Category Archives: Uncategorized

It would have been more fun to say Lost Lost, but it didn’t. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve watched any TV series with regularity, but since I followed at least a couple this past year — Six Feet Under, Queer as Folk, and Lost, which I finished watching on DVD this weekend — I tuned in the Emmy Awards last night to if anyone won from those shows. (No, William Shatner performing the old Star Trek theme was not a draw.)

What’s striking about the win of Lost as best dramatic series is that… I think this is the first time that the dramatic series Emmy Award Winner has been even remotely SF or fantasy. (I’m still dubious about Lost’s credentials here, but I’m hopeful.) A glance through the Emmy database http://www.emmys.org/awards/awardsearch.php (select drama series under category) shows recent winners The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Practice… etc etc.. Northern Exposure? Did that have supernatural elements? (I never saw it). Way back in the ’60s, Mission: Impossible won a couple times, and though not SF, it had its outre elements, in a James Bond sort of way. It won the same two years the original Star Trek was nominated; more recent nominated series with SF flavors include The X-Files, Quantum Leap, ST TNG, Twin Peaks, and Beauty and the Beast. But none of them won.

I haven’t looked at any of the Lost fan sites, with their endless speculation about the meaning of the monster, the Others, and the hatch, but I think it would be cool if the hatch revealed that the whole island was in fact a ship…

UPDATE early evening — Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For Your, has this interesting post about the attraction of the series.

The genius of Lost is that its mysteries are fractal: at every scale — from the macro to the micro — the series delivers a consistent payload of confusion. There are the biographical riddles: why was the beautiful Kate accompanied by a federal marshal on the flight? There are geographic riddles (“why have the rescue teams missed the island, and why does it appear to have a history of attracting castaways?”) and historical ones (“why has that SOS signal been playing for so many years?”) And then there are existential riddles: are these people even alive at all? Perhaps there were no survivors, and these characters are just ghosts haunting an island of lost souls. Or does Abrams have up his sleeve an elaborate homage to The Island Of Dr. Moreau?

I completed adding references to the 2005 Magazines Directory page last weekend — Friday, actually.

As for TV, I meant to mention that I was dazzled and moved by the finale to Six Feet Under, and that having watched the first four episodes of Lost during summer reruns, pre-ordered the DVD of the complete first season, which arrived last week… we spent a marathon Friday evening and Saturday watching the first 12 episodes, and have another 10 days to watch the remaining 12 before the 2nd seasons premiere shows on the 21st. I’m still not sure the show is SF in any fundamental way, but the vagueness of the skiffy/horror allusions (monstrous sounds in the jungle; the appearance of a polar bear on a tropical island; etc.) are more than compensated by the basic drama, in which each episode explores via flashbacks the backstory of one of the characters, giving the overall story depth, and adding intriguing new clues to the central mystery of why the airplane crashed on the island in the first place.

There’s rarely a time I don’t have an aging ‘to do’ list of items to post or infrastructure pages to update on the site. One item from that list I finished today — posting the comments from the Locus polls earlier this year, which I’d gotten permission from Locus HQ to post back in July. But the trip to Worldcon and Europe beyond, and then the resultant catch-up period following, delayed attention to that until this week. Another, even more lingering item: the Directory page for magazine issues, which I’d let lapse over a year ago. I posted that page for 2005 this evening, though in bare-bones form; it still needs gathering off-site review links, from SF Site, Tangent Online, etc. (You’ll find that page via the drop-down under Directories on the homepage.)

Some comments on TV shows next time.

It was a strange weekend, this past weekend, with Monday a holiday; for 15 years or more I’ve always been away at Worldcon over this weekend, which usually overlaps my birthday (on August 30), so that casual friends have gotten used to never thinking about my birthday, since I’m never around when it happens. It’s just as well; I’m not a party person.

A couple quick notes — I’ve gotten absolutely no feedback, for or against, about the little javascript drop-down menus I installed on the homepage last week. I think they’re pretty cool, and might add them in a couple other places, unless I hear some reason not to.

As for Katrina, beyond the posts I’ve already done, I expect nothing more. It’s being handled better by others. I did have a submission by one of my contributors on the subject, over the weekend, until he decided to withdraw it. It may morph into something else.

More later.

Today’s tweak of the homepage design is to add javascript drop-down menus to the archive headings at the top of the center pane of the homepage; instead of just reaching the archive pages by clicking on the headings, if you hover over them — or actually, hover over the downward pointing chevrons next to them — little drop-down menus appear containing links to the latest, or most important recent, items within that section.

As usual with such newer technology, older browsers may not support it, but I think the only negative consequence of this implementation is that older browsers would simply not display the drop-down menus… the links to the archive pages would still be valid. As always, if you or any of your team notice any problems or unforeseen negative consequences, you’re urged to notify the webmaster …

Will not get the issue pages posted until tomorrow, and may do so in the context of a design tweak to the homepage. More as time permits.

OK, so I spent a little while last night and this morning setting up a page of last year’s book cover images, arranged by artist — which I’ve posted here (warning! big page! may be slow to load; has 389 cover graphics).

The page has only covers for books I personally saw and listed on the site (and whose cover artists were credited), thus is light on UK and Australian books. For 2005, it should be easy enough to gather cover artist info on such books from the listings in Locus Magazine. I’ll also include magazine covers on the 2005 list. And perhaps split the page up somehow.

