The new issue of True Review has just been posted. In this one, they’ve reviewed two Fantastic Books titles: one six years old, the other still two months from being published.
Of Susan Casper’s The Red Carnival, reviewer Andrew Andrews writes “I love Casper’s style. It is truly gritty, edgy, compelling, dark and emotional. In this case, there is a stark and sinister force at this carny in the town of Somerset that makes all the festival lights turn red. There is a ride that appears out of nowhere, not attested to by the carny operators, called ‘Golgotha, Place of Skulls,’ and there comes a frenzy of violence by the carnygo’ers and carny staff. There is an impulsivity to this narrative that is disturbing, yet almost amusing.”
That’s a good review of a very good book, and I don’t want to take anything away from it.
But of far more personal import is his review of my forthcoming collection, Wandering Through Time. He writes: “Ian Randal Strock is the Harry Turtledove of short-short SF. His alternate-history stories have punch. The take on a geographically divided America in the time of the Civil War rings strongly in ‘Shall Not Perish from the Earth.’ I think it’s Strock’s best tale. In ‘The Necessary Enemy,’ it’s always wars, it seems, that drive humankind’s progress and destiny. ‘Rockefeller on the Rocks’ proves that unique tales, true or not, of U.S. vice presidents could perhaps work, with sufficiently advanced technology. Why can’t we replace veeps with robots? Who would know?”
I’m thrilled, honored, and a humbled to be compared to Harry Turtledove. My book is being released on December 3.
This weekend, I’ll be in Texas for American Mensa’s quarterly board of directors meeting, but next weekend is Capclave in Rockville, Maryland.
As usual, I’ll be at the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room (open Friday 3:00–6:00pm, Saturday 10:00am–6:00pm, and Sunday 10:00am–2:00pm). I’ll be participating in the Mass Signing and Awards Ceremony in the Atrium (Saturday, starting at 7:00pm). And I’ll be on the following panels:
Friday at 6:00pm in Washington Theater: “What Is a Small Press?” with Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Shahid Mahmud, Adeena Mignogna, and Joshua Benjamin Palmatier.
Friday at 8:00pm in Washington Theater: “This One Time…” with Morgan Hazelwood, Michael A. Ventrella, and Jean Marie Ward.
Saturday at 12:00n in Jackson: “The Future of Currency” with Elektra Hammond, Shahid Mahmud, and Jennifer R. Povey.
Saturday at 4:00pm in Eisenhower: “Short Stories Are Where It’s At” with Ken Altabef, Scott H. Andrews, Jennifer Brinn, and Sheree Renée Thomas.
Sunday at 12:00n in Monroe: “This Was the End” with Scott Edelman, Shahid Mahmud, and Alex Shvartsman.
Fantastic Books is gearing up to publish …As I was saying! The book will be a collection of funny, horrifying, sweet, depressing, outlandish, and true tales of life and encounters at conventions. And we’re looking for your stories!
Tell us your stories about things that happened at conventions. Give us your conventional stories that aren’t very conventional.
We focus on science fiction conventions, but we’re willing to expand our horizons a bit to comic cons, writer conventions, media conventions, things that are close.
Fantastic Books publisher Ian Randal Strock (who has attended more than 200 of them himself) and editor Michael A. Ventrella (who is responsible for Release the Virgins, Three Time Travelers Walk Into…, and the sequel anthology to “The Eye of Argon”) will be co-editing the book. Amazing Stories has graciously agreed to host the submission form at this link: https://amazingstories.com/convention-stories-for-fantastic-books/
So please, share your stories; we’re dying to hear them.
Note: the title comes from Michael’s own contribution to the book.
Also note: this is an unpaid opportunity. If the book actually makes money, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to an appropriate charity.
To-do lists: the joy of crossing things off them, or the truly icky feeling of a list with everything but one crossed off, and just knowing that one is going to sit there for a very long time, so that the incomplete list can never be thrown away.
I’m leaving town Sunday for some Mensa business in Chicago, but I’ll be in Atlanta from Tuesday for my first DragonCon! If you’re going to be there, and want to see me, I gather running into people is very difficult (and Fantastic Books will not have a dealer table). But below are the program items I’m on (so I know I’ll be in these places at these times).
Also, I’m still looking for a place to stay Tuesday and Wednesday nights in Atlanta, if anyone’s looking for a temporary roommate.
