Wednesday, July 13, 2005
I lost most of yesterday. I'm not sure if "Zero Summer" hit a snag, or if I did. Most likely the latter. I might have written a hundred words, the same paragraph over and over again. Something about the plot, something important, clicked, but instead of opening things for me, it seemed to shut everything down. My head was full of noise, and I could only sit and gnaw and worry at the story, at this revelation. Today has to go better, because we're on a clock here. It doesn't help that the story's set in 2125, and I have become increasingly doubtful of my abilities as a futurist. But at least we did finish proofreading To Charles Fort, With Love ("Andromeda Among the Stones" and the afterword by Ramsey, pp. 235-270). At least that's done.
When there was no more hope for work, I had Spooky drive me over to Borders, and I splurged on the Eos trade paperback of William Gibson's Burning Chrome, because I didn't own a copy and often find myself wanting to read one of those stories. I also noticed that The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Second Annual Collection (edited by Gardner Dozois) was on the shelves. I am so very proud that "Riding the White Bull" was selected for this year's anthology. That one thing makes up for a lot of the crap that's happened in the last twelve months or so.
We came home, and I read Gibson's "Hinterlands" aloud to Spooky. It remains one of my favorite sf stories. I also read "Hungarosaurus tormai, a new ankylosaur (Dinosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous of Hungary," because the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology came day before yesterday. I didn't read it aloud, though, as Spooky has no interest in the morphology of primitive European ankylosaurs. Later, we watched Thomas Vinterberg's It's All About Love on Sundance. It was good, though possessing of ambitions a little more taxing than its budget could accomodate — if you tell me it's 2021, don't show me New York streets filled with cars from 2002 (the year the film was produced).
The launch of the shuttle Discovery is still set at 3:51 EST this afternoon. It seems impossible that two and half years have passed since the loss of Columbia, but there you go. I'll be watching the lift-off on NASA TV, though I'd hoped to actually be there in Florida for this one. I have my fingers crossed that mistakes have been learned from.
I've gotten news that the one person in London I'd yet to account for is fine. And I see that four suspects are being held in the bombing, and that they are all British citizens. And that the death toll has risen to 52. And that a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed himself today and took 27 people with him — mostly children. Okay, Caitlín. That's enough Stop with the news. It's nothing you don't already suspect...
11:27 AM
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