Congratulations to Sergio Rebolledo!!!

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I confess that I was not aware of the Frank R. Paul Awards science fiction art, which were given annually by the con committee of Kubla-Khan from 1976 through 1996. And which have just now been resurrected, thanks to the efforts of Frank Wu and friends. But I learned of them yesterday, when Neil Clarke (of Clarkesworld) introduced me to artist Sergio Rebolledo, who was a nominee. Like Neil himself, Sergio is quite a likeable guy.

The awards were announced at the Buffalo NASFIC last night. On the road, with the con behind me, I logged onto the Internet and discovered that the winner for Best Magazine Cover was Rebolledo. That's it up above.

Which makes that brief encounter one of the highlights of the NASFIC for me.

I should mention that the winner for Best Book Cover was Kurt Miller for Lineage: Ravages of Honor, Book 3. You can see the cover and/or buy the book here.

You can read the entire list of nominees and honorable mentions here. 

And if you're wondering who Frank R. Paul was . . .

Shame on you! Frank R. Paul was the single best cover artist of the Hugo Gernsback era, responsible for images that were vivid, exciting, and absolutely gonzo.

I recommend you go to Google Images and search for his images. You won't be disappointed.

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E-Book Sale! In the Drift! Thursday Only!

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As happens often enough Open Road Media is placing my first novel, In the Drift on sale for one day only. That's $1.99 on this Thursday, July 18, 2024 in the US only.

And if you're curious about the title . . .

The novel is set in the aftermath of a full meltdown at Three Mile Island. Most of Pennsylvanis is uninhabitable, Philadelphia is ruled by Mummers, and the uninhabitable area is known as the Drift. Because it's where radioactive isotopes have drifted and fallen to earth. When I was writing it, the book was titled The Drift. It was bought for Terry Carr's Ace Specials line and promptly re-titled In the Drift.

When I asked why the change, I was told that my title sounded like a horror title, like The Fog et al. Fair enough. I didn't much like the title but, not having a better alternative to offer, I went with it.

(Background info: The book was a fix-up of three sequential novellas with connective material. The first novella was titled "Mummer Kiss.")

Time passed. The novel sold to France. I got a copy of the translation. They had re-titled it Baiser du Masque. I got out my French dictionary to see what that meant.

And it meant Mummer Kiss. The perfect title was staring me in the face all along.

Smek.

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Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Me on the Coode Street Podcast

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Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's first novel, Equimedian, has been described as "a love letter to the SF  of the '70s and '80s." Which I suspect is going to be the standard description of this book. So Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan invited Alvaro to discuss it, along with last year's non-fiction book-length interview with me, Being Michael Swanwick on their Coode Street Podcast.

I was a participant in the conversation, so I realize that you're going to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. But I think it was pretty darn good--and I've been in enough public conversations where I was less than stellar to know the difference.

If you're curious, you can find the podcast here.  You should check it out. It's an hour well wasted.

And . . .

Just to be clear, I greatly enjoyed Equimedian. You don't need to know science fiction in the extraordinary depth that Zinos-Amaro does to appreciate it. And the completely satisfying ending took me by surprise. You have no idea how rarely a book does that.

As for Being Michael Swanwick, it's a story-by-story examination of every work of short fiction I ever published as of when the book came out. And now you know whether you want to read it or not. Nothing I could say would change your decision one way or the other.

Isn't that charmingly modest of me? I am the king of the soft sell!

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What I'm Currently Working On

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As a writer, you get used to it. An old friend says hi, and then immediately follows up with, "What are you working on?"

 

When I'm partway through a novel, the answer is easy. Because writing a novel is an all-consuming thing. I might be able to squeeze in a short story, written piecemeal in those random bits of dead time when I'm not researching, writing, editing, or revising the novel. But it's just a sideshow.

 

Right now, however, I still haven't decided what my next novel should be. So, pictured above, is the stack of files containing close to everything I'm working on at the moment. That comes to: 

 

Four novel openings, ranging from 8 to 49 pages.

One essay.

One book introduction (for a reprint of somebody else's book).

Two beginnings of collaborative stories that may or may ever happen. The Eileen Gunn one will have to wait for her to finish her novel.

Five partially written short stories.

A file of six (one to two page) story openings: "Saint Jerry the Hermit," "Two Riders," "The Werewolf in Winter,""Dinosaur on the Moon," "The Water People," and "Mercury is Hell."

