---Never made it down to the office today. Foreboding weather this morning kept me upstairs, but it only rained hard for a few minutes. In the cellar all hell can break loose and I remain blissfully unaware. That's not the way to be with windows open on the front porch and sun room, however. I got started re-alphabeticizing my compact discs, so that was a way to squander a day. The past few days most of the big downpours have been to the north of here, although a hefty system passed by to the south this evening. Other places have had it worse than here, but there is that special feeling of disquiet being at the mercy of the elements.

----Word from Golden Gryphon:

Greetings from the Gryphon:

THE GIRL WHO LOVED ANIMALS AND OTHER STORIES, by Bruce McAllister, is now
available!

These seventeen stories showcase the author’s five decades of writing, including
his first professional sale, “The Faces Outside”—written at the ripe old age of sixteen—to
editor Frederik Pohl for the July 1963 issue of Worlds of if magazine.
In the near-future title story, a young woman offers her love—and her body—to
ensure the continuation of an animal species; and in a related story, “The Ark,” a little
girl’s life is psychically linked to the survival of two pandas, and her father does what he
must to ensure that all three will live.
Also included is McAllister’s best-known work, novelette “Dream Baby,” a finalist
for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the basis for his acclaimed novel of the same
name. In this dark and foreboding first-person narrative of the Vietnam War, a young
army nurse who dreams the deaths of her patients but cannot save them, finally
transcends the pain and violence of war and at last is able to save her fellow comrades
in arms who, in turn, save her.
Whether it be an elderly woman who uses her vast wealth to create genetically
her perfect son (“Angels”), or a young man who, having saved his 1950s-horror-movie
town from a horde of invading locusts, can no longer find meaning in his life until he
meets an invasion of a different kind (“Hero, The Movie”), or a young boy who learns the
rituals of an alien culture in order to obtain an assassin’s help for his unborn sister
(“Kin”), Bruce McAllister’s stories resonate with a childhood’s sense of wonder coming
face to face with the realities of the human condition in a science-fictional world.

THE GIRL WHO LOVED ANIMALS AND OTHER STORIES, by Bruce McAllister
Cover art by John Picacio
ISBN 978-1-930846-49-4 / $24.95 (Trade hardcover)
306 pages

---where I still need to get that order placed. (Bruce McAllister being a favorite back in the day.) Well, the thunder and lightning are coming closer together again now, so I better cut this session short...