Thursday at 8:30pm in Embassy AB Hyatt: “Time and Science Fiction: Time Travel Through the Years” with Griffin Barber, Bill Ritch, M.A. Rothman, and S.M. Stirling.
Friday at 5:30pm in Embassy AB Hyatt: “Time and the Telepath Time Travel Without Mechanical Means” with H.Y. Gregor, Darin Kennedy, and Jeffrey Falcon Logue.
Friday at 10:00pm in Embassy AB Hyatt: “Eye of Argon — Part 2!” with Keith R.A. DeCandido, Esther Friesner, and Gail Z Martin.
Sunday at 2:30pm in Overlook Westin: “SF Literature Track Group Signing: Time Travel” (a group signing, my first!) with D.J. Butler, Van Allen Plexico, M.A. Rothman, S.M. Stirling, and David Weber.
Hope to see many of you there, so you can help me be a little less overwhelmed!
It’s another convention weekend for me, the fourth in a row . This weekend, I’ll be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for Shore Leave. This is my first time attending Shore Leave, and it’s the convention’s first time in a new hotel in a new city on a new weekend, so it’ll be all new for all of us.
If you’re coming to Shore Leave, I’m looking for a little help at the dealers’ table (Friday between 3 and 5pm), and I also have a hotel reservation but no roommate, so I’m looking to share.
My schedule at the convention:
The dealers’ room will be open Friday from 2 to 7pm, Saturday from 10am to 7pm, and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, so I’ll be at the Fantastic Books table for those 20 hours.
If you’re looking for me on programming, I’ll be on:
“SF&F Magazines vs. Themed Anthologies” in Ballroom B, Friday at 3pm, with Michael Jan Friedman, David Gerrold, Joshua Palmatier, Hildy Silverman, and Amy Sisson.
“Juggling Multiple Projects” in Ballroom A, Friday at 4pm, with Christopher D. Abbott, Derek Tyler Attico, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Aaron Rosenberg, and Dayton Ward.
“Writing Brain vs. Editor Brain” in New Holland, Saturday at 9pm, with Derek Tyler Attico, Kathleen David, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Kelli Fitzpatrick, and Scott Pearson.
Again, please, help me save a bit on hotel costs, and consider filling in at the table for an hour or two. Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
This weekend will be my third straight away from home. This time, I’m headed to Buffalo for NASFiC. And I’m still looking for a roommate on my hotel reservation, if someone out there needs a bed.
If you’re looking for me at the convention (other than when I’m asleep), I’ll be mostly at the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room (which is in the convention center; the rest of programming is in the hotel), which will be open Thursday 4–7pm; Friday 11am–6pm; Saturday 10am–5pm; and Sunday 10am–2pm.
I’m also on programming, heavily on Friday. Seek me out on the following panels:
Friday 10am: “Writing for Anthologies” in Grand Ballroom FG, with JF Garrard, Glenn Parris, and April Steenburgh.
Friday 11am: “The Folklore of Space” in Grand Ballroom ABC, with Gary Ehrlich, Herb Kauderer, and Geoffrey A. Landis.
Friday 1pm: “How Good Does the Science Have to Be?” in Regency BC, with Geoffrey A. Landis and three virtuals: David Dvorkin, Elizabeth Moon, and Martin L. Shoemaker.
Friday 3pm: not a panel, but a Kaffeeklatsch in Board Room.
Friday 10pm: “Improvisational Storytelling” in Grand Ballroom FG with B.A. Chepaitis, Bill Fawcett, Phil Getz, and Merav Hoffman.
Saturday 12n: “Truly Weird Aliens” with Jake Casella Brookins, Lawrence M. Schoen, Eli K.P. William, and Frank Wu.
Saturday 11pm “Eye of Argon Reading” in Regency A with Michael A. Ventrella (I’m not listed in the official program, but I’ll be there).
Hope to see many of you there! Also, I’ll be seeking out authentic Buffalo chicken wings, if you want to join me. Yummm!
Oh, and I also have a hotel reservation for Shore Leave next weekend, if someone is looking to share a room.
For those who haven’t heard: Donald Trump chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential running mate in this year’s election.
I’ve been listening to the talking heads as they keep coming back to Vance’s youth: his fortieth birthday will be August 2. I’m not talking about experience, but simply his age.