 

"The Werewolf in Winter" may well get written someday, just because that's a nifty title. The other brief story openings, probably not. The rest (with the exception of one-to-three novels) will all certainly be done someday, though it may take quite a while for some of them.

Right now, I grab the stack of files, look through it to see what I feel like working on, then sit down and add a page or six, or possible a paragraph, or else, like Oscar Wilde, I may laboriously remove a word I'd previously spent a day inserting. This is the glamour and magic of an author's life.

It's not the best way to write. (It can't possibly be!) But it's the one I'm stuck with.

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Rhymer by Gregory Frost (A Review)

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Today, I'm posting a straightforward book review of a fantasy novel I admire a great deal... 

 

Rhymer by Gregory Frost (Tor Books)

 

Gregory Frost’s Rhymer is easily the best thing I’ve read in the past year. It’s a… and already I’m having trouble finding the right descriptors. Initially, it looks to be a Celtic fantasy, with Thomas the Rhymer waging a one-man war against all Faerie. But the elves, it turns out, are an invading alien species from another dimension, so it’s actually science fiction. Oh, and because Frost keeps the historical events consistent with those we know, it’s also a secret history. And the elves themselves are straight out of a horror novel. But it could also be that it’s actually an alternate history.

 

Let me start over again.

 

Thomas Lindsay Rimor de Erceldoune is mad, to begin with. Mad and cursed with the gift of prophecy, he is clearly a precursor to or avatar of Tom O’Bedlam. One night, the Queen of Faerie comes hunting with her elf-troop and takes True Thomas’s brother away with her as a sacrifice to the Teind. On a whim, she cures Tom of his madness (but not his visions, which take the form of epileptic seizures and prophesies he cannot understand). This, as it turns out, is the biggest mistake she will ever make.

 

The newly-rational protagonist learns of the elven/alien plot to first reverse-terraform and then take over our planet. Being immortal, they can take their time. Being shape-shifters, they can assume powerful positions in human society. To oppose them, Tom must first learn how to use weapons. And before that, because even a hero must eat, he must learn a trade, that of stone-cutter.  

 

Everyone knows the pleasures we expect from an action-adventure novel and Frost delivers them most ably. But he’s also too canny a writer to give you exactly what you’re expecting. Through all the many twists and turns of plot, he carefully avoids those that have grown trite and predictable through overuse. And though True Thomas is the hero his world needs—experiences he’d much rather have avoided have made him immortal and given him the elven power of glamour—he’s also a convincing human being in a world that is recognizably our own. He has friends and family and loyalties and, in the course of events, a wife.

 

This wife is Janet of the green kirtle who, in the Child ballad “Tam Lin” (Thomas has many names in the course of his long life), saves her own true love from the Fairy Queen, and she is one of the most engaging aspects of this novel. Not only is she stalwart and capable enough to rescue Thomas from the darkest night of his soul but she is convincing as his spouse as well. They two form a working marriage, a union of peers whose support for each other strengthens them both. And how often do you see that in a fantasy novel?

 

There is so much to praise about Rhymer! All the characters in it ring true. The stonemasons sound like working class men. (When Thomas’ mentor, Alpin Waldroup, is asked in what battle he was injured, he replies, “Has it a name? I never heard it.”) The elves are everything that’s wrong about aristocrats, and then some.  The worldbuilding, both of Faerie and the Scottish Borders, is exemplary. I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that Gregory Frost has done the hard work that is the making of a great book and reimagined everything about it afresh. This is one hell of a satisfying novel.

 

Much more could be said. But I will stop here, before I drown you in a sea of superlatives.

 

In the way of such fantasies, there are two more volumes on their way. Rhymer: Hoode, in which True Thomas assumes the guise of a certain bow-carrying outlaw, available now, and a third book, which I understand will be set in Elizabethan times, will follow soon. As of this writing, I am midway through the second and avid to read number three.

 

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Happy Birthday, Karen E. Quinones Miller!

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Once upon a time, there was a young woman from Harlem and the Bronx who, because she was intellectually gifted, was offered a place in an overwhelmingly white school. She didn't want to go. A family friend, Mr. Johnson, a nice man who loved children, asked her why not. Eventually, she admitted it was because she wore hand-me-down clothes and didn't want the white children laughing at her.

