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Once again this year I attended the annual Writers and Illustrators of the Future Awards Ceremony in Hollywood, California, again at the Roosevelt Hotel; this despite last year’s editorial on the subject, which was thought but some a tad too snarky. Still, I received my invitation and I accepted and I was even seated in the third row, next to Amelia Beamer and Gary Wolfe (attending for Locus Magazine), right behind the first row of contest judges (Kevin J. Anderson, K.D. Wentworth, Tim Powers, et al) and the second row of TV actors (none of whose names, alas, I caught, but who I gathered were familiar to many in the audience) who, over the course of the evening, got up one by one to do their duties handing out the trophies to the various quarterly writer and illustrator winners.

The event was very similar to last year’s, conducted to a polished level of Hollywood professionalism (and hyperbole) unmatched by any other science fiction awards ceremony — as noted by Mike Resnick, one of the newest contest judges, in his turn as an award presenter. The ceremony was somewhat tighter than last year’s, with the choreographed photo ops for each winner shortened, and with only a single featured speaker. This year it was June Scobee Rodgers, widow of space shuttle Challenger pilot Dick Scobee, who has subsequently made a career of promoting the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, which provides simulators for various kinds of space missions to students. Her speech, though obviously rehearsed and refined in many deliveries, was nevertheless heartfelt, and moving.

Following her speech, there was a special presentation from a representative of the Cultural Affairs Department of the United Arab Emirates (actually he was described as being from Dubai, and he was sitting right next to Amelia at the end of the third row) to honor the legacy of L. Ron Hubbard and continuing Writers/Illustrators of the Future Contest. A grand trophy was passed and accepted.

And then the many quarterly winners of the contests were announced, each marching up to the stage to accept and thank the judges, their family supporters, the previous week’s workshop, and in most cases, L. Ron Hubbard. Each pair of writer/illustrator winners was presented by a different pair of presenters, usually a writer judge and an illustrator judge, but sometimes including one of the aforementioned Hollywood actors sitting in the second row.

The Gold Award Winners — not previously revealed, and chosen from the four quarterly winners of the respective contests — were writer Laurie Tom, author of the story “Living Rooms”, and illustrator Seth J. Rowanwood, who in the anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVI illustrates Jason Fischer’s story “The House of Nameless”. (The illustrators, it’s worth mentioning, do twice the work, in a sense, as the writers — first they submit samples for judging, and once they win or place, are assigned to illustrate one of the winning stories, which illustrations appear in the anthology. The writers are judged on the stories that appear in the anthology.)

The final event was the announcement by editor Kevin J. Anderson of a special hardcover anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: The First 25 Years, which includes a selection of stories and detailed profiles of all the judges from the past quarter century.

Then followed the reception, where stacks of the paperback WotF Vol. XXVI were available for free and a table of the hardcover WotF: The First 25 Years were available for purchase, with all the writer and illustrator winners stationed around the room for signatures.

I moseyed about, chatting with Gary and Amelia and with Dani and Eytan Kollin, brother authors of The Unincorporated Man its sequels, who were interviewed by Amelia and Gary the day before for eventual publication in Locus Magazine. I had not met either of them (nor, I must admit, have I read their books, but then, see previous blog entry), but in person they are personable and striking (and different) and I look forward to reading their interview.

A final comment – the video presentation about the influence of the past quarter century of contests, with interviews of various winners, was impressive for the number of recognizable big names who have association with the contest — Nnedi Okorafor, Scott Nicholson, Carl Frederick, Dave Wolverton, and on and on… but wait, Nnedi Okorafor? She was a winner? That must have slipped my memory. So, just now as I was writing this, I checked the database — here is the list of Writer and Illustrator Grand Prize winners — and upon further investigation (I had to dig out my copy of the LRH presents WotF Vol. XVIII) discovered that Nnedi Okorafor was a “published finalist” in that anthology, for a story that didn’t actually place 1st or 2nd or 3rd in any quarter of that year’s contest, much less win a Grand Prize….