While the millennials they’ve interviewed are thrilled that one of their generation is on the ticket, the talking heads have several times compared his age to Theodore Roosevelt’s (who was 42 years 128 days old when he took office as vice president, but six months later, William McKinley was assassinated, and TR became the youngest-ever president). Interestingly—at least, to me—they’re not talking about Richard Nixon, who turned 40 two weeks before he was inaugurated as vice president in 1953 (he served two terms under Dwight Eisenhower, lost the presidential election of 1960 to John Kennedy, and then was elected president in 1968).
The record-holder in terms of being the youngest vice president is John C. Breckinridge, James Buchanan’s vice president. Breckinridge was 36 years 318 days old when he was inaugurated in 1857. He had served in the House of Representatives from 1851 to 1855, and after his vice presidency, served several months in the Senate, before siding with the Confederacy (the Senate branded him a traitor, and expelled him in December 1861). He later served as the CSA’s fifth and final Secretary of War, from February to May 1865.
[And yes, for those of you paying attention, I didn’t post for the fifth: it was all dealers’ room, no programming.]
It’s another science fiction convention weekend—the first of three in a row for me. This weekend, I’ll be in Quincy, Massachusetts, for Readercon. As always, seek me out in the dealers’ room at the Fantastic Books table, where we’ll be debuting two new books: In Memoriam by Fred Lerner, and Disturbing Stories by Ron Miller. They’re both great, in completely different ways.
I’ll also be on programming, a bit. You can find me at my kaffeeklatsch Friday at 4pm in Basalt, and on the panel “The Breakup of the United States in Speculative Fiction” on Sunday at 10am in Salon 4 with Randee Dawn, Tom Greene, James Morrow, and Sarena Straus. I’ll also be at the Meet the Pros(e) event Friday night in Salon 3.
Hope to see many of you there… or the following weekend in Buffalo, New York, or the weekend after that in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (details on those two after I get back from this one)
I’ve been mulling the current presidential election season. Specifically, I’ve been wondering if Joe Biden might have more easily opted to be a one-term president if he hadn’t had to announce his attentions so far in advance of the election. After all, if he’d said—in April 2023—that he wasn’t running for another term, he would have been a lame duck for 21 months, nearly half of his term.
So I’ve dug out the data from the primary era of presidential campaigns, to see if my assumption was correct. Here’s what I found.
Lyndon Johnson was in the race ten months before election day. On March 12, 1968, he won 49 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, barely beating Eugene McCarthy’s 42 percent. Four days later, Robert F. Kennedy got into the race. Johnson announced his withdrawal from the race March 31, 1968, 219 days before the election of 1968.
Richard Nixon authorized the formation of his re-election campaign committee on January 7, 1972, 305 days before the election of 1972. He won the election in one of the greatest landslides in presidential history.
Gerald Ford launched his presidential campaign July 8, 1975, one year and 117 days before the election of 1976. He lost a surprisingly close race to Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter launched his re-election bid on December 4, 1979, 336 days before the election of 1980. He lost handily to Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan announced his re-election campaign on January 29, 1984, 282 days before the election of 1984. His margin of victory was almost as large as Nixon’s.
George H.W. Bush announced his re-election campaign on February 12, 1992, 265 days before the election of 1992. He lost a three-way race to Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton announced his re-election campaign on April 14, 1995, one year and 202 days before the election of 1996. He won in another three-way race, becoming the only president to win two terms without ever garnering a majority of the popular vote.
George W. Bush announced his re-election campaign on May 16, 2003, one year and 171 days before the election of 2004. He won in a less contentious election than his first.
Barack Obama announced his re-election campaign on April 4, 2011, one year and 213 days before the election of 2012. He won in a closer election than his first.
Donald Trump announced his re-election campaign on January 20, 2017—the day he was inaugurated—three years and 288 days before the election of 2020. He lost the election.
Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign on April 25, 2023, one year and 191 days before the election of 2024.
Conclusion: it wasn’t Donald Trump or the 24-hour-a-day give-us-an-election-so-we-don’t-have-to-report-actual-news news cycle that caused Joe Biden to have to announce so early. Rather, it was Bill Clinton who started this absurd trend, and Biden is just doing what his predecessors did. (I’m leaving out Ford because he was a special circumstance in so many ways.)
Also, how long before the election a president starts running for re-election doesn’t seem to have an effect on the outcome of the election.
Ian Randal Strock 