i got home today and a copy of scott’s blue noon was waiting for me. yay! i then opened the copy and found a printing flaw through the first 200 pages of the galley. there’s about a one to one and a half inch wide faded band diagonally across the bottom third of each page. you can make out most of it, but it’s not easy. still, i got it. so much for talking to robin on the plane. i’m gonna be readin’ :-)

I just heard the news that Byron Preiss was killed in a car crash on Saturday. Terrible, shocking news. I didn’t know him well – we’d met twice (once in Washington at World Fantasy and once in Boston at WorldCon) – but he seemed like a kind, decent man who was passionately committed to what he was doing. He obviously loved what he was doing, but when we talked family, it was equally obvious he loved them even more. We did two books together, and were set to do a handful more. My thoughts go out to his family and his friends.

wheee. move over mundane sf, move over infernokrusher. we got ourselves a new movement. yup, folks, it’s the…er…snappily titled new edge.

are you going to continuum? i am. i fly out of perth next thursday with robin, and will be sharing a room with nagoya boy, which is going to be huge fun. i’ve got a friday meeting, a saturday panel on small press (which should be ok), a saturday evening thing for the cool folks at voyager, and dinner with some friends sunday night. otherwise i’m free till i leave early monday morning. i look forward to seeing everyone who’s going to be there.

apologies for lack of posting here. last night was finishing editing the review columns for the next issue of the big magazine. the night before was trying, and occasionally screwing up, porting data from the old computer systems to the new one. somewhere in there we’ve all had the flu, gotten very interrupted sleep, and generally struggled to be the best we can be. more of that soon.

we took the girls to their first ever real movie on sunday. packed them up and went to see pooh’s heffalump adventure. sophie was enraptured and sat there stunned by it all, and jessica was thrilled (she could barely contain herself at times). it was way cool.

what else? i didn’t get to watch live8, but such is life. i read some stories, and really mean to buy some. submissions for the starry rift are suddenly pouring in, which is way cool. some i love, some i wonder about. the main thing on my mind is what exactly is ‘young adult SF’, and what can you reasonably put in a book with that label on it? i’m also finding it interesting to work with some of the writers involved, all of whom have been terrific, but very different. if all goes well, i should have a final line-up within two weeks. i plan to take a print out of all of the stories to re-read in melbourne next week, and will then close the whole thing out.

as i write this, it’s wednesday morning. it’s been a quite cold night. yesterday i found out that a friend had a heart attack on the weekend. it looks like he’ll be fine, but it’s pretty sobering stuff.