I dreamed of you last night but it wasn’t you it was another dog who looked just like you but I was only borrowing her at the whim of some unseen and uncaring entity sometimes the dog was there and...  read

Maggie Thatcher's dead, but so is Roger Ebert. Always a trade-off.  read

How can you live with a dog, with its lifespan of ten to fifteen years, and not realize how quickly the clock is ticking?  read

Biking on Bryn Mawr Avenue, clear sky, afternoon sun, I pull over to the curb for the ambulance hurtling my way. But it turns on Clark, and as I pass through the intersection I see the gapers gathered, the body...  read

I have no illusions of immortality Or do I? The way I shovel known poisons into my mouth Shout motherfucker at drivers who cut me off The way I still haven't put up the smoke alarms, two years later The...  read

This morning in the back window of the car I found a ladybug bleached bone-white and fragile under the glass, like a tiny skull. With eyespots faded almost to nothing, blinded by the sun, it was as if the creature...  read

It was a simple drive twelve miles north this morning to get to Skokie for Algis Budrys's memorial service. Laura was unable to join me so I went alone, and I found when I arrived at the funeral home that...  read

Here's an article about Algis Budrys that ran in yesterday's Chicago Tribune: Tapped human side of science fiction I'm going to head out to Skokie for the service Saturday morning.  read

I just heard from Geoff Landis that Algis Budrys passed away this morning. He was one of the great writers, editors, critics, and teachers of science fiction, and as the first week's instructor for my Clarion class in 1985, he...  read

My deepest thanks to everyone who posted or called or sent cards on the occasion of my father's passing. (Well, to everyone but the ones who tried to use the opportunity to reassure me of the reality of the afterlife....  read