Joe Murphy, podcaster and XM Radio personality, passed away April 1 from the rare cancer leiomyosarcoma, which attacks the smooth muscles of the body.

Joe's favorite song was Jonathan Coulton's "First of May," so to raise awareness of his disease and raise funds for his family, a group of podcasters spearheaded by the estimable Paul Fischer and the heroic Phil Rossi have recorded a benefit version of "First of May":

"First of May (Joe Murphy Mix)" Written by Jonathan Coulton Recorded by The P-Cast Allstars 6:03     7.38 Mb     160kbps

And please, if you can, donate to the Joe Murphy Memorial Fund.

Epidode #45 of "ShunnCast" is now available, in which Bill reads the third and concluding part of his Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novella "Inclination." Plus, special violence, sex, profanity and music episode!

http://www.shunn.net/podcast?id=45

See also shunncast.

I just barely put the album on, but holy shit, I'm flipping through the Snakes & Arrows booklet and there are not one, not two, but three instrumentals. Good God, it's a Rush lover's fantasy.

I almost forgot to show you what I wore today for record shopping:

And yes, I'm wearing it for work, and yes, I'll wear it to the NYRSF reading tonight.

ellapup had only a small part in the "First of May" project, but this is how she spent her first of May.

A delightful Times article about New York City's speakeasies:

One person who probably did not patronize the place was William M. Bennett, who in 1929 ran in the Republican mayoral primary as a dry candidate. One of his campaign promises was that he would close a speakeasy that sat "in the shadow of Police Headquarters"—very possibly Onieal's predecessor—along with what he estimated were 100,000 speakeasies in the city.

His threat did not go over well. He lost the nomination to a wet candidate named Fiorello H. La Guardia, 62,894 to 17,100. Which might explain why your flight to New York will not be landing in Bennett Airport, and why you can have a drink at the bar upon arrival.  [full article]

Strangely, I first met Lt. Jodenny Scott and Sgt. Terry Myell in Sandra McDonald's second novel, which I read in part last year at Blue Heaven. I say "strangely" because the first novel, The Outback Stars, was only published a couple of weeks ago. But I loved the characters enough from the partial second manuscript that I couldn't wait to go back and find out what happened to them earlier.

I got my chance a couple of months ago with an advance reader's copy of The Outback Stars, and I was not disappointed. Lt. Scott and Sgt. Myell serve in Team Space, a future starfaring naval corps whose ships are more than just military vessels. The ships ferry huge container modules—some bearing cargo, others luxury passenger accomodations, others prison populations—up and down the Alcharinga, a sort of spacetime manifold that permits hyperspatial travel. The Alcharinga was built by a vanished race and offers access to seven planets that seem to have been set up expressly for human habitation, but no one knows why. Team Space doesn't seem to want to look this gift horse too hard in the mouth.

Jodenny Scott is a heroic but haunted young lieutenant, one of the few to survive the destruction of the vessel Yangtze as it entered the Alcharinga. Her new assignment aboard the Aral Sea is to take its troubled and inefficient Underway Stores division and turn it around, but she is barely recovered herself from months of intensive therapy. One of her sergeants, Terry Myell, is just as unhappy, having muddled through a false rape allegation but emerged with at best few friends amongst his crewmates and at worst some deadly enemies. And just when Jodenny and Terry start suspecting that some ominous conspiracy is afoot in Underway Stores, they unexpectedly get caught up in the mystery of the builders of the Alcharinga....

A novel that puts the minutiae of naval procedure front and center may not sound like a gripping read, but dammit it is. Sandra McDonald (blogging nearby as sandramcdonald) is a former naval officer herself, and obviously knows this world inside and out. We get to know our two protagonists by observing the way they conduct their inhumanly busy careers and navigate obstacles that range from trivial to lethal, and startlingly come to care about them very deeply in the process. These two broken but good and competent people play their cards very close to their vests, and it doesn't take long for us to start rooting for them to give in to their obvious mutual attraction. But at the same time we're terrified that when they do they will run spectacularly and destructively afoul of Team Space's fraternization regs.

