The 60th Anniversary New York International Antiquarian Book Fair

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Yesterday, Marianne and I made a quick jaunt to the Big Apple (do people still call NYC that?) for the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. One of those half-for-business, half-for-fun things one does.

I won't pretend that we managed to see it all. A quick pass around the perimeter, with pauses to chat with people we know, was pretty much it. Nor did I take notes, so there won't be a full-scale article about it. Still, the Park Avenue Armory (this was a big event) was chock-a-block with nifty stuff any book lover would want.

Just two examples: A miniature book of a biography of Robert Godard, bound between two boards of meteoric iron--acid-washed, of course, to bring out the Widmanstätten patterns. And a quite beautiful artist book, one of four, made from a first edition of Finnegans Wake, with each page torn into strips and woven into a new page, then bound together. It was an audacious thing to do and I have to admire the artist (sorry, I don't have her name; as I said, I took no notes) for the nerve she displayed there.

I was of course daydreaming about items I'd love to own, had I only the shelf- or wall-space for them. Marianne, meanwhile, was making mental notes for future Dragonstairs Press projects.

Oh, and the book above? One dealer had a set of cheap shelves ("Everything $400 or Less!") and there on it was one of Gardner Dozois's best of the year volumes. Signed by Gardner and Gene Wolfe, and only $175. I had no idea such a thing existed. Gardner didn't talk much about his own accomplishments.

Also, and I realize the irony of this, special limited editions and spectacular leather bindings meant nothing whatsoever to the man. He was all about the words rather than the objects. When I interviewed him over the space of several years for Being Gardner Dozois, I discovered that he hadn't even kept copies of all of his own stories.

I'm sure Gardner would have thought the artist-book of James Joyce's most daunting work was a waste of a good reading copy.

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Short Fiction Mini-Review: "Mingus Fingers"

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Once upon a time, science fiction writers liked to write about jazz musicians. Like SF writers, jazz musicians were outsiders. Unlike SF writers, they were acknowledged to be the quintessence of cool. The protagonist was usually obscure but always one of the Greats.

That was long ago, and the sub-genre died pretty much away.

But here comes its resurrection, "Mingus Fingers" by David Sandner and Jacob Weisman and the first of two things that makes it particularly interesting is that while the protagonist is good enough to sit in with Charles Mingus, he's nowhere near on the same level. But his underage nephew and ward, Kenny, might well be.

The second particularly interesting thing about this story is that the almost-but-not-quite great musician is also an almost-but-not-quite great boxer. And in order to support the young man abruptly dumped into his care, he goes back for one last fight.

Take my word for it, it's tough to donkey up the knowledge to convincingly portray a jazz musician or a boxer. Doing both in one story? It's a recipe for disaster.

Yet Mingus Fingers is not a disaster. Rather, it's a graceful and touching portrayal of a man with the odds loaded against him who gives his all for a child who has a shot at something more than he ever had.

This is a slim $8.00 single-story paperback from Fairwood Press. It's nicely made, too.

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Short Fiction Mini-Review: "GO. NOW. FIX." by Timons Esaias

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This is one nifty little story!

"GO. NOW. FIX." by Timons Esaias appears in the January/February 2020 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. The protagonist is a PandaPillow, which is just what it sounds like--a consumer product meant to comfort a child or traveler. It has senses, motility, and the ability to reason, but you wouldn't call it an AI. It's just a very capable expert system.

At the start of the story, there is an explosion and he PandaPillow tumbles out of overhead torage in an airliner filled with blood and unconscious human beings. Following protocols, it connects to Customer Service and sets out to rescue everyone. Then...

Well, then you have the pleasure of reading the story. Being the sort of story it is, you know the PandaPillow will come through. But that doesn't take away the suspense. Or the satisfaction of watching it happen. Or the pleasure in a carefully crafted ending to the story.

This story's just for fun. And fun it is. I recommend it.


And I should explain . . .

One of my New Year's resolutions--well, actually, the only one. I am so old that previous New Year's resolutions have rendered me practically perfect in every way--was to start reviewing short fiction again. Short fiction doesn't get many reviews and when it does, it's usually a sentence or three in the course of a review covering an anthology or magazine.

Alas, I have a lot on my plate these days. So I haven't the time to write thoughtful, seriously structured reviews the way I once did, back in the old New York Review of Science Fiction days. So, recognizing that I was being too ambitious, I lowered my sights. Now I am resolved to every now and then write a line or three in praise of a story that catches my eye.

So I have begun. Fingers crossed, I should be continuing to review stories I like in the coming weeks, months, or years.

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More Praise for the Novel No-One Is Raving About (But Everybody Should)

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In the February 2020 issue of Locus, I somehow managed to miss the fact that Graham Sleight included The Iron Dragon's Mother in his list of "ten books of the year." So let me now note that happy fact.

Based entirely on those books on his list that I've read, I'm in extremely good company.

You can find Sleight's Year in Review here.


And I should explain . . .

The title of today's blog post is a paraphrase of something Jonathan Strahan wrote in that same issue of Locus:

The book of 2019 I loved most that no-one else seemed to be raving about (even though they should have been) was Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Mother. Ostensibly the third in a trilogy, in truth it's a standalone tale of a post-industrial fantasy which I loved very much and recommend.

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Pausing to Admire the Universe

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What an extraordinary universe we live in! What an amazing time to be alive! When I was a child--no, we need not go back that far. When I sold my first story in 1979, the Solar planets were all mysterious fuzzballs of light. Pluto was a featureless dot. And now we get close-up pictures like the above of the atmosphere of Jupiter.


Over at Science and Nature, courtesy of NASA's Juno probe, there's a portfolio of fresh new close-ups of the king of planets. You can see them by clicking here.

Take a deep breath. Disengage from politics for just a minute or two. Any species capable of taking photographs like these can't be all bad.

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Reading Letters from Amherst

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I came back from Boskone with rather a self-indulgent pile of books and am now midway through the first, Letters from Amherst by Samuel R. Delany.

One of the stranger perks of dedicating one's life to the arts is being able to read a friend's private letters without involving oneself in a morally questionable decision. Chip's letters display all the virtues of his fiction. They're vivid, carefully observed, and the product of a particularly fine mind.

But I won't review the book here. Either the mere existence of a book containing five long narrative letters by Delany makes you determined to buy it, or else you don't want it. In the latter case, nothing I might say would convince you otherwise. In the first, nothing would deter you.

So I will simply say: There it is. You know whether you want it or not.

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A First Review for The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus

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Over on Reddit, my PS Publications collection The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus received its very first (so far as I know) review, from somebody who is probably named Mike. The review came under the rubric of One Mike to Rule Them All, anyway, so it seems likely.

Here's how the review begins.

So since my last read left rather a bad taste in my mouth, I wanted something fun for a palate cleanser. A book featuring a series of vignettes about a pair of charming con artists, one of whom happens to be a genetically engineered anthropomorphic dog, seemed to be just about the perfect speed. And that’s more or less exactly what it was.

And it concludes that mine is "a fun little book." It is little and it's meant to be fun, so I have nothing to complain about.  

You can read the entire review here.

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