A Farewell to Rosemary

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I learned the sad news an hour ago:  Rosemary Wolfe, Gene's wife, died over the weekend.

Gene Wolfe is, for good and sufficient reasons, much beloved in the science fiction community.  So too was Rosemary.  I did not know her well -- I chatted with her only a few times -- but everybody who did spoke of her with genuine affection.

Rosemary had serious medical problems, which made the past many years difficult for her and her beloved husband.  They also made it obvious how deeply and profoundly he loved her.  They two were devoted to each other.

If I start reflecting on the nature of a good marriage and what it means to the two people involved, we'll be here forever.  So instead, I'd like to offer up in Rosemary's memory, the smallest of recollections:

Some years back, Readercon celebrated its 20th anniversary and, as part of the ceremonies, every guest of honor they'd ever had was called up on stage in reverse order:  the most recent first and so on, all the way to their very first goh, Gene Wolfe.  I was somewhere in the middle of the mob.

When Gene's name was announced, I swear that I was the second person on his feet.  The first was Michael Bishop, appropriately enough, a guy whose heart is as big as they come.  Everybody on stage rose up, pretty much simultaneously, followed almost immediately by everybody else in the room.  It was the most heartfelt standing ovation I've ever seen -- and I've seen some that would bring tears to your eyes.

So far as I could see, there was only one person in the hall who wasn't standing -- and that was because Rosemary's health wouldn't allow it.  But I was watching her and she was the happiest person there.  She glowed.  And -- I swear I could tell -- she wasn't basking in reflected glory.  She was simply happy that the man she loved was being honored so.

That's how I'll always remember her.

God bless you and keep you, Rosemary.   I'm sure you're safe in His care now.

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One Heckuva Depressing Projection

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As always, I'm on the road again.  I'm tapping out this blog post late at night in a Days Inn room in Western Pennsylvania, so this will be brief.

Above, courtesy of the Planetary Society is a chart showing what's happening to NASA's planetary research budget both now and in the near future.  This is what happens when you have a Democratic president who doesn't think space research is important and a Republican Party that thinks anything the government spends money on is bad.

You can find the Planetary Society's exposition of the above chart here.

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The Parable of the Creche

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It's Christmas season and that means it's time for my annual telling of . . .

The Parable of the Creche

When first I came to Roxborough, a third of a century ago, the creche was already a tradition of long standing.  Every year it appeared in Gorgas Park during the Christmas season.  It wasn't all that big -- maybe seven feet high at its tip -- and it wasn't very fancy.  The figures of Joseph and Mary, the Christ Child, and the animals were a couple of feet high at best, and there were sheets of Plexiglas over the front of the wooden construction to keep people from walking off with them.  But it was loved.

It was a common sight to see people standing in front of the creche, admiring it.  Sometimes they brought their small children to see it for the first time and that was genuinely touching.  It provided a welcome touch of seasonality and community to the park.

Alas, Gorgas Park was publicly owned, and it was only a matter of time before somebody complained that the creche violated the principle of the separation of church and state.  When the complaint finally came, the creche was taken out of the park and put into storage.

People were upset of course.  Nobody liked seeing a beloved tradition disappear.  There was a certain amount of grumbling and disgruntlement.

So the kind people of Leverington Presbyterian Church, located just across the street from the park, stepped in.  They adopted the creche and put it up on the yard in front of their church, where it could be seen and enjoyed by all.

But did this make us happy?  It did not.   The creche was just not the same, located in front of a church.  It seemed lessened, in some strange way, made into a prop for the Presbyterians.

I was in a local tappie, shortly after the adoption, and heard one of the barflies holding forth on this very subject:

"The god-damned Christians," he said, "have hijacked Christmas!"


And while I'm talking about the holidays . . .


I might as well remind you that Marianne's nano-industrial complex, Dragonstairs Press has put last year's Christmas chapbook up for sale.  Every year since 2011, she's commissioned me to write three seasonal works of flash fiction for a holiday chapbook which she designs, assembles, and hand-sews in a signed limited edition of 100. The bulk of these go out to friends of the Press.  Those that are left over go up for sale a year later.


Last year's Yuletide chapbook, Midwinter Elves, started out with thirty copies available for sale, but a lot of them have gone into the mail already.  The original Solstice chapbook, It Came Upon A Midnight, was down to nine copies when last I checked.


The perfect stocking stuffer for that bookish Significant Other of yours.  Unless s/he's a collector, in which case you're going to be in big trouble if it get wrinkled.

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Midwinter Elves! From Dragonstairs Press!

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Every year, for almost a 33rd of a century, Marianne has commissioned me to write three flash winter tales for a chapbook that Dragonstairs Press sends to its particular friends at Solsticetide.  Then, a year later, those few chapbooks remaining are put on sale to the general public.

Yesterday, Midwinter Elves: Three Brief Midwinter Tales, the second Solstice chapbook, went on sale.  It was published in an edition of one hundred hand-stitched, signed, and numbered copies, of which thirty are still available.  And it costs only five dollars.

