You're a loonie, aren't you?

This morning Lisa pointed out a story to me in the San Antonio Express-News regarding a fellow named Dennis Hope who's been selling land on the moon for $19.99 an acre. The scary thing is, people are lining up to buy from hope and his so-called Lunar Embassy. The San Antonio paper doesn't seem to have that story online, but a quick google search turns up a very similar story from the Houston Chronicle:

"I don't consider myself to be a scam artist," Hope says. "I don't consider myself to be anything other than a businessperson that has found an opportunity."

He sits in the office of Lunar Embassy, where T-shirts, plaques and maps herald his company's right to homestead outer space -- and where all of the above are available for purchase.

Not a scam artist. Riiight. He's just a boy who read way too much Heinlein growing up. But not so fast, Dennis. It looks like you're selling something that belongs to someone else, namely the town of Geneva, Ohio, which laid claim to the moon back in 1966 and has the documentation to back it up. And unlike Hope, they actually made the effort to survey the property in person:

Miles says Spencer also organized a militia of bearded men to protect the city’s claim to the moon. And Whaley says he recalls the Centennial Committee building a rocket to the moon where the convenience store stands on South Broadway. He witnessed the liftoff.

“The smoke poured out of it like it was going to the moon,” Whaley says. “Everybody gathered around to watch it, but it just sat there and looked silly.”

Personally, I'm laying claim to the L5 lagrange point while all these nincompoops argue over barren rock. I figure I'll slip in under the radar, so to speak. After all, who's going to challenge my ownership over something that physically isn't there?

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Gosh, Mr. Peabody, I didn't know the 70s were so happenin'!

Had a good night of writing last night. Not so good a night of sleep. I produced a 1,300-word article titled Four groovy flicks from the 70s wayback machine. It was fun to do. Fun to write, and fun to research. All of which I did last night instead of working on the Europa story rewrite or interview transcriptions. You know, paying gigs. The article begins thusly:

I was born in September of 1969. Less than a month earlier, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Sea of Tranquility aboard the lunar lander Eagle. Quite literally, I have never lived in a world where humans have not walked on the moon. That’s something of a heady thought for someone who’s main calling in life is to write science fiction.

So you can forgive me, perhaps, for lapses in which I assume the universe revolves around me, and that my perspective is analogous to that of others. It’s not. I know that, but sometimes conversations I have with members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Society of Texas State drive that point home harder than most. Most of the students in the club have never lived in a world sans Star Wars. Whoo. That’s something to consider, since Star Wars altered the perception of cinematic SF for not just my generation, but also those that came before and after.

From there I continue on for another thousand-plus words or so, giving background info, useless trivia and quick-and-dirty synopses of four SF films from the 1970s I think SFFS students would benefit from seeing. And enjoy, too. An entirely different class of SF films were produced in that decade, an after-effect of the New Wave of the 60s I'm sure.

The piece has been offered to Elizabeth Lowe for her fanzine project, and we'll see what happens with it from here. First person to correctly guess which four 70s films I put under the microscope for this article gets 50¢ and a red bananna...

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Books in the Barrio

For all the talk and debate I hear about the general population not reading or caring about books, sometimes a ray of sunshine breaks through all the doom and gloom and gives me hope that there is a future for the written word. For years, a community activist group called Books in the Barrio has been fighting to get a bookstore opened on San Antonio's south side. Now, San Antonio's south side has a tremendous population. But it's mostly Hispanic and working class. That side of the city is mostly known for colonial-era Spanish missions and used to be dominated by military bases, until most of them were shuttered in the '90s. In a nutshell, it's not the high-income, upwardly-mobile neighborhood most chains covet for new bookstores. Fortunately, Books in the Barrio's efforts are paying off:

Hard work and economic growth finally are paying off for South Side students, community and business leaders — they're getting a major chain bookstore in South Park Mall this summer.

Tim Duda, a South San High School teacher who long has lobbied for a South Side bookstore, thinks the continued publicity and constant correspondence with various bookstores helped convince Waldenbooks to plan the 3,000-square-foot store, which is to open in July.

For six years, students in Duda's economics classes campaigned to bring in bookstores, which bloom in a wide band across the city's North Side. The students organized "Books in the Barrio," which called for bringing a bookstore south of downtown through public activities such as poetry readings at South Park Mall.

The full story can be read online here: Bookstore means a new chapter in S. Side history. Sure, it's only a Waldenbooks, but I remember growing up in tiny Columbus, Texas, where we didn't even have that, and visiting a Waldenbooks or B. Dalton in a mall in Houston or Victoria was a big deal. A Waldenbooks will be a great addition to the area, particularly if they follow through on commitments to tailor their stock to the community's interests.

