The Orphanage

The invaluable Palace Theatre in downtown Frostburg is showing Juan Antonio Bayona's ghost story The Orphanage (a.k.a. El Orfanato) Feb. 15-16, and Sydney and I are sponsoring it. This is our second such fit of artistic patronage; we previously co-sponsored Pan's Labyrinth at the Palace in 2007. Y'all come.

Payseur & Schmidt & O'Connor

My hero Brett Cox reports that Payseur & Schmidt, publisher of fine, beautifully designed books such as John Clute's The Darkening Garden and Nicola Griffith's And Now We Are Going To Have a Party, has accepted his proposal for a reprint collection of four stories inspired by the life and work of Flannery O'Connor:

"The Road Leads Back" by Michael Bishop, first published in After O'Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2003).

"Every Angel Is Terrifying" by John Kessel, first published in Fantasy & Science Fiction (October/November 1998).

"Flannery on Stage" by F. Brett Cox, first published in Indigenous Fiction (June 2001).

"Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" by Andy Duncan, first published in Eclipse One (Night Shade Books, 2007).

Publication date, details of the book package, etc., are TBA.

Last night I dreamed ...

... that I lived in a crumbling but still glamorous brownstone high-rise in the city. The name of the building, spelled out in stained glass over the front door, was The Oasis. My large, high-ceilinged apartment, like all the other apartments, was thronged with people, with refugees. Each room was a jumble of mismatched beds and furniture and stacks of suitcases, trunks and boxes bound with twine. All the beds were occupied by people sleeping, eating, playing cards, visiting with one another, dressed and undressed. Very narrow crooked aisles separated the beds, so that in trying to walk across the room, I kept stumbling into people and apologizing. Everyone was a stranger to me except Ted Chiang, whose bed was several beds over from mine. I couldn't find the exit, but I did find my way to the kitchen, which was as crowded as the other rooms with beds and junk. I marveled: "I didn't know we had a kitchen!" Then I was on the street outside, looking up at the building, waiting in line to board the airplane that would take me back to my apartment. It was a 1930s prop plane, like the one in Lost Horizon. I strapped myself in, and the plane took off nearly vertically, pressing me back into the seat and cutting off my breath. Then I woke up.

Define "fake"

I am as amused as anyone by Stephen Colbert's latest stunt -- talking the National Portrait Gallery into temporarily hanging his portrait, over the water fountain between the bathrooms -- but after reading the lead of this Associated Press article, I wonder: In what sense is Colbert a "fake TV pundit"? Put another way: Are any TV pundits less fake than Colbert? Or are the others more fake, because they expect to be taken seriously, even if their shtick is as fact-free as Colbert's?

Submitted for your Nobel consideration

Pennsylvania cancer patient John Kanzius, whose field is not medicine but electronics, wondered whether radio waves might kill cancer cells. The answer, says the journal Cancer, is: Yes, they do. John Kanzius may have tinkered his way into a cure for cancer.

It came out of the sky

What was the 16-inch piece of burning-hot metal that fell from the sky and through the roof of Susan Wilson's SUV outside Happy Harry's drugstore in Stanton, Del.? The Federal Aviation Administration says that whatever it is, it didn't come from a plane.

We just don't know

We just don't know why 5-year-old Chucky Beutel of Sellersburg, Ind., spontaneously combusted in the bathroom.

"The knickers saved the day"

A kitchen fire in Hartlepool was put out by a pair of extra-large knickers. For further local color, note that the fire broke out while the two blokes were frying bread. There'll always be an England.

Possibly the ultimate church-and-state news story

Whereas an Italian court apparently summoned Tweety Bird, Mickey Mouse and Donald and Daisy Duck to appear as witnesses in a counterfeiting trial through a clerical error, an Indian judge intentionally summoned the Hindu gods Ram and Hanuman to appear as witnesses in a property dispute. Suppose they showed up? I'd like to see the courtroom climax of Oh, God! remade as a Bollywood musical.

Suppose they answer?

"Who Speaks for Earth?" is a fascinating Seed magazine article that asks whether "active SETI" -- broadcasting our existence to the theoretical extraterrestrial intelligences that theoretically could be listening -- is a good idea.

