In a

post on the Asimov’s forum, Gardner Dozois, inspired by a recent A&E or
History Channel poll, asked the question: "Who is ‘The Most Important
American’?"

He goes on to say: "Putting the emphasis on the word ‘American,’ I’ve come up
with three candidates, without whom there probably would be no America, as we
know it today."  They are:

(1) George Washington

(2) Abraham Lincoln

(3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Gardner explains his choices (see the

post for more details), and sums up by saying "So these are my candidates
for the title–since without them, for better or worse, America probably would
not have survived in its current incarnation long enough for them to be asking
this question on the History Channel in the first place."

All this leads to my inevitable follow-up questions:

(1) Who is "The Most Important Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer"? 

and

(2) Who is "The Most Important Science Fiction/Fantasy Editor"? 

Of which writers/editors could you say that without them, for better or
worse, SF probably would not have survived in its current incarnation long
enough for me to be asking this question?

Give your top three answers for each.  I cross-posted this to the F&SF
message board, so please post your responses there, under the thread titled "Who
is The Most Important…?"

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Go vote in the
Locus
Poll & Survey Ballot & the

All-time Fantasy Story Poll.  There’s only a few days left!

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Fresh meat! New this month: a brilliant new story-within-the-story fantasy from M. Rickert; a horrific, Hawaiian ornithology tale from Alan Dean Foster; an urban, fey fantasy from Madeline E. Robins; a baseball story from Robert Reed; a tour of the underworld courtesy of Jeffrey Ford; the further adventures of Kedrigern the Wizard from John Morressy; and a new Silurian Tale from Steven Utley.

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The blurbs are up! Or they’re up in beta-testing mode at least. There are still a few quirks to work out. But, behold! Uh, they’re over there in the left-hand column.

The code was developed for me by my pal Jared. He says he plans on releasing it (sans my specific quotes, into an open-source web design collective, so other can add an array generating their own quotes), so feel free to borrow it yourselves.

Update:

If anyone would like me to alter something in their quote, whether it is correcting a typo or adding a link, or changing a link, let me know. I linked all the names without asking, and some of the names I didn’t have/couldn’t find URLs for. So if you have one, and you want it linked, let me know. If I’ve got you linked, and you don’t want to be, let me know. It’s no problem either way.

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I just got the best frickin’ blurb ever, so I had to post it immediately. It’ll be added to the blurb-o-matic eventually, if I can figure out how to fit it all in there.

One crisp autumn night in 1968, I was contemplating an end-run on life. I’d been up all night doing lines of cocaine with Asimov and Heinlein in a strip club in L.A. The powder brought a clarity to things of the likes I had never witnessed. I had recently failed to win the Hugo for the third time, and I knew that I’d never stand a chance against these titans in the popular vote of fandom. Their accolades were all for which I lived.

He will save us all, one day.
— Jeremiah Tolbert

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Check
out this "shocking-but-false" tale of America’s Black Astronaut Program:

http://www.negrospaceprogram.com/

It’s about 10 minutes long, and is available in a variety
of streaming or downloadable formats.

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Continued from
Lunacon
(Part One)…

First, an omission: Amy Goldschlager, of the
Committee for Accuracy in Blogging, scolded me for having
neglected to mention that I also ran into her before the "Wrong About Japan"
panel (on which she was a panelist).  Mea culpa.  She asked if I
thought her chopped liver, to which I responded that I think of her as more of a
pate de foie gras.

Saturday was easily the best day of the con.  It
started off for me at around 10:30 or so.  I’d planned an 11 AM arrival,
but I made extraordinarily good time on the Turnpike.  Since I was a bit
early, I hit the dealer’s room, which I hadn’t seen yet.  It wasn’t bad —
better than I thought it would be at a con as small as Lunacon.  Dave’s
autograph session was scheduled for 11, so I looked around for a bit to see if
anyone had

New Voices in Science Fiction, so I could pick up a copy.  I did have
two things for him to sign: a copy of Realms of Fantasy with his story, "Seven
Brothers, Cruel," and a copy of the Phobos anthology,

All the Rage This Year, which contains his story "Veil of Ignorance." 
Alas, no copies of New Voices were to be had.  I also looked for the C. M.
Kornbluth collection,

His Share of Glory, but no one seemed to have it.  I stood for a while
in front of the table that I thought was the publisher’s, but it turned out to
be a different publisher; the guy manning the table easily could have told me
this, but he ignored me the whole time I was there, instead preferring to
continue his conversation with some guy who was standing there, but not buying
anything.  Guess it’s all the same to him; I wouldn’t have bought anything
anyway since I was at the wrong table.  Still, no one likes to be ignored
when looking for assistance from a retailer.

