First Glimpses of The Iron Dragon's Mother Characters

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I am, I am told, a more visual writer than is usual, in that making sketches and pasting pictures encountered in random magazines into my notebooks is a major element in my process of world creation. Most writers, apparently, don't do this.

The other day, I came across an old notebook from 2017 (that's it to the right) and in it were a few of the characters I was trying to bring to mind.. So I thought I'd share them with you.



Top: The Dowager as a young woman. 

She was a lot more innocent and vulnerable then. And far less dangerous.

Above: Raven.

Sometimes my entry is only a sketch--often, my take on the soul or innerness of a character. The sketch immediately above is of Raven, who started out as a minor character but quickly grew in significance.

I make no apologies for the quality of my drawing. We all have our crosses to bear.

Above: Nobody and her Shadow.

This is an interesting character because she never made it into the novel. That happens sometimes, and I'm sorry for it. The Shadow would have been a separate (though connected) character.

Above: Esme.

Strangest for last. When I first pasted this in my notebook, I had no idea who the character was. I wrote nelf on the picture itself. But I wasn't getting an elfin vibe from it at all. So I tried again and wrote Little Black Riding Hood. Which shows I wasn't even sure what piece of fiction she might go into. (I also wrote The Legion of Riding Hoods, which I still think would make an entertaining comic book title, on the facing page.) Finally, I listened to the picture itself and wrote Esme before her del with the Year-Eater underneath--and that one stuck.

Esme was going to be a minor character when she first appeared in The Dragons of Babel But she grew in significance as the novel went on. That she would pop up in The Iron Dragon's Mother  was completely unexpected.

What makes this picture particularly strange is that the girl shown is significantly older than the Esme in the books. The Year Eater is a mysterious entity and while everybody thinks they know what it means to make a deal with her, him, or it, apparently no one does.

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"My God! There's a Lost Civilization in Our Refrigerator"

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It's happened at last. One of my optioned stories has been made into an animated episode of Love Death and Robots, now streaming on Netflix.

The adult science fiction animation series  takes advantage of the nature of its medium. Each story takes exactly as much time to tell as the story requires--anywhere from five to fifteen minutes for the first series. So the plot doesn't have to be cut or padded out to make it fit a Procrustean time-slot. That's brilliant.

And what do I think of what Tim Miller, the director, did with "Ice Age?"

 I think I really lucked out. The combined live-action-and-animation adaptation stayed remarkably true to the original story. And where changes were made, they were all to the better. I laughed out loud when Rob said, "Too soon."

A lot of the success of the piece is due to Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who play Rob and Gail, a newlywed couple moving into a new apartment who discover something unexpected in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. The original story relied heavily on a kind of deadpan humor in the characters' reaction to this absurd event. It couldn't have been easy to convincingly deliver lines like "My God! There's a lost civilization in our refrigerator. (Try it yourself.) But Grace and Winstead really nailed it.

So I'm delighted. If you watch it, I think you'll be happy too. Probably not as happy as I am. But happy.


And of course . . .

The question has to be asked: What did Gail and Rob, the then-newlywed couple I based the story's characters on, think of the film?


They loved it.

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The Devil's In the Tarot Deck

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Rachel Pollack, who is an authority on the tarot as well as a very fine writer, once told me the reason why stores selling tarot decks usually keep them in locked display cases. There is a belief or tradition, it seems, that for a tarot deck to work it has to be given to its owner. And, human people being the swine that we are, some of us interpret that meaning that a stolen deck will suffice.

So, to make sure that a) it works and b) I don't force my wife into a life of crime, I bought Marianne the Philly Tarot.

There's a nifty story behind it. Artist James Boyle was commissioned to create an illustration for a Philadelphia Magazine article on the rising popularity locally of Tarot cards and the occult. (An article, incidentally, that could have been written any year I've been alive.) His illo (below) was so very cool that both he and the magazine were inundated with requests to know where people could buy the entire deck.

So Boyle opened a Kickstarter account and in one day got orders for three times his target amount. Then he got to work, not just making the drawings but coming up with witty local associations for the cards.

So in thie deck, the Devil is (of course) Gritty. The Emperor is Ben Franklin, the Empress Betsy Ross, and The Lovers are of course Rodin's The Kiss. So far as I can tell, there's not a dud image in the lot.

It's also better made than it had to be. The edges are gilt, the cardboard is of excellent stock, etc., etc.

I would have loved this deck just for Jason Kelce (who, wearing Mummer gear after the Eagles won the Superbowl, famously said "No one likes us and we don't care") as Justice.

Not that the artist needs more business, but if you have a desire to buy the deck, you can do so here.


And as always...

