Gardner Dozois leaving Asimov's

I interrupt my absence to point out that editor Gardner Dozois is leaving Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Dozois has been at the magazine for something like 20 years and has won 14 Best Editor Hugos. He also does the annual Year's Best Science Fiction books.
Dozois' editing has had a profound effect on me. Asimov's was the first science fiction magazine I ever subscribed to and Dozois' introduced me to a wide range of authors and writing. I remember falling in love with Lucius Shepard's writing because of stories like "R&R" that were printed in Asimov's.
Dozois and Ellen Datlow (editor of Omni then, editor of Sci-Fiction now) are the two editors who have had the most influence over my reading. So it's something of a sea change to see Dozois leaving the magazine he's run for all these years.
Dozois has his own statement up at the Asimov's discussion boards.
Dozois leaves to “pursue other projects, including his own writing.” I don't think I've ever read a Dozois story. Well, hopefully that will change now.
(And Matt Cheney at The Mumpsimus does a much better job than I at looking back at Dozois' work at Asimov's. He also says: "At the moment, I can't think of any great magazine editor who has maintained the energy and excitement of their best years." I would just answer that Datlow is doing work today at Sci-Fiction that is just as good as what she did with Omni, and that's saying something.)

Excuses, excuses

If you haven't noticed, things are quiet around these parts. I'm a bit busy making changes and what not, so I'm not going to be posting much in the near future. In a week or so, I should be back on schedule and, I hope, doing things a little differently. We'll see. More later.
In the meantime, check out Professor Hex. He's quickly making me irrelevant.

Nebula Awards announced

Hey, Jeff Ford won a Nebula Award! He won the Best Novelette award for "The Empire of Ice Cream," which is a great story you can read for free online. What are you waiting for, click the link!
Also well worth reading, Karen Joy Fowler's "What I didn't see" which won for best short story. It's also up at Sci-Fiction.

Supernatural Fiction Database

Tartarus Press is creating an online Supernatural Fiction Database. This is exciting stuff. Not only is it a great resource, but it will help me find new authors I'd be interested in. The proprietors suggest their Arthur Machen entry best shows what they are trying to achieve.
(Link found at Gambols and Frolics.)

Jonathan Lethem's Marvel Years

Jonathan Lethem writes about growing up with Marvel comics and specifically his arguments for and against Jack Kirby with his boyhood friends. It's a great read.
Also online, Lethem's story "Super Goat Man", which deals with a failed superhero, among other things.

Yum, trilobite

Trilobites were apparently the snack food of dinosaurs.

Taking the wet out of water

Tyco Fire and Security has invented a new firefighting device, water that isn't wet.
As part of a demonstration, Pelton submerged several items into a tank of Sapphire that was on the Good Morning America set. Books did not get wet. Electronics were not be destroyed. Items that were submerged in the liquid were dried in a matter of seconds, and showed no ill effects according to Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and other members of the Good Morning America staff who saw items plunged into it.
(Link found at Cylindrical Primate Storage Unit.)

Giant squid fandom stretches across blogosphere

Brokentype writes about everybody's favorite Giant Squid in a nice long essay filled with lots of interesting links. Most of it I've linked to at one time or another, but it's a great essay.
Also, he points to this poster of a giant squid fighting a T-Rex. How cool is that?

New York is full of zombies

David Wellington is writing a novel, Monster Island, about New York taken over by zombies. He's serializing it chapter by chapter on the Web. The first chapter opens with a boat pulling into Manhattan, passing the Statue of Liberty:
I thought maybe, just maybe they were alright, maybe they’d run to Liberty Island for refuge and been safe there and were just waiting for us, waiting for rescue but then I smelled them and I knew. I knew they weren’t alright at all. Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse, my brain repeated over and over, a mantra. I was butchering Emma Lazarus but I couldn’t stop, my brain wouldn’t stop. Give me your huddled masses. Huddled masses yearning to breathe. “Osman! Turn away!”
There are seven chapters up so far.

