Views from Medina Road

Which is why I haven't posted here for almost two weeks. Locus Magazine's January is busy with compiling the February issue, full of Recommended Reading lists and overview essays by the various reviewers about their favorite books of the past year. I'm no longer closely involved with that, since I don't write reviews for the magazine any longer, but I do continue my tradition of tallying up counts of original stories published in the year's magazines, anthologies, and online venues, and writing a summary of story counts and changing trends from previous years. That exercise took 5 or 6 hours from last weekend through Tuesday evening.

For the website, January is busy with tracking down all the 2006 results of the various SF/F/H awards, for the annual update to the Locus Index to SF Awards -- I'm currently about 80% done with that. I hope to finish updating the online site by the end of the month.

More personal responsibilities currently include my reading of candidates for the annual Lambda Literary Awards, in the SF/F/H category, for which I've received about two dozen books to read (entailing adjustable interpretations of the verb 'to read') by mid-February. Nothing like what the World Fantasy Award judges face each year, I'm sure, but a time-consuming task nonetheless.

And I'm enough of a movie buff, especially with the opportunities available for anyone living in the Los Angeles area, to try to keep up with the high-profile end-of-year releases that are talked about by the cognoscenti as prime candidates for the various film awards... There have been past years when I've spent the week between Christmas and New Year's driving around LA to see two or three movies every day; alas, that's no longer practical, and as of this writing I've yet to see Pan's Labyrinth or Letters from Iwo Jima or Notes from a Scandal; still, I've seen many of the most talked about and acclaimed films, and I appreciated being able to recognize many of the Golden Globe Award winners that were announced this past week.

I have one more remark which I think I will post separately.