Time Travel for Fun & Profit

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This just arrived in yesterday's mail:  The Time Traveller's Almanac, edited by the Vandermeers and containing my story, "Triceratops Summer."

"Triceratops Summer" is an interesting story because while almost everyone who reads it think it's one of the sweetest, most positive things I've written (myself included), my son, Sean Swanwick, believes it's the bleakest, most nihilistic thing he's ever read. And he's read both "The Dead" (my version, I mean, not Joyce's) and "Radiant Doors."

De gustibus non disputandum, I guess.

The collection itself is what we call a bug-crusher, weighing in at over a kilo and a half and containing enough fiction to satisfy your appetite for time travel for a long time to come.  It made me wonder, in fact, if these enormous summary volumes of various sub-genres of SF aren't a sign of the end-times of science fiction.  An implicit statement, I mean, that yet another segment of it is done and complete and can be placed on the bookshelf next to the collected Shakespeare and the single-volume works of the Lake Poets.

But these dark moments pass, like the shadows of clouds on a summer meadow.  Whatever the truth may be, I shall continue to write as if both the genre and I were immortal and the long centuries stretched out before us, verdant and serene, waiting for me to fill them with words.

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This Glitterati Life: Capclave 2013

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I had a fantastic weekend at Capclave, hanging out with my friends.  Below are a scattering of things that were said then.  I apologize for how many of them are my own quips and comments, but I didn't think to take notes.


And then I heard . . .

I ran into George R. R. Martin and mentioned that I got a kick every time his fame broke into a new category.  "I never in my life dreamed there would be bobbleheads," he replied.

To my surprise, George hadn't yet heard that there were two porn parodies of Game of Thrones in production.  When I told him that, he said, "Maybe I should try out for a role."

George's wife Parris, a long-time friend, recommended A Feast of Ice and Fire, the companion cookbook to the series, saying, "It's not just a good book, the recipes are delicious."

Michael Dirda and I chatted for a while on the virtues of James Meeks' terrific novel The People's Act of Love, which I read on his recommendation.  I told him that when when I was in Ekaterinburg and said that at Englishman had written a great novel about the Russian Revolution, they denied the possibility and wouldn't even allow me to tell them its name or the the name of the author.

Anatoly Belilovsky and I chatted about Pavel Amnuel's story,  "White Curtain," which Anatoly translated into English and which Gordon Van Gelder is going to publish in F&SF.  "Amnuel is at the top of the second rank of Russian science fiction authors, just below Yefremov and the Strugatskys," he told me.  "But this is going to be his first English-language publication."

I ran into Charles E. Gannon, who showed me his latest book, Fire With Fire.  "The second book in the series will have a very different cover," he said.  "I like it, but worry that readers will want a series with a uniform look."  To which I replied, "Remember Heinlein's covers back in the Sixties?"

There was a panel on writers who used primitive technology, where Howard Waldrop, who was the poster boy because he doesn't use email, absolutely destroyed the basic premise of the panel.  He was asked how he managed to find carbon paper and replied, "I used to buy it at yard sales.  But now I just use a copier."

David Hartwell told me that the second and final volume of William H. Patterson's biography of Robert A. Heinlein will be out next year.  "I never realized it before reading this," he said, "but Heinlein was a bit of a con man."

I spoke with Ian Strock about his Fantastic Books print-on-demand company which is publishing an interesting mix of old and new books.  He looked genuinely happy over how well it was doing.  "I'm able to sell works in the public domain for two dollars less than than books where I have to pay the author," he said.

"It's traditional for you to buy a magazine from me," Darrell Schweitzer pointed out, so of course I did.  I am a slave to tradition.  But I can't seem to remember how this specific one ever began.

My own personal best moment came when, on one panel, cartoonist Steve Stiles said, "I hate fucking unicorns." To which I replied, "Then STOP DOING IT!"

On the George and Howard and Gardner panel, Gardner Dozois reminisced about the infamous Barbara Marx Hubbard Nebula banquet speech:  "Evolution was bunk, she said.  We were were all beamed down from outer space, whole and perfect.  At which point, Michael Swanwick leaned over to me and said, 'Then why do I have an appendix?'"

