Matthew Wayne Selznick

I left work in Santa Monica this evening at about a quarter of seven. Traffic was thin — a mixed blessing of the many fires all over Southern California throwing off people’s commutes.

And then I reached the transition of the 210 to the 15 freeways. Things ground to a halt due to a small shoulder brush fire and the nine fire trucks that had mustered to stamp it out — no one’s taking any chances. I sat there for about forty five minutes, then the fire was out and things got moving again. This was about eight or so.

Then everything stopped. The 15 freeway was closed, north and south, from Sierra (near Fontana) to Oak Hills (at the top of the Cajon Pass.) I live just over the Cajon pass, on the far side of the closure, some forty miles beyond where I sat in dead traffic.

Couldn’t get off the freeway until Sierra, where I hoped for a detour that would get me home. By the time I got off the freeway, it was eleven o’clock. No easy detour to be found. I turned around and headed back south on the 15, defeated. I’d find a hotel and try again tomorrow morning.

My wife suggested I try the hotels around the Ontario airport. I know the area, it’s where the New Media Expo was just held. First I tried the Residence Inn, where I had stayed less than a month before. No vacancy. Then the Marriott. No vacancy.

I tried eight hotels around the Ontario Convention Center. No good — everyone else who couldn’t make it up the hill had beat me to a room. Finally, I found the Nite Inn, where they had just had a cancellation, and here I am.

It’s one fifty in the morning and I’m about ready to finally sleep, seven hours after I left work. I felt like sharing, though. Frankly, I’m lonely and displaced and a bit troubled. I hope to be able to get home tomorrow morning. I strongly doubt I’ll be driving to Santa Monica tomorrow… especially if the damn road is still closed and I have to detour through Riverside or Big Bear or something insane and hours and hours long.

The fires, distant though they are, and the wind, pervasive and brutal, make me feel closed in and corralled. I’m going to need to see the ocean soon, I think.

Time for hotel bed sleep. I predict a headache.

I haven’t been to the local library lately, but I needed to get out of the house and around people and I needed to write, so I visited today. Before I did anything, I checked out their little library bookstore, where hardcovers are a buck, paperbacks fifty cents, and magazines are a dime.

I checked out the new arrivals cart first, and promptly discovered a 1975 book club hardcover edition of L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt’s “The Compleat Enchanter,” and a 1988 hardcover book club edition of Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing’s “The Fifth Child.”

Then. Then… I turned around, and saw a bunch of old issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and one Analog.) I looked closer, and the dates started hitting me: August 1969… February 1975… June 1966…!

There were fourteen. I grabbed ‘em all. I got that chest-swelling, eight-year-old, Christmas morning feeling. I think I bounced up and down, a little. I might have said, “Hee..!!” very quietly (because I was in the library, where you’re still supposed to be quiet, y’know.)

I took the mags and the two books to the counter. I fully expected to be charged more for the magazines… I mean, they’re classics! Antiques! I would have paid more.

I paid $3.40 for everything. There wasn’t even tax.

I took ‘em out to my car, where I did, absolutely, let out as full-throated a “Squeeeee!!!!!!” as one can when exclaiming “Squeeeeee!!!!!”

Let’s look them over, shall we? I took this with my phone, so it’s not the best:

The oldest issue is June of 1966 and features “This Moment of the Storm” by Roger Zelazny, “The Pilgrims” by Jack Vance. It is stunning to me to hold an issue of a magazine that is 13 months older than I am.

The newest issue in an Analog from June of 1977 (”Star Wars” had just hit theaters and I was about to turn ten) — a “Special Women’s Issue” featuring “Eyes of Amber” by Joan D. Vinge, “Salamander” by Leigh Kennedy, and, though he is not a woman, part three of a serial, “After the Festival” by George R.R. Martin.

Between those two issues… oh, just check out some of this magic:

From April, 1970: The first publication of Fritz Leiber’s “Ill Met In Lankhmar.”

From October of 1970: the “All-Star 21st Anniversary Issue” — The second of Larry Niven’s Svetz stories, “A Bird In The Hand.” Very special to me, as I read it when I was probably nine or ten as part of a collection of Institute For Temporal Research stories called “The Flight of the Horse.”

From June of 1973: A Cthulhu Mythos story from Brian Lumley, “Haggopian,” and a poem from Ray Bradbury, “Old Ahab’s Friend.”

From February of 1975: John Varley’s “Retrograde Summer” and David Drake’s “Something Had To Be Done.”

From December 1975: Another of Lumley’s Lovecraftian tales, “Born of the Winds,” and Pamela Sargeant’s “Exile.”

From January 1976: “Friday the Thirteenth” by Isaac Asimov.

And something striking… so many stories by authors I’ve never heard of, who were only represented once, or twice, in those fourteen magazines. Where are they now? Did they continue to write? To publish?

If they didn’t — if that one appearance in a magazine thirty years or more in the past was their one shot — I feel privileged to be able to enjoy their work, still. I read it, they live on.

Many of these magazines still have the subscription label on the back cover. It’s an address here in Hesperia. Richard M. K******. My impulse is to write to him… but I fear he may be dead, and that’s how his treasures ended up for sale for a dime apiece at the local library. Would his relatives appreciate knowing how much these magazines mean to me? I’m not sure. I’m thinking of writing. I feel so much gratitude that these gems ended up in my hands, you know?