All this business is layered through with at least two distinct and interesting mysteries, both of which come to a head together, one coming to a neat resolution, the other opening up into a wider SFnal mystery that will be explored in the next book. Which I've already read part of. Which won't be out until next year. Dammit!

Bottom line: The Outback Stars is an exciting, involving novel thoroughly grounded in the kind of mundane military reality that doesn't appear very often in science fiction, and with the two most likeably damaged characters I've seen in some time. Oh, and the dominant culture is Australian! I can't forget to mention that.

I've never been much a fan of military SF, but I loved The Outback Stars. Now go forth and purchase.

A big cookie lies pulverized in a tight accretion disc in the bus lane of Madison Avenue. Two black (soot-stained?) pigeons peck away at the unbelievable bonanza. Peck peck hop peck.

Cars are coming. A gray sedan bears down. Fly, pigeons! Get out of the way! Pigeons, why can't you hear my telepathic command! CAR!

Black wheels chew up the meters. With an annoyed flutter the pigoens hop aside at the last possible instant, wings a finger's width from rubber mayhem.

Hop hop peck peck peck.

A bus is coming. One-way telepathic communication to pigeons is too stressful. I must turn away.

LIKE A ROCK
BUT DUMBER

What's that you say, Reuters? New York's pedestrians are the eighth fastest in the world? Are you sure?

Pedestrians in Singapore were crowned the world's fastest movers, walking 30 percent faster than they did in the early 1990s... Copenhagen and Madrid were the fastest European cities, beating Paris and London. And despite its reputation as "the city that never sleeps," New York ranked only eighth in the pace race, behind Dublin and Berlin.

Philadelphia Inquirer books editor Frank Wilson uses Cormac McCarthy as an excuse to peddle the rankest of bullshit in his column of yesterday:

Of course, as D.H. Lawrence pointed out in the last book he wrote, Apocalypse, those who warn of apocalypse secretly crave it, the way puritans tend to be turned on by the very vices they so loudly denounce.

The Road is just the latest installment in the pornography of despair.  [full diatribe]

Furthermore, in the balance of his column, Frank Wilson pretty much shames books editors everywhere by displaying his tin ear for brilliant, poetic prose, his utter lack of sophistication as a reader, and his blindness to symbolic content as he drops road apples all over The Road. Of course, if he denudes the book of its value as art, all that can remain in his cramped little mind is a perception of pornography. It's all in the eye of the beholder, after all. To me, pornography is American soldiers and Iraqi citizens dying unnecessarily while Washington watches, skies and seas poisoned as we blithely career down dead-end roads in our dead-end SUVs. Pornography is not contained, nor would be it even be containable, within the borders of The Road.

He's highstepping up the subway stairs ahead of me—tall, soda-straw thin, hair cut Ivy League style and slicked back on top, long sideburns curving to points near the corners of his mouth—back rigid, knees rising and falling in a bizarrely quick clockwork rhythm. Tight black denim jacket, pegleg jeans with the cuffs rolled up, black sock, Converse hightops.

As he pulls away up the ramp at the top of stairs, twisting the throttle, I think to myself, Now that must be the Stray Cat Strut.

Hey, lunch crew. This one's for you. Good to see you all.

Suffer from celiac disease? Know someone who does? Do you, they, or it have difficulty finding gluten-free treats to satisfy your, their, or its cravings?

Never fear. PatsyPie is here! Delicious cookies, biscotti, and brownies, without all the icky stuff that's bad for you, them, or it.

PatsyPie! Ask for it by name!

Wait, does blackmail count as strongarming?

So Laura and I spent last weekend in Chicago. Saturday was a long, long day of looking at apartments, some of which were very tempting and which we had to reluctantly conclude were not right for us. The most tempting of them all was a giant four-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a graystone on a large lot-and-a-half. It was a steal for the price, but still about $300 over our budget.

After dinner with the in-laws who had generously and heroically driven us around the city all day, Laura and I headed north to arrive in time for dessert with at Ysabeau Wilce's fabulous and humongoid apartment, where we also crossed paths with Paul Witcover of theinferior4 fame. No dueling blogs ensued, but Guitar Hero II was played. We shout, shout, shout at the devil!

