Chappy New Year October 3, 2005 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy, Sybil's Garage

Sending out stories has a lot in common with chunks of rock floating in space. Mostly, these rocks roam out in the void for long stretches of time and never hit much of anything. But every now and then they connect with a bang. This moon Hyperion has had many such hits. Our slush pile has had a few as well. 75 stories received to date, 53 rejected, 5 accepted, 1 poem accepted, several candidate stories & poems. Thank you all for sending to us. We are the little magazine that could.

Cool news: While walking through Hoboken on saturday I stumbled across a garage sale (more like a “gate” sale. There are few real garages in this town). And on a table I saw an old magazine that immediately caught my eye. It was called “Time Machine”, and though filled with mostly news, it had an aesthetic much like issue #2 of Sybil’s Garage. They were cheap — like $1 each — so I grabbed the lot of them and went to pay. And the gentleman there said, “Oh, you like those? Those were fun to make. I have some more in the back.” His name is Jim Hans and as it turns out he created this magazine in the late 70s from Hoboken. He is also the founder of the Hoboken Historical Museum. I felt, as I got to talking to this man, that he had loads of wonderful stories to tell. I showed him Sybil’s Garage, and then I asked him if he’d submit for an interview for issue three. He gladly assented. I can’t wait to hear the stories he has to tell. It’s was fascinating to see how much the magazine resembles Sybil’s (with the old ads especially), but his ads were for real products and companies local to Hoboken whose designs were purposefully retro. With his permission, I’m going to post some scans of the magazine here. They really are museum pieces (and are, of course, in the Hoboken museum).

There’s an interesting article in last week’s New Scientist about emerging species identification systems, and one in particular called DAISY. The systems promise to identify species by a few photographs using software analysis, i.e. basically they’re a google for the biological world. Their intention, says the article, is to bring a “bioliteracy” to all, that is, they hope to allow anyone with a camera and a computer to identify any species using the system. Though rudimentary and segmented between life-trees at this point, with the ever increasing power of computers this will soon change.

Also in the news is talk of a new type of cosmetics called “photonics.” We’ve all seen these effects before on say, a butterfly’s wings, or in an oil film floating on water. As we change angles relative to the reflection, the colors change. L’Oreal and other cosmetic companies are working to mimic this color change in things like lipstick, eyeliner, and other products. If you thought cherry-red lip gloss was hot, wait until her lips start shimmering like a butterfly. Here’s a forum that talks about it. And here’s the source New Scientist article.

I’m heading out to my folks for Rosh Hashana today. That means “Head of the Year” or simply “The New Year.” In the Hebrew calendar, it will soon be the year 5766. As a science fiction writer, 5766 sounds much cooler than 2005. Yeah, I’m living in the eighth century of the sixth millenium. Cool. Duke Attreides would be proud.