The latest cover of the Belgian magazine Humo—which I’d never heard of before but which my poor translation skills cause me to believe is a cross between the National Lampoon and Spy—has caught the attention of Walt Disney’s army of lawyers, which is never a good thing. (Just ask Dan O’Neill and the Air Pirates.)

The cover, by the artist Jeroom, features Winnie the Pooh bludgeoning Piglet with a hammer while Eeyore and Tigger watch on. The image is supposedly illustrating a story on near-death experiences. (Though, if you ask me, if anyone deserves to get bludgeoned to death with a hammer, it’s that Eeyore, who as far as I’m concerned has been asking for it for years.)

Disney’s lawyers are supposedly investigating their options, while Humo is defending its actions as parody. Here in the U.S., the claim of satire would certainly protect Humo, but I have no idea whether that’s considered a sufficient defense internationally.

I’m assuming that the magazine is on solid ground, but is there anyone out there with a better understanding of international trademark and copyright law who can give a definitive answer?

If you have a hankering for guinea pig, and don’t know quite where to satisfy that hunger, hop on a plane to Quito, Ecuador and pay a visit to the Wasi Cuy restaurant, which translates as House of Guinea Pig.

Guinea pig is a traditional Ecuadorean dish, though not one of which all Ecuadoreans seemed to be enamored, at least not based on the response we got when we tried to track some down several years ago in Guayaquil and the Galapagos Islands. “Only those crazy mountain people eat that,” we were told, and so we had to wait until we were in those mountains, visiting the Ecuadorean capitol.

The concierge at the hotel sent us off to Wasi Cuy, reputed to serve the best cuy in the city. If you click to enlarge the flier we were given, you’ll see cuy as it is traditionally served, in a single deep-fried portion. The animal may have been gutted, but its head—teeth and whiskers intact—was still attached, so it eyed us suspiciously throughout the meal.

I sadly report that the meat did indeed taste like chicken, so the experience did not introduce me to a new taste sensation. But it was an interesting restaurant, filled with paintings of happy, laughing guinea pigs wearing traditional Ecuadorian garb. They appeared ignorant of their fate as they watched us dispatching their unfortunate cousin.

Irene and I were there back in 2001, but according to this site, it appears to still be in business. So if you’re in the mood … now you know where to go!

Nick Flynn just published an interesting article titled “The Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir of Torture” in the February 2008 issue of Esquire. On the one hand, the piece is exactly what the subhead describes it as, a story about the author’s trip to Istanbul to listen to accounts of torture from former prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But the essay does its job is a very rambling way, offering poetic asides about memories, perceptions, families, and dreams.

In one section, Flynn describes his meditation retreat with a Vietnamese Zen master:

Thich Nhat Hahn says it is a mistake to say, “The rain is falling,” to say, “The wind is blowing.” What is rain if it is not falling? he asks. What is wind if it is not blowing? The falling is the rain, the blowing is the wind.

This passage had nothing to do with writing; it was meant to speak to the impermanence of our existence. But it also gave me a little “Aha!” moment. Have I been guilty of writing a sentence in which the wind blew? Did I ever say that the rain was falling? Was there really a need to say so? What else would they be doing? Wind blows. Rain falls. And words can be redundant.

It reminded me of the need to prune my prose. Not something I always do wisely here … but you know what I mean.

Perhaps that’s an inconsequential and insulting moral to take from such a horrifying essay, but I’m a writer. I commit such crimes all the time.

People ask me from time to time whether I’m related to Ric Edelman, the financial guru who writes books and hosts a radio show. But no, I’m not.

They also occasionally ask whether I’m related to Daniel J. Edelman, founder of the PR firm that bears his name. Nope, no relationship there either.

When I’m in the UK, I sometimes get asked whether I’m related to Keith Edelman, formerly General Manager and currently President of Arsenal Football. Though we’ve met, and have joked about being cousins, we’re not.

And then a couple of times I’ve been asked whether I’m related to Randy Edelman, film composer for Dragonheart and the current 27 Dresses, but whose true claim to fame as far as I’m concerned is that he wrote the theme to MacGyver. No blood there either.

This is the Edelman to whom I’m related. And strangely, he’s also the one famous Edelman about whom no one’s ever asked.

The Horror Writers Association has just released its preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Awards, which will be given out at this year’s World Horror Convention, held March 27-30, 2008 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Active HWA members will now vote from this list to create the final ballot. Awards will be given out in the categories of Superior Achievement in a Novel, Long Fiction, Short Fiction, Anthology, Collection, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Congratulations to all the potential nominees.

