From BBC News today:

It only took 50 years, but by merging electrons with their antimatter equivalent–positrons–in a silicon matrix, scientists have succeeded (at least for a quarter of a nanosecond) in creating Di-positronium, an ultrarare form of matter first predicted to exist by theoretical physicist John Wheeler in 1951.

The annihilation of these particles when they come into contact with normal matter produces a burst of gamma rays, which has obvious military, but also fusion research implications. Both groups are counting on this discovery to speed the creation of ultrapowerful (wait for it) “gamma-ray annihilation lasers”, useful for kick-starting fusion reactions…or blasting enemy starships out of the sky.

My favorite part of the article? The quote near the end:

“A gamma-ray laser is the kind of thing that if it existed people would find new uses for it everyday,” said Dr Cassidy.

No doubt, Dr Cassidy. No doubt.

And you wonder why the stereotype of the mad scientist came about…

– S.

Congratulations to Patrick Rothfuss on his win of the 2007 Quill Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy for his debut novel The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One), published by DAW Books.

According to the Quills website:

The Quills, an initiative launched with the support of Reed Business Information, is designed to be an industry qualified “consumers choice” awards program for books, honoring the current titles readers deem most entertaining and enlightening.

The Quills celebrates the best books of the year in nineteen popular categories, ranging from romance to biography to graphic novels.

The Quill Awards were established to:

* Celebrate Excellence in Writing and Publishing
* Recognize and praise the creators of important books and great literature
* Interest more consumers in acquiring books and reading
* Act as a bellwether for literacy initiatives

Patrick is a fellow WOTF winner (he won in 2002 with an excerpt from this novel) and we’ve talked a bit through Facebook. He’s a really nice guy, and I recently joined his Facebook fan group–Pat Rothfuss’s Legion of Fanatical Minions: The Global Group.

I read The Name of the Wind after hearing endless rave reviews about it, and I can assure you it doesn’t disappoint. Everything you’ve heard is true. The judges at WOTF couldn’t stop talking about this book while we were there. Pick this one up, folks.

Though waiting for the next two volumes will be tough, you know what the best part about Rothfuss is? Unlike some other fantasy authors who’ve kept loyal readers waiting for years or even decades to finish their particular cycles, I know for a fact that Patrick’s trilogy was done before he submitted the first book to DAW.

Now that you have to admire.

So, just as Edmund Blackadder once did when congratulating Samuel Johnson, I offer Patrick my most enthusiastic contrafibularities on his win. Well done!

The 2007 Quills Book Awards will be held on Monday, Oct. 22 in New York. TODAY co-hosts Ann Curry and Al Roker will host the event, which will feature “Colbert Report” host Stephen Colbert. Now how cool is that?

– S.

Monday began early…

Poor Wage–he has the boozing capacity of one of the brownies from Willow. After his bender the night before in the hotel bar he’s seen here recovering. Poor little guy didn’t fell well enough to enjoy the rest of the week and mostly stayed in bed.

Damon Kaswell, John Burridge, my roomie Doug Texter, and I were all in the hotel exercise room before 7am Monday morning. Clearly a new breed of SF writer was at hand–let’s see Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, or Ellison run 5 miles first thing Monday morning.

(One could point out that they’re too busy writing best sellers to have time to run 5 miles…and one would be right in doing so. And you can also note that this was the only morning I managed such a feat…)

It was at this point that I began to realize we were not in just any hotel. One by one, in came blond British girl after blond British girl. Then I put it together: the flight crews in slightly retro uniforms we’d seen the night before in the lobby…these British girls coming to workout…Ah hah! This was the lay-over hotel for Virgin Atlantic crews! Every other day a new crew arrived either from Heathrow or Sydney on their global circumnavigation in service of Sir Richard Branson.

Whenever you went out to the pool the rest of the week there were invariably Virgin flight crew (men and women) clogging every deckchair, their sun-worship done with a kind of reckless abandon given the grayness of their native land. (British Steve would later complain that there are no more good looking women in England because they are all Virgin Airways stewardesses and constantly out of country…)

After getting ready for the day, next was breakfast downstairs in the hotel restaurant (*cough*robbery*cough*). Though we’d discovered a rather large supermarket at the mall the night before, I didn’t want to risk missing the start of the meetings.

