I’m trying to track down a short story that I read long ago and far away, and since I can’t remember the title or author, I turn to you. I’m sure that asking for help with this ID will lead to public humiliation, because I have a feeling it might be a well-known Asimov story that was perhaps published in Analog, and you’ll all just chime right in with the title, but since my feeble brain can’t remember or find it, I thought I’d bring it up here.

The story, as I recall it, is almost a scientific paper about how certain worms, able to navigate a maze, are ground up to feed other smart worms, which then are even better able to navigate the maze. The scientist keeps repeating the process, winnowing out the dummies, and the worms get smarter and smarter from feasting on only the smartest worms. The scientist is thrilled by the discovery that this is possible, and so writes a paper on how certain animals can assume traits from ingesting others.

The scientist then gets on a plane with other top scientists, heading off to present his findings at a scientific conference, and his flight crashes in a part of Africa where cannibalism was purported to be practiced. The implication in the final few paragraphs of the story, based on rumblings the author is hearing coming out of Africa, is that a group of cannibals have become super-geniuses, and are about to change the world.

I seem to recall reading this in an SF fiction magazine of the ’60s or early ’70s.

Any idea as to the title or author of this story?

And please try not to slap me around too hard when you pop up to tell me how famous it is, and how I should have known!

A couple of years ago I signed up for a service which would send me a New Yorker cartoon every few days. Each cartoon would be accompanied by advertising, of course, but still, I love New Yorker cartoons, and was willing to put up with that in exchange for ones showing up serendipitously in my in-box.

Here’s the cartoon which was waiting for me when I woke this morning:

Which is one reason I try not to write about writers.

Who wants to appear as pathetic as that guy?

I woke up one week ago today and immediately started writing a new short story. Forty hours later, at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night, I had a completed first draft of 5,000 words.

That’s never happened to me before. Based on my usual speed of writing, words accruing like a coral reef, a story of that length would usually take from a week to 10 days to achieve finished first draft stage. (What can I say? I’m no Jay Lake.

Perhaps the reason the story poured out of me so quickly was that I’d been carrying the basic concept around for years, and my attendance at the Stokers a few weeks ago acted as a catalyst.

Would you like to read it? Good!

Because there it is.

Hope you enjoyed it! (more…)

… that I began my staff position at Marvel Comics as Associate Editor in the British Reprint Department.

More importantly, it was the day I met my wife.

I’ve shared these photos before, but on a day like today, I feel moved to share them again.

Here I am at my desk in the Bullpen, a wall of that month’s covers behind me:

And here’s my Marvel Comics ID, with a photo taken, I believe, one year into my employment there:

There’s no possible way I could overstate how that day changed my life.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause to mourn and remember Duffy Vohland, who died of AIDS in 1982, and without whom that day would never have occurred. Thanks for everything, Duffy.

The delphinium outside of our dining-room window has been putting on a major display this year, with a single plant yielding seven purplish blue stalks as tall as or taller than I am. It’s the most magnificent showing we’ve ever had.

During our meals, the hummingbirds sometimes ignore the feeder to sup from these flowers, often sitting on the string you can see that we used to keep the stalks upright.

To make sure you understand the size of these suckers, I am 6’4″, and I am standing, not sitting, in this picture.

This is my first Father’s Day without him.

In my mind and in my heart, I’ll always see him like this.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Irene looked out the dining room window this morning and saw this turtle at the base of our red hot pokers in the garden. By its coloring, I think we’ve already seen it 3-4 times this season in various parts of the garden and yard.

This has been amazing year for turtles here—in the past month, we’ve already rescued around 6-8, maybe more, from the middle of roads alone, plus the ones we’ve seen ambling along on our own property.

And when you lose count of something like that, you know that life is good!

I was quickly skimming the front matter to the newly arrived Year’s Best Science Fiction earlier today to learn from Gardner Dozois’ Summation whether there was anything I’d missed in 2008. When I got to the list of people who had died since the previous Year’s Best, I thought, hmmm, I wonder how many of them were older than me when they passed and how many were younger? (What can I say? Maybe once you turn 50, those sorts of things pop to mind.)

So as I continued skimming, not really counting, but just getting a general idea, feeling rather light-hearted and thinking it might even be amusing to report the split in numbers over on my Twitter feed, I was unprepared to come across this (click to view at a more readable size):

I was stunned to see that my father, who died on January 27, was on the list. I never expected to see such a thing, especially not mere months after his death, and so, three days before Father’s Day, I wept.

Thank you, Gardner, for including Dad.

I wrote here on Sunday morning that I would probably have no further comments to make about the Stoker Awards weekend until enough time had passed that anything I would have to say would be historical, a looking back after my return home rather than something written during the heat of the event.

It turned out that I was wrong.

For after I’d made my goodbyes and headed to the airport to catch my 2:00 p.m. United flight which would end up with me arriving in Dulles slightly after midnight, after I’d twittered that I guessed the gathering of the tribe was over, at least for me, after I bumped into Jeff Strand and Lynne Hansen making their own return trip home and we sat for awhile and talked of past and future cons, I heard an announcement come over the loudspeaker—United was seeking a lone volunteer to yield his or her seat for another passenger in exchange for a coupon good for one round-trip ticket to anywhere United flew within the contiguous United States.

I dashed to the front of the crowd, and said, hey, I’m your man. Why? Well, for one thing, I’ve been going to an awful lot of cons. The Nebulas in April, now the Stokers, next month Readercon, the month after that the Montreal Worldcon, and I’d sort of decided that attending this year’s World Fantasy Convention in San Jose was iffy, especially considering I wanted to save cash for next year’s Worldcon in Melbourne. Before making this Stoker trip, I’d already decided that if offered a chance for a free future flight, I’d take it.

The problem was, my flight was a complicated one, in that I had to get to Denver in time to catch the fight which would bring me home. There weren’t any later Burbank flights which could accomplish that, and if I was bumped, I’d have to spend the night. If you can put me up in the Marriott that’s only a few hundred yards away, I’ll take the deal. And since I turned out to be the only volunteer, they said, no problem. (more…)

There’s so much I want to share about yesterday—the thrill of sitting next to John Farris for an hour as we autographed, brunch with Ellen Datlow, hanging out in the bar with Stephen Jones and Mandy Slater discussing zombies and the pride of work done well, watching the Mathesons interviewed from the front row and tossing out a few questions, listening to Maria Alexander read, the fun of the pre-banquet cocktail party, and more—but I am unlikely to do that today, as I’ve only six hours left here in Burbank and it makes more sense to squeeze the last drops out of the Stoker Awards weekend today than to spend time blogging about yesterday. Which means that if I share further about any of those things, it will likely be as something historical rather than contemporaneous reporting.

But I did want to pop up briefly to say, yes, I lost last night. But I’m OK with that. The competition was fierce, and so there was no shame in any of the writers or works who or which did not end up with a trophy. More importantly than that, even though I would dearly love one of those little houses one day, I find that I am quite Zen about it. You know that Stephen King line, “It is the tale, not he who tells it?” I’ve often paraphrased him, and continued the thought.

It is the tale, not he who tells it … not the awards … nor the reviews … nor any other non-literary aspect of writing. (more…)