A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Not much to say.  The zines went live yesterday.  So if you go to SFRevu or Gumshoe Review, you’ll find the new September issues are now up and live.  This month SFRevu has an interview with Joe Abercrombie, the author of The Last Argument of Kings. In Gumshoe, we’ve got an interview with Sheila Lowe, author of Written in Blood.  If you enjoy science fiction and fantasy or mystery, check them out.

In other news, my harddrive is full and I can’t download my photos to get them uploaded to my site.  I’ve ordered an external harddrive but it hasn’t gotten here yet so I’m feeling bereft of photos.  As soon as I get it and get connected, I’ll get up a photo of my September coffee cup, my new sock project, and the totally finished and organized pantry shelves.  Bet you can hardly wait on that one.

Meanwhile, I’m working on the final few items to finish up a website project.  Ran into a few wrinkles, but when don’t you, when designing and setting up a website for someone else.  But, it’s coming along nicely and I hope to finish it before too much longer.

I’ve also bookmarked some interesting articles on science topics that I hope to turn into blog posts as soon as I get a chance to read the articles and then look for the original source material and check some collateral material as well.  Then there’s my TBR (To Be Read) pile to starting getting whittled down for the October issue of the zines.

Moles and Trolls.  Work, work, work, work, work….

We’re up and seeking breakfast, or something to tied us over for a while. (Hyperion: I went over to Starbucks for Coffee. Place was absolutely packed. I was number 32 in line.) First up this morning is the WSFS Business Meeting. We started going to these quite a few conventions ago. We’d been volunteering at all the conventions that we attended and wanted to learn more about running them. This year a couple of proposal will be submitted: One to give a Hugo to the Best SF Website, one for Best Graphic Novel, and one to set the upper limit on supporting memberships, and then whatever else comes up that I don’t yet know about from reading the SMOFs list. Most people can go their whole lives and never attend a Worldcon Business Meeting. Us, we like to get involved. The meetings can be frustrating but they’re also a lot of fun in their own way — personally, I like to think of them as performance art. All the meeting are run by Robert’s Rules of Order. I don’t understand them very well, even now, but the person in charge of the meeting (this year Donald Eastlake) usually makes a great effort to explain the arcana of the various motions so that the members understand and can vote appropriately. The meetings occur each morning from 10am to noon until all the business is concluded for this convention. Rules made here are then voted on one more time at the next worldcon and (if approved there) then go into the constitution.

The business meeting managed to eat up a chunk of our day. We finished up about 1:00 PM. So, food was now on the agenda and we walked down to the 16th street mall for lunch. We decided on Rock Bottom Brewery. Good food. Fast service. Within walking distance.

Back at the convention center, we check out part of the dealers’ room. Managed to see about 1/3 of it before the first set of panels came up. I decided to go to Lois McMasters Bujold’s reading of Sharing Knife: Harmony. It should be out in February 2009 and will finish the Sharing Knife sequence. Bujold read from the first three chapters and it begins just after the end of Sharing Knife: Passages. The audience chuckled, laughed, sighed, and made all the appropriate noises at the appropriate parts. Bujold also answered some questions about the writing process, world building, and what she’s up to next.

My next panel to sit in on was “Writer’s and Taxes”. The panelists were an ex-IRS Auditor (now author), a lawyer, and a UK tax person (I’m really sorry on this as she said her title several times but I just couldn’t seem to get it — obviously my caffeine levels are low). Basically, the bottom line is that you need to keep good records and treat your writing as a business. The audience was concerned about what records to keep track of and the panelists said that Schedule C has a list of the records to keep on the back. They also said be reasonable in what you deduct or do. There was a lot of discussion and suggestions about start-up costs, business cost, and the terms usual and necessary. You can claim a lot of things but not everything that people have probably told you that you could claim as a deduction and that it would be worth an authors time to ask other authors who they use to do their taxes and then have someone check them out for them (to save money — do your own and then have the CPA check it over before filing). This was a workshop that was extremely useful and fairly well attended by authors who are starting out and don’t make a lot of money and want to learn how to avoid problems on their taxes.

For our last item, we attended the 2008 Chesley Awards Presentation. The Chesley’s are for excellence in art given by ASFA. Actually, this year, because of a number of issues, the ceremony was to list the nominees in each category. The presenters listed the nominees as a slide show displayed art work by the nominated artists. It was a nice ceremony even without the awards being given. You must be an ASFA member in order to vote but you don’t need to be an artist to be a member (check their website for details). The winner will be announced in late September. The announcement of the nominees was followed by a reception in the Art Show but we weren’t able to get to it.

