Today’s mail brought yet another omnibus volume from Marvel Comics which reprinted one of my late ’70s stories. With the reprint books I’ve been in over the past few years, plus the ones coming out over the next 12 months that I already know of, there’ll soon be little left from my early Marvel comic-book output that won’t be available to new readers.

The latest collection is Essential Avengers Vol. 7, which includes my 8-page story about the Vision, drawn by Herb Trimpe. It’s a fun little story, but as I flipped through the book, and realized that it included writer Steve Englehart’s final issues of the Avengers comic, I remembered I owned something I think you’ll find far more interesting than anything I ever wrote. (more…)

During Capclave last October, Mike Zipser interviewed me for the long-running show Fast Forward: Contemporary Science Fiction, and the 18-minute video has just gone live.

It was an eclectic conversation, ranging from my days in the Marvel Bullpen and writing for Tales from the Darkside, through Science Fiction Age, and up to my current job at SCI FI Wire.

And of course, there was talk of zombies. From now on, there will always be talk of zombies.

I can’t embed the video, but if you want to see me pontificate, you can check it out here. I don’t think I came off too goofy. But you’ll let me know one way or the other, I’m sure. You always do.

With the constant talk about the death of paper and the eventual triumph of pixels, I thought the following quote, which I included in a handout I prepared for an early Readercon panel titled “Losing Money for Fun and Profit: Small Press How-To,” remained as relevant as ever.

I can’t recall where I copied this from, but I attributed it to John Bennett. While there seem to be a number of John Bennetts out there, I think it came this John Bennett. (I’ll try to verify that.) One reason it rang so true with me is that even though I love beautiful books, I also know that what truly matters is the wine, not the bottle.

This quote, copied down by me in the late ’80s, long before any of us ever thought that books and magazines could be threatened by that spawn of DARPA, seems to have presciently addressed the transition we’re now going through:

You could bring the mag out twice in a month and then once in two years and everything would be fine if the stuff between the covers was good; you could bring it out on glossy paper using a letterpress or on a mimeo using recycled paper and it didn’t make any difference; my God, you could print the magazine with rubber stamps and that wouldn’t matter, that would not make it bad and it would not make it good, the method by which you got the word out was incidental, the important thing was to go after all those vague dissatisfactions, to get at the core of them, to not fall for the soft persuasions and rationalizations, to not cower in the foothills of the mountain of accumulated and historical evidence that tell you you are wrong.

He was right then. And he’s right now.

I wonder whether, given the chance, he’d update this quote to add something like, “why, you could abandon paper completely and even that wouldn’t matter”?

I’m going to try to find out.

Update:

It turns out that the John Bennett I linked to above was the correct John Bennett. He writes to say:

Scott … yes, that’s my quote, from way back when. I’m not even sure where it appears! Possibly in Black Messiah, The Vagabond Anthology, Survival Song or one of the installments in my White Paper series.

Looking through a copy of the October 1944 issue of Action Comics, what attracted my attention wasn’t wasn’t any of the, well, action comics, but rather the ad below, which appeared on the back cover.

The fact that we were promised a “recipe on every wrapper” makes me think that Baby Ruth candy bars were once a baking staple, but could that really be? This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

And how many recipes could there possibly be? Other than using them in those cookies the sailor seems so thrilled to be biting into, I can’t think of many other uses for them.

Besides—what’s he doing taking cookies from a strange woman anyway? Wasn’t he paying attention to all those WWII ads for venereal disease? He should have known better!

DC Comics would like you to pitch stories for their new “EC-type” book Strange Adventures of Science Fiction.

And by you, I mean me.

And by me, I mean me in 1979.

I received the letter below from editors Jack C. Harris and Joe Orlando almost 31 years ago to the day. January 9, 1979, in fact. Just in case the date alone doesn’t make you realize how long ago that was, perhaps their statement that “We also want the book to sell like tickets to King Tut” will!

