tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58855302011-11-11T06:52:31.364-08:00Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.comBlogger5261100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-2780721585009209982010-04-13T20:51:00.001-07:002010-04-13T20:57:03.356-07:00

Locusmag.com migrated to a new server today, which is why you may have tried to view the site, early this afternoon west coast time, and seen a fragmentary homepage. The specific problem there was, the new server didn't have the php scripts for displaying the news feed loaded, and the php tags broke the html structure of the rest of the page...Moving to the new server is roughly like upgrading

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-81841518402756909022010-04-06T20:32:00.000-07:002010-04-06T20:38:46.093-07:00

There is now a separate Index to Magazine Reviews, including all the magazine and webzine issues reviewed by Lois Tilton in her new column, as well as a handful of magazines covered in reviews run on the website in the early 2000s by Rich Horton, Michael Swanwick, and others. This index will, of course, be updated each time we post a new column from Lois.References to Lois's reviews are also now

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-78883612661064453942010-03-21T07:01:00.000-07:002010-03-21T07:31:20.788-07:00

First, to fill in a couple details from the previous post, Nalo Hopkinson's lunchtime speech referred notably to the Racefail 2009 debate that raged online a year or so ago; she also used the phrase "people of pallor" as a nice parallel to the standard "people of color".Friday the clouds broke up a bit, and by Saturday the sun returned full-force, just in time for the annual Locus photo of ICFA

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-76993012157037265152010-03-18T22:58:00.000-07:002010-03-18T23:48:08.970-07:00

I'm in Orlando, attending this year's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, at the conference's new permanent site in Orlando, at the Marriott just north of the airport. It's been overcast, even a bit rainy, the whole time I've been here, a stark contrast to the typically sunny, albeit hot and humid, weather the same time of year in Ft. Lauderdale, the location of the conference

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-12473524977270018272010-03-12T18:23:00.001-08:002010-03-12T18:23:29.781-08:00

Quick check-in -- I will be attending next week's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, one of my favorite annual events which unfortunately I missed last year, in Orlando, and perhaps will see some of you there.Meanwhile, there are some changes upcoming in the structure of the website, because Blogger, with which we host the various blogs (News, Reviews, Perspectives, etc.), has

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-69502229874623523572010-01-21T21:27:00.000-08:002010-01-21T21:48:56.453-08:00

..It makes national news, apparently. Every five years or so we here in Southern California get a series of storms, one after another, day after day, for a week, that dumps as much precipitation as is usual for most entire years. The last time was 2005; five or six years before that, I recall, I had to prop up a leaning tree in my backyard to keep it from uprooting itself from the mushy ground

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-63837858138405176562009-12-31T11:13:00.001-08:002009-12-31T11:19:33.710-08:00

As the year comes to a close and my plans for semi-detailed reading notes get lost in holiday busyness, let me try a relatively quick summary of reactions to several recent books, just to close out this activity for 2009.What with December busyness, it took me nearly three weeks to get through Stephen King's Under the Dome, but then it was nearly 1100 pages. King rates as something of a guilty

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-8883728917185331232009-11-22T21:21:00.001-08:002009-11-23T08:09:27.247-08:00

Earlier this month, on the way home from World Fantasy Con, we stopped in the town of Ben Lomond, in the mountains south of San Jose and just north of Santa Cruz, to visit Marina Fitch and Mark Budz, old friends. We walked through downtown Santa Cruz to have dinner and visit a couple bookshops -- including Logos Books & Records -- the likes of which have vanished in big cities like Los Angeles,

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-7258940937321301242009-11-06T17:42:00.000-08:002009-11-06T17:47:28.167-08:00

I attended several panels on Saturday at WFC in San Jose, including the standard "best books of the year" panel at which, in previous years, Charles Brown has distributed an early draft version of the Locus Recommended Reading List (limited to fantasy titles) as a basis for discussion. This year's panel included Liza Groen Trombi as the Locus representative and was moderated by Annalee Newitz,

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-83493366878735888532009-11-02T21:53:00.000-08:002009-11-02T21:56:07.073-08:00

Just a quick note for the moment -- home tonight from World Fantasy Con, following a visit Sunday night with friends near Santa Cruz, and a drive home today via the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I'll do one more post summarizing some interesting panels at the con (though note the io9 'blink' posted this evening, about the notable books of the year panel) and some of the interesting parties at the con...

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-21482653607883530972009-10-30T21:23:00.000-07:002009-10-31T00:38:46.610-07:00

This year's World Fantasy Convention is in San Jose, California, the heart of the 'Silicon Valley' at the south end of the bay below San Francisco to the northwest and Oakland (Locus HQ) to the northeast. It's in the same hotel, the Fairmont San Jose, that served as the main hotel for the 2002 World SF Convention, an event I remember fondly since that is where I won a Hugo Award...I drove here

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-61378376394688589262009-10-28T20:17:00.001-07:002009-10-28T20:21:02.631-07:00

Which is to say, the final piece of the 2009 Locus Online redesign project is complete: the application of the new site layout template to the News Blog, which was first set up back in January before the redesign of the rest of the site commenced. I have in mind some summary lists via include files in the right pane, but I didn't want to hold up the template update for those. Such lists will be

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-57349387357248646672009-10-23T19:54:00.000-07:002009-10-23T20:03:30.946-07:00

