http://www.heinleinsociety.org/
Readers are strongly urged to check out and join The Heinlein Society, a nonprofit group which was instrumental in the publication of the new Robert Heinlein novel, For Us, The Living, and the creation of both the Heinlein Award (which Spider presented at Torcon 3) and the US$500,000 Heinlein Prize; for further information, visit their website.
http://www.crypticmusic.ca/
SECRETS OF THE CRYPTIC MUSICIAN
--a personal message from Spider
Many of you already know that my friend and esteemed Webmaster Colin MacDonald (he used to be efried, with onions, but he's better esteemed) is not only a saxophonist of uncommon skill and talent, but a gifted composer. Some of you know the extraordinary range and scope of his musical interests, from Balinese gamelan to salsa to jazz to postmodern classical to sounds for which no words have yet been invented. It has been six years now since I wrote a book without the frequent accompaniment of his music, which I find as creatively stimulating as Frank Zappa's guitar work. And a few of you may know that he and my wife Jeanne were lay ordained together here in Vancouver this year as Soto Zen monks in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Hardly any of you realize he has the same name as Robert Heinlein's second father-in-law, Leslyn's dad.
At last, ALL of you can know even more interesting things about him, like how to engage his services, commission his work, or obtain CDs of his extraordinary music–because Colin has finally taken enough time from his Webmaster duties to create his own new website, CRYPTIC MUSIC. If you like this site, or my work, try his. The title of one of my favorite tracks on his CD THE POST MODERN SAXOPHONE, an astonishing tour de force solo, accurately describes all the rest of his music, too: Thaumaturgy.
http://csny.com/
http://www.mwt.net/~koerner/
http://www.ideacityonline.com/
http://www.sethaugustus.com/
http://www.jefraskin.com/
http://www.foolishearthling.com/
http://www.galemead.com
http://www.toddbutler.com
http://www.vishwamohanbhatt.com/
http://www.dougcox.org
http://www.watermelonslim.com
http://www.ajcroce.com/
http://www.mariaritamariano.net/htdocs/home.asp
http://www.alexgrey.com
Spider and Jeanne were both inspired by a visit to the gallery of visionary artist Alex Grey's gallery in New York City, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, or CoSM. Spider was so moved by seeing the artwork in person that he included descriptions of the Sacred Mirrors series of paintings in a scene in VARIABLE STAR. Follow this link to Alex Grey's website if you haven't seen the paintings before, and you want a visual representation to go along with Spider's text. Then take a trip to NYC and see them for yourself.
