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Sunday, May 16th, 2010
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9:04 am
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Report from the 2010 Nebula AwardsThe Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) held its annual Nebula Awards this weekend in Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was an eventful weekend, and this is my necessarily impressionistic account of a few highlights.
I haven't been to Florida since I was in Fort Lauderdale for a few days sometime in 1979 with the Coast Guard Cutter Gallatin. I should have come back sooner—to Cocoa Beach, especially. Beautiful, and mostly empty, beaches, warm weather and lush vegetation. You can see right away why every third New Yorker lives here.
On Friday, the SWFA attendees were packed up in buses for a theoretically short trip to the NASA Causeway to watch the launch of the shuttle Atlantis (STS-132). I was sitting in the back of the bus with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) geoffrey_landis and maryturzillo, SFWA volunteer Chris Hanson and some other very friendly folks. We spent more time waiting to leave the hotel parking lot than we did enroute to the causeway. A NASA employee came aboard shortly before we departed from the parking lot and recorded everyone's name from (picture ID required). It didn't occur to me afterward that the reason was at least partially so that the dead could be identified if, in NASA-speak, "a flight anomaly occurred," and the STS or one of its components slammed into the viewing area.
We arrived at the causeway at about 11 a.m. for a 2:20 p.m. launch, and I proceeded to work on my sunburn. I would be in the hospital if it wasn't for Mary, who'd brought along sunscreen, and who had purchased a very attractive Florida ballcap for me. Geoff and Mary and I all attended Clarion together in 1985, and though we've gotten together over the years, we hadn't had a chance lately. It was nice to catch up. Not too long before launch time, I came across Jerry and Kathy Oltion, writers I knew from my Eugene days. Old home week on the causeway.
There really aren't words to describe the launch itself. It's very bright, very loud (even from 7 miles away) and it's over very fast. It was spectacular. (Images here.). As I said elsewhere, I had never seen a launch before, and this was one of the few opportunities to do so before the shuttles are retired. The causeway was thronged with people, but for a New Yorker, it was a very odd crowd: very polite and very caucasian. Imagine the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Salt Lake City.
SFWA elected its new officers last month, and the results were announced at the business meeting this weekend: John Scalzi is the new president, replacing a grateful Russell Davis; Mary Robinette Kowal (maryrobinette), the current secretary, will be the new vice president, replacing Michael Capobianco; I will replace Mary as the new secretary; Amy Sterling Casil will remain on as treasurer; Sean Williams is the new overseas regional director; and former ombudsman Lee Martindale is the new south/central regional director, replacing Paul Melko.
The award banquet and ceremony was fun in a particularly long and drawn out way. Joe Haldeman was given the Grand Master award, and gave a killer speech. A number of my friends were on the ballot this year, including Rick Bowes, saladinahmed, suricattus and kijjohnson, who won for "Spar" (if you haven't read it, click on the link and do so now—seriously).
I'm packing up my crayons this morning and heading back to New York and eleanor, who tells me the dog and cat misbehaved in my absence.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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5:29 pm
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| Saturday, April 11th, 2009
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8:56 am
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National Poetry MonthWyoming SpringBy Robert J. Howe
Post Modern
Post Cold War
Post Racial
But below the prairie grass
It is always three seconds to midnight
Living death hums busily;
the silicon pulse of circuit checks and authentication codes
Entombed in vertical graves
A malevolence of design
that holds the heartbeat of annihilation
Compress and release
The neutron flux cracks its silvery egg
Arriving in hammertime
Consciousness flayed as a stream of charged particles
Gacked from plattcave's Facebook page
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| Sunday, January 4th, 2009
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9:45 am
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| Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
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11:11 am
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The War to End All WarsOn this day and time 90 years ago, the guns fell silent in Europe, bringing to a close one of the great slaughters of the 20th century.
We remember veterans today, but for just the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, I don't think it would would be unseemly to recall the millions of people around the world who've fallen in war, in uniform or out, since the whole enterprise began.
