[Flight delayed by 2.5 hours. Lost the first version of this blog post by accident. Fortunately, everything up until now was much better.]

The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) was a great time. I met a lot of cool people, caught up with good friends and got interviewed for the Skiffy and Fanty podcast. Coincidentally, I’d mentioned on that podcast that I get tongue-tied when I have to speak to strangers (as opposed to friends or family) in Mandarin. Right before I started blog post version 2, a woman came up to me asking me if speak Mandarin (in Mandarin, of course). We had a short conversation where I could tell her not to worry she wasn’t missing her flight to Boston. The flight boarding right now at the gate was headed to NYC. Communication achieved! (Given that I do some translation from Chinese to English, you’d think I’d have less anxiety about this…)

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Time Traveler’s Almanac, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, is this mammoth anthology of time travel stories by some of spec fic’s best authors (and me!). I’ve read about a third of it so far and it really is one amazing story after another. SF Signal listed the stories in the anthology back before the UK release.

[Note: Strictly speaking, that’s not the table of contents because the anthology is not ordered by author’s last name. Ann and Jeff have organized the stories into four categories: Experiments, Reactionaries and Revolutionaries, Mazes and Traps, and Communiques. A piece of non-fiction heads each section. The non-fiction is pretty awesome too.]

What strikes me so far is the sheer variety. I think there is an archetypal story we all have in mind whenever anyone says, “time travel.” Predestination! Paradox! Puffy sleeves! What this anthology shows is that there are at least as...

The choir I sing with is celebrating its 40th anniversary season. Our official anniversary concert was last night. It made homages to the past with a movement of Robert Kyr’s The Passion According to Four Evangelists and a movement of Julian Wachner’s Come My Dark-Eyed One. Both of those were originally commissioned by the choir. (I actually sang in the premiere of the latter!) The music director who conducted the premiere of the Kyr returned to conduct it again last night. (Some of the choir, of course, have worked with Beverly Taylor before. I hadn’t until this concert. She’s great conductor. Impeccable taste and extremely clear with her gestures. I knew exactly what she wanted at all times.)

Our music director bookended the concert with Bach double motets. We started with Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf and ended with Singet den Herrn ein neues Lied. We’ve sung a lot of Bach...

This year, over the course of the con, three people asked whether there was a convention going on, including one startlingly handsome business man instigating a conversation with me in the elevator. (I only needed to go to the fifth floor so it was a very short conversation.) I’m not sure whether this shows that Boskone can be a rather subtle con–few con goers are costumed, for example–or that Boskone can be a rather small con. Compared to Arisia, because the two cons use the same hotel, the hotel lobby is downright empty. Maybe it’s both subtle and small. Those qualities have its strengths and weaknesses.

That said, I’ve seen more people in costume this year than previous years. Also, I’m seeing a wider range in the age of con-goers. Both of those are good things, IMHO.

The panel on gender roles in Doctor Who was amazing. For me, it was easily the best panel I attended of the con...

I’m not sure that Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation is exactly the sort of thing one reads to pass the time on the bus but it worked for me. Coincidentally, it was also almost exactly the length of my bus trip down. (My bus trip back turned into a train trip when it became clear that there would be no bus home. Of course, I was asleep for much of that, but I digress…)

Jeff explores both the territory of Area X (a strange land encroaching into ours) and the territory of a wife’s relationship to her husband with rich, evocative prose. The writing is gripping and immersive and I read it under really awful conditions for something this detailed and subtle. (One would expect a swaying bus crammed full, some guy right behind me who apparently doesn’t believe in headphones and an engine that droned for four hours to knock me out of Area X but they never did.) Because Jeff is awesome, you expect...

“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” is on the 2013 Locus Recommended Reading List! I’m also thrilled to see on the Locus list some stories that I put on my recommended list for 2013. Since the blog link on my website now points here rather than to my Dreamwidth account, I’m going to repost my list here:

[Again, I will point out that this is, by necessity, an incomplete list. I haven’t read everything and I didn’t always remember to jot down which stories I loved. The list is in no particular order and whether I commented on the story reflects more on how much free time I had than on the quality of the story.

Also, either I’m doing something wrong or something is odd with Svbtle’s CSS files or both. When I previewed this post, the links in lists did not highlight when the pointer hovered over them. They are, however, underlined like the other links in this post.]

Short Stories

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[Testing out new blogging platforms and letting people know what I’m doing at Boskone. It’s like a shampoo and conditioner all in one!]

Bring Back My Favorite TV Show!
Friday 17:00 - 17:50

From recently cancelled shows to long-gone favorites, which SF/F/H television programs deserve a second try at tubal triumph?

Priscilla Olson (M), John Chu, Seanan McGuire, Mur Lafferty, Stephen P. Kelner

The Fantasy and Science Fiction of John M. Ford
Friday 21:00 - 21:50

He wrote a prize-winning alternate history fantasy named The Dragon Waiting that doesn’t have a dragon in it, a Star Trek book that’s kind of a musical comedy, an SF juvenile about teens playing games on a train (on the Moon), and a Christmas card that won a World Fantasy Award. Neil Gaiman called him a “writers’ writer.” Certainly John M. “Mike” Ford (1957-2006) delighted in defying expectations. But let’s try to give you some...