Flogging Babel

Three Typescript Pages

2012-01-31T13:07:00.000-08:00

I was sorting through a pile of partial manuscripts, tossing those which weren't needed anymore into the recycling bin, when I came across a couple of intensely doodled pages and thought I'd share them with you.

Above: Page 6 of what was in the process of becoming "Slow Life." You can see my thought processes at work. Also the fact that I can't remember the elementary school formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. I thought sure I'd know that by now.

This one's pretty cool, actually. It was drawn on the back of a typescript page for "Slow Life" and I was trying to work out the chronology of the ballooning section and make sure I included details I hadn't mentioned yet. Either that or I was avoiding actual work by doodling. Either one is eminently possible.

If only I could draw, this would be worth saving!

This is the first page of "Tin Marsh." Here I absolutely, no question about it, was doodling.

I'm sure this thought occurred to me at the time, but it's a pity I couldn't fit giant alien lizards into the story. Pretty much any story can be improved by the addition of giant alien lizards.

A Massive Failure of Science Fiction's Imagination

2012-01-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for an article or video clip that would, in a sensible and nonpartisan way, examine Newt Gingrich's proposal for a permanent moon base which would evolve into a lunar colony. The clip above of Neile deGrasse Tyson does a pretty good job.

There's also an interview with Warren Ellis which (no surprise) does get a little hard on Mr. Gingrich. But I include it because Ellis goes into the nuts-and-bolts about the difficulties, and mentions the Outer Space Treaty, which makes Luna becoming the 51st state unlikely. You can find it here.

Here's the short take on a moon colony:

Could we do it? Yes, if we really wanted to.

Is it likely to happen anytime soon? No, because there's not the enthusiasm for it.

I don't want to bash Mr. Gingrich here, and I don't want to go into the politics of the proposal. What interests is the fact that I didn't feel even a twinge of enthusiasm for the idea. That caught me by surprise. So I examined the idea and realized that it was because the vision being offered up for our consideration was straight out of Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Heinlein's book was published in 1966. Only four years short of half a century ago.

Now, Heinlein put a great deal of his career into plotting a plausible path for humanity's emergence into outer space. But he never meant it to be the last word. And there's been a lot of technological and scientific growth since then. Yet when a space enthusiast, running for president, reaches for a workable vision to inspire the electorate, he has to go four and a half decades into the past for it.

This is a massive failure of imagination on the part of science fiction.

I understand how this came about. After Heinlein's book appeared, NASA was roaring into the future by itself and it only made sense to let them do it, while writing fiction set after the deed was already done. Even Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, which demonstrate, step by step how to terraform that planet, assume the hard work of moving large numbers of people into interplanetary space has already been accomplished.

But now that the space program has lagged and only a few diehard holdouts -- most of them specifically fans of Heinlein -- believe in the dream anymore, that gap has become more and more obvious.

Somebody really ought to do something about that.

And since you ask . . .

Why not me? Because that's not where my talents lie. But, for what little it's worth, here's my own admittedly sketchy and not at all inspiring synopsis of how it could be done.

1. Start with John Barnes's idea of sending hundreds of cheap probes everywhere in the Solar System. "Build a big enough database," he said, "and it will tell you what to do.

2. Send robots first to construct whatever colonies the database tells you to build.

3. Learn enough about ecosystems to have self-contained farms producing food and oxygen before the human being arrives.

4. (And this is implicit in the previous three items.) Accept that the first permanent Moonbase or Marsbase of Whereverbase is probably not going to happen in our lifetimes.

That last doesn't have to be true. But it will be unless somebody comes up with a viable and inspiring alternative.

And speaking of limericks . . .

The Blue Ribbon And Not At All Nepotistic Jury of Family will be announcing the winner of the low-rent SF and/or Isaac Asimov limerick contest on Wednesday. Brilliant writers of light poetics have only today and tomorrow in which to pull off a last minute upset.

Pushkin the American

2012-01-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

I have a story coming out soon in the latest Postscript anthology, #26/27 Unfit for Eden. It's the second of two stories that I dreamed up while I was in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The first one was "Libertarian Russia," and every time I meet a émigré Russian who's read it, he or she inevitably takes me aside to demand I explain what I meant by it.

I'm expecting an intensified version of this reaction for the second story. It's called "Pushkin the American."

Here's how it begins:

The American, whose name has since been forgotten, came to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains in the year 1817. He was a young man and whatever disgrace had driven him so far had been left behind in his native Philadelphia. Somehow he had found work as the secretary of an American industrialist who, along with his wife, was making a tour of Russia with a particular eye to the natural riches of the Ural Mountains.

You probably know this already, but suggesting that Pushkin was an American is like saying that Shakespeare was French or George Washington was a spy for the British, or possibly some combination of the two. It's every bit as impossible as a libertarian Russia, while running the risk of being taken as an insult to a national hero.

But of course the story has nothing to do with Pushkin at all. I conceived of it on my last day in Yekaterinburg. I'd been pushing myself hard, trying to see as much as I could during my stay and suddenly, less than half a mile from a museum that held some Kandinsky paintings I very much wanted to see, discovered I could go no further. Totally exhausted, and feeling that strange psychological pressure that comes from being immersed in a language you cannot speak, I asked myself: What if I couldn't go home? I'd have to get a menial job in order to support myself and I'd also have to learn Russian. But if I was ever to become a writer again -- ever to become myself again -- I'd have to know Russian as well as a Russian does. I tried to imagine what that would be like.

