Category: Miscellaneous
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Arisia 2020 Report, Day 3
Sunday was my final day at the con. Most conventions are three-day affairs: show up Friday afternoon, do stuff Friday night and Saturday, maybe a few things Sunday morning, then head home after lunch. Not Arisia. Taking advantage of the MLK Day weekend, it stretches into Monday. That means Sunday is a busy full day…
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Arisia 2020 Report, Day 1
I drove out to Boston on a sunny but cold January afternoon, left the car at the disintegrating Alewife garage, and rode the T to the good old Westin Waterfront hotel. Various delays en route and long lines at the hotel meant I barely had time to get my room, get my Arisia badge, and…
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Arisia 2020 — The Initiation Begins
This year's Arisia convention will be back at the Boston Westin Waterfront, January 17-20. I'll be there Friday the 17th through Sunday the 19th, and it's going to be a busy weekend. Friday 5:30 p.m.: "Stories From the Cities" — A joint reading with myself, Andrea Hairston and W.B.J. Williams. All three stories are connected…
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Fencing News
Yesterday was the Upper Valley Holiday Open fencing tournament in Sharon, Vermont. Diane Kelly and Robert Cambias attended. Robert went in an Unrated fencer, trounced all comers, and emerged with not just a USFA E rating but a D. In game terms, he went up two levels in one session. Congratulations!
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A Lovecraftian Chronology
For no very good reason I found myself making up an internal chronology of H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories. My guiding principle was that if a story doesn't have any time clues — and it's interesting to note that most of Lovecraft's stories do include specific dates — it takes place in the year in which…
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Important Notice
Today's Sylvia Plath Memorial Bake Sale has been postponed. Evidently we scheduled it too soon.
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Alexei Leonov, R.I.P.
The title says it all, really. Alexei Leonov, one of the three greatest Russian space explorers, died last week after a long and amazing career. It's hard to avoid the feeling that we're living in a diminished age. We have great plans, great dreams . . . but too often they seem to stay that…
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Yale, Academia, and Power
This is a fascinating article by Natalia Dashan about her own experiences at Yale and the endless, seemingly pointless political/social controversies there. Read the whole thing; it's a bit long but very insightful. One thing which struck me very profoundly was her point that the Yalies (both faculty and students) are actively abdicating power. This…
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AlbaCon 2019!
This Friday and Saturday I'll be a guest at Albany's long-running local science fiction and fantasy convention, Albacon 2019. On Friday I'm doing two panel discussions. At 3:00 p.m. I'm talking about worldbuilding in fiction along with a stellar panel (including Debra Doyle, Ryk Spoor, and Ian Strock). Then at 7:00 p.m. I'm on a…
The Cambias Digression 