Let the wild rumpus begin....

In memory of Maurice Sendak

June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012

April Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of April's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. April was a very busy month, so there is a lot of content here; please return to this blog if necessary to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Philip K. Dick passed away shortly before the release of the Blade Runner movie. But, PKD did catch "his first glimpse of Blade Runner in a television segment," after which he wrote this wondrous letter to the Ladd Company, one of the film's production companies. The PKD Estate believes this is the first time the letter has been made public: "...I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people -- and, I believe, on science fiction as a field." [all emphasis is PKD's] (@WordandFilm via @PantheonBooks)
• Grim_Noir on the PopTards blog revisits George Alec Effinger's Maríd Audran series of books 30 years later: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss, and Budayeen Nights (which I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press; here is my lengthy blog post on the making of Budayeen Nights, part one of three on my edited GAE books). Grim_Noir writes: "THIS is what Blade Runner wants to be when it grows up. (And I say that with the upmost respect for Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford AND Blade Runner.)...Thirty years after it was originally published, George Alec Effinger's Audran Sequence is STILL ahead of its time. The writing is sharp and goes straight at the gut, like a turbo-charged razorblade." (via Gordon Van Gelder's Facebook page)
• After twenty-one years of teaching English Literature at Oakdale Community College in New Jersey, author Jeffrey Ford has retired from the teaching profession to write full time in upstate New York. One of Jeff's former students, Matthew Sorrento, pays tribute to his mentor, in this very personal post on Matthew's Identity Theory (@IdentityTheory) blog. For an instructor, it doesn't get any better than this.
• On Amazon's Omnivoracious blog, Susan J. Morris (@susanjmorris) writes about "Engaging Readers on Page One" with a blog post entitled "Brilliant Beginnings." Susan covers the three most common "False Starts": Waking Up, Fight Scenes, and Origin Stories...of the Universe.
• Speaking of first pages and opening lines: Glamour in Glass, the new novel by Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette), is missing its opening line. The sentence was there during the review of the page proofs, but then, shazam! -- it disappeared in the published edition. But not one to miss an opportunity, Mary has turned the missing line into a game, a t-shirt, and more.

Wild West Show Rides Again....

Annie Oakley bottle

On March 4, I published a blog post about my father's collection of Wild West whiskey decanters, many of which he designed himself.

Since my parents' house was for sale and, in fact, three days later, on March 7, I signed the paperwork that placed the house in escrow, I was desperate to find a home for these bottles. There were thirty-three of them -- too many for me to display at my house, too many for me to even store at my house. I was hoping to find a place, a museum of some sort, preferably, where the decanters would forever be safe, and still be able to be seen by the public.

Thanks to Cory Doctorow, my blog post was cross-posted on BoingBoing.net -- and between the two posts, the response from readers was overwhelming, with suggestions of possible resources both in and outside the state. I was elated. I contacted the Autry National Center (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage) and the Santa Clarita Historical Society, among others, and I even visited Walker '47 -- a Western-themed gun store in Anaheim only three and a half miles from my parents' house, with quite the historical display throughout the shop, and chatted briefly with owner Andy Cauble.

Within a couple weeks I had actually found a home for the bottle collection, but I haven't been able to say anything until now: the official "Deed of Gift" forms have finally arrived.

My father's collection of Wild West whiskey bottles have been acquired by the Autry National Center (Twitter: @TheAutry); from their website:

The Autry is an intercultural history center dedicated to exploring and sharing the stories, experiences, and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West. Located in Griffith Park, the Autry’s collection of over 500,000 pieces of art and artifacts, which includes the collection of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, is one of the largest and most significant in the United States....

My initial email communications were with Jeffrey Richardson, Gamble Curator of Western History, Popular Culture, and Firearms at the Autry National Center. I provided him with a link to my March 4 blog post, and then provided whatever additional information I was able to in response to his many questions. After expressing an interest in the collection, Jeffrey introduced me, virtually speaking, that is, to Steven Walsh, Registrar & Project Manager at the Autry National Center. There were some telephone calls along the way as well. Steven arranged a meeting at the house on Thursday morning, March 22, to pack up all the bottles and transport them to the Autry.

Steven arrived on schedule, along with a couple dozen or more bankers boxes, a ton of styrofoam packing peanuts, plastic bags, bubble wrap -- and a car that I thought was far too small to hold everything -- but it did!

Even though the collection was now in the Autry's possession, it was still not a done deal. On Wednesday, April 4, the Accession Committee was to meet to review my donation of the ceramic decanter collection. The final decision was up to this committee. Later that day I received a telephone call from Jeffrey Richardson, informing me that the collection donation had been accepted by the Autry. But, it still wasn't official just yet: I had to wait to receive the "Deed of Gift" forms, which, as I have already said, are now in my hands. These forms consist of thirty-one pages (two pages contain two entries) describing each of the thirty-three decanters, with a place at the bottom of each page for my signature and date. The letter that accompanied the "Deed of Gift" forms states in part:

It is with great pleasure that the Autry National Center accepts your donation for the museum. The Accession Committee, whose members review each donation to ensure that it meets our acceptance criteria, were delighted with the donation and feel that it will make an important and lasting addition to the museum's collection.

[...]

Please accept our thanks for your gift to the Autry National Center. Your interest and support is greatly valued, and your generosity in making this donation is sincerely appreciated.

[signed] Steven Walsh, Acquisitions Registrar

I, in turn, wish to thank all the readers -- both here and at BoingBoing.net -- for their support, and especially their suggestions. I didn't know there were so many speciality museums! I particularly want to thank Pamela Kruse-Buckingham, who went the extra step with some additional suggestions on museum donations.