Of course, nobody would want to read a story about Swanwick the Russian. But the idea had its talons in my imagination. So I wrote about Pushkin the American instead.

The Russians are one of the most literary peoples on earth. I hope they understand that this story was written with nothing but admiration for their literature and their culture.

And as long I brought it up . . .

Here's the table of contents for the anthology. If you can't find something there to like, you're far, far pickier than I am.

# Michael Bishop - Unfit for Eden

# Darrell Schweitzer - True Blue

# Mike Chinn - Saving Prince Romero

# Richard Calder - Madeline Smith

# Quentin S. Crisp - Non-Attachment

# Matthew Hughes - The Scribe of Betelgeuse V

# Eric Brown - The Room Beyond

# Thomas Olde Heuvelt - The Boy Who Cast No Shadow

# Christopher Harman - The Reader

# Robert Reed - Emergence

# Greg Ouiring - The Man Who Hated Shakespeare

# Amber D. Sistla - The Summer of Our Discontent

# Mike Resnick - A Weighty Affair

# George Hulseman - The Sea Witch

# Vaughan Stanger - First and Third

# Lavie Tidhar - Black Gods Kiss

# Robert T. Jeschonek - Warning! Do Not Read This Story!

# Steven Utley - Crime and Punishment

# Simon Unsworth - Borough Station

# Jessica Reisman - The Bottom Garden

# Kit Reed - Tasmin

# Andrew Drummond - Dr. Calvin’s Grand Illuminated Bestial Pleasure Dome

# Michael Swanwick - Pushkin the American

# Michael Kelly - Conversations with the Dead

# Eric Schaller - The Parasite

# Neal Barrett, Jr. - Trash

# Matthew Bialer - Found Fresh Footprints Again

Above: There's the cover.

Space Nazis

2012-01-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

I took the day off yesterday but even so I've managed to finish two stories this week, the second one just a few minutes ago. Now both of them go into the pie closet to cool off. I'll take a critical look at 'em in a week or three.

Meanwhile, here's a trailer for a movie that, fingers crossed, might turn out to be good trashy fun. On the basis of this one trailer, it looks like a sure thing. Unhappily, some of the other trailers I've seen are not so encouraging. We'll all have to keep our fingers crossed.

Except for those of us who don't like kitschy melodramatic fun. But for them there's always Merchant Ivory.

A Happy Day on Mud Level Road

2012-01-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

Marianne woke up this morning with the desire to see a snowy owl. So we jumped in the car and drove off to Cumberland county, near Carlyle, where one had recently been seen. We found the intersection of Duncan and Mud Level Roads and . . . nothing.

At this point, I could build up suspense by detailing which roads we went down and where we got lost and . . . But what the heck. We finally regained Mud Level Road and found a knot of birders watching what turned out to be a prairie falcon (common enough in the West, but astonishing in Pennsylvania). Not long thereafter, a man who was what Marianne calls a "Saint Matthew birder" -- a proselytizer, out of love of the Good -- gave us detailed instructions to where a Townsend's warbler had been seen, pointed out that there were horned larks in the stubbled field alongside us, and then drove off. Only to reappear, driving backwards, less than a minute later, to tell us that the owl had been seen on Duncan Road.

So we drove until we saw a knot of cars pulled off the road and there, visible in the distance a mile away, was . . . a small white dot. Not a good enough viewing, even through binoculars, to be sure of anything. Luckily, some Amish birders were there and offered to let us look through their spotting scope. (Birders are awfully likeable people.) So we hung about, looking and admiring and talking with other birders, for quite some time.

After which, we followed the directions to the house of a man who took birding very seriously and allowed visitors (for the occasion) to watch his feeders from his porch. There, we and he and a class from Dickinson College saw:

hairy woodpeckers
downy woodpeckers
cardinals
tufted titmice
mice
white-breasted nuthatches
blackcapped chickadees
white throated sparrows
a carolina wren
juncoes
and the Townsend's warbler

Mostly, though, I was impressed by how kind and friendly everybody we met was. Of course, they were birders and that explains a lot. The countryside was beautiful too.

The Russian Clown Slava Polunin

2012-01-24T19:11:00.000-08:00

I spent the day writing, so I have no adventures to relate, other than the adventure of writing hard and well and productively. Which is half of what I live for, but not much fun for others to watch or to hear about.

So posted above is a clip of the great Russian clown Slava. He lives in that dark and beautiful space where despair and wonder meet. And should he ever wander into one of my fantasy novels, he'll find a warm welcome there.

Title Above: If I ever wrote a story about Slava, that's what I'd call it. But it would be a sad story, so out of respect to to the man, the story will never exist. Save possibly in an anthology in the Library of Dreams.

Elephant in the Snow

2012-01-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

A gray sky, melting snow, and lots and lots of fog. It's a formula for beauty. But I spent most of the day indoors, working on a new story that's just reached that point where everything starts to fall together and you can imagine it being done soon. Maybe even this week. Maybe even tomorrow.

But that's not all I did today. I've just sold three stories to Tor.com! In one day! I'm betting that, so far, that's a record.

And speaking of limericks . . .

The Isaac Asimov/Science Fiction Day Limerick Competition has only eight more days to run. I gave it all of January because I figured that some people might need the time. But as it turns out, the kind of people who write limericks are naturally quick-witted because the bulk of the entries were made in the first day or two.

