Archive for April, 2009

Ken Rand died last week. For those not fortunate enough to have known him, Ken was a local Utah writer who spent the better part of the last two decades treading the twilight area between commercial and purely personal writing. I’ve met few writers who managed to so go their own way and yet bring a respectable number of readers with them.

Ken wrote what he wanted to write, comical space westerns and living soap bubble characters, in books with titles like Golems of Laramie County and Tales of the Lucky Nickel Saloon. After years of journalism, I suppose he determined he’d earned a reprieve from fact and documentation and then would take his writing wherever he wanted it to go, and be satisfied with the destination even if others weren’t. He never antagonized readers or claimed that being read and enjoyed was too plebian—but he never regretted a reader who didn’t enjoy his stuff as well as he did.

Ken was one of the first real pros to ever take an interest in me, and I’ll be forever grateful. He’d been fighting illness for a long time (cancer, I believe), and last week it won. He was a member of SFWA, and you can read the in memoriam they have for Ken here.

Happy trails, Ken.

Just received my (possible) schedule at CONduit next month. This is only a first look, but I thought I’d share. What the… I’m doing a workshop? Better decide on a topic, huh. (After a month-long point of view essay, that sounds a likely prospect.) Anyway, expect this list of events to narrow. I’ll probably end up doing 2 and 3 panels and the workshop. The more the better. Oh, and it’s unlikely I’ll be there Sunday. Sorry to be such a tease, not doing everything, everytime, (for or to everyone, take your pick)—though I really am more palatable in small doses.

Anyway, here are the possible panels and their times (all subject to change, of course):

Fri @ 1:00—My Workshop. (Likely on point of view and triple duty writing. Come ask me what that means in person.)

Fri @ 2:00—Writing Evil Overlords. (Sounds fun.)

Fri @ 3:00—Culture-Building in F&SF: How Do You Create a Viable and Consistent Culture. (The must have of every speculative fiction convention.)

Fri @ 4:00—It’s Not Your Parents’ Fiction:Writing for the YA/Children’s Market. (It’s still weird to be speaking about this as I only started writing for kids on a kind of desperate fluke.)

Sat @ 10:00—How Real Should Historical Fiction or Fantasy Be? (A better question is how real should reality be, and why can’t it ever manage to pull it off.)

Sun @ 1:00—Worldbuilding 101: What Do You Need to Know to Create Your Own Fictional World? (Hoping I don’t get this one and culture building. That would be like coloring two items blue-green and green-blue; I’d have to pretend they aren’t the same thing.)

Sun @ 4:00—Aspiring Writer’s Q&A. (Always has the potential of being interesting.)

Also, here are just a few names of other attendees you should know, and probably do:

Michael R. and Judi Collings: Michael is a retired professor who taught at Pepperdine and one of my favorite panelists. From poetry to Stephen King (and yes, he’ll cover both at CONduit), he ranges as widely as any academic I’ve met without a hint of arrogance. The only nicer person you’ll ever meet is his wife.

Dave Wolverton/Farland (whose doing a special presentation Sat at 1:00, by the way—I’m not sure as whom, but we’ll see). Dave is one of those writers so nice they named him twice.

Jessica Day George, writer of arguably the best embroidery-based novel ever!

James Dashner, who is a great guy but nowhere near as impressive as his name, so don’t be disappointed. He is not, despite the sound, a Jane Austin character.

Rebecca Shelley, fellow assistant scribe in the Dragon Codices.

Julie Wright, who is not a bubbly and adorable sixteen-year-old, though you’ll never believe me when you see her.

Paul Genesse, a friend who is having a book release Fri from 3:00 - 6:00. Get a signed copy or four.

Kathleen Dalton Woodbury, another favorite panelist of mine who happens to have impeccable taste in bracelets/bracers/gauntlets and the like.

Eric Swedin, writer, professor, and friend from Weber St.

Howard Taylor, guest of honor and newly minted Hugo nominee, whose book launch will be Sat at 4:00.

Brandon Sanderson (Sun only), the man brave enough to dare Robert Jordan’s shoes—who has, incidentally, discovered a way to rejuvenate the body completely through writing, thus eliminating all need for sleep.

And Dan Wells (Sun only), who is not a serial killer, and least if you ask him.

I believe my second essay on point of view is finally finished. The last section is on narrators. If you’re interested, go here to read it. This took longer than I thought, so thanks for being patient ForeverTeal. You’re request is coming next (how to make short narratives longer).