Very quick note: In posting breaking news 'blinks' about the deaths of Don Punchantz and Dean Ellis (since Locus HQ probably won't post official obits until Monday), I couldn't help but seek out images of what to me are iconic covers for certain SF classics -- which is to say, theirs were the covers on the editions of those books I first acquired myself, in the late 1960s, and however many

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-48968345958044208362009-10-13T21:31:00.001-07:002009-10-14T23:20:55.179-07:00

I've been meaning for several weeks now to catch up on commenting about books I've read recently, but have not gotten around to organizing my notes and preparing proper summaries. I still haven't gotten around to that, so never mind; let me spend an hour or so posting relatively off-hand reactions to the last 10 titles that I've read -- cover images and links already updated in the column to the

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-90146809210994551662009-09-17T20:35:00.001-07:002009-10-13T21:30:45.383-07:00

We saw Julie and Julia a couple weeks ago and so of course I had to come home and order a copy of her cookbook from Amazon.com, and then, pace Slate, we set about making the film's signature dish, boeuf bourguignon. This is basically chunks of beef browned and then simmered in red wine, served with mushrooms and onions and boiled potatoes, but the recipe has all sorts of little details: you

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-10851288065576156532009-08-31T18:39:00.000-07:002009-08-31T20:58:49.864-07:00

One of the features of living in southern California is the periodic spectacle of wildfires that darken our skies with smoke and threaten our towns and neighborhoods with conflagration. The latest, which started last week in the Angeles National Forest in the mountains to the northeast of LA, has made national news for its size and continued growth more than for its destruction, a couple dozen

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-88976645944479553802009-08-26T21:00:00.001-07:002009-08-26T21:00:52.784-07:00

One topic I talked about with Charles Brown the last time I spoke with him (that May weekend trip to the Bay Area I blogged about earlier, and which CNB wrote about in his June issue editorial), was the idea of doing another, or perhaps several, polls of all-time best novels. A reader had written him suggesting an update, since the last all-time novels poll was done by Locus way back in 1998 (my

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-40394900905737452782009-08-25T23:28:00.000-07:002009-08-25T23:50:18.026-07:00

My partner and I participated in helping to boost the US economy (or at least the fortunes of car dealers) this past month, by taking part in the 'Cash for Clunkers' program that made sufficiently inefficient gas guzzlers eligible for a $3500 - $4500 trade-in value toward a new vehicle with sufficiently better gas mileage. Yeong was in China last month when the program became big news for having

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-45345869935570225082009-08-19T22:43:00.000-07:002009-08-19T23:33:03.439-07:00

As promised in the previous post, the Roundtable Blog has now been recast to a format matching the rest of the site. A detail or two still needs adjusting, e.g. the Contributors list is offset a bit, because Blogger wants to format it as an unordered list, and I've managed to remove the automatic bullets but not yet the automatic indentation. So many little details...I'm glad to see more activity

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-41178726627686079252009-08-15T21:00:00.001-07:002009-08-15T21:37:23.014-07:00

I have, off and on, for several days now, been working to complete the final phase of the Locus Online Redesign Project, which means specifically to convert the two initial site blogs, News and Roundtable, to the format of the site homepage and the other blogs (such as Reviews), with the same page width, the same menu bar across the top, and a similar right sidebar.Converting those two initial

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-37510657714897131882009-08-08T21:07:00.000-07:002009-08-09T10:48:35.959-07:00

No, I am not at this year's Worldcon in Montreal, I am sorry to report; I'm missing Worldcon for only the second time in 20 years (the other time being two years ago in Japan); the economy has affected Locus Online's discretionary budget for convention trips, leaving only the upcoming World Fantasy Con as a potential con attendance for this year. (Needless to say, there is no corporate (Locus)

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-63532014377880598092009-07-27T20:59:00.001-07:002009-07-27T20:59:56.063-07:00

Over the weekend I attended the Charles N. Brown memorial, which was held in San Francisco at Borderlands Books, Sunday beginning at noon. That event was preceded by a smaller 'memorial bar-b-q' at Brown's house in Oakland on Saturday evening, for the extended staff and a few guests who had flown in from out of town. I drove up from L.A. with Yeong on Saturday, arriving at the house just as the

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-51128577149325785602009-07-20T23:14:00.001-07:002009-07-20T23:38:53.996-07:00

I'm old enough to remember -- I was 13, in the summer between 8th and 9th grades. Star Trek had ended a couple months earlier, I had survived two weeks in the hospital following a ruptured appendix a couple months before that ("In the Year 2525" ran endlessly on the radio that played in my shared room), a year or so before that, 2001: A Space Odyssey had premiered, and only a year or two before

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-40524723507590541162009-07-13T22:30:00.000-07:002009-07-15T23:53:00.343-07:00

It was a shock -- though not completely unexpected. If anything, Charles' health seemed worse a couple years ago, while recently, despite occasional hospital visits and the recurring downtimes during conventions, his general cheerfulness gave the impression that those mere physical limitations were incidental, that his spirit drove him on. I envied him the energy and determination to continue to

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-92061185745908223152009-06-25T21:22:00.001-07:002009-06-25T21:48:05.806-07:00

