The Crotchety Old Fan

Fandom’s secret cabal is now arguing over the recently announced YA discount to Worldcon.
Short summation: Worldcon needs new blood. Offers meaningful discount to obtain it. This offends some self-identified group(s) because they will not benefit from the discount.
Fail: 1. complaining about benefits received by one minority group – instead of working to [...]

I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting genre related stuff happening today, but I haven’t managed to run across it.
I have been pretty busy. I finally got my new website up and running and really haven’t had a chance to look into SF stuff today.
The new website is a mundane effort, a very, very local news [...]

In which I ask a series of questions of Nick Mamatas (Nihilistic Kid) concerning Viz Media’s new Haikasoru line of Japanese SF in translation.
I just got the answers back today (yes – email interview – see what happens when you can’t get to Worldcon?) and in reviewing it I notice that I failed in at [...]

Do you think Nappy said “Gosh darn it!? The Duke has ringed the hills with artillery – now I’ll have to pull back and reconsider…” or did he say “I AM the greatest! I will forgo all tactical sensibility and continue with ‘hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle’; once I’ve crushed this British upstart, [...]

I received a copy of the August 2009 issue of Realms of Fantasy:? I probably signed up for some free offer (vague memory says that I did and that I’m supposed to offer some blog commentary in exchange for the favor) but don’t really remember.? So, just to cover the bases, here’s some commentary on [...]

My (non-fiction) book – A Parent’s Guide To Paintball, (published by Liaison Press) was released to Kee Action Sports on May 15th of this year.
They’re a rather largish paintball product distribution and manufacturing company (one of the largest in fact).
Liaison and I agreed to give them a bit of a grace period to market the [...]

Two.
1. Why do high profile authors lend their names to blurbs for books that are not worthy of praise (or even of promotion)?
2. Why is so much physical impossibility sneaking through in published works?
Answers?? You supply them – I haven’t got any.
Elucidation follows.
I’ve read several high profile author’s musings on providing blurbs (which in this [...]

I’ve got a few ’specials’ planned for the near future, among them are:
Retro-Interviews with Samuel R. Delany and Norman Spinrad.
These interviews were originally conducted in 1978 by my then SF-partner in crime Joe Zitt, and were published in our SEMIPROZINE Contact:SF.
Delany has been coming back into focus in the industry with reprints of most of [...]

Ford Street has a new title:?They Told Me I Had To Write This by Kim Miller. We?ve had excellent reviews from Terry O?Connell (Director of Real Justice) and Rowland Croucher (Director World Vision). Hopefully you will consider ordering this book.
Details:
Clem is a boy in strife. Blamed for the death of his [...]

Disappointment.? Upset too – but that I attribute to my normal early-morning piss-edness.
I’m energetically working my way through the google newsalerts, (cold) cup of coffee in hand and I come across a PR that announces that Borders Books is trying to engage with niche market buyers by adopting a blog, facebook and twitter.
Here’s the opening [...]