I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. When I ran across the tape last year, I discovered to my horror that three years later, I’d recorded over the first 31 minutes of that tape with a second interview, this one with Steve Gerber. So all that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.

Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the impetuous 19-year-old me who reused the tape!

The photo embedded on the video below shows us in Doubleday’s Park Avenue offices. Isaac is wearing his traditional bolo necktie. Unfortunately, I can be seen wearing a puka shell necklace, which I guess I thought was cool back when I was 17.

We discuss the sexual aspects of The Gods Themselves, the number of typewriters he owns, his advice for breaking into the business, and more.

I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice is that of high school classmate Eric Shalit.

Over on Facebook recently, Steve Niles posted the front and back covers to the 1975 album Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero, the rock opera which, unlike Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, never got any of its performers injured. (Well … as far as I know.) It brought back many memories, because I was on staff at Marvel then, and one of my assignments was to act as an advisor to the creators of the project, making sure they correctly understood the finer points of Spider lore.

Steve’s post sent me scurrying to find my personal copy of the album. Here’s the way most people saw the back cover.

But the copy I was given looks quite different.

I can remember long talks at a recording studio on Park Avenue during which I’m sure I was overly passionate about who the characters were and how their lives intersected. Though I never got album credit for my work, as you can see, the creators did thank me profusely for my efforts.

Terence P. Minogue wrote, “Thank you for your help with this album. You gave us an insight to Comic Art that was crucial and invaluable to completing this project.” And Tommy West and Terry Cashman also signed the album.

Who were these guys? To be honest, I wasn’t that musically inclined, so their names meant little to me, and I hadn’t realized the level of musician that was involved in the project. But by doing a search on their names now, I see that Cashman and West were producers of, and Minogue was a musician and vocalist on, the Jim Croce album I Got a Name.

If I’d realized that at the time, I would have been very impressed, and maybe in too much awe of them to propound so self-righteously about Marvel minutiae. Better that I didn’t know!

If you want a sample of how it all turned out, give a listen to a couple of cuts.

I appeared on the panel “The Moral Distance Between the Author and the Work” at the 2010 World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, along with Eric Flint, Nancy Kress, Paul Witcover, Kathryn Cramer, and Jack Skillingstead. The room was packed, with several hundred people present, and the discussion grew so lively near the end that we almost failed to yield the room.

Here’s how the panel, which is embedded in four parts below, was described in the Pocket Program:

What do we make of good art by bad people, or at least people of whom we disapprove? Richard Wagner was a particularly vile anti-Semite, but he still wrote “Kill Da Wabbit!” and other great music. Should we listen? The official Nazi film industry made one very good fantasy film (BARON MUNCHAUSEN, to which the Terry Gilliam version owes a good deal). Should we watch this? What about an author who is a convicted child molester? Should we read his novel? CAN we read it for itself? Is it possible to truly experience any form of art as a thing until itself, rather than the product of its creator?

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While at Aussiecon4 in 2010, I took part in the “Vampire vs. Zombie Smackdown,” in which I’m joined by George R.R. Martin, Foz Meadows, Narrelle M Harris, Felicity Dowker, and Chuck McKenzie.

Which side won? Once you’ve watched the panel, which is embedded in four parts below, you decide.

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While at my favorite convention in 2010, I read my short story “Tell Me Like You Done Before,” which can be found in my collection of zombie stories, What Will Come After.

If you’re up to finding out what happened to George and Lenny after John Steinbeck got through with them, check out my reading below, which is embedded in three parts!

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When I heard earlier in the week that Cory Doctorow would be in Baltimore yesterday for a reading at Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffee House, I decided to head over. I don’t see Cory often enough, partially because it’s hard to grab extended time with anyone in the maelstrom of a convention, but also because his success as a writer and pontificator out in the “real world” has transformed him from Cory Doctorow into C!O!R!Y D!O!C!T!O!R!O!W. (Not that he thinks of himself like that.)

I arrived half an hour or so before his reading began, and though there were a couple of dozen people already there, Cory was alone at the counter, typing away on his laptop. Was the crowd too in awe of him to go over and speak, or were they just respectfully giving him space to get some work done? No idea, but it meant there was space for me to slip onto the stool next to him and catch up until it was time for him to perform.

He started out by reading a brief section from his new novel For the Win, a clip of which I’ve embedded below. I captured Cory with my new Flip camera, my first attempt to do anything more than experiment with it around the house. It wasn’t the best idea to record him in a dark bookstore with a sunny window behind him, because it caused a halo effect at times, but the place was packed, and by the time I realized how he occasionally appeared to be glowing, it was too late to move. But I think the video is worth sharing anyway.

And here’s the Q&A, chopped into YouTube-friendly chunks. (more…)

Back at the 1999 Philcon, Paul Levinson, who was then the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, approached me and asked if I would act as Toastmaster for the following year’s Nebula Awards ceremony in New York. Ham that I am, I immediately accepted. The video below, the first of five clips available from that night, shows how I repaid Paul for that honor.

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Back in 1993, long before I started working for the Syfy Channel, I was on the SCI FI Channel.

SCI FI Buzz, which was then the Channel’s equivalent of 60 Minutes, did a short feature highlighting me on the occasion of the first anniversary of <em>Science Fiction Age magazine. It was taped at ConFrancisco, the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, and ran in December of that year.

I don’t know how you’ll feel about watching this, but I wince a little, not just because there’s a little bit more of me, but also because there’s a little bit less.

More, because I was heavier then. Less, because I was trying so hard to present myself as a calm talking head and not bounce around in my chair or talk with my hands that I seem more subdued than my usual bouncy self. I was trying to be too cool about it all. I appear too coy and sedate, and with the quiet manner of speech on display here, I remind myself of Jason Alexander playing George Costanza.

You might feel differently. In fact, I hope you feel differently. But however you feel, the clip is too good a piece of history not to share.

I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. I found the tape recently and discovered to my horror that in 1975, I recorded over the first 31 minutes of the interview with a second interview with Steve Gerber. All that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.

Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the 19-year-old me who’d reused the tape!

I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice my high school classmate Eric Shalit.