Jeffrey Richardson has informed me that the museum plans a special exhibit in 2013 that will focus on the Wild West in American pop culture, which will include my father's decanter collection.

Thanks again, everyone!

Nancy Kress: After...Before...During the Fall

I'm delighted to announce here that I have editorial credit on the recent book by multi Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Nancy Kress: titled After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, the novella (38,300 words) is published by Tachyon Publications.

In addition to proof reading, line editing, copy editing, and other such editorial stuff, the manuscript also required a bit of fact checking, given the story's sense of place in the three ultimately intersecting timelines: future, past, and present: 2035, 2013, and 2014.

I submitted the final, edited manuscript to Tachyon Pubs on June 13, 2011. A couple months later, on August 24, I received the following email from Jill Roberts, Managing Editor at Tachyon:

Marty --

From Nancy [Kress], re the copyediting job you did for After the Fall:

"Whoever the copy-editor is, he or she is the best one I've ever had: thorough, sharp-eyed, and willing to be editor instead of a co-author. Please thank him/her for me."

Pretty sure I told her it was you, but I will again. And I totally agree with her. Well done.

Cheers,

Jill

Obviously, at the time Nancy Kress sent that email, she didn't know I had been assigned to her manuscript; but thankfully Jill rectified that fact. When one [me!] is conscientious about a project, makes every effort to do the best job possible, those two sentences from the author can be extremely gratifying. Such praise typically isn't expressed often enough -- I mean, I'm just doing my job, right? -- so when it is, it makes the long hours I spend on a manuscript well worth the effort.

Later, I had an opportunity to briefly chat with Jill and Nancy about the project when we met at Tachyon Publications' "Sweet 16" birthday party at Borderlands Books on September 11, which I wrote about in a previous blog post.

After the Fall... has gotten some great press, and I believe the best way to give readers a taste of this novella is to share some excerpts from those reviews.

The first review (and the longest review) is courtesy of Stefan Raets on Tor.com:

Superstar SF and fantasy author Nancy Kress returns with After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, an elegant novella that combines several wildly different science fiction ideas into a tight package. There's a little bit of everything here: time travel, hard science, environmental collapse, aliens, post-apocalyptic dystopia. It may sound hard to combine all of these in such a short format, but Nancy Kress makes it work.

The novella's slightly unwieldy title refers to the three plot lines described above: the survivors in their Shell in the future, the mathematician trying to solve the "crimes" happening in the present, and the environmental changes. What makes this much more than just another story told from three separate points of view is the time travel angle: as the novella progresses, the stories occasionally connect and weave through each other. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall is really a series of interlocking flashforwards and flashbacks that continuously provide new information and different perspectives about each other to the reader.

[...]

The characters eventually lose [the misconceptions built into the story by the author] as everything inexorably works its way to a convergence, but until that happens there's constant tension between the three plot lines. It's this tension that ultimately makes After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall a great success. Expect to see this one on the final ballots of the major awards next year.

March Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of March's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. Once again there is a lot of content, so please return if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Unfortunately, words of warning to authors are an endless stream, and even more so in this digital age of publishing. This month's word of warning concerns Dorchester Publishing. Author Brian Keene details the current mess surrounding this publisher (with numerous links to other sources). In one place Dorchester states they are closing down; yet elsewhere they continue to buy new material and sell existing material, even when they no longer have the authors' permissions to do so -- while owing their authors advances and royalties. Bottom Line: DO NOT DO BUSINESS of any kind with Dorchester Publishing.
• This was brought to my attention via Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) along with a warning for those who travel with digital comics on their cellphones, laptops, and tablets, particularly in Canada (though there are other countries far more repressive, certainly, than Canada). Everyone who travels with digital comics really needs to read this.... The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) reports "Criminal Charges Dropped in Canada Customs Manga Case." This case involved defendant Ryan Matheson, a 27-year-old comic book reader, amateur artist, and computer programmer, who ended up in this criminal and legal brouhaha because manga comic books were found on his computer. The total legal costs in this case exceeded $75,000 -- and contributions are being sought to help pay off Matheson's huge remaining debt: $45,000.
• On March 13, Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that -- after 244 years; since 1768 -- they will discontinue the 32-volume print edition once the current inventory is gone. But, they add: "...the encyclopedia will live on--in bigger, more numerous, and more vibrant digital forms." (via @HuffPostBooks)
• From The Guardian UK: Lloyd Shepherd, author of The English Monster, found a request to pirate his novel on the discussion board Mobilism; so, he decided to respond to the request himself, to open up a dialog with said individual. Frustration and anger followed with this individual's responses, so Lloyd opened a topic himself entitled "Novelist seeking understanding" on the main discussion board. (via @ebooknewser)
• Brad Torgersen guests on Kevin J. Anderson's (@TheKJA) blog, with a blog post entitled "On Not Quitting." Brad writes: "One week ago, I got a call from the President of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He told me that my novelette, 'Ray of Light,' was nominated for the SFWA Nebula Award.... Being nominated for a Nebula means my story not only connected with readers, it connected with a readership composed of my peers.... I can say from now on that my fiction is 'Nebula quality,' something I find more than a little astounding when I consider the fact that I didn't have a single word in professional print prior to 2010. How did it happen? Simple: I didn't quit."
  

February Links & Things (This Post Not Quite Past Its Sell-by Date)

To say that my February wrap-up of Links & Things is a bit late would be a gross understatement. After spending two separate weeks in February in Southern California (see this previous blog post for some background), I was just too overwhelmed with catch-up in the first half of March -- and then preparing for my next (and hopefully last) trip to SoCal in the second half of the month -- to deal with February at that time; and now, here it is April 1! But there were some excellent resources in February and I didn't want to simply overlook that month entirely, so here they are, February's Links & Things: better late than never.