But there's still time for more! Here are the rules, as I originally states them:

The limerick must be clean, formally correct, and witty. The judgment of the Blue Ribbon and Not at All Nepotistic Jury of Family will be final. You can post your entry here or in response to any other blog entry for the rest of the month. And I'll announce the winner on February 1.

Above: I spotted this elephant today in Chestnut Hill. Drugs may well have been involved. Not on my part, however.

Honoring Gene Wolfe

2012-01-20T17:57:00.000-08:00

On March 17, Gene Wolfe will be honored with the first Fuller Award, acknowledging his lifetime achievement to literature, at the Sanfilippo Estate, outside of Chicago, by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Needless to say, I will be there.

Also present to honor Wolfe will be Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Michael Dirda, Luis Urrea, Audrey Niffenegger, Jody Lynn Nye, Patrick O’Leary, and quite probably others. Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s news quiz show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” will be the toastmaster and the master of ceremonies will be Gary K. Wolfe.

Which is to say that I'll be hanging with exactly the sort of people I hoped I'd be associated with when I was a gonnabe writer, many decades ago.

That's not why I'm going, however. I'm going to pay homage to the man who is the greatest living writer in the English language alive today. I'd say "in the world," but I can only read the one language. In that language, however, I am confident. I have read the works of every writer who might conceivably be a contender and, while I am of course floored by the virtues of their work, Gene is simply the best our culture and civilization (such, as H.L. Mencken would have said, as they are) can boast of.

And he's a science fiction and fantasy writer! How wonderful! It's like discovering that the best writer in the world lives next door. He could have lived anywhere and written anything. But he chose to hang out with us. That's just damned cool.

You can read the press release here.

Visiting Winter

2012-01-19T00:49:00.000-08:00

I had an eminently satisfying day yesterday. It began with a visit to the Carle Museum to see the show of Jules Feiffer's children's book illustrations Then Marianne and I jaunted up to Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, to ogle the glacial potholes. A few of which are shown below.

Which (along with many other such features) exist directly below the falls:

You've noticed the snow. I came from Philadelphia which is cold but snow-free, so tromping about a small town where many of the sidewalks are covered with snow that's been trodden down to ice was like making a trip to visit winter.

After a late lunch at the Foxtown Diner, we hit the road again, traveling by small back roads and stopping in the occasional bookstore. Dinner at seafood restaurant, where I had Rhode Island clam chowder for the first time, and back to the hotel to veg out with our new used books.

So I did not one virtuous thing all day. It was great.

Above, top: "The Red Elephant" by Mo Willems, in front of the Carle.

Visiting Emily

2012-01-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Amherst today and immediately went to Emily Dickinson's grave. It's easy to find the graveyard, but nowhere, apparently, are there directions for how to find the grave itself. So here's the trick: The Dickinson family is the only one surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Once you know that, locating the grave is simplicity itself.

Dickinson -- or, rather, our imagined image of her -- exists right at the nexus of text and biography. Half of the interest in her derives from her poems, which are intense, compact, and unlike anybody else's. The other half comes from her having lived an enigmatic life, into which can be read pretty much anything your predispositions dictate.

How you divide up your interest in her (if interest you have) depends entirely on what you value. Me, I judge writers by what they write. Which is why I'm here to pay my respects.

God bless ya, Emmy. Sleep in peace.

The Queen of the Night's Aria Ruined for Your Pleasure.

2012-01-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

I'm packing for a trip to Amherst. So today's blog will be brief. Here it is:

Rainer Hersch spoils Mozart for you! Enjoy.

The Colbert Super PAC

2012-01-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

I don't sling politics on this blog because (a) I have no particular insight into them and (b) I have no desire to offend people who disagree with me politically, as many of my friends do. But what Stephen Colbert is doing with his Super PAC has nothing to do with Right and Left partisan politics. He's addressing a problem that makes people on both sides of the aisle unhappy -- the distorting influence of money on our system.

When I was an undergrad in William and Mary, a Republican member of the House came to speak and was generously honest about what being in public service was like. One extraordinary thing he said was that he envied Teddy Kennedy because he had "a constituency of voters" -- i.e., he got enough contributions from regular voters that he didn't have to go the special interests, hat in hand.

This guy struck me as a pretty good Joe. It seemed a pity that he had to go shopping around for sponsors whose causes were close enough to his honest beliefs that he wouldn't feel too unclean at the end of the day. So I couldn't help thinking of him when Colbert started this campaign.

And you have to admit the Colbert Super PAC is producing some pretty funny commercials.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Colbert Super PAC Ad - Undaunted Non-Coordination

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

Write What YOU Know

2012-01-11T07:50:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I asked you who first advised gonnabe writers to "Write what you know'? As expected, nobody guessed. That's because, though the aphorism is thrust upon us with all the force of Authority, nobody ever actually cites the original authority.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his journal, in May of 1849, he wrote:

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Which is actually good advice. If modernized to, say, vampire novels, it would urge you not to write vampires which are imitations of Anne Rice's or Charlaine Harris's or Stephanie Meyers's vampires but to "write what you know" about vampires.

And, incidentally . . . those teachers who took "write what you know" and used it as a club to drub you about the head and shoulders for writing fantasy or science fiction? They were completely wrong and deserve no more than a D-minus and possibly quite less.

Above: There he is, the man himself. Ironically his remark is usually misquoted as "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." This is why the original can be so hard to find.

Write . . . What You KNOW???

2012-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Over on Facebook, Jeff Ford posted:

I see a lot of advice on the internet from writers and others based around the question as to whether to "Write what you know" or not. Some people get really adamant about this stuff. LOL! The message should be "Write whatever the fuck you want."

