Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 29
April 19, 2013
in the land of the rising sun
Here we are in Japan. Will be GoH at Halcon, outside of Tokyo, starting next Saturday. We came early and will spend most of the time before the con in and around Kyoto.
The flight was interminable. Crowded and loud. One of the movies I watched on the little TV was interesting, though – two episodes of "Revolution," a miniseries that a couple of my readers told me about. It's very much like Earthbound, a near-future world where technology has stopped working. Of course it's an idea that anybody might come up with.
Not very good writing, though.
Haven't really seen anything of Japan – got on the bus at the airport and it took us to a hotel near the airport, whee. No energy to go out, though, even if there were something to go out to.
Joe
The flight was interminable. Crowded and loud. One of the movies I watched on the little TV was interesting, though – two episodes of "Revolution," a miniseries that a couple of my readers told me about. It's very much like Earthbound, a near-future world where technology has stopped working. Of course it's an idea that anybody might come up with.
Not very good writing, though.
Haven't really seen anything of Japan – got on the bus at the airport and it took us to a hotel near the airport, whee. No energy to go out, though, even if there were something to go out to.
Joe
April 9, 2013
country matters
I wonder whether anybody – anybody! – at Barnes & Nobel has a sense of humor or any sensitivity to language. I just got an advertisement by email for their "Nook" press, which uses a platform called "PUBIT."Maybe the problem is that I'm still basically eleven years old. But both of those names have a high "wink-wink/nudge-nudge" factor. A pubic platform to distribute nookie. Perhaps the real question is whether there might be a higher jest involved here, and I'm too obtuse to see it . . . like Shakespeare alluding to "country matters." My ninth-grade teacher turned bright pink in trying to explain that one. Otherwise it would have gone right over our innocent heads.Joe
April 3, 2013
somewhere
This beautiful url forwarded by Brandy Kershner's son Jesse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwDYBWEDSc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
My favorite song of the 20th century. I've never heard it done better. With a back story deep and hard.
Joe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwDYBWEDSc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
My favorite song of the 20th century. I've never heard it done better. With a back story deep and hard.
Joe
March 19, 2013
caricatures of sf people
Cleaning up my office yesterday, I came across an old sketchbook with pictures of a half-dozen sf writers. It's from sometime in the early seventies. I'd gotten a library book on how to do caricatures, and so experimented on drawing people I'd just been with at the Milford conference at Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm's decaying manse in Milford, PA.
Let me see whether it's small enough to post here . . . .
Joe
Jerry Pournelle
Keith Laumer
George RR Martin
Bob Bloch
Ed Bryant
Ray Lafferty
Let me see whether it's small enough to post here . . . .
Joe
Jerry Pournelle Keith Laumer George RR Martin Bob Bloch Ed Bryant Ray Lafferty
March 17, 2013
Beauty and the beast
We finally got a pretty model at studio yesterday, and my clumsy drawing makes her look plain. But it was fun to gaze at her for a few hours.
Colleen, who runs the Saturday studio, had a reception in the afternoon before a ballet show by Dance Alive, a national touring company she'd associated with. Gay made a fruit salad for the reception, and it was a good gathering, I guess thirty people distributed around her large place.
The ballet was very beautiful, Rite of Spring, celebrating the premiere of the Stravinski 100 years ago, and also Wagner's 200th b-day, with Tristan and Isolde. The third piece, the opener, was Latin American Symphonette, Morton Gould's "Symphony #4."
The stage lighting brought out the women's muscularity, pink and white raking across the stage sideways. The men, too, I guess, but even objectively I think the men were more often props than players.
A fine evening, a good couple of hours wining and dining and conversation, and then another couple of hours of beautiful music and dance.
Now I return to the steamy planet Venus and the joys of plotting. Sigh. To paraphrase Somerset Maugham, why do they need a story? Isn't my fine writing enough?
Joe
Colleen, who runs the Saturday studio, had a reception in the afternoon before a ballet show by Dance Alive, a national touring company she'd associated with. Gay made a fruit salad for the reception, and it was a good gathering, I guess thirty people distributed around her large place.
