Ambrose & Elsewhere

1. Errol Morris has Part 1 of “Seven Lies About Lying” at the NYT website (registration may be required). I’m not sure I can buy the pedantic distinction between lying and deception, but it’s an interesting stretch of text, illustrated by some hoax-a-licious 19th century posters (for those who were intrigued by last week’s review of The Sun and the Moon).

2. This just in: crows are smart. You know this. I know this. Morlock knows this. Even Aesop knows this and he’s been dead for 2500 years or so, definitely hampering his cognitive faculties. But now the NYT knows this, which makes all the difference, I guess.

3. The Kepler spacecraft has already detected an exoplanet. That a spacecraft designed to detect planets has detected a planet may not seem newsworthy. But I just think it’s cool we have a spacecraft aloft whose job it is to find planets.

1. My Blog Gate post for this week is a review/reader’s memoir of Stargate by Tak Hallus (a.k.a. Stephen Robinett), as a belated memorial to the late author.

2. You’ve probably heard by now, but Baen’s Universe is closing. I have mixed feelings about this. I hate to see another market close, but after my original subscription lapsed I never got enough oomph up to renew–I wanted to like the zine more than I actually liked it. And the art on the site always bites my eye in a really unpleasant way. De gustibus. This may be more evidence that “professional” rates are unsustainable for short fiction, though.

3. I renewed my SFWA membership. I have mixed feelings about this, too. But the current administration has been so heroic in tackling things that had to be tackled (e.g. the new website) that I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch by voting with my feet while marching to the beat of a different drummer. (When my feelings are mixed, my metaphors follow.)

4. SF Signal asked me, among others of greater note, about the Hugos in this week’s Mind Meld feature.

5. Is right out.

The Vortex Cannon: useful and beautiful.

Stephen Robinett (a.k.a. “Tak Hallus”) is dead–and has been, it seems, since 2003.

He sort of fell out of the field by the 1980s, and personally I thought it was a mistake to drop his pseudonym: “Tak Hallus” is weird and instantly memorable, whereas I can never remember if his real name has a final “e” or not without looking it up (and I’m a huge fan). But reading his Stargate as a serial in Analog was one of the highlights of my teenage geekdom, and I know that I’m not alone in this. It seems weird that his passing went unremarked for so long in the field, now that we are Living In The Future and know everything before it happens, and also what two flavors of talking head think about it.

1. This is bad. What is M. Night Shyamalan thinking? I’m speaking as one of the three people on the face of this planet who actually liked The Village. But I’m about done with him, at this point.

2. This is good. Happy 191st birthday, Emily Brontë.

My Blog Gate post of the week is up at last, a review of Matthew Goodman’s The Sun and the Moon. Executive summary: I really liked it.

If I had picked a Dunsany novel likely to be adapted as a movie, My Talks with Dean Spanley wouldn’t have been it. But this does look like it might be a lot of fun. They’re certainly working with a great cast.

[Seen at theinferior4.]

1. Ho ho ho ho Mr Vorkos you’re going to be Vorkos-again! And again and again, we hope.

2. More news on Berlusconi’s shady dealings about hideous decrepit old bodies–not his own this time, though (thank God).

The news report describes the tombs as “Phoenician” but, since Sardinia was a Carthaginian possession until the Romans beat them up and took their elephants and islands away from them, “Punic” might be the better word.

1. In this week’s Blog Gate episode I commit career suicide. Don’t miss!

2. A bunch of plaster images of theatrical masks have been unearthed from Pompeii. I particularly like this one, which looks a lot like Hirschfeld’s caricatures of Chico Marx. Hadn’t realized the Brothers’ vaudeville career stretched back that far…

3. The validity of the Vinland Map is not finally settled. Again.

4. Apparently, mindless collectives are very effective at making rational decisions. So there’s still hope for Congress, I guess.

1. Hemingway’s Moveable Feast—“restored” or Bowdlerized? (at the NYT–registration may be required).

2. NESFA has scheduled a collection of John Bellairs’ fantasies—The Face in the Frost, an unfinished sequel and some shorter humorous stuff, most of which I’ve never seen. It’s not out yet–in fact, it seems to be a bit behind schedule. But word on the street has it that the book will be in print by WorldCon. This is a must-have, for me–I was crazy about Face in the Frost from the moment I read the first page. I enjoyed some of Bellairs’ YA books, too, but not with the same intensity–and my kids didn’t really take to them at all, somewhat to my disappointment… but you can’t tell kids what to like; you have to listen.

[NESFA notice seen at james_nicoll‘s blog.]