Oh, if anyone’s having issues reaching my essays, just join the site by going here.

Now I am going to think of an excuse to see a movie—or at least give it my best shot.

Hi everyone.  Back from my anything but relaxing three day hiatus from posting.  It’s nearing finals week at SLCC, which means constant chaos at the writing center.  Without the odd moments between sessions to post, I didn’t find time to even consider my blog yesterday.  So I’m posting early and trying to ignore the fact that I’ve still got to run for a half hour before work. 

So I must be brief: J. Scott Savage, known as Jeff in certain of his other lives, is a total rock star—at least for ten year olds.  Wednesday he kindly invited me to observe a school visit he did at Cherry Creek Elementary in Springville, UT, and I’ll tell you, those poor teachers would have preferred all their kids be injected with pure sugar rather than the state Scott left them.  It was nuts.  I’ve seen several very good school visits, but Scott Savage is without doubt the best I’ve witnessed.  Anyone who has gone to Brandon Mull’s release parties (roughly 5 million kids packed into a darkened auditorium waving glowsticks and screaming), picture that only with 400 students.  If he gets that reaction at every visit he does, soon Scott Savage will be a real person to reckon with, seeing as he’ll be at the head of an army of 4-6th graders who do anything and everything he tells them—except be quiet.  They tried, they really did, but it was too much for them.

Thanks as well to Jennifer, who is the force behind the Savage School Machine.  I learned a ton about how to do school visits effectively and hope I’m ready to start scheduling them next month.  Also met YA author Janette Rallison, who is a very nice lady.  (A school that will remain nameless treated her not so nicely when they cancelled her visit because her book had three kisses in it.  Apparently this qualified as “content problems.”  No, it makes perfect sense; vampires hungering for seventeen-year-old girls who are actually succubi and having undead children together is so much more appropriate.)  Together Scott and Janette, along with Jessica Day George, did a signing/reading in the evening, which confirmed my decision never to do a reading for kids.  They were all good readers with good stories, but it’s just asking too much of 8-11-year-old kids to sit through those things (unless you’re a truly great reader of your own work, like Neil Gaiman or David Sedaris, which I most certainly am not.) 

So, the short and long: learned how to do school visits, was reminded how silly censorship can really be, ate some good Mexican food, vowed never to do a reading for kids, and am now anticipating J. Scott Savage taking over at least one of the smaller states with his army of giant-chocolate-pudding-incensed children.  Oh, and here’s my two cents on Jessica’s and Janette’s conversation on the relative discomfort of bearing children or eggs: I’m heartily glad I’ll never do either (that I can foresee), for I’m far too big a wuss to be a mother. 

Next time: Just got info on my schedule at CONduit, which I’ll share with all of you baited-breath waiters.

Just a quick post to let you know I won’t be posting for a few days. Tomorrow I’ll likely be swamped, and the day after I’m heading out to observe some school visits and an evening author event by a few children’s writers, specifically J. Scott Savage (Farworld) and Janette Rallison. Lesson, boys and girls: the best time to arrange school visits is apparently in May. This means that starting next month I’ll be approaching schools, proposing that they let me loose in lunchrooms full of impressionable children—with a microphone. Yeah, watch your evening news for aftershock.

*****

I just realized something: this is the first time in, what, eighteen years that I have no plans to watch the NBA playoffs.  It sounds almost heretical to say it.  It’s also a pattern I’m falling into.  I didn’t watch a single NCAA Tournament game either.  For a former ball coach and lifetime fan of the sport, there’s definitely something sacrilegious about all this.  But there’s no avoiding the truth: I simply don’t care.  I don’t have enough caring in me to care.

I’ve noticed this building up for the past year or so.  As I become busier and busier, and invest ever more endurance and energy in trying to establish my writing career, things that were once near life and death issues (such as sports) are losing relevance.  In the past, a tough playoff loss would put me in a funk for a week, especially of an elimination game; now I’m painfully aware that I don’t have the emotional investment to spare on any game.  All my reserves go into patience on submitted work, and fighting off the omnipresent fear that everything I write is deserving of nothing less than a bullet to the brain (justified homicide, for writing this bad), and every moment of every day working at my desk, or at my work, or in a meeting, or on my weight bench, or somehow fitting in work between these instances of “real” work.

