Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 13
June 16, 2015
Wolfgang Jeschke
Sorry to see that Wolfgang Jeschke has died. He was seven years older than me, born three years into Hitler's reign. I remember sitting with him on a kerb in Ireland maybe thirty years ago, talking about his childhood. He could remember searchlights scanning the midnight skies as American and British bombers droned overhead, dropping clusters and strings of bombs that boomed and crackled in the distance. He and his friends were too young to be afraid, and marveled at the powerful beauty of it all. Of course their parents found them and scooted them into the nearest shelter.
He was my editor and sometimes translator, and we raised many a wrist in our mutual hatred of war and love of science fiction. Grüß Gott, mein alter Freund.
He was my editor and sometimes translator, and we raised many a wrist in our mutual hatred of war and love of science fiction. Grüß Gott, mein alter Freund.
Saturn rules! (the Underworld)
Relaxed for a bit with the Questar last night. Got a quick glance at Jupiter before it set and then Saturn came up in the east. (Unsurprising.) As usual it was hauntingly beautiful, a golden orb in impossible balance, huge forces spinning in apparent tranquility on the frozen edge of the classical solar system. The air was still enough for me to use 350X. The Cassini Division was clear, a fine black line splitting the large ring system, and the Crepe Ring was visible as a slight smudge against the pale yellow of the planet's atmosphere. Three moons visible, with Titan showing as a tiny circle at that power.
Good job for the Questar, almost 60 years old, pushing a hundred power per inch. And these eyes, rather older.
Joe
Good job for the Questar, almost 60 years old, pushing a hundred power per inch. And these eyes, rather older.
Joe
May 2, 2015
joe_haldeman @ 2015-05-02T18:07:00
While we were in the air between Poland and Florida, this story unfolded–Thursday, 11:18 AM: EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. and Sony are battling to set upthe feature adaptation of the popular sci-fi actioner The Forever War with ChanningTatum attached to star and Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange, Passengers)scripting. The Forever War, written by Joe Haldeman, is considered one of thebest science fiction stories of all time and won numerous awards. The book,which also was continued in two sequel novels, was written in 1974 and alsospawned a graphic novel. The story is an analogy about the Vietnam War, a endlesswar where soldiers fight with no clear idea about why they are engaged in combat.So something indeed has happened/is happening. I await word from my agent (whoalerted me when the first story broke) and of course a line of sweating minionspushing wheelbarrows full of money up my sidewalk.UPDATED, Thursday, 6:15 PM: Warner Bros outbid Sony late Thursday after a spiritednegotiation and is now in business with a new possible franchise, The ForeverWar with Channing Tatum on board to star. The script is being penned by JonSpaihts and will be based on Joe Haldeman’s book. Richard Edlund had the rightsto the book for 27 years, and it had been at Fox for the past seven with RidleyScott, but after several scripts, it never made it to the big screen. Hopefully,this time, the 41-year-old classic sci-fi novel — said to be one of the bestbooks of the genre — finally will get made.Fingers and toes crossed!Joe
April 25, 2015
Poznan
Pyrcon (in Poznan, Poland) may be the largest convention we've been to, with about 25.000 in attendance. Mostly game-players and media, but thousands of readers as well.
Yesterday I was interviewed by , and took questions from the audience, a couple of hundred people, which only took up a small corner in the front of the huge exhibition tent.. There was a panel discussion on __ with __ and ___.
In the morning, Gay and I had wandered around Poznan for awhile, and had a good lunch at a deli, which was actually a pretty large quiet restaurant. A tender beefsteak with good small potatoes. They serve lots of interesting relishes and preserves with every meal.
The line to get into the convention was hundreds of people long, looping through another hundred or so milling around. We were able to bypass it, going through a VIP entrance.
The convention center is large by any standard. Parking for 2000 cars. Sixteen pavilion buildings. Modern electronic facilities that seem to work better than American ones. The website doesn't say how old it is, but it can't be more than a couple of years.
Good beer! Budweiser hasn't discovered them.
