Selah (with Pictures)

I'm still recovering from holiday, which process may well be slowed down by the sore throat indicating the start of a head cold. I hope to avoid it - I'm chugging orange juice as fast as I can - but we'll see. In the meantime, I've uploaded some of the choice photos, with commentary, from our vacation to flickr - lots of good ones of people from the Masterclass, as well as some touristy ones. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone that we met. It was a fantastic trip, and we were really happy to meet so many friends, old and new.

Coming home has been a bit of a shock. After two weeks of mostly British accents, which I tend to interpret as 'educated' and 'refined,' people with strong Texas accents set my teeth on edge (especially when they're talking and giggling loudly about bodily functions, as the people sharing the shuttle to the airport parking lot were - I just wanted to smack them). They sound uncouth in comparison. We had a similar experience on the bus tours after the Masterclass - hearing Americans after spending time in a majority British crowd was jarring. However, we took some comfort in the fact that the couple acting most like stereotypical 'ugly Americans' were in fact Australians living in Ireland.

However, as you can see in the photo below, we are well and truly back home now.
On the left is Dodger, our Pit Bull-Dalmatian mix (70 lbs), and right is Hazel, possibly Pharoh Hound and Terrier (50 lbs). I promise not to go overboard on cute dog pictures, but I know I mentioned these guys to several people in England, so I figured I'd show you what they actually look like.

So what's next?

Well, you can see that the name change has gone into effect. I'm going to be going for quality over quantity for the next month or so. Posts may slow down a bit, but I've got lots of ideas. Coming soon you'll see reviews of Last Colony, Halting State, and Brasyl. Tomorrow I'm planning on putting in my Hugo vote (deadline July 7th!) and I'll be posting about my choices. I need to post something about the current gender flap as well. I'll also be posting about reconsidering my short fiction reviewing philosophy in light of conversations I've had with Gary Wolfe and Niall Harrison.

I'm currently reading Heart of Darkness (finally) which shouldn't take long; it's really grabbed me. I'll be reviewing The Carhullan Army, this year's Tiptree Award winner for SFSignal, and I owe a review of Strahan's Year's Best SF & F and Hartwell & Cramer's YB Fantasy and YB Science Fiction to Niall at Strange Horizons by the end of the month.

Also, I'm embarking on a research project on Stanley G. Weinbaum, to examine his oeuvre and his place in the genre. I thought he'd be a good place to start: his writing is interesting and funny, and he died at age 33, meaning it's possible to read everything he ever wrote in a reasonable amount of time. It's basically to see if I enjoy doing this sort of thing, and to help fill up an otherwise less-than-100%-productive summer.

So there'll be lots happening here, and during all of this I'll also be experimenting with trying to improve my writing style as well. Nothing like ambitious goals! Wish me luck, and stay tuned.

Home Again

We're home, our house is standing and our own bed soon awaits us. Travel was filled with minor annoyances, but these were more than offset by a nice round of serendipity while we were waiting for our plane. As we wandered over to round up some lunch for me, we ran into Maureen Kincaid Speller and her husband Paul Kincaid, who are heading to the SFRA conference in Kansas. This made for a much better lunchtime than we'd expected.

I hope that they made their connecting flight OK, since there were some delays leaving Heathrow.


Will to stay awake is fading.... more tomorrow.

Starting to Head Home

Wow, we're flying home tomorrow. We know that we scheduled the vacation for the right length, because we're half looking forward to getting home and half sorry to be leaving so soon.

Yesterday we did fine, even with Curtis' tender ankle. (We only walked ~11,000 steps, according to his pedometer... that's light for us in London.) We rode on the London Eye, which was just as cool as everyone said it would be. Also, by doing it on a Monday our total standing-in-line time was < 30 minutes. I'm looking forward to getting home and sorting through all the pictures.

Also, we went to the science museum and totally got our geek on. It was awesome. They have a 3-D IMAX film about the International Space Station (for which Curtis does systems engineering) that you have to see if you're there. It honestly brought tears to my eyes, it's such an amazing thing. The museum also has one of the Apollo capsules, and the display pointed out that at its peak, NASA spending was 5% of the USA federal budget. I can't even imagine what we could do if we had that kind of money now. Anyway, the whole museum was awesome, from a Cray-1 computer, to an early Random Number generator, to glass-blown Klein bottles, to space suits, to V-2 & V-1 rockets. It was a moving experience for the part of me that studied Physics and engineering.

A note that I forgot about on Saturday: seeing The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe Theatre was awesome. We had the standing room tickets, and we got to stand in the pit that was inside the stage. Best £10 we ever spent. Basically there were walkways extending out from the stage surrounding the pit, and we got to stand inside them, so that sometimes the actors were all around us. Seeing it live, with all the accents, timing, music, and stagecraft, reminds me of why Shakespeare is so great. It's never as good when you're just reading the words on the page. Seeing it performed brings it all to life, and the cast did a fantastic job.