You know something: fun takes energy.  And I don’t got it, at least not enough to spread around beyond all the pies I’m trying to keep from burning black as pitch (or leaving doughy cold).  How long can one go without doing something pleasant for its purposelessness?  Whatever the duration, I’m certain I’m straining it.  Maybe I need to go see a movie or something.  Yeah, that’s an idea.  Make time to have some fun, do something deliciously unproductive.  I’ll just let something else go.  Not so difficult.

Um, I could ignore… no…

Well, I suppose I could delay… on second thought…

Oh!  There’s… okay, bad idea…

…

Quiet you.  I’ve got work to do.                

There’s a new section up on my point of view essay. It covers multiple POV use, both for logistics and complexity, and communal point of view. If you don’t know what that is, go read it here. Go. Go!

I am tired, and my weight bench awaits me. Big, big sigh. Bye.

I learned something last night: I am verbose. So I have decided to correct myself in this. Starting now!

(How long do any of you think this’ll actually last?)

*****

Not fair, ForeverTeal, as you played a role in this whole situation.  Doormat #1, I believe.  Oh, fine.  Cheater.

So, yesterday after work several colleagues and I were interviewed over the phone for a doctoral dissertation on writing center work.  The candidate, Dawn, was very kind, clearly astute, and engaged in a very interesting project—and her son only called, “Mom!” once during the hour plus interview.  Clearly a woman on point, and I wish her the very best with completion of her Ph.D.

Dawn’s dissertation is on how assessment as a force influences people, primarily students and tutors, in writing center work.  Think of it as examining how awareness of being graded or scored affects someone’s performance.  Think of the difference between rehearsals and opening night, or practice and shooting a free throw in the fourth quarter of a tied game.  Writing centers fill a unique roll in academia and tend to become an intersection of lots of different, and sometimes opposing, systems of assessment—government instituted standards and curriculum, school specific requirements, idiosyncratic professor expectation, cultural assumptions and morays, etc.  When you’re trying to teach a student to communicate what they mean through writing in an efficient manner, and they’re focused on saying exactly what three different parties want to hear, it can be tricky to preserve focus on rhetorical purpose.  Plus many, many other pedagogical issues.  Very interesting, if you ask me.

Anyway, the experience was pleasant, enriching, and completely painless.  At least for me.  It was only after we’d finished that I realized my lack of discomfort likely stemmed from the fact that I had never seen fit to bite my tongue.  I now worry that this made the three other interviewees (all my friends) bite their tongues frequently.  I hope I didn’t monopolize things as badly as I fear but, well, I fear I did.

It’s a problem I have but, as Mr. Darcy says, it is not a fault of understanding—or something to that effect.  To the contrary, I’m quite aware that a captive audience tempts me to talk.  I’ve noticed it on conference panels I do as well.  Recently I’ve been making a conscious effort to spread the wealth around, as it were, but I find that when the balances are weighed I’ve usually gabbed more syllables than anyone else on the panel.  (I have discovered that sharing a table with a NYT bestseller is somewhat of a cure for this.  I’m pretty sure Tracy Hickman outspoke me at LTUE earlier this year.  Not by that much, but I think he did.  I hope so, as he was the Guest of Honor.) 

It’s not exactly that I just have too much good stuff to say (I’ll have you all mark the humility of that statement); it’s more that I have an opinion on everything and am occasionally lacking in self-consciousness and forethought.  This is helpful when I write a rough draft, as I can bang out my 1,500 words in two hours or less most days.  But I keep forgetting I don’t get those revise and edit stages when I talk.  Am I the only one that hates that?  Spoken words should be like typed ones: they should come complete with a string to pull them back to my mouth, gulp them down, and wait for something better to come along.  But if wishes were fishes then every birthday cake would be wet and ruined.  Isn’t that how it goes?  Fine, insert your own ichthyic idiom. 

Ah, well, I suppose I’ll look at the bright side—while my tongue may get tired, it never smarts for teeth marks.   

Just a reminder to everyone in the Salt Lake area that the LDStorymakers annual conference is taking place next week on Friday and Saturday (the 24th and 25th).  I won’t be there this year, but I plan on changing that next year, when I’m hoping to present.

For those who aren’t LDS, I still recommend checking out the conference if you’re serious about writing and publishing in this area.  In full disclosure, I’ve never attended the conference before, but I know a number of the writers who regularly take part, and many of them have told me how worthwhile the conference is.  Also, it isn’t a genre-based event.  The LDStorymakers is a group of LDS writers, but they work in many different genres, and I know that they are seeking to break stereotypes.  The conference is about and for writers; it’s not theologically focused.  (Though some panels do address religiously specific content, my understanding is that most don’t).  For anyone looking to make publishing connections in the Utah area, this is a great conference to attend.