I am not headed to the Locus Awards in Seattle, where all the cool people will be this weekend; various circumstances alluded to in previous posts will be making this an extremely frugal year for travel and convention attendance, for me. Instead I will stay home and stoke the fires of keeping the website running, with an imminent update to the awards index and a few outstanding finishing touches

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-66756282846240094312009-05-23T16:47:00.000-07:002009-05-23T17:13:44.987-07:00

After our sojourn in Napa Valley last weekend, Yeong went to work in Hayward on Monday and I drove up to visit the gleaming Locus HQ office tower on Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, where I --Well, no. The Secret of Ridgewood Lane is that there is no Locus office tower, gleaming or otherwise; Locus Magazine is run out of the home of its publisher Charles N. Brown. And it's not really a secret;

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-52200298036231424532009-05-19T23:29:00.000-07:002009-05-19T23:50:16.646-07:00

Sunday we drove through Napa Valley, past dozens of wineries and through hundreds of vineyards, with stops at Mondavi and Grgich Hills and Stag's Leap and Sterling Vineyards, with its Greek villa architecture atop a hill accessed by a ski-lift style tram. Along the way we stopped for lunch.The CIA is the Culinary Institute of America, apparently based in New York but with a facility in Napa

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-87792869846602949912009-05-17T09:09:00.001-07:002009-05-17T09:09:31.213-07:00

This weekend I'm in Napa, gateway town to the Napa Valley, the most famous winemaking district in the US. I'm spending a long weekend in the area with my partner leading up to his son's graduation from UC Berkeley on Tuesday. We flew up to Oakland yesterday and drove to Napa, which I expected to be overrun with tourists, souvenir shops, and high-end art galleries, along the lines of Ojai or La

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-78903622925296373582009-05-09T19:42:00.000-07:002009-05-09T20:23:00.642-07:00

The new homepage is posted, along with new pages linked to a common set of menu bars, despite a few gaps in the superstructure between those new pages and the older pages, and despite a known browser issue or two. The day is ending and I'll be busy tomorrow and back to work on Monday, so I figure I might as well get it all up there for people to see -- and throws stones at. I just discovered the

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-37360257868791779932009-05-03T19:05:00.000-07:002009-05-03T19:10:57.303-07:00

Just a quick post to say that I haven't forgotten about the redesign, that I'm actively working on it every day time permitting, and that it is -- as we always say in the software development world -- 90% done. The homepage is actually 99% done -- significantly cleaner and crisper, I think -- but part of the point of the redesign is to establish a similar look and menu bars across *all* pages,

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-83655397128281422272009-04-27T22:29:00.000-07:002009-04-27T23:49:43.667-07:00

I've missed the past couple years' Nebula Awards, but this year the ceremony was in my neighborhood, over at the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA, my alma mater (B.A., Math). The event was scheduled in conjunction with the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a popular event held on the campus that I've only ever attended once about ten years ago (despite of course being quite

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-18531985633753917072009-04-10T22:52:00.000-07:002009-04-10T22:54:02.270-07:00

The redesign is furiously in work; the CSS team is daily battling over which tags should be in the homepage style sheet and which in lower level sheets; the graphics team is tired of resizing and rebuilding gradient files again and again, and warns us against too many drop-shadows; the Blogger team is weary of dumbing down its template tags to match the basic tags that the other teams only know

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-74789342861038674272009-04-01T22:23:00.000-07:002009-04-02T07:36:29.417-07:00

It's Spring on Medina Road, here at the edge of the Los Angeles metropolis along the northern base of the Santa Monica mountains, just over the ridge from the beaches and mansions of Malibu where it's always fresh and moist, and that means a new batch of marigolds and petunias in the planter boxes on our balcony overlooking the San Fernando Valley, where it's comparatively hot and arid. We even

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-33427803291813354272009-03-26T20:40:00.000-07:002009-03-26T20:43:52.757-07:00

The balance of competing sections' priorities isn't right .. what with the new Roundtable and News Blog boxes. And the site doesn't look enough like, say, the CNN or Slate of SF sites. More visual punch? Have been experimenting with a new layout this past week. You'll see something soon.

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-83996909299622912009-03-19T21:25:00.000-07:002009-03-20T10:21:26.947-07:00

I seem to have correctly anticipated three of the five Best Novel nominees for this year's Hugo Awards -- by Stephenson, Doctorow, and Stross. I should have guessed Scalzi, just based on his general and internet presence and popularity... I did read his book, found it perfectly pleasant, though not in my mind especially exceptional. I'm rather happier with the Arthur C. Clarke Award finalists,

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-15216026550753294882009-03-10T21:06:00.000-07:002009-03-10T21:07:03.805-07:00

I'm attending my first Ring, beginning last weekend with Das Rheingold, and continuing next month with the second opera in the series and next season with the third and fourth. I'm a relatively casual opera fan, and I've never seen the four operas in Wagner's cycle, or even listened to them more than casually. I did know that the elaborate, mythologically-based plot had similarities to another

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-63058098681151669772009-03-05T07:37:00.000-08:002009-03-05T07:47:31.180-08:00

I've been advised by the editors of Sci Fi Wire, per my February 15th post, that there is "MORE content related to books on the new Wire, not less" -- though actually I'd been comparing the new Wire to the old SF Weekly, perhaps not a fair comparison. As I browse today's Wire homepage, I do see five items tagged Books, even if four of them are about movies being made from books; the fifth is a