An interesting panel that examined the claim that sf writers are either architects or gardeners. I courageously said I was both, though maybe I'm really neither.
Better run off to breakfast. Lots of coffee. Tryong to keep ahead of this unnatural desire to sleep.
Joe
Yesterday I was interviewed by , and took questions from the audience, a couple of hundred people, which only took up a small corner in the front of the huge exhibition tent.. There was a panel discussion on __ with __ and ___.
In the morning, Gay and I had wandered around Poznan for awhile, and had a good lunch at a deli, which was actually a pretty large quiet restaurant. A tender beefsteak with good small potatoes. They serve lots of interesting relishes and preserves with every meal.
The line to get into the convention was hundreds of people long, looping through another hundred or so milling around. We were able to bypass it, going through a VIP entrance.
The convention center is large by any standard. Parking for 2000 cars. Sixteen pavilion buildings. Modern electronic facilities that seem to work better than American ones. The website doesn't say how old it is, but it can't be more than a couple of years.
Good beer! Budweiser hasn't discovered them.
An interesting panel that examined the claim that sf writers are either architects or gardeners. I courageously said I was both, though maybe I'm really neither.
Better run off to breakfast. Lots of coffee. Tryong to keep ahead of this unnatural desire to sleep.
Joe
April 18, 2015
Arrived in Poland
Morning in Warsaw, local time 10:30 ayem . . . just got back from a delicious and too-generous breakfast. I was impressed by the freshness of the citrus fruit; the stuff we get in Florida this time of year comes from California. These are probably from Georgia. The other Georgia.
Haven't done any touristing yet. Slept pretty well but not long enough. Still, up and around and try to catch up with the clock.
Suitcases lost somewhere between Amsterdam and here. Not worried yet.
Here is the inspiring view from our window. Socialist realism!
Joe
Haven't done any touristing yet. Slept pretty well but not long enough. Still, up and around and try to catch up with the clock.
Suitcases lost somewhere between Amsterdam and here. Not worried yet.
Here is the inspiring view from our window. Socialist realism!
Joe
April 10, 2015
Eating bugs
(In reference to mince pies . . .) Thanks for the international broadening, Liz.
I think the best meat pies in the English-speaking world are found in Australia. They have an elaboration that I love, though some think obscene – the "pie floater," which is a meat pie plopped into a bowl of split pea soup. A little squirt of catsup for both color and flavor. The sine qua non of pub grub is a pie floater with a side of Merton Bay bugs – nothing else like it in the world!
(Anybody who says "Ew – I wouldn't eat bugs!" has never had the Merton Bay variety.)
Joe
I think the best meat pies in the English-speaking world are found in Australia. They have an elaboration that I love, though some think obscene – the "pie floater," which is a meat pie plopped into a bowl of split pea soup. A little squirt of catsup for both color and flavor. The sine qua non of pub grub is a pie floater with a side of Merton Bay bugs – nothing else like it in the world!
(Anybody who says "Ew – I wouldn't eat bugs!" has never had the Merton Bay variety.)
Joe
April 4, 2015
the good old bad old days
Over on sff.net, we got to talking Writer Nostalgia . . . .
