I went to Lyon, France with my family for a few days of tourism recently. We stayed in a nice little hotel on the Presqu'ile (the "Almost Island") of Lyon. The town is good sized, but much of it is within walking distance. They also have a great public transportation system with subway, trams and electric bus routes. We got a 2-day tourist pass, which gave us free access to many museums, the transportation system and discounts on other stuff. We made good use of it!
Before I get into it, with pictures and all I'd like to tell you quickly about the other things that have been going on lately:
I forgot to post about the
Speculative Poetry Round Up that went up on Amazing Stories recently. In it, I showcase the website Niteblade, The poetry in Amy H. Sturgis' Halloween Countdown, The SFPA's annual Halloween Poetry Reading and their online journal Eye to the Telescope, a poem by F.J. Bergmann and the Mythic Delirium Anthology. Enjoy!
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My most recent post on Amazing Stories (
"Music - Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music, Vol. 1 Craig Leon") went up today. It's on the subject of Music, so something a little different. My friend and colleague Craig Leon has had some of his pioneering electronic music from the early 80's re-released (and improved) on CD and vinyl ("Early Electronic Works - Nommos Visiting" and "Anthology of Interpolanetary Folk Music, Vol. 1 respectively). Since the inspiration for the music is pretty Science Fictional I was given permission to feature the CD and record on my blog at Amazing Stories.
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This is what we did in Lyon (not necessarily in this order) with accompanying pictures.
We went to the Miniatures and Cinema Museum, which was great and a big hit with the boy (Whew!).
We ate MANY very good meals with way too much food. We tried many of the local specialties, such as quenelles (a sort of huge, oblong dumpling often served with a lobster sauce), Saucissons briochés (a sort of huge pig in a blanket), coussin (chocolate pralines) and way too much more at the special Bouchons restaurants as well as other places.
We went on a boat cruise on the Saone, but despite our intentions didn't go on any others (on the Rhone, for example). We meant to go to the Planetarium, but we got lost and ended up at the (free) zoo instead, which was really nice, but brief, because it was already late in the day.
Dante had three trips on the carrousel. We saw the Roman ruins, which were amazing.
We walked along the top of the hill trying in vain to find the Roman Aqueducts on the way to the Basilica Fourviére.
On our way back to Paris we stopped in Auxerre for lunch, which turned out to be an unexpected gem of a town. It was full of half-timbered houses and BIG churches. We only went into two of them. The first church (with the red doors) was empty except for us, so I sang a bit of Hildegard von Bingen. It was the perfect acoustic for her music - live, but not too much so.
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The Elgin Award winning (2014) collection The Sex Lives of Monsters by Helen Marshall was one I'd been planning on reviewing in full (more than just the mini-review that I did in 2014 along with all the other Elgin nominated works). I also recorded 2 full poems (one of which is a series of 5 short poems on Billy the Kid) for your listening pleasure!
I don't normally theme the Round Ups for Amazing Stories, I feature what catches my fancy. But what was coming into focus was quite a bit of haiku and so I thought I'd gather it up into one post. I'm no expert and so I got some help on this Genre Poetry Round Up dedicated to SF haiku. Thanks Deborah P. Kolodji and Julie Bloss Kelsey:
