My first Gene Wolfe story

I read my first-ever Gene Wolfe story last night. I picked up his collection The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction for the Kindle App. Science fiction writer Fabio Fernandes recommended three stories to start with. The book had two of the three and I chose “A Cabin in the [...]

Index of stories appearing in Analog for the 2011 AnLab awards

Time is almost up to vote for the 2011 AnLab awards for Analog Science Fiction. Ordinarily, you can vote for these awards from their website, but it seems their site has been having some difficulty lately. You can’t vote there and the index of last year’s stories is not listed. So I have gone ahead and [...]

Connie Willis is the next Grand Master of science fiction

I just saw the news via Locus and I am so excited! Connie Willis is the next recipient Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master award for science fiction. I love Connie’s books and stories. Doomsday Book was incredible and for a time, I thought unbeatable. But then she came out with Blackout/All Clear which topped Doomsday Book (in my [...]

A plug for other writers: my Hugo nominations

I finally got around to making my Hugo nominations this morning, after I realized that I’d moved on to 2012 reading and wasn’t planning on doing anymore reading for 2011. I’m listing my nominations below because these writers wrote some outstanding stories and deserve recognition for them. If you haven’t made your nominations yet, or [...]

My annual Asimov autobiography re-read

I started reading Isaac Asimov’s retrospective memoir, I. Asimov last night. I’ve written here often enough about my ritual, each April, where I read Isaac Asimov’s 3 autobiography volumes. I always read I. Asimov first, even though that was written last, because that one is a retrospective of his whole life. In the epilogue, Janet Asimov writes [...]

Transcript of my #sffwrtcht from last night

Last night I participated in my first Twitter chat, talking with Bryan Thomas Schmidt and others about writing, science fiction, and the Golden Age as part of the #sffwrtcht. It was a lot of fun and a lot of typing to keep up! Bryan has posted a  transcript of last night’s chat for anyone interested [...]

Hugo nominations are open

Hugo award nominations are now open. If you attended last year’s WorldCon (attending or supporting) and/or are attending Chicon this year, you are eligible to make nominations. Because I’ve gotten the question, here are my eligible publications for the year: “Take One for the Road,” short story, Analog June 2011 “If By Reason of Strength…,” novelette, [...]

Isaac Asimov at 92

Today would have been Isaac Asimov’s 92nd birthday. Come April, he’ll have been dead for 20 years. It is hard to believe. It is still one of my biggest regrets that I never got to meet him. I really started to broaden my science fiction reading right around the time he passed away. At the [...]

Goals for 2012: Conventioneering

I have a lot of fun going to science fiction conventions. People who have been my heroes and who I’ve enjoyed reading for a very long time have become my friends. There is a camaraderie that is difficult to explain to others outside the genre. So I look forward to going to these. My goals [...]

Year in review – 2011: Conventioneering

One of my goals in 2011 was to “attend at least one [science fiction] convention as a participant.” I started attending science fiction conventions in 2007 after the sale of my first story to Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. The first convention I attended was RavenCon in April 2007 and it set the bar [...]

On Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction Anthologies

It has become a kind of year end ritual, at least for the last 3 years or so, for me to pick up a big anthology or two and spend time reading stories. It started with David G. Hartwell’s The Hard SF Renaissance, which I read 3 years ago at this time and absolutely loved. [...]

Vacation in the Golden Age, Episode 29: November 1941

Forgive me, it’s been four weeks since my last Vacation episode. Early in my reading for this episode, I caught a cold that was followed by the first ear infection that I can recall since childhood. It made it impossible to do any reading or writing and so I really had no choice but to [...]

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  • Vacation in the Golden Age

    Episode 32: February 1942

    Stories by Smith, Moore, Brackett, Jones, Sturgeon

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    Episode 33 coming February 20

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    All Clear
    by Connie Willis

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