Views from Medina Road

Not much to report here lately. Los Angeles is famous for having a late Spring period of "June gloom" (and sometimes "May gray"), when the coastal overcast extends inland, providing unusually cool temperatures and a distressing lack of sunlight. But the weather here is wopperjawed (is that a word?) here as it seems to be everywhere lately, it seems, there's no June gloom this year. It's hot and in the 90s this week.

The death of Algis Budrys broke just as I'd almost finished setting up Graham Sleight's Locus column from several months ago -- not a trivial task, what with chasing down cover images for all those various editions; I resorted to scanning my own 1st edition copies of Bear, Simmons, and McAuley when Google Image searches failed me -- when, coincidentally, Graham's column about Budrys had just run in the June issue. Given the timeliness of events, it seems appropriate to break the belated sequence of Graham Sleight posts and go with the Budrys asap -- I'll try to get to that tonight or tomorrow.

I'm on the hook to post a review of THE INVADERS tv show, recently released on DVD. I've still only watched half dozen episodes, and will try to watch a few more before writing it up, though I have some thoughts about the show as they relate to current TV (and the Harlan Ellison post recently) that don't actually depend on seeing the complete season...

Finally I'll be in Seattle Friday afternoon through Sunday morning, to witness the presentation of the Locus Awards, and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees. Will report on those events this coming weekend.