This is in the way of a peek preview. Several people here have expressed an interest in obtaining one of my bottled stories. Well, I've just created another one. "Moon Over Lubyanka" is 415 words long, counting the title. and it was inspired by an evening with representatives from Eksmo, my Russian publishing house, in a smoky little piano bar restaurant overlooking the infamous Lubyanka Prison. There was a full moon low in the sky over the prison, and Moscow never looked more beautiful or romantic than it did then. So romantic was it, in fact, that I found an excuse to lure Marianne out on the balcony and kissed her so that moment would remain perfect in my memory forever.
But neither the kiss nor Marianne feature in this story. I printed out a single copy, rolled it up, and placed it in an old Perrier Jouet bottle. Then I signed and dated the bottle with a diamond tipped pen and drove a cork into its neck. Marianne sealed it with red wax and pressed into it the Claddagh ring I bought her when we were engaged.
Finally, I destroyed all electronic copies of the story, leaving the one in the bottle unique in the old, unspoiled meaning of that word.
I've contributed the bottle to a worthy cause, and it's going to be raffled off. So you don't need to be rich to get it -- just lucky.
Exactly who is auctioning the bottle off and where can't be revealed just yet. But I'll let you know when the time is ripe. Probably in early July.
And the Poem du Jour is . . .
. . . mirabile dictu, by Yeats again. (Can you tell that I'm Irish?) Click here to read it.
Right now I'm slogging away at the opening chapters of the Darger and Surplus novel. This is the stage where a day's work is measured in paragraphs rather than pages, and keeping you advised on how little progress was being made would only convince you that the book will never get finished. But it will, it will, it will. I speak from experience. Meanwhile, life goes on. Two weekends ago, Marianne and I went to see the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. Alas, their site does not have the glorious array of photos it should, but it's a truly demented event. Surely everybody here knows the old saying, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you give an artist a bicycle, you're just asking for trouble." Well, way up in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia, it happened that an artist was adding a couple of extra wheels to his son's outgrown tricycle when a friend dropped by and was inspired to challenge him to a race. And the rest is . . . whatever it is. I dunno. Everybody seemed to be having fun, though.
And you simply cannot dislike an event which offers a special award for "the sculpture who breaks down in the most glorious fashion." Even the solecism is quintessentially Kensington.
And Yesterday's Poem du Jour . . .
. . . was by Dorothy Parker. Fondly referred to by those who love her work best as Dotty.
Here I am, up on the porch railing, hanging the flag for Memorial Day. The flag was the gift of Marianne's father, who served in the US Navy on board the USS Thurston. "I was off shore at every major battle in World War Two," he liked to say, "wishing them well."
My own father was a radar man in the Army Air Force. His bomber was the Mild and Bitter, known among those who care about such things as the first bomber to fly one hundred missions against the Axis and one of only two to fly two hundred missions during the war. He didn't talk much about the war.
Both men are, like so many others, gone. Today, we remember them all.
Last Saturday's Poem du Jour . . .
. . . was Pablo Neruda's "Saddest Poem." You can find it here.
How exclusive are the zines you read? Odds are that I can best you. Every day (or, when things are particularly busy every second or third day), I organize all my mail by topic, throw in any interesting articles I run across on the Web, and then add illos and the day's date.
Then I give them to Marianne. She's the zine's only reader.
A random scattering of my Daybooksis shown above. Some have cartoons and photos found online. (If "fair use" means anything at all, then it allows you to make a single copy to be shown to a single person.) Others are photos that I or friends have taken. The pictures above include the not-terrorist explosion in NYC, myself and friends (the "Special 'Shark Among the Lambs' Issue"), an old Congres Boreal poster, a b&w copy of a stunning photo by Vlatko Juric-Kokic (the color printer was down), an island (the "Special 'There Will Always Be a Sark!' Issue") and the fabulous James Patrick Kelly. Among others.
Kind of nifty, really. I've been doing this for I forget how many years.
And . . .
Yesterday's Poem du Jour was "Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats. Fabulous poet. Irish, of course.
Hi. A gallimaufry of items today, I'm afraid. First off . . .
Podcasting "Koboldtown"
Escape Pod has podcast "A Small Room in Koboldtown" as part of its project to (I believe) podcast all the current short-fiction Hugo nominees. You can find it here.
The story is read by Cheyenne Wright, of Arcane Times and Girl Genius (my nominee for Most Entertaining Story Ever; she's the colorist), and has my favorite be-careful-of-this-Swanwick-guy warning of the year to date:
Rated PG. Contains dark, seedy places and dark, seedy characters, only a few of them alive.
A Long Overdue Disclaimer Henry Wessells, who is not only my good friend but the man responsible for the publication of What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage?: James Branch Cabell in the Twentieth Century, wrote to correct my speculation in Monday's post that some reviewers might have been particularly kind to the book because they received their copies free:
Michael, As your publisher, it is with a wry smile that I tell you your theory of reviewer enthusiasm is full of holes! Steven Hart subscribed to the deluxe issue of Wreckage; and Douglas A. Anderson (yes, that one) bought a copy of the paperback, and reviewed it subsequently: "Swanwick is an engaging critic, and his enthusiasm for what he likes is infectious . . . . There is gold in the past as well as in the present, and it's nice to have writers like Swanwick point out the treasures." — Douglas A. Anderson http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=6947 Also, Paul Di Filippo lauds the book in the July 2008 Asimov's. Your pal, HW
So I am, not for the first time, wrong. Some reviewers, believe it or not, will put a lot of work into a review of a book they bought despite the fact that the money they receive will not pay for the book itself. I think we should all be a little appalled with admiration at that.