Deedee, I haven't had a New York signing in awhile. It's not worth a special trip, and we don't pass through NYC as often as we used to, when we lived in more northerly climes. To go to Britain or Europe I can fly straight from Jacksonville now.The writing biz has changed, too. It's less NYCentric. In the 70's, 80's, and 90's, I went to New York once or twice a year, just to show up and remind people that I existed. Do lunches with editors and shmooze with everybody.I loved it. We'd stay at the Algonquin and do the old-fashioned New Yorker bit – the cats, the Blue Bar, drinks in the living room. The head clerk knew me by sight (along with another thousand writers and wannabes) and greeted me by name even if we hadn't been there in a year.The French have a phrase for it, nostalgia for a time and place that never really existed. There was a coterie of sf writers and editors who headed for the Algonquin whenever they were in town, and it wasn't because the rooms were good (they were small and not as sanitary as one might like) — but really because Dorothy Parker and her gang still hung out there in spirit. The martinis were great and the chat was spirited and warm; every writer's home away from home.To share the space where Parker and Benchley and Harpo Marx and Alexander Woolcott traded gossip and insults; I don't know of anyplace quite like it in America. Google surprises me by noting that the Round Table only met for ten years, 1919-1929.The Crash destroyed it, along with a lot of America that was genteel and "smart." Of course it was temporary and fragile and doomed. Most of them knew that, and perhaps it made the wit sharper and the food and drink more satisfying. Dorothy Parker wrote its bleak, unsparing epitaph:=======These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them....There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth…=====But almost a century later, it still has charm, in the old magical sense of the word. A lot of what makes good writing is mysterious and hard to explain, and not always painless or pretty.Joe
Deedee, I haven't had a New York signing in awhile. It's not worth a special trip, and we don't pass through NYC as often as we used to, when we lived in more northerly climes. To go to Britain or Europe I can fly straight from Jacksonville now.The writing biz has changed, too. It's less NYCentric. In the 70's, 80's, and 90's, I went to New York once or twice a year, just to show up and remind people that I existed. Do lunches with editors and shmooze with everybody.I loved it. We'd stay at the Algonquin and do the old-fashioned New Yorker bit – the cats, the Blue Bar, drinks in the living room. The head clerk knew me by sight (along with another thousand writers and wannabes) and greeted me by name even if we hadn't been there in a year.The French have a phrase for it, nostalgia for a time and place that never really existed. There was a coterie of sf writers and editors who headed for the Algonquin whenever they were in town, and it wasn't because the rooms were good (they were small and not as sanitary as one might like) — but really because Dorothy Parker and her gang still hung out there in spirit. The martinis were great and the chat was spirited and warm; every writer's home away from home.To share the space where Parker and Benchley and Harpo Marx and Alexander Woolcott traded gossip and insults; I don't know of anyplace quite like it in America. Google surprises me by noting that the Round Table only met for ten years, 1919-1929.The Crash destroyed it, along with a lot of America that was genteel and "smart." Of course it was temporary and fragile and doomed. Most of them knew that, and perhaps it made the wit sharper and the food and drink more satisfying. Dorothy Parker wrote its bleak, unsparing epitaph:=======These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them....There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth…=====But almost a century later, it still has charm, in the old magical sense of the word. A lot of what makes good writing is mysterious and hard to explain, and not always painless or pretty.Joe
March 17, 2015
When is porn not porn?
Okay, you heard it here last. The latest thing from a certain part of California is "drone boning." In case you didn't figure it out instantly from the name, it's flying a tiny camera on a drone looking for people having sex al fresco. The plate scale, as we photopros call it, is so small you can hardly tell what they're doing, but yeah, what they're doing is IT.
Is it an invasion of privacy? Or just sharing?
joe
Is it an invasion of privacy? Or just sharing?
joe
March 15, 2015
An irrational day
Yesterday was Pi Day, 3.14, and as we've done for the past few years, I celebrated by making a meat pie for dinner. No kidneys or anything challenging; just old-fashioned hamburger with chopped onions and carrots and a turnip, the carrots ground fine.
A crust of real mashed potatoes. (An online source recommended instant mashed potatoes. I recommend not using that source.)
The recipe I used as a reference (Mr. Food) called for a 15 oz. can of mixed vegetables, drained, and I think that was a good addition.
One of my guests was a meat-and-potatoes guy, so I didn't add anything fancy. Just some Worcestershire sauce and seasoned salt. With plenty of butter in the mashed-potato "crust."
One of the recipes I saw online called for a generous amount of fresh ginger along with minced garlic. Definitely try that next!
It turned out well, perhaps partly because of the quality of the beef. Bought it from an organic vendor at the local weekly farmers' market. Six bucks a pound, but it's cheaper than raising your own.
Our guests brought another pie for dessert, which saved us from blowing away in a high wind.
