real life, he doesn’t drive. May 31

I dreamt I was invited to be guest lecturer but had to agree via an inaccessible computer locked away in a room occupied by a marching band. May 31

I dreamt I came upon a dry riverbed, but after I drilled a whole in the middle, it flowed once more, and I could speed down it on a raft. May 31

I dreamt I was dying at age 79 in a post-apocalyptic world, and as I did so I gave the lucky coin that had kept me alive to my grandson. May 31

I dreamt that as my father and I hunted for a space in a parking garage, we sang the doo-wop song, “My Juanita.” http://tinyurl.com/3nl5yxp May 31

I dreamt I appeared in a show playing the guitar and singing about a woman who woke up to discover one of her kidneys had been stolen. May 30

I dreamt I was hanging out with Stan Lee, and helping him remember a superhero created in 1987, which felt both far away and like yesterday. May 29

I dreamt my boss was leading a discussion of the Thor movie in a college dorm, and I was the only one who spoke out against it. May 29

I dreamt I was on the lawn, realized the ants were intelligent, and could understand what they were saying. They were conspiring against me! May 29 (more…)

Mystery Monthly was a topnotch digest that published the likes of Ed McBain, Ron Goulart, and Harlan Ellison. But not me.

The first issue came out in 1976, and the last (or so I believe) in 1977, long before I figured out how to create a short story that would get an editor’s attention.

Or get me anything more than an impersonal rejection slip such as this.

Luis Ortiz, publisher of NonStop Press, has a problem. The booksellers don’t care for the cover of his upcoming anthology, Why New Yorkers Smoke, which features short stories by the likes of Paul Di Filippo, Carol Emshwiller, Barry Malzberg, Don Webb … and me.

So he wrote asking me which of three alternate covers I preferred, and now I’m asking you. Luis will randomly select 10 people who give their opinion a copy of the final book. That’s worth an email to nonstop@nonstop-press.com, don’t you think?

But before you look at the possible covers, check out how Luis describes the anthology, which will be released on September 11.

The stories in WHY NEW YORKERS SMOKE blend both the real and the fantastic in a topical mix that illuminates the full range of some of the best speculative writers working today: Paul Di Filippo, Scott Edelman, Carol Emshwiller, Gay Terry, Lawrence Greenberg, Barry Malzberg, Don Webb, Aligria Luna-Luz and others. From “Grey Area”, the story of a taxi driver who bears witness to 9/11 by becoming the Wandering Dutchman of lower Manhattan, to “Why We Talk to Ourselves”, where Osama is still alive, living in NYC, and getting into speed dating.

Got it? Good.

Here’s the cover that Luis had planned to use but which he now says the booksellers didn’t “get.” We’ll call this Cover D.

Now let’s take a look at the alternate covers, one of which you can have a voice is making the final cover. (more…)

I guess I was tweeting my dreams before Twitter was even invented.

I’ve been sharing my dreams online since I started blogging in 2007. And once I got hooked on Twitter, I continued the practice there, which made sense, since not every dream deserves more than 140 characters.

Some nights the picking are slim, but other nights I’ve remembered as many as eight dreams. I’ve been asked whether I’ve always been able to recall my dreams, and I think I have. As proof, here are some dreams I scribbled down from January through March of 1970, when I was only 14.

Some of you have told me that you look forward to learning each morning what I dreamed the night before. You might enjoy this blast from the past.

Others have told me they wonder why I share my dreams at all. You won’t.

I’d read a paperback about lucid dreaming—this was a period when I was reading a lot of Edgar Cayce—and so I decided to attempt it. I was never successful at it; that is, I was never able to control where I went in dream. But when I woke, I was able to bring back many surreal moments. Here are a dozen of the most interesting ones from that period.

I was walking on ceiling in an anti-gravity atmosphere. Filled with seats like from a movie.

Two men are pushing a rock down a ditch. Their boss comes along and kills one of them but spares the other one.

I am doing experiments on mice. The mice are spelling words by crashing through holes with letters on them.

A stuntman in a motion picture is being whipped. Something goes wrong and the whip really works. He becomes completely deformed somehow. A boy turns him into a monster in a comics shop.

Person floating down river covered with a plastic shield or force field.

I get a phaser. We get in car and I try using it but it doesn’t work. We go to Coney Island. … When we are leaving, I phaser a radio that is in front of dad. It all disintegrates but one metallic part.

Reading Fantastic Four comic book.

There is a fight between Hulk, Dr. Strange and me (Thing). The front door gets knocked off. At the end, Hulk is in my room and throws stuff (books) all over the place.

Someone stole a script from me while I was on another planet and became famous on it. To get revenge I come to earth with evidence. While getting out of spaceship had to run so that we could destroy it so no one could learn her secrets. We stole a miniature tank from the army and destroyed the ship.

One of my friends dies but a man living with us brings him back to life.

I go back into the past with [REDACTED]. We never leave the car. We meet a caveman. An ostrich takes something of ours and runs away. He tries to get it back. I open the window of the car and the ostrich tries to stick his head in and I close it on him.

A man tries to kill me because I killed his son on Pearl Harbor Day. He then sees a stamp that stated the time that it started and realized that he killed his son, not me.

I guess I haven’t really changed that much at all in the past 41 years.

Back on February 14, 1972, I sent two poems—one of which I later published in my high school yearbook—to the Poetry Editor of Ramparts. (Hey, I never said this series was going to be devoted only to genre magazines!) Ramparts was known mostly for its political content, but it published poetry, too, so I foolishly figured I’d give it a shot.

I never had a chance. And if you should ever happen to read those poems (which I hope you never will), you’d agree.

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.

When I arrive at Balticon tomorrow, I will be bearing two durian with me. If you’re not familiar with this exotic fruit, you should know that it is banned on public transportation and in many hotels in Singapore, ingesting one has been described as like “eating custard in a sewer,” and I’ve read that, “You can kill a person by throwing a durian at his head. It’s just like a ball of spikes.”

Take a look at a boy and his durian. You’ll note that due to those lethal spikes, I’m holding it with a leather glove.

What else do you need to know about durian? How about the fact that it has thrice defeated Andrew Zimmern, the host of Bizarre Foods, eater of everything from lamprey to bats to stinky tofu? Check out one of his failures below.

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