Fiction

Some short fiction I’ve written.

• The Flood

  An erotica story, set in the 1930s, first published in Wet: More Aqua Erotica in 2002.

• The Last of the Zeppelins

  A pulse-pounding red-blooded two-fisted World War II tale of American hero Hugh Betcha and his trusty ferret Scraps, first published in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories in 2004.

• The Secret Life of Humphrey Milquer

  An erotica story—a pastiche of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”—first published in Clean Sheets in 2000.

• All Through the Night

  A short-short story about predators at a kind of a never-ending party, first published in BEM in 1990.

• Playing Hearts

  A brief unpublished piece, written in 1996.

• The Crystal Terraces of Sanfra Nabisco

  A surreal and odd brief piece, first published in the APA SWAPA in 1990.

• A Rose on Lincoln’s Grave

  An offbeat fragment in a free-associating, malapropping style. First published in the APA Eyeheart in 1993.

Code

Assorted pieces of software and software-related material.

• HTML footnotes

  A demonstration of one way to implement footnotes in HTML.

• Programming language proposal: C!!!

  A proposal for a loud and violent programming language, to be called C!!!

• 3D graphics in VRML

  VRML is the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, a 3D graphics format and language. I was involved in the VRML community in the 1990s; this set of pages includes some VRML models that I made on my own, as well as VRML models for the examples from the VRML book that I co-wrote. You can view all of these models in 3D in your web browser.

  • My 3D models

    3D models that I made, in VRML.

  • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook

    A set of pages showing the example 3D models from The VRML 2.0 Handbook, by Jed Hartman and Josie Wernecke.

    • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook: chapter 4, part 1

      The example 3D models from the first half of chapter 4.

    • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook: chapter 4, part 2

      The example 3D models from the second half of chapter 4.

    • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook: chapters 5-6

      The example 3D models from chapters 5 and 6.

    • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook: chapters 7-8, part 1

      The example 3D models from chapter 7 and the first half of chapter 8.

    • Examples from the VRML 2.0 Handbook: chapters 7-8, part 2

      The example 3D models from the second half of chapter 8.

• Biohazard symbol in PostScript

  PostScript code for drawing a biohazard symbol.

• Name parser/normalizer

  A PHP function that attempts to parse Anglo-style names into separate forenames and surnames.

• Turning text upside-down

  A Perl program to turn a string of English letters upside-down.

• Follow Me!

  A bare-bones game based on Simon; the computer displays a sequence of colored lights, and you have to repeat the sequence. Written in JavaScript in 1999, mostly using JavaScript functions supplied by Dreamweaver; still works in 2023.

• Magazine fiction budget calculator

  A toy calculator that lets you specify various parameters to find out what your budget should be for buying fiction for a magazine.

• Old intro to HTML

  A simple HTML page containing information on how to create an HTML page. Created in the 1990s.

Nonfiction

Essays, math, humor, and other pieces of nonfiction.

• Free books and other free stuff

  A list of books and other things that I’m giving away. Updated every few months.

• Distances and directions

  An essay about walking in the snow and missing my mother, written in 1989.

• How to host a story reading

  Recommendations on how to get people together to read stories aloud to each other.

• Tools

  Info about tools that I use and recommend for various purposes.

  • My video-call setup

    The microphone, camera, and other hardware that I use for video calls.

  • CZUR Aura book scanner

    For scanning paper books, I use the CZUR Aura, which I love.

• Notes on sleep

  For many years, I had various forms of insomnia, and I still occasionally have trouble falling asleep and/or wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep. This page covers some of the things that have and haven’t helped me with that.

• Back Up Your Data Day

  September 20 is Back Up Your Data Day, a day for doing a backup that you don’t normally do.

• A comment, not a question

  I strongly disagree with the idea that a panel audience should only ask questions, not make statements.

• How to drive in Boston: A survival guide

  Tips for driving in Boston, for people who are new to it.

• i to the i power

  A writeup of a lovely derivation of the value of i to the i power.

• Review: Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti

  A review of Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market,” first published in Clean Sheets in 1998.

• Strange Horizons Flashbacks

  A retrospective of some of the fiction we published at Strange Horizons during my time as a fiction editor there, from 2000 through 2012.

• Guide to John Rogers’s Leverage posts

  A link to my spreadsheet that lists all of Rogers’s Leverage-related blog posts.

• Guide to Joanna Russ’s published short fiction

  A link to my spreadsheet listing all of Russ’s published short fiction.

• Mary Anne and Jed’s critiquing guidelines

  A guide to giving good critiques in a writing workshop, by Mary Anne Mohanraj and Jed Hartman.

• My unread-books project

  Overview and current status.

• Some responses to Omelas

  A list of fiction pieces that respond to Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

• Where are all the dreamers that I used to know?

  A two-part essay arguing both in favor of pursuing your dreams and in favor of being happy with what you have.

• Sovietism and Americanism

  A parody of an essay by Matthew Arnold; written for a high school English class.

• Hugo statistics

  A couple of pages with Hugo Award-related statistics.

