The weather outside is frightful, as they sing. I don't like it one bit.

Reaction to Gardner Dozois stepping down as editor as Asimov's continues -- WeirdWriter talks about what Asimov's has meant to him, Mr. Barzak defines the difference between stepping down and stepping off and John Klima nails perhaps the most interesting angle in this to me:

And that brings me to the thought that led me to writing this:

Asimov's = Shelia Williams
Sci Fiction = Ellen Datlow
Realms of Fantasy = Shawna McCarthy

Interesting that three major sources of short fiction have female editors. To extrapolate further, Deborah Layne is the driving force behind Wheatland Press and the amazing Polyphony series, and Kelly Link is half of the team that puts out LCRW and consistently great (and award-winning!) books. Ellen's Sci Fiction (as I noted above) swept the Nebula short fiction categories earlier this year. And, she broke up Gardner's streak of consecutive Best Editor Hugos a few years ago. What next for our fair Ellen? What next for the other ladies who are out there that we don't know about yet? I think this is a trend that deserves some attention.

This can only be good, in my girly opinion.

Alan DeNiro's put up a copy of the complete "Home of the" story he's been serializing so it can be read it order. It's a really wonderful, strange story. Go read it. Bowling alleys and cann--I won't spoil it for you.

And now for the miscellaneous...

The WaPo has a piece on art exhibits featuring work by Wim Wenders and a young David Lynch. The Wenders get a passing grade, but not so the Lynch.

The Post also has a piece on friend crushes and the response to an article about them in a college paper. It's almost painful to read. I will not indulge in self-reflection here, but only say haven't most of us been in the terrible awkwardness of this position? Yeep. Glad it goes away with age.

Love is like wealth, or the world food supply. Some people hog it; others get nothing at all. To scroll down the feedback column below Matt Brochu's article is to realize how much love goes unrevealed, unrecognized and unrequited. If only there were some mechanism for spreading love around, everybody could get enough.

Instead, the postings sit static in cyberspace, declarations of love to people who may never read them.

"I've seen the sun rise over the mountains of Vermont and seen it set over the Caribbean. I've swam with tropical fish and seen the view from the top of Katahdan. But none of that even begins to compare to how beautiful she is."

"Katie Norris -- if you ever read this, you know how I felt about you during that first month when I was in Mexico . . . look me up sometime. . . . I'd still like to try again."

"Shandie although i only just met you it seems like u are the one . . . dang girl ur perfect"

I hope Shandie's not hung up on spelling.

Charles McGrath writes about F. Scott Fitzgerald, screenwriter, and a new archive of his script that will be housed at the University of South Carolina.

Mr. Bruccoli, a University of South Carolina scholar, is also a famous archivist and collector who has written or edited dozens of books about Fitzgerald, Hemingway and their generation. He bought the archive from a dealer, who obtained it from a former studio employee who does not want to be identified.

The importance of the archive, Mr. Bruccoli said in an interview, is that "it corrects this distorted view of Fitzgerald's Hollywood years, the idea that he was just staggering around drunk all the time and not earning his salary." Unlike many screenwriters, Fitzgerald "didn't just take the money and run," Mr. Bruccoli added.

"He took screenwriting very seriously," he continued, "and it's heartbreaking to see how much effort he put into it." The new archive reveals, among other things, that Fitzgerald approached every screenplay as if it were a novel and often wrote long back stories for each of the characters before setting down a word of dialogue.

---snip---

Sadly, most of his work was to no avail. Billy Wilder, Fitzgerald's friend and admirer in his Hollywood days, always thought the notion of turning him into a screenwriter was a little misguided. He once compared Fitzgerald to "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job."

"He did not know how to connect the pipes so the water could flow," he said.

Yet more proof that everyone should always have listened to everything Billy Wilder said.

The screw top will have its day: But 98 percent of all wine is drunk within six months after its purchase. I am willing to predict that within a decade, 75 percent or more of these wines will be sold with metal caps.

Richard Dawkins talks about science writing, and I'm with him. (Via Sarah Weinman.)

Have a day with more sunshine in it than mine.

worm: "White Trash," Jr. Sr.

thingy/s to check out: quotations from Bill Hicks via Alan Graham's guest bar blog on Boing Boing (loooove Bill Hicks; I couldn't believe Comedy Central didn't rank him higher in that stupid list)

namecheck: John "Hits It With a Hammer" Klima