We walked back to our hotel, dropped our bags and accoutrements and made our way to the 22nd floor to check out the parties. Last night we just headed for bed, but tonight was the Peggy Rae’s House in 2010 party. The party floor was alive with people moving about checking out the various parties. It really looked like people were having a great time. The only drawback to the parties is that whenever you get a lot of bodies into small spaces it gets really, really, hot even with the air conditioning up high. So, even suites get stifling very quickly. Even so, there were many people to talk to and get reacquainted with. The North American Disc World Party seemed as popular as Peggy Rae’s House in 2010, they had food themed for Disc World and some of it was very clever (no pictures — sorry). Peggy Rae’s House had chocolate cake and ice cream. Hmmmm, seems there’s a food factor to a good party.

Finally, we just had to call it a night and turn it. Tomorrow starts with another WSFS Business Meeting, to hopefully work thorough the rest of the agenda. Then we hope to attend even more panels. Also, Friday night is the Masquerade.

Today is the first full day of programming. So, here we go….

11 am Over the Hills in Farah’s Way: Four Categories of Fantasy: Gregory Frost (L), Ellen Asher, Greer Gilman, Sarah Micklem, John Clute. Every Readercon attendee is urged to pick up and devour a copy of Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetoric of Fantasy, in which she describes four types of fantasy distinguished by the relationship of the protagonists, and hence the reader, to the fantasy world. In the portal-quest fantasy (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Lord of the Rings), the protagonists leave their mundane world and cross through to the fantastic, and the protagonists and reader discover and understand the new world together. In the immersive fantasy (Perdido Street Station or The Iron Dragon’s Daughter), the fantastic is presented without comment or explanation as the norm for both the protagonist and reader. The intrusion fantasy (Dracula or most of Lovecraft’s short fiction) is in many ways the opposite of the portal-quest: the fantastic enters the ordinary world, where it is met by awe, shock, amazement, or the like. (Most intrusion fantasies are horror, but there are interesting exceptions.) In the liminal fantasy (Hope Mirrlee’s Lud-in-the-Mist or Little, Big) there might be an intrusion into the ordinary world, but the reader is disoriented, estranged, or challenged by the casualness with which the protagonists accept the intrusion or by their doubt of its reality. We’ll discuss the usefulness of the taxonomy and look at each of the categories, highlighting the most interesting of Mendlesohn’s insights.

The pocket program had a different title but I made it to the panel anyway. I’ve read about one-third of Farah’s book. What I’ve learned from reading so far is that it stops me and makes me think of the fantasy I’ve read and whether most of what I’ve read can be placed in one of her categories. The panel talked about the misfits or outliers to this division. However, John Clute mentioned that all ideas are wrong because you can always find things that don’t fit or don’t fit well, but that an idea that throws light on the subject and is a starting point for discussion and classification is always worth while (I’m paraphrasing so this is my interpretation of what he said). These four ways that the fantastic come into a story are not vertical divisions by more layers or talking points about how the fantastic interacts with the reader and/or the protagonists.

Whether you agree with the four divisions or not, it is a way to think about fantasy and thus talk about it critically. I really think if you haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor and get it because it will have an impact on how you, as a reader, will relate to and think about fantasy.

12:00 (noon) Generation Dark: Holly Black (L), Nick Mamatas, M.M. Buckner, Cassandra Clare, Don D’Ammassa, Nathan Ballingrud. There’s some anecdotal evidence that the readership for horror and dark fantasy is younger than the readership for the rest of the field, and this shifting demographic is also reflected in our guest list. To what extent is the boom in young writers and readers of dark fantasy a reflection of the darkness of the times? And to what extent are we simply seeing the first generation to grow up with horror as a successful commercial genre and Stephen King as an icon? What other factors are in play?

I found this panel interesting and there was a lot more audience participation. Basically, (my impression was) the youth of today are not newly discovering the dark, all people at times of transition look for the dark in themselves and young people transitioning to adulthood do the same in all eras. The difference is that there seems to be so much more available now with the Twilight series, Buffy, paranormal romance, etc. One phrase I liked is “V.C. Andrews is H.P. Lovecraft for girls.”