• Consumers in greater numbers are finally questioning the source of their food (and what is in it), which has led more and more people to begin growing their own. So I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you that the long-out-of-print (1995) book Homestead Year: Back to the Land in Suburbia, by author (and my friend) Judith Moffett, is now back in print courtesy of the Authors Guild Back-in-Print program. [Note: I appear, though not by name, in Homestead Year, in a paragraph on "September 4" (page 258 in the original hardcover edition) in Judith's journal; she refers to me as a "[book] collector in California."]
• What was undoubtedly the biggest news of the month (and yet I've seen no further details on this since): On February 6 Reuters reported that Amazon "plans to open a physical store in its home town of Seattle in coming months to showcase and sell its growing line of gadgets, including the Kindle Fire tablet..." (via mediabistro.com's @galleycat)
• A website entitled BookBub has recently come to my attention, and if you are an avid eBook reader, then you'll want to sign up at the site's home page. BookBub describes itself as "an alert service that keeps you updated on great book deals. We only notify you about deals that meet the following criteria: Free or Deeply Discounted, Top Quality Content, and Limited Time Offers." When you register for BookBub's newsletter, you can select the categories of books in which you have an interest. View the latest BookBub Deals.
• Author N. K. Jemisin (@nkjemisin) shares with her readers an essay she wrote for a forthcoming anthology entitled The Miseducation of the Writer -- essays by writers of color on genre literature -- edited by Maurice Broaddus, John Edward Lawson, and Chesya Burke, to be published by Guide Dog Books, the nonfiction imprint of Raw Dog Screaming Press. From the essay: "Not so long ago, at the dawn of the New World, black people were saved from ignorance in darkest Africa by being brought into the light of the West. This is bullshit." This is a must-read essay for all writers (and editors, too).
• James L. Sutter's guest post on SF Signal (@sfsignal) deals with "Technology in Fantasy." Sutter writes: "Some people prefer technology that precisely matches that of a given real-world historical era. Others see nothing wrong with mixing and matching, combining swords, laser pistols, zeppelins, and dinosaur-pulled chariots. Some feel that technology itself should be the defining feature of the world (hence the ever-popular steampunk genre). Yet whatever path you choose when designing worlds for your fiction or RPG setting, there are a few important technological issues to consider." And he deals with each of these issues: 1) Anachronism; 2) Multiple Technology Levels; 3) The Question of Magic; and 4) Common Technologies, in which he covers these specifics: Airships; Sanitation; Medicine; Printing Press; Steam Power; and Firearms.
  

News of Alien Contact

While I was slogging away in the nether regions of fabulous Orange County throughout February and March, two reviews of anthology Alien Contact were published in online 'zines.

The first review, published on February 21, is courtesy of Josh Vogt (@JRVogt), Speculative Fiction Editor for examiner.com. From the review:

Alien Contact is a new short story anthology taking readers through 30 years of extraterrestrial fiction. As with many short story collections, there's a little bit of everything here. From the humorous to the horrifying, the inspiring to the incomprehensible. Often, I count an anthology successful if it leaves a lasting impression with at least a couple stories--and this one hits the mark more than once.

He goes on to review a few of his favorite stories, stating: "Of them all, 'Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's,' by Adam-Troy Castro, reigned supreme." Josh concludes his review with:

Alien Contact is a strong collection of science fiction short stories, well worth a hefty slot in your reading schedule. As with any anthology, there are entries that fall a bit flat, or leave you wondering what the point of it all was--but these are few and far between here. For all those who've wondered whether we're alone in this universe (and desperately hope this isn't the case), this collection will uplift your imagination and give you access to a wider reality where anything is possible.

The second review, from Laith Preston, appeared on The Dragon Page (@dragonpage) on March 1:

I'm always on the lookout for good reading and new authors to follow. Alien Contact is something of a veritable who's who of the current genre greats, with some names I'm not as familiar with in the mix as well.

With twenty-six short stories telling tales of man meeting with other intelligences, Marty Halpern has pulled together an anthology filled with hours of enjoyable reading.

One of the reviewer's favorite stories in the anthology was Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" -- "An extremely well told tale of the first meeting between two races, one more advanced than the other, and the unexpected outcome of that meeting." Laith sums up his review with: "I would highly recommend this anthology to fans of good short form Science Fiction."

And now for something related, but completely different:

"Our house is a very very very fine house..."

My apologies for the lack of posts this month, but the exigencies of life often get in the way of more desirable (and preferable) options. So, I thought a status report was in order....

This past weekend I returned from my third week-long trip (the two previous trips this year were in February) -- and what I hope will be my final trip -- to Southern California for the purpose of cleaning out my mother's house in preparation for its sale. Funnily enough, even though my father passed away in 1998, most of the required work at the house was for his "stuff," as evidenced by my March 4 blog post regarding the Lionstone Old West liquor decanters that he designed.

I signed with realtors The Lappin Team on February 1 for the sale of the house. Facebook users can search for "Lappin Team Real Estate" to learn more -- and if you have property in Southern Cal that you wish to sell, trust me, these are the folks you want to have promoting your house. I lucked out connecting with them: Archie Lappin went to high school years ago with the neighbors' son from across the street -- and when I asked the neighbors for a referral for real estate agents, The Lappin Team was on their list. In fact, the Lappins put together a YouTube vid of my mother's house as part of their promotional efforts. When I first watched the vid, and saw how Kelly Lappin had "staged" (her word) the various rooms in the house using her own décor, my reaction was like "Wow! That's the same house?"

