Retroactive Wit for Procrastinators

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What a stroke of luck! There was a button maker in the huckster room at MileHiCon 50.

What made this so fortunate  is that, as a former guest of honor at the convention,  Connie Willis was there too. And I see I'm going to have to explain this...

Long long ago in a galaxy very close to hand, back in the early 1980s, I had a notion. As a new writer of serious ambition, it was obvious to me who my peers were: people like Connie, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Kress, John Kessel, Pat Cadigan, James Patrick Kelley, William Gibson, and a handful of others.These were the people whose work I most admired and the people I was in friendly competition with. So one day, when there was a great deal of talk about the latest SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master (I think this was before Damon's name was appended to the award), whoever it was, I came up with the notion of getting a batch of buttons made reading Grand Master of the Future and giving them to all of my pals who I thought were likely future recipients of the award.

It was an amusing idea because we were all young and at the outsets of our careers... a little early to be thinking about such matters.

Alas, I never got the buttons made. Why, I'm not sure. Possibly out of mere cheapness. Maybe because I didn't want anybody to think any of my pals were seriously politicking for the offer. The reason doesn't really matter.

Then, decades later, the latest Grand Master was announced and it was... Connie Willis.

I had two thoughts then. The first was: Yeah, she's a good choice.

The second was: Why didn't I get those buttons made?

So when I saw the button making machine, I realized that I had the chance to make things right.

There's Connie up above, wearing a button reading Retro Grand Master of the Future. So an involuntary injustice has been made right.

I hope to have more of these made up as time goes by. In the meantime, I think that Connie Willis is an excellent Choice for the Retro Grand Master of the Future button.


And I should thank...

I really should thank the button-maker, who went through a great deal of trouble to find a printer to make the button possible. But, predictably enough,  I didn't think to ask her name. I am, alas, a Past Mater of what the French call l'esprit de escalier.


Above: I apologize for the strange color values of my photo. I'm not much of a photographer, I'm afraid.

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The Unmoving Pivot

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It seems to be the season for dreams. I had another of those ones last night.

I dreamed I met a Susan Casper impersonator. I was at a large house party with an enormous number of my friends and a lot of strangers too. I was talking to a woman I thought was Susan when she said, "I must have been the worst student you ever had, Michael."

Which took me aback because, as far as I could tell, I'd never taught Susan anything about writing. She had Gardner for that. So I just said, "Well, Susan, you always had your own vision and went your own way."

But in that instant, I realized that this woman couldn't be Susan, even though she sounded exactly like her. For one thing, she was too young. For another, Susan died a year before. Still, she was astonishing. Except for the youth and being alive and the strange comment, there would have been no telling.

When she left, I turned to Gardner (in my dream he was still alive) and said, "Who was that?"

Gardner, of course, said, "I have no idea."

So I went outside to reflect on how good it was to hear my name on Susan's lips again. Susan had a way of saying your name so that you could hear the fondness she had for you. Sometimes it was mixed with amusement or exasperation. But that fondness was always there.

I lay down on the grass and, staring straight up at the sky, thought, "I am the unmoving pivot." I could feel all of life whirling about me and, one by one, my friends falling away.

Eventually, I decided the time had come to leave. So I got up and went looking for the party's hostess so I could say goodbye.

But Janet Kagan was nowhere to be found.


And, again, as always . . .

I'm on the road. This time to Denver for MileHiCon.

Tomorrow at 4, I think, I have a panel discussion with Shaenon Garrity, best known for the (highly recommended) Narbonic and Skin Horse comics. It's a pairing so obvious that I don't have to tell you what the topic will be.

I'm sure we'll have figured it out by then.

Be there or be square!


Above: Susan Casper. All her friends miss her terribly.

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A Story Whose Name I Will Not Tell in a Category I Do Not Know

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I'm in print again! Collaboratively! In an editorial that's simultaneously fiction and non-fiction.

Okay, this may take some explanation. Especially since I can't say much about my contribution without ruining the... Story? Essay? Whatever it is.

Here's what happened. Some time ago, in response to something I had read, I wrote a work of flash fiction and sent it off to Sheila Williams. It has a title but I can't tell you it without ruining the... But let's not go there again. Anyway, I knew that Sheila would publish it. I just didn't know how. Because the work was... kind of tricky to put into a magazine. But I trusted Sheila to figure out a way.

Which of course she did. Sheila made my short-short the centerpiece of an editorial titled "Never Say 'Highly Unlikely' Again." So I have a new collaborative... something... in the November/December 2018 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

Thank you, Sheila.

As usual, the first thing I did upon receiving the magazine was to add the collaborative work to my bibliography. The only question was whether it belonged in the"fiction" or "non-fiction" section.

Ultimately, I had to create a new category: "fiction/non-fiction hybrids."

I realize this is all a little vague, but if you read the editorial, all will be explained.


And as always . . .

I'm on the road again! Or I will be soon. Tomorrow I jet to Denver to attend MileHiCon, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary by bringing back so many former guests of honor you'll have to brush them aside to get into the bar.

Being one of said former guests of honor, I felt I should attend.

So off I go! More adventures when I return.

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"Five Things Nailed to Joe Haldeman's Door"

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Dream Diary, 10/7/18

On my next-to-last night in Iceland, I had one of those dreams. One where someone you cared about isn't really dead after all.

In my dream, it was Gardner Dozois. It was only a few days after his death and I had suddenly realized  that there was a grace period of two weeks after you die before you have to go away. So I hurried over to his apartment.

