Samuel R. Delany and Me at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005

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Not all things we are nostalgic for should be preserved.  I personally feel a sense of loss for the chatty intros that science fiction collections used to have before each story, explaining how they came to be. Chiefly this is because back when I was a teenage werewolf, I studied those intros carefully, gleaning tiny crumbs of writing lore that the Great Authors would occasionally inadvertently let drop.  But also because any extinct or near-extinct prose form is to be lamented.

The late, great, and greatly missed editor Jim Turner sternly informed me on the occasion of my first collection  (Gravity's Angels, Arkham House), that such intros were a self indulgence which he would not put up with, and in my experience in matters editorial Jim was inevitably right.  So that's settled.

Nevertheless, the one regret I have regarding Eileen Gunn's exemplary new collection, Questionable Practices (her second! and this one only took ten years! she's definitely getting faster!) is that it isn't fat and unwieldy with intros, outros, afterwords and story notes.  So I'm going to provide one for her -- and it's not even for one of the stories we co-wrote!

"Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005"

Living on opposite coasts as we do, Eileen and I don't get to spend much time together.  But when we do get together we have some very intense conversations because for unknown reasons she is one of the few people with whom I can talk seriously and at length about writing.

So it was sometime in 2005 and Eileen and I were sitting on the porch of a house high up on the slopes of San Francisco, watching the sun set and then green rivers of fog rolling down from the mountains.  We spoke of many things.  It would amaze most of my friends to hear that I didn't make a single joke.

Not long before, for reasons of plot irrelevant to this narrative, I had driven Chip Delany from Philadelphia to New York City.  He needed a ride and I was happy to be able to help him out.  So, along with many other matters, I told Eileen about the quite interesting conversation we had.  (I betrayed no confidences in doing so, because it wasn't a confidential kind of conversation -- we were discussing facts and ideas.)  One thing I shared was Chip's explanation of the virtues of Guy Davenport's short fiction.  Davenport was a critic of dazzling lucidity.  But in his fiction he wrote for a small and rarefied audience -- and the point of much of his work relied on the reader knowing specific information (in the story in question, it was of a lacuna in Kafka's biography) that was not contained in the story.

Why on earth Eileen should decide to write a Guy Davenportly story about that journey, I have not the slightest notion.  But she did.  Sometimes a writer's brain catches fire with the desire to write something for which there is no explanation.

The story is, as the subtitle puts it, OUTPUT FROM A NOSTALGIC, IF SOMEWHAT MISINFORMED, GUYDAVENPORT STORYBOT, IN THE YEAR 2115.  Much of what is written is deliberately not so.  It's Eileen who knows to say "Nyemnoshka," when asked if she has any Russian, not I.  But bits of it are factual, though I'm not going to tell you which.

Save for one.  When I said, "I'm a burger kind of guy," the white-bearded semiotician really did reply, "So am I."

So there we are, Chip and I, the two most ordinary guys you'll ever meet in the Joyce Kilmer Service Area.

I forget whose place that was where we had the conversation.  I know that Eileen was house-sitting for someone.  I have a nagging suspicion that it might have been Ellen Klages.  If so, I just want to say to Ellen that I was the one who turned around all the little figurines on the fireplace mantle.  Eileen had nothing to do with it.

Much.

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The Two Faces of Andy Duncan's Close Encounters!

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Did you know?  A run of the mill paperback science fiction or fantasy novel will typically get more and longer reviews than a story that wins both the Hugo and Nebula awards.  That's why when I can find the time -- and more and more, I have so much on my plate that I can't find the time, alas -- I write reviews of particularly splendid exemplars of short fiction and publish them in the New York Review of Science Fiction.

A little over a month ago, I reviewed three works of fiction and an essay there, and it occurred to me to share them, one at a time, over the next few weeks.  Here's the first:

Andy Duncan, of whose work one can predict nothing save that it will be beautifully written, has produced what is, even for him, a genuine oddity in “Close Encounters,” a story which originally appeared in his 2012 collection, The Pottawattomie Giant and Other Stories (PS Publishing), was subsequently reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and two separate best of the year anthologies, and went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.  It is at one and the same time two distinct stories, one of them very good indeed and the other much better than that.

           

“Close Encounters” is narrated by Buck Nelson, a crusty Ozarks farmer in his eightieth-odd year.  In his youth he wrote a book about his adventures with a space alien named Bob Solomon, who took him to the Moon, Mars, and Venus, and gave him a giant dog named Bo.  For years after that, Buck threw an annual for-profit picnic on his farm for UFO enthusiasts.  But now he is a bitter old man, dodging the dwindling number of reporters who occasionally seek him out, and mulling over the disappointments of his life.  As always when Duncan is playing with Southern rhythms, the prose sparkles.  Here’s Buck’s reply, when asked by a stringer for the Associated Press why he stopped the picnics and started running visitors off with a shotgun:

“You can see your own self what happened,” I said.  “Woman, I got old.  You’ll see what it’s like, when you get there.  All the people who believed in me died, and then the ones who humored me died, and now even the ones who feel obliged to sort of tolerate me are starting to go.  Bo died, and Teddy, that was my Earth-born dog, he died, and them government boys went to the Moon and said they didn’t see no mining operations or colony domes or big Space Brother dogs, or nothing else old Buck had seen up there.  And in place of my story, what story did they come up with?  I ask you.  Dust and rocks and craters as far as you can see, and when you walk as far as that there’s another sight of dust and rocks and craters, and so on all around till you’re back where you started, and that’s it, boys, wash your hands, that’s the moon done.  Excepting for some spots where the dust is so deep a body trying to land would just be swallowed up, sink to the bottom, and at the bottom find what?  Praise Jesus, more dust, just what we needed.  They didn’t see nothing that anybody would care about going to see.  No floating cars, no lakes of diamonds, no topless Moon gals, just dumb dull nothing.  Hell, they might as well a been in Arkansas.  You at least can cast a line there, catch you a bream.  Besides, my lumbago come back,” I said, easing myself down into the rocker, because we was back on my front porch by then.  “It always comes back, my doctor says.  Doctors plural, I should say.  I’m on the third one now.  The first two died on me.  That’s something, ain’t it?  For a man to outlive two of his own doctors?”

Prose that good is its own justification, and Buck presents a strong argument for the superiority of Romance, however tawdry, over mere reality.  But straight talker though he seems to be, the old man is hiding something.  For most of the first half of “Close Encounters,” the question of whether Buck lied about the Space Brothers in order to get attention and make a little money on the side is left open.  But then at mid-point, he opens up to the reader about “. . . the real reason I give up on the picnics, turned sour on the whole flying-saucer industry, and kept close to the willows ever since.  It warn’t my damn lumbago or the Mothman or Barney and Betty Hill and their Romper Room boogeymen, or those dull dumb rocks hauled back from the Moon and thrown in my face like coal in a Christmas stocking.  It was Bob Solomon, who said he’d come back, stay in touch, continue to shine down his blue-white healing light, because he loved the Earth people, because he loved me, and who done none of them things.”  Now Buck is nearing death but still feeling the hurt of having his friend prove faithless.

           

That’s the first story in “Close Encounters,” and contrary to what you might expect, it is not a piece of critical invention on my part.  It was Andy Duncan himself who cut it out of the text and read it at a convention without the least suggestion that there was more.

           

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the story goes on.  After his dark apotheosis, at the urging of the importunate stringer, Buck proceeds to drop in on some UFO researchers investigating mysterious recurrent lights, sees the lights, makes a fool of himself, and is thoroughly humiliated to boot.  Yet in the process, he proves himself faithful to the dream. Subsequently he puts together bits and pieces of clues that the stringer dropped for him to realize that she is actually Captain Aura Rhanes, a Space Sister from the planet Clarion, come to test and redeem him.  Having proved his worth, it is strongly implied, he will have returned to him all that he has lost:  his youth, his health, his innocence, the universe of Gernsbackian scientifiction and old school ufology, the love and friendship of Bob Solomon and the other Space Brothers, and even his beloved giant dog.

           

This is an excellent story and I’m sure the vast majority of its readers enjoyed it immensely.  But, as Buck might put it, it’s not a patch on the first story.  Which is a moving meditation on old age, death, loss, and how even positive changes can look like a catastrophe to a man who’s in no position to benefit from them.  The second half of “Close Encounters” is good enough that I would not want to see it stripped away.  But, reader, pause at the midway point to admire just how powerful the first story is.

And as long as you're thinking about Andy Duncan . . .

Andy's classic story "Beluthahatchie" has been reprinted on the Clarkesworld site.  You can read it here.  He also posted an essay about writing that story over on his blog.  You can read that here.

One thing Andy doesn't mention is that at the Clarion West in question, I went over his story with him and (because that was my job) gave him a laundry list of changes to make.  So far as I can tell, he made not a single one.

You have to admire that in a writer.

My review of "Close Encounters" is copyright 2014 by Michael Swanwick; it first appeared in the New York Review of Science Fiction.  The image above is of Andy Duncan's first collection.  It's a terrific book.  You should buy it.

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Poul Anderson Shares Clifford Simak's Advice On Overlong Stories

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In the latest (May) issue of the New York Review of Science Fiction, there's a transcription made by Darrell Schweitzer of a 2001 speech by Poul Anderson to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.  Many warm reminiscences of bygone science fiction greats, some forgotten and others still celebrated.  You'd be well advised to buy a copy or a subscription (NYRofSF website here).  But that's just mentioned in passing.  I wanted to share with you some advice that Clifford Simak gave Anderson, back when he was young and in need of it.

Here it is:

He was just plain Cliff to everybody.  I will always remember a piece of advice he gave me.  Writers and aspiring writers here would all do well to remember it.  I had a story that had been bounced around from place to place, being rejected on grounds it was too long for its content, and I remarked to Cliff on this -- remember I was very, very young and didn't have much skill yet -- and he said, "The way to shorten the story is to write the end of it."  He was right.  I just cut out all the preliminary material and got to the point and it sold immediately and was well received.

