Today is J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday: he was born January 3, 1892. In honor of that occasion, here’s the section entitled “In His Own Words” from the biography of Tolkien I wrote for Enslow Publishers, J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Imaginary Worlds. These quotes are drawn from on an interview with Tolkien conducted by Daphne Castell and …
Let’s step into the wayback machine, and set it for the turn of the century… In that long-ago time, ebooks were in their infancy. There were dedicated ebook-reading devices, but practically nobody had them. (Although I did: a Hiebook. Read a lot of David Weber on it through Baen’s free ebook library.) There were ebook …
(A slightly updated version of a New Year’s perennial of mine…) It’s almost 2013, which means it’s time to take down your old Harry Potter calendar and put up your new one (if you’re my 11-year-old daughter). Okay, so maybe you have a Teddy Bears calendar instead, or a Glee calendar. The point is, for …
As promised, some of the interesting (and, to modern eyes, occasionally odd/bewildering) ads from the 1930 (my best guess) Child’s Own Annual. What strikes me most is that, though the annual was clearly intended to be read by children, the ads are very clearly intended only for grown-ups: there’s very little here that’s going to …
So Gerry Anderson has died. I don’t know that I could say I was a huge fan of his shows—well, I liked UFO a lot, but the Supermarionation things, though I watched quite a few of them, weren’t just in the “uncanny valley” for me, they’d pretty much fallen into the “uncanny canyon” and were …
Two things for you on Boxing Day. First, for no particular reason, my daughter Alice sings the Star Wars theme: And second, as promised, the answer to the Christmas Day rebus. Happy Boxing Day! Wee Fish Ewe …
Yes, that’s me, as an elf, a role I played with…um…gusto at the Golden Apple Theatre’s Christmas cabaret Christmas Crackers on December 23. On the wall that evening were photos similar to the ones below: my wish for you this holiday season. (And if you really can’t figure them out, I’ll post the answer on …
There’s a great song called “Christmas Cliches” in which the singer expresses a love of all the Christmas things that come ’round year after year, from plywood reindeer on the roof to Johnny Mathis on the radio. One of the reasons we love Christmas (those of us who do, and you can certainly count me …
A project I’ve had in the back of my mind for years is a book called Things I Found in My Mother-in-Law’s House, built around the many interesting mid-century knick-knacks, oddments, thingamobs and whatchamallits in this house where my wife’s family has lived since 1939 and which is now my home. I did do a …
A picture-perfect Saskatchewan winter day, and a song! (In lieu of a longer blog post, because too much pre-Christmas running around for that.) Enjoy! Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
I think I’ve mentioned—though no more than a gazillion times or so, so you might have missed it—that my next book to be published by DAW will be Masks, first book in a trilogy (and hopefully series) that will continue with Shadows and Faces. Earlier today I spent a couple of hours on the phone …
Long-time readers of my column will be aware of how closely I like to keep tabs on aerotarandusdynamics, the shamefully under-studied science of flying reindeer. I am pleased to note that there has been a small but significant development in aerotarandusdynamics research this year, but before I get to that, perhaps I should recap some …