To which Kit Reed amplified:

I add: I don't know what I know until I start writing it.

Both of which are good and wise observations. But that original bit of hectoring advice... Everbody knows of it. But how many of us know who originally said it?

I do. And I'll tell you tomorrow. See if you can guess.

Envying George Martin

2012-01-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

I am not an envious man. Still, if you work in this field long enough, a sufficient number of your friends are going to be successful that you'll feel a momentary twinge of envy every now and then. One of your pals shows you pictures of the castle he just bought, or you open the Sunday New York Times and there's an editorial about what the latest novel by the guy you used to hang with means to the nation. You feel a twinge, you take a deep breath, and you move on.

I've known George R. R. Martin since -- my God! can this be true? -- at least the first convention where he was guest of honor. That was some thirty-plus years ago, and I remember this fact only because I was present when he remarked how tired he was and Gardner Dozois replied, "I warned you -- when you're guest of honor, they work you like a horse."

So that means I've seen him win two Hugos at one Worldcon, write blockbuster novels, create a major television series (Beauty), beome a megabestseller, and have a smash hit HBO series based on his work, all without the least twinge of jealousy. Good to see that, I thought. George deserves it. More power to him. And then... and then... the Onion ran a parody news story on him. You can read it here.

Twinge.

Okay, cleansing breath. Square up the shoulders. Move on. For a moment there, I was genuinely jealous. But I'm over it now.

I ran across George at the Worldcon this year. I was hurrying down a hall headed one way and he was hurrying up it headed the other, both of us rushing to make panels we were on. I altered course and said, "Hey, George. I just wanted to say hi before you were too big a success to talk to the likes of me."

"Too late!" he said, smiling, and hurried on.

If you're not from the East Coast, you probably don't get it, but he'd just busted my chops. It's the way folks hereabouts let you know that we like you.

But that's George, innit? Unspoiled.

Above: an image icon I found floating through Facebook. Didn't make me envious for even a second. As I said, it takes a lot.

Asimov's Limericks

2012-01-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

So what kind of guy was Isaac Asimov to work for? I asked Gardner Dozois, long-time editor of the man's eponymous magazine, this question during an interview at Capclave once. Here's what he said:

Isaac was great to work for. For one thing, he didn’t really meddle with the editorial content of the magazine at all. Which from my perspective was fine, because most of the stuff I was buying he would not have liked, if he actually read any of it. He was smart enough to hire people that he trusted, and then not interfere with them. Which is very, very rare in today’s society.

He would come into the office once a week to pick up the letters, because he answered the letters for the letter column. It was always a big event when Isaac showed up at the office. People from all other departments, crosswords magazines and everything, would get excited because Isaac was coming into the office. He would arrive and you could hear him whistling and singing down the hallway. He would do Gilbert and Sullivan songs. He would do little dances, while he was coming down the corridor. He would make up limericks on the spot for whoever was in the office. He would make up often insulting, mildly risque limericks about them, and he would make up little poems which he would recite, and then he would pick up the mail and he would sing off down the corridor. That would be about it, actually, for our dealing with Isaac.

But he certainly was a good boss to work with. He left you alone. He was entertaining when he showed up. You can’t ask more from a boss than that.

Which is, from everything I've ever heard about the man, absolutely true. But there's a coda to this. Sometime later, I was talking with someone who knew Asimov well and who said, "When people learn I knew Asimov, they'll gush about how they met him once and he came up with a limerick for their name on the spot! Well, of course, what he did was to make up a lot of limericks beforehand for all the common names and then just trot one out when the occasion called for it. But they were all limericks he'd made up himself, and having them on tap in itself shows just how smart a man he was."

And speaking of limericks. . . .

We've received some beauts already. But there's still time to enter your own in the contest here. The rules are that that the limerick must be:

1. Technically correct
2. Clean
3. About Isaac Asimov and/or science fiction
4. and witty.

Multiple submissions are not only allowed, but encouraged. The world can use more light-hearted wit. Particularly during an election year.

Above: A glimpse of the beauty that is Limerick, Ireland.

In Which I Write Your New Year's Resolutions For You (Via My Pal The Dalai Lama)

2012-01-04T01:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, yeah, I've never met the Dailai Lama. But I've got to admit that the guy has stuff. As witness his list of twenty ways to improve your karma. I'm awfully skeptical about lists of ways to improve yourself and attempts to reduce spirituality to quotable aphorisms. And yet . . . And yet . . . I went over his list with my Sarcaso-Meter wide open and I have to admit that he makes a lot of sense. That would work. I agree with every word of it. More than that, I'm going to put it into action.

You can read the list here.

And as always . . .

I'm on the road again. This time to celebrate the birthday of Mrs. William C. Porter, who happens to be my mother-in-law and who turns 101 today. A century and a year and still worth talking with! And still as sharp as a tack. May we all live as long as she will and with our faculties intact.

But don't forget . . .

The Isaac Asimov National Science Fiction Day Limerick Competition continues. Check out Monday's post responses to see exactly how witty the competition is.

Above: There he is, the man himself. The only human being who ever resigned the Dalai Lama title while still alive. If I were still a Catholic, I'd suggest that the Pope take note. But I'm not, and so my opinion is irrelevant. I mean that without any sarcasm at all. Hard to believe though that may be.

