For those of you who weren’t put off by my first serving of shtick from the 2000 Nebula Awards banquet and have stomach for more, here am I razzing Terry Bisson as he takes the stage to present the award for Best Short Story. To preserve the suspense, I won’t tell you who else gets to take the stage once he opens the envelope, even though since this was almost a decade ago, I realize it’s a false sense of suspense.

You’ll note that both my name and his are misspelled in the subtitles, but that shouldn’t matter, since you know who we are. And we know who you are …

Happy birthday, John!

If I am remembered for nothing else from my relatively few years working in comics, it will likely be for having scripted your debut story. The six-page tale, “Chaos at the Coffee Bean,” appeared as a back-up in 1977’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #11.

Here’s the splash page (click to view at a larger size):

Amazingly, up until the future star received this assignment, he was being discriminated against. No one would give him a shot because his Dad was Marvel Art Director and Spider-Man artist supreme John Romita (who had no need yet to be identified by a Sr. after his name). No one wanted to be seen as rewarding John, Jr. on the basis of his family connection alone.

I thought that was a stupid idea. Talent should out, and as I said at the time, the only thing worse than nepotism is anti-nepotism—not giving a shot to some who would otherwise have deserved it. (more…)

It’s been almost 10 years since Paul Levinson, then president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, approached me at the 1999 Philcon and asked if I would act as Toastmaster for the following year’s Nebula Awards ceremony in New York.

Ham that I am, I immediately accepted. Click below to see how I repaid Paul for that honor.

The event was recorded by a group called the Rochester Fantasy Fans, something which I’d completely forgotten. At the Montreal Worldcon last weekend, they presented me with a DVD containing a complete video of that evening, which contains speeches by Daniel Keyes and Brian Aldiss, plus stage appearances by Octavia Butler, Nancy Kress, John Kessel, and others.

Maybe you’ll get to see them in the future. But for now, here’s a brief taste of my shtick. If you behave, I may inflict more of it on you.

While digging through boxes of papers earlier this month in search of Clarion workshop manuscripts from 1979 which had been scrawled on by my instructors—needed for my Worldcon PowerPoint presentation “How to Respond to a Critique of Your Writing”—I came across a box containing photocopies of several pieces of artwork I hadn’t even remembered owning.

I’ll probably end up posting them all here eventually, but since I shared a a never-before seen drawing of the Scarecrow on John Byrne’s birthday last month, I thought—why not start off with a never-before-seen drawing of The Scarecrow by Don Perlin, an artist best known for Werewolf by Night, a title which had impressed me way back when.

According to the one page of script which was packed away with the photocopy, this was meant to be the splash page for Scarecrow #2, with room left at the top for one of Marvel’s introductory text paragraphs and at the bottom for the indicia.

(And forgive me if the top and bottom halves of the illustration don’t entirely line up—I don’t own a scanner large enough to fit the entire piece, and so scanned each half separately and put it all back together again with Photoshop.)

But (you may ask) whatever happened to Scarecrow #1? (more…)

During a break in the action at the Montreal Worldcon last Saturday, I snuck away from the convention center with power couple F. Brett Cox and Jeanne Beckwith. After lunch at Rôtisserie St-Hubert, we paused at a strip club, wandered a church, and toured the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

As we moved through the museum, I was very conscious of the passage of time. The Locus gang was going to be hosting a wake for Charles N. Brown in Gary K. Wolfe’s room at 5:00 p.m., and I wanted to be there to help remember. Little did I know that there was something the universe very much wanted me to remember.

I learned this while examining one of the the massive photos hung for a special exhibition of the work of Robert Polidori. Mixed in with pictures taken in Chernobyl, Beirut, and Jordan was the following image, which was labeled, “La Guarida, Restaurant Entrance, Havana.”

Why was that meaningful? (more…)

After the fiasco of my trip home from the Montreal Worldcon—which I was reporting on in real time over at Twitter and Facebook, but which I haven’t had the time to write up here yet—I got right down to business, digging into the mountain of mail which awaited me and getting today’s online content ready for Sci Fi Wire.

But then I took a brief break to step out onto the back deck and admire the garden. As I came back inside, I saw something tiny and brown land on the glass of the door. I at first thought it was an insect, but as I knelt to look more closely, I saw that it was this little guy:

He was small! Definitely smaller than a quarter, and perhaps no larger than a nickel. Its back was entirely that orange-brown you see, with none of the white of its belly.

I’d hoped the box turtles would gather to welcome me home, but this will definitely do.

Gary K. Wolfe opened his room at the Intercontinental late yesterday afternoon to hold a wake for Charles Brown. And while many moving and tearful things were said by his many friends, which I will leave unreported as I believe that for the most part what happens at a wake should remain at a wake, one comment Gary made stuck with me.