I'm on the road again! Details when I return. In the meantime, the house is protected by My Son the Black Belt and Miss Hope, the noted mad scientist cat. So don't even think about it.

Immediately above: Miss Hope on her Spectromic 20 Photometer doing important science stuff.

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Josh Hitchens IS Jeffrey Dahmer (Again)

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Those who read my blog on a regular basis know that I think that Josh Hitehens is a cultural treasure. Six years ago, Marianne and I had the privilege of seeing his original one-man performance as a serial killer in a play he wrote himself, The Confession of Jeffrey Dahmer. Last night, we saw it again, in the company of Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Rickett and Bill Wood. 

So, half a decade later and half an hour longer, how does the performance hold up?

It's still terrifying.

The basement space at the Art Church of West Philadelpia wasn't as scary a venue as the near-lightless garage of the original performance. But it's still an intimate experience that puts you very close to a man the likes of which you pray you never run into. (Chairs are set up for seventeen audience members -- one for each of the men and boys Dahmer murdered, though director Ryan Walter says that if anybody is absolutely desperate to see the play, he can slip in a couple of extra chairs.) And Hitchens does a miraculous job of putting the audience in the mind of someone at the extremes of human thought and experience.

This time around, I was struck by how funny the play was. After his performance, Hitchens returned to discuss the play with the audience. Everyone was free to leave if they they wished; nobody did. So I asked about those lines. "About 85% of he play is taken directly from Jeffrey Dahmer's only words," Hitchens said. "All the funny lines were verbatim."

So for ninety minutes or so, we got t live inside the mind of a monster--and a human being. Because the monologue's intent is not to exploit the sensationalistic aspects of what happened--though those were not whitewashed, either--but to give us an idea of what it would be like to be such a man.

There's a line from the original version, since revised, which I like to quote every now and then: "I slept with over a hundred men and boys and I only killed and ate seventeen of them. I think that should count for something." Imagine that said in a flat, affectless voice and now you have some idea of whether you want to see this or not.

But whether it's your sort of thing or not, it's an astonishing performance, a magnificent piece of theater, the sort of accomplishment that justifies is art and its genre.

There are still a few tickets left, I believe, though the run ends on the 17th.  If you wish, you can buy tickets here.


And I Cannot Resist  Including . . .

After the show I took a snap of Chip Delany and Josh Hitchens together. Two very brilliant creators, though in different media.

Note Ryan Walter in the background, aware of the camera and posing for it. That's a true man of the theater. I like his attitude.


Above: Photos by Michael Swanwick and free to use, so long as you include a credit. I should mention that the photo on top is of Josh Hitchens as himself; he looks quite different when he's being Dahmer.

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Carol Emshwiller, 1921 - 2019

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Carol Emshwiller has left the planet. She lived for almost a century yet her friends -- pretty much everybody who knew her -- agree that her death came all too soon.

I have no memory of how we first met. One day, on seeing me, her face lit up and she cried, "Michael! It's so good to see you!" and I realized that we were old friends. This was, by the way, her response to all her friends. She was a beacon of life. It shone from her.

I also have no stories about her. Stories are about conflict and it's almost impossible to imagine conflict with Carol. But I do have one small anecdote.

We met by chance one day, as we occasionally did, and I said, "Carol! How are you doing?"

"I'm in mourning," she said. "I've just finished writing Ledoyt and all these characters I've been living with for over a year are gone. It's as if they'd all died. I'm bereft." Then she asked, "Don't you feel the same way when you've finished a novel?"

It's not all that often that writers talk seriously about writing. So I gave Carol's question some thought. Then I said, "No. I see it as a moment of liberation. I've been persecuting all of them for 400 pages and now I've stopped. I imagine them running down the street, waving their hands in the air, shouting, 'I'm free! I'm free! I'm going to buy a hamburger!' and 'I'm going to move to Poughkeepsie and nothing's going to happen to me there!'"

Which is, in part, what I value about Emshwiller's fiction. She wrote stories and novels totally unlike anything I've ever written. She gave me (and all the rest of us) windows into worlds we never could have seen without her.

I have no interest whatsoever in fiction I could have written myself. I found Carol's work intensely interesting.

I'm particularly fond of Carmen Dog.


Above: Photo by Gordon Van Gelder. He'd just given Carol a Nebula Award and thought the moment should be memorialized. Used by permission.

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Happy Lunar New Year!

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So it's a brand new year all over again!

The Chinese New Year celebration always reminds me of when I was a young father and my son Sean was still an infant. Marianne and I had business downtown, so we parked in a garage in Chinatown and hit the street.