I’m extremely pleased to be able to say that two of the 12 stories on the preliminary ballot in the Long Fiction category were written by yours truly. Here’s the final dozen:

“Afterward, There Will Be A Hallway” by Gary Braunbeck (Five Strokes to Midnight)
“Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” by Scott Edelman (Postscripts)
“Survival of the Fittest” by Scott Edelman (Summer Chills)
“You Never Got Used to the Needle” by John Everson (Needles and Sins)
“Blood Coven” by Angeline Hawkes & Christopher Fulbright (Dead Letter Press)
“General Slocum’s Gold” by Nicholas Kaufmann (Burning Effigy Press)
“Placeholders” by John R. Little (Necessary Evil Press)
“Blood Wish” by Michael McBride (Delirium Books)
“Frayed” by Tom Piccirilli (Creeping Hemlock Press)
“Lost in Translation” by Gord Rollo (NYX Books)
“An Apiary of White Bees” by Lee Thomas (Inferno)
“Trolling Lures” by Steve Vernon (Hard Roads)

My thanks go out to all those HWA members who liked my stories enough to recommend them. Now that voting is about to begin, if there are any active HWA members out there who’d like to receive copies of either of these two stories for further consideration, please let me know. Voting closes February 10, and the final ballot is to be mailed by February 15. I have no idea what will happen next, but that gives me three weeks or so to be happy and hopeful.

Free Range Librarian reports on a brouhaha concerning a recent award given to Orson Scott Card by the the Young Adult Library Services Association. The Margaret A. Edwards Award is given annually to recognize a writer for lifetime achievement in “helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.” K.G. Schneider states that considering Card’s views on homosexuality, “that’s like the Anti-Defamation League giving Bobby Fisher a lifetime achievement award.”

In a report by the School Library Journal, Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief of the Horn Book, is quoted as defending the choice, stating that “The award is not for being an idiot in real life; it’s for writing books that have made a positive difference in the reading lives of young people.”

In her March 2008 Asimov’s editorial, “Panning for Gold,” Sheila Williams shares the following nugget of information about her readership:

I think that at least 10 percent of Asimov’s readers are currently trying their hands at writing. I suspect that over the years Asimov’s editors have seen stories at one time or another from at least 20 to 30 percent of you—perhaps even more.

I must admit to being surprised that the number is so high. Perhaps it’s because I never tried to calculate such a percentage for Science Fiction Age back when I was editing fiction, and if I’d been paying attention, I would have already been aware of such a large overlap.

Oh, I tallied other numbers on and off, such as the percentage of submissions by women compared to the percentage of published stories by women, so that I could respond when people took me to task for the magazine not being representative of the pool of available stories—but I never thought to examine readers and writers as a sort of Venn diagram in an attempt to divine the correlation.

I trust that Sheila’s observation is correct. I’d love to know whether this fact holds true for other magazines, and for book publishing as well, both within science fiction and without. Is the reader/writer relationship similar in mysteries? How about romances?

I also wonder whether this carries over to other creative fields. What percentage of movie audiences want to make movies? What percentage of people who go to the theater hope to someday work in the theater? Is Asimov’s an anomaly, in that it’s so heavily supported by those who want to be a part of it? Or do Sheila’s numbers hold true for all artistic endeavors?

I’m not sure that there’s any way of finding this out. Any ideas?

I’m about halfway through Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I know that I’m late to the party (it was first published in 1988, after all), and you’ve all probably read this book years ago. But I guess I’ve always been avoiding it, even though I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, feeling as if that more recent book had been written with only an audience of me in mind. I didn’t want to go backward through Chabon’s oeuvre, because I was sure that I would only be disappointed. After so perfect a book as Kavalier & Klay, wouldn’t even a near-perfect book seem flawed and primitive by comparison?

But then a review copy of the new edition of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh showed up in the mail last week. I have no idea why; there’s no reason Science Fiction Weekly would ever run a review of a 20-year-old non-genre book. And I thought—it’s a sign. Time to cast off my silly fears and finally read the thing. I figured, well, it would be what it would be, and no matter what I ended up thinking of it, moving back in time would not diminish my love for Chabon’s more mature work. (more…)

John Joseph Adams, editor of the recent post-apocalyptic anthology Wastelands, which has been receiving rave reviews, informed me late last night that he’ll be reprinting my “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” in his upcoming zombie anthology from Night Shade Books. The book, tentatively titled No More Room in Hell, will be published in October. Good news with which to start off 2008!

And for those of you who wanted to nominate the story for a Nebula Award last month, but couldn’t because the story’s original venue was a UK magazine, mark your calendars, because its eligibility period will begin in October with this first U.S. publication.

Robert Silverberg was born 73 years ago today. Here’s a picture I took of a slightly younger Silverberg at the 2005 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. See that photo behind him? That’s of a much younger Silverberg at the 1957 World Science Fiction Convention in London.

I’ve been reading Robert Silverberg for as long as I’ve been reading science fiction. And why not? Bob’s career is one year older than I am, since he published his first short story in 1954. (Though maybe I shouldn’t rub that in.)

Happy birthday, Bob!