So...
On the Robert Sheckley front. What seems to have happened is:
Bob got extremely -- dangerously -- ill in the Ukraine.
The convention that brought him in checked him into a private hospital. (Bob apparently bought insurance in order to get his visa but could not find the card while his lungs were collapsing, nor has it surfaced since.)
This was a good thing, as he would have died otherwise. He needed to be put on a ventilator in order to breathe.
The convention managed to cover the first hospital bill, but they couldn't cover the second. (Nobody expected him to be that ill for that long or that expensively.)
A family friend, and Bob's daughter Anya, are out in Kiev.
Now he needs to be brought home and hospitalised in the US.
Berry Sizemore, who runs the Mike Moorcock website, has offered to help by setting up a PayPal account.
In Russia, Robert Sheckley is still one of the most-read and most-respected of American writers (proving that the Russians have excellent taste in SF writers), which means that this is turning into big news.
Once he gets home, the family is still going to have to raise money for his US hospitalisation.
There's information over at: http://www.multiverse.org/postp40822.html#40822
(and the paypal account at Robert Sheckley Relief Fund (Note, the content of this link has changed to Anya's account.)
...
Peter Sanderson has written about the MirrorMask book at
http://comics.ign.com/articles/617/617904p1.html -- it's a really interesting article. My only response to his occasional wonders of "or am I reading too much into it...?" is No, he's not.
...
I learned about this Guardian interview with Terry Gilliam over at The Dreaming. http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1485600,00.html
Sometimes when I tell people why the Terry Gilliam/Johnny Depp Good Omens rolled over and died (with $45m raised from the rest of the world, Terry went out to Hollywood to find out which studio was going to pay $15m for a $60m Terry Gilliam film, and found that none of them were) they look at me as if I'm making things up again. It's nice to see Terry explaining it.
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More reviews of Stardust the stage play...
This is from the Chicago Tribune.
And Bill Massolia (who adapted it) writes to tell me that the production of STARDUST in Chicago has been nominated for the Joseph Jefferson
Awards. That is Chicago's equivalent of New York's Tony Awards. The awards are
not given out for some time but I wanted to let you know.
...
Someone asked about "proud as punch" -- http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ple1.htm
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Kimberly Butler has put one of her wolfish photos of me from last year (although without the weird photoshopped eyes) up on her revamped website, but I'm not going to link to it directly because if I did you might not look at the Ray Bradbury photos she's got up, which are two of the most joyous photos I think I've ever seen. http://www.kimberlybutler.com/Portfolios/Celebrities/index_A3.html (I'm at the bottom right.)
And before I go, a small wonder about http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5755. Why would anyone transcribe the phrase "all absolutely cock-a-hoop" as "all absolutely @#%#*-a-hoop" I mean, it comes from the phrase to set cock on hoop, to drink festively. You'd need to be an extremely conservative voice to want to give the impression that George Galloway had suddenly been overcome with an attach of Tourette's while testifying...
Right. Maddy says she needs the computer. I'm back to copy-editing.