Views from Medina Road

I've been preoccupied for the past 10 days or so reading short fiction published in 2003 in answer to an invitation to submit nominations for this year's Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

I read lots of short fiction and reviewed it monthly in Locus Magazine from 1988 through 2001. Partly due to fatigue and partly due to personal circumstances, I virtually stopped after that. I realized last week that it had been fully 2 years since I'd read a story in a magazine. It's been oddly surrealistic to watch the parade of awards nominations and winners pass, this last year, without having read any of them. Circumstances having changed and improved, I hope to do some catching up this year, and to get back to keeping up at least somewhat, at least to the extent of reading the stories that others recommend, or that are nominated for the various awards. More on the experience of reading cold, vs what others have recommended, later.

Meanwhile, on the subject of voting, I was especially struck by this Slate article about psychology experiments and the recent history of Democratic primaries. It's for this reason that, despite some recent posts about the way Locus Poll votes accumulate, I would never hint about the results of those votes.

239 ballots received so far, including some paper ballots that a Locus staffperson is transcribing into the online form, so that they all become electronic entries into my Locus Poll tallying database...