Meanwhile…

Normally I am stricken with an inability to remember Edgar Rice Burroughs’s name whenever I am in a bookstore or library, but I finally remembered. While selling some useless old textbooks yesterday I came across this little gem of an edition and snagged it. How can you not love that cover?

I’ve gotten quite a few books over the past few months. I’ll report in my findings as I chew through them. I spent all day Saturday building several new sets of bookshelves for our living room. Then filling them. It looks lovely. Then we lugged the loveseat in front so the baby can’t get at them. You can take my word for it though, they look nice.

In awesome news, I discovered over the weekend that my Mercier’s Flight has received an Honorable Mention over at the Writer’s of the Future Contest. Link when they’ve posted it. It’s the furthest a story of mine has gotten over there (though it’s probably the only one that’s deserved it) and I’m pretty excited. I’ve resumed submitting the story to markets in the hopes that it’ll sell somewhere so you guys can read it.

I have just today nabbed a couple of what you proles refer to as “novels.” First up is The Etched City by K. J. Bishop, which was recommended to me by Goodreads after it caught me making googly eyes at China Mieville.

Next is Cory Doctrow’s Little Brother. All the cool kids seem to know who he is, so I thought I’d check it out.

(I also note that Master and Commander has been on the nightstand since June. I check in on it occasionally to make sure nothing happened while I was away.)

I have a couple of articles I’m intending to write for the Flash Fiction Chronicles, one about superheroes, and another about small apocalypses. Stay tuned!

So not too long ago, I nabbed this from a local comic shop out of their clearance bin for practically nothing (it’s $50 there on Amazon, I got it for maybe five or six dollars). It’s an incredible deal, a collection of nearly every issue of Fantastic Four and The Silver Surfer up to just a few years ago.

It’s hard to argue against the Fantastic Four’s boast of being “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” It’s high concept science fiction that perfectly represents the attitudes of the ’60s, and the book revolutionized superhero books at the time. It’s likely the superhero would have faded out long before now if not for Reed Richards’s ill-conceived plan to take his girlfriend into space and get laid beat the Russians into space.

As I’m reading this first issue (November, 1961), a lot of things jump out at me, and I was having too much fun not to share. To the jump!

Continue reading