My Worldcon Schedule

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Wow. In less than two weeks, I'll be back in Ireland! Wandering the desolate beauty of the Burren. Discovering the Ring of Kerry for the very first time. Returning to Tara. Drinking Guinness in a Dublin pub.

Oh, yeah, and there's this Worldcon thing.

The Dublin Worldcon committee have given me my marching orders, and I have to say that it's a pretty nice schedule. It's spread out over three days, gives me a reasonable amount  of free time, and includes a reading, a kaffeeklatsch, and an autographing session. Also, the panel topics are pretty interesting.

So kudos to the scheduling people. I really do appreciate their hard work.

Here's my schedule:

Friday, August 16

Unwritable stories

Format: Panel

14:30 - 15:20, Stratocaster BC (Point Square Dublin)

Every author has that perfect story that just refuses to be written. From wilful characters to wandering narratives and gaping plot holes, our panellists share the stories that would have even defied the Greek muses themselves. What made these stories so hard to write? What traps did they hold? And whatever happened to those old untold tales? Will they ever see the light of day or will they remain locked away in a hidden drawer?

Jacey Bedford (M), Karen Haber, Nina Allan, Jay Caselberg, Michael Swanwick

Saturday, August 17

Reading: Michael Swanwick

12:00 - 12:50, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)

Autographs: Michael Swanwick  

 15:00 - 15:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)

Kaffeeklatsch: Michael Swanwick

17:00 - 17:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Sunday, August 18

The author as a fellow traveler on the hero's journey

Format: Panel

10:30 - 11:20, Odeon 4 (Point Square Dublin)

Many authors, unsurprisingly, form a strong emotional bond with their characters, experiencing the joys and frustrations of the story along with them. How does this affect the writing process itself? What about the impact on the writer's critical engagement with their own work? How much does an author's engagement depend on their personality, their approach, or the type of story being written?

Dr Kristina Perez (Macmillan ) (M), Michael Swanwick, Karen Simpson Nikakis (SOV Consulting LLC -SOV Media), Naomi Kritzer, Daryl Gregory

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Carol Emshwiller, Remembered

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Saturday I went to New York City for a memorial in the honor of Carol Emshwiller. I will not enumerate who was there and what transpired, other than to note that her children and other family members did her proud.

I was one of those who stood up to talk about Carol. Here, roughly, is what I said:


I won't try to compete with Gordon [Van Gelder, who spoke immediately before me] in analyzing Carol's fiction. She was a very fine writer, with a vision all her own, and I am particularly fond of Carmen Dog, but I want to talk about her as a friend.

I don't remember when I first met Carol. But I vividly remember being at some-damned-event-or-other when she saw me and exclaimed, "Michael! It's so good to see you!" We then proceeded to have a really splendid conversation about pretty much everything on earth.

Later, I told all this to Marianne and a little bemusedly said, "So I guess Carol and I are good friends."

We were, too. Carol wouldn't kid about something like that.

Every time I saw her, she always greeted me by saying, "Michael! It's so good to see you!" And after we had parted, I always found myself thinking: Maybe I should try being a better person. It seems to work for Carol.

The last time we met was at the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series, when her eyesight was so diminished that when I said hello, she had to ask me who I was. But one thing was certain: Whoever I was, she was glad I was there.

Carol was that rarest of creatures, a writer who could talk matter-of-factly about her own fiction. One time, I saw her first and said, "Carol! It's so good to see you! What are you up to?"

"I'm in mourning," she said. "I just finished writing a novel"--this would have been Ledoyt--"and all these people I've been living with for years are gone. It's like they all died! I'm bereft." Then she asked, "Doesn't it feel that way to you, too?"

I considered the question seriously. "No," I said. "When I finish a novel, I feel like I've stopped persecuting my people. I imagine them running down the street, waving their hands in the air, saying things like, 'I'm free!' and 'I'm going to eat a hamburger--and nothing will happen to me!' and 'I'm going to move to Albany and get a job in a hardware store!'"

But maybe that's just because she was a better person than me.

Now she's gone. And I'm bereft. I'm in mourning.

I'd like to think that that's because I've become a better person. But no. It's because Carol was alive in a way that no fictional characters can be. In fact, she was alive in a way that very few living people are. She had a gift for life. She was good at it. It was not wasted on her.

Carol freely shared her friendship and with her joy. But in life nothing is really free. This is something you learn, if you live long enough. The price for someone's presence in your life is the pain you feel at her absence. When she's gone, the only question that matters is: Is the joy her life brought you worth the sorrow you feel at it ending?

In Carol's case? Yes. Yes, it was.

It was worth every tear.

