Painter and poet Josef Čapek was born on this date in 1887.

Why should you care?

Because Josef was the older brother to Karel Čapek, the author of the 1921 play “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots),” in which the term “robot” was introduced. And contrary to popular opinion, it was Josef, not Karel, who coined that word, as reported in this article written by Karel in 1933:

“Listen, Josef,” the author began, “I think I have an idea for a play.”

“What kind,” the painter mumbled (he really did mumble, because at the moment he was holding a brush in his mouth).

The author told him as briefly as he could.

“Then write it,” the painter remarked, without taking the brush from his mouth or halting work on the canvas. The indifference was quite insulting.

“But,” the author said, “I don’t know what to call these artificial workers. I could call them Labori, but that strikes me as a bit bookish.”

“Then call them Robots,” the painter muttered, brush in mouth, and went on painting. And that’s how it was. Thus was the word Robot born; let this acknowledge its true creator.

So let’s hear it for Josef Čapek, without whom there’d be no robots, leaving us all to live in a world in which Isaac Asimov had titled his famous collection, I, Labori.

Today’s mail brings a copy of Button, Button: Uncanny Stories, a collection by Richard Matheson. The world knows Matheson best for his movie-spawning novels I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, and What Dreams May Come, and for his script for Duel, which first brought Steven Spielberg to prominence, and for his script for the classic Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” But it is his short stories, usually with twist endings, which I find the most memorable and chilling.

The reason this collection has been reissued is that the title story is being made into the movie The Box, directed by Richard Kelly and starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. I sat down and reread the story this afternoon, and suddenly remembered the TV adaptation done of it for the 1980s’ incarnation of The Twilight Zone. I had forgotten that the two versions use completely different twist endings, and I wondered … which one will the movie use? Or will there be yet a third ending? I pulled out my DVD boxed set to compare the two.

For those who aren’t familiar with either of the versions, the (non-spoiler) premise for the plot is as follows. (more…)

According to a press release issued by the Horror Writers Association and the administrators of this year’s World Horror Convention, the Stoker Awards ceremony will be broadcast live on the Web a week from Saturday. This means that should I have a reason to take to the stage, you’ll be able to see and hear me from the comfort of your home, without the need to wend your way to Salt Lake City or eat rubber chicken.

Here are the details from the joint press release: (more…)

The day after Science Fiction Age was canceled, I resigned my position at Sovereign Media and moved on a few weeks later to a company called CommTek, where I became the editor of the magazine Satellite Orbit. When it came time to write my first editorial, who should pop into my mind but Arthur C. Clarke.

Why?

Satellite Orbit was a massive (around 300 pages per issue) TV programming guide for owners of C-band satellite dishes, those 8-10″ foot behemoths which were the only sort of satellite available for the general public in the days before DirecTV. Which meant that if not for Clarke—who after all, invented the geosynchronous satellite—the magazine wouldn’t have even existed.

I e-mailed Clarke to tell him so, and he was kind enough to reply, which resulted in this editorial. (Click through twice to view it in readable form.) It appeared in Satellite Orbit‘s June 2000 issue.

Just one more example of the many ways in which we’re all interconnected. Not only did Clarke give me a love of science fiction—but he also gave me a job!

When I first started reading science fiction, my gods were three:

Isaac Asimov.

Robert Heinlein.

And Arthur C. Clarke.

Those were the writers I read and reread. Those were also the writers whom, when I first thought I might become a writer, I wanted to be. As far as I was concerned, they were science fiction.

In my late teens, when I began to rebel, I found a new set of gods. Once more, there were three of them:

Roger Zelazny.

Samuel R. Delany.

And Harlan Ellison.

Now that the last of my first set of gods has departed for a new odyssey, and I pause to mourn as many of us are doing today, I also find myself thinking that those entering science fiction today must have their own set of living gods, for the ones I began with must surely seem as ancient as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells did to me by the time I got around to reading them.

I won’t even begin to attempt to fill in those new names today, just say that even as I mourn the passing of Arthur C. Clarke, I also celebrate that continuum of which we all are a part.

We can only see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Clarke was definitely one of them. We are all indebted to him, and were extremely lucky to have had him with us for so long.

