links for 2007-10-12

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Hunting the Mumpsimus

While at the post office today, on a seemingly routine drop off/pick up mission for F&SF, I ran into none other than the Mumpsimus himself, Matt Cheney. Which was a bit weird, as I had something I was dropping in the mail for him. We discussed me just hand delivering it, but I had a lot of parcels and no idea where it was, and it already had Stamps.com metered postage on it (though I belatedly realized I could have canceled the postage and gotten my money back). In the end, we thought it best to just let the PO bring it by his place.

When I learned of what part of Hoboken Matt moved into, I wondered if I might run into him at the post office. Turned out to happen sooner rather than later. It went much better than my nightmare scenarios of crazed slush writers staking out the post office waiting for me near Box 3447 with a sock full of pennies.

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A Little Help, Dear Readers

Dear Blog readers,

I have a favor to ask. It’s a shameless publicity favor, but still, it should be easy enough to do. Here’s what I would like:

Please go to Amazon.com and view my Post-Apocalyptic Fiction listmania lists. On the right hand side of each list, you’ll find a box containing the text:

List Stats

Last updated: 8/27/07
Read: 352 times
YesNo 

Please vote "Yes" that you found the list helpful. (Unless you think it sucks or something.)

Basically, I just want to make my listmania lists as relevant as possible on Amazon, so that when people view or search for other post-apocalyptic material, my listmania lists might come up, and thus might draw some additional attention to Wastelands.

That’s all, thanks!

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links for 2007-10-11

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links for 2007-10-10

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More on King & Short Fiction

In a LJ comment, in response to some of the discussions about Stephen King’s essay about short fiction that I linked to, J. T. Glover said:

I think it’s a little bizarre to suggest that Stephen King is unaware of F/SF/H short fiction markets. No, he doesn’t know about every last little one of them, but he has published in plenty of them, and I’ve read endorsements of some of them by him over the years. I would assume his non-mentioning of these markets is an… understated… comment on his part of their popularity among and importance to the general population of readers.

I agree that it’s a bit bizarre to suggest that; King certainly knows all about genre markets. He’s published in F&SF a number of times, and once (a few years ago) called it "the best fiction magazine in America." He also reprinted a story from F&SF in BASS (and listed four others on the 100 distinguished list), so obviously he’s aware of genre magazines.

Flipping through the back of BASS, where it lists the addresses for magazines publishing short stories (which I assume to be their "magazines received and considered" section), I did notice that while F&SF was listed, Asimov’s, Analog, and Realms of Fantasy were not. I didn’t comb through it looking for other genre magazines, but if F&SF is the only genre magazine BASS considered, that’s curious.

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Unmitigated love for the July 2007 issue of F&SF

On the F&SF message board, DannyLTK said:

The July 2007 issue of F&SF is the best of any SF magazines I have ever read. Not only did I not feel the urge to skip a story, every story in fact was hugely entertaining. I would like to say something like "Well done and keep doing this" but since this is a next-to-impossible feat, I’ll just settle for "Thanks for filling a few hours of my life with some white-hot reading frenzy".

Wow. Now that’s the kind of feedback we like to hear!

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links for 2007-10-09

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What I Watch on TV

SF Signal asks: What do you watch on TV?

Okay, well, I watch a lot of TV.

Here’s a list of shows that I regularly watch (in no particular order):

  • Survivor
  • The Amazing Race
  • Rescue Me
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Lost
  • Friday Night Lights
  • The Shield
  • The Colbert Report
  • The Daily Show
  • 30 Rock
  • The Office
  • Beauty and the Geek
  • Family Guy
  • The Simpsons
  • ER
  • Jericho
  • Engineering an Empire
  • Digging for the Truth
  • Ancient Discoveries
  • Lost Worlds
  • Robot Chicken
  • Mythbusters
  • Entourage
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm
  • The Wire
  • Big Love
  • Flight of the Conchords
  • John From Cincinnati
  • Extras
  • Brotherhood
  • Dexter
  • Weeds
  • Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
  • Oakland Raiders football
  • Orlando Magic basketball

Additionally, here are the new shows I’ve watched and am currently watching, but am unsure if they’ll remain in the rotation until I view more episodes:

  • Pushing Daisies
  • Chuck
  • Reaper
  • Journeyman

There’s also a few new shows that I’ve Tivoed but haven’t watched yet, so there might be yet even more to add to the big list. (Incidentally, all of this stuff is time-shifted–I record everything on one of my DVRs to watch when I want to, and skip past commercials.)

I’ve purposely not listed shows that are no longer on the air, though I didn’t intentionally exclude anything that’s not on right now (in other words, if it’s an active show, and I watch it, I listed it). It’s possible I’ve forgotten some. It’s hard to keep track with there being so many!

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