Here I Go A-Gathering Links...

My friend Lou Anders has had a short story published in Boys Life. I used to steal my brother's Boys Life magazines and read all the fiction and cartoons before he even got a chance to glance at them. I still want to read the entire comic adaptation of the Tripods trilogy... I never saw the whole thing.

Ancient footprints are already pretty cool artifacts, but now they are even cooler since professional trackers have been brought in to make sense of them. I love this type of history story... looking at a problem from a different, yet totally obvious, direction.

How about a tale of a very long-running experiment? I've heard of some experiments that have been going for many years, but this is a bit of a surprise. Seeds in bottles, buried in an effort to see how long the seeds would last.

So, Free Comic Book Day is coming. Here's some sneak peeks of Doctor Who comics. I need to figure out what comics we already ordered from DCBS so I know which ones to get when Eric and I go to the store next week.

I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading a book the other night/morning. I haven't done that for ages because I've been too responsible to risk being dead at work, for all the good it did me. But I really enjoyed the book and will be writing about it soon, probably not for tomorrow's reviews, but maybe next Sunday. It was Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon, and I strongly recommend it for any young woman, ages 8-18, who isn't very princess-y or girly and likes snakes and slugs and dirt and work. It's very good.

David Gerrold has a post about Hugo asterisks. I just want to say, the asterisks were there the instant the puppies gamed the Hugos. Putting them into physical form didn't make it any worse, since the damage was already done. On the contrary, the asterisks let some of us have a physical memento of their first time voting in the Hugos (me!) and raised money for a worthy cause. The people who were hurt by the asterisks deserved to be hurt because they are the ones who put the asterisk there in the first place by gaming the Hugo nominations. The fact that they still don't get it only proves the point. And it still amazes me that they are stupid enough to think that people gamed the Hugos before they did. The utter willful ignorance of the puppies is astounding.

Below the fold, depressing stories...