How to Help (Part 1)

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Ruhan Zhao sent me the link for the American Red Cross's dedicated funds donation site for China earthquake relief. I did a quick Web search, and this appears to be the most reliable way for foreign nationals to make a donation.

If, like me, you'd like to contribute to the effort, you can find the site here.

Ruhan also tells me that Cecilia Qin, who was my volunteer translator during my stay in Chengdu, may be sleeping on the sports field with other students while the threat of aftershocks continues. This is a minor inconvenience compared to the misery of those caught by the worst of the quakes. But it really brings home the vast extent of the displacement this disaster has caused.

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A Mountain of Books.

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En route to Congres Boreal, I stopped by Lloyd Currey's place. (That genial man is pictured above, standing among a tiny fraction of his books.) L. W. Currey, Inc. buys and sells "rare, fine and collectible first edition books in all fields of popular fiction, with an emphasis on science fiction and fantasy literature from the earliest times to end of the twentieth century." I spent a happy hour or two wandering through his stacks of pre-WWII fiction, marveling at such titles as Queer Tales and Through the Sun on an Airship.

Alas, I cannot find my notes and so am unable to give you a fuller report. But Lloyd did show me his extensive selection of James Branch Cabell first editions, beautifully made and illustrated books in pristine condition, and mentioned that since the man's star has fallen so low, the prices on them are quite reasonable. I don't know exactly what reasonable is in the rare book field, but if you're looking for an entree into what can be an extremely pricey hobby, well, here's your opportunity.

I'll tell you a little about Congres Boreal on Friday. It won't be a full con report, though -- I have a novel to write.


An Update on the Earthquake in China

Ruhan Zhao reported in the "Comments" to yesterday's post: I have got a confirm from an editor of Science Fiction World magazine that all the editors there are safe.

Those giants pandas in Chengdu and Wolong (much closer to the earth quake center than Chengdu) natural centers are also safe.

Cecelia Qin wrote me from Chengdu, just a few minutes ago: Things here in Chengdu are not so bad. But I'm extremely worried about my family since my hometown locates just right next to the center. Luckily they are all fine. But, my mom is a doctor and is the head of a hospital, their major job now is to save all the patients that transported from center...all the safe places are cleared for the patients, but I'm not sure the doctors are so safe as well.

Like everyone else who's following this story, I'm tremendously moved by the enormous relief effort being mounted by the Chinese people. If anybody reading this knows where a contribution of money would do the most good, I'd be grateful to hear of it.

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Winooski Gorge

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Driving up to Montreal on I-89, I caught a glimpse of what in my youth we called simply "the Gorge." From the car, it looked like nothing special. But it loomed large for me in those years. Here's what I wrote in "A Changeling Returns," and essay originally published in Meditations on Middle-Earth:

You grow older, you grow more wary. As a boy in Vermont, I spent almost every day of one summer fishing in the Winooski River. I didn’t tell my parents that my favorite spot was a backwater just below the hydroelectric dam at the head of a stretch of river bounded by high, steep cliffs to either side, which we all called the Gorge. The river churned wildly as it went through the Gorge, and every few years a teenager died falling from the cliffs. And I certainly didn’t tell my parents that the way to the backwater was through the old power plant, and involved scrambling down the jagged, rusted-out remains of iron stairways and a running leap over a gap that would have, at a minimum, broken bones if I’d slipped. For all that, those long summer days spent with my best friend Steve, fishing and talking and playing cards and reading stacks of comic books from each other’s knapsacks, were one of the best times of my life. I wouldn’t trade the memory of them for anything.

