Am awake and on a saline drip. Surgery scheduled for this morning, subject to acts of god. Not sure what this means for my awakeness later today. Will try to update here ( Read more... )

So I've had an unusual day. Getting off the train at Euston this morning, I slipped so that my right leg went between the train and platform; my weight, at least briefly , was all on my shin. Kindly commuterd tried to help me up from where I was sprawled on the platform, but it soon became clear that standing on my right leg was not a good idea. So ( Read more... )

So, accidents permitting, I will be at Anticipation, the Worldcon to be held in Montreal next week. At least as it stands, my program looks like this:

( Read more... )

My final Readercon schedule now looks like this:

70 Years of Van Vogt
Thursday 9th, 7pm, ME/CT
with Gary Wolfe, John Clute, Charles N Brown
[[Locus will be running in August one of my retrospective columns, on van Vogt, plus a transcript of this roundtable discussion with the above-listed illuminati.]]

The Career of Elizabeth Hand
Friday 10th, 1pm, Suite ( Read more... )

Is the Peter Hawkins who did voices for the Daleks and Cybermen (and Captain Pugwash, Bill & Ben, etc) and who has obituaries here and here the same Peter Hawkins who published, under the pseudonym Karl Maras, a 1954 sf novel called The Plant from Infinity? I can find neither confirmation or denial of this online, but both seem to have been born in ( Read more... )

For those of you interested in such things, I should be appearing on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves tomorrow night (from 9.15pm) discussing the work of Philip K Dick with presenter Philip Dodd and another sf author, to be confirmed. I assume the programme will be available afterwards via iPlayer if you're in the UK.

ETA: And it doesn't clash with paulcornell2's " ( Read more... )

1) I've just received a copy of On Joanna Russ (Wesleyan U P, ed Farah Mendlesohn), a book that I think is splendid only partly because I have a contribution in it on Russ's short fiction. (Amazon UK / US)

2) I'll be interviewing Nick Lowe (the sf film critic, not the rocker) for the BSFA on Wednesday evening. No admission charge, details here.

If you want to friend me on Facebook but we haven't met in real life, by all means go ahead, but send me a message with your friend request saying who you are, why you're friending me, etc. Same applies if we've met in passing in the sort of context (crowded room party, etc) where names and faces tend to blur. Thanks ( Read more... )

Has anyone out there sent me a packet recently that's too big to fit through a regular letterbox? If so, could you let me know what it is? I'm waiting in for a Royal Mail redelivery of it, but it's looking increasingly like they've messed that up, and it'd be helpful to know how big this thing is if I have to trek out to the sorting office.

For my own reference as much as anything, a selection of my favorite poems from the late tomsdisch's LJ Endzone. I freely admit to having omitted some stuff that offended me politically. (There were some difficult cases here: I wound up including Arab Love but omitted Job Application. Your mileage may vary. Beyond a certain point, as with Larkin, the ( Read more... )