Seriously, solemnly, he explained to her the importance of education and why she should make the best of herself that she possibly could. What he said made sense and she agreed to go. Shortly after, he gave her parents enough money to buy outfits for her new school

It was only years later, at his funeral, that she would realize that this kindly man was Bumpy Johnson, the "Harlem Godfather."

Karen E. Quinones Miller went on to join the Navy, get a degree in journalism, and work as a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her first novel, Satin Doll, got multiple rejections, so she published it herself to such success that Simon-Schuster won reprint rights in an auction. She went on to publish another seven novels and become an acknowledged authority on Harlem history.

Oh, and she became friends with Mayme H. Johnson, Bumpy's widow and co-wrote with her Harlem Godfather; the Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, the first ever biography of that complex man. Because Ms. Miller is the sort of person who always repays a kindness.

I was present when Karen was one of fifty writers picked by the city of Philadelphia to be recognized in the Philadelphia Literary Legacy project. The mayor of Philadelphia was introduced to her and he was clearly impressed.

All of which is buildup to this:

Today is Karen's birthday! If you like her, or women like her, please share so that others can look up her books and be made happy by them.

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One-Day E-Book Sales! Three Days Only!

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As happens from time to time, I've been notified by Open Road Media, who publish several of my e-books, that they're putting one of my books up for sale, one day only. Sometimes I learn of more than one sale in the space of a couple of days.

So I'm pleased to let you know that there will be three one-day sales this month. 

The first is for Jack Faust, which will be available for $1.99 ( US only) on this Friday, June 21st.

The second is for (again) Jack Faust, which will be available for $1.99 ( US only) on the following Friday, June 28th.

The third is for The Iron Dragon's Daughter, which will be available for $1.99 (in Canada and the US only) on Sunday, June 30th. 

So if you enjoy e-books and like getting them cheap... And if you're curious about two of my best novels... Well, here's your chance to consider buying one or two.

There. You won't get a softer sales pitch than that.

 

Above: I grabbed two of the books with the covers I like best and photographed them atop my desk. Marianne Porter, my wife, says that you have only so much organization in your life. No matter how much effort you invest in trying, you can't increase that amount--you can only decide where it goes. A great deal of organization goes into my work. Not so much into my workspace.

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A Taste of The War With the Zylv

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This Saturday at noon, Marianne Porter puts Dragonstairs Press's latest chapbook, The War With the Zylv on sale. That's at noon, East Coast Time. The chapbook is signed, numbered, lovingly stitched, and available for $11 within the US and $13 elsewhere, postage included. 

The story was inspired by Ariel Cinii's artwork reproduced above and used by permission of the artist's estate.

And just so you can have an idea of what the story is like, here's the first of six chapters:

First Contact

 

They came in peace.

 

The Zylv ship—sprawling, sinister, and elegant—entered the Solar System on a tight, sun-grazing vector, exiting and re-entering repeatedly over the next twenty years, dumping velocity with every passage. All the while radiating attempts across the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate with whomever might be living here: One plus one equals two. Two times two is four. The square of the hypotenuse. Pi. The Fibonacci sequence. Quadratic equations. Chaos theory. A form of combinatorics no one could make any sense of.

 

Earth responded as best we could. Once the conversation moved beyond mathematics, it became obvious how different the Zylv were from Terran lifeforms. Slowly, painfully, a common pidgin was created. Neither species learned much about the other. But by the time the Zylv ship—dark, gothic, and miles-long—had settled into a parking orbit around the Moon, it was hoped that with physical contact, it would be possible to move beyond COME VISIT. ALL LEARN.

 

I was a junior assistant nobody on the first embassy mission to the Zylv ship. The interior was humid and murkily lit, which made sense because we knew already that the Zylv came from a planet orbiting a red sun. The air smelled like a cross between turpentine and the reptile house in the zoo. At the far end of an improbably large space were creatures—the Zylv, we assumed, though our token biologists thought they were six different species—that moved listlessly, like so many barnyard animals, and did not approach us.

 

There was also a large screen. On it, a word: WELCOME. Our spokesperson began a carefully composed speech in pidgin.

 

The first word was replaced by a second: BREATHE. As if we had a choice.

 

Then two more: NOW LEAVE.

 

The screen went dead. A partition rose to separate us from the beings that might or might not be our hosts. Though we stayed far longer than made any sense, there was no further attempt to communicate on the part of the Zylv.

