Ready Player One

Reblog the writers’ fortune cookie for luck!

If I reblog you reblogging me, does it still count?

Eve by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, 1896.

Neil Gaiman: 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick' | Fiction | The Guardian

the Guardian

Neil Gaiman: 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick'

The American Gods and Good Omens author on his friendship with Gene Wolfe, crying over Diana Wynne Jones and falling under the spell of CS L

Good morning @neil-gaiman, thank you so much for this.  I'm psyched to add your books to my list!  I learned to read my first words with the Chronicles of Narnia.  Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew are my favorites.  It must be the portals.

The two ADHD moods:

- I can’t do it

- I can’t stop doing it

tuesday / background practice pieces (ii)

This Tribute Ann Druyan Wrote For Her Husband Carl Sagan Will Make You Sob

Back in 2003, Druyan reflected on her nearly 20-year relationship with Sagan for The Skeptical Inquirer. The couple met at screenwriter Nora Ephron’s home in New York City in 1974, and were married from 1981 until his death from pneumonia 15 years later.

No matter what you do — or don’t — believe about the afterlife, Druyan’s note is irrefutably one of the most poignant letters ever written about the special peculiarity of love. Here’s an excerpt via Goodreads — but fair warning, get the tissues ready:

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again.

Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting.

Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful…

The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

In writing this moving tribute for her husband, Druyan’s words perfectly captures why Sagan remains so beloved to this day.

“There is something in his delivery that communicates his genuine enthusiasm and awe for the universe and for science, and that just cuts straight to my heart,” Columbia University astrophysicist Summer Ash tells Inverse. “That letter is something I always try to keep in mind when interacting with students and kids. I want to do everything in my power to fan the flames for future thinkers behind me.”

Happy 83rd, Carl Sagan. From all of us here on the Pale Blue Dot, ad astra.

Source: Inverse

Detail of my new print The Empress available in my shop Jeremyhush.com or follow the link in my profile. Holidays are closing in so get your orders in soon. #jeremyhush #theempress (at The Convent Philly)

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