Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 217

APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

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My schedule of appearances is dwindling small (though there may be yet another appearance in the works in NYC this fall!), and the free chapbooks have been given away.  But I'm working on tons of cool and interesting projects, and a couple of rather strange ones.  More as they come into print.

Meanwhile, here's where I'll be doing things in the near future:
 
August 19-21   Renovation (Worldcon)                         Reno, NV
Sept. 10           The Spiral Bookcase (signing)                         Manayunk                         Philadelphia
Sept. 21            KGB Bar (reading)                         NYC  

And in 2012 . . .
Aug. 31- Sept. 2   Chicon 7                             Chicago


Above:  I went to an art opening on Friday in the Northern Liberties and I'll be going back there again tonight to see a film about the artist.  More on that tomorrow, probably.  Meanwhile, here's a photo of a roboticized rabbit's head explaining art.
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Speaking of Murray Leinster . . .

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Okay, this one's a real treat.  I've started posting installments of Billee Stallings' appearance at Readercon.   Billee is the daughter of Will F. Jenkins who, writing as Murray Leinster, was one of the pioneers of science fiction.  "In a just universe," David Hartwell has said, "Murray Leinster would be as famous as Robert A. Heinlein."

Billee and her sister Jo-an J. Evans have published a memoir of their father, Murray Leinster: His Life and Works , which will appear any day now from McFarland.  Like all McFarland books, it's a little pricey.  (Forty bucks.  Yikes.)  But if you need this book -- and there are plenty of people who do -- it's well worth the cost.

Personally, I think the photo of the young Will Jenkins, age 13, posing with the glider he built and flew is worth the expense in and of itself.

In any case, Billee is a delightful and intelligent lady who, as you will see, knows how to speak in public.  I could listen to her all day.


And good news if you're me . . .

I have my camera back!  Now I can post photos of my breakfast on Facebook again.


And speaking of the Gardner Dozois panel . . .

I took a look at what I posted on YouTube.  I was my usual stammering self, but other than that the panel was great.  Tom Purdom in particular deserves kudos as an articulate, abide-no-nonsense moderator.  Thank you, Tom.



Above:  There's the first of either six or seven segments.  I'll post the rest soon, probably over the weekend.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 147

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A flyer for the Cumberland County Winter Eagle Festival.  That thing's great.  You start and end at the Mauricetown Firehall, where they've got various eco-displays, rescued owls and red-tailed hawks and such, and some good hearty food at very low prices.  Then you follow a hand-out map to various spots where they have volunteer spotters who'll say things like, "Look right over there on the mud flat.  Those three white spots?  They're bald eagles."

Yep.  Cumberland County (that's in New Jersey) has so many eagles they can guarantee you in advance that you'll see a potful.  So if you're in striking distance, and you get a bad case of cabin fever in early February, and you wouldn't mind looking at a great variety of large and impressive birds . . . well, there you are.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 146

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A rainbow blindfold.  Then the simple surgical equivalent.  Followed by a cartoon figure falling past a curve that represents a planet or a star, and the annotations:

Lucifer fell upward for ten days,
In space all directions are the same.

Long ago I had a word program where you pressed F7 for "search."  So F7 "shrugged" meant I should go through the typescript of whatever I was working on, looking for instances of that word.  Sometimes you work a simple word too hard and you have to go through the story rephrasing, lest it appear so often the reader will wonder what subtle literary thing you mean by it.

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Speaking of Gardner Dozois . . .

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This is pretty cool.  Marianne recorded almost all of the Readercon panel on writer, editor, and bon vivant Gardner Dozois.  From left to right, the panelists are Gregory Feeley, Tom Purdom (who did a great job as moderator), Gordon Van Gelder, myself, and Don Keller.  Because of the angle of the camera, Don is unfortunately not visible.  But he can be heard well.

This video covers the first ten minutes or so of the panel.  More will be posted as I do the work of cutting and pasting.

Enjoy!

Oh, and what the heck.  Here's the second installment.



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Water, Water Everywhere . . .

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This has got to be the coolest new space environment of the year.  I wonder how long it'll take for it to appear in an Analog story.

Basically, what you've got here is 140 trillion times as much water as is contained in all of Earth's oceans  in a torus around a quasar.  Here's what NASA has to say about it:

This artist's concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM 08279+5255, where astronomers discovered huge amounts of water vapor. Gas and dust likely form a torus around the central black hole, with clouds of charged gas above and below. X-rays emerge from the very central region, while thermal infrared radiation is emitted by dust throughout most of the torus. While this figure shows the quasar's torus approximately edge-on, the torus around APM 08279+5255 is likely positioned face-on from our point of view.

You can read about it in (of all places) the Huffington Post here. 

Or you can read the original press release here.



Above:  Picture Credit NASA/ESA

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 145

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The night whisky


mountain roots
Doodles, mostly.  I think painting faces on incandescent light bulbs is a good idea.  If I had the artistic ability, I'd do it myself.  They're only going to get more desirable as antiques as time goes on.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 144

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Just doodles, I'm afraid.  The rather phallic hanged man is labeled doomed & nonchalant.

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Home from Confluence

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Hi, it's me again, and I don't have a photograph for you because I lost my camera at Readercon.  (If you found a cheap silver camera that operates off of AA batteries, get in touch with me and we'll see if I can trade you enough books for it to make you happy.)

Nevertheless, I had a long and productive weekend and enjoyued it immensely.  Rob Sawyer was there and it was good to see him.  At one point, I sang the opening to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1930s crooner style and somebody said, "You have a beautiful voice."  Rob involuntarily shook his head.

That's because a few years back when he and I (and Nancy Kress and Neil Gaiman and several others) were in Chengdu, China, Nancy and I were called up on stage to sing.  (Long story.  Let's skip it.)  Seeing a disaster in the making, Rob gamely leaped into the fray and he and his wife Caroline Clink joined us in what was possibly the worst rendition of "O Susanna" ever performed in public.  And I do not except the Tiny Tim version, if he ever recorded it.

I will be forever grateful to Rob and Caroline for voluntarily diluting the embarrassment, when they could have so easily ducked it.  And for understanding, as Nancy and I did, that if you can't be good, you must be enthusiastic.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that when Rob shook his head, he was right.  As a singer, I suck.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 143

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MAN VS. SNAIL
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