While I don't doubt this wouldn't have happened without Books in the Barrio's unceasing efforts, the cynic in me suspects that the huge new Toyota truck plant being built just down the road probably played just as big--if not bigger--role in the Waldenbooks decision.

Hmm. I wonder if they'd have any interest in a science fiction book signing next spring...

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Paper is to pen as toilet is to...?

If you don't read Nalo Hopkinson's web journal, you should. She's always got interesting thoughts going on over there. Today, she's got a thought-provoking piece regarding "artistic integrity" and the dirty business regarding gasp! getting paid for one's writing:

Making art is work; when people pay me for my work, that helps me to eat and keep a roof over my head, which allows me to keep making art. Work/get paid/purchase sustenance is a very real and pressing economic reality for me and many other artists I know. I'm never sure why we're expected to be embarrassed about it when other people who do work are not. When a plumber fixes your toilet, you don't tell her that you shouldn't have to pay her because she should be working for some--putatively more noble--purpose.

I particularly like the plumber-fixes-toilet invocation. It's appropriately Harlan Ellisonian in tone. To wit, an excerpt from my interview with Ellison (soon to be republished with all-new, value-added material in Voices of Vision):

Because I've done 70 books, people go, "God, you're so prolific." And I say, "What do you mean prolific? I've been doing it for 42 years, and I've done 70 books. That's what I do. It's a full time job. If I were a plumber, and I had unclogged 10,000 toilets, would you say to me 'You're a prolific plumber?'"

Unless you're Stephen King or Tom Clancy, choosing writing as a career path isn't going to make you rich. Believe me, I speak from the experience of supporting myself and my family through my writing for the past dozen years or so. Plumbers, though, I hear do quite well for themselves.

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Writing progress report

I look at other writers' web logs, and I'm shamed by the fact they religiously post their writing production for each day. I look back at my blog, and see that I've posted on just about every topic except my writing production. Huh. Okay, well, that changes right now.

I didn't write yesterday. No, that's not true. I wrote the first half of a review of Walter Wangerin's The Book of the Dun Cow for Green Man Review. I'll finish it up tonight. But as far as fiction or interviews go, nada. Zip. For shame.

But I've got an excuse. I was working on my office. The new house (hey, it's less than a year old, so that counts as new in my book) has a small "den" that I use as my office. But it has a high, broad entry sans doors which makes it hard to get into that writerly cocoon mode when kids and cats and everything else drifts in at regular intervals. So I've been carpentering and remodeling. Last night I hung a pair of double doors and installed the door handles. Naturally, no commercial doors fit the actual space, so much sawing and sanding and chiseling and cursing were invoked to make them fit. Not to mention staining and puttying. But the end result is quite attractive.

The remodeling isn't finished yet--floor to ceiling bookcases are next on the agenda--but now I have privacy, and can write to my heart's content in peace and quite. Or play Joust and Centipede. Whichever.

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Technogeeks on the make. Heaven help us.

Man, what is the world coming to? Now technology scans crowds for you, seeking out potential sexual partners and querying them in private. Liaisons are made without anyone the wiser. No ever-present threat of public rejection and humiliation? Dude, where's the fun in that?

British commuters take note - the respectable person sitting next to you on the train fumbling with his or her cell phone may be a "toother" looking for sex with a stranger.

"Toothing" is a new craze where strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings using messages sent via the latest in phone technology.

Read the whole article here: Britons go 'toothing' for sex with strangers Anyone else find it somewhat ironic that the story focuses on the supposedly under-sexed Brits for this journalistic titillation?


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So how do you define a Thark's strike zone?

This is brilliant. While Major League Baseball continues to make most decisions with its head stuck up its rear, the good folks running Little League Baseball are really planning ahead. There may be hope for this sport, after all: Little League gives Virginia jurisdiction over Mars

Naturally, there will be some necessary interpretation of the rules. Not everything translates nicely between Earth and Mars at a 1:1 ration. For example:

Of course, the expansion to Mars raises several logistical issues for Little League, particularly with the always sticky question of age. Children must be age 12 or under to participate in Little League's core program, and Little League officials have struggled to enforce that requirement in some recent scandals at its World Series.

The Martian expansion muddles the issue, because a Martian year lasts 687 earth days. So a 12-year-old in Martian years would actually be 22 in Earth years.

Also, Martian gravity is a third of that on Earth, so a 200-foot home-run fence would have to be extended to 600 feet on Mars.

It also gives rise to endless controversy, which baseball thrives on. On Babylon 5, when one character mentioned that Mars' team had reached the World Series for the first time in history, another argued with him over the validity of the Martian team's home run record set that season--whether Mars' lower gravity and thinner atmosphere warranted an asterisk in the record books or not. Not unlike the second-guessing the Colorado Rockies face daily, come to think of it...

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