cough. glare. repeat.

Everyone else is now up and better, back at school or back at work, which is my cue finally to collapse with the lurghi and go to bed for the day. Death: The High Cost of Living script is done, and I'm very happy with it. I started typing the second half of Anansi Boys yesterday, and found myself wishing for a word processing program that would do for novels what Final Draft's scene navigator function does for scripts -- essentially, take all the scenes and bits and put them on moveable cards, so you can get an overview.

I thought this story was fascinating. I wonder if it'll get to the point where the US media doesn't cover things happening in the rest of the world, from fear of seeing nipples or hearing bad words. (Given some classical Greek traditions, I can't help feeling that Olympic viewers got off easy.)

Farah Mendlesohn is one of the smart academics and good critics. She just let me know that This year's project is an extensive survey on science fiction for children and YA from 1950-2005. I've opened a blog (TheInter-Galactic Playground: http://farah-sf.blogspot.com/) to record some of what I'm reading, but much more important is thequestionnaire. I really want to be able to reference my arguments to reader response -- so much of kid lit criticism is hot air, and sf barely exists in the criticism.

If you felt inclined to steer your blog readers to the questionnaire site (Questionnaire at: http://sfquestions.blogspot.com/) I would be incredibly grateful. It would hugely increase the volume of response. Comics *do* count in this survey.

The bibliophiles among you will want to head over to the Clarion Benefit Auction at http://www.msu.edu/~clarion/auction/auctionpreview.html, where many wonderful books are listed, for a very good cause. Hill House have generously donated some of the limited editions (and some of the Incredibly Limited Editions that I've not even seen yet) that they've done of my stuff. [Note the bidding starts on Jan 28th.]