 

Eventually, because there was no alternative, we went back home to Earth.

 

Quarantine was supposed to be a formality. But then one of us came down sick. Followed quickly by the rest. A virus, moon-suited biologists told us. Of alien origin.

 

BREATHE the Zylv had commanded.

 

And, like fools, we’d obeyed.

 

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Ariel Cinii's Chapbook

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The War with the Zylv, Marianne Porter's latest Dragonstairs Press chapbook, goes on sale this Saturday at noon, Philadelphia time, and since it is printed in an edition of 100 (numbered, signed, and hand-stitched) chapbooks, could take hours to sell out.

The story itself is a science fiction tale of first contact, invasion, and war with an alien species. It was inspired by a piece of artwork by Ariel Cinii, which is reproduced on its cover.

But who was Ariel Cinii?

Good question. Ms. Cinii, who also used the names Abra Cinii, Sodyera, and Winterbrucke, but was known to her friends as Abby, was an active member of science fiction fandom as a filk singer-songwriter, artist, and all-around fan. She was also the first openly trans individual in fandom.

If I ever met her, it was one of those myriad acquaintances where you chat amiably on occasion and after a couple of years realize that it's too late to politely ask for a name without giving offense. But at Boskone, a month short of three years after her death, her friends had a table at which they were cheerily giving away her art to whoever wanted it. How could they possibly bring themselves to do this? Well... it turns out that she left behind some 1,300 works of art. Giving it to the community she loved seemed to them the best way they could keep her memory alive.

These are, yes, fan art in their themes—spaceships, aliens, futuristic cars, fantastic cities, and the like. But the skill and care that went into the art and its preservation indicate a high seriousness on Ms. Cinii's part. Which combined with elaborate symbols with which she labeled her pictures in her invented language Sartine, puts her in a nebulous space somewhere between “fan art” and “high art.” Let's just call it art.

I picked up three 17” x 14” images and over the following months would look at them and think about what stories they might tell. When one came to me that I felt would make a good story, I pitched it to Marianne. She agreed that it would be an appropriate way to pay back Ms. Cinii (and her friends) for the artwork.

And, you may ask, did we . . . ?

Yes, of course. Marianne and I paid Ariel Cinii's estate for the use of her artwork.

This is a motto and a matter of honor in our household: The Artist Always Get Paid. I've known artists to break out in laughter when I say that. But we're sticking to it. Because it's how one shows respect for the artist.

This was the other way we paid back Ms. Cinii for her work.

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On Strike Against God--And In Print Again!

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Look what came in the mail! Joanna Russ's brilliant On Strike Against God is back in print again. This is reason to rejoice. 

Most of Joanna's fans aren't aware of this book because it's not science fiction. It's a highly figurative mainstream feminist lesbian novel which was written immediately after The Female Man and because it's a highly figurative feminist lesbian novel, none of the major publishers would touch it. Despite the fact that Samuel R. Delany thinks that it's Joanna's best novel

Why? Well, I could gush about the prose, the writing, the brilliance, but instead I'll just quote a brief but typical passage. Esther, the protagonist is enduring a difficult but typical date when the man in question leans forward and says:

"You're strange creatures, you women intellectuals. Tell me: What's it like to be a woman?"

I took my rifle from behind my chair and shot him. "It's like that," I said. No, of course I didn't.

Now either you find that simultaneously horrific and laugh-out-loud funny or you don't. If you don't, well... Horseman, pass by. But if you do, I can assure you that On Strike Against God is a joy and a delight. 

You can pre-order it from The Feminist Press here. This volume includes several essays about the book, correspondence with Marilyn Hacker, an interview with Samuel R. Delany, and two essays on related matters by Joana herself. Joanna was a brilliant essayist. Her non-fiction crackled with ideas. If you doubt me, go to Interlibrary Loan and request a copy of How to Suppress Women's Writing. You won't regret it.

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I Thought This Was A Good Story --Then I Learned It Was A Heroic Story

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Do you have an unread copy of the May/June issue of Asimov's on hand? Quick! Right now! Open it to page 76 and read Rattler by Leonid Kaganov. The translator's note by Alex Shvartsman at the end too.

