Simple pleasures

When I was a kid, I could recall wanting everything. See a toy in a TV commercial: I want that! See some candy at the story: I want that! See a book in the library: I want that! I thought that when I grew up I’d eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and I [...]

Amazon reviews

I was glancing at the reviews of various books that I’d posted on Amazon, looking to see whether they are particularly helpful or not based on on the feedback that people can give. The results seem mixed and I decided to take a look at reviews by others for a book I’d recently reviewed to [...]

R.I.P. Anne McCaffrey

I first saw the news of Anne McCaffrey’s passing last night via a Rob Sawyer tweet and it kind of stunned me. I was never a big reader of Anne McCaffrey‘s, not because I didn’t like her work, but mostly because I hadn’t gotten around to reading the bulk of it. What I have read [...]

Bing Crosby and me

I don’t know when it was that I first heard of Bing Crosby. I know that the name was familiar when I was younger, but only because it was distinctive. Who else in entertainment was named “Bing”? In college, I recall hearing one of his songs, “They All Laughed” but I don’t exactly recall where [...]

Scheduled downtime for this site December 2-3 (approx. 3-12 hours)

I have recently noticed that at times, this site is pretty slow. Sometimes, it seems almost unaccessible. I inquired with my hosting service and they indicated that the premium servers (on which my site resides) are getting slow due to high volume. They are going to be moving all of their premium users to a [...]

Reading Stephen King

Last week I wrote about my general experience with Stephen King books and a few days ago I posted my review of his latest novel, 11/22/63. Sometime in the fall of 2009 I started reading Stephen King again after not having read his books for several years. I decided I would start from the beginning [...]

Pre-telling stories

One thing I have been really trying to get away from is what I call “pre-telling” stories. I think that all writers do this to some extent, and there is a reason that professional writers don’t do this. What is “pre-telling” a story? If you know a writer, have hung around writers, have gone to a [...]

What’s keeping me busy this weekend

For folks who like lists: Pickup and install new bookshelves. (Done) Golden Age reading (up next Isaac Asimov’s “Not Final!” in the October 1941 Astounding) Start reading Robert J. Sawyer‘s serialized novel Triggers in the Jan/Feb 2012 Analog Figure out what book to read now that I’ve finished Stephen King’s 11/22/63. It is always hard for [...]

New bookshelf and reclaimed desk space

Thanks to our friend Kevin, who needed to get rid of a bookshelf after replacing it with another shelf, I have a new bookshelf in my office–my 8th–and the bookshelf has allowed me to reclaim my desk from the stacks of pulp issues of Astounding that had been piled on it since January. Here is [...]

Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King (5-stars)

Stephen King’s most recent book, 11/22/63, is a time-travel adventure about a man from 2011 who uses a time “bubble” to attempt to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Writing a book  like this is a bold move on the part of Mr. King. In the science fiction realm, time-travel stories are rampant and can easily become [...]

My daily 500 words of fiction: progress update

I haven’t gotten in my 500 words for the last 3 days, but that is because I’ve been dealing with a laptop that seemed on the verge of death and was then pulled back from the brink and restored to full life. That sounds like an excuse. I could write on my iPad nearly as [...]

My MacBook is back from the dead!

Reports of the imminent death of my MacBook earlier this week were, apparently, greatly exaggerated. At the suggestion of my friend, Reed Stoner, I took my MacBook into the office today to have him look at it. He had some extra hard disks at home and offered to replace the hard disk in my computer [...]

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  • Vacation in the Golden Age

    Episode 38 August 1942

    Stories by MacDonald, Clement, Rocklynne, Cartmill, Padgett and Knight

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