{"id":6405,"date":"2018-03-28T17:50:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T00:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=6405"},"modified":"2022-04-17T14:59:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T21:59:09","slug":"intro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2018\/03\/28\/intro\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the blog and homepage of Mark R. Kelly, the founder of Locus Online<\/a> in 1997 (for which I won a Hugo Award in 2002 — see the icon at right) and of an index to science fiction awards in 2000 that became sfadb.com<\/a> in 2012. I’m retired from my day job of 30 years, from 1982 to 2012, as an aerospace software engineer, supporting the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Posts here are mostly about my reading, of science fiction and of books about science, history, philosophy, and religion; and comments to articles in newspapers that I link to. Movie reviews and pics from travels are posted on Facebook.<\/p>\n

More on my About<\/a> page, including a photo of the Hugo Winners the year I was among them, and links to an index of my columns and other writings, and to my earliest homepage with links to some of my work.<\/p>\n

Likes and Dislikes:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Those who know me even casually \u2013 say acquaintances at work, or at conventions — likely know that I like books, read a lot (especially science fiction), and like working big projects, like Locus Online and the Science Fiction Awards Database, by myself and on my own terms.<\/p>\n

Those who know me somewhat better \u2013 say family and friends with whom I have visiting acquaintance \u2013 know that I like cats, hiking, fine dining, cooking at home, and movies (classic, or of some critical merit; rarely big blockbuster hits).<\/p>\n

Even those closest to me may be unaware of some of my favorite things: The Apple Valley desert and deserts in general; the film 2001 and to a lesser extent (due to violence) Blade Runner; Beethoven\u2019s \u201cMoonlight Sonata\u201d; composers Mahler and Glass; certain types of movie music quite apart from the films they support; the Myst games and a couple that are similar (but generally no other video games); martinis; maps.<\/p>\n

And then there are the things that are popular with others but which I have no interest in at all (consider these blind spots): sports, superheroes, comic books, Star Wars, first-person shooter video games, amusement parts, shopping. (I have an intellectual interest, but no interest in participating, in politics and religion.) Fireworks. Guns.<\/p>\n

And my favorite science fiction writers \u2013 I tried to narrow this down to a dozen \u2013 are Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury (though mostly a fantasy writer); Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Samuel R. Delany; Gregory Benford, Gene Wolfe, Kim Stanley Robinson; Greg Egan and Ted Chiang.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the blog and homepage of Mark R. Kelly, the founder of Locus Online in 1997 (for which I won a Hugo Award in 2002 — see the icon at right) and of an index to science fiction awards … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6405"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14573,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6405\/revisions\/14573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}