Ellen Datlow's Blog, page 70

Robert Holdstock RIP 1948-2009,

A good friend of mine died in London this morning at 4am. Aside from being a fantastic writer, he was kind, sweet, smart, and an all around great guy.

He'd been in intensive care since his collapse with E. coli infection on the 18th of November. I really have nothing else to say except my heart goes out to his life partner Sarah Biggs and to the rest of his family and to all his other friends. This should not have happened.

movies (and some theater)

Catching up. I went to see Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts (author of August: Osage County) last week. Not at all bad, but as with his earlier play, the beginning is slow and annoying and it takes awhile to adjust to the slow pacing.

Older middle-aged widower (Michael McKean, who is terrific) owns a dying donut shop in Chicago that was opened by his father decades earlier. The play opens with two cops who frequent the shop there before it's open because it's been vandalized. Ambitious next-doo...

Take a fascinating tour of sf history with Barry Malzberg

Here's a wonderful video of wonderful sf writer and critic talking about his favorite Astoundings


thanks to Eric Solstein

Put some joy into your lives and watch this

August Strindberg and helium

don't thank me, thank Rick Bowes...

SFWA reception (aka mill n swill)

Last night I had dinner at Planet Hollywood before the festivities with Gardner and Susan, Michael Swanwick, Gordon Van Gelder, Rick Bowes,and Ricky Kagan (who we picked up in the lobby since he was there early). The music was awful and loud, the food ok.

After going up and down several times trying to get to the fourth floor where the reception was all was well. Crowded, and weirdly enough I missed people I'd wanted to see but didn't--turns out that because my hair was up they didn't "see" m...

Bibliophile Stalker reviews Lovecraft Unbound

and likes it. See it here Lovecraft Unbound

My brand new Sony e-reader is a-chargin....

I did it I did it. Yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought the Sony e-reader (pocket edition). That's the one I bought because it's the only e-reader (so far) that will (I hope) download word files from my computer instantaneously. I knew that I wasn't ready to open the package yesterday, being a wee bit stressed about getting up at 3:30 am to appear on Hour of the Wolf. But once I got home after breakfast today and took a lovely long nap --awoke without an alarm at 1:30 pm--I felt ready to t...

a review I forgot

I think this came in as a google alert while I was in San Jose so I forgot to post it. It's a very nice review of Best Horror of the Year, volume one from Innsmouth Free Press.
Thanks Adam, for reminding me).

Hour of the Wolf 5-7 this morning

Rick Bowes will be reading from and I will be discussing Lovecraft Unbound and we'll talk about H.P. Lovecraft himself on Jim Freund's long-running radio show Hour of the Wolf on WBAI this morning (Saturday) 5-7 am.

Two movie projectors being given away for free

A friend of mine has two film projectors that her father had in his possession when I died a couple of years ago. She wants to get rid of them...Obviously, this offer is for anyone who can pick them up in Manhattan:

1. Revere--eight movie projector (I assume this means 8mm)
2. DeJur 1000B movie projector

If anyone is interested in either of these, just leave a comment and I'll put you in touch with my friend.