National Science Fiction Day

2012-01-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

I have been advised by Tom Purdom that Gardner Dozois has advised him that today is National Science Fiction Day. January 2 was chosen for this august celebration because it's Isaac Asimov's official birthday. Asimov was born in Russia in 1920 (his parents brought him to America at age 3) and since there are no official records of his birth, it's not absolutely certain that this was his birthday. But right or wrong, the honor remains.

In honor of the event, I'm going to give a copy of the brand-new trade paperback of my own Dancing With Bears to whoever can come up with the best limerick honoring either Asimov or Science Fiction Day.

Here are the rules: The limerick must be clean, formally correct, and witty. The judgment of the Blue Ribbon and Not at All Nepotistic Jury of Family will be final. You can post your entry here or in response to any other blog entry for the rest of the month. And I'll announce the winner on February 1.

And speaking of the paperback release of my novel . . .

Andrew Wheeler gave Dancing With Bears a splendid review on his blog, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. Where he wrote (among other things):

Dancing With Bears is a splendid romp, a tour through a strange future, and an enthralling adventure -- I won't recommend it to any readers looking for morals in their novels, but for all of the rest of us, it's a great way to spend a few hours. (And reading about them is the only way I'd recommend spending time with Darger and Surplus!)

So that was very pleasant for me. Those of you who are curious can find the whole thing here.

A Final Quiet Thought for the Year

2011-12-30T14:10:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, a day on which we traditionally deal with the fact that we and everything we know are getting older by making resolutions to spend this precious gift, our lives, better.

But mortality doesn't bother me. I came to grips with it twenty-eight years and seven months ago, when Sean was born. After Marianne had held him for a while, the midwife picked him up and placed him in my arms. I looked down at his little lavender goblin face and a tremendous wave of emotion washed through me and I burst into tears. Someday, my son, I thought, you're going to grow up and turn me into an old man and then I'll die. But that's okay. It's a small price to pay for you. This sounds like the sort of thing a writer would make up after the fact, but it's not. Those really were my thoughts, word for word, at the time.

Every year on New Year's Eve, I pause to reflect on the ticking of the clock. And my original judgment holds true: a good life, a small price.

Happy New Year, everybody! Spend your lives wisely. But if you can't do that, waste them well.

'Tis The Season To Be Gemutlich

2011-12-29T15:20:00.000-08:00

It's party season! And dinner season! And lunch with friends season! So Marianne and I have been going to events pretty much every day and enjoying them all. I won't bore you with the details, other than to say that shown above is literary superstar John Kessel, who generously allowed me to wear his fez. Alcohol may well have been involved.

So happy party days to us all. Which is all I have to say, except: Good Lord, look at John and me -- we're neither of us anybody whom anybody would trust with anything.

And, just because this is America . . .

Let us never forget that peculiar American genius not for art or science or literature (since other nations have been known to do these things well too) but for the misappropriation of categories. As witness the brilliant accomplishment documented in the following video. Enjoy!

And the Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year Is . . .

2011-12-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

The year has wound gracefully to an end and so we are come once again to that moment of reflection and summing up when I and my Not At All Nepotistic Jury of Family choose the Godless Atheist Christmas Card of the Year.

And what a competition it's been! First, perpetual front-runners and frequent winners John and Judith Clute in a stunning turn of events, disqualified themselves by using as artwork for their card a piece by Judith Clute entitled Penates. Penates were, as you know, the household gods of ancient Rome, which knocked the "godless" requirement right out the window. Further, the artwork itself, showing two stylized and overlapping faces reminiscent of shamanistic masks, was undeniable spiritual. Thus rendering the card shockingly appropriate to a season when one turns away from the material and reflects upon those things that matter in the face of eternity.

With the field wide open, impressive entries flooded in from a host of friends. (Allen and Linda Steele, as usual, comported themselves with a -- dare I say it -- steely lack of religiosity.) But then, right out of left field, Henry Wessells pointed out to Marianne and myself that our own homemade card was a leading candidate for the honor. (That's it above, with a gold border added so the scanner would recognize it.)

It was a thunderbolt. "I had no idea it would be received that way," Marianne said. "I just thought that the punched snowflakes would look lovely against white paper. And I added a light sprinkling of glitter." There was no getting around the fact, however, that black snowflakes against a featureless white strongly suggested a bleak and Godless winter.

But then the noble Jason Van Hollander stepped up to the bat . . . and walloped one out of the park. Not only did his card contain a welter of demonic -- some would say Satanic -- imagery, but it also bore the legend JASON VAN HOLLANDER ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN on its front. Suggesting that it was less a holiday card than a piece of self-advertisement. Nor did the wonders of the card stop there! For on the inside, Jason had written, "Dear Folks -- How Can A Christmas Card Be More Godless Than This!"

(That's it -- or most of it -- to the right. Damn that scanner!)

In any other competition such a blatant acknowledgment that he had cold-bloodedly set out to win the competition would have disqualified Jason immediately. However, in context, this only made his card more Godless and Atheist than ever.

With a sigh of relief (and a feeling of having ducked the bullet) my Blue Ribbon And Not At All Nepotistic Jury of Family declared that this surely must be the winner. That evening, in fact, I saw Jason, and assured him that, short of a miracle, he would be taking home the honors for the second year in a row.

And then . . . And then . . .

Oh, dear God. A dark miracle occurred. The very next day, on Christmas Eve itself, we received the card below from Rob Price. Taking no chances, he enclosed it in a second envelope and signed it with a post-it note so we could reuse it ourselves next year. As if we would!

The horror! The horror! It was a Christmas card so Godless and Atheist that his own wife refused to sign it. So, with all apologies to Jason, we had no choice but to give the honors to Rob.

The card itself is titled Sketch in Men's Room, Hotel Restaurant Gottfried Moos, Constance, Germany. It's available from Shutterfly. You can find their website here.

Above at Top: The scanner didn't do justice to Marianne's card, which was smooth white with a very light sprinkling of glitter and three elegant black snowflakes glued to it. A lot of work went into that.

Above: Are those two dogs on the left hitting on each other? There can be no bottom to the depths of this card.

Unwritten Stories: Antiheroes in Hell

2011-12-27T16:13:00.000-08:00

I don't contribute to many theme anthologies simply because it's rare that I can come up with an appropriate story idea on a schedule. I like to tell editors that I've learned how to ride my imagination, but not how to tell it where to go.

But occasionally I get invited and, if it's an interesting theme, I always look inside myself to see if there's an appropriate idea simmering away. So, long ago, when I was asked to contribute to the Heroes in Hell series, I gave it some thought.

There were a lot of top-notch writers playing in Janet Morris's sandbox in those days. Robert Silverberg penned a H-in-H tale wherein Robert E. Howard met Gilgamesh. As a result, I'd read many maybe even most, of the stories. And it seemed to me that a formula had spontaneously developed: Two famous people meet in Hell. They have a conversation. Then they travel hundreds of miles, hiding whenever one of the Armies of Hell go by. Then they have another conversation. And so on. The traveling-and-hiding parts were the least interesting ones. Wouldn't it be better, I reasoned, if instead they sat in a room and, whenever the Armies of Hell marched by, hid behind the couch?

Of course it would. So the next question was which two famous people to choose?

The obvious choice, given the mileu, was the author of "No Exit" -- Jean-Paul Sartre. So I needed somebody -- an intellectual, of course -- who would drive him right up the wall and in return be driven mad by him. Who?

Again, the question answered itself: John W. Campbell.

I pictured the two men sitting in overstuffed chairs, sucking on their pipes. Suddenly Campbell jabs the stem of his pipe at his opposite. "Sartre!" he says. "It seems to me that two smart cookies like us ought to be able to put our noggins together and come up with a way out of this Hell place. I once put a problem very much like this to a couple of my writers and their protagonist managed to cobble together a glider and use the thermals from the infernal fires to fly out! Now, I'm not saying that's the solution ... but its the kind of thinking we ought to do."

In response to which, Sartre mutters, "Merde alors!" and retires into a sullen funk.

And at this point I realized that I had both summarized and exhausted the fun to be had from this idea. Yes, I could have written it, and Morris would probably have bought it. Editors are better sports about writers subverting their instructions than you'd expect. But the amount of research it would have taken to get both Campbell's voice and Sartre's pitch-perfect was far greater than I was up for.

So the story was never written.

I look back on that unwritten story with a touch of tristesse, sometimes. But for every work of fiction that gets written, there are a dozen that don't. There are a million stories in the naked city . . . but most of them never reach print.

And come back tomorrow . . .

I'll be announcing the winner of this year's Godless Atheist Christmas Card competition on Wednesday. Be there or be square! As the young people used to say.

Soft! Kitty! Klingon! Yikes!

2011-12-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

I've written novels. I've written stories. I've posted blogs. I've done lots and lots of things with words. But I've never launched a meme that went viral.

Klingon language maven Lawrence M. Schoen, however, has. Potentially. His Facebook video of himself singing "Soft Kitty" in Klingon (his own translation!) hasn't yet ripped through the blogosphere (or whatever it is that you young kids call it these days) like a bat'leth through soft butter, even though it's been up for days.

What's wrong with us?

C'mon, guys. Let's put our shoulders behind this. Blog, forward, reblog, tweet, and faceboo. I won't be satisfied until Lawrence has a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory.

And on Wednesday . . .

We're coming up on the conclusion of this year's Godless Atheist Christmas Card competition. And, oh dear God, what a roller coaster it's been this year. Thrills! Tears! Last minute turnarounds! It's been such an amazing year that the Blue Ribbon And Not At All Nepotistic Jury of My Immediate Family decided we'd have to wait two days after Christmas to see if something even more Godless and Atheistic than what was already received might yet pop up in our mailbox.

In any other year, that would seem impossible. Given what today's front leader is.

Unca Mike's Christmas Story 2011: Herald Angels

2011-12-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

Time for a new tradition! Every year, on Christmas Eve, I tell my family a story I've made up for the occasion. Sometimes it's serious, like "Honkeytonk Angels" or "Christmas in Winooski." Other times it's very, very silly, like last year's "A Chrismoose Carol." Some are throwaways and others in retrospect I probably should have written down. But what the heck. I can always write more.

Anyway, it occurs to me that all my friends out there in cyberspace deserve a Christmas story too. So here for your entertainment is . . .

Herald Angels

It’s a job, heralding is, nothing more. Oh yeah, sometimes you get a prestigious gig announcing the birth of God or the end of the world. More usually, it’s just a supermarket opening or the invention of a new flavor of toothpaste. You pop in, announce, “You’ve got lung cancer,” and then pop out again. Mission accomplished.

A moron could do your job. Provided that moron had the gifts of precognition, heavenly radiance (so the marks know you’re not a hallucination), uncanny beauty, instantaneous teleportation, and a deep and resonant speaking voice. It’s the rarity of these qualities being found all together in a single individual that keeps you from farming the work out.

Sometimes you meet a fellow heralder and then the two of you wax nostalgic about the old days when angel heralding meant hanging in the inky vastness of nonexistence, trumpets ready, to announce the sudden and inexplicable emergence of a universe from the invisible confines of a non-dimensional monoblock. Or the rare and inexplicable beauty of a single hydrogen atom pulling itself up out of the quantum foam into the realm of being. You remember heralding the creation of concepts that are the building blocks of reality: Love! Beauty! Electroweak Interaction!

But then break time’s over and back to work you go. You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it. And do it you will, because an angel is faithful, one hundred percent. Horton has nothing on you.

“Troy’s decided to invite you to the prom,” you tell a temporarily ecstatic teenage girl. “Also, your zits are back.”

Treasure Private Island Lives

2011-12-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas time which means, among other things, that it's a good time for light theater. And this week I did my part.

Last Thursday I went to see the Lantern Theater Company production of Noel Coward's Private Lives. Imagine my delight on discovering that somehow I'd never seen it before. Private Lives is lighter than an air souffle. A divorced man and women meet by accident on the first night of their second marriages. Almost instantly their passion for each other rekindles and they run off together and resume the bickering that doomed their first go-around. And, um... well, that's about it, really. At the time Coward wrote it, there was a certain amount of substance to the contrast between two people who love each other for who they are and the jilted spouses who are in love with the roles they are presumed to fill because of their gender. But nowadays, one full wave of feminism later, none of this comes as anything new.

What the play is, however, is very very funny. And the actors were obviously having a great time. Ben Dibble has come in for a great deal of praise for his portrayal of Elyot, and I'll confess to being half in love with Geneviève Perrier's Amanda -- particularly the extraordinary expressiveness of her face, which is in constant motion and a silent comentary on the plot throughout. But there isn't a flat performance in the show. It's all fizz and champagne.

And today . . .

Today I went to the panto!

For most of my lives I wondered what the heck was with Christmas pantomimes. The Brits always included them in reminiscences of the holidays of their childhoods, but never explained what they were. It was assumed you knew.

Well, last year I finally went to one, at People's Light & Theatre in Malvern, PA, and it was such a hoot that I made it an annual tradition.

The panto is theater without pretensions. It involves lots of music and puns and jokes, handfuls of candy flung out into the audience, broad acting, a young woman dressed up as a punk parrot, a large man wearing dresses gaudy enough to satisfy an entire company of cross-dressing mummers, star-crossed lovers, scurvy pirates, a happy ending, and what might conceivably pass as a plot if you squint at it just right.

Treasure Island, this year's production, was a hoot and a half.

I wonder why it took so long for Americans to catch on to this? I know that when I was a kid I would have loved it.

And did you know . . . ?

Noel Coward, incidentally, was a spy in WWII. I am not making this up. He was the Twentieth Century's own Scarlet Pimpernel. “I was the perfect silly ass,” he said much later. “Nobody ... considered I had a sensible thought in my head, and they would say all kinds of things that I’d pass along.” Among other things, he kept an eye on the Duke of Windsor whom he privately despised as a Nazi sympathizer. After the war, it was discovered that he was on the German death-list of people to be immediately killed upon the conquest of Britain.

You can read an article about it here.

Russia Captures the Imagination

2011-12-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

There's a new interview of me up at SF Signal. It was conducted by Bradley P. Beaulieu and I'm pleased with how it came out. So kudos to Mr. Beaulieu.

You can find it here.

And it turns out that there is hope for me . . .

I'm not old yet, but I'm getting there. And here's an early sign that old age will work out well for me: The first trailer has been released for the movie based on The Hobbit, and I find I have problem waiting a year to see it. I'm just glad that it looks like a decent bit of work.

You've probably seen the trailer already. So I won't inflict it on you. Instead, here's Terry Gilliam's video Christmas card. I like to think of it as being not so much mean-spirited as surreal.

Enjoy.

Working Hard Ain't Hardly Working

2011-12-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

I'm playing hooky today from all the obligations and chores, answering of emails, posting of packages, scanning of contracts, and suchlike, to just sit and write. I'll probably work on three or four of the stories that I'm actively engaged in and put in a little more wordage on one of the novels.

In the picture above, you can see some of the post-it notes I use to keep track of what's on the front burner. The pink slips are novels, but only the top two are being actively written. The rest are just there to keep them in mind. The green slips are short fiction, and most of them are more than half written. Mostly, though, they're alive in my imagination and jostling for attention.

And so I have a question . . .

I'm writing a scene set in a bar just before the Chicxulub Impactor kills everybody and somebody sits down to the piano and begins to play Hey Jude and The Sloop John B, which go over well, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which bombs.

Which got me to wondering. What songs would be good to play if you knew nobody was going to make it to morning. Closing Time by Leonard Cohen? Or maybe It's The End Of The World As We Know It?

Bar music, obviously. If I were alone, I'd put on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

Any ideas?

Above: Yeah, my desk looks like a tip. Creation is not pretty. You should have seen God's desk when he was creating the universe.

Women Are Beautiful

2011-12-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Here we are with visual proof that most women are beautiful. I'm married to a beautiful woman. If you're an adult female, chances are that you are a beautiful woman. Here's why that fact isn't as self-evident to you as it is to me.

"Is All This Cheese Real?"

2011-12-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays! This morning, Marianne and I went to DiBruno Brothers, the world's best and most crowded cheese shop, to buy cheeses and various olives, and pickled octopus, and cured meats. We dropped a bundle. A Christmas tradition, you ask? Oh, no, no, no. We were must buying the makings of lunch.

