Hal Duncan: Columnist of Sodom

Hal Duncan, known to some as The Slayer of Shibboleths, to others as The Scribe of the Book of All Hours, to others as The Notetaker of the Geek Show, and to still others as THE....Sodomite Hal Duncan -- this (super)man is now writing a regular column for Fantasy Book Spot, "Notes from New Sodom".

In his first column, Hal does what many of us have done in our early ventures with such things, he digs into definitions (and thus stakes some ground). This is Hal, though, so what he does is really not much like what any of the rest of us have done. It's longer, for one thing. And full of that inimitable, erudite lyricism, that voice, that essence (spunk!) of Hal.

And with this first column of his, he lets me achieve one of my greatest ambitions in life: to provide an epigraph. An epigraph taken from my second column for Strange Horizons, "The Old Equations", a piece I'd pretty much forgotten I'd written, in which I staked out some ground of my own. My view of genre as a term and idea has grown more ... well, frankly, neurotic (in its hesitations and divigations) ... since 2005, and it was fun to reread that piece, in which I had more confidence than I have now. Which is not to say I think "The Old Equations" is wrong, just that were I to write it now I wouldn't write it the way I wrote it then. But I could say that for stuff I wrote yesterday, too...

Anyway, welcome, Hal, to the Hall of Columnists. Long may ye reign, in time and wordcount!

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