The ballet was very beautiful, Rite of Spring, celebrating the premiere of the Stravinski 100 years ago, and also Wagner's 200th b-day, with Tristan and Isolde. The third piece, the opener, was Latin American Symphonette, Morton Gould's "Symphony #4."
The stage lighting brought out the women's muscularity, pink and white raking across the stage sideways. The men, too, I guess, but even objectively I think the men were more often props than players.
A fine evening, a good couple of hours wining and dining and conversation, and then another couple of hours of beautiful music and dance.
Now I return to the steamy planet Venus and the joys of plotting. Sigh. To paraphrase Somerset Maugham, why do they need a story? Isn't my fine writing enough?
Joe
March 13, 2013
Microsoft vs. the world
I get so damned tired of Word. When it goes down, it goes down in flames.
What are other disaffected Wordsters out there using? Anybody have an opinion about Scrivener?
Thanks
Joe
What are other disaffected Wordsters out there using? Anybody have an opinion about Scrivener?
Thanks
Joe
March 12, 2013
taking a peep --
Today's daily (11 March 1659) entry for Pepys's Diary
(http://www.pepysdiary.com)
starts out
(Sunday.) All the day busy without my band on, putting up my books and things, in order to my going to sea. At night my wife and I went to my father’s to supper, where J. Norton and Chas. Glascocke supt with us, and after supper home, where the wench had provided all things against tomorrow to wash, and so to bed, where I much troubled with my cold and coughing.
What does he mean by "without my band on"? Enquiring minds want to know!
joe
(http://www.pepysdiary.com)
starts out
(Sunday.) All the day busy without my band on, putting up my books and things, in order to my going to sea. At night my wife and I went to my father’s to supper, where J. Norton and Chas. Glascocke supt with us, and after supper home, where the wench had provided all things against tomorrow to wash, and so to bed, where I much troubled with my cold and coughing.
What does he mean by "without my band on"? Enquiring minds want to know!
joe
March 3, 2013
Karl Hiaissen and the tenderloin district
Talking about Karl Hiaissen (sp?) in sff.net . . . .
He's one of my favorites. Love his jaded journalistic voice.
I threw a dinner last night and one of the guests was Sarah Bewley, a good playwright and something of an expert on thrillers. We talked about the genre course I'll be teaching in the fall and I mentioned that I have to make up a reading list soon.
She suggested Gun Machine and The Lock Artist. Both look good, but I think I favor the former. Goodreads says " After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose." It's by Warren Ellis, whom I know from comics writing.
For sf/f I'm going to assign stories out of Gardner's "Best of," to be assured of fresh stuff. About half of the books I teach will be new; half old reliables. Have to look back over the past five years and not repeat any of the most recent.
I'll be turning seventy this summer and, naturally enough, have meditated on retirement. MIT is a large workload – I hardly write at all from September through December – but there are compensations.
Meanwhile, the outside is warming up. Think I'll hop on the bike and go look at books at the B&N.
(The dinner, incidentally, was a success. Beef tenderloins were on sale. I put two in a slow oven, covered with melted butter and Worcestershire sauce, and roasted a big pan full of tiny potatoes and chunks of sweet potato. Artichoke hearts for a greenish vegetable. A curious red, Oakley Eighty-two, which of course amused us with its presumption.)
Joe
He's one of my favorites. Love his jaded journalistic voice.
I threw a dinner last night and one of the guests was Sarah Bewley, a good playwright and something of an expert on thrillers. We talked about the genre course I'll be teaching in the fall and I mentioned that I have to make up a reading list soon.
She suggested Gun Machine and The Lock Artist. Both look good, but I think I favor the former. Goodreads says " After a shootout claims the life of his partner in a condemned tenement building on Pearl Street, Detective John Tallow unwittingly stumbles across an apartment stacked high with guns. When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose." It's by Warren Ellis, whom I know from comics writing.
For sf/f I'm going to assign stories out of Gardner's "Best of," to be assured of fresh stuff. About half of the books I teach will be new; half old reliables. Have to look back over the past five years and not repeat any of the most recent.