I’m going to enjoy reading these. Very much. What a lucky, happy thing.

MWS Media presents two new podcast episodes featuring Matthew Wayne Selznick:

Writers Talking episode eighteen is the season one finale and features Mark Leslie and Matt Wallace on writing horror. Listen to it right now, or subscribe via RSS.

A new episode of Sonitotum is also available — Episode ten celebrates Matt’s first three years as a podcaster, and discusses his reasons for declaring a hiatus from podcast creation. Listen to it now, or subscribe via RSS.

My third anniversary as a podcaster was on October 15 — five days ago. This episode of Sonitotum recognizes that… and I talk about why I’m not going to podcast again until the podcast novel Pilgrimage is released in 2008.

This is one of those episodes of Sonitotum where I lay on the couch and try to figure out what’s in my head. I get a little squishy.

At the end, there’s a promo for Phil Rossi’s Crescent End Celebration. Listen to Crescent, and join Phil on November 10, 2007.

The next Sonitotum will be in 2008 — happy new year!

 

 Sonitotum Episode Ten - Three Years [30:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (216)

Whew.

I’m back in the coffeehouse where I write in the morning before going to work. It’s in a town right next to Ontario, California, where the Podcast and New Media Expo was held. Ontario might be down the road, but the PNME, the Residence Inn, the Doubletree, the Marriott, Spires, Marie Callendar’s, and Stater Brothers seemed like they were five hundred miles from everything I know.

I’m experiencing some kind of rifting. I did not want the weekend to end. Every time I’m with my Tribe, particular members of my Tribe, the impact of separation is proportional to the depth of the connection made. My chest hurts, but there’s a soft edge of warmth on the cracks.

Ow.

Listening to Ryan Adams, Belle & Sebastian, and other earnest, heartfelt, melancholy music right now. Probably not making this any less maudlin. Suck it, it makes me feel good to feel this… bad? Nah. Full.

So. The Expo.

Smaller this year. Does that mean Podcasting is slowing down? Is podcasting “dead?”

Not at all. I think it means a whole lot of podcasters are not interested in what the Expo presents: an emphasis on monetization, metrics, and tech. Advertising networks, trade associations, hosting networks… and rivalries and posturing between same right on the Expo floor. However, there are still people who approach podcasting as an art form, a means of expression, or as just another way to distribute their open media / new media / multimedia content.

Also… I’m no pundit — look to others for that. I’ll just say that activists and lobbyists will one day be necessary to represent new media to lawmakers and legislators. The people who will represent new media are being chosen now. Choose wisely.

Now comes the time on Sprockets when we name drop and and provide little snapshots of special moments at the Expo.

• I started the weekend Thursday with a nice lunch with Steve Eley and Tee Morris, where we Old Boys of podcasting ate sandwiches (I think Steve had an actual dinner of some sort) and just yakked about stuff and things.
• My speaker badge and that of Matthew Snodgrass were merged together like a fly and Jeff Goldblum. I managed to get a fresh badge printed up, but I met Matt later Thursday night and he wore the “Matthew Wayne Snodgrass, MWS Media” badge. We laughed about it and I apologized for never getting him a paycheck for all the fine work he’s done for my company.
• Met Chris Moody, which was nice to finally do, since he lives about twenty minutes or so from where I work.
• Tee: offer I made during the Speakers Reception still stands, as needed.
• I spent the greater and best part of my weekend as an intern for Lulu.tv / Gnack.com and started it off picking up Mur Lafferty, Jason Adams, and Carol Housel at the airport.
• Nice to see Colette Vogele, if only for a little bit.
• I believe Eric Rice was the first person to tell me in person that he listened to any of my podcasts, during the first Podcast Expo in 2005. Since he’s always fifteen miles ahead of the rest of us, that obviously makes me an innovator and revolutionary. Or it could have been that there were only, like, eight podcasts back then. Either way, it was good fun spending some quality time with him this time around, riffing on this crazy fuzzy-boundaries multimedia world we live in.
• It’s a very small world, at that. Considering the overlapping spheres we float in, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Sean Percival walk into the super-secret “studio” we had set up to interview Eric. Sean and I know each other through his contract work with Mahalo.com, and it was cool to see him in a different setting. We’ll be trading brain cells in the near future, no doubt.
• Many of the usual suspects were there… a very special pleasure seeing you all again, and as usual, it’s never long enough or in deep enough depth. The Tribe knows its own; ’nuff said.
• I’ve become quite taken with spending the last night of these conventions / expos / conferences in a more quiet, intimate setting — someone’s hotel room, with a handful of friends. Sunday, Mur and Jason lodged with me, and our afternoon, evening, and early morning was in turns intimate, irreverent, revealing, hilarious, risque, revelatory, and above all, full of joy and joyness. Some of it was documented — look to a future Geek Fu Morning Show, and a new podcast from Jason.
• Finally… after this Expo, how you feel about Charlie The Unicorn will, for me, be a good barometer of the kind of person you are.

Next year… Las Vegas.