lightning

Gimbling in the Wabe – No Parking on Thursday

The signs are up in the street in front of my house: No Parking on Thursday – Tree Work from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm. The guy who was putting the signs up yesterday morning didn’t seem to have a care in the world: “At least you won’t have to […]

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Tor Books First Edition: 3/19/13 ISBN 978-0-7653-3227-1 Take 19 established and talented writers. Give them the chance to craft stories full of fantasy, magic, gaslight, alternate history and/or visceral horror. Mix in a Victorian-era mindset and a nod […]

Birthdays

On this day, May 14, in 1965, writer Eoin Colfer was born in Wexford, Leinster, Ireland. This former primary school teacher is best known for his young adult fantasy books (eight so far, with 10 spin-off and companion novels) based on the character Artemis Fowl, a young criminal mastermind. (He himself calls the original Artemis Fowl book, “Die Hard with fairies.”) In 2008 he was picked by Douglas Adams’ widow to write a sixth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, an honor that he wrote was “a gift from the gods”; And Another Thing… was published in 2009. He served as Laureate na nÓg (Ireland’s Children’s Laureate) between 2014 and 2016. Still living and writing in Wexford, Ireland, today he turns 56.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.