The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

So, since December, after a crippled crawl leading to a months hiatus in terms of reading, reviewing, photographing and pretty much all other Gnome Press related activities, I’m back.  This should be good news to my parents, wife (all of whom really have no interest in this anyway), the occasional accidental surfer and possibly a certain Frenchman.

What’s been happening??

Well, I finally got a MacBook for one.  Beautiful piece of technology it is too.  After about 20 years of being frustrated by Windoze nonsense I feel free.  I was an avid gamer, and I think that was the only thing that really kept me willing to endure crashes, endemic malware, device shenanigans and all manner of other nonsense that I had to put up with.  Of course it was an absolute joy to play games like Doom, Quake, Halflife, Counterstrike, Call of Duty, Far Cry and Crysis (you can see what kind gamer I was..) the way they were meant to be, but after an enforced year+ of having to struggle with my wife’s 7-year-old laptop when I wasn’t snatching moments on her PC to process my images (my other hobby is photography – you can check me out on Flickr here), I’ve lost much of the interest I had.  It’s also nice not to be concerned with all the constant upgrading that goes along with staying on the cutting edge of gaming.  Relief.

Of course, Apple stuff is more expensive than PC stuff, but the way I see it now, with that extra investment I’ve bought out of the problems and into stuff that just works.  And it does.  Beautifully.

Getting off that horse, in other news, this blog has been referenced on The Way the Future Blogs. Now that ain’t just any blog, it’s the blog of the great Frederik Pohl, who also happens to be a Gnome Press published author.  If you are any kind of science fiction fan, you certainly don’t need me to tell you about him, if not, go and check him out.  The reference is part of his excellent series of posts on Isaac Asimov.  Well worth reading: part I, part II, part III, part IV and this blog is referenced in the form of a link in part V.  What’s so cool about this, is that my humble efforts here have received recognition (from such an eminent personage like Mr Pohl..) as (perhaps) the Internet source for Gnome Press.  It’s very humbling and gratifying.  I don’t do this for gratification of course, I do it because I love it.  But still…  More installments in the Isaac Asimov series would appear to be forthcoming, I’ll post links if/when they do.

I’ve put my library up on LibraryThing.  This post in James’ Auxiliary Memory prompted me to look into it.  I’ll post a little more about that at a later date.

Speaking of Flickr, I’m the president/leader/public sock puppet of the Seoul Photo Club.  As part of that position, I write a sometime-weekly photography column for Korea’s biggest English language newspaper, The Korea Herald and have been interviewed in various media in the past (I wish these people would ask me about Gnome Press..).  My latest interview was at radio station TBS eFM.  I include it here for easy access by my family back in New Zealand.  And as an ego boost.

I just discovered that I can’t upload audio to WordPress without purchasing an upgrade.  That’s too bad.  I uploaded it to Youtube (in two parts as it’s just a little long..) so as to stream it from there.  The workaround is a bit clunky, but needs must.  I added the Club’s logo to make it look at least a little more interesting.

What have I got planned??  Several things are still outstanding.  This is my todo list in no particular order:

Finish reading Judgment Night
Review Typewriter in the Sky & Fear
Do a Close Up of SF’57
Get an email interview underway with David Kyle
Re-read and Review Renaissance
Exercise more
Lose weight

That’ll do for now… and it’s nice to be back.