So — the video was a valid representation of the impact these contests have had on writers, and illustrators, over these many years, and it was indeed impressive. Judging from those interviews, and comments from the winners who accepted their awards this Saturday evening, the week-long workshop with the various big name authors and artists was as influential on their motivations and future careers as was winning the contest itself. At the same time — there is that element of Hollywood and hyperbole in the whole contest presentation, of, as they describe it, the most influential writing contest in the history of science fiction.

I’m a teensy bit surprised, even given the low feedback to anything posted on the website (which is a good thing, I try to think), that there’s been no comment yet about Gary Westfahl’s essay posted yesterday morning, Notes from a Mixed Marriage, Or, The Lady and the Monster, which is all about a sci fi guy living with a non-sci fi partner. I would think this is not an uncommon situation.

My own situation is similar enough that I empathized with Gary’s essay, even as I noted that Gary (being for this website a film reviewer) focused his essay on film, and not at all on books, or the activity of reading. My own situation has analogous issues, but more related to books and reading than to seeing movies. I try not to think of myself as especially disadvantaged; I must reasonably assume that every relationship has issues of preferences and priorities that, to some degree, are worked out sufficiently well to maintain the health of the relationship…

Yet I still have this abiding curiosity about how other ‘mixed’ relationships do manage this. In my own case, my partner is not a book person at all, and has been given to opine, over the past 9 years, that reading is something only young people or single people do; that people in relationships do things together, like going on trips, going out to shows or restaurants, or doing pretty much anything as long as it’s together; reading, being a solitary activity, is essentially a selfish, self-indulgent thing to do.

That has been the ongoing issue in our relationship, which is why I spend more hours per week watching whatever happens to be on the Food Channel, or watching Dancing with the Stars, than in reading any kind of book. If I find time to read, it is in the interstices of our mutual schedules, and is in inverse relation to however much time I put in on the website (which consequently, lately, has been very little). I’m not completely happy about this, but I try to work around it as best I can, and I recognize it is as the cost of maintaining this particular relationship. And the cost of doing some small service to the SF community, at the expense of actually participating in it in the sense of reading the books that are its reason for existence. We have friends, I should say, but not book friends; I don’t have much interaction with SF people except for attending con’s once or twice a year.

Still, I expect this will change presently; the current website upgrade activity will level off to some new plateau, I expect within a few months, and I’ll work my way back to my pursuing my appetite for reading, ideally attaining, at least for a time, my ideal of 100pages/day that I was maintaining a couple years ago. I have this huge stack of books waiting to be read. I know everyone says this, but I bet my stack is larger than yours.

As I work various enhancements and expansions to the Awards Index site, and comparing the design and layout to various other prominent awards sites, I can’t help but noticing that the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards is seldom linked from other sites. It doesn’t seem to have much of a profile, or presence. I visit both the Hugo Awards site and the Nebula Awards site, for example, and notice, most obviously, that neither site has indexes to nominees; there is no way I can look up Connie Willis, or Neil Gaiman, and find out how many nominations or wins they have for those respective awards. You would have to search through the annual listings and tabulate them manually. Whereas the Locus Index to etc. has had such nominee indexes for a decade now. One might think proprietors of those other sites might have noticed. Apparently not. (Yet they do link to a couple other SF awards sites, which similarly lack indexing.)

Is this an issue of branding? Does the “Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards” sound too much like merely an index to the Locus Awards?

I am thinking in the direction of renaming/rebranding/re-URLing the awards index. Or is something else going on that such changes would not address? Comments welcome.

