Well, I didn’t go to BEA, though it sounds like Gwenda, Matt and everyone else had a ball, and nabbed some great galleys. I also didn’t score an invite to the launch of the first ever Borders store in Perth, which opens this Friday. I will probably drop in on Friday at lunchtime to check it out, though. And, I won’t be at Conflux, which looks pretty crazy fun. That, however, is all okay. I’ve started ticking some stuff off my “to do” list. I don’t know that I’ll get to the far side of it by the end of June, but that’s still the goal. If I can be clear by June 30, then the rest of the year will still flow kinda on schedule.
I did read Tim Pratt’s story, “Impossible Dreams”, from the July Asimov’s last night, though. It’s a simple, sweet little story about a film buff who discovers a version of the classic little magic shop, a video store that stocks movies that were either lost or never made in our world. It’s a basic Twilight Zone kind of idea (something Pratt himself acknowledges in the story), but Pratt handles it beautifully. It’s not overlong, it doesn’t overplay or overcomplicate the idea: instead he tells it well, delivers the pay-off and gets out. It both stands amongst Pratt’s stronger recent stories, and is a second very good story in what is a top-notch issue of Asimov’s.
I’ve been engaged in discussions, considerations, and deliberations about all maner of things to do with Jack Vance of late (as regular readers will now). There’s been the matter of stories to be shortlisted, read, interstitial materials to be considered etc etc as the structure of The Jack Vance Treasury is sketched out.
