It’s a Strange Horizons…

It's a Strange Horizons kind of morning. The new issue is up, with a story by Cecilia Tan (who bought *my* first story; it's such a pleasure being able to return the favor), a review of Anne Harris's Accidental Creatures (hopeful cyberpunk(!)), and a topology article. That last one is particularly fun for me -- it's by Bryan Clair, who I've mentioned in these pages before. He was one of the mathematicians at Chicago, friend of mine and Kevin's, and eventually married Elissa (who I roomed with at one point). He and I dated very very briefly. I'm not sure you can even call it dating -- but we did kiss. :-)

Anyway, he's written a really fun article, using puzzles and pictures to introduce people to some basic topology. I've always liked that kind of thing -- I actually scored higher on the analytical part of the GRE (which is basically this sort of stuff) than on the verbal. Is that weird or what? I sometimes wonder if I would have stayed with math, if I'd gotten some decent math training early. Wouldn't that be strange? Mary Anne the Mathematician. Hah! I did enjoy his article, though, and now I know what a manifold is. At least kinda sorta. :-) I suspect this is the kind of thing that Kevin was doing in 8th grade. (Kev's also a topologist; not sure if I ever mentioned. It always seemed the funnest part of math to me.)

Our regular newsletter editor is out with some personal business, so I took over for this week. I did it this morning, and was suddenly overwhelmed with this wave of nostalgia for the early days of CS, when I *was* the Articles and Reviews departments, wrote weekly editorials, *and* sent out the newsletter every week. Things have changed, and for the better. But it was kind of fun doing most of a magazine by myself every week. In a weird stay-up-all-night-swearing-at-the-HTML-code sort of way. Did I mention that I did all the coding? (Well, Kirstin X designed it, but I put it up every week. It was amazing how many errors would creep in that had to fixed. Will's got it all automated at Strange Horizons, and I suspect it goes much more smoothly for him. I hope so, anyway.)

Anyways, I have contracts to write and checks to send out. I may check back in later; it's a day for finishing off lots of little tasks, including a bunch of errands on campus, so I'm not sure how long everything will take. I'm also going to try to do another big chunk of the history book I'm reading; I'm meeting with the professor supervising me on Thursday morning, and it would be very satisfying to walk in having already read and finished taking notes on the first book. I get so ambitious at the beginning of the semester, and so much more...expedient...later on. :-)

Did I mention that I love grad school? I *love* grad school. If there weren't so much that I wanted to get done, I think I could happily be a perpetual grad student. Hey, Tim Pratt? You reading this? Go for it. Choose your program very very carefully, and be sure it's someplace you can be happy -- but then go for it. Grad school rocks.