Monstrous

July 2

Ah, crap. As you've probably heard, Clarion is getting the axe.

I don't think I have to tell you what Clarion meant to me, or what it's meant to the field of SF/Fantasy (I think it's meant mostly good things, by the way). Is it worth writing to MSU and telling them they're fools? Well, I guess it won't hurt. Clarion didn't begin at MSU, and it could thrive somewhere else, I think, but it'd be a tricky transition, and there wouldn't be the ducks, or the wicked black squirrels. Or the terrible cafeteria food; I suppose there are wheels within wheels. Sigh. They tried to cut Clarion a few years back, and there was enough of a hue and cry that the administration changed its mind. Perhaps that will happen again, if we hue and cry enough.

I read the new Pratchett this week, Monstrous Regiment (an uncorrected proof, that is, at work -- the book isn't out until October in the US, I'm not sure when in the UK, either simultaneous or a bit earlier). Very nice. He takes the young-woman-dresses-like-a-boy-and-joins-the-army trope and torques it wonderfully. Funny, obviously, in that darker, more serious vein of his more recent books (the ones for grown-ups, anyway, though his YAs are basically just his normal novels, only a bit shorter). Am now reading The Buzzing by Jim Knipfel. I started packing up books tonight, reasoning that Heather and I don't desperately need access to hundreds of novels and collections and anthologies during the next couple of weeks, so they can be packed up first. Reference is still on the shelves, of course; the work must go on. I had to be careful not to box up my to-read pile, though. Many people I know have quite a large to-read pile, but mine is usually very small. I mean, there's a sort of larger mental to-read pile, which includes Gene Wolfe and John Crowley and other dense stuff, but my immediate to-read pile seldom has more than four or five books in it at most. I prefer it that way, I think. It makes me less prone to existential despair.

Heather and I went walking tonight, in the neighborhood where we'll be living. We wanted to have a look around, see what we'll be near, and all that. The short answer is: we're near lots of quiet residential streets. We'll be walking distance from Lake Merritt and the shops/cafés/etc. on Grand and on Lake, but it's a twenty or thirty minute walk, something to do on weekends. The Parkway speakeasy/theater is only about fifteen minutes away, though, which is nice. That's staggering distance, though one has to watch the traffic on Park. (When a street is named Park, it is reasonable to think there might be a park somewhere along its length, and, indeed, we found one, with a basketball court that wasn't full of very aggressive and apparently angry young men who would at the very least verbally abuse me and at the very worst leave me for dead under a picnic table if I tried to shoot some hoops; this makes it a very different park from the one nearest our current location.) We are pleased.

Happy July, everyone. We're sliding into the back half of the year, here; may it be better than the first, hmm?

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