The anecdotal evidence turned out to be that because China Mieville brought in a much younger crowd as a guest of honor, young people must like horror and dark fantasy. Laughing commenced and the phrase “anecdotal evidence” became something of a catch phrase.

There was also some anecdotal evidence supplied by the audience that many young people (young teens) don’t know who Stephen King is. Also that young people seem to read a lot of paranormal romance. And that it was the nature of youth to rebel and rebellion often causes them to go and look at the dark within themselves and in the world.

3:00 pm The Critical Review: Griffin, Gorgon, or Sphinx? David G. Hartwell, Elizabeth Hand, Gary K. Wolfe (L), Farah Mendlesohn, John Clute. The book review and the critical literary study serve fundamentally different purposes. Yet SF book reviews have frequently contained valuable critical insights: it’s hard to avoid having them if you’re a perceptive reader, and hard to leave them out of a review. We’ll look at the history and techniques of the critical review and assess just how comfortably the two components have gotten along. What does the continued practice of the hybrid form say about the nature of the reading experience and the way we talk about books.

David Hartwell started out when asked about the difference between reviews and critical study, said that reviews are for people who haven’t read the book and want to figure out if they’d like it and critical studies are for people who have read the book. Most of the panel thought that was too limiting (I agree with him). John Clute said he doesn’t care if he gives away the ending because he’s talking about the shape of the book/narrative and you need the ending to see the full shape. Elizabeth Hand said as a reader she always reads the ending first but as a reviewer she reads front to back to give the full experience and surprise of the ending for the reviews. All agreed that reviews/critical studies should be entertaining and enjoyable in themselves.

Then there was some discussion of the growing trend for reviews to be entertainment in and of themselves and books being chosen just as jumping off points to write and entertaining review, usually negative, about the book. Following this the panel members discussed reviewing or reviewers with agendas.

John Clute said that reviewers are essentially essayist and and reviews should have the shape of an essay. Then there was a discussion of word length, essays, protocols, and formats for reviews.

A consensus was reached that reviews should be pleasurable to read in themselves whether or not you intend to read the book. Interesting thought. I still believe that there is a difference between reviewing for people who are trying to figure out if they’ll enjoy a book than writing for people who have read the book who are looking to learn more about the structure and narrative techniques used to create the reading experience.

4:00 pm Objects in a Room May be Scarier Than They Appear. Delia Sherman (L), John Clute, Kit Reed, Lucy Corin, Paul Tremblay. “The description in crime fiction of domestic interiors, furnishings and possessions…is often crucial to the plot. In Agatha Cristie, for example, we can be confident that almost any domestic article mentioned, however commonplace, will provide a clue, either true or false.”–P.D. James. Objects in a room in SF or fantasy are clues to the world-building, while in much contemporary fiction they are class and status markers and hence clues to character. What about the objects in a room (and by extension the entire described environment) in a horror or slipstream story? How often are they clues, and clues to what? Or is the very cluelessness of the environment part of what creates the horror or facilitates the slippage.

The discussion circled round the need for all elements in a story to serve the character(s) or the plot. Everything (objects, character,  and plot) join together to form an organic whole. Less is usually more. Write and describe everything you want and then, for every item, ask if it is needed.  If you can’t think of at least two reasons to keep it, take it out. You want everything to be there for a reason not to be set decoration.

Bad horror is usually recognized by adjectival barrages — lacking true description. The best horror has no metaphors.

7:00 pm Waking Up Sober Next to a Story Idea. Kay Kenyon, Jennifer Pelland, Jeffrey A. Carver (L), Paolo Bacigalupi, David Anthony Durham, Allan Steele. Really, it seemed absolutely beautiful once upon a time. Now that you’ve had intimate knowledge of it (say, midway through the novel), you can see all the less-than-flattering sides. You may even wonder, What the hell was I thinking? How do you recover enthusiasm for the work? Now that you see the flaws, how do you begin the process of fixing them?

The trick, said the panel, is recognizing when to stop and give up, put the story on ice for later, or simply toss it out. Consensus was that all writers need a bullet-proof, unshakable, bullshit detector. Sometimes you may know the beginning and the end, but not the middle, sometimes the middle and the end but don’t know where to start — the trick it to connect them anyway. Do you barrel thorough anyway or give it up?

It seems that most of the time if you’re stuck it’s because you lost the heart/essence/theme of the story. Once you find it again, write it down in two sentences or so because it will keep you focused and hopefully avoid another wall. You always need to keep the WHY of the story in mind.