The three stories are "Cookie Elves," "Adam's Third Wife," and "Meryons."

There are also a limited number left of the first chapbook,  It Came Upon a Midnight: Three Brief Midwinter Tales.  Also five dollars apiece.

The three stories are "Snowflake People," "Mrs. Claus," and "Manger Animals."

Either or both are perfect for that obsessive bibliophile on your Christmas list.

And that's the end of the commercial.  You can find the Dragonstairs Press website here.


And why, you ask, are these collectible limited edition works so cheap?

When Marianne started making limited edition, lovingly crafted chapbooks, I asked a friend who knew the economics of small presses how much she should charge for them.  "Fifty dollars apiece!" he said cheerfully.  "Anything less and the real collectors won't take it seriously."

I told this to Marianne and she was horrified.

"I believe in the Beanie Babies theory of collectibles," she said.  "Price them cheap enough for an impulse buy.  Let them go out of print.  And whoever bought them first can reap the profits."

"You can make a lot more money the other way."

"I don't care," she said.

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my dream diary - 2

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December 6, 2013

Of this song, sung by Johnny Cash, all I could remember on awakening were the following lines:

Before the jury, on his knees,
He said, "Your honor, if it please,
I have no option now but God's own truth.
I'll show you there's no villain here
And that there's but one thing to fear --
Today's disaffected, misdirected youth."

Note:  this is, I think, the first time I've ever written song lyrics in my sleep.  Though I occasionally manage doggerel. And it almost scans!

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The Price of Success

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There are stories you read once, nod approvingly, and then promptly forget both the title and the author, because you don't realize at the time you're going to be quoting that work for the rest of your life.  As, for example, the one I read in (I think) Analog years ago, where a man realizes that the bureaucratic system for rewarding excellence in science and technology might as well have been created by hostile aliens to keep our technology backwards.  He mentions this idea to a colleague who enthusiastically promotes it -- and finds himself admired, feted, promoted, organizing conferences on the notion . . . and not actually getting anything substantive done with it.  Particularly nice was that, though it was never explicitly stated, by story's end the reader had reached the conclusion that the system was created by hostile aliens, and doing a bang-up job of holding back progress as well!

Something like that happens in literature too.  When Doris Lessing heard she'd won the Nobel Prize, she snapped, "Oh, Christ!"  She just wanted to write, and here the world was heaping distraction on her head, and she was going to lose a couple of months dealing with it all.  

I am far from being as successful as Ms Lessing.  But I must be doing pretty well, because I keep getting invitations to write incidental nonfiction -- guest of honor profiles for convention books, introductions for collections, and the like -- and, believe me, they take up a lot of time.

Nor are they things I can turn down.  An essay on R. A. Lafferty?  An introduction for Tom Purdom?  A blurb for Gene Wolfe or Eileen Gunn?  How could I not want my name associated with these guys?  Just being asked is like receiving a little medal of merit.  I'm working on three such at the moment.

I say all this not in order to whinge, but to advise young writers:  Right now, while nobody is asking, work on your non-fiction skills.  Teach yourself to think clearly and to write swiftly and well.  You'll thank yourself for that, down the line.

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Grand Master Chip!

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SFWA has just announced that the 2013 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award will go to Samuel R. Delany!  This is an award meant to be given to people who obviously, blatantly deserve it.  People like Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe . . . and Chip (as his friends call him).  So I don't think anybody had any doubt that would happen sooner or later.  But sooner is better.

I had the good fortune of discovering Chip's works early in his career and relatively late in my pre-career.  The Einstein Intersection shaped my writings-to-be in ways that will never be mapped out and may in fact be responsible for my fondness for creating works that sprawl across the boundaries of genre without concern for what they properly "should" be.  I've been following his works, both of fiction and of criticism, with enormous joy ever since.

Just how important is Chip to science fiction?  More so even than most of his admirers -- and they are a fervent lot -- realize.  Some years ago, my pal Gardner Dozois put together two anthologies of SF, one titled The Good Old Stuff and the other The Good New Stuff.  The first was to introduce the virtues of classic SF (what might be and once was called the Old Wave) to a new generation of readers.  The second was to highlight the virtues of those who came later (post New Wave, mostly).  Afterward, he told me that in his researches it became obvious that every writer in the first book had in some way or another been influenced by Robert A. Heinlein.  Those of the second had all been influenced by Chip.

You want specifics, but alas I do not have the time to write the book explicating them.  So I will only observe that John W. Campbell once observed that you could have too much innovation in a story, that if everything is new and bright and interesting that distracts from the central thesis of the work.  But Chip said no to that.  Interesting people, interesting worlds, interesting ideas, prose that feels free to turn a handspring if it feels like it.

Science fiction got a lot more interesting when Chip came into it.  As a reader, I just want to say:  Thank you, Chip.  I appreciate that.

Click here for SFWA's press release.


Above:  God in His library.  The "real" Samuel R. Delany is actually a very pleasant man, easy to get along with, great company.  If you haven't met him, I hope that someday you do.

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