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-18499440163872062262009-03-02T20:16:00.001-08:002009-03-05T07:25:11.634-08:00

So I submitted my Hugo nominations on Saturday, a few hours before the drop-dead deadline, and as usual left some categories entirely blank -- including, I'm a bit ashamed to admit, all the short fiction categories; I simply haven't read any current short fiction this past year. I did much better keeping up with current SF (and a few fantasy) novels, though even there a few key titles I still

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-87943603798346644382009-02-26T17:08:00.000-08:002009-02-26T18:00:14.165-08:00

My office and library are the same room, at the front of my house looking out on the hillside street where as many people pass walking their dogs as cars drive by.To the immediate right is a bookcase that fills with current-year books, which I've recently about half-emptied, moving books into the general stacks. A few books I haven't yet read -- you can see Anathem -- are still there; the 2008

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-52659136974550837662009-02-25T21:17:00.000-08:002009-02-25T21:34:37.801-08:00

I've been home the past two days with a head cold, sneezing and congested, but not unable to sit at the computer for several hours each day. Catching up on listings, Directory page updates, and so on.Among numerous other updates to the site, I've tweaked the layout and archive settings of the Roundtable blog, taking some of the Torque Control comments into consideration, with the concurrence of

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-25867921077623182412009-02-22T21:35:00.001-08:002009-02-23T07:32:42.278-08:00

This week we have a long new essay by Gary Westfahl about SF's predictions and how seriously to take them; I think it's a fascinating, substantial piece in the venerable tradition of, say, Arthur C. Clarke's Profiles of the Future, even as it undermines some of SF's party line positions on the inevitability of certain trends. What with upcoming film reviews (Watchmen will be covered by Howard

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-65107230003058597912009-02-18T19:55:00.001-08:002009-02-18T22:05:32.578-08:00

Just a couple more days, or more properly I should say another four to six hours real time; it actually depends on when during the next few days I can find those hours, to finish the Awards Index update and post the overhauled site. Depending on how closely you've been paying attention, it will look pretty much the same, or quite different; the color scheme is revised, a bit subtler and more

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-55679955208185252082009-02-15T20:32:00.001-08:002009-02-15T20:34:51.980-08:00

Despite a hopeful email from John Clute a couple weeks ago, book coverage on the new "Sci Fi Wire" has been scant to nonexistent, and the whole tenor of the site is apparently now about movie news and gossip; and thus, I have removed the link to SciFi.com / Scifiwire.com from my row of essential daily links atop my Links Portal page... replace by SF Site, with Salon squeezed in there earlier in

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-38469684141299437592009-02-11T20:01:00.000-08:002009-02-11T21:29:11.774-08:00

Got an email today from the proprietor of SciFi Watch, a blog by David Halpert, about a post called Nine Science Fiction Blogs You Should Keep Track Of, one of which was Locus Online. The odd thing was that his description explained that most Locus articles were available only to subscribers, behind a password-protected firewall...I sent him a correction, but I'm curious how anyone could have

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-22132425234827462632009-02-08T20:53:00.000-08:002009-02-08T20:55:27.008-08:00

I have this idealistic fantasy that, in a calm and contemplative state of living -- a state I never quite seem to achieve -- I would have time every day to jot down a few insightful comments or pithy remarks about SF or current events or even, on occasional, my personal life.Obviously this blog has never reached that idealistic state, but let me see if I can quickly record a few such remarks that

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-38738981990714757792009-01-15T22:33:00.000-08:002009-01-15T22:41:51.992-08:00

The new News Blog seems to be working out well (i.e., no complaints), and it strikes me as perhaps the most significant development for the website since its debut over ten years ago. At last, the site is not constrained by my own personal schedule (which has in recent years been even more constrained by security restrictions at my dayjob, which prevent my ability to update the site during work

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-50444477973376209692009-01-06T21:19:00.001-08:002009-01-06T21:23:52.825-08:00

I've just posted the new index.php version of the Locus Online homepage, with links to a new News blog that can be updated weekdays from the Locus Magazine HQ building that towers over downtown Oakland CA. If you're reading this and haven't already checked the homepage, let me know if you see any problems viewing the posts.This, in work for a couple weeks now, just as scifi.com has converted two

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-8603088737855606612009-01-04T19:14:00.000-08:002009-01-04T19:31:48.882-08:00

Substantive posts to the website have been light over the past couple weeks not only because of the holidays, but because what time I've had to work the site has been devoted to developing new functionality -- principally, to expand news coverage on the site so that the Locus Home Office staff can post breaking news, via a Blogger blog whose rss feed is automatically displayed on the Locus Online

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-49004454297563138302008-12-27T17:17:00.000-08:002008-12-29T16:19:59.581-08:00

In response to those reports on Christmas Day of readers apparently being attacked by malware programs when viewing the Locus Online website, I contacted our hosting service, CI Host, about the problem, and they responded quickly, within the hour, to say that our dedicated server had been checked for abnormal processes and files and been found clean. A couple of the email reports implied it was

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-1005373967311631762008-12-27T17:09:00.000-08:002008-12-27T17:16:50.105-08:00

C.E. Petit makes a useful comment (to the previous post) about the reformatting of the awards nominee index pages -- that displaying the em-dash in the title column for any award citation that does not refer to the actual title of a book or story is perhaps misleading; it suggests, as in academic bibliographies, that the previous title still applies, which certainly isn't the case here. So this