Years later, somewhat transformed, it appeared in The Dragons of Babel:

The Gorge extended half a mile down-river from the hydroelectric dam to a sudden drop in the land that freed the Aelfwine to run swift and free across the tidewater toward its confluence with the Great River. The channel it had dug down through the bedrock was so straight and narrow that the cliffs on either side of it were almost perpendicular. The water below was white. Crashing, crushing, tumbling as if possessed by a thousand demons, it was energetic enough to splinter logs and carry boulders along in its current. Anyone trying to climb down the cliffs here would surely fall. But if he ran with all his might and jumped with all his strength, he might conceivably miss the rock and hit the water clean. In which case he would certainly die. Nobody could look down at that raging fury and pretend otherwise.

It was an endlessly fascinating prospect to contemplate: Stone, water, stone. Hardness, turbulence, hardness. Not a single tree, shrub, or flower disturbed the purity of its lifelessness. The water looked cold, endlessly cold.

Is there anything for which we feel so much nostalgia as that which, when we were young, we knew could easily kill us?


An Apology

I was, as I feared might happen, unable to find the time and opportunity to get online while at Congres Boreal (wonderful event! more on it soon), but I was not expecting to be overdue with Monday's post. Alas, I got home at ten yesterday night, far too weary to add a single word. Next time something like this comes up, I'll manage it better.


The Earthquake in China

As you may have heard, there was a massive earthquake in Sichuan Province, China. Science Fiction World, the widest-read SF magazine in the world, is located in Chengdu, so those of us who made new friends there last year were of course concerned. Luckily, they seem to be untouched. I've received an email from my fellow writer Haihong Zhao, who says:

Chengdu is quite close to the center, yet the situation there was not bad. Most of the area was in the mountains, so the information could not be transported immediately, there will be heavy rain this evening, which will make the
matters worse.

We are watching, the whole China is watching, and acting.

The Chinese Army has been mobilized to lead relief efforts and the government is apparently pouring resources into the area. (Quite a contrast with Myanmar!) If I learn anything that you can't find out more immediately elsewhere, I'll let you know.

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A Quick Note

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I'm off to Montreal for the 2008 Congres Boreal (my apologies for not having mastered the art of adding accents to Web posts), and while I shall try to blog while I'm there, there's a small but measurable possibility that I won't mange to get access to a computer. If there's nothing here on Friday, that's why and I apologize for it.

But I expect I'll manage. I'll certainly try.

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This Glitteratti Life

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Strange Smile Competition:  I finally have photographic evidence of the Avram Davidson Society luncheon last Thursday, May 1, thanks to David Hartwell.  Above, l-r:  David Hartwell (he got a waiter to take the pic), myself, Henry Wessells, and Adrian Dannatt.  Every group photo has to make at least one person look odd, and it seems that this time I drew the short straw.

The gathering was as small as the Society has ever garnered.  People were out of town, already committed, etc., etc.  But it was still worth making the effort and the two hundred mile round trip because... well...  I'm a member of the Avram Davidson Society.  How cool is that?

The book I'm holding up, incidentally, is The Other Nineteenth Century, which is the collected Avram Davidson steampunk stories.  If you read only one AD collection in your lifetime, you should make it The Avram Davidson Treasury.  But the steampunk volume is good as well.

And My Latest Adventure in Reprint-Land . . .

My contributor's copies of The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy arrived yesterday, and I had fun sampling its contents.  In the introduction, editor Mike Ashley says that he has "presented the stories in sequence from the least to the most extreme, so that your imagination can expand as you work through the book."

So of course the first thing I did was check where my story, "Radio Waves," ranked on the Weird-o-Meter.   Fifth from the end, out of two dozen.  Not bad.  Edged out by Ted Chiang's "The Tower of Babel."  Perfectly fair.  That was one strange story.  But is Sean McMullen's "A Ring of Green Fire," the book's ultimate story, really more extreme than Ted's and mine put together?  And the very first story is Andy Duncan's "Senator Bilbo," in which arch-racist Theodore Bilbo is a hobbit and the descendant of one B. Baggins.  Is that really less extreme than the notion that when you die, the world turns upside-down and you fall off?

