Beelzebub in Yellow

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How cool is this? Artist Manuel Preitano, inspired by the title of my new collection, Not So Much, Said the Cat, took it on himself to draw Beelzebub as a long-time rival to the arch-grifter and dog of action, Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux (known to his friends as Surplus).

Admit it. You want to see those two tangle.

Manuel Preitano also did the quite charming cover for the Italian edition of Dancing With Bears, His portfolio page, with that illustration, can be found here.

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"One of the Master Short Fiction Writers..."

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I'm home!

And in the mail to greet me is this month's Locus, with Gary K. Wolfe's review of my just-published new collection Not So Much, Said the Cat. Here's some of what he had to say:

 Michael Swanwick has been one of the master short fiction writers in the field for decades, and one of the most eclectic. He seems to know so many traditions of fantastic literature that you can sense his glee at being able to juggle them, often in the same story, in a way that is somehow both deeply original and playfully allusive.

And also:

Even when a story begins with a sequence that seems familiar from a hundred SF or horror stories, Swanwick opens it out in unexpected ways, and demonstrates as consistently as anyone now working that the craft oft he literary short story and the materials of SF and fantasy can not only be compatible, but impressively synergetic.

I never express gratitude for a review because that seems to me an insult to the reviewer. Thanking one for a positive review would imply that the review had been slanted as a favor to the writer under question. But there's no denying that I found this review very satisfying.


And for those who crave food for literary thought...

Also in the August Locus is an interview with David D. Levine, in which drops this intriguing theory by our old friend Anonymous (but maybe the interview will prompt the theory's creator to step forward and take a bow.):

I read an essay in a fanzine years ago... predicated on the idea that science fiction grew out of a tradition of sea stories that started in the 1700s...The idea that you can travel from one planet to another in a matter of weeks or months rather than days or decades. The fact that the captain of the starship is the one who is in charge, that there is no effective communications between captains and their bosses back home, the relationships of people within the ship, the relationships of people on the ship to the places they arrive, the idea that each island has a single culture -- a single climate, a single religion, a single language -- all of these science-fiction tropes come directly from the sailing mechanics and realities of 1700.

Which, true or not, you have to admit is pretty nifty. I could argue it both ways.

This is, incidentally, one of many reasons I subscribe to Locus -- to be surprised by intelligent discourse.


Above: Beelzebub, minor prince of darkness, checking out his reviews.

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And As Always...

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I'm on the road again!

Well, I will be tomorrow. I'll be teaching at Clarion West in Seattle all next week. Originally the Week Six teacher was scheduled to be Geoff Ryman, who is a wonderful writer, an admirable human being, and one of the most likable guys you could ever hope to meet. Alas, he fell afoul of a Kafkaesque bureaucratic mixup that has temporarily deprived him of his passport, stranding him in the U. K.

This means that I PROBABLY WON'T BE BLOGGING AT ALL NEXT WEEK. When I teach, the students get everything I have. Nothing is certain in this phenomenal world, of course. But I doubt I'll have the time or energy to post anything here.

I'll be back here on Monday, August 1st.

In the meantime, if you'd like to support Clarion West, you can find their website and contribute to their Write-a-thon here.

Or, if you'd like to support the genre in a more cerebral manner, you could read one of Geoff's novels. I am particularly enthusiastic about The Child Garden and Air, but anything by Ryman is first-rate. The man is astonishing.

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Beelzebub On Tour

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My life is an odd thing, sometimes. Case in point. I've been conducting a Cat Tour with Beelzebub ("Not the real one, obviously," as I never tire of mentioning he said in "Of Finest Scarlet Was Her Gown") to support the any-minute-now publication of Not So Much, Said the Cat, my brilliant new collection of short fiction. Forthcoming from Tachyon Publications.

The highlight of the Cat Tour had to be Beelzebub's participation in a Scotch-tasting party at Roscon, Russia's national science fiction convention. But he's been seen many other places as well, from Red Square to Baltimore.

Pictured above is Beelzebub keeping a sharp lookout for trouble in Mattapoisett, an old Massachusetts whaling port on beautiful Buzzard's Bay.