11:00: After the dealer’s room (which I escaped without
purchasing anything!), I wandered around the lobby until Dave spied me from the
second floor.  Good thing he wasn’t a slush writer I’d rejected; he was in
the perfect position to spit on me, or throw eggs, or…something worse. 
So as the eleven o’clock hour approached, Dave and I congregated at his table in
the lobby where all the signings were held.  His was supposed to coincide
with Paul Levinson, but Levinson didn’t show up (I don’t think he was actually
at the convention), leaving Dave all alone to draw in fans.  Alas, there
wasn’t much traffic out and about at that time of the morning, and we basically
spent the hour chatting.  Andrea came by later and joined us (filling in
for Paul Levinson).  I was all prepared to shill for Dave, but there was no
one around really to shill to (at?).  One girl, a rather attractive lass,
came by, but she thought we were the registration desk.  Very exciting. 

12:00: Now it was time for the inevitable panel… The
Rise and Fall of SF Magazines.  On the panel were Gordon Van Gelder and
Darrell Schweitzer, along with a couple people I didn’t know.  It was a
decent discussion, though no one came up with any bright ideas on how to save us
all.  One guy harangued Gordon from the audience about there being a lack
of "editorial voice" in the magazine, like Campbell had back in the old days of
Astounding/Analog. 

1:00: Next up was How Editors Think.  This one had
Gordon, Jeanne Cavelos, and was supposed to have Ginjer Buchanan, but instead
had her husband, John Douglas.  Also a decent panel.  Helped me
understand how I think.

Also at one was a panel called "Fiber Arts in SF/F." 
I didn’t attend, but I thought Fiber art–I bet that’s very…moving.

2:00 – 4:00: Dave, Andrea, Chris, and I got together for
lunch at the Sports Bar and played some pool.  The food was subpar, as was
my game — I did all right, but blew the game when I scratched on the eight
ball.  D’oh!

4:00: After pool and lunch it was time for Thog’s
Masterclass — a panel I’d been looking forward to all day.  For those who
don’t know — Thog’s Masterclass was created by Dave Langford and John Grant to,
and I quote, "celebrate ‘differently good’ bits" of sf/fantasy writing. 
You can read selections from Thog each month in
Ansible, Langford’s
free fanzine.  Alas, Thog’s offerings tend to work better on the page than
read aloud, and the panel seemed to drag on a bit, but it was well worth it in
the end, for the best of their offerings made up for the blander entries. 
Dave really liked “He lifted her shirt up over her head. Her panties followed.” There were many that had me laughing aloud, but the one I remember clearly was
from the great Connie Willis: "She learned how to embroider and milk cows."
(From Doomsday Book, I think.) 

Hmm…criticizing Thog…that’s sure to get me into
Ansible!

5:00: More grilling of magazine editors with the Magazine
Editors Q & A.  Marvin Kaye (editor of

HPL), Gordon, Chris Cevasco, and
Ian Randal Strock.  Gordon, however, seemed to think the panel was at
six, so he was down in the lobby killing time, until he realized the error
(about halfway through the panel) and made a grand entrance.  Marvin Kaye
revealed that he’s also editing a mystery magazine for Wildside/DNA called
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.  I have no information on it, other than
he said he is actively looking for submissions there (though HPL is still closed
for the time being), and it pays 3 cents per word (I believe).  If someone
has a URL to guidelines or something, feel free to pass it along and I’ll post
the link.  Kaye also said he hates it when people call him by his first
name when they don’t know him.  So remember to call him Mr. Kaye, kiddies. 
Gordon revealed that the cats sometimes do some unauthorized editing —
apparently, one of them scratched or chewed his/her way through a couple pages
of a manuscript (perhaps he/she disagreed with Gordon’s assessment) — and that
he hates unnecessary commas in the beginning of a story.  Chris said a lot
of people send him stuff not relevant to his market (i.e., it’s not historical
in any way).  Ian said Artemis is on hiatus, so don’t send him any stories.

