Something's Happening Here . . .

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This is mysterious.  My son Sean came back from a day as a poll worker to report with what sounds like half a conspiracy theory.

This year, it seems, the state Republican party made a major push to put "minority observers" in Philadelphia polling places.  Since each polling place can have only so many workers, this meant that some long-time workers were displaced.  Some of the displaced workers challenged the displacements and the judges sided with some of them and said they could keep their positions, which meant that there would be no minority observer at their polling place.

Got that?  Now it gets odd.  On election day, all the minority observers showed up in bright red shirts.  Plus, the workers who hadn't been displaced by minority observers had people show up at their houses beforehand who gave them bright red shirts and told them they were required to wear them at the polls.

It's illegal for poll workers to wear anything indicating political affiliation at the voting place. 

Now, some of the minority observers were confronted for wearing gang colors or because they'd displaced long-term cronies of those who remained.  To a man and woman they did not argue, but turned around and immediately left.  Which meant that the polls were undermanned.

Now, supposedly, the commonwealth Republican establishment is outraged at the treatment of the minority observers.

Aaaannnnddd . . . that's it.  Whatever's happening here -- if anything -- is not exactly clear.  Nor what the Republicans could possibly hope to get out of the situation.  But it's interesting, no?

This is politics as it's played in Pennsylvania.  "Land of Giants," as Steve Lopez used to say.


And speaking of collectibles . . .

 The Ebay auction for the framed and signed typescript of "From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . ."  ends tomorrow at 10:56:32 Pacific Daylight Time.  So if you're a collector or if you're simply curious as to how much such items go for, that's the place to be.

Remember, every penny goes to Clarion West Writers Workshop.

The story is on sale here.  And it can be read here.

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Commodity Fantasy

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The other day, David Stone posted a thoughtful response to a blog entry here, noting that he had been shocked to learn that a lot of the really bad fantasy he read as an adolescent was consumed by adult readers.

Critic John Clute coined a term which explains this phenomenon and, since it's a useful one, I thought I'd share it with you:  Commodity Fantasy.

Commodity fantasy is work whose main purpose is not  to give the reader a satisfying experience, but to buy the next book in the series.  It's important that such a work leave the reader a little unhappy, a little dissatisfied, a little edgy -- and anxious to snatch up the next volume in the hope that it will provide the experience that the last book failed to.  The more like a pack of cigarettes (if you've never smoked, trust me -- cigarettes temporarily ease the craving but they never quite satisfy it) a commodity fantasy is, the more successful it will be.

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories had some of the qualities of commodity fantasy.  Conan, it was stated up front was destined "to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."  But the Kull stories had taught Howard that all the fun was to be had during Conan's adventurous years and would abruptly cease once he became king.  So the reader never was going to see him fulfill his destiny.

Later, John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian stories took the Conan matrix and turned it into a cartoon of itself.  When we meet Brak, he's decided to make a trek to Khurdisan the Golden, the southernmost city of his world, apparently because it sounds kind of neat.  Story by story, he fights monsters and acquires supernatural enemies who try to stop him from reaching Khurdisan.

I read the Brak books when I was young because I read every fantasy book that came out.  There simply weren't that many of them.  For a time, I kept reading them because I wanted to know what would happen when he reached Khurdisan.  But finally I realized that he never would.

That's simply not what commodity fantasy does.

John Jakes went on to have a smash series of Civil War novels, and I went on to read other and better stuff.  Samuel Johnson was right when he said, "Why, let him read what he will.  He'll come round to better, by and by."  I don't suppose that reading commodity fantasy is any worse for you than smoking cigarettes -- something else I used to do -- and it's a heck of a lot easier to give up.



 Oh, and . . .

If you're in the market for an enigma machine, one is going up for auction in London.  It's expected to bring in forty to sixty thousand pounds.

You can read about it here.


Above:  There it is, the holy item itself.

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Voting Day

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This is what democracy looks like.  Marianne and I got up this morning, walked over to the Knights of Columbus hall, voted, and then went over to Crossroads Coffee House for breakfast.  It wasn't very dramatic.

But that's the whole point, innit?  More times than not, I've seen my favored candidate go down in flames and somebody I despised (Richard Nixon and George W. Bush come to mind) elected president.  But I've never, even when I was young and hotheaded, been tempted to pick up a gun afterward.

Brilliant invention, the vote is.  We had a good turnout too.  I was number 62 and the polls had only been open some forty minutes.

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Small Worlds

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I'm working on a secret project, so Saturday i went to a miniatures show in Cherry Hill.  And what's that all about?  Dollhouses, basically, and dollhouse accessories.  There were things there would make even the most hardened non-collector feel a twinge of desire -- such as the detailed miniature, shown above, of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

But there were also things that would confirm you in your opinion that here was an opportunity to spend far too much money.  Such as a $350 cut crystal bowl, small enough to balance on a fingertip.  It was exquisitely crafted, of course.  But buying enough crystal to make your miniature china cabinet look respectable would cost you several thousand dollars.  And then there'd be the rest of the room and house to furnish.

"There's your desk!" I said to Marianne, knowing she'd always wanted a nicely complicated rolltop.

 "For that money," she replied, eying the price tag, "I could buy a real one."