I note that four of the 2005 Hugo nominated best artists — Jim Burns, Bob Eggleton, Donato Giancola, and John Picacio — all have at least a handful of items on this page, while the fifth, Kelly Freas, does not. Checking my magazine database, I don’t see a 2004 Freas cover there either. Hmm. It’s easy to understand why he was nominated, but I wonder if some sort of minimum qualifications analogous to those for other categories — say, at least 4 book or magazine covers within the eligibility year — would be appropriate. Or perhaps there is such a rule and I’m just missing the relevant covers.

UPDATE late afternoon — I corrected some variant and mis-spellings of artist names and regenerated the page.

Also, I ran a little group query to see, based on this set of data (which I grant is far from complete), which artists have the most book covers.

16: Stephen Youll
11: John Picacio (H)
11: Bob Eggleton (H)
10: Michael Whelan
9: Les Edwards/Edward Miller
8: Paul Youll
7: Steve Stone
7: Dave Seeley
7: Scott Grimando
7: Tom Kidd
7: Cliff Nielsen
7: Stephan Martiniere
7: Donato Giancola (H)
6: Stephen Hickman
6: John Harris
6: John Jude Palencar
6: Jim Burns H
(0): Kelly Freas (H)

Where the H’s indicate Hugo nominees and the winner.

I have in mind two lists to compile at the end of this year, for possible use in Hugo nominating and voting. First, since I have always documented the cover artist in the new book listings for Locus Online, and that data is all gathered in a single database, it will be simple to assemble a selection of cover images for those artists most active producing cover art during the calendar year 2005. The Hugo category of ‘best artist’ has, by its nature, relied on voters’ impressions of the various artists work in general, since there’s been no handy way of judging various artists’ works from within each eligibility year; compiling images of works from within a single year is a function that a website can easily serve.

Second, I’ll start reporting the editors responsible for individual books, in the weekly New Books listings, when that information is available — to begin with, those Tor books that list the editor on their copyright pages. Again, I’ll compile a list by editor at the end of the year. And I’ll explore the feasibility of gathering such data from other publishers.

Among Ellen Datlow’s photos from Glasgow is this one of my partner and me on The Tall Ship in Glasgow, site of the HarperCollins party, where guests were handed small bags with pirate paraphernalia — eyepatches and sashes. I wore the eyepatch for a while, but couldn’t see well with it on (especially climbing and descending those steep stair/ladders). Yeong tied his sash around his head, samurai style, and looks pretty good. The sun was in my eyes.

As of last night’s New Books page, I’ve re-instated links to BookSense, the network of independent booksellers, which I suspended a few months ago when I realized that, after a couple years of posting them, I’d never gotten any kind of feedback from BookSense, let alone commissions. (The Amazon links throughout the site do provide a few cents commission for each purchase made through them.) Some feedback from independent bookstore owners — who contribute to Locus Magazine’s monthly bestseller list — has led me to re-instate the BookSense links, even though BookSense itself reports absolutely no purchase activity through the previous links. So… if anyone does use the BookSense link for any book I’ve listed, and buys a book that way, please let me know. I’d like to know if the system is working.

There were some comments to my earlier post about losing the Hugo by one vote, so check them out, and my response, if you’re curious.

Finally, this passage from Entertainment Weekly‘s August 19th Fall Movie Preview issue, concerning A SOUND OF THUNDER, due in theaters September 2. It’s directed by Peter Hyams and written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Gregory Poirier… it says.

[Ben] Kingsley also likes Ray Bradbury, the science fiction titan who wrote the futuristic story Thunder is based on. You know that old adage about how a butterfly flapping its wings can change the course of history? Legend has it that its origins lie in Bradbury’s 1952 tale.

Legend?

Today my workplace was affected by the virus/worm that has been infecting Windows 2000 PCs over the past few days, causing my computer there to engage in an endless reboot cycle, until a PA announcement from our IT group told us to disconnect our computers from the network and await further instructions… which trickled down and cleared things up by mid-day. Until when I puttered, read the papers, and puttered. It’s amazing how little it seems possible to do without a computer, these days.

I don’t plan to recount my Europe vacation here, except (searching for any kind of skiffy relevance) to note that the rates for wireless connections in Amsterdam and Paris were just as exorbitant as they were in Glasgow. By Paris, I was logging on for only an hour at a time, every couple days. In contrast, my last few hotel stays in the US have provided free (if sometimes slow) wifi connections. Travels to Europe provide bracing contrasts to the occasionally stultifying and backward cultural attitudes of the US, but in this tech case, it is they who are sadly behind the times.

Still working my way through stacks of new books, magazines… and audiobooks and galleys, that I’ve been receiving more of, of late. I need to figure out a way of acknowledging and listing them on the site as well. There will be several Monitor pages of books and mags on the site by this weekend.

UPDATE on Thursday — All my credit card charges have been posted, so I can summarize actual costs of Wifi access in various cities:

Glasgow Moat House hotel, 1 week: 69 pounds = $127.02 [$.75/hour]
Dublin airport, 1 hour: $3.82
Amsterdam hotel, 1 day: 15 euros = $19.22 [$.80/hour]
Paris hotel, 1 hour: $10.24

(Of course, *everything* is expensive in Paris.)

At home, my DSL service runs $49.95/month, or about $.07/hour.