*****

Some of my fellows at the SLCC Writing Center and I are going to be interviewed for a doctoral dissertation later this evening.  Don’t know what about, exactly (I’m guessing writing stuff), but it should be fun.  Not sure including me is a particularly wise choice on the candidate’s part, but far be it from me to pass up any chance to make pedagogical mischief.  I’ll let you know how things went tomorrow.     

I have received the first commentary of position divergent from my own since starting this blog.  (Very cogent and respectfully written, I might add, so read it here.)  It is a red-letter day!  And I can’t help but love the fact that the first person to really disagree with me on something here is named Clint Johnson.  (And yes, it really is a whole other person.)  How great is that!  It’s deliciously wondrous in a postmodernist way, as well as suitably schizophrenic for this blog.

So, yesterday Other Clint brought up some very good points about committee or group composition that I think deserve discussion.  Here are my thoughts on his ideas.

Other Clint said:

I’ll have to work on a variant of my name to set us apart.  My full name is John Clinton Ralph Johnson so I have options.  J. Clinton R. Johnson sounds, and looks, sufficiently pretentious.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as sufficiently pretentious (as those who know me will attest), but J. Clinton R. Johnson is a great start.  I propose Jintalph Johnson.  Doesn’t it have the phonetic flavor of, say, truffle stuffed hotdog deep-fried in panko? 

Other Clint again:

…a Canadian television series is usually run by a room full of producers in Toronto, trying to meet mandates of a room full of bureaucrats in Ottawa, that is then shot in Vancouver by hired gun directors.

Sounds like they tried that room full of monkeys with typewriters and found the method too efficient, doesn’t it.

Other Clint:

…an American television series is almost always helmed by a showrunner who is also the head writer.  They will create the outline for the series as a whole and work with the other writers in the writing room to break the episodes to work individually as well as cohesively inside the series arc—then send the individual writer off to write the episode.  The showrunner gets the script back and makes a pass to make sure that it is what was discussed and doesn’t conflict with what the other writers are creating.  Good, bad or indifferent, the series usually reflects the storytelling ability of the showrunner.

The American model can create material that is very, very good; I will hold Buffy the Vampire Slayer up against any series of novels.  They are different mediums and when television plays to its strengths it can be truly great storytelling.

I confess, I’ve never watched Buffy, but I don’t disagree with your premise—given two stipulations.  One you identify yourself: that the medium must be taken into account when evaluating the narratives that come via that medium.  The other is an important matter of semantics: just how does the best of television “stand up” to the best “series of novels”?  Note that you chose to correlate a television series to a series of books?  That isn’t necessarily a true parallel unless you’re also paralleling a television episode to a whole novel, and look what happens to our comparison then.  It just doesn’t work.  The greatest 30-minute or hour-long television episode is vastly different from a great novel.  This distinction can be very useful when examining and evaluating the different creative methods behind the writing for the different mediums.

Television is episodic.  Long narrative (short narrative works differently) usually isn’t, at least not in a closely related way.  The most significant distinction between the two is how they handle interrelation and connectivity.  All art (and comedy) is based on forging connections distinctive from those presently in existence.  Without that newness of interconnectivity, you get trite rehashings of old ideas, bald plagiarism, or, to stick with our current context, Knight Rider.  The simple fact is that an episodic structure does not require—and does not allow—the same interconnectivity over a protracted arc that a novel, or standard screenplay, or any other long narrative form facilitates.  It just so happens that this is the main weakness of group story composition as well.  It’s not as difficult to keep a variety of identities from creating inconsistency in one episode as it is over a season or the life of a franchise.

We see this by looking at television history.  Most of the best-written shows didn’t place much emphasis on season and series arcs.  Start with the variety days and comedy shows like the Carol Burnett Show, where they didn’t even use episodes but rather unconnected vignettes.  Then look at early sitcoms like the Honeymooners or even MASH, where the series mostly hinges upon characterization as a means to explore theme.  Even more modern examples, such as The Simpsons during its richest decade or Seinfeld, blatantly disregard the need for protracted narrative arcs.  Those television shows that do accept the challenge of strong connectivity between episodes, such as The Sopranos or The Tutors (I don’t watch much TV, but I’ve heard these are well written), still can’t work outside their episodic structure. 