So as I said, I signed with the realtors on February 1, but I wouldn't let them place the house on the multiple listings service until I had an opportunity (two weeks worth) to clean the place up as much as possible. The Lappins could show the house themselves -- in fact, they had an open house on Sunday, February 19 (I arrived at the house around 4:00 p.m. that day for a week-long stay; the open house had ended around 2:30) -- but I wanted to hold off opening the house to other realtors. The house was finally placed on the multi listing service on Sunday, February 26, and I signed the acceptance paperwork, which placed the house in a 30-day Escrow, on Wednesday, March 7. Amazingly, the house sold (with multiple offers) within ten days of being placed on the multi listing! And the buyers? A husband and wife; he grew up two doors down, graduating from the same high school as Archie and the neighbors' son (and me as well).

My wife Diane and I have our hands full managing our own house, but I have also had responsibility for managing my mother's house -- and her affairs -- since August of last year (she passed away in October), and with the added complication that I live nearly 400 miles away. But hopefully in two weeks, when Escrow closes on April 6, most of this will be behind me; all that will be left will be the disbursement of my mother's trust.

Within about a week and a half or so I hope to be able to announce some good news regarding the status of the Lionstone whisky bottles: one official hurdle remains (though I believe it's more of a formality), which should be resolved next Wednesday, April 4. Keeping fingers crossed....

In addition to these whisky bottles, my father had a history of other such creative endeavors. Back in the 1950s and early '60s, he was an amateur photographer (living in Pennsylvania at the time), with a penchant toward circuses, if you can believe that. This was long after the Ringling Brothers Circus fire (1944), so the only circuses still performing under the "big top" were smaller, family-owned circuses. He would sometimes visit as many as two different circuses in a single day across the state, photographing the shows and the performers themselves, often before or after the show, back in the trailer areas, which was typically off limits to the public -- but not my father. As a "thank you" for their posing for his pictures (slides, actually), he would gift them with a set of slides from his previous visit. To make a long story short, I found a box of slides from various circuses from the late '50s and early '60s: Cole Bros. circus, Hagen Bros. circus, and quite a few others. I contacted the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and shipped off the 500 or so slides last Thursday to the attention of archivist Peter Shrake. In addition, I found my father's old movie-making equipment: a Revere movie camera, circa 1955; two tripods, one brand new and still sealed in the original packing box; two title-making setups, both brand new and sealed in the original boxes; and a ton of title-making letters, in gold, silver, red, blue, and black. I packed up two huge boxes of this stuff, and shipped it to the photography teacher, Victoria Byers, at Silver Creek High School, where my daughter had attended. She always spoke highly of the class and the photography teacher, who has since retired, so I wanted to make this material donation to the school. Schools continue to need our support, particularly for the elective classes.

Upon cleaning out the kitchen cabinets, hall closets, and garage storage areas, we filled two trash bins (one regular trash, one recycled; but note that I had filled two dumpsters, each holding 80 cubic feet of trash, during my previous visit); we also filled the rental SUV from back to front with a Goodwill donation (this was my fourth, and final, trip to Goodwill since October). And the realtors promised me that they would find good homes for all the remaining furniture.

So, that was how my wife and I spent our spring vacation. And why I have been absent from this blog for most of the month.

Wild West Show Closing Down....

Wells Fargo Agent

  

This blog post is not about books; it's not about publishing or editing or any such related topic. So I'll understand if you click on the Back button, or some other fave link, and go elsewhere at this time. This blog post is about my father... Well, not exactly about my father, but rather about the product of one of his creative endeavors.

I spent two of the past four weeks in February staying at my parents' house in Southern California, cleaning the place up so that the house can be sold, while trying to come to terms with the detritus of the nearly 50 years that my parents -- together, and then my mother alone -- lived in that house.

I filled two 80-cubic-feet (each) dumpsters; I made three trips (carloads) to Goodwill, with a fourth trip already set aside which the realtors have promised me they will take care of, because a pickup truck is required; I made two trips to the hazardous waste disposal center; I filled two city-provided recycle bins and one trash bin four times each (with special thanks to the neighbor across the street who graciously hauls the bins to the street for me, and then returns them to the backyard after they are emptied the following day). And yet still there is more to do....

This also explains why there have been few blog posts this month; I wish that my time in SoCal was all that was required of me, but even when I'm home there are phone calls to be made, forms to complete, and, alas, bills to be paid.

My father, Al Halpern, had many hobbies; one might say "passions" rather than hobbies because he often went over the top in his pursuit of these hobbies -- even, occasionally, to the point of what I would call craziness. If you had seen the house right after he passed away -- and the backyard shed that I just emptied a week ago -- you would have understood.

Pictured at the top of this blog post is an example of the fruits of one of his passions. This is a full-size whiskey bottle -- or, to be fancy, decanter -- which depicts in authentic detail a Wells Fargo agent from ye olde Wild West. Note the liquor tax stamp on the back: the agent's head is actually the top of the cork. My father designed these bottles in the '70s for Lionstone Distilleries in Kentucky. The "Wells Fargo Agent" bottle is just one of about thirty or so bottles that I need to find a home for now that their home for the past forty years will soon be sold.

My father was a resident of Anaheim at the time, and the Orange County Register ran a full-page article on his work in Section B (the "Local" news section) in the November 21, 1972, issue. I've scanned the article as best I could and will include it here with your indulgence; since it's a full-page spread, it took four scans to capture all the photos and text. If you click on each section, that section will appear in a larger form in a separate window, and thus should be easier to read. The Register will do a more succinct job explaining my father's hobby than I ever could.