The ultimate news story

Man bites dog to death in China. Apparently, a drunk man was nipped by a dog. He didn't like it much.
The infuriated inebriate then pounced on the dog and bit it repeatedly until it died.

Deadly squid guts

Wow, squid are dangerous even after death.
Three of four crew members found dead Sunday aboard a South Korean vessel at a fishing port in Oda, Shimane Prefecture, may have died from lack of oxygen due to a gas caused after the guts of squid in the hold of the ship rotted, police and Japan Coast Guard officials said Tuesday.

The skies are falling

Professor Hex posts on things falling from the sky, from frogs and fish to piranhas and ice bombs.

"Our utter insignificance"

I saw this meme at Return of the Reluctant and decided to participate:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

RESULTS: Algernon Blackwood, "Ancient Sorceries and other Weird Stories" from the story "The Willows":
"Indeed, so vague was the sense of distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do with my realisation of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained power of the elements about me."

A dark thought for the day.

Delivery from the past

Post Office delivers postcard, 82 years later.

Shroud of Turin news

Apparently, there is a face on the back side, too.
These days though, Jesus has found new places for his image, like lava lamps (with pic!).

Codex Seraphinianvs

Thanks to Gambols and Frolics, I've found out about the Codex Seraphinianvs. Some claim it's the weirdest book in the world. It's a tome drawn and "written" by Italian artist Luigi Serafini.
The Codex is a collection of original artwork by Italian artist Luigi Serafini, presented as a travalogue or scientific study of an alien world. Unlike such alien worlds as Darwin IV in Barlowe's Expedition, which one might find in a science fiction novel, the world in the Codex is obviously some kind of perverse reflection of our own. All of the Codex is presented entirely in an obscure alien writing. This writing, in combination with the bizarre pictures, is what finally puts the Codex in its own league for weirdness. For instance, on one page is a "Rosetta Stone" - only it just translates Codex script into another alien language.
The Web site above has images from the book and some links for more information. It seems to me to be an attempt to create a modern version of the Voynich Manuscript. You can find a few links about the Voynich Manuscript here (scroll down).

A journey under Malta

Professor Hex links to this article on the Hypogeum in Malta, a subterranean burial chamber so large that people got lost and never returned. One teacher and her class of 30 never returned. Well, that's what this article claims anyway. Here's a snippet of some of the far out claims:
She claims that out of this lower tunnel on the far side of the chasm emerged, in single file, several very large creatures of humanoid form but completely covered with hair from head to foot. Noticing her, they raised their arms in her direction, palms out, at which point a violent "wind" began to blow through the cavern, snuffing out her candle. Then, some “thing” wet and slippery (apparently a creature of a different sort) brushed past her.
It's fascinating stuff, whether true or not.
You can see pictures of parts of the Hypogeum here. Here's an article that treats it more soberly as a tourist attraction:
For about a 1,000-year span, the Hypogeum served as a necropolis, a city of the dead that eventually housed the remains of about 7,000 people. It was one of many megalithic structures strewn across Malta, built by a complex Neolithic culture that mysteriously disappeared around 2500 BC.
Even without slimy things and hairy humanoids, the Hypogeum is interesting as an underground Stonehenge and home of a death cult of some kind. Thanks Hex!

Japanese tattoos don't say what you think

The Chicago Tribune does a great little article on what kanji character tattoos really mean. (You may need registration for the article, Metafilter suggests using anonymous/anonymous for your user name/password.)
I had a friend who lived in Thailand. She talked about how people there wore remaindered T-shirts from English speaking countries that said horrible things. One T-shirt was supposed to say DNKY, instead it said DYNK. Another said "I fuck horses" or something similar. If you don't know the language, you must be careful with what you wear, or get imprinted on your skin.

Killer asteroids

Scientists are coming close to surveying all the asteroids that could destroy human civilization. Next they plan on finding the less important city destroyers.

Do birds have cults?

Sparrows try to commit mass suicide by drowning.