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| Sunday, October 26th, 2008
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4:36 pm
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| Friday, October 17th, 2008
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5:51 am
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One More DayA terrific sendup of Les Misérables gacked from shelly_rae. The thing that struck me most about this is that you couldn't imagine the McCain campaign making it, or anyone making it about the McCain campaign.
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| Sunday, October 12th, 2008
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1:38 pm
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| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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7:10 am
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Photo MemeGacked from pegkerr
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.
Luckily I was at the office.
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| Saturday, December 1st, 2007
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11:46 am
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Your Cat & Other Space AliensThat's the title of maryturzillo's volume of poetry out from Van Zeno Press. Go out and buy it. Now.
In Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, Mary manages to express the complete range of human exultation and sadness in short, jewel-like paragraphs. Joe Haldeman calls her book "...a huge banquet of food for thought, as well as a display of poetic virtuosity and intense emotional complexity." The book has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
It is an amazing book.
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| Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
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11:58 am
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Things I Am Not Making UpI knew there was a new film version of Beowulf in the works, co-written by Neil Gaiman. eleanor and I had seen a preview, and my first thought was, "I don't remember so many women in the book." So I was prepared to be underwhelmed.
I almost choked on my coffee this morning, though, while reading the New York Daily News "Fall 101," a roundup of coming attractions in film and music, and found out who would be playing Grendel's mother. That devil-shaped woman is played by none other than pillow-lipped serial adopter Angelina Jolie (last seen making grief unbearably telegenic as the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in A Mighty Heart).
Having read that, I couldn't help wanting a better look at this cinematic train wreck. Imagine my childish delight when I Googled up a Los Angeles Times review and found: "Later, Grendel's mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to reestablish her dominion over the kingdom."
But Neil Gaiman is sensitive to the integrity of the original text. The LA Times piece wraps up with this:"I have no idea if this thing is going to work because it isn't done yet," Gaiman said. "But because it's so hyper-real and immersive, once you are two to three minutes in, I think it will own you for the full 90 minutes."
Gaiman is also a vocal proponent of an unrated version of "Beowulf" down the line.
Even more than nudity, Gaiman said, "I just really miss all the swearing."
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| Monday, August 27th, 2007
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7:43 am
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A Three Hour TourThe Redhead (eleanor) and I toured Governor's Island on Sunday. It had been 27 years since I'd been stationed there with the U.S. Coast Guard, and the homely government architecture brought up a lot of nostalgia.
In 1996 the Coast Guard decamped and turned the property over to New York, which is now in the process of deciding how to ruin develop it.
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| Friday, August 24th, 2007
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5:55 pm
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| Monday, May 14th, 2007
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7:40 am
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ExcrescencesFrom today's Get Fuzzy:I am bloated with steamy wondrousness. My poems are not so much written as they are excreted.
Really, I couldn't have said it better myself.
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| Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
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9:39 am
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But Will He Pimp It?The AP moved a story this morning about mckitterick's newest vehicle purchase: a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was buried in brand-new condition under the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse in 1957, and is scheduled to be unearthed June 15 as part of the Oklahoma Centennial.
The only question worth asking is what color Chris will paint the vehicle.
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| Sunday, January 14th, 2007
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12:05 pm
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| Saturday, January 6th, 2007
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4:27 pm
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Open Letter to Salon.comI wrote this to Salon a week ago, I'm posting it today in response to an entry pegkerr made about a Garrison Keillor piece in Salon.
Walter Thompson
Manager, Salon Premium
Dear Mr. Thompson:
I'm sorry to say I won't be renewing my Salon subscription in January.
I used to love Salon, but it has become the digital equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show: all opinion, all the time, very little of it informed. The editorial standard now seems to be how many letters a given piece will generate. And I have to tell you, every time I read the letters section I want to take a shower afterward. I don't know what it takes to exclude a letter from your pages, short of a death threat, but your "Editor's Choice" designation is merely an abdication of editorial responsibility.
If it was possible to support just the AP feed, War Room, Heather Havrilesky, Joe Conason, Patrick Smith, and maybe one or two others like them, I would. I can't justify underwriting the self-indulgent auto-eroticism of Garrison Keillor; the always-angry, always self-absorbed Debra J. Dickerson (who appears to be the love child of Ayelet Waldman and Anne Lamott), and Cary Tennis, who is quite possibly the last person on Earth from whom I'd seek advice.
