Views from Medina Road

The results are posted, after finally hearing from Locus HQ that it was OK to do so. (I'd wanted to post the results 6 weeks ago when I tabulated them. Why wait?) Perhaps I should anticipated the confusion about when it was OK to release the news, given the earlier confusion over when the voting ended-- Locus announced in the May issue editorial that voting would remain open until May 15th, but didn't tell me; I counted down the number days left to vote on the homepage for an entire week up to May 1st, then removed the ballot. Apparently the office staff was too busy to glance at the site that week.

Oh well; my problems are pretty minor compared to the major shakeup in Locus Magazine's editorial staff just concluded this week. But you will have to read about that in the July issue editorial (which, this time, I saw in advance).

Been a busy couple weeks, for assorted reasons. I've been placing more ads on various pages of the website, hesitantly, and so far no one has complained. Have yet to find out what the first month's earnings will be from them; what they amount to may well guide further decisions about placing ads. I haven't yet put one of the supplied ads on the homepage, because I already have a top of page banner there (and the space there is reserved for the next several months). Yet pay-outs from ads there could be substantial, the ad folks say, hinting at numbers easily double what the flat fee banners I've been selling there so far earn.

I never got around to writing about my tour of the then-uncomplete SF Museum in Seattle, which I saw during Nebula Awards weekend back in April; now the museum is open, and articles about it have run in dozens of papers, so there's not much point. I will mention that the museum's website, now called www.sfhomeworld.org, has recently undergone a slick redesign, though I must say that some of their bibliographic data, in the book recommendations lists linked from here, are less than completely accurate.

I need to update the right sidebar cover thumbs, I know; I have been reading a few books at least these past couple months.

My DSL service at home (from SBC), after having been flaky for the past several days, gave up entirely last night about 8, and is still down this morning. No time to call and sit on hold, so will see to it this evening after work. Meanwhile I can access my inbox, slowly, via a web interface, but there are emails that downloaded before 8 last night sitting at home unanswered.

Cleaning out old file cabinets recently, I came across what might be quite a treasure to someone: a 'souvenir program' pamphlet from the original 1977 Star Wars, which I attended at Graumann's Chinese Theater (or was it already Mann's by then?) with a group of college friends who, frankly, were more interested in the space opera flick that I was. We stood in line for a couple hours, and in those days--not even for this film--owners didn't clear the theaters after each show, and so the four of us cheerfully (well, less so in my case) sat through two successive screenings. I have never watched the film again (though I've dutifully seen all the sequels, once each). I don't recall if the programs were free, or if (more likely) we bought them; I see now on the inside back cover, underneath the list of credits, it says

For additional copies of this souvenir program, send $1.50 plus .50 handling and postage to: S.W. Ventures, Inc., 45 East 55 Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Printed in U.S.A.

I wonder what would happen if someone tried this now.

I am an eBay virgin, to echo a theme on one of the newsgroups I subscribe to, but I presume people there sell and shop for things like this all the time. What would this item bring, I wonder? Perhaps a commentator can offer a clue.

Despite the fact that I didn't attend any of the many SF conventions held around the country this past weekend, I was busy enough, managing some website updates in between family events and seeing movies.

Some quick takes: I liked Troy better than I thought I would, considering the reviews. Perhaps it's my already-lowered expectations of standard Hollywood flix, or my relative unfamiliarity with the source material (I've never actually read The Iliad) so that I can't quibble closely about the changes made; but overall, despite this quibble and that quibble, I enjoyed it and thought the time seeing it was well spent.

Also saw The Day After Tomorrow, with its great FX drowned in a wholly implausible silly plot, garnished by occasionally witty bits. (OK, if they had to burn books to stay warm, Tax Law books were OK.)

An hour after seeing that movie, I saw the US edition of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Forty Signs of Rain on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, and realized that KSR's book is basically a realistic, un-sensationalized version of The Day After Tomorrow, the overall plot arch remarkable similarly. Will Bantam take advantage of this fortuitous timing in any way? Not that I can tell so far.

I'm gradually introducing the new advertising onto pages of the website, and making a point to create separate News pages where possible (reversing a trend toward the blog style of the Locus Online homepage since January). Thanks to A.R. Yngve for his PayPal contribution... Several feature articles are in fact forthcoming in the next few weeks. Next up is Cynthia Ward's essay about manga, as soon as I can read and edit and format it.