R.I.P. Harlan Ellison

Science Fiction author Harlan Ellison has died at the age of 84. :-(

https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2018/06/28/624416014/harlan-ellison-award-winning-science-fiction-writer-dies-at-84

R.I.P. Ursula K. Le Guin

Science fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin has died at the age of 88.  Her obituary can be found in The New York Times.  I first came across her works many years ago through a paperback copy of A Wizard of Earthsea that I picked up the autumn of my freshman year in college.  I found it in a used bookstore that's no longer there,and voraciously devoured it.  I was back the next week to pick up copies of The Tombs of Atuan and the Farthest Shore.  Those books meant a lot to me, especially the first.  I was away at school and hadn't really found any friends yet, so I found Ged to be immediately relatable.  It was a source of comfort at a lonely time in my life.  I was pleasantly surprised when later she continued the series with Tehanu and then two more volumes after that.  She wrote many other stellar works, such as the Left Hand of Darkness, but the Earthsea cycle will always hold a special place in my heart.

My Signed Bookplates

For many years, she would send signed bookplates to anyone who sent her a self-addresed stamped envelope, and I was fortunate enough to have taken her up on that offer.  But those bookplates have sat in the envelope for years now.  I guess I've been waiting for leather bound editions of her books to come out or something.  Who knows?  What I do know is that as I sit here feeling melancholy on a windy January evening, I remember how her writing made a lonely young man feel better a long time ago, and I think it may be time to re-read A Wizard of Earthsea.

That used copy from long ago

R.I.P. William Peter Blatty

Author William Peter Blatty has died at the age of 89.  I first read The Exorcist in high School and not being religious, I thought that it made a decent horror story, but not much else.  His work certainly didn't capture my interest like Lovecraft.  I seem to recall that my mother had been so disturbed by the book when she read it in the 1970s that she burned it.  I'm not sure where my copy is, but maybe I'll read it again someday.

Happy Birthday Clark Ashton Smith

On what would have been his 123rd birthday.  I came to C.A.S. later than I did his contemporaries like Howard, and Leiber, but his Zothique and Hyperborean cycles are among some of my favorite writing ever.

Happy Birthday Fritz Leiber!

He would have been 105 years old today.  Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser remain two of my all-time favorite sword and sorcery characters.  December is quite the month for sword and sorcery author birthdays, with Wagner, Moorcock, and Leiber all falling in a 2 week window.  So today, take a moment to remember (and maybe drink a toast to) one of the giants of science fiction and fantasy.

Happy Birthday Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock turns 76 today!  The last of the great Sword and Sorcery writers.  December is quite the month for Sword and Sorcery writer birthdays.  May Arioch grant him many more.

Karl Edward Wagner would have been 70

Karl Edward Wagner, fantasy/horror writer, psychiatrist, and hard drinker would have been 70 years old on December 12th.  I first discovered Wagner in a book shop in florida in 1984, when I picked up a paperback copy of Darkness Weaves.  Attracted by the Frank Frazetta cover, there was no way I could resist.  Darker and grimmer than Howard's Conan, Kane was an antihero in the vein of Moorcock's Elric.  No noble savage, Kane was a Machiavellian swordsman, who also dabbled in sorcery to further his frequent goals of world conquest.  I was hooked, and quickly sought out the rest of Wagner's Kane stories.  The novels are a bit of a mixed bag, but I think it's in the short stories where Wagner's writing really shined.  Sadly, Wagner died at 48.  I should very much liked to see where his writing would have gone.

My 500 Words

So yesterday finished the My 500 Words writing challenge.  I didn't actually sign up for it because I wasn't sure that I would actually complete it, but in the end I did.  I'm actually pretty proud of my self for it too.  I managed to write at least 500 words every day for the past 31 days.  I wrote the first draft of two new short stories, added some new material to an existing story, and started two other stories.  That's pretty productive for me.  The goal of the challenge was to re-establish one's habit as a writer, and I'm really hoping that I can hold onto the momentum.  Here is a small sample of this month's work:

A bitter wind moaned through the high crags, carrying with it the sharp tang of ice.  There would be snow by morning.  Here among the shattered peaks of blackened stone, the mournful tone of the wind was an eerie dirge blown to herald the death of the day and to foretell the birth of the coming night.

Yep, I'm writing crap, but at least I'm writing. :-)  Now on to some editing!

R.I.P. Jack Vance

Another one of my favorite authors, and the inspiration for the original Dungeons & Dragons spell system, has died.  He was 96.  A long life indeed.

Summer's end

Yet another of my favorite authors has died, and along with him a bit of my youth. Ray Bradbury was the eternal optimist. No grim, dark, gritty futures for him. His visions were of hope and possibility, and not just about the future, but about life in general. My favorite of his books, "Dandelion Wine", contains no trace of science fiction, and in fact no trace of the fantastical at all, unless you consider, as he did, life itself to be fantastic. It is a book that resonates with me many years after I first read it in those sunny days of my youth. I'm just old enough to remember those days before personal computers and video games, where long summer nights were spent sitting on the front porch with my grandparents chatting with people who just "stopped by". Old enough to remember hunting for ancient treasures in the basement of my great grandmother's house, or wandering the overgrown paths of "The Woods" behind my grandpartents' house. Those woods, much reduce today by the coming of a Wal-Mart, were in truth not that large even back then, but they seemed to me as grand as any eleven forest. As boundless and mysterious as Toklien's Mirkwood, and as fraught with peril too. I can remember waiting eagerly for the fair to come to town and how its sounds and smells and bright lights seemed to draw the whole town to it. The excitement bargain hunting at all of the long gone shops on Main Street during Sidewalk Sales. My youth while separated from his by fifty years, still seems to hold echoes of those long lost summers that he wrote about. Bradbury's works covered the broad spectrum of what has come to be known as speculative fiction, but the underlying theme of his work was always love. All summers must end, but we can keep alive the memories of their past warmth. Bradbury cannot be replaced, but I hope that future generations of writers will take up some part of his mantle and remember the importance of love and hope in their writing.