sunshine morning: more Jarry & SW website

...didn't sleep a wink last night.

Following the lead of CAAF at Tingle Alley, I'm going to bump a comment onto the front page. Some nice anonymous soul (REVEAL THYSELF!) left this in the comments of the entry in which I posted Alfred Jarry's "The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race."

Which always reminds me of Ballard's riff on it: The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.

Also of Waldrop's brilliant story "Fin de Cycle," featuring Jarry in a bicycle duel on the Eiffel Tower.

I'd no clue such things existed, so thank you, anonymous. And as I pointed out re: the Ballard, JFK once said that: "Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride."

Think about that -- when he says nothing, he's talking about a naked and inviting MARILYN MONROE. Moving on...

It turns out that "Fin de Cycle" is available on Fictionwise for a scant $1.69. And Howard Waldrop is, of course, a genius in all things. (Which makes me wonder what losers that read this story at Fictionwise voted that it was "good" and not "GENIUS.") The story is described thusly on the Electric Story website (where I found the FW link):

Howard Waldrop's "Fin de Cycle" concerns a slightly re-realized France at the end of the nineteenth century, where Melies, Proust, and Alfred Jarry employ the new technology of movies to forestall a terrible injustice. The bicycle gun-duel on the Eiffel Tower is worth the price of admission by itself.

Waldrop is doing the weekly blog thing for the Infinite Matrix here, which should be loved and read. The latest installment examines what the 1954 Hugos should have looked like.

And now for something completely different. Scott Westerfeld finally has a killer website! For years, when he was mostly writing science fiction novels (ironically), he had this AOL old-core site that was, shall we say, pretty terrible. But now, he's all fancied up at Scott Westerfeld DOT COM. You can read his lovely essay on what it's like being a ghostwriter (the other thing he was doing when he had that bad website) and find out all about the MIDNIGHTERS trilogy, the first book of which is out now and, of course, available for your purchase at Amazon. The site has excerpts and all sorts of fun stuff, including Dess' blog (Dess being a Midnighter with magically mathematical powers), which was sort of my idea and so should be your favorite thing on the site. Anyway, click, click, click, my pretties and make Scott happy. Reward him for entering the modern day.

Bonus, the tridecalogism of the day is: resplendantly.

worm "One Piece at a Time," Johnny Cash

namecheck Landon "How do I jump the bike?" Bond