I’m watching and enjoying the Olympics, as always (at least, when I can find competition, rather than filler, being broadcast). But looking back on the Olympic competitions I remember from when I was younger, I think I’m seeing a change.
Sports which were (at least, to my memory) almost entirely judged artistic competitions, such as the various ice dancing events (or the gymnastics and equestrian events of summer), now seem to have more and more mathematically required elements in the scores. Indeed, NBC shows a box in the top left corner of “this element, if completed correctly, adds this many points,” and it’s measured down to hundredths. And that number updates in seeming real-time as the competitors are performing.
And sports which (again, I think I remember this correctly) were entirely numerical measurements not open to interpretation, such as ski jumping (which I thought was “how far down the slope did the competitor fly, and was the competitor able to land on the skis, or was it a wipe-out?”) now has a judged component: “Oops, he kind of wobbled a bit when he landed, and his feet were too close together” or something like that.
I’m still amazed that timed events like luge are measured down to thousandths of a second, and that the commentators think we can see any real difference between competitors when the final standings, after four 53-second runs, have six athletes separated by less than two seconds.
But are we seeing a blending of judged events and those measuring absolute values? How long before there’s an artistic component figured into curling or ice hockey?
Many of my friends are doing it, so I guess it’s time: next weekend, I’ll be at Boskone in Boston, Massachusetts, and here is my schedule.
But, before that, I’ll be at the Brooklyn Books & Booze Book Fair at Barrows Intense Tasting Room, 86 34th Street, in Brooklyn, New York. That’s Industry City, for those unsure of the address. I’ll be there with a bunch of other authors from 11am to 5pm. Come join us!
Then, next weekend is Boskone. As always, I’ll be in the dealers’ room at the Fantastic Books table Friday 4:00pm – 8:00pm, Saturday 10:00am – 6:00pm, and Sunday 10:00am – 3:00pm.
I’ll also be on panels and such.
Friday at 5:30pm in Harbor III: “Secret Wars, Futuristic Espionage, and Lost Technologies” with Laurence Raphael Brothers, Kacey Ezell, Alexander Jablokov, and Walter Jon Williams.
Friday at 8:30pm in Harbor I: “Boskone 63 Awards Ceremony.” As last year’s Skylark Award winner (it’s still hard to believe that they thought I was worthy of the award), I’ll be participating in this year’s ceremony.
Saturday at 1:00pm in Marina III: “Working with an Editor” with Ginjer Buchanan, Neil Clarke, David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson, and Matthew Kressel.
Saturday at 2:30pm in Harbor III: “Forks in Time” with Steven Popkes, Stefan Rudnicki, Susan Shwartz, and Sarah Smith.
Hope to see many of you in both Brooklyn and Boston!
The New Americans: A Saga of Immigration and Family
After being forced to kill in order to protect their widowed mother, three brothers escape Mafia-controlled Sicily to the New World.
Life for immigrants in America during the second decade of the 1900s is difficult and often harrowing, but that’s the reality into which Peter, John, and Angelu Donatello are thrust when their ship docks in Philadelphia. As Peter tries to make his way in this new land through honest hard work, John’s talents—many learned fighting in the Great War—lead him to the seamier, but potentially more profitable, underworld. And all the while, Angelu, the youngest brother and a true innocent, struggles to just find a place for himself in a world he can never truly understand.
Prohibition may make criminals of honest men, but it also allows poor immigrants to mingle with the upper classes; the Donatellos among them. Yet, despite war and crime, marriage and loneliness, honor and betrayal, the brothers, each in their own way, cling to their creed of Supra tuttu la famigghia: Family is all.
Eventually, everything will lead them back to Sicily, to a confrontation with the forces that have shaped their lives, and to a heart-wrenching reconciliation.
Reminiscent of John Jakes’ Bicentennial series, The New Americans by Tony and Ty Drago is a wonderfully moving saga. The genesis of the story is itself a tale: in his final weeks, Tony Drago tape-recorded what his son Ty thought were simple reminiscences. It was only in the years following Tony’s death, after Ty became an established novelist, that he listened to the tapes and realized his father had left him, not a family history, but rather an emotional novel of immigration, rebirth, and growth. Milherst Publishing is honored to bring this story to the world.
The New Americans, by Tony & Ty Drago, will be released in six monthly installments, as both trade paperbacks and ebooks.
