Thinking Outside the Universe Box

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I was present, years ago, when Michael Dirda first visited Gardner Dozois' and Susan Casper's house. Michael examined the bookshelves and exclaimed, "Gardner, I don't think I've ever seen a collection of books looking so delightfully read!"

"I buys 'em to read 'em," Gardner replied.

Not all that long ago, Dragonstairs Press published Universe Boxes, a series of art assemblages containing a beautifully made stab-bound book of my novelette, "Universe Box." Each cigar box's contents were unique to that box (though some were common to all), they were quite reasonably priced as these things go, and only thirteen were made, of which ten were offered for sale.

Tres collectable.

But much in the spirit of Gardner Dozois, I writes 'em so people can read 'em. Particularly when a story is as much fun (it contains cosmic powers and giraffe wranglers) as this one turned out to be. So I resolved to sell it to one of the genre magazines just as soon as the collectable version sold out.

The Universe Boxes sold out in three and a half minutes.

So, long story short, I've sold "Universe Box" to Asimov's. Keep watching the skies! It'll show up one of these months.


Above: There it is, the distinguished thing. Credit for the boxes is equally split between Marianne and me; I wrote the story and she did everything else. That was a fun project.

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Portrait of a Leaf

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It's rushing the season, I know. But autumn is coming. And so...

Portrait of a Leaf

I planned to die young and leave a beautiful corpse. But when summer turned scorching, I did my small best to shade my comrades from the sun. This is the result.

But I do not complain. Others gave, and suffered, more. I did what I could. That's enough.


Above: Leaf, both text and image, copyright 2016 by Michael Swanwick. Today's post is a day late simply because I had no notion what to post. This happens, unfortunately.

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The Best Fourth-Hand Advice About Writing You'll Read Today

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In yesterday's New York Times, there was an article by movie-maker Mike Birbiglia titled "6 Tipes for Making It Small in Hollywood." I thought I'd pass on his Tip 2:

Don't worry about failing. There's a great video where Ira Glass explains that when you start in a few field, your work won't be as good as your taste. It will take years for your taste and the quality of your work to intersect. (If ever!) Failure is essential. There's no substitute for it. It's not just encouraged but required.

True that. I could name you dozens of promising writers who simply weren't willing to be terrible. But those names would mean nothing to you -- because they've never sold anything.

I could go on. But you get the message.


And for the numerate among us...

Yes, I know. My repeating advice from Barbigia which he repeats from Glass only makes it third-hand. But you don't imagine that Ira Glass came up with that himself, do you? I'm giving somebody the benefit of the doubt by not calling it hundred-and-ninety-third-hand advice. The author of Gilgamesh probably passed it on as something he'd come up with too.


Above: The Andromeda Galaxy in a composite photo of visible and IR light. From NASA, of course.

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An Ice Volcano on Ceres

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In Hal Clement's Half Life, people are dying off in droves from autoimmune diseases of unknown origin. Knowing they don't have long to live, a group of scientists decide to dedicate their remaining time to sheer hedonism. And what's the most fun you can possibly have? Obviously, basic research.

And, by God, he made an expedition to Titan to perform basic research sound like enormous fun. I admired that novel greatly.

Sometime later, I wrote a story called "Slow Life," which was set on Titan. In homage to the master, I named the spaceship the Clement and the lander the Harry Stubbs. Harry Stubbs being the rean name of the man behind the pseudoym. Sometime between the writing of the story and its publication, I ran into Harry and told him I'd done this and gushed about how wonderful his novel was.

Harry was pleased. "It's good to hear one of my other novels get praised for a change," he said. Referring obliquely to Mission of Gravity.

That was Harry's last Worldcon. Any other writer would have died just before I had the opportunity to pass along news of my homage. But Harry was a gent. And being there to hear my praise was his last gift to me.


And I say this because...

This morning came news that there's an ice volcano on Cerees! This is astonishing. The science fiction community has collectively assumed that the dwarf planet would turn out to be a dented hunk of rock -- much as we now know Vesta is. But Ceres keeps coming up with surprises.

And the first thing I thought of when I read the news was thatHarry Stubbs would have gotten a kick out of it.

You can read the Science article here.

The Scientific American article here.

The Space.com article here.

The Nature article here.

And there are plenty more to be found.


Above: Ahuna Mons. Not active. But still impressive.