They agreed that the worse thing is when you can see the story and know the potential but you know you can’t live up to the potential — you just can’t pull it off because you lack the skill at this point, but you’re the one who has to do it.

They all mentioned how key a significant other or spouse who believes in you when you’re in the depths of despair can be to keep you believing in yourself. Each told stories of when they hit the wall and lost the heart of a story and had to strive to find it again or just give up and go on.

I’d hoped to go to another panel on writing essays but unfortunately, I needed to eat supper before all the eateries around the hotel closed for the evening. So, food and drink were in order.

Once fed and watered, we ventured to the Meet The Pro(se) party.  This is the standard Friday night Big Event at Readercon, where, in an informal setting, everyone gets to mingle and talk.  We schmoozed for about a hour, taking a few pictures here, chatting there, being witty and engaging throughout.

But now it’s time to finish writing up this report and getting to sleep.  Tomorrow is another busy day.

The marathon effort to get the zines up and live for the 1st of the month is now done. Gumshoe Review, SFRevu, and TechRevu are now all up online with new content.  As you can probably guess by the names, Gumshoe Review covers the mystery scene with reviews, author interviews, news items relevant to the field, media, and books coming out this month (that we know about and have a copy of).  We’d also like to do reviews of monthly mystery magazines but alas no one has seen fit to contact us about their magazine or send review copies.  SFRevu is our big sister publication and covers all the same areas as does Gumshoe Review, but in this case it’s all things speculative fiction based (SF, Fantasy, Horror, and the subgenres). Only on SFRevu, Sam Tomaino covers the magazines and short fiction and usually has review of 8-10 magazines a month.  We also tend to have more media reviews (as we have two dedicated movie reviewers — though one is off for health problems).

TechRevu is our technology zine.  The news items are updated daily and there new usually indepth reviews or commentary on technology weekly.  We’ve been working very diligently to make this online magazine your source for information on technology you can use to better your quality of life, or manage your life,  or because it’s just plain neat and we like it.

Take a look and see what I and Ernest Lilley and the other staff of these zines are doing with our time.  We’d really like to share our excitement about our mystery, science fiction, and technology magazines.

PS: Tomorrow — July’s cup.  I can hardly wait to share.

For some reason this has been a bad week for me — migraines, bad fibro days, and let us not forget the poison ivy. Luckily, the poison ivy (cross every set of fingers within ten miles) looks like it’s not going to go systemic on me this time. My right arm has pretty much cleared up. The left is taking longer for some reason but it’s not weeping and not spreading, so that’s a win.

We’re coming up on the publishing date for SFRevu and Gumshoe Review and things are a bit hectic. Most of the content is in as far as the book reviews go. I’ve got the interview for Gumshoe Review in and formatted and just need to write an introduction (I’m doing that interview). For SFRevu one of our regular contributors is doing the interview and I’m on pins and needles waiting for it.

For the next few days, I have to write up my reviews. Every month I say next month I’ll read the book and write the review in that order before reading a second book. But, somehow each month I find myself with a pile of read books filled with notes, sticky notes, highlighted passages, and no reviews in evidence. Then it comes down to lots and lots of coffee and writing, writing, writing (interspersed with coffee, coffee, coffee). It usually comes out okay in the end but it makes for some tense time just at the end of the month when the crunch comes.

Of course, having the unexpected come up during the same time period — we’ve been having a lot of severe storm warnings and have lost power for seconds and minutes at a time (no long outages thankfully). However, the worse unexpected occurrence is increased migraines with stormy weather. (I know it’s not just me because my husband gave me a reality check — our friends with migraines have also been afflicted.)

The creativity of the title is that, I’ve been jotting down notes and sentences for a short story idea I have. Just when I think I’m all focused on a project or reading or something — I’m shiny thinged. For those of you who don’t know, it often happens that people with migraines and fibro have trouble focusing and staying focused. Once I’m interrupted by something, I find myself shooting off in some other direction and working on things other than what I planned. If you’ve every read that joke going around on the internet about going to the store — first they have to find the car keys, then they see the bills need to be paid, then they go to find the checkbook, but notice the floor needs to be swept…and on and on. That’s being shiny thinged.