We were nervous about our prospects upon restarting the hunt Sunday morning. If we didn't find something that day, Laura would have to make a solo hunting trip back alone. Fortunately, the second place we saw Sunday morning was perfect. First floor of a greystone in Humboldt Park, good neighbors in the building, El stops convenient, nice communal yard for the dog, friendly landlord, only $100 over our budget, and best of all two blocks away from TASTEE FREEZ! Oh, dear. I have shed 17 pounds in the past two months through brute willpower, but now I fear their return is incipient.

But we have a place to live! Now the only thing to worry about is the moving itself.

I wish we could all just be writers, writing the best stories we know how, and none of the rest was important.

Via gregvaneekhout and rajankhanna:

Epidode #46 of "ShunnCast" is now available, in which Bill reads his first published professional short story, "From Our Point of View We Had Moved to the Left," on WBAI 99.5 FM's "Hour of the Wolf."

http://www.shunn.net/podcast?id=46

See also shunncast.

The syndicated RSS feed for ScientiFicShunn, my relatively new only-fiction-no-chat podcast, is now available on LJ. See scientificshunn.

The podcast is also accessible via the iTunes Music Store, if you have iTunes installed on your computer.

Let me start by saying that I had a fabulous time over the weekend. I lost a Nebula to James Patrick Kelly, but I wasn't unhappy about it. Burn is a terrific novel novella, and it's pretty incredible that after nine at-bats this is Jim's first win.

Anyway, the weekend started for me last Thursday afternoon, and between then and about 2:00 am Sunday Laura and I hung out with Sheila Williams, asphalteden, Bianca Miele, Trevor Quachri, paulmelko, paulwitcover, bobhowe, eleanor, Jim Minz, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jack Skillingstead, Scott Edelman, Toby and Emily Buckell, Steve Feldberg, Jim Kelly, John Kessel, Craig Engler, Jae Brim, rajankhanna, Barbara Krasnoff, Jim Freund, Chris Cohen, Marc Zicree, Brook and Julia West, Rick Bowes, Jeff Ford, Wil McCarthy, Daryl Gregory, Shawna McCarthy, Wayne Barlowe, Gordon Van Gelder, John Joseph Adams, slushmaster, and probably a couple dozen other people who are slipping my mind just now. I also appeared live on Jim Freund's radio program on two hours of sleep, had a lovely breakfast with Jack and Maureen McDevitt, and helped direct Norman Spinrad to the nearest subway station.

The banquet and awards ceremony itself were interminable. Thank God the novella category came early in the program or it would have been even worse. Even so, the nervousness didn't start settling in until during dessert. Or maybe the delicious cheesecake concealed a botulism virus, I don't know. Laura and I were fortunate enough to sit at the Asimov's table with Sheila Williams and my fellow nominee Paul Melko, who cut quite a handsome figure in his spiffy tuxedo. (Brian Bieniowski and I looked good, but we were still hopelessly outclassed.) As I said above, Paul and I lost to Jim Kelly, but we're saving those acceptance speeches because we'll face off again in Yokohama. Better sharpen that katana, Melko! Dou itashimashite!

And last but hardly least, I can't forget to mention the seventeen kinds of awesome Laura looked in her Nebulas dress!

The photo above is from Ellen Datlow's collection, by the way. Our own photos to come.

Ron Hogan of MediaBistro's GalleyCat certainly had an eye for the hotties at the Nebula banquet this past Saturday. Amongst the objects of his roving camera eye....

Laura wielded her camera at the Nebula ceremony to caption more of the hotties of science fiction. Here, f'rinstance, paulmelko and I pose with novella victor James Patrick Kelly:

Didn't Melko look fine in that tux? Too bad it didn't distract Jim enough to let me grab the Lucite and run.

Dooce has a terrific little audio snippet of a Utah traffic reporter who unintentionally reveals her religious affiliation on the air:

Only in Utah

Good thing she wasn't flying the chopper! And shouldn't cold medicine be against the Word of Wisdom?

