Brief Essays on Genre, Part 5: On Prediction

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On Prediction

 

In The Door Into Summer, published in 1956, Robert A Heinlein predicted cell phones, Ticketron, computer-assisted design, metal detectors in airports, robot vacuum cleaners, and much more that has since come to pass. Today, Heinlein’s visionary descriptions of then-nonexistent technology are as dull as dirt to read.

 

In a story titled “The Mole Pirate,”  Murray Leinster posited a device that would put matter out of phase with matter, making it possible for someone to walk through walls. A criminal steals the technology and uses a retrofitted submarine to surface inside bank vaults and make off with all the money. The climax when the device fails and the criminal falls helplessly toward the Earth’s molten core is nonsense but riveting.

 

Draw your own conclusions.

 

--Michael Swanwick

 

Brief Essays on Genre, Part 4: On the Origin of Fantasy

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On the Origin of Fantasy

 

The first story was told by a spear-fisher deep in our ancestral past. After missing a cast, the fisher exclaimed, “Did you see that fish?”

 

“No,” somebody standing nearby said. “How big was it?”

 

“It was—” The spear-fisher held up hands to indicate the length, then suddenly yanked them farther apart. “—this big!”

 

For a heartbeat, it had seemed the Ur-story would be mimetic—mainstream. But with a leap of imagination it became fantasy and realism has been a subset of fantasy ever since.

 

--Michael Swanwick

A Few Quiet Words of Praise for Philip Gelatt

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So I have seen the Netflix/Blur Studio animation of my story “The Very Pulse of the Machine” in the third season of Love, Death + Robots, and I love it.

 

Great praise is due to Polygon Pictures, the Japanese studio responsible for the beautiful and occasionally hallucinatory animation, and to the director, Emily Dean, who put it all together.  They’ve been receiving it, too.

 

Less often mentioned is the writer, Philip Gelatt. I imagine that most people think he had a relatively easy job, since all he had to do was put what was in my story in script form.

 

Boy howdy, no! “The Very Pulse of the Machine” was written in what’s called “third person close point of view.” Third person, of course, is when the protagonist is a “they” rather than an “I” (first person) or a “you” (second person). When the reader is given access to the character’s inner thoughts, that makes it "close" as opposed to the more distanced “limited point of view.” In both the animated and print versions of the story, Martha Kivelson (Kivelsen in the original) is exhausted and occasionally hallucinating. From time to time she lapses into stream of consciousness.

 

This would not work in an animation. The constant jabber would drive the viewer mad. So the animated version showed MK from the outside. Which created a new set of problems. Without access to her thoughts, her actions had to be made self-evident. A good example of this is why she’s dragging the corpse of her friend, Juliet Burton, behind her. In the print version of “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” Martha has personal reasons for doing this. In the animated version, her oxygen is depleted and so she plugs her suit’s breathing tube into her friend’s suit.

 

That’s very neat, quickly done, instantly comprehensible to the viewer—and not at all easy to come up with.

 

As I watched the episode onscreen, I was alert to every change that had been made—everything that was left out, everything that had been invented. They were all good decisions. Which required a good writer.

 

So I thank you, Philip Gelatt. Great praise be unto you.

 

 

And speaking of Easter eggs . . .

 

I got an enormous kick out of the quick glimpse of a poetry anthology titled Poems of Old Earth. That wasn’t mine, but it was a sly reference to my short fiction collection Tales of Old Earth. Kudos to whoever it was who came up with that.

 

 

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"The Very Pulse of the Machine" Animated (and Streaming Today!)

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Today's the day when I get to see what Blur Studio did with my Hugo Award winning story, "The Very Pulse of the Machine." The snippets seen on various trailers look promising. 

Love, Death + Robots releases its third season on Netflix today. As of this writing (I am typing this yesterday), I haven't seen my segment. But the credits look good.