More adventures are forthcoming.

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One Rule To Ring Them All

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It's Monday and suddenly I'm swamped with work. No time for anything deep. So I thought I would share with you the One Rule of Writing that Overrules All Other Rules.

The thing is that writing is not a single skill. It is a family of skills all of which result in superficially similar end-products. This means that no single piece of writing advice works for all writers. Write every day? Works great for many of us. Totally useless advice for others. Write from your own experience? Invaluable for some Not so great for people who write about zombies, alien planets, and serial killers. And so on.

So when a reputable source offers writing advice, keep an open mind. Try it. If it works, pat yourself on the back and put it in the tool box. If it doesn't, discard it without regret. It's still good advice. But it's good advice for some other kind of writer.

One piece of advice that's almost invariably true is this: Your characters have to interact with each other. Otherwise, no story. Invariably true. Almost.

I say almost because I advised someone on a story a while back and recently he shared with me his revised version. In it nobody interacted at all. That was, in fact, the point of the story. It worked. And there's no arguing with that.

So here's the One Rule: Anything you can get away with, you've gotten away with.

So endeth my sermon. Go ye and write better stories.

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Universe Box Preview

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The other day I posted a photo of the first completed box of the Universe Boxes Project. Now here's a glimpse of the interior. Pretty nifty, eh?

The Universe Boxes are issued in an edition of thirteen, of which ten will be offered up for sale by Dragonstairs Press, the nanopublishing juggernaut founded and operated by Marianne Porter. At their center is a stab-bound book with decorative papers containing a 10,500-word story, "Universe Box," written by me. It has never been published before, so this is a true first edition.

Here's how it begins:

Out of the everywhere and nowhere the thief fled, quarks and galaxies crunching underfoot, vacuum rippling like a banner in his wake. Skipping nimbly in and out of space and time, he dropped down into the quantum slush underlying physical existence and then up again into the macrocosmic realms of which reality is but the tiniest province. Nightmares beyond human imagining howled and ravaged at his heels. Nihilism and despair sleeted down on his upturned face. But the thief couldn’t have been happier. His grin was so mad and bright that it would melt granite.
 His erection was shocking.

You'll notice that not only is the book itself autographed by the author, but the contents list is autographed by both Marianne Porter and me. That's not only because the work modifying the cigar boxes and the selection of found and created items was done by Ms Porter but also because each box contains a "vaccine," one of a series of small artworks she has created, in which select items are sealed permanently in vaccine bottles, an activity straddling the line between art and shamanistic activity. 

Some items within the box, such as the book and a bundle of calling cards for characters in the story, are common to all the boxes. Some are common to other boxes but not to all. And some are unique to each box.

I exist in order to create interesting things. So you can imagine how happy I am with this collaboration. 

Nota bene: Dragonstairs Press does not do pre-orders, even for dear friends. A week before the boxes go on sale, information about them will be posted on the Dragonstairs website here. 


Above: Photo by Henry Wessells. Whose website at http://endlessbookshelf.net is well worth your perusal.

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In Which I Am Interviewed by Chris Urie

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The industrious Chris Urie, writer and Associate Editor at Geekadelphia, has interviewed me for Clarkesworld. The occasion is the imminent (soon! very soon! sometime this month!) of my new Tachyon Publications collection, Not So Much, Said the Cat.

Her's how it begins:

Why does the cat say “not so much?”
He’s a character in a story about a young teenaged girl’s attempt to rescue her father from Hell. Beelzebub is there for whatever reasons a cat would be sent to perdition, and when he delivers that line he’s telling the girl that she might be lovely to look at for other humans, but for a cat . . . Which he does simply because he’s a contrarian and in Hell honesty is an offense to local community standards.
I hadn’t thought of this before, but Beelzebub—“Not the famous one, obviously,” as he says—and I have a lot in common. We both enjoy telling the truth in unexpected ways.

You can find the entire interview here. Or you can simply go to Clarkesworld itself here and poke around, maybe read a few stories. It publishes a lot of good fiction.

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