The Rarest and Least Valuable of Books

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The picture above was taken in Montreal by my friend Rob . I'd run into Charlie Stross, who wanted to talk business and just as we were about to pop into a bar in the basement of the Palais de Congres de Montreal, Marianne said, "What's wrong with the absinthe bar, across the street?" So the four of us and Gail as well ordered our absinthes and the waitress brought out the traditional water-drizzling device for melting the sugar cubes into the drinks.

I was doing legitimate business, really! But after seeing the picture, I don't think I'll be deducting the abinthe from my taxes as a business expense.


And last Friday ...

I went, as I do most months, to the Philadelphia Fantastic reading. I pretty much had no choice, because I was reading "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled . . ." from Gardner's The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection. Marianne and I did the reading, actually, with her doing the suit's voices and me the rest. Which made it possible to read alout a text which is almost unrelentingly visual. Gardner Dozois also spoke on the making of the volume, and why publishing, science fiction, and indeed the printed word are all doomed to catastrophic collapse within the next five years.

But the best part of the evening is always the conversation at dinner afterwards. I told Darrell Schweitzer that I was able to inform Maureen Kincaid Speller that her copy of Madeleine was extraordinarily rare though very little desired, and he of course one-upped me. He'd recently found a century or more old collection of fantasy poetry (mythological creatures, Celtic fantasy kind of stuff) by a writer about whom absolutely no reference can be discovered on the Web. Further, it's inscribed by the author to his brother, and there are annotations of the text. So far as he can tell, his is the only copy of the book to survive. And there's no demand for it, because nobody has heard of the guy. "If he'd turned out to be Yeats, I'd be rich," Darrell said wryly.


And in the same conversation . . .

Victoria McManus told me that too many of my posts are too short. "Really?" I said. "I thought the whole point was to be brief, so people could sip quickly and browse on."

So now I don't know. And I thought I'd put out the question to everyone reading this. Should these posts be longer? I can't guarantee to do anything about it if they should. But at least I'd know.

Waddaya think?

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In Which I Dwell Among the Immortals.

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Tachyon Publications, publishers of many fine books, some of them by (modest cough) yours truly, celebrates its fourteenth anniversary this Sunday at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. I've been there. Terrific bookstore. Great place to drop a lot of money on printed materials you may not technically need but definitely want. The festivities will include the Emperor Norton Awards, a "special giveaway gift" for the first 50 guests, food and drink, special guests, and a tribute to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction on its 60th Anniversary. You can find Borderlands here and Tachyon here. Tachyon's blog entry about the event is here.

I won't be there in person, but I will be there in spirit and in audio recording as well.

All of which I mention primarily as justification for boasting about the fact that a story of mine is included in the forthcoming The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder and published by -- no surprise here -- Tachyon Publications.

Let me repeat that. A story of mine made it into The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction! We're talking about an anthology that includes Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," Philip K. Dick's "The Electric Ant," and Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon." And I am there.

Is this the fulfillment of a goal formed many long years before I sold my first story? Why, yes it is. Thank you for asking.

You can see the press release for the book here.

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There is Hope For Us All

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I am not, as you may have noticed, one of the good kids who sit up in the front row, brightly scrubbed and eager to learn. I am, I afraid, one of the bad kids who sit in the back row and say fuck, as Ian MacLeod defined us in "1/72 Scale." So, often, when I'm asked a question like "How important is it for a science fiction writer to go to college?" I won't respond with a proper absolutely-necessary-best-years-of-your-life-rah-rah-rah answer, but with the truth.

No. Not needed. Look at the Golden Age writers who essentially created this genre. Yeah, sure, Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke went to college, but they were the exception. Most of the greats in our field were autodidacts. The kind of stuff we need to know, they don't teach in school.

Still, it's pleasant to learn that high school dropout Fred Pohl has finally received his degree.

You can read the Locus squib here. Or the full-scale New York Times article here.

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The Immortal Eileen Gunn

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Here's a picture from Worldcon, of Eileen Gunn showing off her newest award -- Pour Le Merite, informally known as the Blue Max. It was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military honor, and I presented it to Eileen for courage in the face of . . . well, me.

Did I mention that we recently sold "Zeppelin City" to Tor.com? It'll be posted sometime in September, I think, and it's a barn-burner of a story. It's got Zeppelins, slidewalks, a spunky girl inventor named Radio Jones, an ornithopter pilot named Amelia Spindizzy, and giant naked brains in glass jars. You don't get much more science-fictiony than that.