The triptych of bottles pictured at the beginning of the article -- and showcased at the end of the article in my father's hand design -- is the "Shootout at the OK Corral." When I lived at home, I was totally taken with this set: the detail was mind-boggling, particularly the horses on the middle bottle. But I haven't seen these in years and years, decades actually; they weren't stored anywhere at the house, so I assume at some point my father (or possibly my mother, after his passing) sold them.

ASUS Zenbook: The Zen of Ultrabooks

On January 10 my ASUS Zenbook (UX31) arrived at the Microsoft Store in the Valley Fair mall in San Jose. I had to do quite a bit of hustling in order to give the store my money for this little gem. You see, back in December, when I began my search for an Ultrabook -- and eventually decided on the recently released ASUS Zenbook -- I discovered that this PC was in such high demand that they were completely sold out at all local stores¹, and online as well. Even Amazon sellers didn't have this particular model available.

The Microsoft Store at the Valley Fair mall had one on display, but none were in stock; I was told that a new shipment (though the store didn't know how many would be in the shipment) should arrive before Christmas. After the Christmas weekend came and went, I was told that the store was still expecting delivery later that week. And then, New Years weekend came and went -- and still no Zenbooks. So I contacted a number of Microsoft Stores across the country and discovered that the Zenbook was in stock in Colorado, and elsewhere. I spoke to a manager at the Colorado store: she was willing to ship a Zenbook to the Santa Clara store, but the request had to be initiated by that store. So, I contacted the Valley Fair store once again, explained the situation, and they agreed to do a stock transfer from another store; the store they chose, for whatever reason(s), was in the District of Columbia.

I was motivated to purchase the Zenbook from the Microsoft Store for a number of reasons: I liked what I saw at the store -- the layout of the store and the hardware on display that was available for hands-on use, the store personnel who were there to assist and answer questions; also, the store was running a special offer that would save me $200, and provide me with two years of free support and maintenance, along with a full copy of Microsoft Office 2010; and lastly, all PCs sold through the store go through a "Microsoft Signature" review -- the PC is tuned, bloatware removed, etc. Given the problems that had been reported with the initially released Zenbooks, I felt the "Microsoft Sig" touch would ensure that my Zenbook wouldn't have bad pixels, problems with the keyboard, etc.

As I said, the Zenbook arrived on January 10; I was handed a brown corrugated ASUS shipping box at the store, which I greedily opened as soon as I arrived home. Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I neglected to snap any unpacking pics, and that outer box has since been disposed of. However, inside this outer box was the nicely crafted Zenbook box (pictured below) -- a multi-level box that contained the Ultrabook, a padded brown fabric carrying case, and a few booklets in an envelope-like enclosure mounted to the bottom. A section along the right side of the box held the power supply, along with a matching brown fabric pouch that contained the VGA and Ethernet adapters.

Two Holes-in-One and a Bogey

This blog post has absolutely nothing to do with golf -- sorry, golf fans... -- I just happened to like this title that I came up with to represent the three recent reviews for my anthology Alien Contact (Night Shade Books).

I'll start with the two holes-in-one because we always want to boast first about the best -- our best golf swing, the humongous fish we caught, stealing home....

This first review is courtesy of Bob Blough, and published on Tangent online on January 30. After providing readers with the complete list of stories included in the volume, Bob opens his review with the following:

Alien Contact is an intelligently edited anthology of 26 first contact stories. And thankfully, Mr. Halpern has decided to mine the last 30 years for his selections, eschewing more well-known and oft-reprinted old favorites from earlier decades. So, this is a huge anthology favoring more contemporary SF and it acquits itself wonderfully. I do not agree with all of the editor's choices and can think of others I would have preferred, but so many terrific stories are gathered together in one place that everyone who likes this theme or is interested in learning more about it will perhaps find some new gems.

In the review, Bob focuses on "a few of [his] favorites." In particular, he singles out Pat Cadigan's story "Angel," which he refers to as "the best story of the batch (and one of my top SF stories of all time)."¹ Bob's other faves include stories by George Alec Effinger ("a story with the perfect title"), Neil Gaiman ("read it and revel"), Mike Resnick ("a sadly moving tale, albeit a joy to read"), Michael Swanwick ("a complex and beautiful novelette"), Molly Gloss ("bravura performance"), Robert Silverberg ("a terrific read"), Nancy Kress ("clever and a delightful entertainment"), and Stephen Baxter ("the final story is one of the best").

Bob concludes his lengthy review with this paragraph:

These are but a double handful of my favorites; others by Paul McAuley, Bruce McAllister, Jeffrey Ford and a number of others serve this anthology well. If you are new to most of these stories or want to reacquaint yourself with some favorites – get this book. I thank Mr. Halpern for his knowledgeable selections. Alien Contact was a kick to read.

January Links & Things

I returned this past weekend from my trip to SoCal, only to have to schedule yet another trip in a couple weeks. My mother's house in Anaheim, California, will be on the market toward the end of this month. In my youth I used to walk to Disneyland from that house, but it was/is a long walk, though not for a teen -- and from the house you can watch, and hear, the D-land fireworks at night, with no interference from any structures. It really is a great house. When everything becomes official, I'll post some photos and more details.

If you have an interest in my recently published anthology Alien Contact (Night Shade Books), please consider clicking on the "Like" button (if you haven't already done so) in the Facebook widget in the right column of this blog. This will add the anthology's updates to your own news stream on your FB Home page. You won't be inundated with posts, probably on average a couple per week, I promise.

