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For a few hours every year, the Science Fiction Capital of the World is a tiny Dairy Queen in Portales, New Mexico.

That’s because the attendees of the annual Williamson Lectureship always end up congregating there during the programming break between the luncheon and afternoon panels, and the Lectureship draws an impressive crowd of SF luminaries not only from New Mexico’s large local population of writers, but also from places far and wide. Sure, you might argue that conventions like Worldcon, World Fantasy, or ComicCon draw far more people and thus many more professionals. And that’s true. But I’m talking sheer density here. Conventions like those are spread out over entire convention centers and multiple hotels.

You try cramming a dozen Hugo and Nebula winners and maybe a SFWA Grand Master or two into a single Dairy Queen some time. It ain’t that straightforward. Dairy Queens are small.

More information about the Lectureship follows below the cut.

I’ve just learned that the contact form on this website is eating messages. Possibly due to a leaky pneumatic tube. I know that at least one person has been trying to get in touch with me via the form this week– my most sincere apologies to anybody who hasn’t received a response from me. I like hearing from people. A lot. Honest.

If you sent something my way and I didn’t respond, please send me an email:

ian AT (i don’t like spam) iantregillis DOT com

Just remove the bit about spam. I’ll be taking a helium leak detector and some duct tape to the tubes later today. In the meantime, here’s a haiku below the cut.

Update:  We think the contact form is working again.  But feel free to send email to above address.

In my previous post, I talked at length about the series finale to the American version of Life on Mars. (It’s spoileriffic, so you might want to give it a miss if you don’t want the series spoiled for you.)  I was pleasantly surprised by the finale.  The next night I went to see Knowing, which has an ending that is decidedly less effective.  (And, well, just plain bad.)  So all of this has prompted me to think about why some endings work and why some endings don’t.

It wasn’t until later that I realized could have added the series finale of Battlestar Galactica to this discussion, but that’s been discussed and slagged and defended all over the place.

Oddly enough, I discovered just this morning that GRRM himself has put up a blog post about the endings of Life on Mars, Knowing, and Battlestar Galactica.  (Great minds?  Heh.)  In this second part to my discussion of endings, I’ll explain why I agree with George about Battlestar Galactica and Knowing, and why I think he’s mistaken about Life on Mars.  Because sometimes you gotta speak truth to power, right?

Spoilers for Knowing, and lots of rambling thoughts about what makes for good and bad writing, follow below the cut.

Earlier this week, the (American) series finale for Life on Mars aired.  (I say American because the show was based (like so many others these days) on a British series of the same name.)  I was sorry to see the end of it, because it was the only television show in the past couple of years that I actually liked enough to follow closely.  The good news was that the network’s decision not  to renew the show came early enough that the writers could bring the show to a definitive conclusion in the final episode.   My thoughts have kept returning to that episode over the past few days.

And, on a related note, my friend Ty and I — in a fit of boredom laced with mild masochism — saw the Nicholas Cage movie Knowing last night.  Which also got me thinking about endings, but not in a good way. 

Spoilers follow below the cut, where I ramble on and on with musings about Life on Mars and some of the things that make for a successful ending.

Good news for Wild Cards fans!  George has told the WC consortium that Tor has scheduled the finale of the Committee Triad, Suicide Kings, for publication this coming December.  Suicide Kings wraps up the story that began with Inside Straight and continued with Busted Flush.

And as with the previous two volumes, Suicide Kings boasts yet another fantastic cover by the amazing Michael Komarck.   I think he’s outdone himself with this cover.  Check it out here and see for yourself.