I'll be turning seventy this summer and, naturally enough, have meditated on retirement. MIT is a large workload – I hardly write at all from September through December – but there are compensations.
Meanwhile, the outside is warming up. Think I'll hop on the bike and go look at books at the B&N.
(The dinner, incidentally, was a success. Beef tenderloins were on sale. I put two in a slow oven, covered with melted butter and Worcestershire sauce, and roasted a big pan full of tiny potatoes and chunks of sweet potato. Artichoke hearts for a greenish vegetable. A curious red, Oakley Eighty-two, which of course amused us with its presumption.)
Joe
March 2, 2013
Cedar Key
Back home after nine days' concentrated labor at Cedar Key, the quaint resort town about sixty miles from here. I finished the novel I was working on, Work Done for Hire, and started the next, tentatively called Phobos Means Fear. That's the title on the contract, anyhow.
When I wasn't working, I spent a lot of time out on the dock, watching the fish and birds do their thing. Pretty cold, but otherwise pleasant.
I saw a remarkable altercation between a bald eagle and an osprey, about a third of its size. The osprey, a fish hawk with a wingspan of about a yard, is a lot more nimble. It was harassing the eagle relentlessly, which I assume meant that the eagle had discovered its nest, and had designs on the osprey's chicks or eggs.
They fought all over the sky – left, right, up, down – crashing together several times. Then the eagle executed a move that looked like it was straight out of a WWI Flying Ace manual. He stalled mid-flight and started to drop like a rock. The osprey hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then stabbed down like a spear . . . and missed death by inches when the eagle suddenly uncoiled, flying on its back with huge talons grasping! Only fifteen or twenty feet above my head, they flew away screaming and cawing, out of sight over the road that separates the salt marsh from the Gulf of Mexico.
Otherwise, the animal behavior on display was pretty quiet, birds stalking or waiting patiently. Fish, especially mullets, jumping high out of the water. (Mullets seem to jump for the hell of it, not escaping predators. I've read that they do it to force parasites out of their gills or something.)
I've probably said this before . . . I'm reluctant to write anything about Cedar Key, because I don't want people to learn of the existence of such a lovely quiet retreat. It's like a sleepy New England town transplanted to a subtropical beach. It can support a few hundred tourists at a time, but if twice as many showed up, it would be the beginning of the end.
Joe
When I wasn't working, I spent a lot of time out on the dock, watching the fish and birds do their thing. Pretty cold, but otherwise pleasant.
I saw a remarkable altercation between a bald eagle and an osprey, about a third of its size. The osprey, a fish hawk with a wingspan of about a yard, is a lot more nimble. It was harassing the eagle relentlessly, which I assume meant that the eagle had discovered its nest, and had designs on the osprey's chicks or eggs.
They fought all over the sky – left, right, up, down – crashing together several times. Then the eagle executed a move that looked like it was straight out of a WWI Flying Ace manual. He stalled mid-flight and started to drop like a rock. The osprey hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then stabbed down like a spear . . . and missed death by inches when the eagle suddenly uncoiled, flying on its back with huge talons grasping! Only fifteen or twenty feet above my head, they flew away screaming and cawing, out of sight over the road that separates the salt marsh from the Gulf of Mexico.
Otherwise, the animal behavior on display was pretty quiet, birds stalking or waiting patiently. Fish, especially mullets, jumping high out of the water. (Mullets seem to jump for the hell of it, not escaping predators. I've read that they do it to force parasites out of their gills or something.)
I've probably said this before . . . I'm reluctant to write anything about Cedar Key, because I don't want people to learn of the existence of such a lovely quiet retreat. It's like a sleepy New England town transplanted to a subtropical beach. It can support a few hundred tourists at a time, but if twice as many showed up, it would be the beginning of the end.
Joe
February 17, 2013
Winter weekend down south
Yesterday I biked to figure studio and was somewhat disappointed. The model was a ghastly skinny boy I've encountered a couple of times before. His body is grotesquely thin, like an Auschwitz victim, and drawing him is vaguely repellent. Gay was going to pick up me and my bike at 12:30, but I called and talked her into coming an hour early.