Book #1 begins in Sicily in 1915. When his middle brother kills the son of the local Mafia don while defending their mother, Petru Donatello and his younger brothers, Juvanni and Angelu, are forced to flee their homeland. This takes them on a harrowing voyage in the bilges of a transatlantic ship teeming with Sicilian and Italian immigrants just like them, a multitude hoping for a better life in America. Along the way, they make both friends and enemies as the Donatello brothers struggle to prepare themselves for their new life in a world beyond their understanding.
Milherst is a division of Gray Rabbit Publications/Fantastic Books. All Milherst Books are distributed via Ingram. Review copies are available upon request.
Should I just give up, or should I continue to cringe when I hear people using the word “fulsome” when they mean “full” or “large”? Because it grates on my ears. And yes, before I looked up this source, I hadn’t realized that the modern usage of just meaning “full” but with more syllables is actually the original meaning from the 1200s.
Dictionary.com offers the following on the word fulsome:
adjective
offensive to good taste, especially as being excessive; overdone or gross. Example: fulsome praise that embarrassed her deeply; fulsome décor.
disgusting; sickening; repulsive. Example: a table heaped with fulsome mounds of greasy foods.
excessively or insincerely lavish. Example: fulsome admiration.
encompassing all aspects; comprehensive. Example: a fulsome survey of the political situation in Central America.
abundant or copious.
adjective
excessive or insincere, esp in an offensive or distasteful way Example: fulsome compliments
[not standard] extremely complimentary
[informal] full, rich or abundant Examples: a fulsome figure a fulsome flavour fulsome detail
[archaic] disgusting; loathsome
Note: In the 13th century when it was first used, fulsome meant simply “abundant or copious.” It later developed additional senses of “offensive, gross” and “disgusting, sickening,” probably by association with foul, and still later a sense of excessiveness: a fulsome disease; a fulsome meal, replete with too much of everything. For some centuries fulsome was used exclusively, or nearly so, with these unfavorable meanings. Today, both fulsome and fulsomely are also used in senses closer to the original one: The sparse language of the new Prayer Book contrasts with the fulsome language of Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. Later they discussed the topic more fulsomely. These uses are often criticized on the grounds that fulsome must always retain its connotations of “excessive” or “offensive.” The common phrase fulsome praise is thus sometimes ambiguous in modern use.
The US military removed Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela.
The Abraham Lincoln carrier group is nearing Iran to support the protesters demanding regime change in that country.
I think it’s time we started considering domestic regime change. Donald Trump: you can save us all a lot of pain if you resign with dignity and grace.
And note, the founders considered this an acceptable possibility. Article 2, Clause 6, begins: “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office…” Resignation is acceptable. Richard Nixon did so for the good of the country, as did Vice Presidents John Calhoun and Spiro Agnew.
I frequently attend science fiction conventions and other conventions, but this is going to be a first for me. I’ll be one of the featured authors at the Brooklyn Books & Booze Author Book Fair. I’ve been in the house since the weekend, avoiding the cold, so this will be a wonderful reason to get out, to be with people, to revel in books (and meet their authors, and buy some books), and bask in the warmth of it all. The event will be Saturday, February 7, at Barrows Intense Tasting Room, 86 34th Street (Industry City) in Brooklyn, New York. We’ll be open for browsing and buying and boozing from 11 am to 5 pm. Hope to see many of you there!
When talking about writing science fiction, I usually warn authors not to put near-future dates into their stories, because they run the risk of being overtaken by reality. Matthew B. Tepper just reminded me that early in my career, I did put a date in a story, one that is arriving all too soon. In “How I Won the Lottery, Broke the Time Barrier (or is that ‘Broke the Time Barrier, Won the Lottery’), and Still Wound Up Broke” (which was published in the June 2000 issue of Analog), the narrator gets a message from the future, from March 16, 2026.
There are several predictions in the story that did not come true… at least, not in this universe. Nevertheless, I’m wondering if I should do something to commemorate the day, to kick myself for getting it wrong (although I guess it was successful in at least one way: I sold the story, which was the real goal).
I’ll be traveling to Massachusetts later that week, but March 16 is a Monday, on which I currently have nothing scheduled. Anyone want to celebrate the day by helping me try to open a 27-year-long wormhole, to transmit a little information back in time? Or do something a little more pedestrian, people-getting-together type of thing? Or perhaps the day before, which is a Sunday?