For an episode to work, there must be a fairly high level of genuine resolution at the end of each mini-arc.  By necessity, that means that lots of the material covered in the episode cannot be too heavily interconnected to the season or series arc.  If it were, there wouldn’t be enough independent substance in each episode to satisfy viewers with a day’s resolution.  Series like Burn Notice don’t even hide this dual necessity; each episode alternates time between the season narrative and the episode narrative.  And if you look at the amount of time dedicated to each, you realize that the majority of a television series is often dedicated to the episodic arcs.  If you write a novel this way it isn’t a novel; it’s either a story collection, a series of vignettes, or a really bad novel.      

As for a showrunner making for better story, I agree.  The more autocratic the creative process, the better (as long as you have a skilled, diligent autocrat).  But you still sacrifice things in a group composition process that you can’t get back.  Every story wants to achieve several things to as great a degree as possible, most significantly having a unique perspective that is still consistent.  The more people you add to the process, the more you diminish the ability to do both simultaneously, especially in limited writing time (and television is mostly, by necessity, an assembly line model).  If, for example, every episode writer is a great writer with a unique voice, some of that distinction has to be glossed over to fit with other equally inventive writers’ work.  If you don’t gloss over individuality enough, you lose consistency.  The showrunner is the main conceptual artist, but when it comes to carrying out the actual on-the-page composition, she transitions more to a role of editor.  In such a circumstance, the showrunner’s talents at unifying disparate elements by shaving them to fit a whole shows their skill.  A single storyteller is very different, as their skill is shown in every facet of the artistry and by undiluted, unadulterated, and to as great a degree as possible, uncompromised communication of natural connections they’ve made between elements of experience.  When you read a novel by Terry Pratchett, or Neil Gaiman, or George R. R. Martin, or Haruki Murakami, or any other really distinctive novelist, you get 100% of both uniqueness and distinction, in vision and voice, as well as 100% consistency (or as near these two things as can come from a human being).  Get a bunch of geniuses, real geniuses, into a room together, and you can’t match that mix of uniqueness and consistency.  Now, you might end up with a fine product.  Maybe even a great one.  But you’ll have made compromises in areas that would not have happened with a single author, and so I doubt the final product will be as good as may have been in regard to this tricky balance. 

The fact that group storytelling limits interconnectivity across a long arc doesn’t mean near as much in television because of the medium’s episodic format.  In novels, it’s a big, big deal.  Hense my loathing for The 39 Clues.  It’s literally taking the strength of the novel, its very heart, and denying it in favor of assembly line production. 

As for the Man-Kzin Wars (see Other Clint’s post), that’s short stories, so we’re talking different narrative forms.  An anthology of great writers is wonderful because of Poe’s unity of effect (focusing everything in service of a single premise, point, or impact), which allows for great differentiation that isn’t all-encompassing.  This helps integrate individual stories within the whole without cutting down too much on that central unity of effect (though compromises are made, even here).  It’s totally different when you get several writers into a room, have them plot out a series, and then they divvy up the work and each write their own book.  Do I think your scenario of a Niven-as-”seriesrunner” led team writing multiple good books in one year is plausible?  Yeah, it’s a real possibility.  I’m certain, though, that give Niven all the books and enough time to write them, you’d get a better series (as long as you appreciate Larry Niven). 

That’s the essence of the debate, really: does time-efficient narrative production justify sacrificing some of a story’s potential?  For novels, my answer is no, at least in most circumstances.  It’s much more understandable in mediums that favor episodes, such as television.  

Finally, Other Clint addresses his dark alternate world’s writing contract paradigm:

Using this model, the publishing house that “produced” the series would own the intellectual property but then would have to compensate for the writers similarly to television writers—if not in quantity then at least in kind… [it] would be a way for more writers to make a living at writing rather than trying to find room to write around the full time job.   

Which is exactly why Scholastic did this, to try to make more money, partially at the writer’s expense.  That ticks me off, but even worse is the fact that it will create inferior stories.  Not necessarily bad stories; maybe even good stories.  But it won’t create great stories, or stories of wild, unified truth.  That is what I find truly offensive.  The novel is what it is and does what it does; making it more like television, or comic books, or a symphony, or anything but what it is, would only be done for one reason—because making money is more important than telling the best story possible.