6:00: Dave had a panel on writing workshops, so I went to
that.  Not that I had any interest in it really, but there were no other
panels I wanted to see, and Dave’s my wingman, so I went to help support the
team.  Though I did first sneak down to the lobby to get two books signed
by Swanwick, whose autograph session started at six.  That took like five
minutes, so I got back for most of the panel.  Chris and Andrea were there
already, soaking up the wisdom.  On the panel were Dave, Jeanne Cavelos,
Gregory Frost, and Barbara Campbell.  They talked about Clarion, Odyssey,
Viable Paradise, etc.  At one point, someone in the audience incorrectly
mentioned that Viable Paradise was only a weekend long, and one of the VP
administrators (in the audience) snapped out an angry retort that VP was
actually a week long.  I don’t know where the anger came from, but there it
was, then vanished, and she went back to her knitting. 

7:00: After the panel, there was a pre-planned dinner for
Odyssey alums, which included Dave, Andrea, Barbara Campbell, and Jeff Lyman
(who I originally met at the art show Friday night).  I was invited to go
along, so I did.  At dinner, Barbara reveals to Dave that from looking at
his photo
on his website, she thought he was an elfin boy, but when she saw his
six-foot-two frame she realized he was really quite a strapping young lad (so
when we made fun of him for admiring his six-foot-two frame, it became his
strapping six-foot-two frame).  At dinner (all day, in fact), Dave was
bragging about how he spent Friday afternoon in the F&SF office.  Hard to
say if he was more impressed with the portrait of Avram Davidson or the wax
replica of Anthony Boucher — I mean sure, the wax Boucher’s Lenin-like
mausoleum is certainly more impressive, but it loses points for being creepy. 
Andrea, meanwhile, told us about how there were several different couples on her
floor having really loud (and apparently marathon) sex at all hours of the day
and night, and this bothered her because it was keeping her awake (I can’t
begrudge anyone having loud marathon sex — god bless ’em).  Jeanne seemed
to enjoy the sex talk, and didn’t blink an eye when Dave mentioned Paris
Hilton’s sex tapes, though she was appalled when he admitted to reading Paris
Hilton’s biography (she was somewhat mollified by the fact that he took it out
of the library, so he didn’t actually contribute to Paris’s royalties). 

8:00 – 10:00: Hmm, I have no memory of this time period. 
Dinner must have ended sometime around 8:30 or so, but the next thing I remember
was at ten.  Guess we wandered around and chatted or something.  Wee!

Oh wait, I remember now why I didn’t remember.  There
was supposed to be a party in one of the rooms upstairs, so Dave and I went up
to check it out.  I was ready to stroll right into the room (rookie
mistake), but Dave caught me in time, instead advising that we do a drive-by. 
Good thing we did.    All old guys
with bushy beards and middle-aged women.  Not my scene, man.  So we
bailed.  The elevators were taking forever, so we decided to take the
stairs.  We were on like the 20th floor, but we figured down is easy. 
Besides, we’d just climbed like nine flights earlier when we went up to Dave’s
room for a minute.  I think that’s the most stairs I’ve ever climbed at
once.  Started off okay, but the legs were feeling sluggish by the eighth
or ninth floor (he was on eleven). 