(more…)

Have you heard the news? The Science Fiction and Fantasy writers of America has decided to change its membership requirements.

That’s right—as announced yesterday by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, in order to gain or retain SFWA membership, you’ll have to appear in at least two of my dreams!

Don’t believe me? Then check out Patrick’s tweeted revelation below:

Which made me realize it was important for me to prepare a dream census to help guide SFWA’s officials in their new mandate. So below is a list of every person, real or fictional, who has appeared in the dreams I’ve reported to you since beginning to relate them on both LiveJournal and Twitter. You can find them all collected here.

So let’s see—who has visited those dreams more than twice? Who gets into SFWA? Following are all my nighttime visitors, with those who’ve appeared more than once bolded and having the number of visits after their names. (more…)

Based on what I’ve seen from my other online friends, I seem to dream more than the usual amount. I sometimes tweet about two, three, even four dreams a day over on Twitter.

I shared my Twitter dreams from October through December with you last week, and you can find my March through September tweet dreams, back to the beginning of my account, below.

Why am I collecting these all here today? Blame Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It’s all his fault. And if you don’t know what that means, you’ll just have to wait for my next LJ entry to find out!

dreamt I was held hostage by Amy Poehler from Baby Mama and Woody Harrelson from Natural Born Killers. I escaped, but I can’t remember how. 7:58 AM Sep 28th, 2009

dreamt I was on a train with Paul Di Filippo, and when we looked out the window, instead of stars, the sky was filled with cherry tomatoes. 7:24 AM Sep 26th, 2009 from web

dreamt I played both tour guide and bodyguard to Vladimir Putin as we wandered a dealers room. He seemed particularly interested in artwork. 7:53 AM Sep 25th, 2009 from web

dreamt I stepped aboard a docked Lindblad cruise ship to ask someone a question only for it to take off with no announcement and me on it. 6:42 AM Sep 19th, 2009 from web

dreamt that Stan Lee and Marie Severin dropped by for a visit and ended up spending the night. Don’t worry–the guest room had double beds. 6:33 AM Sep 19th, 2009 from web

dreamt I woke in the Sovereign Media storeroom among mags which don’t really exist, including ones devoted to Doc Savage and Marvel Comics. 8:51 AM Sep 17th, 2009 from web

dreamt I was planning an exotic vacation with Chuck’s sister and jerk brother-in-law. I couldn’t have been planning it with Chuck and Sarah? 7:57 AM Sep 13th, 2009

dreamt I was on a lively creative writing panel with Nancy Kress during which I tweeted John Kessel about meeting for the pre-Hugos party. 7:07 AM Sep 12th, 2009

dreamt I saw Jack Williamson alive and walking into my local supermarket, but it didn’t seem odd at all so we didn’t bother to speak. 7:26 AM Sep 9th, 2009

dreamt I was at DC while a LeRoy Neiman portrait of Jim Steranko was unveiled. The weird thing? Paul Levitz was dressed like Green Lantern. 8:34 AM Sep 5th, 2009

dreamt it was Irene’s and my 33rd wedding anniversary. Hey! Hold it right there. I _didn’t_ dream it! It _is_ our 33rd wedding anniversary! 8:12 AM Sep 4th, 2009

dreamt I was 98 years old, and my doctor wanted to prescribe me antidepressants. “Doc,” I said. “I’m not depressed — I’m 98 years old!” 8:01 AM Sep 4th, 2009 (more…)

I dreamt I was in one corner of a busy con suite, banging away at a toy typewriter while Bill Shunn watched me and other writers waited their turn to use it. It was a pretty crappy toy typewriter, plastic instead of metal. The keys were of a solid piece with the body, so that they didn’t move when you hit them. The platen was fused into the rest of the machine so that it didn’t return, and there wasn’t even room to fit in a sheet of paper. So it almost looked like a fake you’d find in a furniture store to stand in for a real typewriter in a pretend office.