Once the room was filled, he stood on a ledge by the window (inside the glass, of course) to get our attention and begin the proceedings. Some began to shout “Jump! Jump!” … because, as we all know, those of us who gather at Worldcon once each year are three-year-olds at heart.

In response to this, Gary pointed at Ellen Datlow and Gardner Dozois, seated on the edge of the bed, and said:

“The science fiction editor says ‘Don’t jump.’ The horror editor says ‘Jump.’ That’s all you need to know about those genres.”

The more I think about it, the more I like it.

I’ve been too busy at Worldcon to spend much time keeping up here. Even my tweeting has been unusually limited for a con environment, since to avoid insane international roaming charges I’ve been dependent on free wifi, which I’ve only been able to access at the hotel and in the dealers room, and not while watching or participating on any of the panels.

But before throwing myself out into the maelstrom once more—I’ll be attempting to moderate Bob Silverberg, Nancy Kress, James Nelson-Lucas, and Bill Willingham on the 11:00 a.m. panel “What Makes a Good Story?”—I’d like to share one of the more joyous moments I’ve had so far.

I very much wanted to see David Kyle this weekend. He was one of the Futurians, and a co-founder of Gnome Press. Dave was at the first Worldcon, and even at what was supposed to have been the first SF con before the Worldcon, which I believe occurred in 1936 when a group of New York fans drove to meet with some Philadelphia fans in the back of a bar owned my somebody’s father. (Any fan historians out there, feel free to correct me!) A Worldcon isn’t a Worldcon until I catch up with Dave, and I never got a chance to do that last year at Denvention.

I spotted him between panels early yesterday afternoon, rushing along to get to his next panel, with no time to talk. But just seeing him, hale and hearty at 90, bursting with energy as he passed me by and promised we’d get together later, made me happy.

Later, though, I did get to sit with him and chat for half an hour. We talked until I had to meet some friends for dinner and he had to rest a bit before heading out for a night of partying. I would have liked to have hung out with him all night, talking of the old days and the days still to come. Dave’s one of those people I hope to be like when I grow up. If you see him this weekend, be sure to say hello!

I have no idea how long this has been going on, or how long it will continue, but John DeNardo just pointed out to me that Robert Reed’s Wikipedia page features a photo of me instead of Bob!

Here’s the page as it looks right now.

I may have accepted Bob’s Hugo when he couldn’t make it to the Japan Worldcon, but as far as I know, I am not Robert Reed … unless something supernatural happened unbeknownst to me when I touched his trophy.

Guess I’d better start packing my bags for that move from West Virginia to Nebraska!

I dreamt that I was hanging out at the beach with coworkers in a gathering meant to induce bonding. I’m not sure how much bonding was going on, though, as I couldn’t even tell the identities of the coworkers who were with me. What office were they supposed to represent? Were these comrades from my current job at Syfy, or were they from past employers Sovereign Media or Marvel Comics? I couldn’t tell. As we milled around in the sand, it was one big faceless mob.

Then the boss stepped forward with a surprise. Two surprises, actually. The first surprise was that as soon as he started speaking, I recognized him. It was Steve Carell, in his role of the not-so-bright boss of The Office. (My coworkers remained anonymous after this big reveal, though, and did not suddenly turn into other Office cast members.) Surprise number two was his announcement that as an additional part of our supposed bonding, we were all about to go skydiving together.

My boss began climbing into his chute, and as he wrapped the straps around himself, he tripped and fell, bumping into a trash can in which a fire was going to keep us all warm. The can tipped over onto him, and his hair caught fire. No one else seemed to be doing anything as he screamed, but I scooped him up in my arms and, since we were at the beach, ran into the ocean to submerge him in water. (Though thinking about it now, awake, I’m not entirely sure that was such a good idea. What would salt water do to his burns? Maybe I should have covered him in sand instead.)

Suddenly, it’s months later. As a result of what happened at the beach—and I’m not sure whether this resulted as a reward for rescuing my boss or merely because an opportunity arose because my boss was dead or incapacitated as a result of the fire—I’m writing a massive issue of a Marvel comic in which the Hulk fights the Thing.

I’m doing it in a hotel room for some reason, my wife beside me. When I step into the hallway, there’s John Verpoorten, longtime Marvel Comics production manager (who’s long gone from the real world). He’s worried about my progress. Will I be able to get it done in time? I didn’t mind him asking, because it was his job to worry. I told him this would be easy for me, that I’d been reading stories of the Hulk fighting the Thing since I was a kid, so their rivalry was in my blood. It was going to be a snap.

I woke while continuing to reassure him in that hotel hallway, both of us smiling.