I'm troubled that you've turned Salon into a blogger collective, in which opinion pieces, rather than reporting, now dominate the pages (including "news" stories in which the news is merely the hook upon which the writer hangs his or her disquisition). I'm troubled that so much of the content seems designed to pump up the volume on the letters page, rather than inform readers or unpack a complex issue. I'm troubled that so many pieces spotlight the trivial difficulties of relatively privileged people.
I've been watching Salon drift toward the precipice all year, and if it isn't there yet, I don't want to watch it slide over the edge.
Best Wishes,
Bob Howe
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| Sunday, December 31st, 2006
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6:01 pm
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Writing NewsThis just in: I'll be doing a fiction reading, with fiction writer and SF academic John Langan, at the Melville Gallery of Manhattan's South Street Seaport on Tuesday, January 2, as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series.
The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and complete details can be found on the NYRSF page. The series is curated by Jim Freund, host of Hour of the Wolf, broadcast on WBAI radio.
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| Thursday, December 28th, 2006
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7:16 am
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The Year in ReviewHello my little forest friends. Anyone who reads this journal knows that I've been posting infrequently. The truth is, I've been missing out on the interactive part of the LJ experience; I haven't taken much time to read my friends' journals, much less comment on them. Mostly I've been using the journal for writing news (also infrequent), which strikes me as the digital equivalent of those horrible Christmas form letters.
You know the ones I mean: they're usually from families with young kids who don't have the time to write individual letters to all their friends, so they mail out a press release (folded awkwardly into a Christmas card) about their doings, their kids' doings, and their pets' doings. The letters often come off as boastful and condescending: not only do I have a fabulous life, home, boat, child, dog, but I have far too many friends to write to them individually.
I hate those letters. Or I used to.
I have far more sympathy for the letter writers than I used to—even the ones who own boats—because whatever else those letters say, they're also saying, "I've neglected my friends and I feel guilty about it." Mea Culpa.
This past year all my friends, on LJ and off, have probably been saying, "What the hell is up with Bob? He doesn't call, he doesn't write, and all my letters are returned, marked Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."
 Well, I didn't buy a boat. Part of the reason I've been incommunicado, as many of you know, is that I've been working long hours at an absorbing, demanding and very satisfying job. I'm also in a serious relationship for the first time in a while, with the spheniscidaephile eleanor (pictured here presiding over her Christmas dinnertable). To say that I've been struggling to find the balance among work and life and relationships is a vast, drafty understatement. Even when I've had the time, a rare commodity these past nine months, I haven't had the energy to keep up with my friends. For that I'm sorry.
I'm not one for resolutions, New Year's or otherwise, but I'm going to try and make 2007 the year my friends say "What the hell is up with Bob? He's at the door again. Doesn't he have a life?!"
So you'll be hearing from me. Consider yourself warned.Writing NewsSo this is pretty gratifying: my novelette, "Do Neanderthals Know?" published in the December 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, made the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award. What this means is that ten of my fellow science fiction and fantasy writers found the story compelling enough to recommend it for the award. I've read half of the other works on the ballot in that category, and they are good, so it's pretty flattering to be included in their company.
Also in December, my short story, "Life Sentences," was reprinted in issue nine of Aeon Speculative Fiction, edited by the fabulous Marti McKenna and Bridget McKenna.
All in all a pretty good way to close out the year.
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| Friday, October 13th, 2006
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8:38 am
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Hot AirBest Day for Radio Since the LZ-129 Docked at Lakehurst: on Saturday, October 14, I will be appearing on Hour of the Wolf, hosted by Jim Freund, on WBAI 99.5 FM, from 5 to 7 a.m.
Hour of the Wolf's format will be music, conversation with Jim about speculative fiction, and a reading by the show's guest (that would be me).
If you're not in WBAI's broadcast range (the New York metropolitan area), you can listen to the show on the web.
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