Bill asked me whether I wasn’t wasting my time banging away at a machine like that.

And I told him no, not really. It didn’t matter whether I was leaving any evidence of what I was writing there in front of us, because I knew that whether or not I had a record, somewhere in the world, someone I didn’t know was seeing my words appear in front of them. That was all that mattered. And I went back to typing.

Now there’s a dream that’s easy to interpret!

A note about my dreams in general, for those of you who follow them: When I wake from a dream in the middle of the night, I’ll scribble down a few words, sometimes only two or three, as a tickler. For example, with this dream, I scrawled, “Bill Shunn waste time plastic toy platen.” Then I’ll go back to sleep. And when I wake, I sometimes don’t even remember whether I’d had a dream or not. Until I look at the notepad. And when I read those few words, the entire dream comes rushing back.

Is it that way for any of you?

In recent entries of Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column—on December 9 and December 23—he tackled the rumor that Jack Benny had an uncredited cameo in Casablanca. While addressing various claims, such as the fact that one Benny fan-site stated that the Casablanca press kit verifies the fact, Ebert responded, “I think you’re right.”

I’d never heard this before, and didn’t dig out my old VHS tape to check, but based on a few minutes searching online, I found a newspaper ad placed by a Florida theater that confirms this appearance—because it gave away a free pass to any theater patron who could spot Benny.

Check out this ad below taken from the February 4, 1943 issue of the St. Petersburg, Florida Evening Independent.

Ah, the wonders of the intertubes!

So I guess it’s true! Who knew?

I have quite a vivid dream life, usually remembering two-three dreams each night. I’ve been sharing the ones that can be explained briefly both on twitter and facebook.

But since twitter is ephemeral, I thought I’d gather my tweet dreams together in one place, both out of a fear that they might fade, and to see if there’s any overarching theme. So here are three months worth of them in reverse chronological order. I already knew that many of you in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror communities had starring roles in my dreams. But what I didn’t realize was how many of the dreams I’d already forgotten.

Looking at these, I have a feeling that I’ll someday do something more formal with them. But for now, just seeing them in one place is satisfying enough.

Welcome to my subconscious!

I dreamt I was in a railway station discussing the print histories of Dune and LOTR with Cheryl Morgan as ancient steam engines roared by. 7:41 AM Dec 31st, 2009

I can’t believe I dreamt I was driving while explaining SCI FI Wire’s Moveable Type system to my bored passengers. I need to get out more. 8:10 AM Dec 30th, 2009

I dreamt I was at an awards banquet, polling my friends as to whether or not I should shave my head. But I woke while tallying the votes! 7:56 AM Dec 29th, 2009

I dreamt I was reading the nonexistent The Complete Jules Feiffer, which contained thumbnails for comics I _know_ he had nothing to do with. 7:57 AM Dec 28th, 2009

I dreamt I could play the guitar, but when I tried to sing along, I couldn’t recall the lyrics to a single song. But the music was amazing. 8:38 AM Dec 27th, 2009

I dreamt I was at a con dinner for ten (including Jenn Reese and Karen Meisner) in Australia. A ladybug crawled on Karen, who didn’t mind. 8:26 AM Dec 25th, 2009

I dreamt I was in a corrupt Third World country trying (and failing) to convince rebel leaders to cooperate with the church, and vice versa. 8:20 AM Dec 25th, 2009

I dreamt that a strange insect, half stick bug, half praying mantis, had gotten into the house, and we were having a staring contest. I won. 7:35 AM Dec 24th, 2009

I dreamt I was visiting with Paul Di Filippo and preparing to eat at Prosciutto’s, an all-prosciutto restaurant that exists only in dream. 7:33 AM Dec 24th, 2009

I dreamt I was wandering NY with Irene Gallo while describing the new mag I intended to publish, one with a different format for each issue. 7:29 AM Dec 24th, 2009 (more…)