Samuel R. Delany is super cool.
Work Weekend
I’m spending this weekend over at the Hartwell manse, reading articles for the New York Review of Science Fiction. Reportedly, legendary author and critic Samuel R. Delany will be hanging out with us tomorrow and Sunday, which I’m very excited about.
Eye in the Sky
Trying to familiarize myself with L.A. geography, and having way too much fun with Google Maps satellite images. Check out the University of Southern California, Los Angeles International Airport, Marina Del Rey, and the Hollywood Sign.
Reading Tonight
I’ll be checking out the NYRSF reading tonight at the South Street Seaport Museum’s Melville Gallery (213 Water Street). Linda Addison and Gerard Houarner will be reading at 7:00 p.m., and we’ll be doing dinner afterward. This is the last NYRSF reading of the season, and since I’ll be moving to L.A. this fall, it’s the last one I’m likely see for the forseeable future.
Shunn-tastic
Muchas gracias to Bill for hosting a party in his backyard tonight. I had a great time, and met many nice people. Before that, I swung by Union Square Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Barbara Campbell’s new novel (her first) Heartwood, so that I can have her sign it at her Book Launch Celebration tomorrow. (And for those keeping score at home, this Barnes & Noble stocks one signed copy of All the Rage This Year.)
I also wandered the street fair up on 7th Avenue. For a while, there was a woman walking ahead of me holding a large poster that read: “Extraterrestrials Have Left Us a Message. They Created Us In Their Image.” And, “Science Replaces Religion.” (It’s reassuring to know, in this culture seemingly awash in soft-headed nonsense masquerading as fact, that someone is standing up for science.) The poster depicted a flying saucer beaming a giant DNA double helix down onto the earth, and then a swirl of species representing human evolution, though I wasn’t sure about the progression. Don’t hold me to this, but I’m not sure that camel -> butterfly -> chimpanzee -> human is precisely correct. The poster also listed a website.
Trailing after that woman came a small, agitated man repeatedly shouting, “Science replaces religion? Hmph. Go home! Go home!” and exhorting passerbys “Don’t look!” (At the woman’s poster.) “Don’t look! There is no message!” (from Extraterrestrials). This was proving to be a startlingly ineffective strategy for getting people to not look at the poster.
Nice Note
Got a nice note today from a 7th-grade teacher: “I have just completed reading ‘Lest We Forget’ with my students and they want more! They loved the story, even those who don’t like to read. The only negative comment I have received is that the story is too short. They want to know more about Morgan and Corey. Good job! I’m going to try to find some of the other short stories you have done and share with them. It’s very rare that I find something that becomes popular that quickly.”
A Feast for Crows
George R. R. Martin just announced that he’s finished writing A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. George R. R. Martin is my favorite writer currently working, and A Feast for Crows is the book I’m most looking forward to reading.
It’s been a long wait. The third volume in the series, A Storm of Swords, came out in 2000, so lots of people have been waiting five years for this. I didn’t discover the series until the fall of 2001, and didn’t read A Storm of Swords until January 2002, so I’ve only been waiting a comparatively easy three and a half years.
The bad news is that A Feast for Crows won’t feature many of the major characters, including Jon, Daenarys, Tyrion, and Bran. Their storylines are being bumped back to the next volume, A Dance with Dragons. For more on this, read George R. R. Martin’s explanation.
Boylan on Larry King
Professor Boylan, with whom I studied creative writing at Colby College, is on Larry King right now. Boylan was a man when I knew him, and switched genders after I graduated.
Revenge of the Sith
Saw Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
Spoilers
It was pretty good. It’s about the best that could be hoped for, I guess, given that it’s a continuation of the other two prequels. The opening space battle may be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
If you saw the New York Times review, the gist of it was “Writing and acting aside, it’s a pretty good movie.” And that’s about right. All the dialogue is inadequate, and the scenes between Anakin and Padme are staggeringly awful. They’re much harder to watch than any of the (surprisingly dark) scenes of violence. And like the other Star Wars prequels, there are frequent moments where you wonder just who the hell could have possibly thought that this was a good idea, like when Obi-Wan Kenobi rides around on a giant cartoon lizard.
The thing is, the story itself is really pretty cool, and if you just sort of imagine each scene playing out with strong writing and acting, you can almost imagine the movie being very powerful. Probably the closest the movie actually comes to achieving this is when the clone troopers betray and massacre the jedi. Uncoincidentally, these scenes involve no dialogue.
Excited
I’m actually excited now to see the new Star Wars movie. I mean, not camped-out-in-front-of-the-theater-dressed-as-a-wookie excited, but still, faintly vibrating. This is strange because, when I walked out of the theater after Episode II, I doubted I’d even bother to see Episode III on the big screen. But I keep hearing good buzz about it. Even the New York Times liked it, saying it’s better than the original Star Wars. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I’ll be doubling my scientific knowledge tonight by watching The Science of Star Wars on the Discovery Channel.
Update: I’m now officially excited to see the new Star Wars movie and the new The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe movie.
Further Update: The Science of Star Wars featured some nifty stuff, like the exoskeletal legs, but boy, I think that even the worm-robot that burrows through rubble looking for survivors and has a brain like an ant must have felt that the patronizing narration was an insult to its intelligence.
Sunday Afternoon
Came into the city today for the spec fic fair. Turns out it was cancelled. Hey, you know what would’ve been totally awesome? If someone had announced that somewhere, before I spent two hours getting there. Fortunately, someone I know showed up, having also not gotten the nonexistent cancellation announcement, so we sat and chatted for a few hours. So it wasn’t a total waste of time.