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-24182294495344724182008-12-25T13:04:00.000-08:002008-12-27T16:55:01.080-08:00

So as indicated previous post, I've begun updating, overhauling, and scrubbing the Awards database and index, step by step, beginning with a reformatting of the Nominee Index pages, which I've felt were a compromise layout to begin with...The history of web page layout, in a tiny thumbnail, began with bulleted lists and indents (such as Locus Index to Science Fiction pages still use), advanced to

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-66677141293171442152008-12-21T20:19:00.000-08:002008-12-21T21:11:37.916-08:00

As I indicated in a note to the last New Books page posted on the site, http://www.locusmag.com/2008/Books12_1.html, I'm deliberately scaling back on detailed listings of all new books I see or am sent each week. This is because this task for the website is easily the most time-consuming of any of the website tasks, taking four to five hours at a time, and generally consuming much of the one free

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-45780227873558842232008-11-29T20:35:00.000-08:002008-11-29T21:00:11.404-08:00

This past week I wrote a review of the second Best American Fantasy anthology, again edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, for Locus Magazine. It should appear in the January issue, or possibly the February since I was a bit past the nominal deadline for reviews. In any case, it's a book worth reading for anyone interested in unconventional sorts of fantasy. And it's nice keeping my hand in writing

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-83892897848680404172008-11-20T00:27:00.000-08:002008-11-20T00:52:23.580-08:00

I've been in Denver the past few days, attending a technical conference and in the downtime between events, catching up on e-mail and various website tasks. The conference, by the way, is at a hotel several miles southeast of downtown, in the Denver 'tech center', not in the downtown area where the Worldcon was three months ago.This past weekend there was another round of devastating brush fires

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-56177241543973904112008-11-03T18:41:00.000-08:002008-11-03T19:41:16.495-08:00

So to wrap up, after returning home to work, and work. There were a couple program items Sunday morning, but I was too busy doing a little last minute souvenir shopping, and then packing to check out of my room by noon, to attend them. The banquet began at 12:30, with the doors open at 11:30 for ticket-holders to begin drifting in...This convention was a little smaller than most World Fantasy

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-7546727269691600242008-11-01T23:55:00.000-07:002008-11-02T01:22:22.611-07:00

More panels today: Fantasy 'Zines Online, with Sean Wallace (Clarkesworld), John Klima (Electric Velocipede), and Jennifer Dawson (Flash Me), about their respective submissions processes and the limitations they face growing their publications. The most remarkable comment I heard was that the quality of slush is actually higher for e-zines than print zines, because writers are more likely to have

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-33301553316852481662008-11-01T00:49:00.000-07:002008-11-02T01:06:47.380-07:00

Today I listened to the official interview (by Gay Haldeman) of GoH Barbara Hambly, who talked about her preference for mysteries, her disciplined work schedule, her take on vampires (not the soft and romantic ones currently in vogue), and her favorites of her own books -- Traveling with the Dead, Bride of the Rat God, and the upcoming Civil War novel that will be published next year. A panel on

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-3418802281390952702008-10-30T23:38:00.000-07:002008-10-31T00:03:23.447-07:00

Arrived Calgary today, after an uneventful three-hour flight from LA on Air Canada, catching a glimpse of the Rocky Mountains out the left side of the plane before descending to the prairie flatness of the destination city. Rather like Denver, that way. I was embarrassed to discover, during hotel check-in, that the lady I'd sat next to on the flight (and not recognized) was none other than

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-20760565664014611092008-10-29T18:30:00.000-07:002008-10-29T18:36:21.043-07:00

Again, per previous post, I apologize for neglecting this blog, for the five or six of you who check on it regularly. I do expect to ramp up in the next few days, reporting from the World Fantasy Con in Calgary. I'm leaving LA first thing in the morning, and will be there through Sunday afternoon. (Since I'll need to check out of my room before the awards banquet on Sunday, I hope I can find a

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-31772318799883086482008-10-08T20:46:00.000-07:002008-10-08T20:53:19.050-07:00

I realize I'm way behind on posting here, but let me recite a litany of excuses: catching up from my vacation cruise; busy-ness at work; problems with installing a new cable modem; a fender-bender parking lot collision, requiring insurance company and repair shop interaction.However, I'm on the *verge* of updating the awards index, and I've managed to read quite a few books recently, which I

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-78035952402133832872008-09-15T22:02:00.000-07:002008-09-15T22:12:42.415-07:00

The cruise *was* wonderful, despite the erratic Internet access. The weather was unusually good -- a few days of overcast with bits of drizzle, but also several days of blue skies and sunshine; even the locals in Ketchikan mentioned how lucky we were to have such good weather. We took a helicopter ride to stand on the Mendenhall Glacier, north of Juneau; took a train ride from Skagway to Grant

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-17058105454840432362008-09-09T11:42:00.000-07:002008-09-10T18:59:12.224-07:00

To follow up on previous post, I'm currently on a cruise ship heading up the coast from Seattle to Juneau (in Hobart Bay, at the moment), and will be away from home until Sunday the 14th. There *is* internet accessibility here (obviously), but it is slow, and $55/hour -- so aside from checking urgent e-mail, and posting a couple pages set up before I left, posting on the site this week will be