Rattler starts with a fresh take on the alien invasion story. The invader is small and so alien as to be incomprehensible. And, at first, there is only one. But it has a singular power: If anyone tries to kill it, that person immediately dies, followed by whoever ordered that person to try and that person's superior and so on up the line. So it can't be defeated and yet it must be defeated. Classic science fiction problem story.

Opposing this is a TV news team: reporter, producer, cameraman, and (the narrator) driver. They are not exactly a team of heroes. But--and the logic of this  perfect--when you need heroes but can't get them, cowards will do.

It's a satisfying story. But it's the translator's note (Shvartsman, btw, does an excellent job of translation) that reveals the story to be something else... an act of heroism.

And why won't I tell you about the translator's note . . . ?

I worry that Kaganov has made himself an enemy of Putin's government. There's nothing you and I can do about that. But we can give him the one thing every writer craves: an audience. If you have a copy of this issue, read it. If you don't, buy one. If you can't buy one, go to whatever place you know of where readers gather and ask for somebody to explain it to you.

Share this post. Pass it off as your own, if you wish. Write your own review. Tell your friends to write reviews. Make this story known. Make its author famous.

He's already a hero.

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Remembering Hetty Jones on Memorial Day

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There are two memorial services in Roxborough on Memorial Day. The big one is at Gorgas Park by the war monument, and it'll have a good-sized turnout. But Marianne and I like to go to the earlier one, only a few blocks distant, at Leverington Cemetery. There, the number of vets actively participating in the ceremony is roughly equal to the number of civilians, family mostly, attending. 

The thing about Leverington Cemetery is that it contains the graves of Americans who served in all the major wars this country has fought. The bodies of soldiers who died in the Civil War were shipped home from other states. But the eighteen Revolutionary War soldiers buried there died only a short walk away when Hessian troopers set fire to the barn they had been sheltering in and shot them as they tried to escape.

So, between that and the fact that the vets at the service are neighbors who deserve what little support we can offer, that's the service we go to.

And in what has become a small tradition in our family, Marianne cut roses from our back yard and left them on the graves of two who were never American soldiers: One was Choban Hoxha, known locally as Pretzel Pete, who had spent time in a Nazi concentration camp before being taken for slave labor by the camp's Soviet liberators, but managed to escape and make his way to America.

The other was Hetty Jones. 

Miss Jones was the daughter of a prominent Baptist minister and had a comfortable life when the Civil War broke out. She did volunteer work on behalf of the Northern soldiers. But when her brother, a Union officer, died in action, she decided she was not doing enough, and volunteered as a nurse, first at Filbert Street United States Army General Hospital in Philadelphia, and then at Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters in Virginia, where the suffering was greater. Her service, it is recorded, was tireless. In 1864, she worked hard preparing Thanksgiving dinner for the soldiers there, and shortly thereafter came down with one of those diseases endemic to military hospitals at that time. She recovered enough to resume partial duties, but it did not last. She died, aged 56.

At Hetty Jones' funeral, her casket was carried by convalescing soldiers who knew her from the Filbert Street Hospital.She is buried beside the graves of her father and brother.  

 

 

 

 

The Sleep of Reason is in My Hands at Last!

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Look what came in the mail!  

The Sleep of Reason is my collaboration with Francisco de Goya, one original story by myself for each of the 80 etchings of his Los Caprichos. Here's the book's back copy, describing it:

At last, Goya’s immortal etchings get the fictive treatment they deserve! Grotesque, mordant, and darkly hilarious by turn, the satiric images of Los Caprichos are as relevant now as they were when they were first published in 1799. In an era of war and extreme cruelty very much like our own, they laid bare the folly and absurdity of the human condition. As do the stories Michael Swanwick has crafted to accompany them. It is a monstrous and possibly even blasphemous work of hubris for a contemporary writer to collaborate with an artist recognized as “the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns” two centuries after his death rendered him unable to give his consent to the project. But Swanwick is up to the task. Read this book and discover for yourself the satirical worlds of Goya and Swanwick.

 To this I must add that John D. Berry did a beautiful job designing the book. If you held it in your hand and opened it randomly, you'd want to own it, even before reading a single word. The reproduction of Goya's etchings is fine and lucid and the prose is laid out in an open and inviting manner that as good as begs you to sit down in an easy chair and start reading.

And what of the stories . . . ?