And I best get to January's Links & Things before I run out of time this month as well. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. Once again there is a lot of content, so please return for a second visit if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Via author and friend Bruce McAllister's FB page, I learned of a new magazine with a very strange title: rFISHc. Bruce has a short-short story in the first issue. Submission guidelines, payment details, etc. at the link.

• Do you write fantasy novels? -- HUGE fantasy novels? If so, then you need to consider taking David J. Parker's "The Fantasy Novelist's Exam." Here are the first 5 of 75 questions: 1) Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages? 2) Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage? 3) Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it? 4) Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme bad guy? 5) Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world? Let's just say that you don't want to be answering "yes" to very many of these questions. (via John Shirley's FB page, shared from David Brin)

• Princeton Alumni Weekly -- "an editorially independent magazine by alumni for alumni since 1900" -- recently published a feature article on books entitled "What Princeton students are reading." You may be interested in learning what their "comfort food" reading actually entails. (via Gordon van Gelder's FB page)

• From the UK's Guardian (@guardian): "YA novel readers clash with publishing establishment," and subtitled: "A row over the status of the bloggers who fuelled the success of young adult novels has been raging across the net." Apparently YA authors and their agents and publishers do not like negative reviews. I'm shocked, shocked I say.... So, among other things, they have been publicly discussing rigging the Amazon and Goodreads ratings to improve the visibility of good reviews, and thus "hide" the negative reviews. They've also been ganging up on the YA book reviewers/book review bloggers. The Guardian article concludes with a very special note to authors: "And if you can't stand the heat of the blogosphere – don't Google yourself." (also via Gordon van Gelder's FB page)

• I write these month-end recaps on my computer, directly into a blog post, because I need access to the links/articles and often reference material, etc. But the drafts of most of my other blog posts are written in longhand; that's right, I take pencil to paper and actually write (well, more like scribble, since I'm the only one seeing the draft). I do this because I have a tendency to overedit when I compose online, and thus I never complete the text because I'm too occupied with editing. (Did I tell you that I'm an editor?) But writing on paper avoids a lot of this, and words actually do get written. Yes, I'll scratch out text, squeeze in changes, draw an arrow to the bottom of the page to something I want to add -- but the energy continues to flow, words continue to be written, and eventually the piece is completed. And then I edit as I type the text into a blog post. Evidently I'm not the only writer who works this way. Timmi Duchamp, of Aqueduct Press fame, also uses longhand, particularly when she needs to write additional material that will be inserted into an existing file. In a blog post entitled "The magic of writing longhand," Timmi says: "[In the past, before personal computers] whenever I wasn't sure where the story was going, I would retype the entirety of the scene I was working on, to give me a sort of running start. It never failed. I didn't feel I could do that when I switched to a word processor. So then I'd write out some of it longhand, and continue from there. Writing longhand has thus come to seem a sort of magic...." (via @charlesatan)

Would you like to review Alien Contact?

If you would be interested in reviewing an eBook edition of my Alien Contact anthology, recently published by Night Shade Books, please read on....

I've made this offer previously and thought I would follow it up with one additional post. I have eBook editions -- mobi, epub, and pdf -- available for Alien Contact that I would be happy to provide to book reviewers and/or book review bloggers.

If you would like an eBook review copy, simply post a request below in the Comment section, along with a link to one (or more) of your online book reviews and/or a link to your book review blog. I'll also need an email addy in order to get in touch with you. If contact information is posted with your review or on your blog, no need to include that same contact information with your comment.

Any questions, etc. can also be posted below in Comments.

Doing Charles Stross's Laundry with Style

Back in December 2010 I wrote a blog post entitled "Writing with Style (Sheets, That Is)," on my need, as an editor/copyeditor, for the author to provide a style sheet. This blog post was the result of a series of comments to a status update that Theodora Goss had posted on her Facebook page. In addition to Dora's and my comments, Robert Vardeman and Paul Witcover shared comments as well. And with their kind permissions, I included the FB comment stream in that blog post on style sheets. Dora then wrote a complementary blog post of her own, from her perspective on the subject in question. So with my post and hers, the reader is treated to the editor's and author's viewpoints regarding a single copyedit in a short story.

I won't overly bore you with repetitions from this blog post, should you choose to read it in its entirety, but as I mentioned in that post, in the nearly fifteen years that I have been in this business, I've only had two authors -- Michael A. Stackpole and Mark Teppo -- provide me with style sheets along with their manuscripts. That's two authors in nearly fifteen years. In fact, just this past September I worked on Michael's Of Limited Loyalty, the second volume in his Queen's Command series published by Night Shade Books, and once again he provided the publisher with an updated style sheet for his book.

The second post I want to reference was published on December 10, 2009, shortly after I finished work on Charles Stross's third Laundry Files novel, The Fuller Memorandum, for Ace Books. Entitled "Charles Stross: On Her Majesty's Occult Service," this rather extensive blog post covered my working relationship with Charlie Stross: how it all came together, including the genesis of The Atrocity Archives, the first Laundry Files volume, and the Hugo Award-winning novella "The Concrete Jungle." (Which, by the way, is still available online -- as a PDF doc or as a web page -- for your reading pleasure.)