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Of a Swallowtail Farm and the Final Image Book Picture

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Pictured above is Marianne's swallowtail farm on the front porch. She didn't set out to raise butterflies. But it turns out that swallowtails love parsley. So they come unnoticed to lay their extremely small eggs, which hatch into extremely small caterpillars, which then proceed to eat and eat and EAT. Growing all the time.

Remember reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar when you were small? Something like that.

The caterpillars put away an astonishing amount of parsley and grow to a respectable size. Then they disappear. Sometimes during the night, they crawl away from the pot and go... somewhere. We've never been able to determine where.

The world is full of mysteries. One of them is on our front porch.

Marianne also has a second patch of parsley, which is used in her cooking. There's something unspeakably cool about going out in the middle of winter to brush the snow off the parsley and bring in a few sprigs for garnish.

When she finds a swallowtail caterpillar on her cooking patch, Marianne plucks it off and removes it to the pot on the porch.

And from the Image Book . . .

This is the very last image in the book. Put there because it's obviously a photo of the Triune Goddess. Most of the images of women taken from fashion and art magazines are far more glam than I would have liked. This one has the right edge of scariness. These are three dangerous women.

I first saw this image in an ad for the Cafe Luxembourg (West 70th St., NYC) in, I think, the New Yorker. It definitely raises in the mind an expectation of a rather louche drinking hole, probably somewhere high up in a skyscraper. Imagine my surprise when I ate there and discovered a cheerful, street level eatery with fish and chips and grilled rack of lamb on the menu.

Ah, well. The sinful bar of my dark imaginings surely exists somewhere in New York.

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Young Caitlin

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This is one of the saddest images in the entire book. Caitlin did not have a happy childhood. Which is why it's hardly ever referred to in the novel.

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Things Simmering Away

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This glitterati life! I've been signing tip-in sheets for an unannounced future project. It sounds glamorous. But five reams of signature sheets is a lot of work.

Every now and then, Marianne will ask if she can sign just one of the sheets for me. "No," I say.

"But it'll be much rarer than the others!"

"Speciously put, but no."

I cannot remember ever saying no to Marianne on any other request. But the people buying an autographed book expect it to be autographed by the author. I won't betray that trust. Even for a mischievous wife.


And in the Image Bopk . . .

The top image is labeled A MAP OF THE WORLD.

Below, where it says "the Crown of Thorns," is actually a label for tomorrow's image.

This is the last page of the book, incidentally. Only the inside and outside back covers to go.

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Great Footnotes of Western Literature

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If I were an organized man, I would have carefully saved all my favorite footnotes in a series of notebooks and be well on my way to pitching The Oxford Book of Footnotes to a doubtless receptive publisher.

Alas, I am far from that organized. Still, occasionally a footnote rises up to charm me. Most recently, it happened in a paper I'm reading titled Lud-in-the-Mist as Memento Mori: Existential anxiety and the Consolations of an Aestheti Theology in Hope Mirrlees's Fantasy Novel. Here's the footnote in question:

2 Brian Attebery notes that Lud-in-the-Mist has never been "read as an important Modernist text, not even in an article on Mirrlees as Modernist poet (Boyde) or in a book-length study of Jane Harrison's influence on Modernism (Carpentier)" (Stories 59). Given the religious argument I advance below, I would suggest that this oversight springs in part from a distaste for "things religious" among those who have shaped the Modernist canon.

Which is a nice, tight, two-sentence essay. To it I would only add that in my experience most academics find the novel baffling simply because it is fantasy, a genre they tend to be poorly read in. They're like early travelers to a distant land. They don't understand the customs and the language... well, it's weird.


Above: Only a few more excerpts from the Image Book to go.

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A Day in the Life

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There are all kinds of interesting projects simmering away on a variety of metaphoric stoves. None of which I can talk about yet. So I'm forced to fall back on What I'm Doing Today.

Not much, as it turns out. Some time ago, I wrote a story called "Sparks and Embers," which I had decided was not a success and put it aside. This morning, I picked it up, changed the title to "Artificial People," did a light rewrite of the text, and gave it a new ending.

The result? Much better. Eminently publishable. Not one of my best.

Life is too short to waste on a story that isn't one of my best. So back into the pile mulching away on my desk it goes. I'll pick it up again sometime and see if I can make it sing. Until then, it simply must wait.

This is the glamorous, excitement-packed life of a working writer.


And from the Image Book . . .

Not a lot to be said about today's images. The typewriter is a reminder that artifice and lying are thematic to the novel. The murky figures, possibly drowned, are an evocation of the fast that Faerie is, in many ways, an inversion of our own world--which its inhabitants call Aerth.

Only five more of these to go, by the way.

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