10:00: Here it is, the money shot.  Best Panel Ever
(or should have been): "How to Get Laid at a Con."  It started off okay,
like it was going to be fun as the title promised.  Enough people certainly
thought it sounded good — I thought the panel would be dead, but it was
jam-packed with con-goers wanting to get laid.  I’m talking standing room
only.  So like I said, it started off good, with some brazen talk and
innuendo as the tips for getting laid were…uh, laid out.  But then a girl
raised her hand and wanted to talk about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  See, she’d just
been at a party and some guy moseyed up to her and laid his hand on her buttocks
and said something lewd.  Okay.  That’s Not Cool.  I understand. 
But this was a panel on how to get laid, man!  Not the place for this
discussion.  We’re trying to have a little fun here.  I cried out
"What does this have to do with getting laid?"  (Well, cried out quietly,
to Dave…but not quietly enough, for an older lady in front of me scolded me
with a terse "Maybe you should listen.")  Anyway, after the gropee was done
with her tale, and the crowd had finished its chants of "Burn the groper!" and
"Kick him in the balls!" I was thinking You know
what her problem is? That girl needs to get laid. (Call off the dogs — it’s a joke, people.) The panel then
continued and got better, with some people sharing amusing stories, and the
panelists providing more "advice" (i.e., bathe, make eye contact, compliment her
shoes, etc.).  Overall, not very useful in the learning department, but it
was pretty amusing overall.  I suggested that it might have been more
productive if everyone who wanted to get laid raised their hands, that way we
could all find someone to hook up with. 

11:00: We had an hour to kill before the infamous "Sex in
SF" panel, on which our very own Dave was a panelist (apparently the con
organizers heard rumors of his ladies man sexual prowess and recruited him for
the panel…or that’s his story, anyway).  So we had that hour to kill so
Dave, Andrea, and I sat around and talked about a variety of things, but we
couldn’t quite get past the getting laid panel.  Alas, there was a shortage
of people on which Dave and I could practice our skills.  I’m sure Andrea,
being a woman at a science fiction convention, wouldn’t have had any trouble,
but she’s married.  Actually, none of us would have had any trouble if we’d
taken the panel’s first piece of advice: lower your standards. 

12:00: So, the Sex in SF panel.  Honestly, though it
sounded like it might be fun, I probably would have skipped this one if Dave
hadn’t been on it (it was already late, and I had to drive home afterward). 
Alas, going to this one really was taking one for the team.  It was at
times painful, though it did provide much amusement afterward when we looked
back on it mockingly.  There were three guys on the panel (including Dave),
with two women scheduled…neither of which showed up.  Holly Black was
actually there on the panel right before that one, but she bailed, claiming that
as a children’s author, she didn’t belong on a panel about sex.  She may
have had a point there, but that left the panel with no women.  Three guys
talking about sex in SF — kinda creepy, no?  (Sure, not as creepy as the
wax Boucher, but still….)  The second woman who blew off the panel (keep
your mind out of the gutter) was actually the moderator, so it was nice to see
she took her duty so seriously. 

One guy on the panel appeared to be a self-published or
vanity-published author of a generic sword & sorcery novel; the other guy worked
in RPG manuals.  When they explained why they were on the panel, the sword & sorcery novelist
said probably because his novel had some graphic sexual scenes in it which had
even caused some parents to complain because what’s sex (orgiastic,
anything-goes sex, apparently) doing in a fantasy novel — fantasy is for kids! 
Later, when asked if the sex in his novel was somehow unique in that it could
only be done in a fantasy novel, he said that indeed it was.  When asked to
explain how, he said, with all seriousness: "The queen goes both ways." 

Ahem.

RPG guy explained his being on the panel by showing the
audience a bunch of semi-explicit paintings in an RPG manual.  Though that
may have been a thin reason to be on the panel, he was a good panelist.  He
stepped in as moderator and did a pretty good job of keeping the discussion
flowing.  He did however, bring Swamp Thing into the discussion, not once,
but twice.  When Swamp Thing made his second appearance, I felt as though
the circle was now complete. 

In the end, it all comes back to Swamp Thing. 

More soon…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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This month we acquired new stories from Joe Haldeman, Terry Bisson, two new (related) stories from David Gerrold, and Jaye Lawrence. You may remember Ms. Lawrence as one who was previously saved from the ravages of the slush pile; her first story, “Kissing Frogs,” as I mentioned previously, is eligible for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award this year. Did you vote yet?

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I went to Lunacon for the first time this weekend. It was held at the Sheraton Meadowlands hotel, which means it was in Jersey, and I could just commute back and forth without having to spring for a pricey hotel room…though that did prove to be more of a hassle than I’d expected. Not fun driving home in the wee hours of the morning only to drive back after a few hours of sleep.