Which was when we discovered that it was the first day of the Year of the Rat. The streets were filled with celebrants and young men with cigarettes dangling out of the corners of their mouths were setting off string after string of firecrackers. It was gloriously noisy.

I was worried, of course, that the noise would frighten Sean. But instead, his eyes grew wide and he peered about him with wonder. Looking at his face, I could see exactly what he was thinking:  At last! The big people are doing something sensible!

To all my friends in China and everyone else who celebrates this holiday, let me wish you a Happy New Year.

The one day a year on which we big people put aside our ordinary concerns and do something sensible.


Above: Sean, some years later, celebrating the Western New Year at Gardner Dozois' and Susan Casper's apartment in Society Hill.

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The Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year! (Part 3)

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You've seen the runners-up. They were all worthy. In an ordinary year, any one of them could have  won. But this was no ordinary year.

Two works stood head and shoulders above all others for their towering bleakness and uncompromising refusal to even pretend to acknowledge the existence of the spirit of the season. When it came time to choose between them, even the Not At All Nepotistic Blue Ribbon Panel of Family could not find a rationale for choosing one above the other.

The adventure began with Sam Jordan's conceptual deconstruction of the traditional Christmas card. That's it immediately above.

Long term readers of this blog may remember Sam as last year's winner of the Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year competition. Which victory was achieved by writing a threatening seasonal note on a meat cleaver, burying the cleaver in a bloody turnip and then leaving the whole on the back porch in the dead of night. It was truly a breathtaking piece of work.

Mr. Jordan's submission this year was a genuine work of conceptual performance art. As the accompanying note says, "The Card is INSIDE the Ornaments." The accompanying hammer, complete with festive bow, implied that there was an obvious way to read the card.

One could, of course, employ tweezers. But to do so would be to show the white feather. So...

The hammer was raised.

And lowered.

It must be said that there is something exhilarating about deliberately smashing a Christmas ornament.  It explodes beautifully. It is an act of vandalism akin, one imagines, to flinging a stone through a stained glass window.

This is the first season's greetings I've ever received that made me feel complicit.

Inside the ornament was the message: This "card" represents the last of my creative ability as the depression tightens it's (sic) grip.

The solecism, it must be said, did nothing to lessen Sam's chance of winning.

So... you may well ask... What could possibly offer any competition to so remarkable an effort?

Simply this:

The seasonal card from Judith and John Clute is always an event because Judith Clute is a serious artist (you can find her web page here) and the card is a serious work of art.

Serious, it goes without saying, does not necessarily mean joyful.

The title for the original etching that became the card is 2666, which clearly refers to Roberto Bolaño's novel of the same name. Which, you will recall, involved an unsolved series of murders of women, the miseries of the Eastern Front in WWII, academia, mental illness, and other such matters.

A familiarity with the book is not necessary to recognize that Ms Clute's work is dark indeed. The woman in the center looks happy and confident -- clearly, she's got it all together. But darkness impinges upon her from either side, with images of death, war, and suffering.

As one member of the Not At All Nepotistic Blue Ribbon Panel of Family put it, this is a picture that says: No matter how happy you may be, the common fate of all is death --- death in the past, death in the future, death everywhere.

From a lesser work of art, this would be easily dismissed. But Judith Clute is, as has been said, a real artist.

For a very long time, the debate went back and forth. Could Sam Jordan's conceptual piece be disqualified as an obvious attempt to win the Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year  competition? No, it was decided. What could be more godless and atheistic than wanting to win such a competition?

Could, then, Clute's card be downgraded for being aloof from the entire competition? Also, no. Its sincerity had to considered an asset.

For the first time ever, the Not At All Nepotistic Blue Ribbon Panel of Family was deadlocked. Nobody could bring him or herself to vote either way.

And then... And then...

And then, a Christmas miracle happened! One of us moodily smashed another of Mr. Jordan's ornaments:

And it contained a message saying: May this ornament find you in good health for years to come!

"Christmas," somebody gaped, "is saved."

With a palpable feeling of relief, the Not At All Nepotistic Blue Ribbon Panel of Family declared that this warm message of good will moved Sam's offering one degree off of negative zero. It was declared first through tenth runner-up.

And the title of Godless Atheist Christmas Card of 2018 went to Judith Clute's 2666.

But it was a squeaker.


And for the second time in a row . . .

I have to apologize for being a day late with this post. I had it half-written when a certain family swept me away to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. By the time we'd watched and discussed it, built a fire in the wood stove, mixed Manhattans, and settled down to dinner, I had forgotten my obligations entirely.

For which I am sincerely sorry. The movie was good, though. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys the superhero genre.

Would it be a spoiler if I told you that Spider-Man dies? Okay, then, forget I said anything.

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