What struck me most strongly, though, was that these people were engaged in creating small, imaginary worlds -- fantasies, if you will -- and yet there was almost no overlap with the worlds of fantasy and science fiction.  No Baba Yaga chicken legged dollhouse or Moominhouse or 1950s Moon Base or Lothlorien elven tree-house  . . .  There wasn't even any overlap with the the ship-model building community, though the commonality would seem obvious.

My son is a shrewd social observer, so I asked him about this phenomenon.  "When a sub-culture is shrinking, the boundaries are patrolled more rigorously and the purity of the core defended more passionately," he said, adding that the sub-cultures shrink when the avenues to bring young people in disappear.  Model trains are a good example of this, because children aren't given train sets anymore.  Nor, apparently, doll houses.

Which explained why almost everyone at the show was old.  It wasn't just that so much of what was for sale was pricey -- there were lots of small and cunning creations within the reach of a modest pocketbook.   It was that this small world was steadily growing smaller.

I asked about comic books, which you used to be able to buy in every drugstore and (remember these?) magazine kiosk.  "There are still two routes into them," he said, "the movies and Saturday morning cartoons."

I didn't ask about genre fantasy, which I already knew was safe for the moment.  Fandom may be getting grayer and less welcoming to the young, but there are still lots of ways for young readers to discover fantasy and science fiction.  Still, it was a sobering reminder of what could easily happen . . . a dystopian future in which the readers grow steadily older and fewer and the books become increasingly more like themselves, predictable and stereotypical.  It confirmed me in my resolve to write some very, very strange fiction.

Immediately above:  Elements for the secret project.

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Bid Early and Often!

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The Halloween story is finished, but the auction for the original typescript has just begun.  The four by six inch typescript, printed in small text so the entire story fits on one page, has been signed, placed in a contemporary frame, and is now up on Ebay.

This is being done for the benefit of Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Not a penny of the proceeds will go to me.  In fact, I'll be paying for the postage myself.   So if you're a collector or need a present for a collector and or just think this would be a cool thing to have hanging on your wall, you can bid with a clean conscience.  Your money will be going straight back into the sf/fantasy/horror community.

You can find it here.  Or go to Ebay and type in "autographed" and "Michael Swanwick." 

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Air Lothlorien

  and aLast

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Last night was Halloween and, for a miracle, we had lots of trick-or-treaters.  There aren't a lot of children on our street and only a few of us make an effort to be generous with the candy, so normally we don't get many visitors.

But last night we ran out of candy. It wasn't easy, either.

And above . . .

Just how big a deal are the Lord of the Rings and now The Hobbit movies to New Zealand?  Pretty darned big, apparently.

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It's Halloween!!!!

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .

That year summer lasted halfway to forever.  The dog days of August stretched into September and beyond.  It was only in late October that a storm front finally swept through Winooski and brought in cooler weather.  When the rain ended, Kenny ran out the back door of his house and through the dying woods at the edge of town, into a meadow that crunched underfoot.  Looking up, he saw a bat struggle across a sky that storm and sunset working together had turned an eerie green.  For the first time Halloween felt near.

Out of nowhere, a skeletal hand clutched his shoulder and spun him around.  Kenny found himself staring into the ivory face of an impossibly lean man.  The face had no eyes, only blank skin over the sockets where eyes should be. The mouth, when it opened, was full of pointed teeth.  Kenny's heart hammered.  He tried to pull away, but those bony fingers held him like shackles.

"We are leaving, boy, all of us," the pale man said. Kenny didn't have to ask who he meant.  Kenny had spent the afternoon drawing monsters in his math workbook:  vampires, ghouls, giant spiders, frankensteins, werewolves.  Everything that people feared even though they knew better.  Everything that kids loved even though they knew they shouldn't. Maybe that was what had drawn this creature to him.  "Your kind has ruined this world. Soon you will be extinct.  So we are opening a passage elsewhere."  Then he added, "But we will not go alone."

“Where are you going?” Kenny asked.

The pale man raised his blind face to stare up into infinity.  "Far, far away."  Then he added, "But we will not go alone.  We are gathering the most sensitive and imaginative mortals to accompany us on our long, dark trek.”

“You’re taking me with you?”   Kenny was terrified at the prospect, but also a little thrilled.   He could not deny that.  But neither could he keep himself from asking, “Why?”

“Humanity has always had a symbiotic relationship with its monsters.  We give shape to the fears you dare not face. And you– ”  The hand on Kenny’s shoulder did not weaken, struggle against it though he did.  But the other hand now stroked Kenny’s hair gently, almost lovingly.  That terrifying mouth twisted into a near-smile.   “Think of yourself as a brown bag lunch for the voyage.”

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And my commentary . . .

So it concludes, as it pretty much had to, a breath before the plunge into the long, dark spaces between the stars.  Today I make arrangements to put the original typescript of the story (pictured above) up on auction.  All proceeds go to the Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Obviously, I'm hoping that the auction will bring them oodles and oodles of money.  But it's equally possible that it will go for a pittance.  In which case, you might wind up with something cool for your wall at far below the market rate.

For those who are reading these things in hope of getting tips on how to write:  I came up with the final sentence before writing the first one.  That way, as I was writing, every sentence was aimed straight at the ending.  This not only meant I never had to go back and excise passages that led nowhere but that the ending (ideally) has the feeling of inevitability.  This is a trick that will not work for every story or for every writer -- I know writers who write only to discover the ending, for whom this technique would simply prevent them from ever starting a story -- but it's worth your trying.

If you want to link to the final story without my commentary, you can find it here.

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