I saw KD Wentworth having breakfast over in the corner and briefly thought about joining her but chickened out. Soon I was joined by fellow winners John Burridge and Damon Kaswell, the two winners from the Wordos–the Eugene, Oregon writer’s group that is some kind of advanced training program for winning the WOTF (past winners from the Wordos include Eric M. Witchey, Leon J. West, and Jay Lake)–Steven Gaskell from Brighton, England (who was quickly rechristened ‘British Steve’); and Ed Sevcik, gentle giant of our group, who’d just recently moved to Haifa, Israel.

We all spent too much on breakfast (especially John, who had a cup of tea and one of those little boxes of Raisin Bran from the Kellogg’s variety pack for $14) and when the waiter, who was from Thailand, came to clear away our plates (some of which weren’t polished clean) he regaled us with the traditional weight-loss method of his homeland–which consisted mainly of a diet of butter, steamed vegetables, and going a week without eating now and again.

Not exactly Atkins.

It was getting near 9am by the time we managed to extricate ourselves (though I was wondering if that could count as our interview of a stranger) and made our way to the little octagonal conference room where we’d spend our workshop hours.

From the front of the room. Left panel…

…Centre panel (note the appearance of the day’s first can of Coke)…

…Right panel.

How our desk spaces were laid out: ice water (with lemon), a mint, notepad, pen, a copy of The Master Storyteller (a book of Hubbard’s pulp magazine covers, some of which were really cool), and a copy of WOTF XXII (which included Joseph Jordan’s story “At the Gate of God,” which Publisher’s Weekly called an “excellent story of faith lost and found.” Joe couldn’t make it to last year’s workshop so we were lucky enough to have his company for our week.)

The Whole Gang Part 1: Kim Zimring (front), Jeff Carlson and Joseph Jordan (middle), Andrea Kail (back), Steve Gaskell (getting coffee)

The Whole Gang Part 2: (Somehow Kim and Joe made it in to the photo again…)
From L to R: Aliette de Bodard and Ed Sevcik, Doug Texter and Damon Kaswell, John Burridge and Tony Pi.

The bulk of our workshop lectures and discussions were held Monday. We’d have other sessions Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday but they were always interspersed with other events or guest lectures. So Monday was the major (to borrow a term) info-dump day.

KD Wentworth and Tim Powers–our gurus for the week.

And what an info-dump it was. I took 15 pages of notes and it was all gold. I won’t go into extensive detail about what was said (partially because I don’t think it’s mine to tell–it is Tim and Kathy’s presentation after all–and because such a summary is available elsewhere on the net).

By 11am Monday, Tim had demonstrated that the “lethal dosage” levels of caffeine were more a suggestion that a hard-and-fast rule…

In general, however, some of the things I learned:

– Where I had been stopping work on stories thinking they were done is the point at which the real work on them needs to begin
– The story is not the words
– Leave out the bits readers skip over
– Ask questions of your characters and plot (Why? But why really?) but also ask random questions (How is this like cutting down a tree?) to see what information they might throw up for you to use
– If you as the author know something completely you can leave it out and the reader will be able to figure it out
– Dialog can be too helpful. Chop it up, have people mishear or misunderstand. Speech starts and stops; thoughts and words are broken.
– Hiring an agent who is less than the perfect fit for you is like hiring “a blind Sherpa on Everest.”

“I swear Carlson, I’m gonna belt ya…”

Advice from Tim and Kathy was interspersed with reading Hubbard’s articles about art, writing, plot, suspense, etc. and discussing these with our twin.

Our twin was the person who we were sat beside the first day and with whom we were to discuss the articles and later our story idea. I was paired with Tony (I guess they wanted to keep the Canadians together, lest we frighten the Yankees with our “a-boots”, “ehs?”, and our drinking Labatt 50 from stubbies). Tony was a great partner, later bailing me out of a major dead end with my story. I don’t know that I was as helpful to him as he was to me. He seemed to have a much better sense of his story from the get-go.

On a break, Kim takes it easy. Joe demonstrates a traditional Bosnian chair samba, much to Andrea’s amusement. Meanwhile, British Steve is fascinated by his name tag–a cutting-edge American technology yet to be exported to Old Blighty.