At the same panel, Gardner described the presentation Howard had once done at a Worldcon of all the science fiction movies ever made, the peak moment of which was when he had everybody don 3-D glasses and then threw wadded-up sheets of paper into the audience, shouting "Meteor storm!"  For years after, convention planners begged him to do it again, but he never did and swears he never will.  "Howard is as stubborn as a mule," George said.

However, at my final panel, I took a snapshot (above) of Howard summarizing the plot of The Invisible Man.  So never say never again.

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My Capclave Schedule

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As ever, I'm on the road again.  This time to Capclave, Washington D.C.'s finest science fiction convention.  Which is in Gaithersburg, but never mind that.

Here's my schedule:

Saturday

4:00 pm: The Worlds of Clifford Simak (Ends at: 4:55 pm)

Panelists: Jamie Todd Rubin (M), Darrell Schweitzer, Alex Shvartsman, Michael Swanwick

50 years ago Simak won a Hugo for Way Station. He also wrote City and the Hugo and Nebula winning "Grotto of the Dancing Deer." Yet today, few younger fans have read his work which is available only in the small press and "public domain" compilations. What happened? What makes his stories so timeless? What do you think is his best work and how can it be revived for today's audiences?

7:30 pm: Mass Signing 

10:00 pm: Name Drop and Quote Panel. (Ends at: 10:55 pm)

Panelists: Scott Edelman, Andrew Fox (M), Steve Stiles, Ian Randal Strock, Michael Swanwick

Nothing but bragging rights here as the panelists drop names and share quotes as they discuss the best experiences, novels, stories, and conventions they have ever seen. Or not.

Sunday

9:00 am: Agents and You (Ends at: 9:55 am)

Panelists: Tom Doyle, Emmie Mears, Lawrence M. Schoen (M), Michael Swanwick

Agents are very important to authors. Sometimes you have a great match from the beginning, other times the situation changes. Hear the experiences of authors at different stages in their careers.

2:00 pm: Low Tech Writers (Ends at: 2:55 pm)

Panelists: Dina Leacock, Jamie Todd Rubin (M), Michael Swanwick, Howard Waldrop

Harlan Ellison uses a typewriter, a manual typewriter. Asimov refused to fly. And our special guest Howard Waldrop doesn't use email. Why might some writers about the future refuse to use technology? How does this influence their fiction? What would happen to society if more people followed their example and opted out?


And speaking of this literary life . . .

I drove out to Bala Cynwyd today to have lunch with master fantasist Gregory Frost.  We covered a lot of territory but the single coolest project we worked on was the early scheming-out of a collaborative fantasy story.

It's going to be a great story, too.  I could tell by how gleeful we both were as we kicked around ideas for the plot, lines of dialogue, and the like.  Oh, we were flying!

And that's all I'm going to tell you.  The story is going to be too good to give any of it away here.  But stay tuned.

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Eleven Words of Wisdom from Tom Purdom

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I'm home from the fabulous SFWA Mill-n-Swill in New York City.  Picture two large rooms with three free bars, thronged with publishing professionals, and you can imagine the clamor.  Loudest damn get-together of the year.

But a productive one.  My traveling companion, Tom Purdom, and I had dinner with editors Sheila Williams and Neil Clarke, and up-and-coming editorial professional Emily Hockaday.  I talked over my new novel with my agent, Martha Millard.  I learned a lot of useful information.  And I picked up a fair amount of gossip.

None of which I'll share with you today.  Instead, I want to pass along eleven words of wisdom from Tom Purdom.  I like traveling with Tom because he's a serious conversationalist, a witty man, and someone whose memory goes back further than mine.  I enjoy talking with him and he's always worth listening to.

We were talking about the mania new writers have for self-publishing e-books and how unprepared most of them are for the enterprise.  Yes, there have been successes.  But those I've talked to all emphasized how much hard, pragmatic work they put into it.  If you aren't already famous and you want to self-publish, you really should have a business plan, I said, and it shouldn't be based on wishful thinking.  Word of mouth is all very well and good.  But it didn't kick in for Moby-Dick until long after Herman Melville was dead.

But Tom cut right to the core of the matter.  "There's a big difference," he said, "between publishing something and making it available."

There it is, in a nub.  If all you want is for your work to be available, it's never been easier.  But if you want thousands of people to read it . . . well, you've got to be published.  By professionals.  They might be the staff of a major publishing house, who are prepared to offer you money in advance, send out ARCs to reviewers, and distribute your fiction to bookstores.  Or they might consist solely of yourself.  Both routes are possibilities.

