Habeamus Pubdate!

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 At last it can be told! I have a new collection of my short fiction coming out from Tachyon Publications in 2026.

The Universe Box contains contains seventeen of the very best of a decade's worth of stories appearing in Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Reactor/Tordotcom, F&SF, Analog, New Worlds, Sunday Morning Transport, Sword and Sorcery, The Book of Dragons, and Dragonstairs Press (the story the book derives its title from; though it was later reprinted in Asimov's). Plus one or two that are original to the book. If you already have almost all of them, you have my profound admiration. Also my worried concern that your bookshelves may be as overburdened as my own.

This has been in the works for a while. But at last a publication date has been set. It is (trumpets and drum roll, please): 

 

  February 3, 2026 

 

This seems like a long time to wait. But in publishing time, it's a blink of the eye.

 

And I should warn you . . .

The kindly but tyrannical people at Tachyon have informed me in no uncertain terms that between now and the publication date, I must ruthlessly promote the collection on social media. So, of course, I have no choice but to do so.

Still, I promise I'll do my best to be entertaining at it. I have plans. You'll see.

 

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Tiptree's Paper Clip

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I am the proud owner of a paper clip once owned by Alice Sheldon, a giant of science fiction under the name of James Tiptree, Jr. Sheldon kept a physical distance from her literary genre of choice. She didn't attend conventions and very seldom met with anybody, fan or writer, from the community. I never even came close to meeting her. So you may be wondering how I came in possession of this literary relic. Well...

Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper met Sheldon once in the late seventies or early eighties, at her place in McLean, Virginia. Her house was mostly glass and sat over a stream that ran through the living room. Raccoons would come into it at night. In an interview published in the Temporary Culture chapbook She Saved Us From World War Three Gardner said, “…we went out there and spent the afternoon. We had burgers, I think, which they grilled, and we sat around for a while. I found out during the afternoon that she kept her Nebula Award in a closet with galoshes piled on top of it.”

He also said that Sheldon was flamboyant, even theatrical. “She really dominated your attention. She was magnetic. […] While we were eating our hamburgers… She had put out paper napkins and I was nervous, so I sat nervously shredding a napkin. She told me later that after we left she had picked up the shreds of the napkin and put them in a baggie and written “Napkin Shredded by Gardner Dozois” and the date on a label. Whether that still exists or not, I have no idea.”  

Such souvenirs were obviously important to Sheldon. When Gardner and Susan started to leave, she looked around hurriedly for something to give him as a memento and ended up handing him an oversized blue plastic paper clip—the one you see enshrined above.

Such souvenirs were not important to Gardner So he gave it to me.

Thus it was that this luminous object passed from a believer to an infidel to a believer again. This is the Wheel of Samsara in action.

 

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A Comprehensive Dictionary of Cat

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After years of labor, I have finally assembled a comprehensive dictionary of Cat. It is as follows:

now?: Oh, please, sir. I'm ever so hungry. Will no one feed the nice cat?

 me-out: I'm only going to say this once, but I'm going to say it once as many hundred times as it takes: Open this door immediately.

hark!: Damn your eyes, why did you make me do this? Your impudence will not be soon forgotten. Clean up this hairball immediately. I'm going off to a quiet spot to plot vengeance.

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Barry Longyear R. I. P.

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Barry Longyear is dead. I wasn't going to note his passing because he and I were never close. We bumped into each other on panels at Worldcons a couple of times, but that was it. However, the current issue of Locus has, in addition to its obituary, only one appreciation, though a good one written by his agent, Richard Curtis. His star has since faded, but Longyear was once considered to be one of the greats in science fiction. He deserves more than that.

So I'll say a very few words here. If early on you're offended, please keep reading. I promise all will be made right. 

Back in the 1970s, Longyear was one of George Scithers' two most celebrated discoveries, along with John M. Ford, in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. As a writer, his every story, especially the Circusworld ones set on the planet Baraboo, hit the sweet spot with fans. As a human being, he was an absolute asshole.

The stories of the man's offensive behavior and curmudgeonly insults of his writing peers (in all fairness, he did punch up as well as down, though at some of the most beloved figures in the field) were legion. Thankfully, time has erased most of the specifics for me. Though I vividly remember the fanzine article he wrote about the Hugo Award, where he said that if he won one and had only enough room in his suitcase for the trophy or his soiled underwear, he would choose the underwear.