I’m may be the world’s least trustworthy recommender for Adam-Troy Castro’s first non-franchise novel, Emissaries from the Dead, just out from Eos.

I’ve been impressed by his work ever since I read his first published story, “Clearance to Land,” back in the same 1989 issue of Pulphouse that printed one of my own stories. I chose his “The Last Robot” as the first story in the first issue of Science Fiction Age. I published so many installments of the zany adventures starring his inept space characters Vossoff and Nimmitz that they eventually filled a book, one for which I wrote the introduction. His zombie tale “Dead Like Me” is one of my favorite short stories. And he’s been writing book reviews for SCI FI magazine and movie reviews for Science Fiction Weekly for years.

As you can tell, I’m a little biased toward his writing. So it might be pointless for me to talk up Emissaries from the Dead, since you’ll just figure that I drank the Castro Kool-Aid a long time ago.

But that’s not enough to stop me from saying publicly how much I enjoyed reading Adam’s new book. I was thrilled to finally be able to read him at novel length in a piece of fiction which didn’t star Spider-Man. Emissaries from the Dead is a science-fiction thriller, always a tricky sub-genre to pull off, because it’s tough to play fair with the reader in a mystery when tomorrow’s rules are so alien to our own. But Adam managed to write a book that worked both as SF and as mystery, at the same time creating intriguing alien intelligences, building a true sense of wonder, and introducing a compelling protagonist about whom he’ll be writing future novels.

Congratulations, Adam! I’m looking forward to many more.

I’m in the midst of the deadline crunch on the next issue of SCI FI magazine at the moment, so I was only able to spare a few minutes outside wandering our property today. I’m lucky that I managed to get out there, or else I would have missed one of my favorite moments of the year.

Thanks to the high temperatures, the first daffodil of the season popped open this afternoon, a tiny Tete-a-Tete. I’ve always found something hopeful about daffodils, which is why I spend much of my October and November each year digging them in. Looking forward to them always makes Winter zip by.

By the end of the month, we’ll have hundreds of daffodils in bloom, and by the middle of April, perhaps thousands. But the first is always special.

In addition to my previously announced panels at this year’s World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, I just learned that I’ll also be doing a reading on Saturday, March 29, at 11:30 a.m.

I’ll probably read my Stoker-nominated story, “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”—or as much of it as I can squeeze into 30 minutes. I managed to pull off a condensed version back at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, so I think I’ll try it again.

I see that my old pal Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended Clarion back in 1979, will be reading immediately before me at 11:00 a.m. We just can’t seem to escape each other!

Yesterday, these iris were closed up tight, with just the slightest bit of purple showing at the tips of their buds. Today, they’ve burst forth in all their glory. They join the snow drops and crocuses which have already been coloring the landscape for a week or so.

Just one more welcome sign that Spring is hurtling toward us.

Though the daffodils have begun to peek out from the soil, none of them have yet popped, not even the earliest ones, which puts them behind their debut dates from the past two seasons.

We planted an additional 1,100 bulbs last year in addition to the thousands we’d already planted in our first few years here, and I’m looking forward to the explosion.

Can you tell that I can’t wait for Winter to be over?

Over at Salon, Cary Tennis replies in his advice column to a woman who recently graduated from a writing program but can’t seem to face up to getting any writing done.

“How can I give myself the kick in the ass that I so desperately need?” she asks.

Personally, I’d be glad to give her that kick, for I had little sympathy for her plight—I feel that if she actually wanted to be writing, she’d be writing, which tells me that perhaps she’s better suited to her job as “a personal trainer at an upscale health club” and should just stop whining about it—but then, she wasn’t asking me.

After giving the woman advice on how to climb out of her existential rut, here’s the final part of what Tennis had to say, which hit home:

Doing it for others sucks us dry. We have to do it for ourselves, for the love of it, for it. We have to give ourselves over to it like giving ourselves over to a lover or to the water, like giving ourselves over to the waves and sinking under. We just give ourselves to it. We surrender to it. We don’t worry about who will publish it. We do it because we need to.

Writers write because they can’t not write.