Can you smell it? Just there, around the corner: the end of semester. I’ve got three exams next week, though thank heavens two of them are oral exams and graded on the spot. I will receive a stack of fifteen essays to grade, feedback unnecessary since they’re “final exams” and Iam unable to return them to students. I’ll have one stack of forty-odd written exams to grade, but again, no feedback necessary. Some calculations and weeding through paperwork submitted by teams in my two Listening & Speaking classes, along with evaluations and self-evaluations. The exams should be done by Tuesday …
Category: WRITING
Asimov’s July ’08 — Fictionwise eMagazine Edition Up
For those living outside of the English-speaking, American-magazine-distributed world who are interested in reading my recently-published story “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues” in the July 2008 issue of Asimov’s SF, you might be interested in the Fictionwise eMagazine edition. (There’s DRM, of course, and I don’t usually buy things with DRM myself — though since my subscription copy was sent to the wrong address somehow, and I’m going to have to wait a few more weeks before demanding it be re-sent, along with a couple of other months’ worth of my subscription! But anyway, it’s up, it’s available, …
“Lester Young…” Reviewed @ The Fix
What a lovely review of my story Val Grimm has posted at The Fix as part of a review of the July ’08 Asimov’s SF: Think about the first time you discovered science fiction you enjoyed; remember the wonder and joy you felt, the sort of sensation that makes you twelve years old again. Sellar conjures up that Ray Bradbury-esque golden-hour bliss with a piece which has a traditional feel but glimmers with freshness, originality, and craft…sort of like a good rendition of a jazz standard. There’s more, and you can read it all here. (I’m looking forward to when …
Linux/Nethead Injokery
I haven’t actually been working on “A Killing in Burma” lately — the semester has kind of turned into a swarm of bumblebees and I haven’t had much time to do anything besides school stuff — but I did get a little work done on my draft of “Ten Spikes and a Hammer,” a story I’m working on about, well, more WWII-era geomantic warfare as remembered by an old man in the late 80s in a rather different American from the one we all remember. (Or don’t remember, as the case may be.) But when Lime and I were puttering …
Stuff Going On
Been busy like mad, and traveling for the next few days, but briefly: I’m getting my students to release stuff (or let me release their stuff) online. The first in a series of projects is now up at YouTube: my Korean students considered popular stereotypes believed in Korea about foreign countries (like France, America, South and Southest Asia, China, and Japan) and then went out and asked people from those countries what they think and feel about those stereotypes. That’s how you turn a somewhat disturbing class discussion into a learning experience. More to come: remixes/creative work from my Media …
Dhuluma Proofs Done & On Tuckerization
Let’s see, today I: graded most of a huge pile of exams (some with quite a surprising degree of insight, including a few analyses of the peculiarities of American social anxieties as encoded in the TV show Lost; others, rather disappointing) critiqued a student article for the campus magazine (about the decline of open-air traditional markets in South Korea) wrote some content for an English textbook (essaylet title: “Spider Silk and Gecko Tape”) But most exciting, I: proofread the galley proofs on my second story to appear in Asimov’s SF in 2008: “Dhuluma, No More.” Yes, exciting! Really! It’s not …
So, Then… aka Squee
The subscriber issues of Asimov’s July ’08 issue are out, and apparently there’s a review of my story in it coming in Locus… I’ll be waiting a while for my copy, but the gist is here. And it’s been a springboard to at least one discussion of jazz SF already at the Asimov’s board. Is it impolitic to jump in on such a discussion? I would like to inform Redmarvel that the fate of the cowboys will not always be a mystery, if I get my way… but wouldn’t want to make people feel like they can’t bash the story …
Flashmobsters
The flashmob is not new, but flashmobsters? Googling shows I’m not so brilliant as I thought — the term’s been used before online, but that won’t stop me writing about the potential criminal uses of flashmobs by organized crime, especially when they have the advantage of working in a city where everything, including law enforcement, has been privatized. Yeah, it’s political SF, since the current administration is privatizing almost everything here, and yeah, it’s set in Seoul. Lots of young male and female twiggi — that’s a Korean word that often has a connotation rather like what people tend to …
Welcome, Asimov’s Readers!
I guess some people might visit after reading my story in the July 2008 Asimov’s SF, which has gone out in the mail (though I’m sure it isn’t on newsstands yet) titled, “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues.” I hope you enjoyed it, though I guess if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have come here. Anyway, welcome to my site, and feel free to have a look around if you like. A lot of my recent posts here are about current Korean political stuff, but if you dig, you can find all kinds of other stuff. If you’re like to …
Pahwakhe Podcast is Up
The audio podcast of the first story I ever sold, “Pahwakhe,” is now online at PodCastle. It’s very flattering to have joined some pretty illustrious ranks in the Escape Pod/PseudoPod/PodCastle family. I’d like to offer a big thanks to Rachel Swirsky for giving the story a spot at PodCastle, to Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay at Fantasy Magazine for being the first to give the story a shot, and to C. G. Furst for his reading. When you have a quarter of an hour to spare, go check it out!