Polygon Pictures, which did the animation, is the first Japanese studio involved in the project. Emily Dean, the director, appears to be on a short, steep upward arc. And Philip Gelatt, the writer, wrote the script for Europa Report, which I thought was a pretty great movie. So I am optimistic. 

 Here's Netflix's elevator pitch for the segment:

When an exploratory expedition on the surface of the moon Io ends in disaster, an astronaut must trek to safety dragging the body of her co-pilot while using potentially mind-warping drugs to deal with the pain of her own injuries in this trippy tribute to comic book legend Moebius.

You can see the trailer for season 3 here. 

If you don't have Netflix, you can see one episode, "Exit Strategies," which Blur dropped onto YouTube, and get an idea of what you're missing here.

 

Above, top: There I am with the season 3 t-shirt and the Dragonstairs Press logo. (The latest chapbook, The Proceedings of the American Martini Institute, A Report of the American Martini Laboratory, The Once and Future Rye: The Whiskey that Was America, goes on sale tomorrow at noon, Philadelphia time.) 

Above bottom: A still from the animation.

 

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Brief Essays on Genre, Part 3: On Fantastika

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On Fantastika

 

The term fantastika, meaning a single genre encompassing both science fiction and fantasy, originated in Eastern Europe. Science fiction chauvinists object to it strenuously. But, given that Hugo Gernsback included work by Edgar Rice Burroughs in Amazing Stories, the ur-zine of what he then called “scientifiction,” it has to be admitted that the distinction between fantasy and science fiction was blurred even before the latter was named.

 

--Michael Swanwick

The Iron Dragon's Daughter E-Book Sale! Act Fast!

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Another one of those one-day pop-up e-book sales. Here's what they told me:

The e-book of  The Iron Dragon's Daughter will be on sale for $1.99 on Wednesday, May 18 for one day only. This is an Early Bird Books promotion available only in Canada and the US.

 Which is all I know.

If you want to sign up for the Early Bird Books newsletter, which will give you the direct link to the promotion, you can do so here.

 

And because you may not know . . .

 

The Iron Dragon's Daughter is the story of Jane, a girl who has been kidnapped by the elves and forced to work in a factory, building dragons. Faerie has been industrialized. The high-elven wear Armani suits and dwarves sit in the back of the bus. As the story opens, the enslaved children who labor in the Baldwin Dragon Works are planning to murder their supervisor, Blugg.

This has proved to be my most popular novel ever. Some of my pals give me a hard time about that. "You peaked twenty-five years ago?" But there it is. A fact is a fact. 

Anyway, if you like reading e-books and you're at all curious about my work, this is a great opportunity.

There. That's as close to a hard sell as I'll ever come.

 

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The Once and Future Rye, the Dragonstairs Chapbook!

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Marianne's Dragonstairs Press has released its latest chapbook, a compilation of my posts on the history of rye whiskey in America!

Here's the official notification: 

Dragonstairs Press is pleased to announce publication of The Proceedings of the American Martini Institute A Report of the American Martini Laboratory The Once and Future Rye: The Whiskey that Was America by Michael Swanwick, with a cover illustration by Susan McAninley. This report, tracking the rise of rye whiskey, its tragic downfall, and its wondrous rebirth, originally appeared as a number of posts on the Flogging Babel blog and has since been lightly rewritten. It is a 8 ½ x 5 ½ inch chapbook, hand-stitched, and is issued in a signed, numbered edition of 80, of which 76 are available for sale.

Domestic price, including shipping $12

International price, including shipping $14

 

Please note that it doesn't go on sale until Saturday, May 21 at noon, Eastern time. Also note that in direct contrast to some of Dragonstairs Press's small-run and ultra-small-run productions, this one will not sell out in one or two or even five minutes. It is Marianne's intention to have this chapbook available for sale for weeks and even months to come. But even if that doesn't happen, it's pretty sure to take days to sell out.

 

No guarantees, though.

And why, you ask, that particular date . . .?

 

May 21st, or 5/21, was chosen because it is National Dry Martini Day... Five to One.

 

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