One of the pleasures of owning a dog is taking her for walks at Astoria Park during the morning off-leash hours. Ella loves to chase squirrels, so much so that Laura and I have to call them "rockies" when we talk. If Ella hears the word "squirrel," she instantly goes on high-alert.

Ella has never caught a squirrel, though she comes close sometimes. She is usually startled to round a tree up which her quarry has run and not find the squirrel behind it. Only rarely does she look up and realize that the squirrel is now above her, taunting her. (Yes, Shaun of the Dead fans, dogs can look up.)

Yesterday morning, Ella and I took a long early walk. The squirrel chasing was great. She came close to catching a black squirrel that passed up two perfectly good trees on its run. Are the black squirrels dumber? I'm not sure.

Anyway, after a long circuit of the park, Ella and I neared the infamous Charybdis Playground. I saw a dog we know named Sultan, a large furry black dog, part chow, I think, up ahead near the playground wall. Sultan was sniffing around near the base of the wall behind a tree, maybe pawing at something.

When we were about ten feet from Sultan, he suddenly turned around, shaking his head hard. A struggling squirrel was clamped in his jaws. The squirrel was shrieking. It was a godawful sound, and there's really no other word for it.

Sultan's owner came rushing up, yelling for the dog to drop the squirrel. Sultan did, and the squirrel flopped into the grass on its back, one hind leg twitching. While the owner hustled Sultan away from the site of the struggle, I started looking around for something I could use to put the squirrel out of its misery—a stout branch, maybe. But before I found anything, the leg stopped twitching.

As Ella and I left the scene, I heard a strangely plaintive chirping sound. I looked up. In a high branch of a nearby tree, two squirrels were huddled together. One of them was turning its head this way and that, making the sound. It was the second time in less than a minute that I'd heard a squirrel making an unfamiliar sound. I'm sure it was calling to the dead squirrel, or maybe just bleating in terror.

Squirrel chasing had lost its appeal for me, if not for Ella. I hope she never catches one.

Would you be weirded out to step into an elevator and then realize that the walls are all covered with plastic sheeting?

Bill the Piano Mover was quick and efficient, but it was still a sad morning:

Treat her well, Zach!

FRIDAY
Derby, 10 PM
LIAR'S PANEL ON HOW TO GET PUBLISHED
Carol Berg, Joshua Palmatier, Laurence Schoen, William Shunn, Diane Weinstein

SATURDAY
Derby, 3 PM
HIGH TECH WAYS TO PROMOTE YOURSELF
Walter Hunt, Robert Jeschonek, Melissa Marr, Jana G. Oliver, Joshua Palmatier, William Shunn

SUNDAY
Salon F, 12 PM
PODCASTING AND MUSIC
Matthew Wayne Selznick, Jason Adams, Heather Welliver, William Shunn, Phil Rossi

Salon E, 4 PM
SOLO PODCASTING
Grailwolf, Command Line, Chris Merle, William Shunn, Mur Lafferty, Leann Mabry

MONDAY
10 AM
READING
William Shunn

Derby, 11 AM
VOICE ACTING AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
Cindy Shockley, JR Blackwell, Tee Morris, William Shunn, Rich Sigfrit, J.C. Hutchins, Renfield, Steve Wilson, Leann Mabry

It was a historic occasion last night. I was the only person who brought a contribution to the May CD Mix of the Month Club. (It was a charming collection of animal songs called The Bestiary.) I was also very nearly the only person who showed up at all! But after an hour of solitary Johnnie Walker Black Label and Guinness (not in the same glass), my self-proclaimed stalker Ali showed up, and we were later joined by her friend who's in town driving the tour bus for Earth, Wind & Fire. It was a good time, and I didn't go home empty-handed because Ali brought a copy of her mix from last month that I hadn't gotten.

But one has to wonder if CDMOM is beginning to die. That would be sad, but understandable since we've been going almost three years already. Next month will be my last meeting, though, in any event, and with luck a big crowd will show up to bid Laura and me farewell. I already have my mix ready, and it's called From Gotham to the Windy City. But no preview yet of the track listing!

(The story so far.)

Via planetalyx, who was lucky enough to get to be Bennet.

