MatthewWuertz

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6564304/Nasas-LCROSS-mission-proves-once-and-for-all-there-is-water-on-the-Moon.html

I love this headline:

Any headline that contains the phrase "NASA confirmed their mission to BOMB THE MOON had found..." is a winner.

While this does not necessarily mean that the Va-Gas are roaming the interior seas of the Moon, it does mean that a moonbase, should one ever be constructed, would have some local naturresources to draw upon.

Probably triggered by the fact that I stopped work today on page 42, but this is me thinking out loud again. I do that. Except I do it on paper most of the time and call it a story. It doesn't always work that way, for instance, now. I was thinking about my reaction to the news that this writer or that writer was going to finish Big Writer's last incomplete novel or continue another's series. For example, when I heard that Eoin Colfer was going to continue Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy(HHGTTG henceforth), my immediate reaction was typical -- extreme indifference.

( Musing Semi-Rant Hidden Unless, You Know, You Really Want to. )

First, let me recommend two articles:

• An article by historian Victor Davis Hanson pointing out that the Fort Hood shooting was a terrorist act following a pattern of terrorist acts. He note the absurdity, if not insanity of public figures denying the obvious link between Muslims and Muslim violence.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDM4YWY3NmRlNWQ4OTFhNWYxZTE3ZDdlNzdhM2I0ZGU=

• An article by historian Fabio Paolo Barbieri offering an explanation as to why public figures say things that they know to be absurd, if not insane, such as denying the obvious link between Muslims and Muslim violence..

http://fpb.livejournal.com/434242.html

Mr. Barbieri has a follow up article here

http://fpb.livejournal.com/434723.html.

Second, let me comment on the Fort Hood shootings:

Our public figures (either freely elected voters or freely selected by the marketplace for media info-entertainment) reacted to the Fort Hood shootings with Politically-Correct clownishness unparalleled even in this clownish age.

I thought I was bitter and cynical and unemotional enough not to be appalled. Apparently that thought is false to facts. I am so appalled it makes me seasick.

Commentary ranged from the mulishly stupid to the seriously stupid to the flippantly stupid to the surrealistically stupid.

( Read more... )

The bottom line is that when you’ve got a show with a lead who can’t act and is consistently shown up by her supporting cast and occasional guest stars, you have a problem. When you’ve got a show with a sketchy premise that does not live up to the responsibility of that premise but simply shows us the worst kind of people and then attempts to make us sympathize with them, you’ve got a problem. When the audience has to wait until season 2, episode 5 to see some decent writing, acting, and direction, you’ve got a problem. When television journalists insist that an audience owes it to a creator of television to watch and wait and give a show time to go from crappy to not as crappy as all that, you’ve got a problem.

--K. Tempest Bradford on the demise of Dollhouse at Tor.com

Re tonight's Glee: I was a little shocked by the glimpse into Sue's backstory. It wouldn't be surprising for any other character on TV, but then she isn't. Some more somber narrative tones this episode, but a couple of great wheelchair numbers (including Artie's solo version of "Dancing with Myself"). Looking forward to the return of the "doe-eyed little harlot" and co. next week.

Not so's you'd notice lately, but I am. Busy with many things that I won't bore anyone here with. Suffice it to say that it may be this way for a while.


"The River of Three Crossings" gets a nice shout-out from ecbatan in his yearly summary of Realms of Fantasy. Always cool when you realize someone is paying attention. :)

The story continues to consume all my writing mojo at the moment, for all that the pages come in dribbles and drabs. Managed six whole pages today, after a week or two of two-page days, and doing good to get that. It still astounds me sometimes how differently writing projects express themselves through the consciousness. Some are written at white-heat. And others, like this one, demand a slow, steady, plodding approach. And when all is said and done and I look at them again, be darned if I can trust my memory on which one was which. The story usually knows what it needs. Not always, but often enough.

"Don't categorize me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre." -- Carlos Fuentes

ARMISTICE DAY, 1918
by Robert Graves

What's all this hubbub and yelling,
      Commotion and scamper of feet,
With ear-splitting clatter of kettles and cans,
      Wild laughter down Mafeking Street?

O, those are the kids whom we fought for
      (You might think they'd been scoffing our rum)
With flags that they waved when we marched off to war
      In the rapture of bugle and drum.

Now they'll hang Kaiser Bill from a lamp-post,
      Von Tirpitz they'll hang from a tree....
We've been promised a 'Land Fit for Heroes'---
      What heroes we heroes must be!

And the guns that we took from the Fritzes,
      That we paid for with rivers of blood,
Look, they're hauling them down to Old Battersea Bridge
      Where they'll topple them, souse, in the mud!

But there's old men and women in corners
      With tears falling fast on their cheeks,
There's the armless and legless and sightless---
      It's seldom that one of them speaks.

And there's flappers gone drunk and indecent
      Their skirts kilted up to the thigh,
The constables lifting no hand in reproof
      And the chaplain averting his eye....

When the days of rejoicing are over,
      When the flags are stowed safely away,
They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'
      And another wild Armistice day.

But the boys who were killed in the trenches,
      Who fought with no rage and no rant,
We left them stretched out on their pallets of mud
      Low down with the worm and the ant.

This is John and I really do talk in this fake deep voice...