We went out to Tioga for lunch. It's an interesting neighborhood, built all at once, perhaps to provide a kind of upper-middle-class environment a comfortable distance from Gainesville's complicated social mix. I googled it and found this –
Michael Diaz and his son Luis dreamed of a neighborhood that gives people open space, gathering places including parks, a town square and a group of community shops.They envisioned homes whose architecture are as individual as the people who live in them.
Town of Tioga is a 21st Century community inspired by human needs and desires with the style of an old southern town. Their dream was to create a neighborhood where people have a chance to be friendly neighbors and foster a sense of trust throughout the community.
-- which is fair enough. The place does have a lot of architectural variety. The houses are a little close together for my taste, but that's the price of land nowadays.
(It may look like de facto segregation, but I don't think so; the people in the town center, at least, seem to comprise a normal mix of races for suburban northern Florida.)
They had a kind of street fair going on, a winter festival. We wandered through looking at paintings and sculpture and various kinds of fair food. I succumbed to my addiction and bought a hand-made fountain pen, a lovely thing with a barrel of turned koa wood (picture on LiveJournal). It has a good German iridium nib.
We went to a tapas-style restaurant there I've been wanting to try. High points for weirdness; it's a fusion of Mediterranean, Asian, and South American styles, called Saboré. I had duck breast chunked in a molé sauce with a stack of little tortillas, spicy and good; Gay went for raw tuna stacked on oriental vegetables, also good but a little too spicy for her. Pretty good lunch wine list; a generous glass of French ordinary red for eight bucks.
Curious for Florida, the temperature nose-dived during the hour we were in the restaurant. We've been enjoying the seventies and even eighties for a couple of weeks, but that's over. This morning we even had frost. It's 32 degrees at 8:00, and will only get up into the fifties. (Temporary aberration, though; tomorrow they forecast a high of 61, and 77 the next day, and up in the eighties again by Thursday.)
Back to work. Happy Sunday.
Joe
We went out to Tioga for lunch. It's an interesting neighborhood, built all at once, perhaps to provide a kind of upper-middle-class environment a comfortable distance from Gainesville's complicated social mix. I googled it and found this –
Michael Diaz and his son Luis dreamed of a neighborhood that gives people open space, gathering places including parks, a town square and a group of community shops.They envisioned homes whose architecture are as individual as the people who live in them.
Town of Tioga is a 21st Century community inspired by human needs and desires with the style of an old southern town. Their dream was to create a neighborhood where people have a chance to be friendly neighbors and foster a sense of trust throughout the community.
-- which is fair enough. The place does have a lot of architectural variety. The houses are a little close together for my taste, but that's the price of land nowadays.
(It may look like de facto segregation, but I don't think so; the people in the town center, at least, seem to comprise a normal mix of races for suburban northern Florida.)
They had a kind of street fair going on, a winter festival. We wandered through looking at paintings and sculpture and various kinds of fair food. I succumbed to my addiction and bought a hand-made fountain pen, a lovely thing with a barrel of turned koa wood (picture on LiveJournal). It has a good German iridium nib.
We went to a tapas-style restaurant there I've been wanting to try. High points for weirdness; it's a fusion of Mediterranean, Asian, and South American styles, called Saboré. I had duck breast chunked in a molé sauce with a stack of little tortillas, spicy and good; Gay went for raw tuna stacked on oriental vegetables, also good but a little too spicy for her. Pretty good lunch wine list; a generous glass of French ordinary red for eight bucks.
Curious for Florida, the temperature nose-dived during the hour we were in the restaurant. We've been enjoying the seventies and even eighties for a couple of weeks, but that's over. This morning we even had frost. It's 32 degrees at 8:00, and will only get up into the fifties. (Temporary aberration, though; tomorrow they forecast a high of 61, and 77 the next day, and up in the eighties again by Thursday.)
Back to work. Happy Sunday.
Joe
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