Your Score: Zach

You scored 37 Idealism, 58 Nonconformity, 45 Nerdiness

You gotta embrace your inner freak. 'Cause the only thing you'll regret is denying who you really are. Congratulations, you're Zach! You're nerdy, strange, slightly snarky, and proud of it! You're also a nice guy and really trustworthy friend. Any cheerleader (or, well, anyone) should consider his or herself extremely fortunate to be friends with a person like you.

Your best quality: You're an all-around great friend
Your worst quality: You don't get along well with annoying little brothers

Holy cow! In news of the entirely unexpected, I learned this morning that "Inclination" is a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short science fiction! Here's the full list of finalists, including many friends and other very familiar names:

• "Yellow Card Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi
  
• "Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth" by Michael F. Flynn
  
• "Botch Town" by Jeffrey Ford
  
• "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald
  
• "The Walls of the Universe" by Paul Melko
  
• "A Billion Eves" by Robert Reed
  
• "You Have Never Been Here" by M. Rickert
  
• "The House Beyond Your Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
  
• "Another Word for Map Is Faith" by Christopher Rowe
  
• "Inclination" by William Shunn
  
• "Lord Weary's Empire" by Michael Swanwick
  
• "The Cartesian Theater" by Robert Charles Wilson
  
• "Julian: A Christmas Story" by Robert Charles Wilson

14theditch

ianmcdonald

paulmelko

The cicadas have arrived in Chicago!

I'm relieved, because I was a little worried about how we would eat when we get there.

I have arrived in Baltimore and landed safely at my hotel, after all sorts of travel- and hotel-related weirdnesses. (I hope these don't set the tone for the weekend.) I am holed up in my room now to write a theater review that needs to be done tonight, and then I will head to the con for my 10 pm panel.

My room is a suite with a full-size fridge! Oh, with what shall I stock it...?

Epidode #47 of "ShunnCast" is now available, in which Bill reflects on sex and the modern Mormon missionary, with illustrations from his own post-Canada mission service. Live from Balticon, more or less!

http://www.shunn.net/podcast?id=47

See also shunncast.

I wonder how long before the Times catches the error in the first paragraph of its current story "Andy Roddick Crashes Out of French Open":

To figure out how Andy Roddick was fairing in his first-round match of the French Open tennis tournament today, spectators did not have to see the score.

My weekend in Baltimore got off to a portentous start Friday afternoon when, after having dragged my luggage seven or eight blocks from the train station, the woman at the Thrifty rental counter told me I would not be able to return my pre-reserved car to that location on Monday owing to their closure for the Memorial Day holiday. I would have to return it Tuesday or else take it to their BWI Airport location instead.

I grumbled, but I didn't have much recourse.

When I reached my hotel in Cockeysville, a mile or two from the con, and hauled my bags to my room, I found the door to my room standing open. I called the front desk and insisted that I be moved to another room. "Yes," I said, "I'm sure you're right, it was just a mistake made by housekeeping, but I still want a new room. I've lived in New York City for twelve years. I'm a little paranoid about things like that."

I hung out in my new room until late in the evening, working on a review that was due to Sci Fi Weekly. I made my 10:00 pm panel ("Liar's Panel on How to Get Published") fine, and had a good time, but had to get back to the hotel to finish my review before bed. On the way I stopped at a Giant supermarket to pick up some beer. Since I would be driving back and forth to the con I didn't figure on doing any drinking there, but I definitely wanted a few cold ones in the fridge in my suite for the end of each day. What I learned at the supermarket is that beer is only sold in liquor stores in Maryland—and the liquor stores were all closed. I did manage to purchase a few apples, though.

On Saturday morning I recorded and edited a quick podcast in my hotel room. Then I was on a panel that afternoon about "High-Tech Ways to Promote Yourself," at which the other panelists spent a lot of time and energy trashing the idea of podcasting. I'm sorry, what part of "high-tech" did we not read in the panel description? I had a lovely dinner with Scott Edelman that evening, though, before crashing in my room. I was beginning to succumb to some kind of throat and chest congestion.