That’s my take.  Loved the comment Other Clint.  I hope more keep coming, all of you.

A few days ago Daniel commented on my blog post about narrative by committee.  Read the original here.  Now my comments on his comments about my original comments.

Daniel said:

I was talking to one of my history professors yesterday and… the subject of fan fiction came up and his son became really incensed when he started reading Harry Potter fan fiction.  For one thing, some of the writing was horrible, but probably even worse than that, was that peoples’ facts weren’t even correct about setting, character, the magic system etc.

I think this illustrates the fact that many people experience what a great story is and feels like, and try to emulate that.  “Well, so-and-so did this.  How hard can it be?”  As with most things in life, things are more difficult than you initially think (I know, it sucks, but it’s true).

Imitation isn’t a bad thing.  To the contrary, it’s a constructive phase in the development of any writer (or artist of any kind, truth be told).  The only way to find one’s voice is to seek it, and to do so we need some idea of what is possible.  We writers get this by reading.  When we read something that communicates powerfully to us, we have a slightly different response than a pure reader: we wonder why these words in this configuration representing these ideas carry such potency.  Then we try to figure it out by recreating it.  We’ll never actually do it, but the attempt stretches us, helps us to try new things and discover what does and does not work for us.  Over time, we’ll find that we adopt less and less of the flavor of the styles we imitate until, one day, the need to imitate disappears almost entirely.

If we never leave the phase of imitation, then there’s a problem.  It’s just like maturing as a person.  Right around two years of age every person on the planet shrinks their vocabulary to one word: Mine!  This is a constructive and necessary thing for the child to develop her sense of individuality and identity apart from parents.  Staying in that phase for, say, thirty years, is no longer constructive.  You’d be so self-absorbed and childish as to be incapable of interacting in adult society—or in kindergarten.  Being a perpetual imitator makes no more sense.  If a writer of story does fan fiction or something similar purely for personal enjoyment, as a means of living their own versions of favorite milieus and not with a greater writing goal in mind, okay (though I do not endorse this).  If they tell themselves that this will perpetually improve their skills, in most facets they’re wrong.  As for imitation being difficult, yup.  One thing you learn quickly is how bad we all are when we start.  I made my first test readers go blind!  (I think one vomited up a lung, too.)

Daniel again:

…my writing is so much better in every way when I remember my love for storytelling and the project in particular.  If I focus too much on what x, y, and z want, the story loses its unique flavor.

That’s not necessarily because what x, y, and z want is inferior, but it is different in one very important way: it isn’t you.  We always write ourselves in story.  Those who pretend otherwise are either naive or dishonest.  If we try to write as someone else, we end up writing as no one, meaning our words are empty.  I’ve said this before, but the same characters, plot, and setting combined by different writers will always result in different stories.  Always.  Absolute statement.  The moment you forget that you’re trying to say something in your story (lose rhetorical awareness), you’re creating a lifeless thing.

*****

As GDC takes place in one of the D&D realms (Dragonlance), I thought I’d better acknowledge the death of Dave Arneson, co-creator of the original Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.  His partner, Gary Gygax, died last March.  So now both of them are gone.  Do I place these passings “on par” with the death of Kurt Vonnegut in 2007 or Arthur C. Clarke last year?  Not really.  I think such comparisons are both meaningless and inappropriate.  What I will say is that Arneson and Gygax got a generation participating in narrative and mentally constructed gaming in time for the electronic game era, and many have persisted in role-playing using imagination in addition to video and computer games using controls.  That’s a legacy to be proud of in my book.

And for anyone who’s interested, here are the Sci-Fi and Fantasy heavyweights we lost in 2008 (as listed in SFWA’s 2009 directory):

Forrest J. Ackerman (1916), Robert Asprin (1946), Algis Bundrys (1931), Arthur C. Clarke (1917), Michael Crichton (1942), Thomas M. Disch (1940), Leo Frankowski (1943), Gary Gygax (1938), Edward D. Hoch (1930), James P. Killus (1950), Janet Kagan (1946), Robert Legault (1950), Richard K. Lyon (1933), George W. Proctor (1946), Brian Thomsen (1959), and Donald E. Westlake (1933). 

*****

Sorry about not updating the POV essay today.  I’m, um, busy.  Busy, busy.  How many times do I need to say it to make you go, “Oh, you’re busy.  No problem.”  Consider those plenteous busys said.  I’ll be sure to add to the essay next week.