I just feel like of all the billion of things I want to do in a day, there just isn’t the time to do them all and I have a terrible time trying to focus on the list, choosing the things that can be done in the time period because I want to do them all. Or most of them. Or at least some of them. Today was a really bad day. It took almost all my spoons to get dressed, treat the poison ivy, get downstairs, pick up the dining room table, start the laptop, download mail, get breakfast, and read email, answer same, and start proofing and formatting reviews. Now it’s evening and I’m all caught up on everyone’s stuff but my own. So, I guess with 3 days left to go that’s a good thing — but it still feels like there so much left to do. And did I mention I have a sweater almost done that I need to write the pattern up for? Never enough time.

Today I was reading Amazon Daily and found a link to an article by Luc Sante, “The Book Collection That Devoured My Life” in the Wall Street Journal. I read through the article and I laughed and I commiserated and I thought, “Here is a kindred spirit.” Here’s two quotes that give a flavor of what I mean:

There’s nothing inert about these shelves, no men’s-club-library or college-chapel somnolence here — it’s a hive of activity, abuzz with rhythms and images and ideas. As for time: I shelve literature chronologically. It’s the way I think, a landscape of hills and ridges and switchbacks marked off by dates, like a cartoon by Saul Steinberg, here rendered almost literal, so that I can see as well as feel the 19th century turning into the 20th, the prewar cascading into the postwar, the spines gradually becoming brighter as the present day approaches.

Over the years I’ve gotten used to the inevitable questions about my accumulation of books. No, I haven’t read all of them, nor do I intend to — in some cases that’s not the point. No, I’m not a lawyer (a question usually asked by couriers, back in the days of couriers). I do have a few hundred books that I reread or consult fairly regularly, and I have a lot of books pertaining to whatever current or future projects I have on the fire, and I have many, many books speculatively pointing toward some project that is still barely a gleam in my eye. I have a lot of books that I need for reference, especially now that I live 40 minutes away from the nearest really solid library. I have some books that exist in the same capacity as the more recondite tools in the chest of a good carpenter — you may not need it more than once in 20 years, but it’s awfully nice to have it there when you do. Primarily, though, books function as a kind of external hard drive for my mind — my brain isn’t big enough to do all the things it wants or needs to do without help.

That’s pretty much our library here in the woods. The closest library is simply a pick up for books requested and the next nearest is 40 or 50 minutes away (sometimes longer depending on traffic). We used to use the library a lot wherever we lived. But even then we bought a lot of books. Even working with SFRevu, Gumshoe Review, and TechRevu, I still buy a lot of books. The three zines don’t cover some of the subjects that I’m extremely interested in: knitting, spinning, fiber related material, textile history, pattern collections, Jane Austen follow-ons, historical romances, psychology (scientific and layperson), and many other things that set my mind on a quest for knowledge or entertainment.

When my husband and I first moved in together, we jokingly told friends that we could never break up because we’d consolidated our libraries. When we married, we said the same thing. People seemed to accept that it was serious because of the books; but then they were also book people.

When we moved to Maryland the first time, a pizza delivery guy looked at the bookshelves spread along every wall and even creating one wall in our tiny apartment and commented that he hadn’t realized this apartment complex had a library. At that time we only had about 3-4,000 books. Every move, we’ve paired down the other household items and with great reluctance gave away unwanted books. Yet, every time we had more and more book boxes to move.

A couple of years ago, we entered all our books into a cataloging program and found quite a few duplicates and books we forgot we’d bought. At that time we had close to 7,000 books in our library. Now that the zines shipping address is my home and we need to store the books for review here before mailing out to the reviewers, we needed more space.

Paul and I have spent some time each month going through our collection and culling those that we think we can do without. Usually, a couple of hours nets us 3-4 books pulled out for sale. The problem is that we pick a shelf and start to go over the books and we reminisce about the book in our hand: when we read it, what was happening in our life at the time, what it meant to us, and so on. It’s hard to give up a friend. The easiest books to cull are the ones we read because everyone else was, and it wasn’t our taste anyway, but we didn’t want to talk about it without reading it first. Also, the reference books that are outdated and we have another recent copy anyway. And books by authors that were trendy, the story was good but we won’t reread it.

The books we’re saving are the ones with too many memories attached to let go right now. The books that changed our lives when we read them, because they spoke to something deep inside. I have two shelves of books that I call my comfort shelf. These books are the ones that I reread. Usually, I reread them when I’m feeling really crappy and I need some good wholesome stories of people doing the right thing because it’s the right thing. The characters get hurt, frightened, and scared but they keep going because they know that is what needs to be done. It perks me up when there aren’t enough spoons in the state to get me moving or keep me moving for the day. I’ve read them so often that I know them nearly by heart. Those authors (Steve Miller, Sharon Lee, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jane Austen, Jim Butcher, and Charles deLint) have kept me going through some pretty dark times. But isn’t that what books are for?