Eileen likes to claim that we worked on it for fourteen years. She exaggerates by something like a decade. But I do seem to recall that the science was cutting-edge when we began.

Speaking (as we weren't) of bookstores . . .

Saturday, I went to Balwin's Book Barn, out in Wyeth country in Chester County. The Book Barn is that most sensible of institutions, a barn filled with used books, which you are permitted to buy.

The only quibble I have with BBB is that it's run by people who know books, so the chances of my ever finding a first edition of The Hobbit priced at five bucks is pretty much nil. But after I'd gone through their (relatively small) science fiction section, I chanced upon two hardcovers of my own books -- Jack Faust and Bones of the Earth, I think, but I could be wrong. Both were pretty reasonably priced at eight dollars a pop, and both were shelved in the Modern Fiction section. So I whipped out my pen, autographed them, and put them back on the shelf.

Now, whoever is sensible enough to buy them, can get a particularly nice deal.

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Greg Frost, Liar

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I'm fresh home (if fresh is the word) from Pittsburgh and completely exhausted. But does this exempt you from my implicit promise to provide you with something diverting every Monday and Friday? It does not.

Fortunately, Gregory Frost took the Liar's Club of Philadelphia to Lititz for a day trip. Here's the television footage:



And the best part? Greg doesn't live in Philadelphia. He lives in Merion.

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What Does a Fan Look Like?

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Yesterday I blogged about Kyle Cassidy's project photographing fans. Well, he left the URL for the pics in a response to yesterday's post, so that means we're all free to look at them! You can find the photos here.

Above, chosen pretty much at random, is Kyle's photo of Sharon Reynolds. Some of the people in the series are rather eccentrically dressed. But they look good too.


And on the Hope Mirrlees front . . .

I just now found a glowing review of Hope-in-the-Mist by the slightly mysterious MKS. I mention this for two reasons. One is that that midway through the review, MKS writes, "Swanwick's monograph is not a full-blown biography by any means, and I think he would be the first to admit it."

And since this is the only speculative sentence in the review, I wanted to say: Yes. Absolutely true. I admit it.

The other reason is that the review mentions that The Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees, edited by Sandeep Parmar and James Byrne, will be published by Fyfield Books (Carcanet Press) in 2011. I went to Wikipedia, and saw that this information is public, so now I can mention it.

Sandeep Parmar is also researching a full-scale biography of Mirrlees, largely based on papers that were not available when I was writing my monograph. I'll have a lot to say about this when it comes out, and it will all be positive. I got an advance peek at her introduction to the collected poems, and she's a very fine writer indeed.

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Kyle Cassidy and the Energizer Bunny ... Separated at Birth?

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As anybody who even casually follows this blog knows, Kyle Cassidy has a project going, Where I Write, photos of authors in their work spaces. So far it's been plugged in both Wired and Boing-Boing, and the contract for the inevitable book hasn't even been signed yet.

Well, Kyle went to his first Worldcon -- Anticipation in Montreal -- a week and a half ago, in part to publicize the project, excerpts of which were published in the program book. And as long as he was there, he set up his gear and started photographing fans! Show above is my own amateurish snapshot of Kyle at work. The guy is astonishing to watch. He focuses, frames, takes a few fast shots and in a matter of seconds comes up with a picture that's an honest portrayal of how his subject really looks and attractive at the same time.

Sort of the anti-matter universe opposite of a driver's license photo.

The results were so good that they spawned several more projects in Kyle's fertile mind. In addition to at least one other project he shot at the convention just as long as he was there. Kyle really is, to borrow John Irving's term, Captain Energy.

And it's contageous. Back in the early Eighties, it was new stories by the likes of Stan Robinson or Bruce Sterling that got me fired up to write more. Now it's just hanging around with Kyle. He reminds me just how much fun work can be.


And as long as we're talking about Ponyo . . .

I went to see Miyazaki's latest yesterday. Fabulous stuff. There's been a certain amount of grumbling because it's not better than Spiritied Away. But that's not what he set out to do. He's made a children's film for children. And it's a great one.

You should rush out to see it in the theater right away, though, because it's distributed by Disney which has a vested interest in keeping it away from American eyes.

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