Like everyone else, I greet every arbitrarily-chosen day that indicates a new calendar year with rage, skepticism, and vows to never ever drink something handed to me by a stranger on the street. I also vow to develop my own calendars and system of time, enabling me to claim August 5th as New Year’s Day and January 1st as New Year’s Day (observed).

But as usual: I digress.

Since the wizards and alien astronauts who invented the world decided more or less at random that January 1st is the New Year, it’s a natural time for folks to make resolutions, and I am no different from anyone else. Or, yes, I am extremely different from everyone else due to my flagrant lack of pants and my unusual, Dick-Van-Dyke-in-Mary-Poppins inspired system of hygiene, but in this respect I stand with my brothers and sisters and declare the following things will happen in 2010 (or, in my own personal calendar system, Fred):

1. Develop Super Powers: It’s about damn time. I’m tired of not being able to fly, or shoot bolts of energy from my hands.

failing that:

2. Develop Super Weapons: If I can’t fly or shoot energy bolts, I’ll at least create the world’s largest slingshot and hold cities hostage for trillions of dollars.

That’s it. I figure if I succeed in either one of these resolutions, all sorts of exciting things will be very easily achieved, so why put more effort into it than necessary?

The fantabulous cover for The Terminal State is up against two other books in a Book Cover smackdown over at SF Signal. I want to win, because I assume there is a large cash payment and some sort of trophy. I suppose I could confirm that by reading the entry, but I will just assume. Go get me that trophy!

Herewith some random photos of bookshelves in my house. Why? Why not. These are just a few. There are many, many more. And people wonder why I’m lukewarm about eBooks.

More after the break.

(more…)

Since my cats have very short memories and no sense of time, I believe that about five minutes after The Duchess and I leave the house they start to think the Apocalypse has occurred. I figure five minutes after we step out one of them rises up as a prophet of doom, telling how the Shaved Can Monkeys have abandoned us. About ten minutes in, there’s widescale wrestling and hissing and several cats take up positions by the dwindling food bowls, ready to pounce on intruders. Half an hour in, it’s Kitten Thunderdome.

I figure this solely from the reactions when I return to the house: First there is a sort of frozen awe, as if they can’t believe it – I am risen! Then there is what can only be described as joy, followed by a determined guidance to the food bowls so that I may be aware of the dire conditions they have survived fro thirty minutes. Then I feed them, and there is a feast, just like in most religions.

Carry on.

Well, we seem to be surviving:

Jeff Somers – Wikipedia

Jeff Somers is an American science fiction author from New Jersey. Since 1995, Somers has published his zine The Inner Swine and has been a prolific contributor to alt.zines. The 21st century has seen Somers’s transformation from an observational essayist into a science fiction writer of no small talent, “a gifted craftsman” with a “funky wit.”

Although we’re marked for “speedy deletion, whis is worrying. DAMN THEIR EYES. We will triumph. Um, won’t we?

I think there may have been a second page that folks were editing, so if that’s the case, I’m sorry, but THAT page, the one you were working on, appears to have bitten the dust.

Onward! I owe everyone who works on this a beer. SOmehow I will fly around the world delivering alcohol, I swear.