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-79196353217263831732008-09-06T18:25:00.000-07:002008-09-06T18:30:52.109-07:00

I am leaving tomorrow on a week's vacation, an Alaska cruise, and so posts on the website, and responses to emails, will be limited for the next week. I do expect to check in to the ship's Internet Lounge at least daily, and I even have a couple posts pre-prepared for quick posting while I'm aboard, but depending on actual access capabilities and my own schedule during the trip, I'm not

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-47674788666734568552008-08-22T20:11:00.000-07:002008-08-22T20:32:56.485-07:00

Part of the new design scheme is to never ever post an item with only an external link (which used to be flagged by a chevron, ») in the center main section of the homepage. Every post in that center section will be to a separate, independent page on the site. (The link to that page being the 'permalink'.) Any news short enough to not warrant creating a separate webpage will go under Blinks. The

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-79202889528820013532008-08-14T21:42:00.000-07:002008-08-14T21:57:10.697-07:00

A note on the still-in-progress refinement of Locus Online's look and structure -- I've pretty much finished layout and graphics for the homepage, and for the template post page, which tonight I've used to set the latest New Books page. At the moment the new homepage is posted here, current as of tonight, and all I'd have to do is rename this page to 'index.html' to replace the oldstyle homepage

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-61142173450318670322008-08-11T21:00:00.000-07:002008-08-14T13:17:06.128-07:00

Not much to report as the con wrapped up. I had a flight out Sunday afternoon -- had to be back at work Monday morning -- and so wandered over to the convention center Sunday morning, to check for any breaking newsletters and to hang out at the Locus table in the dealers' room for a while. But by 11:30 a.m. or so I headed back to my hotel to check out and find a SuperShuttle ($21 compared to $50

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-18362030758064183002008-08-10T00:28:00.000-07:002008-08-10T10:30:28.751-07:00

By day 4 of a big convention like this, it all begins running together. Which day is this? Saturday? Already? I had breakfast at a funky market/cafe on Market St, then wandered down to the convention center for a while, doing a last round of the dealers room and hanging out at the Locus table for a while, until a group of us wandered up the street for lunch, ending up at Chipotle (a Mexican

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-1336962035163594922008-08-09T00:13:00.000-07:002008-08-09T01:26:05.646-07:00

This convention isn't a big Worldcon; about 3500 attendees, I've heard, smaller than I'd expected considering that many usual members (including me) did not attend last year's con in Japan and therefore might be inclined to catch up with this year's con in Denver. Doesn't seem to be so. Is Denver part of the problem? A nice enough, decent city, but no special attraction, unless one takes (as I

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-73574639423780358932008-08-08T14:23:00.000-07:002008-08-08T14:42:00.132-07:00

Among panels Thursday morning was one on "New Trends in SF" moderated by Ken Scholes, with Jim Minz, Sheila Williams, Charles Brown, and Gary Wolfe, who talked about the usual suspects -- dissolving genre boundaries, abundance of YA, rise of the small/independent presses -- and the general principle that most 'trends' have been around before, and whatever the next one is, it will be over by the

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-69647783754321983342008-08-06T23:25:00.001-07:002008-08-07T10:04:54.265-07:00

This year's World SF Convention is being held in downtown Denver, Colorado, at the Colorado Convention Center, a reasonably spectacular facility that this week is also hosting the 2008 Joint Statistical Meeting, i.e., a conference of statisticians. I actually chatted with a couple attendees to the JSM for a while this afternoon, as I grabbed a plastic-packaged tunafish sandwich while waiting for

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-88453473958410328702008-08-06T21:39:00.000-07:002008-08-06T22:31:59.123-07:00

Yeong and I flew into Denver on Sunday, rented a car and drove northwest to Estes Park, the tourist town just outside the east entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park, where we checked into a bed & breakfast cabin alongside the babbling Big Thompson River. On Monday we drove into the park, up through the Old Fall River Road, to the Alpine Visitor Center, then further west and south down the west

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-49807738484563910622008-08-06T13:06:00.000-07:002008-08-06T13:08:30.435-07:00

Have arrived at the Worldcon here in Denver, after spending a couple days driving and hiking around Rocky Mountain National Park... which is why email response and posts (e.g. Bestsellers) have lagged. Will catch up and post more about the first day at the con, later this evening.

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-14442180129981470152008-07-31T18:33:00.000-07:002008-07-31T18:36:13.813-07:00

There are links to two alternate design studies for the Locus Online homepage in the comments to the previous post. I will not leave them posted indefinitely... May even delete this post after a couple days (before I leave for Worldcon). Anyone reading this is invited to take a peek and let me know what you think.