Stephen Saperstein Frug, who was as I expected appalled to discover that his (mostly positive) review was the most negative one I received, wrote:
Aside from the free/bought copy issue, I wonder if there isn't another difference: was I the only reviewer to have read the book without having actually read any Cabell?
And that may well be. One of the essay's chief functions, after all, was to make the interested reader aware of which of Cabell's books he (or, more rarely, she) need not bother with, and why. To read Cabell and like some of his books -- as I did and did -- is to feel vaguely uneasy that there might be something wonderful out there that one is missing. Which I also did.
But it occurs to me that I haven't yet posted a disclaimer that I should've put up in my very first blog. So I'll do it now:
MICHAEL SWANWICK IS A RELIABLE SOURCE OF FICTION. BUT NOT OF FACT.
I've been assuming all along that everybody understood this. But, of course, that assumption being about matters of fact and coming from me, is absolutely unreliable. I believe that Kurt Godel had something to say about this.
Oh, and I'll exempt my formal essays on Cabell and Mirrlees from the above. I researched them as best I could, and if I got anything wrong, I'll take my lumps for doing so.
Hylozoic Soil
Okay, this is just bizarre. Bizarre and cool. It looks benign, but it's hungry for your blood. What the heck was this guy thinking? I like him a lot.
And Finally, Laptop Skins
Capitalism discovers yet another way to separate you from your money!
And for those of us who admire Michael's relentless self-promotion...
I've just recently gotten three -- count 'em, three -- rave reviews for What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage?: James Branch Cabell in the Twentieth Century. In the latest New York Review of Science Fiction, Darrell Schweitzer writes:
This is the best literary monograph I have read in a long time . . . his little treatise makes clear, in away we've never quite seen it explained before, what happened to Cabell's career and why. It is a definitive autopsy report. Even the most devoted, lifelong Cabell fan will come away with insights.
And Steven Hart writes:
Swanwick has ranged the considerable length and negligible depth of the Cabell oeuvre and come back with good news about the good stuff to be found there. If, say, the Library of America decides it needs a suitable editor to bring James Branch Cabell into the Black Jacket Club, I know just the man for the job.
And in F&SF, James Sallis writes:
Cabell is a problematic author, and to all appearances was a difficult man, but for those interested in learning more about Cabell there can hardly be a better or more readable beginning than Swanwick's monograph.
But here's what's interesting about these and many previous extremely positive reviews. The book was published in an edition of two hundred. Which implies an astonishing reviewer-to-reader ratio. I suspect it's because publisher Henry Wessells was more interested in getting the book reviewed than in making money from it, and so sent out a significant fraction of the total run to reviewers.
Stephen Saperstein Frug, on the other hand, gave what he felt was a well-reasoned and -balanced review of the book here. He would be chagrined, I suspect, to be told that it was the most negative review of it I've received to date. And yet it was.
So why was everybody else so much more enthusiastic? I suspect it's because they received their books free while he had to pay for his out of his own pocket.
Another reminder, if we needed it, to take all reviews with a grain of sale.
What more need be said? There are strange things to be found on the long road between Philadelphia and Montreal. This is one of them. Here's a photo of James Morrow thinking appropriate thoughts in the dog cemetery.
Congres Boreal was delightful. I think it was Jean-Louis Trudel who told me that it was modeled after Readercon. But quite frankly, while Readercon is crammed with smart and articulate people, the conversations were better at Boreal.
I don't have the time to do a full con report. Among those present were Elisabeth Vonarburg, Karl Schroeder, Jo Walton, Catherine Dufour, Claude Lalumiere, Yves Meynard, and (briefly) Donald Kingsbury. I talked, I listened, I learned, I did a one-question interview with Karl which I've already sent to the New York Review of Science Fiction, and I posted a few photos on Flikr. You can find them here.
Kathryn Cramer also has some pix of Boreal up on Flikr, including one of me as the Clown of Death.
Me . . . In . . . Spaaaaaace!
A website called governmentattic.org has posted a "NASA List of books, movies, television shows, and music maintained on the International Space Station (ISS) for recreational/off-duty consumption." And guess who just barely squeaked in? The surprisingly genre-heavy list of book (lots of Lois McMaster Bujold, for example) includes several issues of Asimov's Science Fiction, one of which contains "The Word That Sings the Scythe," a revised-for-stand-alone-publication section of (yes) The Dragons of Babel. One small step for a writer, one giant leap toward getting a Lunar crater named after me someday.
You can read the list here. There doesn't seem to be much music on it. Maybe the astronauts have all got their own iPods?
What You Can Do (Part 2)
Marianne did a little more thorough search of the Web than did I and came up with Charity Navigator's list of the most effective places to contribute money for disaster relief in China. These include "4-star charities" Direct Relief International, Mercy Corps, United Methodist Committee on Relief (all three working with partner agencies in China) and ADRA (on the ground in China). You can check it out here.
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