Monthly Archives: February 2010

Get yer Ben here

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Anyone within striking distance of Oxford on May 8 may like to know that The Write Fantastic is holding a 5th anniversary event at St Hilda’s College, of which yours truly will be a part.

My windows shiver as an ignorant nation bellows: “What is The Write Fantastic?” It is “an exciting initiative by professional authors aiming to introduce fantasy fiction to readers who have yet to experience the genre. Its mission is also to ensure existing readers know the full breadth and depth of current fantasy writing.” Said professional authors include such lovely people as Juliet McKenna and Chaz Brenchley and it’s all well worth it.

Anyway, I love mixing with people I first met on a panel of debut novelists at a convention over 10 years ago sharing our experiences about how we got our first novels published and who are now leading lights in their field with sales in a list of countries as long as your arm and not feeling remotely bitter about it (hi, Jules!).

And before that, on 6-7 March I’ll be in Exeter for the university SF society’s annual Microcon. Remembering the extremely steep hill you have to get up and down to arrive at or leave the campus, I expect to be marginally fitter on 8 March than I was three days earlier.

Lovely as it would be to see the same familiar faces at both these, I might start to worry that I’m being stalked if I do.

Coming soon: Tarot Trumps

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I wasn’t sure how to tackle this because I really don’t want to jump onto an Internet rumour hobbyhorse that later proves embarrassingly hoaxish. But my source is a level headed individual I know and I respect, and Snopes.com has nothing on it, so here goes:

It appears ToysRUs is stocking a toy ouija board. Said board is manufactured by Hasbro. It’s aimed at little girls, so it’s pink and frilly.

This is so far from a good idea that the light from a good idea will take several million years to reach it. And that’s just the pink and frilly. I also have deeper objections. The reliable source I was talking about is the proprietor of a witchcraft shop in Glastonbury (don’t ask) and they think it’s a really dumb idea too. [What they have to say about it.]

Another site even has a picture of the thing, looking disturbingly like something from the back of an Ann Summers shop (I mean, ahem, I would guess) but aimed at girls aged 8+. Clicking on that page’s product link to ToysRUs now gets a “not found” page, but search there for “oujia boards” and you do still get a glow-in-the-dark one, which is presumably for boys.

Boycott ToysRUs? Boycott Hasbro? Write to the Times, your vicar, your youth pastor? Pray hard? Write to Richard Dawkins? I don’t really know: I leave it up to you. There is a boycott Hasbro page, but having seen some of the comments there … Hmm. Even though I know the speaker is ultimately on the same side as me, the low-church Protestant in me does find sentiments like “St Joseph, slayer of demons protect us, St Michael, St Gabriel, St Raphael protect us, St Anthony protect us” to be not entirely different to the problem being discussed in the first place. But that may just be me.

Book disposal part 2

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This was my core science fiction collection as of 26 June 2006. Exercising ruthlessly stringent criteria I had whittled it down to these four simple shelves. Since then various of its components have come and gone but the quantity has remained the same.

Until last night, when it got whittled down by a further two shelves worth. We are inheriting a big kind of dresser-thingy which will take up most of one wall and comes up to the level of the second shelf: ergo, at least two shelves had to go. I was as ruthless as the first time round, with similar criteria honed after a further 3.5 years of life-changing events: am I really likely to read this again? And could anyone else benefit more from its ownership?

That second one was actually quite easy to answer, as Senior Godson has turned into quite the SF fan. About one shelf’s worth went to him, the rest to a jumble sale for Haiti. I like to think my selection criteria made sense. Not too light? Not too heavy? Too much sex and violence? Not enough? Is this a classic that a developing young mind should read? And so on. I gave him all the Asimovs but kept all the Clarkes: getting rid of those would be tearing out a piece of my soul.

But. Two shelves down, about 10 titles in from the right, red text on a yellow spine – that would be my copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics (and here’s how I came by it). Not really the kind of thing a godfather should give his godson, and not really the kind of thing I feel should be unleashed on the unwitting public via a jumble sale, even for a good cause. So I’ve hung on to it. Ironic that Senior Godson’s father works for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: now I begin to understand the dilemmas faced by other purveyors of toxic waste.