Okay, this is not John. John is asleep, having written all night on his latest Work In Progress (he has today off.)

Here's a crosspost for my latest Wright's Writing Corner. There is also a guest article here.

Hope you are all doing well,

Mrs. John C. Wright

Evidence to all would-be science fiction writers that one does not need big budgets, more than one location, or more than simple character development to write a witty tale. I am going back into the past to show myself this video, so that I, rather than Robert Heinlein can write BY HIS BOOSTRAPS.

Rich Horton ecbatan does his usual thorough and thoughtful job summarizing the year for us.

http://ecbatan.livejournal.com/84793.html?view=137785#t137785

This is just a short note to the world at large: be it known that I have purchased, despite the extreme poverty that my recent voyage across the world imposed on my budget, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF MIND-BLOWING SF (Mike Ashley, editor).

Since I am a Null-A trained Houyhnhnm from planet Vulcan, I am (of course!) a being of pure logic unmoved by any passions or emotions, but from time to time one simply must make a gesture, no matter how small, to oppose the Dark Lord, even if that gesture is only symbolic.

In this case, the book is one that holds for me only mild interest, despite the fact that some of the contributors include giants in the SF field, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg and Michael Swanwick.

No, my interest in the book was piqued only because of a pseudocontroversy that was ginned up over the race and sex of the authors in the table of contents. Because the editor did not include a token female, he was excoriated by the unwitting servants of the Dark Lord.

Not only was the editor threatened with boycotts and reduced to the status of an unperson, any authors or editors who spoke in his defense, no matter how mildly, were also boycotted. Much of the ire seemed to be over the cover blurb and title, which (as best I can tell) is boilerplate boosterism, no more meaningful than Stan Lee of Marvel Comics assuring potential buyers in blazing all-capital letters that this issue is the best battle issue ever!

What was the cause of so much vexation, we might wonder?

( Read more... )

I haven't programmed in C for 10 years. Which means I haven't needed to optimize in Assembler in at least as long. I rather doubt that I will ever program in either C or Assembler again in this lifetime. So why do I hesitate to get rid of my Assembly Language book?

I know: it's a sickness.

Story is still going. Still going slowly. I'll finish one day or another.

Cinema Spec, Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy
Karen A. Romanko, Editor
Raven Electrick Ink ISBN 978-0-9819643-0-0 $13.95

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9780981964300&ourl=Cinema%2DSpec%2FKaren%2DA%2DRomanko&cm_mmc=yahoossp-_-plp-_-books2-_-Cinema-Spec-9780981964300

http://romanko.org/cinemaspec.html

Full disclosure: my own submission to the slush pile was rejected.

Cinema Spec is the second in editor Karen A. Romanko’s anthologies featuring themed flash and poetry (the first, Sporty Spec, contains a flash by me. She is currently reading submissions for the third, Retro Spec.)

The theme for this anthology is “moving pictures,” which morphed into stories about Hollywood. You’d think the idea would have been done to death, from “Sunset Boulevard” to “Day of the Locusts” to “A Star Is Born.” Still, editor Romanko put out the call and the specfic community responded with 32 contributions of flash, short, and poetry that embraced and expanded on Hollywood glitz and glam with a twist of fantastic speculation.
( review )

I finished a rough draft on a new science-fiction story.  Life is pretty busy at the moment, especially with the addition of a new baby, so I’m not writing much.  It’s pretty exciting at the Wuertz household!  Elora and William keep me on my toes.

One cool thing about dreams is their capacity for scale. Last night I dreamed I was standing on a planet (Earth? Dunno) and watching this incredibly huge starship moving across the night sky. Made the one in the "V" promo look like a frisbee.

I tend to dream about large objects in the sky quite often. I think it was because, when I was a toddler, I lived on an air force base.

A quote from ON FAIRY STORIES, an essay by professor J.R.R. Tolkien:

We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Yes, it's November again, and again for November we're open to short story submissions up to 10k words in length, and flash fiction submissions under 1.5k words in length.

camillealexa (flash fiction editor) and saycestsay (short fiction editor) look forward to reading your stories!

Sam Tomaino of SFRevu takes on Issue 32 and likes it!

I keep meaning to get back here more often, and it keeps not happening. But I do have good news.

One: I am extremely pleased to announce that the talented Charles Saunders, creator of Imaro and Dossouye, will be dropping by to guest blog at the Black Gate web site from time to time, and he's just posted his first entry. Charles is one of the greatest living sword-and-sorcery writers we have, and I'm thrilled he's on board. Drop by the site and see his first post, then make sure you go find his fiction!

Two: John O'Neill has recently posted a preview of issue 14's cover, and is through laying out the fiction. We just have to wrap up the review sections. The finished issue should be available come Christmas time, and it will be extra bonus size, and not merely by a page or two.

Three: Now that I have a copy of the contract, I no longer feel like I'm jinxing anything by revealing that I have a two book hardback deal with Thomas Dunne, a St. Martin's imprint, for my Dabir and Asim historical fantasy/sword & sorcery novel(s). It's a good feeling. I had planned on keeping everyone abreast of the whole submitting process once I sent the thing off, but it didn't seem right talking about any of it until things were finalized. If anyone's curious about what it's like suddenly going from "outside" to "inside," I can post on that later.

Warm Regards, 

Howard Andrew Jones