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-18110640511980714642008-07-28T18:47:00.000-07:002008-07-28T19:19:45.117-07:00

Inspired by recent comments and e-mails I've been rethinking the design of the Locus Online homepage, and supporting pages, the past couple weeks -- the sort of rethinking that's appropriate every couple three years anyway. It's been a year since the homepage was widened to include box ads in the right margin; and roughly three years since the current homepage color scheme and drop-down menus

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-3445673262559409582008-07-19T18:45:00.000-07:002008-07-19T19:47:46.940-07:00

As I mentioned several weeks ago now (at the end of this post), actor George Takei, famed for his role as Lt. Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series, appeared at the rocket-engine factory where I work in the Los Angeles suburbs for a lunchtime speech in celebration of the company's recognition of 'Gay pride' month -- Takei (here's his Wikipedia entry) being a prominent actor who recently 'came

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-26983865926959860262008-07-17T19:05:00.000-07:002008-07-17T19:15:57.073-07:00

Running a bit slow this week, down sniffly and sneezy with a summer cold. Blinks pending. Also compelled to contemplate design changes and polish to the homepage, in response to comments on this blog's posts and to the Locus Survey Comments post. Those comments were concerned mostly with color schemes, graphics, and permalinks, not to mention general 'clutter', though specifics on what sites work

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-37109824231854113182008-07-07T20:35:00.000-07:002008-07-07T20:38:37.561-07:00

I was all set to post a blog entry called "Disenfranchised" -- because, while I did buy my Denvention membership rather late, it was some two weeks ago now, and I'd worried that I'd not gotten any email response to my purchase (though I noticed my credit card was duly charged, a week ago), and despite two follow-up emails, had not gotten the PIN number needed to submit Hugo votes -- but then,

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-19608312700897101752008-07-06T19:57:00.000-07:002008-07-07T06:47:11.197-07:00

With the Disch obit today, a couple hours' work upon my arrival home from a July 4th trip, I've tried posting the entire thing on its own page, with its own URL, rather than only on the homepage, to see if this attracts any kind of permanent notice. In particular, Google, I've noticed, compiles new content when posted on new pages, but not new content merely posted on a site's homepage. I'm

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-52444607665882635452008-07-02T18:16:00.000-07:002008-07-02T18:40:41.056-07:00

OK, then, away with the search box bubble. Realign the title logo vertically, rather than horizontally, and make it the same width as the left pane where the Blinks are. Recombine the current issue and magazine info bubbles on the right (they were split while highlighting the Locus Poll voting). Make all the content in the left pane left-justified, rather than a mix of center and left. Make the

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-45660291874330027302008-06-29T16:48:00.000-07:002008-06-29T19:38:08.817-07:00

Last Sunday I wrote up my experience attending this year's Locus Award banquet in Seattle, and only now after a busy week have I found time to sit down and write up my notes on the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, which took place later the same day, Saturday the 21st of June. As before the event was held in the "Sky Theatre" of the Science Fiction Museum, housed in the same Frank

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-16830830883013901222008-06-22T10:19:00.000-07:002008-06-22T10:40:22.311-07:00

This year's weekend was a confluence of three events, up one from two in the past couple years: the Locus Awards, the SF Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, and this year the kick-off of Clarion West's six-week summer program for new writers. To highlight the last, Clarion West sponsored a live interview of (Hall of Fame inductee) William Gibson, conducted by uber-librarian Nancy Pearl, famous for

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-90616215442512719222008-06-16T18:47:00.000-07:002008-06-16T18:57:55.174-07:00

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

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-19599193846918369982008-06-02T08:52:00.000-07:002008-06-02T09:23:11.525-07:00

As I mentioned last time, having seen an advance DVD of an upcoming film documentary about Harlan Ellison (which does not, as an aside, completely avoid not mentioning the LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS) prompted me to pull down from my shelves a 1995 Borderlands Press edition of Ellison's famous Star Trek teleplay, "The City on the Edge of Forever", which is of course the subject of a decades-long

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-47923363127325359022008-05-26T19:08:00.001-07:002008-05-26T19:12:02.233-07:00

Ursula K. Le Guin's Lavinia is very nice, a wise narrative by a young girl witnessing a war going on in part over her ownership. The time and setting are that of Vergil's Aeneid, and the book is fantasy only to the extent that Vergil himself appears to young Lavinia in dreams, and Lavinia and other family members experience visions or prophecies, though there are no explicit appearances by any

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-37863849228660333582008-05-14T21:41:00.000-07:002008-05-14T22:13:48.526-07:00

Still sorting my extraneous books, that is. I have fewer 'junk' books than I thought -- self-published tomes of dubious literary merit. I like the suggestion from C.E. Petit about books for soldiers, and will send some that-a-way.Some quick takes on recent reading (see thumbnails at right): John Scalzi's books are fun, easy reads, very much what I've been thinking of as basic 'meat and potatoes'

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-56632853391489184082008-05-04T19:47:00.000-07:002008-05-05T18:51:12.051-07:00

It's been a busy couple weeks, so busy I haven't had a chance to mention that I flew to Huntsville AL for three days this past week (to train newbee software engineers in the right and proper processes for doing their jobs). I've been to Huntsville probably a dozen times over the past 20 years, though this latest trip was my first visit there since 2000, I think. Meanwhile at home I've been

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-16752172776484975932008-04-23T21:49:00.000-07:002008-04-23T22:03:46.739-07:00

First, the spam attack problem was solved the morning after I reported it to our hosting service, CI Host; it's called 'spoofing', as several readers advised me, and the boffins at CI Host had some method (something about a 'PTR record') of preventing the effects of the incursion.Second, the Locus Poll votes have been processed and databased and scrubbed for egregious voting sins (people-- we

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-50295011533694817752008-04-20T19:04:00.000-07:002008-04-20T19:10:00.172-07:00

