Back on October 25 at The Washington Post, the paper’s Style Invitational department put out a call for comically badly written endings to novels, in an inversion of the annual Bulwer Lytton contest.

And now they’ve announced the winners.

Here’s the ending that was judged to be the worst:

As the wail of the nearing sirens shook him awake, Todd rose from the charred remains of Rensfield Manor, wiped the ectoplasm from his brow and, stuffing the Amulet of Valtor inside his shirt, gazed ruefully at the venom-encrusted Sword of Darjan, realizing that this long night wasn’t over yet, because he still had a heck of a lot of explaining to do.

But I much preferred this one of the three runners up:

Oh, and by the way, Chapters 3, 8, 10 and part of 16 were all dreams, in case you hadn’t caught on.

My short story “The Human Race” was just accepted by Space and Time magazine. It’s due to be published sometime in 2009.

My only other publications in the pages of S&T were back during the Paleozoic era in the magazine’s Winter 1982 and Winter 1983 issues.

Here’s a bit of trivia you may not know:

The most recent of those two stories, “Floater,” was adapted into an episode of Tales From the Darkside with the title “Fear of Floating.”

It was extremely loosely adapted, and I winced quite a bit while first watching it when it aired at the time. But still … it was adapted.

That makes sale number four for 2008—and the year isn’t over yet!

Check out Bookride for a list of rock band names smurched from literature.

Fiction of the fantastic is well-represented, with names inspired by Philip K. Dick, Iain Banks, Michael Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, John Wyndham, and many others.

For those of you who’ve grown tired of seeing endless photos of the Stan Lee of 2008 due to the National Medal of the Arts he received from President Bush at the White House last Monday, here he is 41 years ago at the 1967 New York Comic Convention.

That’s Big Name Fan turned pro Dave Kaler on the right.

And before you ask, no—I wasn’t there to take this picture, though I wish I had been. I was only 12, and my first comic-book convention was still three years away. (As for Stan, I guess the goatee was still in his future.)

Though I’ve had the photo in a folder for decades, you’ll have to thank either Andy or Pat Yanchus for its existence. One of them (they’re not quite sure which; after all, it was 41 years ago) snapped it at this early con at the City Squire Hotel.

It’s been months since I last shared an example of the fanciful envelope art of , so let’s take a look at another piece.

Click on the image above to view at a larger size, and on the tag below to see other examples.

I dreamt this morning that I was crushed inside a small elevator with Jeffrey Ford. We were headed many miles underground to an abandoned coal mine which had been turned into an art gallery and performance space. It was a long and seemingly endless journey down. Once we reached our destination, I wasn’t quite claustrophobic in the repurposed area, but I could feel the weight of the Earth’s crust above me, and was always aware of it throughout the dream.

The exhibits in the dark and narrow room were in small pens behind metal chain link fencing. I could see books, magazines, and bizarre sculptural artifacts on display, but now that I’m awake I can no longer remember the specifics of any of them. There were many other visitors milling about in the tiny space, but the only one I recognized (other than Jeffrey Ford, who had arrived with me) was Bruce Sterling, who was being treated like a celebrity. Bruce was happy and laughing, carefree and casual, the only one seemingly unconcerned that a sudden cave-in might crush us all.

The host of the space brought over a young fan, and offered her to Sterling, as if Chairman Bruce was allowed anyone there as a form of droit de seigneur. But Bruce was a gracious Lord, and waved the punkish blonde woman off.

My attention returned to the exhibits, and I cursed myself for failing to bring along my camera. I thought of returning to the surface for it, but knew that another roundtrip would take hours, and by then it would be too late, for the exhibit space would be dismantled.

I awoke while bemoaning my forgetfulness.

I dreamt last night that was I interviewing Beverly Cleary, the author of such classic children’s books as Henry Huggins, Ramona the Pest, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8. It was a phone interview, and I was at home with all sorts of print-outs spread across my desk, including spread sheets and sales figures. I was doing quite well at first at maintaining a professional and serious demeanor, but then my facade dropped away and I turned into a raving fanboy, embarrassing myself by gushing about how much I’d loved her books as a kid.

Then the dream jumped to me hearing the phone ring while I was in the shower. I stepped out as quickly as I could, wrapped myself in an enormous, fluffy white hotel bathrobe (something which I don’t own in real life), and rushed to the phone, only to find that Cleary was there, and had already answered. While she was explaining to the caller that I was currently unavailable, I could see my wife arrive from the other end of the hall, also too late to grab the phone.

As I stood there stunned and in awe, thinking, “What the heck is Beverly Cleary doing here?,” I woke.

Amazingly, Beverly Cleary is still alive at age 92.

There was nothing in today’s Washington Post about the Kennedy assassination. I had expected that there’d be something. There usually is some kind of look back on each anniversary of that traumatic event. And the 45th anniversary is a round enough number that I assumed I’d find at least a mention of it.

The absence of any remembrance as far as I see in either the Post or the New York Times seems to me as if it could mean only one of two things. Either so much time has passed that that it’s now considered ancient history, or else even the smallest mention of assassination in the current political climate has been rendered taboo by fear. (more…)

I was looking back through some of my earliest publications and came across this ad for GEnie’s SF & Fantasy RoundTable as printed on the inside front cover of the November 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Raise your hand if you can remember GEnie, or having to “set your modem for half duplex (local echo) at 300 or 1200 baud.” Does anyone still have to do that sort of thing, or have such manipulations gone the way of the buggy whip?

I can’t remember the exact year I joined GEnie, only that it was so early in the online timeline that there really wasn’t any other reason to be online. Back then, GEnie was where all the cool kids hung out … sort of like LJ today.

The solicitation may look primitive now, but it sure seemed tantalizing and state of the art back then.

I can’t wait to see how primitive today’s online interfaces (and the ads for them) will look nineteen years from now!

Today’s mail brought a new catalog from auction house Profiles in History. Its 204 pages contain more than 500 items of memorabilia to be sold on December 11, including the guitar strap worn by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, Sally Field’s habit from The Flying Nun, an Egyptian chariot from The Ten Commandments, James Dean’s vest from Giant, Marlon Brando’s Col. Kurtz coat from Apocalypse Now, one of Mark Hamill’s lightsabers from Star Wars, Orson Welles’ red Rochester jacket from Jane Eyre, and on and on and on.

Amazing artifacts all, but the two I’m jonesing for are still to come. If you’re having difficulty deciding what to get me now that the holidays are just around the corner, what follows is my wish list. (more…)