In case you hadn’t heard, Realms of Fantasy is going to cease publication in April 2009.  This sudden halt is largely due with the economy.  You may have also seen Fantasy and Science Fiction is going to be shifting to bi-monthly publication starting this spring.  One of the big difference between Realms and other genre fiction publications like F&SF is that Realms is a full format color magazine.  Not only did they include stories but also lots of art work.  There is an illustration to accompany each story which really helps get the reader in the state of mind for the story.  A grass roots effort has started to save Realms of Fantasy.  You can help by joining the Facebook or Live Journal group.  For now, the Realms of Fantasy forums are still open.

10. The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

9. Old Flames by Jack Ketchum

8. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

7. Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambough

6. Heartsick/Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain

5. Nixonland by Rick Pearlstein

4. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

3. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

2. The Garden of the Last Days by Andre Dubus III

1. In Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard

photo by dt0111

Are you inconvenienced when employees or co-workers call out sick? Want to try and put an end to it? Here is one thing you can do, see if there is any pattern to when your employees use sick time. I’m not talking about something as simple as a Monday morning or on Friday. If you have an employee who is obsessed with football and there is a Monday night game for his favorite team and you notice he called in sick on Tuesday, make a note. It happens a second time, give them a warning that if this happens again they will have to use a vacation day and will not be able to take sick time. Your employee will then tell all of his co-workers and overall sick time usage will decrease.  This works great for holidays, concerts, children’s extracurricular activities, etc. Once people have to start giving up vacation days, they will go ahead and schedule them in advance or get their lazy butts into work.  (Author’s note: I am currently out on medical leave from my job.)

A Case of Need

I just learned of Michael Crichton’s passing yesterday and am sad to see such a great writer gone.  Crichton wrote the first science fiction I read that wasn’t part of Star Wars or Star Trek.  The first book of his I read, and still my favorite, is A Case of Need. A medical mystery that deals with the topic of abortion.  This was the first real exposure I had to abortion and really shapped my views on the issue.  (Note: the pages in our high school Health text books covering aborotion were glued together and the topic was not covered with any depth; though we were shown a demonstration of how to properly put on condoms.)  The topic was so contrivercial when it was released in 1968 that Michael Crichton used the pen name Jeffery Hudson.  In 1969 it won the Edgar Award.  If you have only seen the movies of Jurassic Park and The Lost World I strongly encourage you to pick up the books. They are real page turners and light years better than either movie.  Rest in Peace Michael Crichton, you will be missed.

But like mathematics and women’s gymnastics, system building is a youngster’s game. Although the truly hardcore might stick with this hobby for decades, the typical geek burns out around their 30th birthday. All of a sudden, debugging overheating problems and scouring the internet for updated drivers becomes… less fun. You’ve reached the magical age where time begins to > money. Maybe it’s because you’re making more money, or maybe it’s because you feel the icy hand of death approaching. Either way, you sell out. You buy a Name Brand Computer, possibly a shiny silver one with a fruity logo. At first you feel guilty, dirty even. Then you get over it.

The end result is closets full of old, decaying systems, plus scads of individual components: Pentium II motherboards, PCI sound cards, and cables. Lots and lots of cables.

Thanks to Mighty Mur for the heads up.