But in either case, you want people who know what they're doing.

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Michael Swanwick, Trencherman

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And now for something completely different . . . a link to somebody else's blog!

Lawrence M. Schoen has a series on his blog titled Eating Authors.  As he explained it to me:

Given that the protagonist of much of my fiction styles himself a gourmand, a couple years ago I started a feature on my blog where I ask other authors to share recollections of their most memorable meal. 

Lawrence is a genial guy and I like him, so I said yes.  And I told him about the time that I -- moderate and abstemious man though I am -- was a Trencherman for a Night.

Click here to read the entire story.


And as always . . . 

I'm on the road again.  Today it's a flying visit to New York City for the SFWA Annual Reception for Industry Professionals, an ungainly name for a pleasant event that's pretty much universally referred to as the Mill-n-Swill.  (I don't know who came up with that nickname, but I'm pretty sure it was an editor; and I think I can guess which publishing house; and I know which one I'd bet twenty bucks it was.)

I'll be back Wednesday, possibly with tales of lust and fury among the glitterati.  But probably not.  It's been decades since Thomas Disch got drunk at a SFWA event and took a swing at . . .  Oh, wait, the other guy is still around.  I'm afraid you'll have to wait to hear that story.


Above:  I've said it many times before, but it bears repeating.  Lee Moyer is a brilliant and witty artist.  Any time one of my publishers wants to commission him to do another cover for me, they'll have my full support.

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K3LOID

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Okay, it's Friday and my computer is barely speaking to the tubes and chutes of the Interweb, so I'm posting a video trailer for K3LOID, a short film by Big Lazy Robot about a robot uprising.  It looks to be great fun.

The robot uprising seems to be the default meme for robots.  The very first appearance of robots (well, actually artificial humans, which would make them androids; but this is where the word was invented; and anyway that fight has been long lost)  in R. U. R. by Karel Capek featured a robot rebellion, and almost a century later we're still playing out the same fantasy.

Robots were a mainstay of science fiction from their initial speculative invention, continued strong through the1970s and then dwindled to almost nothing in the 1980s as various pundits articulated the many irrefutable reasons why there would never be humanoid robots.  Followed in the 1990s by a swarm of Japanese patents for humanoid-ish robots that could do the many things it had just been established they never would.

You don't see a lot of written science fiction about robots nowadays  (film robots are a different story), I suspect mostly because so many of them already exist.  But I think they're going to make a comeback.  All that's needed is one major story with an original and compelling vision of what robots might become.

New writers should take note.

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The Imagination is a Horse . . .

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In response to Monday's post about "Radiant Doors," perhaps my bleakest story (unless it's "The Dead"... how do you quantify such things?), Mark Pontin posted the following request:

... But perhaps at some point you'll take a break from Darger & Surplus and dragons -- however profitable and entertained the audience for such fiction might be -- and take the chance to write more stories like 'Radiant Doors'?

This is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.  Alas, the answer is anything but straightforward.

It's true that I've been writing a lot of what Graham Greene called "entertainments" lately.  In addition to the works cited, there are also my Mongolian Wizard stories, the fourth of which will be appearing at Tor.com soon.  These were inspired by Poul Anderson's Operation Werewolf and the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. and there are three more stories in various stages of completion on my hard drive.  I imagine these would also be seen as a distraction. 

Why have I been writing entertainments?  I honestly don't know.  The imagination is a horse.  I've learned how to ride mine, but not how to tell it where to go.  All I can do is hang on and hope for the best.

This does not mean that I won't be writing any serious stories.  On the side of the bookshelf by my desk, I have post-it notes with the names of six novels and a dozen shorter works I hope to get to in the foreseeable future.  They do include a new Darger & Surplus story.  But also a major collaboration with Gardner Dozois, a long story about dissecting a giant intelligent alien worm, a story set on a cloud, a Christmas story, a fantasy I promised Marianne for Dragonstairs Press, a werewolf story...

Most of these stories are nothing like you'd imagine they would be.  They are all worth writing.  And some of them are very dark indeed.  But which will get written when?  And what new ideas will rise up from the primordial murk in the meantime?  Your guess is as good as mine.

I'm only riding the beast.  And so far as I can tell, he doesn't take requests.

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