Joe
A crust of real mashed potatoes. (An online source recommended instant mashed potatoes. I recommend not using that source.)
The recipe I used as a reference (Mr. Food) called for a 15 oz. can of mixed vegetables, drained, and I think that was a good addition.
One of my guests was a meat-and-potatoes guy, so I didn't add anything fancy. Just some Worcestershire sauce and seasoned salt. With plenty of butter in the mashed-potato "crust."
One of the recipes I saw online called for a generous amount of fresh ginger along with minced garlic. Definitely try that next!
It turned out well, perhaps partly because of the quality of the beef. Bought it from an organic vendor at the local weekly farmers' market. Six bucks a pound, but it's cheaper than raising your own.
Our guests brought another pie for dessert, which saved us from blowing away in a high wind.
Joe
January 23, 2015
joe_haldeman @ 2015-01-23T11:06:00
Feeling unaccountably down. Maybe the weather, still and close. Probably the unfinished projects littering my desk. Updating a speech I gave years ago, never my favorite use of time.
Or perhaps it's mainly a nagging sense of mortality left over from last night's music. We went to an Arlo Guthrie concert, and although it was most entertaining, it was definitely an Old Person's Event. Full of sixties stuff. Lots of long hair losing its pigmentation and framing bald spots.
They showed part of the film Alice's Restaurant, where Arlo is a young kid tweaking the establishment. All very clever and nostalgic, but it's hard not to feel irrelevant, now, in the backwash of zany zeitgeist. We were all so relevant then, in our sacred antiestablishmentarianism. While the unborn ghost of the 21st century looked down on our antics and shook its head slowly: we act out the script while we think we're inventing it.
Partly that it's Friday and I wish it were Saturday. Off to lose myself in drawing, rather than shoulder the labor of thinking. This week, the weekend is also the Hogtown Medieval Fair; Bill Hutchinson came by yesterday with guest tickets. We spent a pleasant hour reminiscing.
Also talking about the television special we'd both seen on Nova. (Gay was down visiting friends in Orlando, so I was watching teevee by myself, a rarity.) It was about the salvaging of the Costa Concordia, the large tourist liner that sank in the shallows off the coast of Italy in 2012. Huge property loss; only one dead.
The salvage was a hugely complicated industrial process, given a large element of suspense by the clock and calendar: the ship had to be moved before the autumn storms came in. The wreck was only meters from a sheer underwater cliff, and the storms would likely move it over the edge, into the abyss.
An entertaining suspense story that ultimately was about engineering and science. See it if you can.
Joe
Or perhaps it's mainly a nagging sense of mortality left over from last night's music. We went to an Arlo Guthrie concert, and although it was most entertaining, it was definitely an Old Person's Event. Full of sixties stuff. Lots of long hair losing its pigmentation and framing bald spots.
They showed part of the film Alice's Restaurant, where Arlo is a young kid tweaking the establishment. All very clever and nostalgic, but it's hard not to feel irrelevant, now, in the backwash of zany zeitgeist. We were all so relevant then, in our sacred antiestablishmentarianism. While the unborn ghost of the 21st century looked down on our antics and shook its head slowly: we act out the script while we think we're inventing it.
Partly that it's Friday and I wish it were Saturday. Off to lose myself in drawing, rather than shoulder the labor of thinking. This week, the weekend is also the Hogtown Medieval Fair; Bill Hutchinson came by yesterday with guest tickets. We spent a pleasant hour reminiscing.
Also talking about the television special we'd both seen on Nova. (Gay was down visiting friends in Orlando, so I was watching teevee by myself, a rarity.) It was about the salvaging of the Costa Concordia, the large tourist liner that sank in the shallows off the coast of Italy in 2012. Huge property loss; only one dead.
The salvage was a hugely complicated industrial process, given a large element of suspense by the clock and calendar: the ship had to be moved before the autumn storms came in. The wreck was only meters from a sheer underwater cliff, and the storms would likely move it over the edge, into the abyss.
An entertaining suspense story that ultimately was about engineering and science. See it if you can.
Joe
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