Upcoming Public Appearances

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Normally when I'm working on a novel I like to just hole up and type -- and right now I'm working on two novels.  So it's unusual for me to have two public appearances  coming up in the next fortnight.

The closer appearance is this weekend at Readercon in Burlington, MA.  Here's my schedule:

Friday July 13

5:00 PM    F    The Books Readers Don't See. Christopher Brown (leader), Barry B. Longyear, Anil Menon, Michael Swanwick. This is about non-English-language science fiction & fantasy, basically.

6:00 PM    RI    A Story from Scratch, Part I. Elizabeth Bear, Kyle Cassidy, Lee Moyer, Michael Swanwick. This is one of Kyle's odd projects.  Using models from the audience and "props provided by celebrity guests," Bear & I will create a story that will be photographed by Kyle.  Lee will create a cover.  The final work will be read on Sunday and an e-version of the book made available for download.  For some reason, the schedule says, "business casual attire recommended."  But those who are familiar with Kyle's or my or Lee's or Bear's work will probably dress up somewhat better than that.

8:00 PM    E    Autographs. Kit Reed, Michael Swanwick.

9:00 PM    RI    Readercon Classic Fiction Book Club: The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Michael Cisco, Sarah Smith, John H. Stevens, Michael Swanwick (leader), Jeff VanderMeer.

Amos Tutuola was a genius.  All literate people should know that.

Saturday July 14

11:00 AM    RI    A Story from Scratch, Part II.

1:00 PM    NH    Reading. Michael Swanwick. 

3:00 PM    ME    A Story from Scratch, Part III.

Sunday July 15

12:00 PM    ME    A Story from Scratch, Part IV. 

I believe this is the public reading part.

Then I appear at:

The Wise Owl Bookstore

624 Penn Avenue

West Reading, PA

July 18

6 p.m.

I haven't been to the Wise Owl yet, but apparently these events are (forgive me) a hoot.  The website notes that "The event will begin at 5pm with music from Gary M. Celima, an open mic with area authors follows and then Swanwick will take the stage."

So if I were you, I'd show up at five.

Most importantly, this event is free of charge.  You're not going to get a better deal than that.

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Straddling the Continents

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My friend Igor Iva sent me some photographs taken during and after Aelita, the Russian science fiction convention in Ekaterinurg.  Here's one of them.  It was taken at the border of Europe and Asia during the picnic after the con.  Not everyone was there, of course.  It was a picnic and nobody was giving or obeying orders.  But that's a good selection.

You'll note that I'm carefully standing on both sides of the border, straddling the continents.

Above:  I can identify most of the people in the photograph, but not all.  So, rather than offend some of them, I'll be silent on the subject.

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My Sincere Apologies

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As pretty much always, I'm on the road again.  I've got some cool stuff to share with you, but it all requires editing, formatting, and the like.  Meanwhile, I've got two novels and a nounload of short fiction to write.  Plus a couple of pieces of nonfiction that I really should get down on paper.

All of which is to say:  I'm on the road again.  My next post will  be on Monday.  I apologize for having nothing of substance for you today.

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The Mongolian Wizard Adventures Begin!

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Big news today.  My new story, The Mongolian Wizard, is up on Tor.com.  As you might be able to guess from the cover illo, it's a Ruritanian fantasy set in "a fractured Europe that never was," as whoever writes Tor's intro material puts it.  You can also most likely guess that it's meant to be first and foremost entertaining, that it's an adventure story, and that it has a dark edge to it.

What you can't guess from the illustration is that this is the first of a series.  I liked Ritter and Sir Toby, the main characters, so much that by the time I'd finished the story I had the plot for another story.  And by the time I'd finished that, I had the plot for a third.  These guys -- and the situation they're in -- have really got a hold on my imagination.

Right now, in fact, I have the shape of the entire series roughed out in in my mind.  I know how it's going to end and what major plot twists will occur along the way.  I even know who the mysterious visitor in the final adventure will be.

Does all that sound like I'm pushing this story hard?  I am.  I want everybody to love these stories and these characters as much as I do.  Just to keep the pressure on me to write more.

But decide for yourself.  War is brewing in Europe and all the greatest wizards of the continent have gathered together to try to stave it off . . .

You can read the story here.


And speaking of the illustration above . . .


Illustrator Gregory Manchess has done a fantastic job of not only picturing the characters as I saw them myself, but of conveying  the mood of the story and indeed the feel of the entire series.  Mostly, though, what it does is let you know if this is the kind of story you want to read.  If the picture makes you hope that "The Mongolian Wizard" is as good as it is, you'll almost certainly like the story.  But if it doesn't look like your sort of thing, you can pass it by with a clean conscience.

Did I mention that I like this artwork?  I really like this artwork.

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Playing Hooky

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No blog today --- I'm off to the beach.

As filler, here's Rob Pratt's stunning trailer for an imaginary cartoon, Bizarro Classic.

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My Audible Fiction

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Audiobooks are certainly coming up in the world.  (A good thing, too, with all the traveling I do!)  My stories appear in four anthologies on Audible.com.  They are:

We, Robots,
Timeless Time Travel Tales
The Best of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine

and, just the other day, The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 4, edited by Allan Kaster.  which contains "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not Be Back Again," my tale of love and terrorism set a century in the future. 

Six of my novels are also available as downloads -- and this is why I haven't mentioned them before; because normally I blog about my fiction when I receive the contributor's copies -- on Audible.  They are:

Bones of the Earth
Stations of the Tide
Jack Faust
The Iron Dragon's Daughter
The Dragons of Babel
Dancing With Bears.

As for the job the readers have done . . . I honestly can't tell you.  It turns out that I cannot listen to other people reading my work because they put the emphasis on other words than those I would.  You wouldn't think it would be that big a deal, but it is.

Other people's novels, however, I have no problem with.

You can read about Kaster's audio anthology here.



And as a piece of whimsy . . .



I bought the first volume of the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series and am happy to report that it's nowhere near as gnostic as the 1969 version was.  It struck me, however, that Alan Moore was at a disadvantage dealing with the year 1997 because for legal reasons he had to stay with immortal characters from out-of-copyright fiction (Orlando, Allan Quatermain) and unnamed or renamed characters we're supposed to decode and who have minor roles (Emma Peel, James Bond).

So I began in my imagination to put together a new team of EG, for an adventure that could be written a century from now.  Emma Peel makes an excellent M and I'd keep her.  I think that Buffy and  Hannibal Lector both deserve a place on the roster.

But who else?  Ideas, anyone?

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The Courage of Pussy Riot

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According to the Guardian, the detention of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alehina, members of the feminist anarchist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot has been extended indefinitely.  Their crime?  Back in February, the group performed (and filmed) a protest song in Christ the Redeemer Cathedral in Moscow.

This was an astonishingly courageous thing to do in Putin's Russia.  Predictably, the police grabbed who they could and slung them in jail, where they remain with no trial in sight, apparently because the government doesn't have much of a case.  Because Pussy Riot performs in masks, it's not even certain that the women they arrested were part of the protest.

You can read about it here.

And you can view the video that has three brave young women in jail, facing charges of "hooliganism" that might result in a seven-year sentence below.

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