New writers tend to start their fictions with way too much expository material.  (How much should you have?  None is about perfect.)  So this was an elegant lesson on writing that Simak offered Anderson.

Note, however, that Poul Anderson had taken the necessary preliminary step:  He had written the story all the way through to the end.  He wasn't a good enough writer -- yet -- to do it right.  But he was good enough to write it anyway.

Young, unpublished writers, go thou and do likewise.

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A Few Brief, Honest Words About Reviews and Reviewers

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Every writer I know says that there's no such thing as bad publicity, so that they therefore never get upset by bad reviews.  I appear to be the only one who actively dislikes getting one.

Okay, I'm going to be honest here.  I think that my distinguished colleagues are all lying through their teeth.  I'll bet that even [insert name of your favorite living writer here] gets moody and snarls at the dog on getting a bug-crusher of a review.

This observation was occasioned by the fact that over at Best SF,  my story, "Passage of Earth," was given a quite positive review by Mark Watson.  This perked up an otherwise cold and wet April morning for me.  I know it's only words.  But then, words are my all, my raison d'etre.

And what is the proper form for thanking a reviewer for a good review?  You don't.  The review was written for readers, not writers.  To thank reviewers would be to imply that the opinion of the author was a factor in their reviews.  Which would be an insult.

Still being honest, I'll admit that, yes, reviewers are human and so they'd probably enjoy the thanks.  But it would still be an insult.  And even if they didn't take it that way, it wouldn't be good for them.  So I shall continue to respond to positive reviews (with the exception of this one; but then, I'm not really talking about the review but about the phenomenon of being reviewed) with silence.

That's the plain and simple truth, in my humble opinion.  Yours may differ, and if it does, feel free to write a fan letter to your favorite reviewer expressing your thanks for his or her body of work.

Only, please.  Not to one who's panned my work.

If you're curious, you can read the review here.  But really, so long as I'm being honest, I'd much rather you read the story itself.  It was published on Clarkesworld and you can find it here.


Above:  A cold and rainy morning in Philadelphia.

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Ossa Della Terra

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It must be Italy week!  In the mail today are my copies of Ossa della Terra -- in English, Bones of the Earth.

I spent roughly a year researching that novel, interviewing scientists, going to conferences, traveling to view specific fossils.  By the end of that year, I could sit on any conversation between paleontologists and understand every word they had to say.  I couldn't contribute to that conversation, mined you. But I could follow it.

More than that, whenever I finished a chapter I ran it past Bob Walters, the dinosaur reconstruction artist, and some time later he would return it to me with an insultingly thick list of corrections.  I would incorporate them into the chapter and then run it past Ralph Chapman, then at the Smithsonian.  Who would return an equally thick list of corrections to be made.

At the time of publication, Bones of the Earth was as accurate as any dinosaur novel ever written.

That happy state lasted for most of a year before subsequent discoveries began invalidating parts of the novel.

But, my God, what a lot of fun that book was to research.


And sad news . . .

I learned recently that William H. Patterson, Jr., died this April 22.  Patterson wrote the authorized biography of Robert H. Heinlein, published in two parts as Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Vol. 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve (2011), and Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Vol. 2: The Man Who Learned Better, which is forthcoming.

I did not know Patterson very well -- a few pleasant conversations, and that's pretty much it.  But I did get to watch from the sidelines, a little, as his massive (and massively titled) magnum opus was created.  The fight over what was to be included and what was not was prolonged and many-sided, and I can't pretend to be well informed enough about it to give you a recap.  Suffice it to say, the biography was a lot of work.  Some of it caused by Heinlein himself, who put a great deal of effort into pruning his paper paper trail, in order to hide parts of his past which I rather suspect would only have made us like him the more.

But while he did not live to see the second volume published, Patterson did get to clutch the first and to see it nominated for a Hugo Award.  He was a great admirer of RAH, and I know it meant a lot to him to finish the project and to see it acclaimed.

You can read the Locus Online notice here.

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[Dream Diary]

April 26,  2014

Dreamed I was at a Nebula Awards banquet and (there is no explaining dreams) one of the officers.  However, there was a glut of SFWA officers present, all getting in each other's way, so I quietly slipped outside.  On a balcony off the hallway, I saw Michael Dirda looking down two great  black 19th-century steam locomotives in the rail yard below.  We were both eagerly looking forward to taking part in the train duels later that night.

"The rail guns those things carry will launch a projectile at 1,200 meters per second," Dirda said in a tone suggesting he never ceased to marvel at human folly, "yet if you walked down the aisle with an ice cream cone, they'd fine you for it."

On awakening, I checked the numbers and found the projectiles would be traveling at almost four times the speed of sound.  But I've never had any mathematical ability whatsoever when asleep.

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Philadelphia Wonderland

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The Day Wonderland Stood Still... from Bruce W. Berry Jr on Vimeo.


This is Philadelphia as I see it:  whales singing deep beneath the pavement, lions sheathed in ice. Some forty years ago, I came to this city, fell in love with it, and almost starved to death before I managed to find work.  It was a terrifying place, but beautiful too.

This video, by Bruce W. Berry Jr., captures that beauty perfectly.

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