Posted on February 8, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
Happy Birthday to Mary Robinette Kowal. Who is awesome.
Here, listen to her short story “Evil Robot Monkey,” which she performed at our recent dual reading, and which is eligible for a Hugo nomination, hint, hint.
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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Ooh, gadget! What is that thing she’s holding in her hands?
looks like the HTC Dream otherwise known as the T-Mobile G1
Thank you! And yes, that’s a G1.
Thought it looked like the HTC Touch Pro, but the keyboard was a little off….
Happy Birthday, Mary! And yay–I’ve got the same phone. :)
Happy Birthday and good luck!
In honor of Mary’s birthday, today, I have posted to Youtube my video of Mary Robinette Kowal reading her short story “Nails in my Feet” at Borderlands Books in San Francisco:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se3g0rn9wxc
I would have posted this clip much earlier, but the sound-track needed a fix that I neither had the skills nor the tools to make. Today, I made the fix anyway.
Wow! What a story.
I Went through a whole gamut of emotions. Its funny, sad, thought provoking and brilliant. One of the best short stories I have heard or even read in years.
It hit a particular nerve for me in that I visit an establishment in Dorset, England called “Monkey World” http://www.monkeyworld.org/ (Which incidentally was founded by a New Yorker, the late Jim Cronin) that rescues primates from all over the world and rehabilitates them. They have about 80 Chimps mostly rescued from beach photographers and other types of shows since the early 80’s as well as numerous other species. Hearing their stories and seeing how well they have adjusted to normal Chimp behaviour is wonderful. The thought of what had been done to the “Evil Robot Monkey” seems to parallel what was done to these Chimps.
Thanks for pointing me to it. Your works and the links you provide to other authors has given me the biggest backlog of reading matter for many years. Thanks to now being retired I at last have time to keep up with it.