Laser did number their books, and the last 3 were sent only to subscribers in order to finish out the subscriptions. There's a list available here. J. Hunter Holly, who wrote one of them, is also a long-term seller to (low-end) legitimate publishers.
John A. Arkansawyer @255 -- you may not be able to find a burglar charm, but you can probably find a hobbit -- I understand they can fall into that category.
There were a lot of good people who sold books to Laser -- what makes Pournelle, Koontz and Piers Anthony notable is that they all went on to have real-world bestselling novels (Pournelle in collaboration with Niven, that is). Powers may yet end up in that category if Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides gets made and has the kind of following the earlier films in the franchise did.
My memory is confirmed by fantasticfiction.co.uk -- the van Vogt title was The House that Stood Still, and it was published in 1952.
I'd at least hope to see a nod to Kazantzakis' film Z in there, though perhaps they'd prefer to think of her as Zorba....
The Tim Powers books published by Laser were The Skies Discrowned and Epitaph in Rust. Laser also published books by Pournelle, Anthony, a pseudonymous Dean R. Koontz, John Morressy and others who were Real Writers. And they failed in large part (according to scuttlebutt) because Harlequin couldn't count on selling the same number of copies of each book -- those pesky sci-fi types insisted on buying different amounts of books written by different authors.
Harlequin did actually publish some SF under its own imprint in the early days: three Golden Amazon novels by John Russell Fearn and an A. E. van Vogt book.
Rereading the rules: that applies to getting the lower fee for members, rather than strict eligibility. I still think they can make a serious argument that this is a similar sort of change of status rather than a change in the rules.
One writer @ 16, Darth Paradox @20 -- the eligibility rules about membership say that if a person drops between nomination and the award announcement, they lose their eligibility. I don't imagine that they'd treat this differently than what would happen if a member stopped being a member. In that sense, this is not a rules change -- it's an eligibility change.
I am not a member of RWA, I just read the rules, my interpretation is not guaranteed to be correct.
Sundre -- that needs to be coupled with the fact that eligibility is limited to works published by a "non-subsidy, non-vanity publisher". I don't know how the organization will work with the appropriate separation of vanity and non-vanity sides of Harlequin. It will be interesting to find out. If a publisher is partially vanity and partially legitimate, what's an appropriate separation? This is not necessarily a simple question to answer.
Having been through some bouts of depression, I'd like to put in that I can only love someone as much as I can find it in me to love myself. Where Scraps has gone in this -- he may have lost a lot of self-love, to the point where it's interfering with his ability to see (or feel worthy of) his love for you, Velma. I know neither of you well enough to say this is what's going on for sure. I think you know him well enough to know. And holding onto your love for him can act as a splint to keep him strong enough until his love re-grows.
SylvieG @7 -- adding my condolences. While I've lived with dogs a few times since losing what was supposed to be My Puppy at about age 8 (distemper -- it was a pound puppy named Sniff that didn't survive more than a month) I haven't had a dog of my own to deal with. I'm blessed with a history of marvelous cats, though, and have had to grieve for several of them. Reiterating a common thread -- it's your life, and your grief. Live and grieve your own way, and pay attention to it. That's how to learn what's right for you.
On finishing writing projects -- has anyone else here read Howard S. Becker's Writing for Social Scientists? Becker's a rare sociologist who writes compulsively readable books, and this book is all about how to write a better article than most people get trained to. Highly recommended.
Most of them are using such money for their religious purposes, or at least get a collateral benefit of appearing to be "good guys" by what they do charitably. Their religious purposes include proselytizing, after all.
Nobody in government is trying to force them to allow gay marriage within the church. I can see them having a legitimate objection to that, by their internal logic. But they accept a lot of things within the larger society that aren't supported by church doctrine or scripture (and don't always accept things that are supported by scripture, e.g. slavery). So, why this particular line in the sand?
Thoughts and good wishes from here as well. Not a praying sort, either, but still there's power in the sending of light. Hoping for you both to take care of yourselves as well!
NASA reports finding serious water on the moon. Wow. Just Wow! (from Glen Blankenship)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/prelim_water_results.html
That should have been http://www.dolcifrutta.com in the previous post -- I caught one typo in that URL, but missed the other!
Nerdycellis @750 (and others in passing) -- Karen regularly uses an Italian product for dipping strawberries and the like that is a good chocolate-for-shell -- it may fall into the "mockolate" category to purists. Karen's quote: "Not gourmet, but nobody's ever complained about it either." I'd agree with that assessment. For what you want, it might be perfect.
Dolci frutta, information available at http://www.dolcifutta.com ; it's also apparently available through Amazon, but I won't spread that link around.
Skwid @709: That Beatles sidenote is indeed an amazing bit of alternate history.
Raising fizzy water! It's almost as long between the time I visited Berlin and the time the Wall came down as between the time the Wall came down and now (I was there in 1968). It was a momentous day.
Allan Beatty @602 -- yes, I know they're cataloguing something they consider different. I would be very interested in how they categorize that difference, when one can look at the amount of poetry and fiction published in mimeographed zines from well before the period they call a revolution (look, for example, at the SF/fantasy poetry journals of the early 50s, or the fiction contained in many early fanzines). The difference is only visible if one wants to make SF into something other than literature, a clueless pastime. That's why I say it's clueless, rather than evil.
I'd take you up on a copy of your list if I weren't trying to cut down on the amount of stuff I have rather than increase it. Oh well; I'm interested enough to want to see it anyway, so I'll send an e-mail in a few minutes.
Kevin Riggle @544 -- John Houghton has it right @552. That project starts in the 1950s, ignoring the history of mimeo'd zines that included fiction and poetry from the SF world that goes back into the 1930s. It's not evil -- it's just totally clueless in terms of the history of the material it's looking at. It doesn't even mention the origins of Superman in a fanzine put out by Siegel and Shuster, arguably more important to fiction than any of the writers they list (the superhero genre took off after that creation and popularization, and is a major portion of the literary zeitgeist which most of their favorites tend to attempt to subvert). The Fisher/Pavlat/Evans index covers a period before their survey starts, and is large but not comprehensive.
Rattles cane, wheezes, comments about the kids no the lawn not showing proper respect for grassland ecology and the evolutionary pressures leading to plants surviving some kinds of stresses better than others....
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