You may well ask. "Grotesque, mordant, and darkly hilarious by turn," describes these stories well. I wouldn't advise you to binge read them. But I am immodest enough to admit that I'm proud of the stories and the prose they're written in.

I honestly think you should buy a copy.

 The paperback edition, published at a perfectly reasonable £12.99 can be ordered directly from PS Publishing here. The hardcover edition, published at a scandalously affordable £25.00 in an edition of 100, predictably sold out before publication. 

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My Collection is a Locus Award Finalist!

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The Best of Michael Swanwick Volume Two is a finalist for the Locus Awards in the Best Collection category! This is an honor worth celebrating and I'm doing so now because there's not much chance my book will win. I say that without any self-pity whatsoever. Or modesty, come to think of it. But in the forty-nine years the category has been in existence, "Best Of" collections have only won three times--for The Best of Connie Willis, The Best of Gene Wolfe, and The Best of Fritz Leiber.

But there I am, on the slate! As are nine others:

    The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volumes 1 & 2, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)

    Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories, Tobias S. Buckell (Apex)

    The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Tananarive Due (Akashic)

    White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra)

    No One Will Come Back For Us, Premee Mohamed (Undertow)

    Jackal, Jackal, Tobi Ogundiran (Undertow)

    Skin Thief, Suzan Palumbo (Neon Hemlock)

    Lost Places, Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer)

    The Best of Catherynne M. Valente, Volume One, Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean)

 

I think you'll agree that's pretty good company to be in.

And elsewhere on the list:

 

In related news, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's remarkable book length interview Being Michael Swanwick is a finalist in the Best Non-Fiction category. In case you missed it, this is a series of interviews covering pretty much every work of short fiction I've ever published--where they came from, what I was trying to do with them, seasoned with a dollop of gossip. Alvaro was an extremely insightful interviewer and a most impressive researcher. He definitely deserves an award for this book, although--as one favorable reviewer noted--people who read my short fiction are a niche market. 

 

And up in the same category is The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History by Jack Dann.  This is relevant to me because in addition to the more analytical chapters about the nature of alternate history fiction, Jack assembled a round table of writers who have practiced the form, one of whom was me. He then posed questions, stood back, and let us disagree loudly with each other.

I will admit that, reading this book, there were a couple of times when I wished I had been more profound. But the other authors included were Kim: Kim Stanley Robinson, William Gibson, Pamela Sargent, Harry Turtledove, John Crowley, Michael Bishop, Lisa Goldstein, John Kessel, John Birmingham, Barry N. Malzberg, Janeen Webb, Bruce Sterling, Mark Shirrefs, Christopher Priest, Terry Bisson, Mary Rosenblum, Paul Di Filippo, Richard Harland, Howard Waldrop, Lewis Shiner, and George Zebrowski, so there a lot of things there worth hearing.

There are also eight other books nominated in this category, most of which I have not (alas) read. They are:

 

    42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, Kevin Jon Davies, ed. (Unbound UK)

    Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir, M. John Harrison (Serpent’s Tail; Saga 2024)

    All These Worlds, Niall Harrison (Briardene)

    101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, Sadie Hartmann (Page Street Publishing)

    Space Crone, Ursula K. Le Guin (Silver)

    Ex Marginalia: Essays on Writing Speculative Fiction by Persons of Color, Chinelo Onwualu, ed. (Hydra House)

    A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, Maureen Kincaid Speller (Luna Press Publishing)

    Owning the Unknown: A Science Fiction Writer Explores Atheism, Agnosticism, and the Idea of God, Robert Charles Wilson (Pitchstone)

And who do I think will win . . . ?

I honestly have no idea. Perhaps because in my first decade as a published writer, my work was nominated for major awards over and over and never once won, I've always taken pleasure in the horse-race aspects of these awards. I'd read all the fiction and make my predictions, sometimes based on what deserved to win and other times based on the literary politics going on at that moment. And I was always wrong. Always.

I concluded then that there are so many factors at play in a popularly-voted award that when it comes down to the voting it goes chaotic. Which is why the process is still so much fun to watch.

 

Meanwhile, if you'd like to buy one of the books discussed here, you may:

The Best of Michael Swanwick Volume 2 may be purchased from Subterranean Press here.

Being Michael Swanwick is currently on sale (three dollars off!) at Fairwood Press here.

And The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History is available from Bloomsbury Publishing here. Although non-UK readers might try a local bookseller to save on postage.