Donald Trump’s tariffs are imposed due to “emergencies,” which thus grant him the power to do that which Congress is the Constitutionally empowered body to do. Or so he says. And he keeps relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for the thin veil of legitimacy.
I am having a hard time finding any “emergency” in Emmanuel Macron’s decision to not pay Trump $1 billion to join his “Board of Peace,” but somehow Trump sees that decision as justification to impose a 200% tariff on French wines.
I only hope the Supreme Court wakes up to its job, that it is not subservient to the president, but a co-equal branch, and that the Court kicks Trump’s entire absurd tariffing policy to the curb.
Donald Trump is like a dog, pissing on things to claim ownership of them.
His latest is threatening staunch American allies with tariffs if they don’t support the forceful US annexation of Greenland. “We need Greenland for security,” he says. Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s what Vladimir Putin said just before ordering Russian troops to attack Ukraine. That’s the same Ukraine war, by the way, that Donald Trump said—during the 2024 election—that he would end within 24 hours if he won the election. We’re still waiting for that.
Long ago, I wondered if Donald Trump was a stooge working for Putin. Now I realize he’s simply doing his best to emulate Putin. Indeed, Putin gets all this Trumpian love for free.
Trump’s only morality is self-aggrandizement. Everything he does as president seems to have the same goal: to put more money in his pocket, or to put his name on things. In that respect, he’s not unlike a dog, pissing on things to claim ownership. The last major US territorial acquisition was the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The US acquired Puerto Rico and Guam due to the Spanish–American War (in 1898; we also got the Philippines, which became an independent country in 1946). And the US purchased part of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.
So what happens if the US manages to “acquire” Greenland? He becomes the first president since World War II to increase the geographic size of the United States. Indeed, he also gets to claim to be the president who acquired the largest parcel of territory for the US, and if you’ve listened to any of his speeches, you know “first” and “biggest” are among his holy words. (For comparison, Alaska is about 665,000 square miles, and the Louisiana Purchase [which the US got from France in 1803] involved about 828,000 square miles, while Greenland measures about 836,000 square miles.)
Any other president would measure success in terms of national peace and prosperity; the people’s health and wealth; happiness, amity, and community. But how does Trump measure success? With crowns on his head and dollars in his pocket.
He was talking about his “Board of Peace” this week. It’s key feature? Each member has to pay $1 billion, which he as chairman gets to control. The gold decorations dripping all over the White House are not impressive; they are there to tell him he controls vast sums of wealth. But he looks at the truly wealthy—Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Elon Musk—and he feels his inferiority complex, because his wealth is not on that level. So he keeps grifting, keeps taking what he can.
The first load of Venezuelan has recently been sold, and the proceeds of that sale wound up in a Qatari bank. Why Qatar? Why not the US? Or, for that matter, why not Venezuela? Because this way, Trump has control over that money, can disburse it as he will. It has suddenly become his money.
The Trump Kennedy Center. The Trump Ballroom. The Trump Battleship. The Trump Institute of Peace. The Trump Savings Account. The Trump Special Visa for Rich People. The Trump Southern Border Boulevard in Palm Beach. His face on the National Park pass. And on, and on…
The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v United States (2022) seems to have set the standard for presidential immunity, that the President of the United States may not be sued for anything he does while serving as President (without any comment or direction as to what a President might do during his time in office that is not within the scope of his “official acts”). It seems most current interpretations of that ruling assume the President may not be the subject of any lawsuit, period.
At the same time, however, the United States is experiencing the presidency of a person who’s first response to almost any disagreement is to sue. I’m not sure there is an exact count of the number of lawsuits he has brought. For only the latest example, see President Trump’s threat to sue JPMorgan Chase.
As much as the President needs to do things that an ordinary citizen oughtn’t be able to do, it seems manifestly unfair that while Donald Trump as the President is immune from lawsuits, Donald Trump himself has the complete freedom to file lawsuits of his own.
Added January 30, 2026: And now he is suing the Internal Revenue Service. From the linked article: “The lawsuit, filed Thursday at a federal courthouse in Miami, says Trump is suing in his personal capacity, not as president.” So he can differentiate Trump-the-person from Trump-the-president. Hmm….
Ian Randal Strock 