Afterward, I browsed Barnes & Noble at 22nd & 6th Ave, which gets my Official Seal of Approval as a Quality Establishment, as it carried not one but two copies of the All the Rage This Year anthology (which contains my short story “Veil of Ignorance”).
The weather was nice, so I decided to stroll back to Grand Central. Passing through Madison Square Park, I happened to spot a fat man wearing only very skimpy blue underpants. No sooner had it occurred to me that this was somewhat odd than a pair of park police pulled up in a cart and attempted to restrain him. The guy never looked at or responded verbally to either of them, which gave you the distinct impression that he was either mentally disturbed or else had just taken some of those drugs that let you do a really good job of faking it. One of the cops kept trying to grab his arm, but underpants man just kept pulling loose and continued walking. I paused, in order to spectate the (at that point, seemingly inevitable) moment when underpants man would be wrestled to the pavement and handcuffed.
But that’s not what happened. Underpants man wandered out of the park and across the street, at which point the park guards shrugged and drove off. Apparently across the street is out of their jurisdiction, or else they figured they’re just not being paid enough to wrestle down fat drugged-out mostly-naked guys. Underpants man paused in front of a bank and spent a few minutes staring at his reflection and fussing with his hair. Then he wandered into the bank. (Was he applying for a loan? Maybe that’s why he was so concerned about his hair.) But the bank employees politely encouraged him to leave again.
Next, underpants man descended into the subway. I couldn’t imagine he had a metro card on him, so I figured he’d pop up again soon. When he didn’t, my curiosity got the best of me, and I followed him down into the subway, but he was gone. I figured he must have gone through the turnstile, but I didn’t care enough to waste the last two bucks on my metro card to find out. So I guess he did have a metro card after all. (I don’t even want to think about where he had it.)
Wrong Link
Whoops. I just noticed I had goofed the link for Derek’s site. It’s www.derekjamesmusic.com, not www.derekjames.com (that’s the site for a different Derek James). It’s fixed now.
Friday
Eventful day today (at least by my fairly laid-back standards). Went to editors lunch. Heard many interesting stories. Checked out all the new gallery openings in Chelsea. Original dinner plans fell through. Went to check out Conservatory Garden in full bloom. Was hit on by pair of attractive older women. Met friends for dinner. Heard some very interesting stories. Went to see bud Derek James play a show in the East Village. Fun day.
Update: I see that Derek has updated his web site. Now you can listen to some of the tracks from his new CD. I really like “Summer.”
Toby’s Novel
My good buddy Tobias S. Buckell just posted the cover wrap for his first novel, Crystal Rain. Check it out. It’s awesome.
KGB
Ellen Datlow just posted photos from the April 20th reading at the KGB Bar, which featured Harvey Jacobs and Ben Rosenbaum. I finally made the cut.
Primer
Primer is the best science fiction movie I’ve seen in a long time. This is even more impressive when you consider that its budget was $7,000. And no, that is not a typo, I did not slip three decimal places, its budget really was seven thousand dollars. Check it out.
Absynthe Muse Chat
I’ve been invited as a guest for a live chat at Absynthe Muse: Young Adult Writing Community. I’ll be chatting about writing, workshops, and getting published. The chat will be at 5:30 p.m. EST on Saturday, May 21st.
Afternoon in Central Park
Wandering through the Rambles in Central Park this afternoon, I was set upon by three attractive midriff-baring girls with a boombox who mobbed me and proceeded to gyrate provocatively all around me as I walked. This is (sadly) not something that happens every day, and I was unsure how to react. I tried saying, “So … what’s up?” but they just smiled enigmatically. Maybe it was just a gag, but I kept walking due to a vague suspicion that associating with them was somehow going to end up costing me money. But geez, what’s the world coming to when you start to suspect every random passerby on the street who gyrates provocatively of having ulterior motives?
A few minutes later I saw one of the girls doing the same routine to an old stocky guy with white hair. How could she? I thought we had something.
I also saw Mel Brooks and Nathan Lane outside the Plaza hotel filming a scene for the new The Producers movie.
Fall Classes
Signed up for classes this fall at USC: Playwright’s Workshop, Writing for Film, and Academy Series. Writing for Film is taught by Irvin Kershner, who directed Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Academy Series is a film series where they show a different Academy-award winning movie each week and the director comes in to talk about it. I was hoping to get into a fiction writing class, but those were all full already, though I’m on several waiting lists, so we’ll see what happens.
MOMA
Went to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York today, for the first time since it reopened. I’d heard it was expensive now, but it really wasn’t too bad. A quick second mortgage and I was good to go. No, just fooling. Actually, I got in for free, since one member of our party volunteers at another museum. We haughtily breezed past the plebeian suckers waiting in line (and it was a long line). I couldn’t believe so many members of the American public were lining up to see art … and it turns out they weren’t. Everyone in the museum was European. We mostly stuck to the “old school” wing, where I am able to awe onlookers with my modest art knowledge by successfully identifying pieces by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Gauguin, and by making perspicacious art comments such as “This is pointillism” or “This counterpoints the meaning of the underlying metaphor” or “This was done with paint.”
Actually, that reminds me of the first time I went to MOMA, as a teenager. I encountered Duchamp’s famous bicycle wheel bolted to a stool. It really baffled me. What the heck was it supposed to be? I just stood there staring at it. I stood so still and concentrated so hard that one woman asked if I was part of the exhibit. Shortly thereafter, a docent attempted to allay my perplexity. He came up beside me and explained dismissively, “It’s just a bicycle wheel on a stool.”