The Locus Index to SF Awards is just past its 10th anniversary online, I just noticed, as I finished the latest update and started uploading files. The first posting was quite modest — only the 10 or so ‘major awards’. It’s expanded over the years, and of course I’ve been planning to expand it even further almost since the beginning, as longtime attentive readers of this blog will recall. At the risk of repeating unfulfilled promises, I really do still plan to implement those expansions, and I’m more confidant in the near-term prospect of doing so by the recent success in managing to updat the main Locus Online site on a regular, daily basis. (In part, that has to do simply with project management tricks of breaking big tasks into teeny-weeny tasks, planning to do at least some task *every day*, and setting up a system to take credit for each and every task in a positive-feedback, self-reinforcing loop.)

On the other hand, I’m not sure that I’ll ever produce a version on CD ROM, as advertised on the Awards Index homepage. Bill Contento does this with his Locus Index to Science Fiction, and he sells a handful of copies a year (so far as I can gather), but then he doesn’t post the entire index online for free, as I still do with the awards index…

Thanks to those who commented on the previous post. At my day job for a certain large aerospace concern (not the same one as a few years ago; same company, but different corporate owner), we are constantly reminded that our purpose in life is to please — actually the word is ‘delight’ — our customers. So: you are my customers, and I will listen to what you have to say.

So then; a reading of the comments to the previous post suggests that there is no solution that will please everyone. I had thought (Antiqueight) that I was *helping* by bringing Locus Online’s coverage of online publications to the same level as print publications; thus a Monitor page formatted in exact parallel with the long-standing ‘Other [print] Magazines’ page. If I put the word magazine in quotes (Antiqueight and Mishell), it’s because I think like a mathematician (which I am by training), or a lawyer, and was experimenting with precise, workable definitions of that particular word.

It’s not about reviews (Rachel); it’s not about deprecating online magazines compared to print magazines (again, I thought I was helping; Chris and Heather, how did this become a slam against technology??); splits between fiction/nonfiction (Dave) or periodicity (C.E.) or free vs not-free (steve) have too many exceptions or complications.

The one obvious distinction I thought was reasonable (Fred, mkb and SMD), print vs electronic, caused the reaction in the first place; like “separate but equal”, it is apparently not a workable solution.

(I will note a couple points of reference: Locus Magazine’s “Magazines Received” listings do not distinguish between periodicity, or among professional status; and neither do they include electronic publications. Also, last time I checked, Bill Contento’s Locus Index to SF (and his Index to Magazines) does not index electronic publications.

I’ll also note that, all along, Locus Online’s Directory pages for ‘Magazines’ (e.g. 2010 Magazines) has included references to online publications reviewed in the magazine by Rich and Gardner, and online by Lois. Actually, this was a gap in my proposed ‘Other Websites’ setup, since I’d implemented this in a separate database that didn’t synch with the Magazines database and directory pages. (I would have synched them up eventually.))

So for now… I will not split the baby, along any division. I will post a single page each week listing all new print and online publications of any type, format, and venue, that come to my attention, actively or passively, and I will be very careful not imply that anything is or is not a ‘magazine’.

(Again — sorry to belabor this — where to draw the line? Is Tor.com or io9 a ‘magazine’? [Tor.com ranked 3rd in the Locus Poll for 'Best Magazine'.] I once opined that websites that updated in a periodic ‘issue’ format were holdovers from a prior mode of expression — like early movies that were merely filmed versions of staged plays — but obviously I was wrong. The issue paradigm is alive and well, perhaps as a convenience to readers, who need check a particular publication only monthly, or whatever the frequency is, whereas sites that update daily demand more attention… So, is everything online a magazine? [Slate calls itself a "daily magazine on the Web".] Where is the line between magazine and blog and mere website? I guess I will be careful not to go there.)

I have now reset last week’s ‘Other Websites’ page to this new template, at Magazines & Websites, mid July 2010, with some additional specs for format (more than just print vs online) and frequency, and some enlarged logos.

Finally.. should I reconsider Locus Online’s subtitle, at the top of every page since the redesign a year or so ago? That is, “The Website of The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field”..? Does this make a distinction that is misleading, if not obsolete?