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Random Readings: William Morris' "The Hollow Land"

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I was reading William Morris' short romance, "The Hollow Land," yesterday. It was an early work and not one he thought worth reprinting, though it happened posthumously. A fantasy, but not a great one.

However, it had the following passage, after the hero has by cunning infiltrated a walled town at night and is leading his soldiers toward their enemy:

 

We had not gone far, before we heard some knights coming, and soon, in a turn of the long street, we saw them riding towards us; when they caught sight of us they seemed astonished, drew rein, and stood in some confusion.

We did not slacken our pace for an instant, but rode right at them with a yell, to which I lent myself with all my heart.

After all they did not run away, but waited for us with their spears held out; I missed the man I had marked, or hit him rather just on the top of the helm; he bent back and the spear slipped over his head, but my horse still kept on, and I felt presently such a crash that I reeled in my saddle, and felt mad. He had lashed out at me with his sword as I came on, hitting me in the ribs (for my arm was raised), but only flatlings.

I was quite wild with rage, I turned, almost fell upon him, caught him by the neck with both hands, and threw him under the horse-hoofs, sighing with fury [...] I fought with my heart, till the big axe I swung felt like nothing but a little hammer in my hand, except for its bitterness: and as for the enemy, they went down like grass, so that we destroyed them utterly, for those knights would neither yield nor fly, but died as they stood, so that some fifteen of our men also died there.

 

Wow.  That is one vivid recreation of an event unlike any that Morris could possibly have taken part in. Gonnabe writers should reflect on this whenever somebody says, "Write what you know."

 There's more than one way writers can "know."

 

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The Annotated STATIONS OF THE TIDE (Part 4)

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Part 4! I begin to think it's possible I may bring the notations all the way to the end.  Again, I have to apologize for the fact that these notations are scattershot and incomplete. Some sources don't spring to mind immediately, while others are skipped lightly over for a variety of personal reasons. The technique allowing a man to achieve orgasms without ejaculation does, yes, work, but I'd have to do digging into the far reaches of my books to find the references and life is short. 

Meanwhile, a soupcon more insight into my novel:

Page 44:

“I killed a dog today”: When I was at William & Mary, struggling to pass German (I never did get good at it), I tried writing a story in German and only got as far as the opening line: Ich tötete heute einen Hund. This fact is of absolutely no importance. I mention it only to demonstrate how much more goes into any substantive piece of writing than the reader suspects.

 

Page 46:

Campaspe: The name is taken from E. R. Eddison’s A Fish Dinner in Memison. In it, Campaspe is a sylph, whose human form alternates with that of a water-rat.

 

Page 50:

St. Jones's: There is no such saint. But the St. Jones is a river in Delaware. No one knows the origin of its name but it is speculated to derive from St. Joan or else St. Jone, a variant Welsh spelling of St. Ione or John.

 

Page 60:

Clay Bank: A neighborhood in Gloucester County, Virginia. Will Jenkins who, writing as Murray Leinster, was the original Dean of Science Fiction, lived there.

Cobbs Creek: A neighborhood in West Philadelphia, and a creek defining part of Philadelphia's border.

 

Page 61:

remscela: A little joke here. The remscela are the prequel-tales to the Táin Bó Cúailnge in the Ulster Cycle and Remscela is the title of a Celtic fantasy novel by my friend Gregory Frost. On Miranda it is apparently also a form of alcohol.

 

Page 62:

fantasias: I have usurped an existing word here as the name for elaborately fantastic costumes specific to  carnival on Miranda.

 

Page 63:

jubilee: In Biblical times, after seven weeks of years--half a century--came the jubilee, a time of transformation, when all debts were forgiven and slaves freed. The time of the jubilee tide is, similarly, a time of physical transformation and, for some, spiritual transcendence.

Page 65:

Undine: In Miranda, a witch; in our world, the name of a water-nymph. The word was coined by Paracelsus in his alchemical writings and popularized by Undine, an 1811 novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. A knight falls in love with the wild and capricious young nereid. Marriage, however, gives her a human soul and makes her virtuous in the drearily long-suffering Christian manner of the times. The knight proves unworthy and they both die—but romantically.

 

Page 68:

iridobacteria: A nonce-word, but in context self-evident.

