This past weekend was Boston Mensa’s regional gathering, known as Wicked Good. As always, a good time with people I know and people I met. This time, I was also an invited speaker on the program. I presented “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: Calling Them Exceptional is Understatement” to a very full room (every seat was full, and there were people sitting on the floor). Considering that there were several other program items at the same time, and I was contending with the water park in the hotel which hosted the gathering, getting one-quarter of the attendees to come listen to me was a very gratifying turnout. (And as a reminder: I’m available to speak to your group, too.)

Sunday evening, after leaving the hotel, I visited a friend in Brookline who showed me my latest book, Ranking the Vice Presidents, which he’d borrowed from the library (photo attached). My own library here in Brooklyn has it available only as an ebook, so it was a neat surprise to see my physical book in library livery!

Here’s a new one to me: I just heard from my publisher that someone has requested access to my Amazon author page with the e-mail address irs@panix.com. What’s strange is that I used to own that account. I gave it up a bunch of years ago. Now, it seems, someone else has access to it, and is trying to use it. If you hear from that address, please know that it is not me using it.

On our way out to friends’ home on Long Island Wednesday, we made a quick stop at Sagamore Hill—Theodore Roosevelt’s home—which I’d never visited before. Unlike the Grover Cleveland museum in New Jersey (which is very informative, but very small), Sagamore Hill is a very large site/museum, and will require another trip to actually see it all. But a quick impression: gorgeous house in a wonderful setting, and the museum in TR Jr’s house (out behind the main house) is well laid out. We didn’t actually get a chance to get into the main house: tickets are required for guided tours, and we just didn’t have the time.

However, a quick stop in the gift shop presented me with a very pleasant surprise: The Presidential Book of Lists on the shelf, eagerly awaiting new homes (there were several copies there). I was excited when it first came out and I saw it for the first time on the shelves of a bookstore. Now I realize I’m still excited to find it on the shelves, especially at a Presidential home, where it really ought to be. Hurray!

#sagamorehill #theodoreroosevelt #tpbol

The fall convention season ramps up tomorrow, as I head to Gaithersburg, Maryland, for Capclave, which is always a nice convention. A little smaller than some, with a stronger focus on short fiction (my forte), it’s always a good time. And if  you’re looking for me, as usual, I’ll be tethered to the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room for most of the weekend. I’ll also be on four panels and another special program item:

• Friday at 9pm in the Bethesda room: “Small Press: Is It Still a Golden Age?” with Lezli Robyn, Hildy Silverman, Sean Wallace, and Steven H. Wilson.
• Friday at 10pm in the Bethesda room: “Where’s My Flying Car?” with Neil Clarke, Andrew Fox, and Christopher Weuve.
• Saturday at 12n in Salon A: “Putting Real Science in Science Fiction” with Michael Capobianco, Alan Smale, and Bud Sparhawk.
• Saturday at 4pm in the Rockville/Potomac room: “Politics in Science Fiction & Fantasy” with Anthony Dobranski, Larry Hodges, Karen Wester Newton, and David Walton.
• Saturday at 10pm in Suite 1209: “Eye of Argon Reading/Performance/Presentation” with Walter H. Hunt, Hildy Silverman, and Michael A. Ventrella, along with a special surprise cast. If you haven’t attended one of these performances before, you don’t know what you’re missing. And if you have, well, you know you want to come back.

I’ll also be at the WSFA Small Press Award ceremony Saturday at 9pm, rooting on Tanith Lee’s “Burn Her” (which I published in her collection Dancing Through the Fire).

Hope to see some of you there!

#capclave #tanithlee #fantasticbooks

A very nice (and lengthy) review of the anthology with my story in it at this link. Of my story “Shall Not Perish from the Earth,” the reviewer says “riveting” and “emotionally provocative.” Guess that means he likes it.

Tonight, ABC Television is debuting a new series called Designated Survivor, apparently about what happens when the President, Vice President, most of the Cabinet, and Congress die during a State of the Union address, and how the one Cabinet member who stayed home as the “designated survivor” becomes the President. I’ll be watching, because I’m fascinated by the White House and the Presidency, although I wonder what they can do to differentiate it from The West Wing beyond the first few episodes, if they’re planning to make it an open-ended series.

Tom Clancy explored a similar scenario in his Jack Ryan series (the book Executive Orders, published in 1996), and Irving Wallace looked into it from a racial point of view in The Man (published in 1964).

The Presidential order of succession—beyond the Vice President—has been frequently discussed, and several laws have been adopted, switching around the order over the decades, although none of them have ever had to be put into use. Nevertheless, it is an interesting topic for fiction to explore. And if you’re looking for more on the factual side (what is the designated survivor, how did it come to be, and who has been that person who was one terrorist attack from the Oval Office?), check out chapters 72-77 in my newest book Ranking the Vice Presidents (specifically, chapter 77 is titled “Designated Survivor”).

#designatedsurvivor

In November 2014, Tanith Lee wrote this dedication for her collection Dancing Through the Fire (which Fantastic Books published in September 2015): “To Philae—and her Mother-Ship, Rosetta—Who danced through the fire, the ice, the dust and the shadow, to bring about the first landing… On a Comet.”

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day has something to say about that.

I neglected to mention that I was going to speak in Albany. Of course, from the time I found out I was on the schedule, I didn’t have enough time to put the presentation together, let alone talk about it here. The acceptance of my offer got trapped in a junk mail folder which I stumbled across last Thursday night, as I was logging off to get some sleep. Instead, I wound up staying up another four hours, putting together most of a PowerPoint presentation to back up my speaking (finalized the slides on the road). And on Sunday morning, I was awake and alert and talking about “Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton: Calling Them Exceptional Is Understatement” at the Mensa Regional Gathering in Albany, New York. The meat of the talk was the fact that President Obama’s election forced me to change only one of the ranked lists on my book The Presidential Book of Lists, but regardless of who wins this year’s election, a lot of the book will have to be changed. In other words, President Obama looks an awful lot like all his predecessors, but neither Hillary Clinton nor  Donald Trump looks terribly Presidential in terms of shared characteristics with the 43 people who’ve held the office.

The talk went well, every seat was filled, and nobody left early. And, being a Mensan audience, they pointed out several typos in the slides (which I’ve since corrected). So I’m available to speak to your group, if you’re looking for an entertaining speaker talking about something different during this year’s Presidential election cycle.