Well, half the fun of an anthology that purports to rank its stories by objective criteria is arguing with the results.  This is a big fat book, containing a lot of very cool stories, many of which I hadn't read before.  So I'm happy.  Particularly since my story is deemed way more extreme than Howard Waldrop's.

If anybody cares to do their own ranking of these stories by Extremity/Edginess/Sheer Bugfuck Weirdness, I'd love to see the list.  Though I'll disagree with that one too.

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Sleek, Chic, and Ever So Geek

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In Richard Mason's response to last Friday's posting, he mentioned had-powered digital cameras which Sony made -- but, sadly, only as a promotional item. Alas, many of the coolest things in the world are issued in limited, and thus unobtainable, editions. As witness the above absolutely real Chanel USB key. Manufactured in an edition of 250 for an in-house promotion.

You won't be seeing this one on Ebay anytime soon, either. Chanel frowns on its employees profiteering from its brand. In fact, the Chanel employee who showed me the key made me promise not to mention her name.

Pretty cool, though. Anybody interested in getting more young women involved in IT might want to look into this.

And the exact opposite . . .

There are a zillion USB keys out there in the form of twigs, thumbs, rubber duckies, you name it. But if I had to choose the single one that was the exact opposite of the Chanel, it would have to be this one.

Et un amuse bouche . . .

Aberrant Dreams has an interview with me here. Here's a snippet:

I've definitely got a love-hate relationship with the genre. On the one hand, I love the work of writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley, Fritz Leiber, Paul Park, and all the others, who've written magnificent works that only fantasy makes possible. On the other hand, too many writers have learned how to write formulaic imitation fantasy. Sometimes looking at the fantasy racks can be as depressing as discovering that the Shire has been gentrified and all the hobbits cleared away to make room for condominiums and Appleby's and Gap outlets. It hurts the heart.

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This Glitteratti Life

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It always happens.  Not to you, maybe, because you're better organized than I am.  But always to me.  Two minutes after I hit St. Mark's Square in Venice, my camera died.  Standing in front of the Tsar's Bell in the Kremlin, my camera ran out of juice.  And so on, in Sweden... Finland... Croatia...  If if would be a really good idea to have a snapshot, my camera's not available.

Which is why there isn't a photo on today's post.  

Yesterday, I got up, ran a few errands, and then drove a hundred miles north to New York City for the Avram Davidson Society luncheon.  This august organization exists to promote the memory and reputation of one of the great American short fiction writers of the Twentieth Century.  It's entirely a coincidence that two of my editors were there.  Henry Wessells, founder of the Society, of course published What Can Be Saved from the Wreckage?  James Branch Cabell in the Twentieth Century, famed for its 17-copy limited hardcover edition signed by myself, Barry Humphries (you may know him as Dame Edna), and JBC himself, and has plans to do something else by me, though not this year.  And David Hartwell is my editor at Tor -- insert mandatory plug for The Dragons of Babel here -- as well as being a friend of long standing.  David and I discussed, among many other things, the logistics of our trip with James and Kathy Morrow to Congres Boreal next week.

Then a quick hundred-mile jaunt home to feed the cat, pick up Marianne, and drive downtown for dinner with Gardner Dozois, Susan Casper, and Ricky Kagan.

I mention all this not to dazzle you with my fabulous social life (though if you cared to be dazzled, I wouldn't object) but to explain why I haven't whomped up something more substantive for today's post.  

I was having a life.

So may we all.

Et un amuse bouche pour vous . . .

You probably want to hear a bit of the gossip.  Hmm... well...  Gardner (who edits, remember, The Year's Best Science Fiction for St. Martin's Press) tells me that Jonathan Strahan's new anthology, The Starry Rift, is an early front-runner for best science fiction anthology of the year -- despite the fact that it's aimed specifically at the YA market.

What's that?  Oh, yes,  We really do gossip about business and art, and a lot of the gossip is simple praise.  I know how unlikely that sounds.

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