Though the language in Hubbard’s articles was a bit old fashioned and a bit ‘purple’, as they say, on the whole his advice was solid and got me thinking about things like suspense and character development in ways that I’d not previously thought of them–so all in all quite useful.

Intently reading, my twin by my side…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

And Hubbard’s thoughts echoed other things I’d heard from people like Robert J. Sawyer, Orson Scott Card, Ben Bova, and now from Tim Powers and Kathy Wentworth.

We broke for lunch at the grocery store we’d found the day before and I took the opportunity to stock up on snacks for what I knew would be the Wednesday writing marathon–tortilla chips, salsa, and a 2L bottle of Dr. Pepper.

After lunch I went briefly to my room to drop off my supplies and discovered that someone from Galaxy Press had been in to drop off a WOTF t-shirt.

Then back to class for the afternoon.

On a break, I appear to be doing some kind of Dr. Evil
impression, much to Andrea’s amusement…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

By the end of the day I’d forgotten that this was only Monday–we’d taken in so much and as I could feel my thinking and approach to writing changing as I listened part of me was sure we’d been there learning for several days already. In a good way, though 🙂

The last thing we did Monday was receive our inspirational item from Kathy. She, quite wisely, had decided on all new inspirational items for this year given that all the old standard ones have been revealed and discussed on the internet.

This was mine:

A red apple fridge magnet.

I must confess I was initially a little freaked out because everyone around me seemed to have instant flashes of inspiration from their object and, well, I didn’t. I looked at it for a while and considered it’s various features, hoping for that flash–it was red, wood, had a shine mark that looked like an ‘L’. It still wasn’t doing anything for me. Tony and I talked a bit about it and then class was dismissed.

Dinner was (not for the last time) Mexican food from a place in the mall called Rubio’s. The evenings were gorgeous in Pasadena and we ate outside (again, not for the last time) in the courtyard.

I had a great time all week with this gang–they’re a very smart, very sharp, very funny bunch. We spent about 20 minutes discussing the semiotic implications of the near-by movie poster for Shoot ’em Up…and by ‘semiotic implications’ I mean Monica Bellucci’s corset, how none of us could take Paul Giamatti seriously as a hitman (Kim wondered if he’d gone over to the dark side after someone made him drink some @#$%ing merlot), and what exactly he was holding.

You can see the poster in question in this shot from earlier in the day.

I think SF writers are kind of a self-selecting group and so we were bound to have much in common and (probably) have similar personalities, so maybe it’s not surprising that such a good time was had. And two weeks later I do find myself missing the gang.

We wandered the open air mall looking for one of those beer helmets as a gift for Tim. We figured since he drank so much Coke we might as well give him the ability to drink from two cans simultaneously while leaving his hands free. Sadly, we didn’t find the helmet…but we did stumble upon a place called Cold Stone Creamery which has some of the richest ice cream I’ve ever eaten.

Trying to get a picture of the hills at dusk I instead ended up with two Miss Teen USA contestants wandering into the shot. You thought I was kidding about girls walking around in sashes, didn’t you?

John was able to ascertain the position of Arcturus in the sky and guide us all safely back to the hotel. A few of us went for a quick drink but we were mostly exhausted (and full of ice cream) and retired soon after.

I fell asleep with visions of apple fridge magnets troubling my mind…

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Tuesday
– Blue brings out my eyes
– Hugette plants a tracking device on me
– I do battle with Samurai Guy and Jeff Carlson does 10 to 20 in San Quentin
– Did you know there is a species of albizia in Malaysia that can grow more than one inch a day?

According to an article on SciFi.com, there are apparently plans afoot in Japan to build a 13,123-foot-tall building which would be able to house upwards of 1,000,000 people and would cost somewhere between $300 billion and $900 billion to construct.

That’s about 7 times taller than the current tallest building on earth, and 700 feet taller than Mt. Fuji.

It will probably never get built and it’s a very William Gibson/Bladerunner-ish sci-fi idea…but how cool would that be? 🙂

– S.

My first day of the WOTF experience began auspiciously: I got dropped off at the wrong terminal at 830am.

Now, admittedly this was my fault—I got this ticket confused with the one I had booked for the next week to Chicago and said I was leaving from Pearson’s Terminal One (Air Canada) instead of Terminal 3 (US Airways).

D’oh!

I took the monorail (monorail, monorail…) to T3 and had plenty of time to check in and spend my 40 minutes to get through customs.