 

Page 71:

nerve-inductor: An obvious swipe from Frank Herbert’s Dune. I am astonished I neglected to include it in the Acknowledgements page. Somehow, I forgot all about it.

 

Page 82:

“A new age of magical interpretation…”: This is a quote from Adolph Hitler.

 

Page 83:

Veilleur: French for “watchman.” There was a strong French (and French Carribean) component to the original human settlers of Miranda, as well as a lesser Armenian component.

 

Page 87:

the golden woman: The poncho-clad puppet who dissolves in a shower of golden rings is taken from C. L. Moore’s classic story, “No Woman Born.”

 

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THE SLEEP OF REASON in book form at last!!!!

 .

GREAT NEWS! and... less great news. The Sleep of Reason, my posthumous collaboration with Francisco Jose de Goya, is now available in paperback form from PS Publishing for thirteen U. K. pounds less one pence. I haven't seen it yet but I know that it's a beautiful book because John Berry did the book design. 

That was the great news. The less great news is that the signed-and-numbered hardcover edition of 100, priced at an eminently affordable twenty-five pounds, sold out pretty much instantaneously on pre-order.

Those copies will be mailed out later this week, but the paperback is available for purchase now.

And what exactly, you may ask, is this thing . . . ?

Way back when, I contracted with Eileen Gunn's then e-mag The Infinite Matrix, to write a flash fiction a week based on the illustrations of Goya's Los Caprichos. The images were by turns angry and sardonic and they called up the Irish darkness in me.

 

The stories can still be read online. But they read best with Goya's images large and lucid before you, and for that, you'll want the book.

You can read a typical story about the joys of motherhood by clicking here.

 

 

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The Annotated STATIONS OF THE TIDE (Part 3)

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Page 21:

the suppression of Whitemarsh: This and the related witch-cults were based on the Albigensian Crusades against the Cathars.

 

Page 22:

the maggot in the skull: A maggot is not only a larval fly, but also a whimsical notion, derived from the folk belief that an irrational person literally had maggots in their brain.

 

Page 24:

the Third Unification: Of this phase of the Prosperan System’s long and tangled history, I know nothing.

 

Page 25:

barnacle flies: A dimorphic name: in Great Winter a barnacle and in Great Summer a fly.

Rose Hall: Rose Hall, Jamaica, is known for the legend of White Witch, Annie Palmer, a slave owner even crueler than most of her kind, who was purportedly trained in voodoo.

 

Page 26:

sleeve job: A crude folk joke in which the sleeve job is described as a sex act of extreme perversity and effectiveness—yet whose specific workings are never described. The term has since been appropriated for various sexual acts of greater or lesser likelihood.

Caliban: Miranda’s larger moon, inhospitable to life and used primarily to house prisons and military training camps.

 

Page 27:

TERMINAL HOTEL: This is an inside joke. There used to be a shabby hotel across from the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia. The sign over its door simply read TERMINAL. Gardner Dozois was once filmed crossing the street in front of the Terminal Hotel for an incidental scene in Brian de Palma’s movie, Blow Out. Unhappily, the footage ended up on the cutting room floor.

 

Page 29:

Two television sets were wedged in the sand, one with the sound off, and the other turned away: When I first came to Center City in Philadelphia, I couldn’t afford to buy a television. So I went out on trash day and hauled every TV set I found back to my apartment. I yanked the vacuum tubes (this was before printed circuits) and took them to Radio Shack, which had a tube tester, and bought new tubes. This resulted in two sets, one of which had good sound and the other a good image. I stacked one on top of the other and the rest went back to the curb.

Sex, magic, and television are thematic in Stations of the Tide, as intangible technologies whose main effects are achieved inside the human brain.

 

Page 33:

the System government: A small joke here. Prospero and its attendant planets make up the Prosperan System. But the government is the System.

 

Page 36:

wands and orchids: Male and female genitalia.

 

Page 37:

“All is pattern”: This is one of the major themes of Stations, along with the universality of change. I feel close to embarrassed for pointing out something so obvious.

 

Page 38:

haunts: This is the first mention of the aboriginal people who possessed Miranda before the coming of humans and the guilt for whose possible extinction haunts Mirandan society. The name is derived from the “haints” of African-American folklore.

 

Page 39:

Ariel: Miranda’s lesser moon.

Ararat: The resting-place of Noah’s Ark. Also the first human city on Miranda, long since abandoned and lost.

 

 

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