So tomorrow we're flying home. The next post from me should be written in Texas once more, on Thursday, since Wednesday will be devoted to flying. It's been a wonderful vacation, and I've got a lot to think about.

The Good and The Bad

The Good: a lovely day strolling around Oxford with Niall Harrison, followed by relaxing & dinner with Niall and Nic Clarke.

The Bad: Doing all that without Curtis. As we left the hotel for the tube station yesterday morning, in one of those freak accidents, he sprained his ankle on some uneven pavement. He briefly tried to soldier on, but we decided to get him back to the hotel. He spent the day with his foot up, occasionally limping out to get more ice from the hotel bar. I left him with water & juice, chips, a laptop, DVD player, and Ibuprofen, so it wasn't an entirely miserable day. And he got to watch the final match of the Euro Cup football (soccer) tournament, which was apparently most excellent.

Back to Oxford, then. Absolutely lovely. Buildings, gardens, places I'd only heard of before, places where many famous people have walked. It was also a relatively sunny day, which made the gardens even nicer. I even remembered to take some pictures! (Usually that's Curtis' domain.) When I get home we'll put the best of them on Flickr.

We alternated between talking about the sights and talking about reviewing. One thing that really stood out for me was talking about the criticism done by Joanna Russ and "William Atheling, Jr." back in the day. The idea of reviewing advocacy is one I instinctively reject, but now I realize that I really shouldn't. We all do it to some extent, and it's better to do it consciously than simply to point to "stuff I like."

When I get back home (Thursday, effectively) I think I'll rename this blog "Spiral Galaxy Reviewing Laboratory" and start experimenting a bit more with ranges of approaches. I think I'll also use my $10-off ABEBooks coupon and finally track down some of those older criticism collections. So much to read, so much to write! It's exciting to have so many ideas kicking around my head.

More Buses

Yesterday was another bus tour: Stonehenge, Salsbury Cathedral & the Roman Baths at Bath. It was great to see all those places, but again it felt (inevitably) rushed. Also, I'm not sure I'd use this company again: they overbooked the tour and 4 people got left at the curb. Ouch. (Gray Line Tours)

Still, it was great to see all these places, and not to have to drive or rent a car. A couple neat (if trivial) points: Re: The Magna Carta. Those scribes were amazing. Working with quill & ink, the guy who copied out the document was writing in 6 or 8 point font, making perfectly formed letters. It's a long document, and not an excessively large sheet of vellum. He also basically perfectly justified the edges. Frankly, it's hard to make that sort of thing look good using Microsoft, much less doing it by hand. I doff my cap to that anonymous scribe.

Also, a nice feature on the audio tour at the Roman Baths: They have commentary by Bill Bryson, one of my favorite non-fiction authors. He helps give some perspective the sights you see, giving some context and generally encouraging you to go "Ohhh, Ahhhh" I appreciated his bits more than the official ones, frankly. And I can't help but agree with him: especially on a slightly drizzly day, I just wish I could have actually taken a lounge in the pleasantly warm Baths.

Today is Central London day - we're going to be off to St. Paul's, then some wandering as the whim strikes us, culminating in seeing "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. Tomorrow it should be off to Oxford to spend a day with the esteemed Niall Harrison of Strange Horizons and Torque Control fame.

We've got 4 more days here including today; we fly back on Wednesday. I have to say that I'm starting to hit the point where I long for my own bed and to see our dogs again, but I'm also glad that we've got the time to do so much. Hopefully 2 weeks will turn out to be the right balance.

Vacation Notice

I'll be on vacation starting tomorrow, and I'll be back around July 4th. Blogging will be a little scarce on the ground. I'll be in London with a laptop, but I certainly don't want to be stressing out about composing posts and finding wi-fi access while I'm on vacation. I expect to check email, but replies may be delayed.

I've got some more short fiction posts scheduled, but let's just say we won't be finishing all the June magazines in June. C'est la vie. At least I managed to finish one extra thing before I turned my attention to packing: SFSignal posted my review of Marie Brennan's excellent faery story-cum-secret history Midnight Never Come.

In the meantime, the awesome picture over here (the 2007 Hugo award statue) is meant to remind y'all: The deadline to vote for the 2008 Hugos is July 7th! You can find the list of nominees over here, and you can vote online here. Don't worry if you haven't read everything on the ballot, just vote. I'm probably going to end up having read only 3/5 of the novel nominees, 4/5 if I'm lucky. The only category where I've gotten to everything so far is Best Novelette.