Once I’d checked my baggage I found my gate and Tony Pi, fellow Toronto winner (who’d got there at 730am—apparently I like to live dangerously when it comes to flight times, a theme which would repeat later in the week…), and settled in. Tony and I talked about what to expect, who of the writers would be there (Tony’s been in touch with quite a few via LiveJournal, Critters, Kathy Wentworth’s WOTF forum on SFF.net, etc.) We both agreed, once we had boarding passes in hand and were through security, that it seemed like this might actually be happening after all.

Wage checks to make sure he has his passport and ticket ready for boarding.
He doesn’t want to end up in GitMo, after all…

Our flight for Phoenix left on time and was pretty painless. Alas, Tony and I weren’t seated together (I think they must have shuffled Tony around to make room for somebody because I’m almost sure our e-tickets said we’d be sitting together the whole way there and back—ah well). Tony was up in row 16, while I was in row 22—the very last row in the plane; fine, except when you’d like to make a quick exit in Phoenix to catch your connection.

I had the window seat and while that was cool I felt badly when I had to get up to use the washroom. I was beside a guy who slept the whole flight (had to wake him up) and an elderly lady who had real trouble getting around and out of the seat.

It occurred to me that in the event of an emergency, despite being closest to the plane’s rear left exit, I was screwed.

Like I say, the flight was pretty painless, but US Airways…not the greatest airline in the world. I’d had breakfast, but our 4 ½ hour flight meant lunch aboard. After getting a look at the prices of a sandwich at Pearson ($9!) I decided to wait and get one on the plane ($5). But the attendant announced at the beginning that they only had a limited supply of sandwiches (why, I don’t know—you know it’s a sold-out flight over the lunch hour) and once they were gone they were gone, meaning that by the time they got to me…so hungee. I had two Cokes and hoped to get something in Phoenix.

But the other thing that bothered me about US Airways was their request that we slide down all window shades “for the benefit of our passengers trying to enjoy our in-flight movie—Shrek 3.” In the first place, it would take a lot more than total darkness to enjoy Shrek 3. And besides, I didn’t want to watch the movie; I wanted to read and look out the window as we crossed into the desert of the American southwest. I’ve never seen the desert and have always wanted to, so this request seemed a little unreasonable to me (or maybe I was cranky because I was hungry.) In any event, my window shade stayed up.

The desert really is amazing country and so unlike anything I’m used to or have seen before. There’s actually a very clear dividing line as you’re flying over the American plains and their rich agricultural land (below us for much of the journey were vast fields, laid out in huge, perfect grids, uninterrupted by lakes or rivers or any variation in terrain, like some great green chessboard for giants). One minute it’s all lush fields and then there’s a band of scrub transition terrain maybe only 50 miles wide and then the desert.

The earth itself looks different there. It’s all blasted land, red and khaki, with dark hills rising and rippling up from the desert floor; wandering tendrils of dried mud and salt halos show where rivers once ran. Dark dots of desert shrubs follow the contours of the land, finding their home in valleys and on ridges and without these little tufts of plant life it could almost have been mistaken for Arrakis, our plane powered by the beat of ‘thopter wings…

Once and while there would be another (much smaller) square of lush green farming below us, but it struck me at that point as an oddity and unnatural in that landscape. I couldn’t help thinking over and over again as we flew into Phoenix how much water it took to sustain such farms and such huge cities (Phoenix has a population of 1.5 million and stretches across the desert floor forever) in this arid place. The southwest finds itself in the middle of a huge population boom (Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the USA) while at the same time being caught in a terrible drought.

The Fremen in me was very upset.

One really cool thing about Phoenix is the desert art. Whereas at home they line highway on- and off-ramps with shrubs and trees, in Phoenix they have desert art pained or carved right into the earth. It looked to be Navajo or Hopi imagery, mostly of deserts birds and lizards.

We came down from
Carson and Springfield/
We came down from
Phoenix enthralled
– ‘The Celebration Of The Lizard’, The Doors

We landed in Phoenix and our brief exposure to the desert heat as we exited the plane via the gangway made me understand why the Navajo called Phoenix Hoozdo–literally “the place is hot.” It was like stepping in front of a full body hair drier, much as I imagined the arrival in Arrakeen to be like for young Atreides…

Are those the hills around Phoenix or the Shield Wall around Arrakeen?