Today I've been inundated by 2000+ emails in my inbox (meaning that the Outlook junk e-mail filter didn't filter them) all with subjects along the lines of 'delivery status (failure)' and 'mail system error - returned' and 'undelivered mail return to sender', all with email attachments which *appear* to be spam emails sent from *my* email address, i.e. online@locusmag.com, and returned by spam

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-72300651834125697042008-04-14T22:06:00.000-07:002008-04-14T22:11:12.862-07:00

As if an abreaction to something in the Florida water or food wasn't enough, I managed to catch upon my return from ICFA the rumored '2-week flu' which entails cold symptoms for that amount of time, nothing debilitating but an interference nonetheless. April 1st has come and gone, with no outraged letters in response to our (originally ICFA-inspired!) tomfoolery. Meanwhile Locus Poll ballots are

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-66977675780434388912008-03-26T19:55:00.000-07:002008-03-26T20:04:25.875-07:00

A brief but enthusiastic shout-out for the film Into the Wild, which I just caught up with on DVD via Netflix; a beautiful, complex film about a young misfit's obsession with living off the land in Alaska, and by extension, about the ways in which people decide to lead their lives. (In this case, I had *not* read the book, by the way.) Had I seen it earlier I would have been disappointed not to

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-29353023741389186732008-03-22T20:38:00.000-07:002008-03-22T21:09:32.610-07:00

In addition to the grad student paper presentations and the author readings, the conference program also features panels, in the manner of more typical SF conventions, on particular topics. Friday morning I attended one about World War II and SF, moderated by Gary K. Wolfe, with panelists Kathleen Ann Goonan (whose WWII novel In War Times I just read last week), Joe Haldeman, Andy Duncan, Ellen

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-87262326157162982672008-03-20T21:35:00.000-07:002008-03-20T22:54:53.655-07:00

The past few days have been hectic, what with preparing for and traveling to Orlando for this year's International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, ICFA, which this year has relocated from its previous 20-some-year venue at a hotel at the corner of the airport in Ft. Lauderdale. The new venue is a big Marriott at the corner of the airport in Orlando. But it's a big, more modern hotel than

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-69274820542514923102008-03-07T22:18:00.000-08:002008-03-07T22:26:04.241-08:00

On another topic, I'm quite jazzed by the recent episodes of Lost, which not only have had key revelations about the central mysteries of the show in virtually every new episode, but which, in its flash-forward revelations of what happens at the *end* of the series, rather brilliantly indicates that the writers/producers *do* have an over-arching story in mind, an end goal, and are not just

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-10443990313300909182008-03-07T21:24:00.000-08:002008-03-07T21:26:13.763-08:00

The high point of the month was the J.G. Ballard autobiography, Miracles of Life (published in the UK by Fourth Estate), a fascinating account of the life of one of the most distinctive and controversial SF writers of the 20th century, about which I can complain only of its brevity. Compared to many autobiographies -- the other extreme would be Asimov's -- Ballard's is brief, almost minimalistic.

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-55684669421932924292008-02-22T18:25:00.000-08:002008-02-22T18:30:17.058-08:00

Locus Online's version of the final Nebula ballot is now posted (and integrated into the SF Awards index, at least insofar as the Nominee Indexes are concerned), and I couldn't help but noticing a significant fact: that, despite the rolling 2-year eligibility rule for Nebula nominations, almost all of this year's final ballot consists of books and stories published last year, 2007, with only a

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-14121586966511536502008-02-20T20:43:00.000-08:002008-02-20T20:46:33.574-08:00

I've gone ahead and updated the majority of the awards index, leaving aside for now a few foreign language awards and others, but having reviewed steps toward what I hope will be more frequent updates in the future. I know I said that last year but... this time fur sure.I've also tweaked the page widths and font sizes, though probably not that anyone will notice.

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-21958030610807303262008-02-13T22:10:00.000-08:002008-02-13T22:28:52.267-08:00

It occurred to me a week or so ago that I should be able to analyze and summarize all the weekly bestseller rankings that I've been compiling for the website, to get some kind of cumulative rankings of overall bestsellers for the entire year. Of course, needless to say, actual total sales of books are not available (except perhaps via the subscription service BookScan, to which I don't subscribe)

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-79394615233521640292008-02-04T21:19:00.000-08:002008-02-04T21:47:28.467-08:00

So I actually took a day's vacation off work today to catch up on some overdue listings pages on the website, including the Classics Reprint page, which hadn't been updated for a while partly because the pace of new books that fit that category has been sadly slow for several months now. The past week has been busy anyway, what with formatting the Locus recommended reading list, and setting up

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-22225977401182559202008-01-29T20:49:00.000-08:002008-01-30T19:10:11.479-08:00

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, *after* having seen the film earlier this month, in contrast to my experience with Ian McEwan's Atonement last month, where I read the book first and then saw the film. My experiences could have been interchanged, however, with similar reactions -- that I can't remember seeing films so faithfully adapted from their literary sources

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5885530.post-83955344889550772982008-01-29T20:42:00.000-08:002008-01-29T20:44:27.718-08:00

In between rainstorms this past weekend here in Southern California was one of those magical, chamber of commerce photo-op moments when the mountains to the northeast were capped with snow and the sky was blue and the sun was warm. I snapped a few pix and cut one down to size to replace, at least for the moment, the purple twilight view from here on Medina Road.More about recent books read

Mark Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08278489325928998940noreply@blogger.com0