The first science fiction magazine I ever saw, read, subscribed to, submitted to, and was rejected by was Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Back in 1983, when I was almost 16 years old, my father brought a copy home for me after it became clear to him that writing SF was just simply going to be something that I did, and there would be no use complaining about it. He found the magazine at a 7-Eleven and showed me the address for fiction submissions. It was a generous gesture on his part, especially since a few years earlier he had forbidden me to read the evil stuff.

That first issue had a Fred Pohl story on the cover, I recall, "The High Test." I read the magazine greedily, then called the phone number inside to subscribe. The woman on the other side of the line wanted me to give a credit card number. It took some doing, but I convinced her to enter my subscription without one, and to bill me later. I'm not sure why I didn't just mail in a subscription card. I think I was just too excited to get my subscription started.

Before long, I had my first rejection in hand—a photocopied sheet of possible reasons my story was not of use to Asimov's, with editor Shawna McCarthy's second-generation signature at the bottom. Crushed but undeterred, I sent in another story. Same outcome.

Every time the new issue arrived, I would read it cover to cover. Those pages are where I first read Lucius Shepard, Bruce Sterling, James Patrick Kelly, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, Michael Bishop, Norman Spinrad, Dan Simmons, and a host of other exemplary short fiction writers I'm forgetting now. I still have many of those issues, the ones with the stories that affected me most. "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler is one of the first that comes to mind. More even than the novels I had long read, those stories were my first real education in the art and craft of writing science fiction.

I would lie in bed some nights and picture myself in that company. I would picture my name on the cover of Asimov's.

Years went by. Editors changed. I kept writing and submitting stories. Eventually I started making sales—to other magazines. I made a lot. I even landed Shawna McCarthy as my agent and received a Nebula nod. And still that stack of Asimov's rejections got higher and higher. Something like 50 sheets high.

Then last year an email came from Sheila Williams, the newest Asimov's editor. She had received, read, and wanted to buy my novella "Inclination." The streak was officially broken.

Today asphalteden dropped by my office. He hand-carried me my contributor's copies of the April/May 2006 Asimov's, which should be available on newsstands early next week. (I do have the tremendous good fortune of working ridiculously close to the Dell Magazines offices.)

Twenty-three years later, my name is on the cover of Asimov's. I will admit to having to swallow a lump in my throat. I'm glad that young, starry-eyed kid is still around to see this—especially in an issue that Sheila describes in her editorial as coming-of-age–themed.

Apropos of my recent post about the silly "natural family" resolution adopted by the city council of Kanab, UT, I have news of a new web site:

http://www.whatsupwithkanab.com

Check it out, click around, and sign their petition if you feel like it.

"Your call is important to us. All our associates are busy servicing other customers. Please hold."

In other news, today's top random spam from-field name is "Defeatism J. Beheading." Yeah, that's an email I'm going to hurry to read!

Apropos of a great post by asphalteden, I figured I would post a brief overview of my relationship with science fiction. This was originally written as a response to his post, but I figured maybe it could stand on its own. Heck, we might even kick off a meme here!

I adore Gene Wolfe (well, his writing—I don't know him personally). I have read The Book of the New Sun three times, The Book of the Long Sun twice, and The Book of the Short Sun ... well, not yet. Despite the fact that most everything he writes goes a few inches above my head, I feel paradoxically smarter when I'm reading one of his novels, rather than dumber. I think this is because I make enough of the connections, even though I don't make them all.

The Dying Earth (the original short novel) is one of the earliest SF novels I ever read. Knocked me out. I haven't read a Jack Vance novel since, though again I intend to read all those Dying Earth novels ... someday. The first real SF story I remember reading was Asimov's "Reason," in abridged form in the Scholastic Weekly Reader. That was the hook that got me. I now own a copy of the April 1941 Astounding in which "Reason" first appeared. I am afraid to take it out of the plastic bag.

I almost always say "SF" or "science fiction." It's hard for me to say "sci-fi," but I'm learning. I think "speculative fiction" is shuck-n-jive talk.

I attended Clarion when I was 17. I think it did more good than harm, though certainly it did both. It terrifies me to say that this was 21 years ago, almost. I have known bobhowe more than half my life. I cried at Clarion.

I enjoy Blade Runner, Gattaca, Dark City, The Thing (the original version), Aliens, Tremors, Buckaroo Banzai, and the original Star Wars trilogy. I wanted to like A.I. and Minority Report both, and I did, but only up to a point. I have never seen 2001 from start to finish, but I plan to this year. I am stoked for the Jumper movie in Summer 2007. I am also stoked for Richard Linlater's A Scanner Darkly. I avoid most SF movies and television, though I liked Babylon 5. I fell in love with Star Trek before kindergarten even though it gave me nightmares, and I will always love it, much like two thirds of Feel So Good by Chuck Mangione will always be my favorite record.

I have The Essential Ellison, but I don't think I will ever read it. I've probably read most of what's in it anyway, at a time when I really would have called it "essential." I ate both Glass Teat books like candy. I was in college.

I never attended an SF convention until after I'd made my first pro sale, so I don't feel as if I was ever truly a fan. Like many of us, I was often told by high school English teachers not to waste my talents on sci-fi. I sent one of those teachers my first published story, and she liked it.

Live long and prosper.

This tune is narrated by a clerk at a 7-Eleven, selling generic cigarettes to lowlifes in the wee hours:

It's not that I don't like them And I feel all right to sell it But I'm scared when 20 guys are buying GPC's And not one of them can spell it

Insatiable is a ska band I used to go see at the Dead Goat Saloon in Salt Lake City, way back in the early '90s. (My friend Mike and I went thirsty through those shows because we were too embarrassed to ask the bartender for a pitcher of root beer.) I'm not aware of any album Insatiable has cut, but I was delighted to find two tracks by them on the second volume of Ska: The Third Wave, which I picked up a few years back on eBay.

Would you say the past tense of podcast—and the past participle, for that matter—is podcast or podcasted? My vote is podcast.

The city council of Kanab, Utah, has unanimously endorsed a non-binding "Natural Family Resolution" that promotes the claustrophobic values of '50s America. You know, that nice women-belong-in-the-kitchen morality that had grown across the nation like kudzu on a railway trestle, smothering everything underneath, and which was soon to be sprayed with a liberal dose of '60s-era Weed-B-Gone. Everywhere but rural Utah, that is. Yeah.

Here's the Salt Lake Tribune:

Carol Sullivan voted for the resolution - pitched by the conservative Sutherland Institute - last week when it was introduced by Mayor Kim Lawson. But the council's sole woman did so with some reservations.

"I saw no reason to vote against it because it is nonbinding," she said, noting that no one spoke out against it. "But I did wonder why it should be a government issue."

Sullivan also sees some of the resolution's language as "chauvinistic."

"It kind of made me feel like the odd one out ... the square peg in a round hole. But that's how it is when you're the only woman on an all-male council."  [full article]

One wonders how the Bionic Boy (1976, made-for-TV, filmed near Kanab) would have fit into a "natural" Kanab family.

If you saw me on that evening subway ride and judged me for my reading material, a battered, torn copy of Snow Crash, how would your opinion have changed if you'd known I was toting four volumes of Proust in my shoulder bag?

Prepare yourself for envy, markbourne.

Next month, Laura and I are going to see Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving in Hedda Gabler at BAM. Blanchett won Australia's 2005 Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor for this role, you know.

Brooklyn, baby.