I had just enough time to grab that longed-for sandwich ($7) before boarding for the up-and-down to Los Angeles. While Tony and I were seated together for this leg, I felt bad for him—the pressure differences of takeoff and landing really give him headaches, and like I said, Phoenix to LA is all up and down.

Coming into LA was impressive in a really gross way: you’ve heard of the LA smog? Yeah, it’s as bad as they say. The whole valley looked like it was covered in a thick fog and it was hard to see landmarks of any kind.

After landing and baggage claim (everything arrived!) we were met by Claude and his WOTF sign.

Tony and Claude

He took us outside to wait for the car (and curbside at LAX is so much crazier than curbside at any airport I’ve ever been at before). We got to talking and Claude informed us that Galaxy Press had just sold rights for a Turkish edition of WOTF 23! They apparently don’t get that many frees as part of the deal, but they promised to keep us informed and maybe work out some deal where we can get a copy of the Turkish edition cheap. Very cool.

Is there an Amazon.tr? 🙂

Soon we were met by our driver, Jason, and then whizzed around to one of the other gates to pick up Aliette de Bodard, the first WOTF winner from France! Aliette and I won in Q3 and had been e-mailing already (as had she and Tony) so it was almost as if we knew each other a bit to begin with.

We next met Hugette, a fellow Canadian (she’s from Montreal) and the week’s official photographer. She got quite good at finding me at almost every turn during the rest of the week (more on that later).

She took a few photos of us, and had Tony and I get out to fake a few shots of our arrival (because we didn’t want to fish our luggage out of the back of the mini-van, Tony and I tried to look casual as we had our pictures taken standing near the luggage of some guy who was waiting for a cab…)

Tony and I “arrive” at LAX…
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Palm trees and American megalopoli still fascinate this Canadian boy.

Seeing this sight made me feel like I was in a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song…

As we drove down the 101 through LA and the 110 to Pasadena, Aliette regaled us with tales of transferring international flights at Heathrow. She had a two-hour layover and still barely made the plane after all the security, etc. Makes me feel pretty silly for being worried that 40 minutes in customs at Pearson was going to make me late…

After a brief stop at the 76 for gas, we arrived at the Sheraton Pasadena. We were greeted at the check-in by Sarah Caruso, one of the Galaxy Press folks and our coordinator during our stay.

Sarah Caruso (in the foreground) and John Goodwin (over her shoulder).
This shot is actually from Monday. Note the binder Sarah is looking
through–she was never without it all week.

Sarah was fabulous all week–if you needed something done, you asked her and it was ready by the next break. I think she slept even less than the winners, because every time I was wandering the hotel corridors at 4am there was Sarah… I also think her clipboard-binder thing had been surgically grafted to her arm, because she was never without it. She did a great job keeping the wheels greased all week.

We were also greeted at the desk by John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press. I’d e-mailed with him a number of times but it was great to finally meet him.

What I didn’t expect was for him to look like Superman–seriously, look at the guy. He doesn’t need those glasses. John Goodwin can see through walls.

Tony, Aliette, and I agreed to meet shortly to get some lunch and went to our rooms to drop stuff off.

I arrived in room 240 to find that my roommate’s stuff was already there, and soon in he walked. Douglas Texter–which is possibly the best last name for any writer ever–with whom I got along fabulously (as evidenced by his inscription in the book later in the week: “To the best WOTF roommate I’ve ever had” 😉

The view from our hotel room.

Doug is an English lit PhD candidate (specializing in utopian studies) and at one point had worked as a developmental editor for a textbook publisher in the US so he actually (unlike most people) understood what I did for a living. We talked shop for a bit (he once ‘Canadianized’ a textbook and was fascinated with the Toonie I had with me) and then there came a knock on the door–Hugette was looking for some photos of us meeting so we faked a few more for her.

Doug Texter and me “arriving” in our hotel room.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Downstairs for lunch to discover that a number of the other winners who had already arrived were assembled ready to strike out in search of food in Pasadena. We wandered over to the open-air mall for the first of many trips. There was lots of talk about the contest, how many times people had submitted before winning (I think the highest was 12), and what to expect from the week (most people had pieced this together from the various web pages and blogs of past winners).

