On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Fans of Ursula le Guin may have a pleasant surprise awaiting them, if they haven't already watched today's episode of Discovery.

I haven't yet, but I cheat a little.

Listening to this on the radio at the moment, after getting some morning and afternoon chores done here:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/zadie-smith-s-latest-book-intimations-reflects-deeply-on-isolation-and-injustice-1.5729946

"Racial contempt" as a concept...I accept that it's real. "Fear of poverty"? Also real. Also fear of poverty as a contagion...as a related concept. I am certain that I have been taught those latter two concepts, whether my teachers realized what they were doing as such or not. I hope I wasn't successfully taught racial contempt. I plan to assume the attempt was made to bake it into my education.

Details here:

https://can-con.org/final-decision-on-cancon-2020/

Our intrepid organizing committee will just have to work out something on-line for the benefit of the region and the country (and have announced such intent). That might be more involving for more people, depending on how things go over the next weeks and months.

Details at Newsarama and elsewhere across the comics-focused news services.

https://www.gamesradar.com/legendary-batman-writer-denny-oneil-dies-at-age-81/

For myself...my first real reading of his work as a writer was in Marvel's Daredevil and Iron Man. He was the one who made Jim Rhodes as Iron Man/War Machine possible. And when he went back to DC to edit the Bat-books and write his version of The Question...well...

This is going to hurt for a while.

When I saw and first retweeted this one, it was about five minutes old. Renaissance Press is local to Ottawa, and is run in part by a friendly acquaintance of mine, and the conference is to be held on Zoom. May already be in progress.

https://twitter.com/renaissancepre1/status/1268251134096883713

Ideas: Gelber Prize winners blame 'politics of imitation' for extremism in Central Europe
From the fall of the Wall to this pandemic era, experts look at the legacy of ill-fitting political systems

I'm going to listen to this for an hour.

Waubgeshig Rice used to be a reporter with CBC's Ottawa news division until he moved back up to Sudbury to keep doing that work there. Somewhere along the way, he started writing books as a sideline, and his first SF novel, Moon Of the Crusted Snow, published two years ago, seems to have ended up being more predictive than he expected or planned.

I hope that it's still in print when this mess is over.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/why-stories-matter-now-more-than-ever-1.5526331/blew-my-mind-how-waubgeshig-rice-s-post-apocalyptic-storyline-became-a-reality-1.5526691

http://www.waub.ca/

His photo from Fort Lauderdale got picked up by Associated Press, and from there...

I have a book that she and her partner Nigel Henbest co-wrote: The Guide to the Galaxy. Bought it from Perfect Books years and years ago. It was and remains a great read, however much time and new information have dated it. The maps were beautiful works of cartographic art for their time and topic. Sadly, it's no longer in print, but other examples of their work remain available.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51562165

I'm about five chapters into this one. Bought it back in January of this year, and then got distracted with a couple of metric tonnes of other stuff. One more of my mistakes.

Well, it's getting fixed now, right?

Anyway, two chapters in, and already Gail's upended stuff that Joanne Kilbourn thought she knew and understood about her own life and family. No, not going to explain it. I spoiled it for myself by finally starting to read Gail's "how-I-dunnit" book about mystery novels, Sleuth. That book is one more reason why University of Regina Press ought to be getting much more attention from the general book-reading public on the non-fiction side.

Anyway, I'll try to remember to let you know when I've finished. Gail migrated in the opposite direction of mine: to Saskatchewan from Ontario. And she found ways of proving my birth province an interesting place in its own right, as Robert B. Parker did with Spenser's Boston.