Sequencing a Science Fiction Writer

restless_nomad — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 13:40:25 -0800

Campbell-award winning science fiction writer Jay Lake has cancer. His prognosis at this point is not good, but there is a distant hope - cancer genome sequencing. This is an expensive process, so the science fiction community got together and held a fundraiser, volunteering "Acts of Whimsy" as rewards for various monetary goals. The results were whimsical indeed. The rewards were many and varied. Among the more amusing: - Embarrassing juvenilia from Tobias Buckell, Jim C. Hines (recently on Metafilter,) and Patrick Rothfuss - A variety of performance art, embarrassing to greater and lesser degrees: Mary Robinette Kowal reading the first lines of beloved classics in the style of phone sex, Paul Cornell singing, or perhaps "singing," Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights," Mefi's Own John Scalzi performing a lost Bob Dylan song, and Seanan McGuire's Veronica Mars-fanfic Shakespearean play, "The Tragedy of Lillian Kane," performed as a radio play with an all-Squeecast cast. (MP3 download at Dropbox) - Various less-categorizable whimsical acts: Stephen Gould agreed to run for SFWA president, noted Kilingon expert Lawrence K. Schoen delivers five pickup lines in the original Klingon, steampunk author Cherie Priest attempts to wedge her unenthusiastic pets into alternate-period finery. The fundraiser hit 50% of its goal in about an hour, and, once PayPal was cajoled into unfreezing Lake's account, ultimately reached 243%. Jay was, and is, most grateful.

The Nashville Portraits

netbros — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:26:09 -0800

Born and raised in New Jersey, Jim McGuire was an unlikely country music-lover, but one song changed all that. McGuire was twelve years old on the day he heard Hank Snow’s “Spanish Fireball” for the first time, and he instantly fell in love with country music forever. Music has since been a huge part of McGuire’s life—a muse for his photography—The Nashville Portraits. Then, in 1971, McGuire caught a performance in Greenwich Village by John Hartford and the Aereo-Plain Band—consisting of Hartford, Vassar Clements, Tut Taylor, and Norman Blake. With the help of friend and record producer David Bromberg, he was able to get them all back to his Gramercy Park studio for some late night, impromptu portraits. The portraits of Hartford, Tut and Vassar shot that night, were the beginning of what evolved into the Nashville Portraits. [via]

MetaFilter posts tagged with mcguire

Sequencing a Science Fiction Writer

The Nashville Portraits