The courtyard the of the mall where we took most of our meals.

I just can’t get over my fascination with those hills…

As we returned to the hotel we discovered that the Miss Teen USA pageant was being held next door at the arena. Girls in sashes were thus to haunt over every move during the week. A very LA experience.

At 8pm in the hotel lounge we met up with the rest of the winners who had arrived (a few, like poor Andrea Kail, wouldn’t arrive until extremely early the next morning) and we were also introduced to Tim Powers and KD “Kathy” Wentworth, both of whom we came to love over the course of the week.

They briefly outlined what we could expect from the week and took our questions, which started off being about the week, but then quickly turned to other aspects of publishing, agents, etc. We were hungry for knowledge and success and it showed.

That disembodied arm to the right of KD Wentworth? Yeah, that’s me.
The lady in the red golf shirt by the mirror is Joni Labaqui, the contest organizer.
(photo courtesy of WOTF/Galaxy Press)

Tim’s most salient advice that night for new writers?

1) If you’re at the WOTF you’re already one step ahead. You’ve shown you can sell a story. The workshop is to take you beyond the first sale.
2) Have a crappy part-time job so you can write. Make sure it’s crappy so that you don’t mind dropping it in order to write more.
3) Start smoking (* This last I think was motivated more by Tim’s disappointment that none of us smoked rather than its necessity to good writing. He had no one to hang out with on break and have a butt–and though I hate smoking I was tempted to take it up for a week just to hang out with Tim. Tobias Buckell told me before the WOTF to stick as close to Tim as I could, so…)

We were also exposed for the first time to Tim’s primary quirk. He was drinking a can of Coke through the whole introduction, and when he’d finished that one he pulled another from an inner pocket of his thin, black jacket. When Jeff Carlson asked him just how many he had in there he pulled out two more from what I swear were secret pockets in the lining. The weird thing is that you couldn’t tell from looking that he had four cans of pop concealed on his person. This wasn’t to be the last time Tim produced Coca Cola seemingly from thin air…

We were all handed itineraries and several books of Hubbard’s article on writing and received our first homework: read two specified articles before class at 9am.

I retired to the bar with a band of the other winners to talk writing, the contest, life, the universe, everything… Eventually we broke up and headed for our rooms to read the requested articles.

As I finally lay down to sleep I couldn’t wait for the WOTF week to really begin.

– S.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
TOMORROW: Monday
– A new breed of SF writer shows itself
– Lessons on a traditional Thai weight-loss plan
– My brain gets full
– We learn that a human being’s maximum safe daily dose of caffeine is actually more a recommendation than a hard-and-fast rule…

So a number of the WOTF judges write (or have written) media tie-in books, and there was some discussion amongst the various winners about whether we would do likewise someday. Some said they would absolutely, others refused outright, others said they would but under a pen name to differentiate it from their personal fiction.

I was sort of on the fence about the whole idea: in some ways I think I’d find it inhibiting to follow somebody else’s rules and continuity (though Sean Williams says he has loads of fun doing Star Wars books)…but then again it could be fun to contribute to a universe I love, like Star Wars or Star Trek, and the paycheck would be nice, because these books have HUGE built-in audiences. But having the opportunity to do any of these kind of titles is realistically years off, so I didn’t think too long or hard about my official position.

However…

This morning I stumbled through one of the random, magical tubes that comprise the Internets and was presented, almost from whole cloth, a really cool, fun idea for a Star Trek novel. Oddly, this is a retcon idea for the TOS era even though I’ve always been more a ST:TNG man.

What’s the idea?

I’m not going to tell you that! What do you think I am, stupid?

So now, if anyone ever asks me or will let me, I think I’d consider writing a Star Trek novel because it would be fun.

– S.

Despite Andrea Kail’s contention that I don’t know how to pronounce my last name, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a hold of how to say (and more importantly spell) my given name.

See, I was thinking about the news posts yesterday about the WOTF Award Ceremony in which my name was spelled ‘Steven’ rather than my (I was going say ‘preferred’, but what I really mean is ‘correct’) spelling ‘Stephen’. It’s a minor thing, really, but I was struck that I was still thinking about it hours later.

