Reading: Easter Wine
Music: Blues Collection set
TV/Movie: The Critic
Link o' the Day: Seacon '03, The 54th UK National Easter Science Fiction Convention and Emerald City.

Well a fairly productive evening. I put the voice acting book to bed and the printout and CD go to the printers tomorrow. I got a good start on the next SFWA Bulletin and am trying out some new layout ideas which should make the job quicker and easier and still be professional-looking. Got a little bit of editing done and some research. Took some notes and jotted down some further notes.

So somewhat productive. I just have to remember to put the trash out, and it'll be a completely productive evening.

As a reward, I get to take to bed, and to the bus in the morning, Easter Wine, a fanthology that was produced for Seacon '03 in the UK. British fan Mark Plummer sent it to me after seeing a post of mine at Memory Hole stating that I thought old fanzine articles need not be treated as ephemeral and forgotten, but resurrected from time to time to show to the newer fen on the scene. As much as I love reading the fanzines coming out these days, I get a real kick out of some of the history of fandom, and some of the early fannish writings of others who were around long before I loitered onto the scene.

It's been a bit too busy for any real insights into anything to share tonight, although I've been having some interesting thoughts about this whole Philosopher's Stone business and such. I seem to recall reading someplace that the quest for the Philosopher's Stone wasn't so much the literal quest to turn base metal into gold, but was originally a metaphoric quest to purify the (base) soul into a divine (golden) soul. This sounds like something out of classical philosophy that got a bit mistranslated or misinterpreted by the Middle Ages and Beyond when the alchemists came on the scene and started blowing things up accidently. And if draw a direct line from alchemy to chemistry, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to look at science as a quest for immortality in its own right.

The Western folken weren't the only ones to think along these lines. Some aspects of Taoism included a study of science, nature, and alchemy in its own right, and was very much linked things larger than the mere secular.

This means something, but I'm still deciding what. I'm open to suggestions tho.

And today's link takes you to the Seacon '03, The 54th UK National Easter Science Fiction Convention site. Okay, this con is in the past, but if you've ever been interesting in British fandom, this wouldn't be a bad place to jump off from. For those who like photos, there are some photos at Emerald City.

Cheers!