I remember as a child, growing up in a very small town in Maine, books were a window to a world that I thought I’d never see in any other way. TV didn’t come into our home until my early teens and by then I was an avid reader — reading before I got to school. I’ve found that books can supply comfort, advice, knowledge, guides to learning new skills, excitement, adventure, and much more. A library is a way to have the world at your finger tips. Whenever, I want to learn something new my first impulse is to find a book about it.

We may never pare down our library to be a “reasonable” size. I don’t know how to let go of these friends who have shared my life. They may be just paper and print, but nevertheless, books have been there for me whenever I needed them. There are so many good memories of the ones I’ve read. And so many possibilities in the shelves of the ones I have yet to read. So meanwhile, we’ll cull the ones that haven’t managed to touch our hearts or fill that space where the books that might be useful references someday get stored. (I doubt I’m the only person that goes to the reference shelf to look up one thing and next thing I know it’s hours later and I can’t even guess how I got from the subject I was looking for to where I was when I realized my butt is numb from sitting on the floor.)

How big is your library? And, how do you keep it under control? How do you store it?

Got to thinking again… In some correspondence with one of our reviewers, she wrote, “I guess I’ll work on reading that book–as if that’s really working.” Just the other day another person said, “I have a hard time sitting and reading a book for review because I feel like I’m not working.” Over the last few days, as we gear up to go live with the next issues of SFRevu and Gumshoe Review, I look at the steadily decreasing pile of books I’ve yet to read for the issue and every time I think, “why not just take a break and read for an hour” I think of the other stuff I have to do and I put it off.

Reading books for review is just one of the things I do in getting the zines together and online. It’s part of the process.  If I, along with others, don’t read the books and write reviews there will be no content — so the reading is fundamental (and like the poster I found on Amazon shows it’s also fun). Reading has always been fun for me. It’s what I do to relax. The perfect vacation for me would be to be able to hike to a nice place with a view, a snack, no mosquitoes or other attack bugs, and a good book. As I get older, this dream sort of includes proper seating or lounging to avoid back problems. But, the basic fact is I’ve always considered reading fun.

Now, I’ll also admit I come from a family of readers. Even my grandmother read, though she had to quit school about grade three to care for her younger brothers and sisters (Nana died a couple of years ago at age 100ish). I was also very lucky to have excellent English teachers who didn’t do the “what color coat did CharacterX wear in Chapter 3”. No, instead they talked of plot, theme, and character development. In high school, many of us talked about the books we read in class during lunch or after school — that’s how great the teachers made reading. In college, I learned that others hadn’t been so lucky and reading was a chore for them. I’ve never forgotten a woman with a college degree that I worked with, who when I asked at lunch one day if anyone had read a good book lately said, “I don’t read anymore. I got my degree, I don’t have to do that again.”

I can’t imagine a life without books. Books are escapes. Books can take you on visits to other places, other times, and other worlds. They are gateways to new thoughts, ideas, and philosophies. Whenever I have a task I’m not sure how to do, I turn to books. The public library has to be the best institution of civilized society.

But because I enjoy reading so much, when I read books as work it feels like cheating. You know reading a novel behind an open textbook, reading under the covers, reading at work when your supposed to be doing something else. Now my job is to read. How do you convince yourself that it’s okay to curl up with a book during work time? It is work, but it’s so entertaining — it just feels weird somehow.

You may have heard by now that Arthur C. Clarke, the author of over 100 books of science and science fiction has died. Once of his best know works is 2001: A Space Odyssey though most people probably know it from the movie rather than the book. I read the book years and years ago but strangely we just watched the DVD a while ago along with 2010: The Year We Make Contact (I love the aero-braking scene).

I’m a very visual reader and see the scenes as I read them. So, often I can’t remember if I saw something in a movie or read it. These two movies, 2001 and 2010, were filled with amazing visuals of space. I think it was reading so much SF when I was younger that got me interested in the sciences and space. I’m sure he has influenced many of his readers to learn more about physics, chemistry, space travel, communications, and many other fields.

I’ve never met him at a convention just seen videos and podcasts but I feel in some ways that I’ve lost a friend because he’s had such an influence on my life and my reading.

He’ll be missed.