Now, I’m used to the butchery of my last name. When people see a non-Anglo-Irish name of any kind they seem to freak out, and ‘Kotowych’ has been the recipient of many a creative misspelling and mispronunciation. (My favorite was when I was interviewed for the Perth Courier a number of years ago and the summer intern interviewing me, despite having gone to high school with me, and despite asking me at least four times to spell my scary last name for her, spelled my last name in the photo caption ‘Kotowolowolowich’).

But the whole Steven/Stephen thing goes back to Junior Kindergarten for me. I was one of five (count ’em–5) Steves in the class–Steve being a very popular name in 1978, apparently–but I was the only one to spell it Stephen (thank you, Mom and Dad). I always spelled out my full name, even though everyone called me Steve along with the rest of them, because it was easier for the teacher to tell whose work was whose.

So from that time onward, even though I’m perfectly happy to answer to ‘Steve’ in conversation, I’ve always spelled my full name when I write or type it down, and always hate seeing it with a ‘V’.

“Why?” you may well ask.

If I can employ a sci-fi reference here (and believe me I can), at one point in the mostly terrible Season 2 of ST:TNG the ill-fated Dr. Pulaski and Data have a discussion after Data insists she call him “Day-tuh” rather than “Da-tuh”.

“What the difference?” Pulaski asks the android.
“One is my name,” says Data, as if surprised at the need to clarify. “The other is not.”

It’s like that with me and Stephen vs. Steven. Now, I have nothing against Stevens–some of my best friends are Stevens–but I’m just not one of them, that’s all.

And calling or writing my name ‘Stephan’ or ‘Stephane’ or any other vaguely French version of Stephen will illicit an even more visceral reaction. I noticed this happened routinely when I was in the States the last few weeks. Despite having any number of perfectly good, famous examples of Stephens–King, Colbert, Baldwin–any time I went to a restaurant, etc. and my name was called out for an order or a reserved table it was always “Stephan!” (This confusion rarely happens in Canada, I think because of the Quebecois influence).

Given American hatred of the French I was surprised by this persistent Francophilia.

You’re welcome to call me Steve or Stephen at all times, but never ‘Stephan’, and if you’re going to write my name down then, please, write it “Stephen”.

– S.

I’ve been alerted to a couple of news items about the WOTF 23 Award Ceremony. They obviously come from the same press release sent by Galaxy Press, which gives us an interesting chance to see how different news services treat (and especially edit) the same information.

Anybody else ever read Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent? 🙂

There’s one here at SFScope (they spelled my name with a ‘V’, which I don’t do, but which makes me think I need to add that spelling to my Google Alerts so I can better Googlestalk myself…)

There’s another here at Yahoo! News (which I’m told also went out over the AP newswire).

– S.

A new theory from a US-Czech research team (published in Nature) says that an “asteroid pile-up” 160 million years ago (some kind of cosmic-scale traffic jam) littered the Solar System with debris, sending fragments crashing into the Moon, Venus, and Mars, gouging out some of their most dominant impact craters, and which was also responsible for a chunk that later smashed into Earth wiping out, you guessed it, the dinosaurs (or at least those ones who didn’t survive and evolve into birds–it’s a bit fuzzy to me).

Talk about lousy weather ruining your summer…

Full story from BBC News Online here.

– S.

I don’t think I sound nearly as nervous as I really was.

My focus was on breathing and staying on my feet, given that earlier Doug (my WOTF roomie) and I had discussed what we termed the Douglas Texter Award Acceptance Method, which consists of three easy steps: start to shake, lock knees, fall over.

Fellow winners assure me that at the time I looked (and I certainly felt) like I was going to pass out. But, all in all, I’m happy with what I managed to say despite not having prepared anything (though the brief ‘uhhs’ that I inserted felt, at the time, like they were roughly five minutes in length each, and my mind was utterly blank even as I spoke). I’m actually really impressed with myself for having remembered Jeff, Andrea, and Kim by name. I’m almost sure that at that point I couldn’t have told you what my name was if you’d asked.

But seriously–does my voice sound like that?

And I need to get to the gym. Looks like they gave the award to Jabba the Tux…

And just so you know: this was the SECOND speech I had to give, and since I knew I had to give the first one that’s when I took the opportunity to thank my parents, my friends, Rob Sawyer, etc. So if I know you and you’re offended because you think I didn’t thank you, well, that one’s just not on YouTube yet 🙂

TTFN

– S.