When I got there, he handed me a thin typescript--maybe six pages altogether--of an essay he had just written. "I'd rather it was fiction," I said, "but I'll take what I can get." The title was "Five Things Nailed to Joe Haldeman's Door." 

"Aha!" I cried. "I know what this is." Because it was clearly a companion piece to an article Joe had written about his early days as a writer, titled "Five Things Nailed to My Door." Which had been written for I forget now what non-fiction book, possibly a collection of essays about his work. At which point, I dropped Gardner's typescript.


Gathering up the pages, I noticed that they had been misnumbered, so I said, "This is so very appropriate. I read Joe's piece a couple of days ago and every single page was numbered either 2 or 3--including the first one!"

Gardner threw back his head and laughed, then, that beautiful, full-hearted laugh of his. I felt a twinge of sorrow, then, knowing that this was the last time I would ever hear it.


At which moment, I woke up. It was night, and I'd heard Gardner laugh one more time. And I felt such a strange mixture of sadness and gratitude.

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Starlight Touching China

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I brought home from China a pendant for Marianne. It was a gift from Jie Zhang, one of my writing students in the Future Affairs Administration writing workshop. That's it up above, in use.

The pendant, as you can see, is a lovely piece of jewelry and Marianne was very happy to receive it. As Jie Zhang explained it to me, the spiral at the center of the piece represents starlight, the symbols around it are the Chinese names for constellations, and the line of stones downward represents the starlight coming down to touch the Earth.

So there's science touching science fiction touching craft. A tight little knot of creativity.
 
Jie Zhang has a store on Wechat, for those who use that app.  Here's (I think) the information for finding it.

And as always . . .

I'm on the road again. This time, I'll be in Iceland -- in part just to gad about, but mostly for Icecon, the national science fiction convention in Reykjavik.


More details as they develop.

Above: As you can see, I've packed everything I need for a tip to the North: a sturdy coat, a sturdy bottle of Scotch, and a sturdy cat.

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Beijing At Night

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What a wonderful experience Beijing must be to an architect! The city is filled with strange and wonderful buildings. A skyscraper is going about its business when suddenly the windows ripple in strange patterns. Fifteen-story hotels have traditional green-tile roofs. Occasionally, as above, the city even looks like yesterday's science fiction.

What you're looking at is the plaza with reflecting pool in the center of a cluster of buildings, one of which houses the Future Affairs Administration, a publishing house that began, if I recall correctly, as a science fiction fan group. Today, it has some thirty employees and publishes both on the Web and in good old-fashioned books. And it's still growing!

Last week, I ate a fabulous meal in a restaurant on the plaza and then went to a bookstore event on the same plaza. What a rich world this is, and what a remarkable place is Beijing!

Oh, and that yellow thing to the right of center, above? It's a viewing room, where people can enjoy watching the future taking place.

There's another photo of it, from a different angle, below.

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Oddly Misguided and Possibly Not Even Art

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There's a game I like to play on Facebook every now and again that I call Art or N'art? I have a fondness for challenging contemporary art and so when I'm visiting an institutional repository of such work, I'll take a photograph of something that might be art -- or, then again, might simply be a pile of crumbling bricks or some construction debris waiting to be hauled away. Then I'll challenge my friends: Is it art? Or n'art?

The answer, much like the Scarlet Pimpernel can be damned elusive.


Today I took a jaunt to 798 Art Zone, an old industrial neighborhood of Beijing that has been taken over by art centers and galleries and a swarm of parasitic cafes and shops. It was quite wonderful and I hope to return someday and spend a lot more time there. The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art had a major retrospective on Xu Bing, an artist I had never even heard of and now one of my favorites. I may write something about him here, if I can find the time.

I also went to see Muse, which is either a gallery or a show at the 798 Building. And here I find myself punked by my own petard. Art or N'art? Postmodern irony or misguided spectacle? I honestly dunno.

The exhibition consists of a series of room in which famous works by several great painters are projected on the walls... and partially animated.

Renoir's dancers slowly incline their heads toward and away from each other, seemingly caught in a nightmare from which they cannot awaken. All move heavily, sluggishly, as if trying (and failing) to escape the embrace of paint. Luncheon of the Boating Party rocks from side to side, people shifting in relation to each other, as if it were set not on a restaurant balcony but on a boat on a heavy sea. Watching it, I felt seasick.

Van Gogh's people, by contrast, only have to contend with the moving rays of a killer sun.

Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, blown up to fill a wall, suffers from daggers and confetti of light that flow down the image, giving it a kind of Hallmark romanticism, while little colored florettes dance about on the floor, doing their damnedest to distract the viewer from the original image.

A cat wanders through several of Matisse's jostling the bric-a-brac and complaining plaintively. As well it might.

Finally, a room titled Henry's Scissors strives to provide Matisse's cut-outs with a playfulness they already had. Bird-shapes flap, fronds sway, and snippets of blue assemble themselves into women.

Each room is accompanied by its own relentlessly chipper music.

So... Art or N'art? It certainly has the nervy chutzpah of much postmodern art. But if I had to guess (I wouldn't bet money), I'd go with N'art. I think it's a misguided attempt to "bring the classics to life," to make them accessible by turning them into spectacle.

But I could be wrong. Over at Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey, there's a life-sized Seward Johnson sculpture of Luncheon of the Boating Party which is well on its way to the the thing I saw today.

Which is to say, I'm baffled. Maybe somebody reading this knows for sure? If so... you tell me.

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