Sunday's breakfast was at a nearby IHOP (Stuffed Garden Crepes = good!), though I sat hungry in the car in the parking lot beforehand to hear the end of an NPR interview with Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, and Darryl Pitt about Michael Brecker's final recording, Pilgrimage. At noon I was on a panel about "Podcasting and Music" at which I had almost nothing to contribute. (Everyone else on the panel did actual music-based podcasts.) A happier time was had at the "Solo Podcasting" panel, which was well-moderated and at which everyone was able to contibute equally. That evening I drove into Baltimore to have dinner with a couple of former New Yorker friends who moved last year to Maryland. We had a terrific meal and a wonderful chat, but I crawled into bed that night with a worsening cough.

Monday morning my throat was sore enough that I was worried about my ability to read at 10:00 am. I packed most all my stuff, then set about revising one of the stories I wanted to read that morning. After checking out of the con and scoring a scanty breakfast (water, coffee, and a muffin), I hit the con. Three folks showed up for my reading, including the estimable jamietr, Elaine Brennan of Nippon 2007 English Language Programming (with a timely reminder for me to fill out my Worldcon Participant Questionnaire!), and Eric Sorenson, the fellow who used to provide hilarious parody lyrics of LDS hymns to my web site under the name Stephen Sondheim Smith.

What the audience lacked in size it made up in enthusiasm; I think my two stories went over pretty well. I read "Timesink" first, a story which will appear in a future issue of Electric Velocipede, and second I read the humorous unsold piece, "Care and Feeding of Your Piano," that I had revised that morning. (Laptops are wonderful things.)

After the reading, I immediately had to rush to an 11:00 am panel on "Voice Acting and Public Speaking." This panel featured no less than nine podcasters, and at the first opportunity I laid the groundwork for an early escape: "Before I address the question, I want to apologize for the fact that I'm going to have to jump out of this panel at 11:30. I have a car rental problem that can only be dealt with then, and I tell you this because, one, I don't want to seem rude, and two, I've always wanted to be applauded for leaving a panel."

This was a good panel too, at least as much as I was able to stay for, and when I did exit it was to a huge round of applause. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that cinemafreak was holding up a hand-lettered APPLAUSE sign. It was a good note on which to exit the con.

Because that's what I was doing. I had examined maps and timetables and charts and schedules of all sort online the evening before, and I had come to the conclusion that the only way I could guarantee being able to a) drive my rental car the thirty miles to the Thrifty facility near BWI, b) catch the free shuttle to the airport terminal, c) catch the light rail from the airport into Baltimore, d) transfer to the light rail spur that connects with Baltimore Penn Station, and e) make my reserved coach seat on the correct train home to New York, would be to leave the con at 11:30 am.

All of which I did. Whew!

I was about an hour north of Baltimore on the train when Paul Fischer, head of the Balticon new media programming track, called me, concerned that he hadn't seen me at all at the con. Ha ha ha ha ha! If only he knew.

If you're a New York science fiction fan, you have no excuse. You know where the theater is already. It's the Red Room, and it's upstairs from KGB, home of the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series. In fact, if you've been to a reading at KGB, you've probably heard stamping feet or caber tossing or whatever it is they do up there that makes so much noise.

But now I'm urging you to grab some tickets and hie thyself to the Red Room Thursday through Sunday until June 10th for 75 minutes of radio drama you won't soon forget. The show on tap is RadioTheatre's KING KONG, but rather than describe it for you here, I'll simply point you toward my review at Sci Fi Weekly:

King Kong An off-off-Broadway production brings the Eighth Wonder of the World to the most intimate stage of them all—the stage of the mind.  [review]

Oh, and mark your calendars for this fall, when RadioTheatre presents its H.G. Wells Science Fiction Festival! I'm going to have to try to come back to town for that one.

In more news for New York SF fans, check out the HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival schedule and start planning your picnic for June 25th.

...is when someone says "tenant" but means "tenet." A tenant is an inhabitant. A tenet is a principle.

The building's tenants adhered to the tenets of Zoroastrianism.

The website for Rise: Blood Hunter proudly proclaims:

From The Producers of The "The Grudge" Franchise