In addition to being the first day of Lunacon, Friday was also the date of a regular group lunch that Gordon and I attend monthly in Manhattan. My bud David Barr Kirtley was attending that for the first time, so he and I made plans to drive over to Lunacon together later in the day. But since he’d never ventured into Hoboken via the PATH train before, he went back to Hoboken with us right after lunch, and having nothing planned for the next couple hours until I got off work, he came back to the illustrious offices of F&SF and sat and wandered around those hallowed halls, eyes wide in abject wonder.

At lunch, the subject of men’s adventure novels came up. You know the sort, the ones like Don Pendelton and James Axler… titles like THE DEATHLANDS and THE EXECUTIONER. All series stuff, often post-apocalyptic, peopled entirely with gun-toting, amoral survivalists. Anyway, Gordon mentioned one of the problems with those books is that the protagonist always, at some point in the narrative, stops to admire his (for they are always male) six-foot-two frame in a mirror… a cheap narrative trick to describe the protagonist. Gordon complained that people don’t do that in real life. Dave disagreed, claiming that he was six-foot-two and he often stopped to admire his frame in mirrors. And he does too; I’ve seen him do it. In fact, we were late to several panels because he had to take some extra time to admire himself.

So anyway, Dave and I headed out to the con sometime after five, and we got off route 3 one exit too soon, so we ended up driving around in circles over by Giants Stadium. It’s all Dave’s fault; he was the navigator and he led us astray.

We get to the hotel sometime before six I think, then stand in lines to register for the con and check into the hotel. After waiting in the registration line for about 45 minutes, I realize I definitely should have pre-registered.

After getting that taken care of, we head off to dinner at the only restaurant, and run into Elizabeth Glover (who I know from the OWW), and her friend Rachel. We joined them, but they had to run off to get ready for a panel called “Wrong About Japan,” which was a discussion about all the ways in which Americans have come to have wrong ideas about Japan because of the way it’s depicted in anime and manga. That sounded like something I would like to hear, seeing as how I’ve been on this big Kurosawa kick lately (the man is brilliant), and had, in fact, just watched THRONE OF BLOOD the night before.

I did in fact get to see half the panel, but only half because the first half of it overlapped with Dave’s reading…which no one really showed up for. There was me, Christopher Cevasco (editor/publisher of PARADOX), and a writer Dave knew from the Odyssey workshop, Andrea Kail (who works at the CONAN O’BRIEN SHOW). There were also a couple of people just chatting in the room who deigned to silence themselves and listen when Dave started reading. So, could have been worse. It was a crappy timeslot — there was no time for Dave to talk to anyone at the con and to mention that he had a reading. He did a good job with his performance of “The Black Bird,” which I think is one of his best stories, and well worth hunting down if you haven’t read it (it’s in NEW VOICES IN SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Mike Resnick), though he ended up choosing that one really because by the time he got around to starting the reading he only had fifteen minutes left (and that one is quite short).

Next up was the Meet the Pros event in the lobby, where Dave and I wandered around for a while, but I don’t think we actually did meet any pros. But that was just for a half hour, because at 9:30 was the art show, which required special invitations for some reason — I think only panelists were allowed to attend or something — but Dave was a panelist so he was able to get me in, not that anyone was collecting invitations at the door. We caught up with Andrea and Chris in there and wandered around and admired all the art, much of which featured naked, muscular pixie women, though there was a pretty cool Noah’s Ark sculpture thing that Andrea and I were strangely obsessed with for a while. I was going to buy it, but it cost ten thousand dollars, so instead I charged it to my F&SF expense account (won’t Gordon be surprised!).

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

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The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards are given to recognize outstanding works in science fiction, fantasy, or horror, which deal positively with issues, themes, and characters of special relevance to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities. Winners are chosen by a panel of judges. Nominations are open to everyone. Readers, fans, writers/creators, publishers, and more are encouraged to nominate their own or others’ works. The Closing Date for Nominations/Recommendations will be March 31.

http://www.spectrumawards.org/nomform.htm

Go nominate! You can do so as many times as you like.

F&SF picks:

Serostatus by John Peyton Cooke (F&SF, Jan. 2004)
Pervert by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF, Mar. 2004)
Kissing Frogs by Jaye Lawrence (F&SF, May 2004)

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