As teenagers, James Morrow and his friends made short 8mm movies based on Coleridge and Poe stories. Morrow went on to earn a master's degree from Harvard University, then published his first novel, The Wine of Violence, in 1981.

1. Carolyn "Pinky" Kellogg is in Istanbul! Nice to see a busy blogger getting away for a literary journey.

I was approximately ten years old the first time I read Madeleine L'Engle, the award-winning author of over sixty books, including A Wrinkle In Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and A Wind In the Door, who died on September 6, 2007 in Goshen, Connecticut.

Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, author of "Eden" and "Solaris" (filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and by Steven Soderbergh in 2002) has died at the age of 84 today.

The satirical and philosophical science fiction writer -- to whom the future had always been suspect -- had foreseen many technological achievements in his utopias. His stories tell of the difficulties of communication between humans and other civilizations and of the limitation of human understanding. They portray the human indecision between curiosity and xenophobia, and the tragedy and comedy of future machines, human intellect and emotion and their relation to each other.

Has anybody heard about this John Twelve Hawks guy? According to his official biography, he lives off the grid and only speaks to his publisher via untraceable cell phone.

I don't usually follow the fantasy/sci-fi genre, but I have to admit I find this biographical concept (or conceit) intriguing. A few great writers have lived off the grid (Rimbaud and Thoreau come to mind). Anybody else know anything about this disconnected author, or has anyone read the book?

As you may or may not know, a film version of the Douglas Adams classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is opening in theaters this weekend. I know this book remains a popular favorite among many, so I thought I'd ask what you think about it being adapted into film. Do you plan to see it? Why or why not? If you catch it this weekend, be sure to give us a short review.

But now, because I'm fond of changing the subject, I'm going to, uh, change the subject. Even though it's often like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, the subject of books on film is capable of spurring debate among devotees of each form. (No, really. It is.) But beyond that, I think we can all agree that there are some film adaptations that shouldn't have happened, like, ever. (The Scarlet Letter, anyone?) We can all agree on this, yes?

It's common among Beat aficionados to scorn the popular media version of the Beats, especially the term "beatnik", and the stereotypical goatee-sporting hipster. But to a youngster growing up in a small town, like me, sensing there was more out there than what they taught in middle school, even the cliche hints of downtown jazz and nightlife and hip lingo were welcome. I could tell right away that Rod Serling was cool, from the subdued bongo drums in the opening theme to his sly, out-of-this-world countenance.

The 12th Planet is book one in the Earth Chronicles series. Originally published in 1977, it is the original and most well known. The premise of his work, simply, is that life originated outside planet earth. It was transplanted to and genetically modified on here by an alien race of supermen-gods, know collectively as the Nefilim. If one can wrap his head around this concept, the research and work following is marginally easier to accept. Sitchin seeks to support a number of scientifically unpalatable and unpopular theories.

"The act of writing is, for me, like a fever -- something I must do. And it seems I always have some new fever developing, some new love to follow and bring to life.

"I've never doubted myself; I've always been so completely devoted to libraries and books and authors that I couldn't stop to consider for a moment that I was being foolish. I only knew that writing was in itself the only way to live."
--Ray Bradbury

It was the summer of 1990 and I was in Los Angeles on assignment to cover a national convention of health professionals and dieticians. The LA riots were light years away, not many people paid attention to some place called Iraq, and O.J. Simpson was considered a hero. George Bush was in the White House, George Herbert Walker Bush.

What are the new circumstances - and how might we react to them?

That's a question that the best of science fiction tackles - the best in the old genre traditions dating back to the thirties and before. And happily, last week.