But then he went into rehab.

He went in belligerent and offensive, and he came out likeable. Again, I never knew Barry Longyear very well. But anyone could see that person he used to be was not the real him. The real him, it turned out, was a nice guy.

That nice guy, according to the Locus obit, founded Dragon Slayers, a Narcotics Anonymous group that he selflessly helped run for decades. That tells us a lot.

Longyear's career highpoint came when his novella, Enemy Mine, in which a human and an alien at war with each other must make common cause in order to survive. won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and John W. Campbell Awards. A low point ensued when it was made into a movie. Word at the time was that the suits looked at the script and said, "Where's the mine?" and so one was inserted. Reportedly, the whole thing went down from there. The movie was a flop and by all accounts deserved to be one.

Curtis relates, I'm sure correctly, that Longyear wrote two sequels to the story and his own version of what the movie should have been. A year ago, Twentieth Century Studios decided they wanted to do a remake of the movie. Contracts were signed in time for the ailing author to know that there was a good chance his story would be done up as it deserved. I could have wished that he had lived long enough to see the movie and that the movie was everything it should have been. But writers live on hope, and Longyear lived long enough to experience that hope one last time.

Go with God, Barry. I hope your movie is one of the great ones.

Above: The picture of Barry Longyear was taken from Hazelden Publishing.

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Books I Have And You Don't: Penna School Report 1869--a Commonplace Book

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This entry in the series may be cheating a little... But most readers of this blog are on the bookish side, so coming up with something none of you have is a challenge.

 Anyway, sometime in the 19th century, either one or two men... And here I have to pause because Albert B. Flagg and Indecipherable M. Stone both put their names and addresses (22 Derby Street, Jamestown, NY) in the front endpapers. They both, or presumably one of them, were or was the editor.

So, as I was saying, someone(s) took a book he or neither of them gave a fart about and turned it into an anthology of stories clipped from the newspaper.  Back then, newspapers published overt fictions with titles like (chosen at random):

[WRITTEN FOR THE NEW YORK WEEKLY]

THE INDIAN'S REVENGE

A TALE OF ILLINOIS

BY FRANK E. T[AGESPOT]E CLAIRE

"an  o'er true tale"

Which begins:

The scene of this sketch is laid on the Illinois river, something over a hundred miles from its mouth, where the town of Meredosia now stands. The time of which we write, the pioneer days of the Pioneer State, prior to its admission into the Union.

There are also poems and non-fiction articles that the compiler(s) found amusing.

And it has to be said that most of these gems of prose and poetry so carefully preserved from the winds of time are dreadful. So much so that I have never read the whole book through and can only sample it in small sips.

Yet, every now and again, I pick up the product of the (surely young) Mssrs. Flagg and Stone and am transported back to their time. When newspapers printed fiction. And readers cared enough to want to preserve what they felt were the best of that.

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Mattie Brahen, Briefly Remembered

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Today, I attended the memorial service for Mattie Brahen, author and the wife of Darrell Schweitzer. Darrell was of course devastated. He wrote a memorial for Mattie and very wisely had the funeral parlor director read it for him, rather than attempt it himself and risk breaking down in public.

The parlor was filled with friends and family. Several came forward to speak. And then it was over. 

At times like these, I feel the loss of Gardner Dozois most acutely. I've heard him speak at several funerals and he had the gift of summing up a life in a handful of words, always ending with, "You could do worse."

Thinking about Mattie, and Darrell, and Gardner afterwords, I speculated about what Gardner might have said were he there. Something, I think, along the lines of;

She read the books she loved. She wrote the books she loved. She sang the songs she loved. She loved the people she loved. You could do worse.

And I honestly don't see how you could do better.

Above: I swiped Mattie's picture from her Facebook page. I honestly don't think she'd have minded.

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One-Day E-Book Sale Tomorrow: The Iron Dragon's Daughter

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Open Road Media is putting the e-book of what may be my most popular novel, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, on sale tomorrow, June 11th, That's one day only. The price will be $1.99. And, with apologies to the rest of the world, this offer is good in the US only.

And here's the entirety of my sales pitch: If you like e-books and are curious about my novel and live in the United States, you might consider buying it.

I don't believe in haranguing readers.

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