They're Not Gonna Hold Me Down
Yet another healthy chunk of time has gone by without a proper update from me, so this is going to have a mix of both the latest regarding Strange New Worlds 10 and some random stuff which has been going on lately.
(I will be blogging a proper con report about Shore Leave, I swear, but this is not that entry...)
First, on a somewhat frustrating note, I still haven't gotten my copies of SNW 10. :/ I didn't worry about it too much before Shore Leave, because no one else seemed to have gotten them either...and then, I allowed for a bunch of extra time to clear any customs hurdles, since I believe I was the only Canadian in this volume...but there's still been no sign of them at all. *sigh*
On a more amusing note, though, Amazon.ca sent me an email a while back with recommendations based on my Amazon Wish List--and SNW 10 was at the very top. :} I guess my tastes are easy enough to figure out...
Speaking of Amazon, the first review finally showed up on Amazon.com last week. I disagreed with many of the reviewer's thoughts (he dissed some of the stories I really liked, for one), and he has a very strange rating system, but for what it's worth, "You Are Not In Space" received a brief and middle-of-the-road assessment as a "good story, but a little predictable in it's [sic] ending."
More important to me was the review which appeared in Issue #7 of Star Trek Magazine, on newsstands now:
John Freeman's review included the following, which made me very happy:
Paul C. Tseng's story A Dish Served Cold...is a gem, as are Time Line by Jerry M. Wolfe...the Vic Fontaine story So a Horse Walks into a Bar... by Brian Seidman and the Hoshi Sato-centered You Are Not in Space by Edgar Governo.
Lest I fail to give a shout-out to the other writers just mentioned, Paul C. Tseng is ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
exculpatory around these parts, and Brian Seidman has his own website as well. Unfortunately, I can't find any online presence for Jerry M. Wolfe. :/
Also unfortunate is the fact that I waited so long to mention that the official Star Trek website is hosting a "Strange New Worlds 10 for 10" Book Giveaway, where you can actually win a free copy of SNW 10. Why is this unfortunate? Well, for one, the contest is only open to US residents to begin with; and for another, the deadline is tomorrow afternoon, so I'm not really leaving you with a lot of time to enter--but there is time, my American friends!
I'd love to follow all this up by talking about the various stories I need to mail off before the impending deadline for Strange New Worlds 11 on October 1...but as I've mentioned before, such a volume will not be happening. *sigh* Various reviews and posts online have lamented the end of the series, and I doubt I can add anything new to those, other than to say that I'm as sad as everyone else. Alas, I shall never earn a Wardy.
In that case, you may be asking, what have I been up to?
The usual fandom activities and a lot of birthday shopping, for the most part.
I was very surprised last Monday to discover an autographed photo of Christopher Lee in the mail...a photo, I can only presume, intended as a donation item for the charity auction I held last year, in response to the letter I wrote him just under two years ago. I should be getting that letter from Ringo Starr any day now...
I've been talking about Doctor Who to anyone who will listen lately, so I thought it was awesome a couple of days later to spot a "DR WHO" licence plate on a Mini Cooper going down Osborne Street. I've been told that "TARDIS" is already taken in Manitoba as well, but I have yet to see one on the streets of Winnipeg.
I also thought it was awesome that "Dick in a Box" won an Emmy last weekend. :) I can honestly say there was no more deserving entry in its category.
Shopping for birthday presents turned out to be easier than I expected in some ways and harder in others. (September and October have a concentration of birthdays for people I'm close to, including my own. The only other period with so many birthdays coming at me at once is mid-March.) For one, I had a hell of a time this past Friday trying to find a copy of Babylon 5: The Lost Tales for my friend Bradley, but I had a much easier time finding Serenity: Collector's Edition for him, after having the reverse be true a few weeks ago when I considered getting a copy of the latter for myself. (At this point, I'm leaving it as a very obvious birthday suggestion for other people. ;))
On the bright side, there was a Browncoat at the HMV where I bought Serenity, who was smart enough to ask if I'd already bought Firefly since it was currently on sale. We had a nice little bonding moment where she expressed some excitement that this Collector's Edition exists in the first place. :)
Despite a few hours of searching that day, mostly around Polo Park, I didn't encounter anything else I was looking for, birthday-wise (for Bradley or anyone else), and then ran out of time and had to head to The Forks for some pool with xandersgirl (one of the birthday people in question), jack_pride, and my brother Tony, followed by a trip to Cinema City for a second-run viewing of Ocean's Thirteen. A definite highlight of the evening was putting together our list of five celebrities of each gender for our respective laminated cards (Friends-style) over dinner before the movie, which was both enlightening and a lot of fun. I wasn't so thrilled with my guy list (a couple of them could be switched out very easily), but I'm quite happy with my girl list, as I feel it represents a great lineup of very attractive women. ;)
Also worth mentioning was Tony's Consumer Rage gene kicking in at the cinema after a snafu over our movie tickets, which is a rare event in itself. (For anyone who hasn't met my brother, he's generally a very quiet person, so seeing him get his hackles up for any reason at all is akin to a J. D. Salinger sighting.)
Saturday was a similar story as far as shopping went--a mix of finds and frustration--but St Vital worked out somewhat better than Polo Park had. I didn't have time to head downtown that day, but their Chapters had more of the things I wanted, and I managed to find the B5 DVD at their HMV location.
Since I was there anyway, I checked the Science Fiction section to see what was stocked, and sadly, no copy of SNW 10 remains there...but for some strange reason, they had fifty copies of The Klingon Dictionary sitting on their shelves, far more than anything else related to Star Trek in the entire store. Don't get me wrong--it's a great book, and I do own a copy, but it's a fifteen-year-old Star Trek reference work, and such works are often said not to sell well compared to original ST fiction. What's up with that?
At any rate, I wasn't there for that, but I did pick up Those Left Behind and Firefly: The Official Companion (Volume One) there to round out Bradley's birthday package. I debated over whether to try and find Volume Two before handing the gifts over, but (as xandersgirl correctly pointed out) I automatically have something to give him for Christmas this way...
Looking for birthday cards is at least as hard for me as what I just described. When it comes to my personal card-buying philosophy, I try to avoid rhymes, bad jokes, and (to a certain extent) glitter, while leaning towards cards that are witty and/or literary. Even if a card meets all of these criteria, I still have to do the obvious and make sure it reflects how I feel about both the person and the occasion, with plenty of space for me to write my own sentiments. (I'm one of those verbose fill-up-all-the-space-available guys...have you noticed yet? ;)) All of this knocks out so many potential candidates that, in an ironic twist, I tend to buy a lot of cards when I'm in a card store, since I'll grab anything that I think will fit the bill at some point, e.g. birthday cards for friends whose birthdays are months away.
My most recent card-shopping trips have proven no different from this pattern.
For now, at least, I seem to be caught up on all birthday-related matters, but I'm sure there are still more gifts to be bought...
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festive
