Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 94

A must-see

Last week we saw Inglourious Basterds and last night, District 9. It's interesting that they both opened to about the same box office, $38M versus $37.3M. But Basterds cost $70M, and the sf flick less than half as much, $30M.

I liked them both, but District 9 will stick with me longer. An actual adult science fiction movie that asks to be evaluated as a real movie, in spite of the presence of a huge space ship and a million plug-ugly aliens. Of course the real ugliness is in the way the human

The last Kennedy

Edward Kennedy finally lost to brain cancer, and what did the rest of us lose?

My father knew both Ted and his brother, in dad's capacity as assistant Surgeon General in the 60's. He didn't much like Robert, who he saw as the wheeler and dealer, the consummate politician. Edward was a good politician, too, but he was also a graceful man given to abstractions ... friendly rather than confrontational, not given to anger or righteousness..

I was a teenager in the 60's, and Bobby was one of our heroe

of course

(Dave on sffnet threatened to synthesize my courses by reading all my books and essays . . . )

Dave, you can do that exercise with my blessing. Just send me the results on a nice podcast DVD and I can have it shown to the class, pretending you are me, and have the papers sent to me via e-mail. I'll grade them down in Nassau when I get tired of gambling and snorkeling and ogling bikinis.

Incidentally, all my assignments are on the course description at http://home.earthlink.net/~haldeman/courses.

misteaks

Dave, in sff.net, asked what the story "Mr. Big," in my longer fiction reading list, referred to . . .



My bad, Dave . . . that's a tyop of "Mr. Boy," a hilarious novella by James Patrick Kelly. It was in Asimov's in 1990.

And people who can count up to fourteen may notice that the silly sonnet is missing a line. Please insert, three lines from the end, "Trying his best to bring the sonnet home."

With chagrin

Joe

pomes pennyeach

I didn't write much in the way of blogging during the Worldcon, because I was running around to event after event. So I didn't record a less-than-champion poetry experience.

There was an "Iron Chef" poetry contest, where the poets were given a form and certain constraints. I would normally be pretty good at this sort of thing, but the "Iron Chef" designation meant that the audience could shout random epithets and advice to the writers. It was excruciating, trying to think through deliberate di

44 years!

Today was our 44th wedding anniversary! I got Gay a blouse and she got me a couple of cool long-sleeved shirts, for Boston. Our "actual" presents were ordered through Amazon and haven't yet arrived.

A couple of people have asked what my reading lists will be this semester. For
sf writing, it's the current issue of F&SF, the Dozois Best of the Year antho, and for starters the SF Hall o' Fame V.1 and the Dozois Hard SF antho.

For Longer Fiction, it's mostly novellas or short novels --

16 Sept -- G

Perseids

Oh, a negative astro-report . . . late Tuesday night, Gay and I put out a couple of lawn chairs and looked through hazy skies, hoping to see a Perseid or two. No luck. I went back out at 02:30, near the max, and saw nothing. The moon was coming up, but still behind a tree, and I could see Vega and Deneb. But no meteors in a half hour.

Put the Questar out on the porch so it could warm up to ambient temperature, but when I got up at 5:30 guilt drove me to the novel, even though the moon was ove

futuristic bikes

Liz at sff.net sent a note about a futuristic bike design at http://www.computerbuyer.co.uk/news/266350/the-bike-of-the-future.html


I replied with

A delicious-looking bike, Liz. I wonder, though, whether the solar assist is
more than symbolic. So little unshaded surface area.

I'd like to see a diagram of the power train. Lately I've seen a couple of
relatively inexpensive bikes that do away with the conventional chain, with
everything internal. (There's one for $649 at www.dynamicbicycles.com/buy

Child Ballad

Went out with Brandy and Christina to a nice Italian joint last night (grilled salmon with a lovely marinara sauce for me), and thence to the movie _Julie and Julia_. It's two alternating stories, Julia Child in the 1950's, becoming Julia Child, and Julie Powell, a contemporary woman writing a blog about trying to prepare all of the recipes in _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ in one year.

The two stories are told with interleaved jump-cuts, which could work if both stories had equal weight.

nightmares and book awards

Back in Florida with some time to catch up.

(Answering some queries in sff.net -- )

Karen, yes. We'll be at World Fantasy. It's the one not to miss.

(Asking about why I felt I had to restructure _Earthbound_, the current novel-in-progress) Neale, I guess it was a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees. The series of events that I had planned out for the first part of the novel were interesting and very sciencefictional, but they led right down the rabbit hole -- there was no place for