Sample Comic-Con Travel Itinerary

All Times Local

7/23, 2pm: Say bye to wife and kids at Portland, Maine, airport.
7/23, 3:30pm: Learn that flight from Portland will miss connection in Philadelphia. Ask about options. Discover that the only way to get to San Diego is to drive to Boston and take flight connecting through Las Vegas. Receive assurances from US Airways personnel that Logan Airport is free of delays.
7/23, 4:30pm: Leave Portland.
7/23, 6:30pm: Arrive Logan Airport. Discover that flight from Boston to Las Vegas, scheduled for 7:45 departure, is now departing 9:15.
7/23, 9:15pm: Take off from Logan. Nap in between bouts of annoyance at possibility that connection in Las Vegas will be missed. Receive assurances from US Airways personnel that connection in Las Vegas will no way, no how be missed.
7/23, 11:40pm: On final approach to Las Vegas, experience a Murphy's Law moment as a passenger flips out on the plane. Note with interest that flight attendants really do ask at moments such as these whether there are doctors on the plane.
7/23, 11:59pm: Sit on plane as EMTs treat passenger for unspecified illness. Miss connecting flight to Las Vegas as a result of treatment.
7/24, 1:30am: Speak to US Airways personnel. Learn that there are no more flights to San Diego, and that all flights to San Diego the next day are full. Briefly indulge antisocial fantasies.
7/24, 2:00am: Rent car, hit I-15. Drive across the desert in the middle of the night.
7/24, 4:00am: Pass through Barstow. Develop strong opinion that everyone should drive through Barstow at 4am at least once.
7/24, 5:30am: See light in the sky over the San Bernardino Mountains as traffic begins to thicken through Orange County. Note that 85mph doesn't seem as fast when everyone else is doing it, too.
7/24, 6:30am: Drop car at San Diego airport. Take cab to hotel. Inform mom and wife of night's activities. Experience puzzlement when they do not understand or endorse choices made ca. 2:00am. Look around. It's morning in San Diego.

A New Web Site

Is in the works. It is

alexanderirvine.net

Currently there is a placeholder there, but great things are in the works. Update links etc. accordingly, and thanks to t. for the design.

Buyout

My next novel, Buyout, the last sentences of which I am drafting more or less now, is already listed on Amazon even though it doesn't come out until March. Preorder it now, and then when you've forgotten all about it, the book will show up and pleasantly surprise you.

The book is a near-future noir with murders, skullduggery, and some thoughts about what an information society and an overtaxed ecosystem mean for the value (monetary and otherwise) of human life. I'm still formulating the perfect one-sentence encapsulation.

Edit: here's the cover!

If You Happen to Be in Bangor on Friday...

...make sure you check out River City Cinema's Perils of Peroxide festival.



First up, tomorrow night, is The Scarlet Empress. Oh, Marlene.

RIP Tom Disch and Tiger Stadium

Of all the obituaries coming out in the wake of Tom Disch's suicide, the New York Times version seems the most interesting, with a laudatory and evenhanded assessment of Disch's achievements in all of the various genres he tackled. It's not often you see an obit with quotes from David Pringle and Dana Gioia. When I was in grad school, a professor of mine suggested that we're more comfortable with heroes and geniuses when they're dead and we can offer our praise without worrying about what the subject of our adoration might have to say about it. Disch seems to be one more sad instance of that comfort. He was a writer's writer, that's for sure. I remember the way 334 and On Wings of Song blew me away when I was a teenager.

Another death to report, of no literary merit but deep personal relevance, is the passing of Tiger Stadium.



Actually, I guess there's a little literary relevance too, since I can't be the only person who has set scenes (in "Agent Provocateur" and The Narrows) in the old ballpark.

What Indiana Jones Should Have Been Searching For

Lost footage of Metropolis? Holy smokes.