WHAT'S ON YOUR DESK?

JOHN VARLEY

I used to have a big apartment, a lot of books, and a huge, U-shaped desk littered with stuff. Now I have a small apartment, very few books, and a tiny desk, and I like it better. 

I haven't gone completely paperless, but I'm getting there. I can do 99% of my research on the Internet now, so my reference books are in storage, and largely obsolete, anyway. The desk just has room for a laptop and a printer, and a few shelves to sort out the bills to be paid. One day I'll be set up to do that online, eliminating even more paper.

There is an overhead shelf to hold my Hugo and Nebula Awards, and another with four US stamp albums. I have to fold the laptop away to work on the stamp collection. It's really rather like a desk might be on a small live-aboard boat, and it suits me fine. 

John Varley is the award-wining author of the Gaea trilogy Titan, Wizard, and Demon. He also penned Millennium, which was made into a 1989 film starring Kris Kristofferson, Steel Beach, The Golden Globe, Red Thunder, Red Lightning and Mammoth.  

His latest novel, Rolling Thunder, will be released in April 2008.

OUR CURRENT CONTEST

Great storytellers are read, not seen. They let their characters do the talking and the listening and the getting in and out of trouble. Still, no law says they can't make a cameo appearance. Are you ready for your close-up? Give us a short story in which you, the author, are directly involved. You may be the main character or a minor character but—and here's the catch—you may not use First Person narrative. That means no I or me. For this story, you are looking at yourself from the outside. 

Entry Fee: None
Length: Up to 700 words

Complete details.

IN A LONELY PLACE
(1950)

Written by:
Andrew Solt


Starring:
Humphrey Bogart
Gloria Grahame

A Hollywood screenwriter 
falls in love with his gorgeous neighbor while the police 
suspect him of murdering 
another woman. 

Regretful - an expression of sorrow.
   "We mourned his regretful passing throughout the halls of Congress."

Regrettable – undesirable, deserving censure.
     "Your regrettable remarks will be deleted from the article."

A MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING

In 1819, a whaling ship left Nantucket, Massachusetts for a two year voyage in the South Pacific to hunt sperm whales. In the second year, thousands of miles from home, the crew of the Essex met up with a severely perturbed sperm whale. He rammed the ship twice, sinking her 2,000 miles off the coast. Twenty sailors jumped into lifeboats and rowed away. 

Surrendering their supplies to the ocean, these sailors suffered from malnutrition, diarrhea, blackouts, boils, tobacco withdrawal and magnesium deficiency which caused bizarre and violent behavior. Toward the end of their ninety-day stint, they even resorted to drinking their own urine, stealing food and cannibalism. 

Most of the survivors wrote accounts of the disaster. The most popular one was penned by the first mate, Owen Chase. The Narrative of the Most Extra-Ordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex was published in 1821.

Also in the Pacific during this period was a young man whose whaling career had just begun. He signed on as a hand aboard the New Bedford whale ship Acushnet. At some point, he met up with William Henry Chase, Owen Chase's teenage son, and thoroughly questioned him about his father's experiences on the Essex. The boy retrieved a copy of his father's book from his sea chest and handed it to him. "The reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea," he later remembered, "and so close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect on me."

Turns out, the surprising effect served as inspiration for Herman Melville's greatest literary achievement, Moby Dick.

Page 4