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England and Wales decided to take a step forward on Wednesday. Pop star Elton John and his longtime partner David Furnish tied the knot in a civil ceremony, that while not technically the same thing as marriage, is nonetheless a huge step forward for same sex unions, legally and socially. Both John and Furnish were classically clad in black suits to the dismay of homophobes worldwide. This came on the same day that Canadian courts ruled that what "swingers" do, as long as they are consenting adults and whatever they do takes place in private, is their business. Maybe one of these years the States will abandon their hypocritical posturing and get on the socially progressive bandwagon. Until then, we wait.

Bob Sheckley has passed away. I am deeply saddened at the loss of not only a friend and colleague, but a kindred spirit as well. While I only knew him for the last few years of his life--his friendship and guidance helped me through some of the hardest times in my life.

You will be missed brother...and when it's all said and done, we'll raise a glass together in Valhalla.


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Robert Sheckley, of Red Hook died December 9, 2005 at Vassar Hospital.
He was 77.

He was born in Brooklyn on July 16, 1928. Mr. Sheckley was raised in
New Jersey and entered the U.S. Army after high school. He served in
Korea during the Korea Conflict.

After discharge he attended NYU, graduating with an arts degree. He
began to sell stories to all the science-fiction magazines soon after
his graduatino, producing several hundred stories over the next
several years. During this perior Mr. Sheckley also wrote fifteen
episodes for the television series Captain Video and sixty short-short
stories that were read aloud by Basil Rathbone on Monitor Radio. He
also wrote "The People Trap", which became the basis for television
special.

He is the author of a number of episodes of "The Twilight Zone." He
was fiction editor of "Omni" magazine from March 1980 through the
summer of 1982 and a Visitiing Scholar at the Artificial Intelligence
Lab at MIT in Boston in 1983. In 1991 Mr. Sheckley received the
Raymond Z. Gallun award for contributions to the genre of
science-fiction.