  • Hugo stats: author gender, fiction categories

    An attempt to chart the genders of authors whose work has been nominated for Hugo awards in the main fiction categories.

  • Hugo stats: numbers of nominating ballots

    Statistics about the number of people nominating for Hugo Awards over time.

• San Francisco Bay Area attractions and tourist stuff (all-audiences version)

  A list of some stuff that I consider worth seeing and doing in the SF Bay Area, without the NSFW/adults-only items.

  • San Francisco Bay Area attractions and tourist stuff (adults-only version)

    A list of some stuff that I consider worth seeing and doing in the SF Bay Area, including NSFW items.

• Laws and sayings

  Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation and other laws.

• Classics recast into high school settings

  A link to my spreadsheet that lists classic works adapted into modern high school settings.

• Prestigious unthemed original-anthology sf series

  A link to my spreadsheet that lists high-profile unthemed series of original sf anthologies.

• My most widely distributed work

  An unofficial list of the things I’ve written or co-written that have probably had the widest audiences.

• Chain letters and forwarding mail

  • How to defeat a chain letter

    An anti-chain-letter, along with some long-outdated links to other information about chain letters.

  • Forwarding hysteria

    A recommendation against forwarding email that tells you to forward it, written in the 1990s.

  • Bad-luck-threat anti-chain letter

    An anti-chain letter, not written by me, which threatens bad luck to anyone who doesn’t forward it.

  • Science projects about forwarding email

    Notes about a couple of please-forward-this chain emails.

  • A specific dying-wish chain letter

    Notes about a specific please-forward-this chain email.

  • Houghton-Mifflin email forwarding

    Notes about a specific please-forward-this chain email.

  • Note on the “FCC Modem Tax” Rumor

    Notes about a specific false chain email.

  • Note on the 1997 FCC-related mass-forward email

    Notes about a specific viral rumor that turned out to be based on a misunderstanding.

• Marriage equality status

  In 2014-2015, this page was an attempt to stay up-to-date on the status of marriage equality in many US states. This page became irrelevant after the US Supreme Court recognized marriage equality throughout the country in 2015; I’m leaving it up for historical purposes.

• Movie list

  My ratings and reviews for movies I saw in and before 1999.

• Old HTML authoring tips

  A set of HTML authoring tips from 1997, preserved for historical purposes.

• Old tips on websurfing and troubleshooting HTTP servers

  A set of tips from 1996, preserved for historical purposes.

Verse

Poems and filks and such.

• The Parsee’s Tale

  Chaucer meets Kipling.

• Tipsy

  A playing-with-word-sounds poem about a tipsy puppy.

• Sisters

  A hair-braiding poem.

• Uprising

  A poem about a (fictional) revolution.

• Paradox

  A wooing sonnet.

• Airport Departures

  A farewell sonnet.

• Anniversaries Apart

  An anniversary sonnet for Mary Anne, written in 2009.

• Fourteen Lines for Fifteen Years

  An anniversary sonnet for Mary Anne, written in 2012.

• On first looking into Hooker’s Cyrano

  A sonnet about my first encounter with Cyrano de Bergerac.

• The Naming of Vaxen

  Riffing on T. S. Eliot.

• The Dumbarton

  A set of 14 sonnets by Mykle Hansen and Jed Hartman, loosely patterned after Vikram Seth’s novel-in-sonnets The Golden Gate.

• Product Deadline in the Valley (Employees)

  Notes on a filk that used to be on this page, but that I’ve removed.

Tall Tales

Three “tall tales” that I wrote for the alt.callahans newsgroup.

• Tall Tale One: Horses Sweeter Than Wine

  A tall tale about wine.

• Tall Tale Two: Power Corrupts

  A tall tale about power.

• Tall Tale Three: Night of the Dentist

  A tall tale about a dentist.

Fiction exercises

Brief pieces I’ve written as writing exercises.

• Fishers

  A ten-minute timed writing exercise about fisherfolk.

• Small and Cold

  A ten-minute timed writing exercise about small cold beings.

• Let There Be Darkness

  A ten-minute timed writing exercise about the end of the world.

• Screaming Clay

  A ten-minute timed writing exercise about kids being cruel to their toys.

• Louise

  A ten-minute timed writing about the aftermath of a relationship. (Content warning for ominous hints at domestic violence.)

Work by others

Pieces that I didn’t create, but am hosting.

• La Tierra RPG character drawings

  Art by Mark Precious and Ananda Patterson, showing characters from a roleplaying game.

• Testosterone Tornado

  An essay by Alex Weirich about his experiences taking too high a dose of testosterone (for him) in the 1990s.

• This is the house that blood built

  An article by journalist Abe Peck, written in 1969 or 1970, about the murder of Black Panther Party deputy chair Fred Hampton by Chicago law enforcement officers.

• Allen Ginsberg testifies at the Chicago Seven trial

  A transcript of Allen Ginsberg’s testimony during the Chicago Seven trial in 1969, with commentary and editorial summaries by journalist Abe Peck.

• A taxonomy of things

  A taxonomy to classify material items in the home, by Amy Smift.