As he did in 2009, Charlie again recommended me to Ace Books to proof, line edit, and copyedit his forthcoming (fourth) Laundry Files novel, The Apocalypse Codex. I have a distinct advantage over an in-house or other freelance editor because I have worked on the first three books in the series, allowing me to maintain consistency across all the volumes. And Charlie and I work well together: I ask a multitude of questions, and he answers, often with links to reference material; I make content suggestions, and he either accepts, rejects, or modifies said suggestions. Just as it should be, between editor and author. In fact, regarding my work on The Fuller Memorandum, Charlie informed me that upon reviewing the marked up (i.e. change tracked) manuscript from his publisher, he didn't have a single STET on any of my copyedits. No STETs means I done good -- very good. No STETs also takes a lot of stress off both the author and publisher, since there is no back-and-forth dickering necessary over changes: I'll give you those three copyedits for my one STET; this inevitably speeds up the production process, too. (I don't know if I'll be as lucky with the the work I did on the latest volume, which I delivered to Ace Books in December.)

In The Apocalypse Codex, our reluctant hero, Bob Howard, skilled in the techniques of applied computational demonology -- as well as all things IT geekery, plus PowerPoint slide shows and departmental time sheets -- is once again called upon to save the world from a diabolical fanatic who plans to open a portal to call forth a nightmare from the vast reaches of spacetime, at the cost of thousands of lives. Sounds like a typical Laundry Files novel, yes? But there the typical ends. The diabolical fanatic is a reverend; and Bob must team up with a couple of "external assets": Persephone "the Duchess" Hazard (code name: Bashful Incendiary) and Jonathan "Johnny" McTavish (code name: Johnny Prince).

(Belated) December Links & Things

Whoa... hard to believe that we're in week four of January and I still have yet to post my December links and things. I do have a lot of excuses, like the holidays (and recovery from same), multiple computer, software, and network issues (some good, including a new ASUS Zenbook; most not so good; but all very time consuming), as well as a huge project -- 271,000-plus words! -- I just proofed and copyedited for Night Shade Books (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan¹) that took far longer than I had anticipated. And I'm still dealing with the aftermath of my mother's passing: emails, phone calls, photocopying, meetings, forms to complete and notarize, and yet another trip to Southern California planned for next week.

But, as they say -- whoever "they" are -- that's life. And better that than the alternative, to be sure.

In fact, by the time I finish typing up and posting these December links it will be time to type up January's links... sigh....

I want to remind you that February 3 is the deadline to sign up for the last Alien Contact giveaway, hosted by SciFiChick.com. The giveaway is open to US residents (a print copy giveaway) and non-US residents (an ebook copy giveaway). So follow the link to SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post entitled "Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks..." and be sure to sign up for the giveaway.

And speaking of Alien Contact: Michael at The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review blog just posted his December Reading Log, and he had these kind words to say about the anthology:

Alien Contact edited by Marty Halpern – Ranging from first contact and last contact to vacationers visiting an alien's home world and being, typically, obnoxious guests, Alien Contact compiles one of the most diverse collections of modern stories concerning the "other." Highly recommended....

Now, on to the links: This is my belated monthly wrap-up of December's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. There is a lot of content this time around, so please return for a second visit if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Since I'm encouraging you to follow me on Twitter, here are teasers from Angela James's (@angelajames) "10 things authors should know about Twitter": 1) When you start your tweet with the @ symbol... 2) If you have your tweets protected... 3) You should not, really ever, I mean never, query or pitch an editor or agent on Twitter... 4) Please don't use Twitter DMs (or Facebook messages) to do business... 5) Just because the editor/agent is on Twitter at 11pm on a Friday night... 6) When we say you should "engage" on Twitter... 7) You should be talking about other people's books... 8) And while we're on the subject of promotion... 9) It's a good idea to be mindful... and 10) Twitter should be fun. For all the details: Angela James's blog. (via @ColleenLindsay)

• In 1963, at the ripe old age of sixteen, Bruce McAllister (1988 Hugo and Nebula awards finalist for "Dream Baby"; 2007 Hugo Award finalist for "Kin") sent out a 4-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors to learn if "they consciously planted symbols in their work." Remember, this was long before the internet and email: the authors had to be tracked down, envelopes addressed and mailed, etc. He hoped the surveys would "settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren't lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery." Bruce has been sitting on 65 of those responses for all these years, and thanks to the Paris Review, we can now view many of these questionnaire responses from the likes of Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer. This is amazing stuff! Not to be missed! The PR article was posted on December 5; on December 17, less than two weeks later, PR Online reported that they had 120,000 page views of the McAllister survey article -- the most page views they've ever had!

Close to the EDGE....

Kilian Melloy, Assistant Arts Editor for EDGE, poses some difficult questions for me in this Alien Contact interview, originally posted on EDGE:Boston.

When Kilian asked:

As a follow-up to last year's Is Anybody Out There? (which you co-edited with Nick Gevers for Daw Books), Alien Contact is a logical theme. Both books pose big philosophical questions. Is Anybody Out There? examined the paradox of why, if there is alien intelligence in the galaxy (as, mathematically, there ought to be) no extraterrestrial race has yet, to our knowledge, paid Earth a visit. Do you have a personal opinion on the best explanation for this conundrum?

I responded:

There are others who are far more qualified to respond to this question than I am... I would have to agree with Paul Davies¹, whose book The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was published nearly simultaneously with Is Anybody Out There? Davies states that focusing on radio signals for 50 years of the SETI project has been to no avail; we need to start thinking out of the box. One suggestion Davies makes is that ET might use biological organisms as a means of sending information, so we should dispatch retroviruses that would insert DNA into any found DNA-based organism. Coincidentally, the British edition of The Eerie Silence from Allen Lane Publishers is subtitled Are We Alone in the Universe?

