The Mumpsimus

The room in which The Mumpsimus was born. Photo from February 2007. Well, golly. Today marks eight years since I created this blog back in 2003. I didn't post anything beyond the definition of the word "mumpsimus" on that first day, but then things got going with a post about a story by James Patrick Kelly after a brief statement of purpose . The statement of purpose ended by saying, "Who knows what will come of all this?" What became of it was certainly more than I ever expected. The busiest time for the blog, in terms of posts and of visits from readers, were the first few years, particularly 2004 and 2005. There weren't a whole lot of other people doing what I was doing, and it felt like everybody who was writing blogs about books and literature of any sort knew and read each other (hence the creation of the Litblog Co-op ). But the blogosphere expanded rapidly, and one day it seemed like there were 1,000 book blogs out there. And a lot of us s...

The previous post, "The Sokal Hoax at 15" , was number 1,500 here at The Mumpsimus.

Long-time Mumpsimus readers will remember a young man named Alan DeNiro, subject of an interview in 2004 , and a young woman named Juliet Ulman, subject of an interview I conducted for Fantasy magazine in 2006. Recent readers will remember that, in 2008, the elves of Mumpsimus Mansion expressed excitement that a young woman named Colleen Lindsay moved from the world of publicity to the world of agenting, and one of her first clients was the above-named Mr. DeNiro. Well, our plan for world domination is coming together. Super-writer DeNiro has, via the talents of super-agent Lindsay, joined forces with super-editor Ulman ! The elves are jumping up and down with joy, expressing great congratulations to Alan for selling his novel Total Oblivion, More or Less to Juliet at Bantam via Colleen. Numerologists will note that the various important events (interview 1, interview 2, joy for Colleen) occurred in even-numbered years. What do we have planned for 2010? Wait and see, my child...