I’ve gotten a bit of feedback on the revived Other Websites Monitor page (once posted as a monthly ‘E-Publications’ page), which raises the question of whether or not online ‘magazines’, such as Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Clarkesworld, et al, shouldn’t be listed with the print magazines like Asimov’s and F&SF, on the Other Magazines pages. There is apparently this lingering perception that online magazines don’t get the respect that print magazines do… a situation which I, as proprietor of the online counterpart to a print magazine whose editors are regularly showered with Hugo Awards, can’t say I’m unaware of.

So let me put the question to readers of Locus Online. The intent of the various ‘Monitor’ pages, for new books and magazines, paperback reprints and reprints of classic material, has always been to alert readers of what’s newly available that they should be aware of, in as timely a manner as possible. Covering web content has been an unfortunate omission now for several years, due to my own inability to keep up [there's no one here but me, running this website], but now that I’m able to resume that coverage, the issue of where to draw the lines between departments has arisen.

So, readers, what makes more sense to you? Include periodical web ‘magazines’ on the same page with print magazines? And put blog-style websites on a separate page? Or, say, have one page for all print/online publications providing fiction, and another page for all those providing nonfiction and reviews and whatnot? (And on which of those would Tor.com go? Both?) Or… simply put all print and online publications on a single, weekly, page?

Let me know your ideas.

Over the past month now I’ve gradually managed to bring the website ‘up to speed’, in the sense that I’ve always thought it should be: something substantial posted every day; more frequent updates of new books and magazines; better reaction and response to incoming emails (my inbox now has no more than a couple dozen items left at the end of each day, rather than hundreds of stale, unread and unanswered items).

This is due to a synchronicity of events: Locus HQ is supplying more content (sample reviews, and ‘spotlight’ interviews yet to be posted) for the website; Locus HQ’s taking over of News posts this past year has relieved me of a considerable burden (though I still do them once in a while, on weekends, which they all take off); my workplace has gradually eased off on website access during the day (though certain domains, e.g. anything on blogspot such as Matt Cheney’s blog, are intermittently blocked); I’ve found better, more effective ways of tracking scheduled tasks and dispositioning them each day; and, frankly, my focus on health over the past couple years, diet and exercise and supplements, has recently had beneficial consequences in terms of focus and energy in a sense that only my partner, doctor, and trainer can fully appreciate. (This may be TMI.)

The next step is that I’m reviving the website’s periodic ‘Monitor’ page devoted to what’s on other websites, in counterpart to the ‘other magazines’ page; I did such pages for a couple years back in the 2001-2003 time period, as ‘E-Publications’, the last post being May 2003. The new posts will be called ‘Other Websites’ and should be posted weekly. That’s the plan. Most of the first post is ready, and you will see it tomorrow, Friday 7/23. In conjunction with that, I’m checking for currency the links on the Links Portal page, which I haven’t done for a couple years, and consolidating there links to newer sites that so far have only been listed in Blinks.

One area not yet ‘up to speed’ is this personal blog — since, as everyone knows, the ideal blog should have something posted every day. Do I have anything to say worth posting every day, that people out there would want to read every day? Well, perhaps the former, and the latter doesn’t seem to bother many bloggers out there. We’ll see; that will be next.

I spent this past weekend in Palm Springs (for a complex series of reasons that involved not going to the Locus Awards in Seattle). It was hot. –Though not too hot. We lounged by the pool, took in the sun, lunched al fresco, trolled the night hours, met Tom Bianchi, and took an architecture tour. It’s a fascinating story: the hot, dry oasis 100 miles east of Los Angeles, nestled to the west and south by high mountains and serviced by an aquifer to keep all those golf courses green, the city grew gradually since the early 20th century, and was in the post-WWII era a haven for modernist architects such as Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, and John Lautner. At the same time the city was a refuge for Hollywood stars — under contract not to weekend more than 100 miles from Hollywood — who built vacation or retirement homes there, with lots of money to spend to hire those forward-thinking architects. Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, dozens of others. We took the van tour and saw many of those, though just as fascinating was the historical aspect of the ‘Alexanders’, homes built by the Alexander brothers to modernist principles but using standard floor plans in variations in what quickly came to be called ‘tract’ housing — without having researched it beyond what I heard on this tour, the very concept of tract housing, so familiar to me in the Los Angeles suburbs where I grew up, was virtually invented then, and there. (This website has a nice graphic on the left illustrating the variations on the basic principles of the Alexanders, running left to right or vice versa: garage, breezeway, windows, wall.)