Serious scientists are beginning to sound like the narrators of Lovecraft stories, speaking openly about "the potential for alerting dangerous or malevolent entities to our presence."

My favorite quote, from a former U.S. State Department officer: "Active SETI is not science; it's diplomacy."

Hola, amigos

Sydney says my stocking cap looks like Jim Anchower's. This stops short of saying that in my stocking cap I look like Jim Anchower, but it's mighty close.

How innocent was Dr. Crippen?

The Guardian reports that the dismembered body found in Dr. Hawley Crippen's coal cellar in 1910 was not that of his wife, Cora; so saith the DNA evidence. Here's the BBC account.

Was Crippen hanged, then, for murdering someone who wasn't even dead? Whose body was it? Who dismembered it and buried it in Crippen's cellar? What prompted Crippen and his mistress to flee England in disguise? And will the next edition of Erik Larson's fascinating best seller Thunderstruck, about Crippen and Marconi, include a new epilogue addressing the DNA claim?

One theory: Crippen was an abortionist, and the body was a customer whose procedure had gone horribly wrong.

Preliminary Nebula ballot

My story "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," from Jonathan Strahan's Night Shade anthology Eclipse One, has made the preliminary Nebula Awards ballot.

The starving of Shallmar

The national effort to save the inhabitants of the mining town of Shallmar, Md., from starvation in December 1949 is the subject of an interesting two-part feature by James A. Rada Jr. in the Dec. 27-28 Cumberland Times-News. Here's the first part, and here's the second. I marveled that things in Shallmar could have gotten so bad without the neighbors noticing, but then I found the now-defunct town on Google Maps. As you can see, Shallmar was terribly isolated, between the river and the end of the road, just like the better known hamlet of Gee's Bend, Ala.

The Wilson Parrot Foundation

Here's a wire story about parrot rescuer Brian Wilson of Damascus, Md., and here's the website of his non-profit Wilson Parrot Foundation.

When do students become threats?

When is student writing a warning sign? This question is debated singlehandedly by Chris M. Anson of North Carolina State University in Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors.

How about student role-playing? This past week, a Frostburg State University student was arrested, and his dorm room searched, because of comments he allegedly made on a live audio feed while playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Xbox Live. Call of Duty 4, like countless other computer, card and board games, awards points for "killing" one's "enemies." Whatever this guy said in the heat of "battle" prompted police to swarm across campus the next morning, and lead the student away in handcuffs -- though police later conceded, according to a follow up Cumberland Times-News item, that he "did not have the means, nor the intent, to carry out the threats."

Once more into the wardrobe

Amid the tablid bonanza that is the faked death of John Darwin, the discovery of his secret passage through a wardrobe is leading headline writers to do plays on C.S. Lewis. The Sun had "Liar, witch and the wardrobe" Dec. 8, and ABC News had "The Liar, the Switch and the Wardrobe" Dec. 10.

Speakers for the dead

At noon every Tuesday during the semester, at the clock tower in the middle of the Frostburg State University campus, names, ages and hometowns of U.S. troops killed in the current war are read aloud by volunteers, a program organized by the United Campus Ministry. I was one of the readers on the last Tuesday of the fall semester; here's a photo Sydney took.There are far too many to name all in one session, so four readers take turns reading names, in alphabetical order, for a half-hour each week. During my week, we were in the D's. And so on, week after week.

"Excellent pen! Some issues ..."

Since graduate school I've been fascinated by fiction in non-fictional formats. Here's one I haven't seen before, a short story written and posted as an Amazon customer review ... of a Bic Crystal ballpoint pen with, apparently, Lovecraftian qualities.

I admire Robert Carlberg's comment, too.

Thanks to my hero Barry Johnson for passing this along.

The Dracula Innocence Project

In the grand tradition of the Richard III vindicators, the learned Sherlockians and Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton universalists comes the Dracula Innocence Project, which is seeking contributors to help clear the name of you-know-who:

Was Dracula framed? Why did a small group of people chase a terrified Transylvanian dignitary through the streets of London, and fatally run him through with a blade? We'll examine the evidence. You be the judge.

This is the doing of Paul Bibeau, author of the non-fiction book Sundays with Vlad. I salute him.

Thanks to Elizabeth Miller for passing this along.