eddvick

My latest story for the Daily Cabal has gone live.

We invite your comments at the site.

Here is a family tree of the various branches of electronic music.

Via

I have sleep apnea. That's where you stop breathing every once in a while while sleeping. I got tested, and evidently woke up a truly amazing number of times every hour. There are two types of sleep apnea, central (where something's going wrong in your central nervous system) and obstructive (where there's a problem with the architecture in the back of your mouth that means not enough air gets through).

But enough about sleep apnea. What's this about writing apnea? It may be a case of tempest meeting teapot, but Huffington Post writer Linda Stone noticed that she and co-workers occasionally slowed or stopped breathing while working on email. This can, she found, trigger a fight-or-flight reaction in the body:

The activated sympathetic nervous system causes the liver to dump glucose and cholesterol into our blood, our heart rate to increase, our sense of satiety to be compromised, and our bodies to anticipate and resource for the physical activity that, historically, accompanied a physical fight or flight response. Meanwhile, when the only physical activity is sitting and responding to email, we're sort of "all dressed up with nowhere to go."

If this is the case with email participants, could it be happening with writers, too? We sit all day more caught up in our imaginary worlds than inhabiting the real one. I find myself leaning more to the left, often resting my left elbow on the armrest of my chair. Is that why I'm getting an ache in that elbow?

I get involved while writing battle scenes, too. Almost ducking and weaving with my characters' movements. Does that, too, contribute to this fight-or-flight reaction? Interesting, if so.

Bottom line: to me this looks like the case of a columnist having to have something to talk about. Still, wouldn't hurt to get up and stretch once in a while, maybe concentrate on breathing. Bad posture and obesity all too often go with sitting in front of a keyboard all day.

Via an interview on the always-entertaining CBC podcast Spark.

Via Chris Roberson, here is an interview with consummate artists Moebius and Miyazaki.

Walt Kelly, that is. There's a lovely new blog devoted to his work, Whirled of Kelly. Sadly, the publication date of the first volume of Fantagraphics Complete Pogo keeps getting pushed back, but I really look forward to seeing it.

Now is your lucky day.

Word is my latest story for The Daily Cabal is now available.

I'm going to disable comments here because we really want folks to comment at the Cabal.

Janna Silverstein forwards news that one venerable Seattle-area independent bookstore is closing, and another is going to have to leave its current location.

Bailey-Coy Books is the one that's closing, and the excellent Elliott Bay Book Company is considering a move, ironically, to the same neighborhood.

The bad economy is partially to blame. Lack of parking certainly hurts Elliott Bay. But both have been hurt a lot more by the availability of books at big box retailers and at Amazon. In a just world there would be room for all, but independent booksellers just can't compete with stores that mark books down so much as loss leaders. The biggest thing I'll miss is another venue for writers to read their work. I went to quite a few readings at Elliott Bay, and have little faith that a move to Capitol Hill will be beneficial for their bottom line.

Evidently one of my favorite cartoon shows is being reincarnated. Is there a word meaning 'reincarnated' that applies to new versions of classic television shows? It's right on the tip of my tongue...



Via

My latest story for The Daily Cabal takes a few liberties with cosmology.

This looks like it should be lots of fun. Orycon is always a good convention, and since it's an anniversary of sorts for Amy and me we always try to make it.

Your suggestions for what story I should read for kids are invited. I'd really like to find out what age level they're expecting.
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Itinerary for Vick, Edd

Fri Nov 27 12:00:pm
How to be a panelist
Hawthorne
You've been invited to be a panelist. Yay! Now, how do you become a good panelist and, should you land in the hot seat, a competent moderator? It's not as easy as it looks.
Jerry Kaufman, Ben Yalow, Runa, Carl Cook, Edd Vick

Sat Nov 28 1:00:pm
Reading for children
Broadway
Guests read a story (not necessarily one of their own but one of their choice) for kids. 10 minute to 1/2 hour reading spots, depending on number of panelists.
Edd Vick, Callie

Sat Nov 28 2:00:pm
How to prepare a manuscript
Grant
What is standard format? What else should you do besides formatting your manuscript before you submit?
Edd Vick, Maggie Jamison, Rhea Rose, Elizabeth Engstrom

Sat Nov 28 3:00:pm
Eureka! Have you found it?
Weidler
Panel discussion about Sci Fi channels (or SyFy as it's called now) hit series of a small Pacific Northwest town populated with geniuses and a "Keep it Stupidly Simple" sheriff.
David Lohkamp, Edd Vick, Janet Borkowski, Elizabeth Fellows

Sat Nov 28 5:00:pm
Blah blah blah, she said
Broadway
What makes good dialogue? Saidisms, dialogue tags, making characters sound individual, writing accents, and all that stuff that makes or breaks dialogue.
Edd Vick, Dan C Duval, Kay Kenyon, Dave Duncan

Tom was in the Seattle comics scene in the early 90s with Jon Lewis and Ed Brubaker and a lotta other creative folks. We hung out from time to time, so this interview delving into that time and telling what the now 40-year-old cartoonist is doing is nostalgic for me.

Via

Every song by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper is currently available for free over at Amazon.

Local SF convention Foolscap was last weekend. I spent most of my days working registration or showing people where stuff was, but I did make it into the dealers' room, where I nabbed a copy of Scott Westerfeld's new YA novel Leviathan.

Here is the book trailer for it.

There are only about a dozen people actively editing anthologies, and most of them are interviewed at SFSignal. While it would be great if they had gotten entries from Gardner Dozois, David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, or Martin H Greenberg, this is the start of what looks like an insightful set of interviews.

As much of it as exists, anyway.


Via Booksteve.

I have an ongoing fascination with the life and work of Paul M.A. Linebarger, who wrote science fiction as 'Cordwainer Smith'. I've collected all his books, including the early psychological novels Ria and Carola, his atomic war novel Atomsk and his nonfiction books on psychological warfare and Mao Tse-Tung. He grew up in China, and there is an otherworldly aspect to his fiction that I think was a result.

There is a good bit of evidence that he is 'Kirk Allen', a case history in a book on psychoanalysis called The Fifty-Minute Hour. 'Kirk' thought he lived an alternate life as hero on a distant planet. Alan C. Elms has an overview of the case.

I unexpectedly ran across an anecdote about Linebarger in a book I just read, Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. I read the book as a follow-up to my recent visit to his bookstore in Archer City, TX. In chapter 58 (they are very short chapters!), he says:

Most of the collectors whose libraries we bought were dead years before the libraries came to us, so the only way we could judge the level of eccentricity in the collectors was the books themselves, or from other evidence. Philip Graven, as I noted earlier, had fifty pairs of fine handmade gloves.
An Orientalist named Paul Linebarger, whose father, we were told, had been Sun Yat-sen's lawyer, had absolutely wonderful books, but he had other things, too. He was an early expert on psychological warfare, which I believe he later taught. In one of his closets, for example, we found a huge pile of anticommunist comic books in Mongolian. Paul Linebarger also wrote science fiction, under the name Cordwainer Smith. And he had an interest in ladies' lingerie. One of the more unusual things we bought from his estate was a bra mannequin, complete with bra. Several drawers full of bras we let lie.

One of my parents sayings that doesn't seem to be in the common parlance was, "He wouldn't be happy if you hung him with a new rope."

Here is my latest story for The Daily Cabal, with a narrator who's in that situation.

A copy of the art book issued on Fantasia, signed by Walt Disney, and illustrated by many Disney artists, will be up on eBay by and by.

Via.

We do need a sitcom set at a renfair and a drama about machine intelligence. He reviews the fall TV lineup from the loglines.