Here’s the evidence…

What a stupid week.  I’ve been chased by some kind of virus all week long.  Difficulty concentrating, occasional light headedness, headaches (mercifully mild), aching teeth and all kinds of blech.  Saw the doctor yesterday, who was eminently unsatisfactory. Not convinced her assessment was remotely right, but I’m going with it till I hear better.

Now, you ask, ‘Jonathan, if it was a stupid week, what else was stupid, cos that’s unfortunate but not so bad really”.  Well, I banged my thumb in the door. It’s bruised and I am embracing self-pity on the issue.  That’s really it. Other than that, I finally acquired a taste for The Mountain Goats (Heretic Pride is excellent, if a little silly), read some very good stories (Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘The Goat Variations’ amongst others), had some great birthday celebrations for Marianne, and kind of mostly kept busy.

I also bought some of the Beatles remasters (Abbey Road does sound terrific), started reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (the opening chapters are terrific, but what’s with the cover?), pretty much finalised the table of contents for The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson with Stan, prepared for Eclipse Three copyedits (due to hit any moment, but it will be out for World Fantasy!), and got some good news.  What good news? Well, some private stuff worked out and may result in an awesome sekrit projekt, and The New Space Opera 2 just got reprinted, which makes me feel optimistic that there just might be a third one, which would be awesomely cool. I don’t know that I’ll have much family time this weekend because of project wurk, but things are good in a busy sort of way.

Oh, and a quick thank you to family, girliejones, and Deb who have listened to me dribble on about all of the above all week long.  Can I go back to bed now?

Good morning, world. I know you didn’t ask, but I was woken at 3am by my seven-year-old daughter, who wanted me to help her get her covers back on her bed. I have not been able to get back to sleep, so I prepare for the day. I’ve been less than 100% the last few days, feeling a bit light-headed and odd. I think it’s the darned multi-focals, which also seem to be making reading more difficult and less fun.

That said, I forge on. Today, work. Tomorrow, the beloved wife’s *actual* birthday. Friday the family celebration of same. And then stuff on the weekend. I continue to push to find time to do things, but we shall see.

And reading? Well, I’m reading Datlow’s Lovecraft Unbound, dipped into Interfictions 2 last night, and just finished re-reading Citizen of the Galaxy. Hmmm. In truth, right now I feel like reading some old stuff, but the mountains of new novels keep piling up.

It’s Father’s Day here in Australia. I’ve had a lovely morning. Sleeping in sort of happened, and I’m doing a little reading before getting ready for lunch. We were going to see a movie, but that’s moved to next weekend.

I’m currently reading for The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, so they’re sitting beside my chair in the front room so that I can spend time re-reading possibly contenders and going back and forth with Stan about what can and can’t go into the book. “A Short, Sharp Shock” fell by the wayside, as did “Green Mars” (sadly). But the book will be filled with great stories like “Black Air”, “The Blind Geometer”, and more. It should be awesome.  Basically, we have a list of about 185,000 words that we’re whittling down to 160,000 and then we can move into preparing the manuscript.  The book should be really terrific.

Every Saturday or Sunday morning for the best part of seven years I would call Charles Brown in Oakland. The ostensible reason was to discuss reviews editing for Locus, something we did discuss.  We would talk about events of interest in the field, books we were interested in, books he had that I’d not seen yet, and books that we loved.  Again and again we’d circle around, discussing this and that: our mutual admiration for Citizen of the Galaxy, our love for the novels of  Tim Powers, and many, many other things. One book that came up again and again was The Past Through Tomorrow,  which collects Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘Future History’ stories.  It’s an essential book, a fascinating book, and one that we both loved.  When I was in Oakland I’d amuse Charles by admiring this signed first edition, and bemoan the fact that I only have a dog-eared old NEL paperback of the book. I’d hoped that the Virginia Edition might offer some good options, but that doesn’t seem like a good option. And now I’m thinking, I just might have to fork over a couple hundred bucks and get myself a first edition. If there’s a copy in the World Fantasy dealer’s room, I just might come home significantly poorer. I think I might need it.