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A Hologram of A Hovercraft

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In response to my last post, Mark Pontin requested that I expand upon a comment I made on a Worldcon panel. With both respect and regret, Mark, I have to say Homey don't play that. Mostly because I'd have to research up a lot of examples and citations, which is a lot of work. And a lot of work is something I try never to do for free.

But I can offer something not far unrelated, off the top of my head: the concept of fossil science fiction.

Fossil science fiction is not my own invention. I heard of it maybe a decade ago at a Worldcon room party. A writer I know and admire (only I'm not sure which one -- the person I thought it was denies everything) told me that he'd run a story past a younger writer friend who called him on having a 3-D picture hanging on a character' s wall.

"Why is this here?" The younger writer said. "Holograms have come and gone. They're not a likely part of the future anymore. The only reason you've included it is because they were in stories written when holograms were futuristic. Now it's fossil science fiction."

We got into a discussion of future things that once were. I suggested hovercrafts. Like holograms, they're still around. But, like holograms, they're a niche product rather than the commonplace we once thought they would be.

"And a hologram of a hovercraft would be DOUBLY fossil!" my friend exclaimed.

Examples of fossil science fiction are legion. Perhaps you'd care to post one below? In any case, the next-to-last thing a writer should do with a story, immediately before reading it aloud, is to go through it with a sceptical eye, looking for the fossil remains of other people's ideas.


Above: It may not be the Future, but you still want one. You can find the manufacturer's page here.

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A Strange Person To Encounter In Somebody Else's Story

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It is a strange thing to encounter one's own name in a story written by somebody else. But that's exactly what happened to me on the plane home from Kansas City. I was reading Jeffrey Ford's new collection A Natural History of Hell. Which is, so far, brilliant. I've always loved this guy's short fiction but it seems that over the years he's gotten better and better at it. My chances o getting a Locus Award for best collection next year may have just gone down.

Anyway, I had just started reading "Rocket Ship to Hell" which I had somehow missed on its first publication, when I came across the line, "Somewhere along the line Michael Swanwick told me I should check out Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness."

Wow! I remember that, too. It happened in 2001 at the Millennial Philcon, as that year's Worldcon was called. Jeff and I were talking literature (we're funny in that way; most writers don't) and when I discovered he hadn't read that book, I felt an extraordinary rush of pleasure at knowing that I was about to recommend a work to a writer who was the perfect reader for that astonishing book.

I remember also that on the way out of the convention, I stopped in the dealer's room and bought that exact same Ace Double he mentions in the story for, I think, a buck-fifty. If I'd known it was such a rarity, I'd have read it immediately. But as it is, it's languishing unread somewhere among my books, possibly in the cartons I boxed up when the shelves began to overflow. I should go looking for it one of these days.


And speaking of MidAmeriCon...

Over at PositronChicago. com, there's a recap of one of the panels I was on. This one was "Does SF Still Affect the Way We Think about the Future?" I'm always grateful for evidence that I managed to say something intelligent on a panel -- and I was far from being the only one.

You can read the recap here.


Above: There it is, the distinguished book, Jeff's collection, floating in the airliner window of the American night.

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Ruled By Mummers!

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Tom Purdom, the dean of Philadelphia science fiction writers and a friend of long standing, likes to mix up his reviews with the occasional astonishing choice. I am thinking, obviously, of the time he reviewed War and Peace as he would have were it a new release.

Well, Tom has done it again. This time, he's reviewed my first novel, In the Drift, first published over thirty years ago. He is kinder to it than I would have been (writers are hard on their firstborn), and careful to mention that I did get better later on.

The man's a mensch.

You can read his review here.

And, as Tom says, the ebook is available from Open Road Media.


And as long as I'm bragging...

Rave reviews keep pouring in for my new collection, Not So Much, Said the Cat. Perhaps most touching is the Locus review wherein the always-generous (a status I suspect he maintains by the simple expedient of not reviewing books he dislikes) Paul Di Filippo reviews every single one of the book's seventeen stories.

You can read it here. Or just go to locusmag.com and wander around. Always a worthwhile thing to do.

Meanwhile, over at the Open Book Society site, my collection got a five star review and so much effusive praise that I would blush to repeat a fraction of it. If this goes on -- but the reviewing season is almost over, so it won't -- I will begin to put on airs.

You can read the review here.


And as always...

I'm still on the road again. Which is why, what with misplaced adaptors and long car rides and the like, Wednesday's post is a day late. I apologize for that. Tomorrow's may be late too, since I'm flying home then. But I'll do my best to get something up.

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