I dwell on this here because of the futuristic aspect of Palm Springs architecture — it was a breaking ground for new principles, and many of the homes, 50 years on, still look futuristic and spacey — such as the Ship of the Desert and the House of Tomorrow (better known as Elvis Presley’s Palm Springs hideaway). There’s an early-space age, Jetsons feel to the experience.

Meanwhile, work continues on the website for an update to the awards index this summer, in addition to the now standard daily updates. (I managed to set up four days of posts, Thursday’s through Sunday’s, Thursday evening before the trip — sample reviews and interview excerpts — requiring only brief edits to the homepage to activate while away from home. Now that I’m back, more work-intensive posts will follow this week, including new in paperback, classic reprints, and the end-of-June new books page.)

Like most people, I suspect, who work on computers and who deal with sending and receiving e-mail as part of their jobs and daily lives, I seem to work in a perpetual state of backlog. I’m always behind. There are always dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails in the inbox awaiting attention; there are always more listings to compile for the website, more reviews to post, more enhancements to install, more data to compile for the indexes.

Yet somehow, without having taken any particular action or made any particular resolution to do so, I have over the past weeks burned down the backlog in my inbox and, in the past few days, not once, not twice, but three days in a row have seen the very bottom of that inbox. The brilliant whiteness of the empty screen. This is such a rare event, I felt compelled to note it in this public manner.

At the same time, over the past two weeks, I’ve managed to maintain what I’ve always felt was an ideal standard for a website like Locus Online: to post something substantial every single day (with the possible exceptions of Sundays, a traditional day off). As with the inbox burndown, I mention this in a knock-wood manner; it is as if to mention it is to risk jinxing it. So we’ll see how long I can maintain.

The weekend before last my partner and I attended his elder son Jimmy’s graduation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specifically the Business College there. We flew in to Chicago and spent a night or two there both before and after driving down to Champaign for the graduation, a typically sententious event that included a lengthy reading and presenting of graduates, many of which exhibited Chinese ancestry. After the event we, the extended family, did a walking tour of the campus, which is remarkably spread out. I did keep an eye out for any sort of plaque commemorating HAL, but did not spot anything. Though I didn’t look terribly hard.

Both before and after our jaunt to Champaign, we met up with Gary Wolfe, Locus critic and seasoned Chicago resident, who guided us to worthy eateries (Les Nomades; the original Morton’s) and more importantly provided a contact, via his stepson Rob, for Jimmy’s search for an apartment near Chicago’s downtown Loop, where he’d just the week before gotten a job at the Chicago Exchange. That worked out very well — by the time we’d flown back to LA on Monday, Rob and Jimmy had met and found Jimmy an apartment north of downtown in the Lakeview area. We are now eagerly anticipating the millions he’ll earn as a trader.

This most recent past weekend was another family gathering here in LA, with Jimmy taking a break before starting his job, flying to LA with friends on their way to Las Vegas, and younger son Michael returning for the summer from U of Maryland. We lunched at Paradise Cove in Malibu.

All of which is mentioned in part to explain, if not excuse, the usual backlog on the website — yes, yes, New Books listings are a bit late, Classic Reprints are way way late, sample reviews from the magazine have been neglected for several months, and let’s not mention the awards index and its expansions. I never forget these things, and they will be worked. (In my defense, the rebuilding of Locus Online blogs in WordPress was another big hit to my ideal schedule, but still.)