You can read the full interview, including my response to this, the last question:

The collection includes a story by a well-known anti-gay writer, as well as one whose remarks on a blog got her disinvited as Guest of Honor from a convention a couple of years ago because some people saw her remarks as bigoted. When it comes to publishing a story by a writer who has generated such controversy, do you simply ignore his politics and rely on the quality of his work? Or do you have to weigh the political against the artistic when making your choices?

---------------

Footnote:

1. My previous blog post, just prior to the publication of Is Anybody Out There? on Paul Davies and his book The Eerie Silence.

To the Core...

Keith Soltys reviews Alien Contact on his blog Core Dump 2.0. Here's the concluding paragraph to Keith's review, which I believe speaks to the heart (the core!) of Alien Contact:

Alien Contact is a strong anthology that showcases the diversity of modern SF. Given how central the idea of alien contact is to science fiction, you might think that all of the good ideas were taken long ago, but this anthology demonstrates clearly that that's not the case.

Keith isn't a book blogger, per se; his blog is subtitled "Things that interest me," in which he blogs "about science and technology, music, technical communication, computers and software, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like writing about." Hopefully his review of Alien Contact will reach a wider audience than just strictly book readers, and science fiction book readers at that.

Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks...

...is the title of my guest blog post on SciFiChick.com, whom I would like to thank for providing me the opportunity -- and the space -- to share with a new group of readers some background on my Alien Contact anthology.

Here's an excerpt from my blog post:

By April 2011, I had finalized the story order for my Alien Contact anthology. So I was ready to announce the contents list. Most anthologists accomplish this by simply posting a list of the stories. SF news sites pick it up, as do SF bloggers and tweeters, and that's how readers learn of an anthology's contents. But a list is, well, a list — and boring.

I had already invested more than two years in putting together this anthology, and I was determined to maintain that energy level until the book was published. So, after a bit of brainstorming, I decided to blog about each of the stories — one story each week, in their order of appearance — over the course of twenty-six weeks, concluding by the end of October, just in time for the book's publication.

[...]

...if the reader thinks of Alien Contact as a DVD, then these twenty-six weeks of blog posts serve as the DVD extras....

Following my guest blog post is yet another Alien Contact giveaway: An opportunity for a US reader to win a signed/inscribed print edition, and for a non-US reader to win an ebook edition. The deadline to enter this giveaway is February 4. [Note: This is the final Alien Contact giveaway!]

Please check out SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post while you're there, and be sure to sign up for the giveaway if you don't already own a copy of Alien Contact. (And if you don't, why not?)

Ommmmmmmmmmm....

Coming soon....

Grasping at Aliens

In previous blog posts I've mentioned the significant role that book review bloggers play in today's publishing wars -- by bringing titles that aren't always reviewed by the mainstream press to the attention of book readers and buyers. Take Alien Contact for example: it's an all-reprint anthology from independent press Night Shade Books, and even though the book contains stories by such "name" authors as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to name only three, it hasn't gotten a great deal of attention amongst mainstream publications, with the exception of Library Journal and The Guardian.

That's why book review blogs are so important to an anthology like Alien Contact and to a publisher like Night Shade Books. A typical reader doesn't have access to Kirkus Reviews or Publishers Weekly -- mostly because these publications are designed for libraries and bookstores and are far too expensive. But what a typical reader does have access to are the hundreds (thousands?) of free online book review blogs, such as John Ottinger's "Grasping for the Wind science fiction & fantasy news & reviews" blog.

I mention this blog specifically because John recently reviewed my Alien Contact anthology.

What I appreciate in particular about this review is that John addresses each of the twenty-six stories in the anthology. He doesn't necessarily like, or even understand, all of the stories, but he gives equal attention to each, which allows the reader to assess the overall content and quality of the book as a whole. As the book's editor, I'm gratified to see every author mentioned, not just the most popular or well-known authors.

Here are just a couple (well, maybe three) of Ottinger's individual story reviews:

Karen Joy Fowler's "Face Value" is a tragic story of a man and wife team sent to an alien planet to make contact with the moth-like intelligence found there. Taki is the xenobiologist and Hesper, his wife, a poet. Taki thrives, but Hesper becomes more and more depressed until even her poet's soul is lost. Fowler's sad story is about transcendence and the place where beauty comes from. It's about relationship too. Taki and Hesper's inability to understand one another has its echo in Taki's inability to communicate with the natives. There is a haunting beauty to Fowler's story that will leave you pondering long after you read it.

I have to admit that I don't really get "Guerrilla Mural of Siren's Song" by Ernest Hogan. The story appears to be about a street artist who encounters sirens deep in the winds of Jupiter. It's also a love paean to a dead woman. Art and experience combine in an experiential tale of whirling emotions and unreliable narration. It's likely to be the favorite story in the anthology of people with a less analytical and more artistic bent than myself, but for me it was rather confusing.

"If Nudity Offends You" by Elizabeth Moon is another story I have read before. In this one, a court secretary, living in a trailer park, finds that her neighbors have been illegally tapping into her electricity. Most of the story is about her confrontation with these odd foreigners who wear no clothes in their trailer, talk funny, and seem slightly off. The whole story builds up to a surprise ending that makes you wonder if these foreigners were not just from a distant land, but from a different planet entirely. It's a close encounter that is discovered only after the fact.

John concludes his review with the following observation:

Alien Contact is a title that might be slightly misleading. This is not an anthology of first contacts but rather a collection of encounters with the other, what we choose to call the alien, the ineffable, the different and unknowable. Halpern's anthology is an excellent collection of tales that share a theme in common, but that manage to postulate widely different scenarios

As I said, these are only three of the twenty-six individual story reviews; you'll find John Ottinger's complete review on Grasping for the Wind.