We've been going to DiBruno's for over a third of a century. When Sean was teething, I carried him in my arms and let him gnaw on the top of the loaf of bread (from Sarcone's, which is to bread what DiBruno's is to cheese). We've seen a generation of cheesemongers grow old and retire and be replaced by younger relatives.

My best memory of DiBruno's is the time an out-of-stater, gawking wonderingly about her at the astonishing variety of cheeses, asked, "Is all this cheese real?"

"What do you mean real?" one of the guys behind the counter asked.

"I mean, is any of it processed cheese food?"

And everybody in the shop -- everybody! -- laughed.

And speaking of yesterday's advice . . .

On Thursday I wrote about the importance of a strong opening and ending to a story you're hoping to sell. Chad Hull asked, "Do you think it applies to people who are already established and proven; such as yourself? Or can the already established writer get away with 3, 5, or 8 pages of setting before something happens?"

Good question. There are exceptions to every rule. Gardner Dozois, for example, once started a story (the quite wonderful "Executive Clemency") with a very long description of an idiot watching sunlight move across a floor. But it was a gripping description of an idiot watching sunlight move across a floor, a compelling description of an idiot watching sunlight move across a floor. Once you read the first sentence, it was impossible not to read on and on. And, come to think, it wasn't scene-setting at all but an important part of the story's action.

If you're a name, you get a smidge more attention, if only because the editor wants to make absolutely positively sure that you're completely lost it before spreading the word to every other editor in the industry. But if the story is so good that it sells anyway, the editor is going to want you to remove those 3, 5, or 8 pages of scene-setting. Because readers are every bit as fickle as editors -- and they're not being paid for reading. They flip through the magazine, read the first couple of paragraphs of your story, and if they're not grabbed, they move on.

In all my thirty-plus years as a published writer, I've only broken the unwritten rules for story openings twice, once deliberately and once by accident. The deliberate one was "Slow Life," which began with a long description of the chemistry of a raindrop falling through the atmosphere of Titan. For the New Yorker that would have been a deal-breaker. But I sold it to Analog, where I felt the memory of Larry Niven's early fiction, which often began with a physics lecture, would linger.

The other was "Wild Minds," which began with the sentence, I met her at a businesspersons' orgy in London. After I'd sold it to Asimov's, editor Sheila Williams said, "You know, we usually don't buy stories that begin with a sex scene. That's an almost infallible sign of amateurism."

Um . . . well . . . actually I hadn't know that. But now I do.

And so, too, do you.

Something Every Gonnabe Writer MUST Know

2011-12-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

I've always regretted I didn't have a video camera with me the time I dropped in on Gardner Dozois at the Asimov's Science Fiction offices and, before going out to lunch, he went through a two-foot-high pile of submissions in fifteen to twenty minutes. While we had a pleasant conversation about other matters.

The video would have shown Gardner pick up the first manuscript, read the first page, turn to the last page, read that, and then put down the story. Then he did exactly the same thing with the next. And the next. All the way down to the bottom. At the end of which he had two piles -- one for people who might someday write something good, who received a polite rejection slip; and one for those who never would, who received a discouraging rejection slip. He set aside exactly one story to actually read.

Not buy. Read.

I've talked with any number of editors about this and they all agree: That's all the time they need to tell if a story might be publishable. Fifteen seconds -- maybe thirty, tops.

Over the years, I've taught at the various Clarion Workshops, and I'm here to tell you that the single most common mistake not-yet-published writers make is to spend several pages setting the scene before anything actually happens. Reading their typescripts, I'll strike out paragraph after page before finally coming to the point on Page 3 or 5 or 8 where I write: BEGIN HERE.

Because no matter how brilliant the story is, no editor is going to read it unless something interesting has happened before the second page.

So here's what every writer hoping someday to be published must know: Your very best prose should come at the beginning and end of the story. Because that's what's going to catch your editor's attention.

Oh, and the electronic submission revolution? Last convention I went to, an editor told me that she loved electronic submissions because then she didn't feel obligated to read all the way to the bottom of the first page.

And here's a case in point . . .

I picked up the new Granta yesterday and read "The Infamous Bengal Ming" by Rajesh Parameswaran. It's about a Bengal tiger with a complicated emotional life. Here's the first sentence:

The one clear thing I can say about Wednesday, the worst and most amazing day of my life, is this: it started out beautifully.

And here's the last:

I had never felt so much love in all my life.

The first sentence is an attention-grabber. You wouldn't want the entire story to be written in such elaborate prose (not this particular story, anyway), but it alerts you to the fact that Parameswaran is one heck of a writer. The final sentence gains its considerable emotional strength from the cumulative effect of the rest of the story. But even the most superficial reader can figure out that this writer has stuff

And even the most superficial editor would put it on the To Read pile.

Above: This card was sent to me by my college chum Mario, who collects pop-up books. It has absolutely zilch chance of winning this year's Godless Atheist Christmas Card competition.

An Armful of Toys and a Sad Thought for Christmas

2011-12-14T12:23:00.001-08:00

The Christmas tree is up and lit but the ornaments -- millions! galaxies! universes of them! -- await tonight when we'll light a fire in the wood stove and bring out boxes and boxes of decorations from storage.

This morning Marianne and I spent shopping. We went to an independent bookstore and bought Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Dangerous Book for Boys. Then we bought an alien invasion set of Legos, an enormous tub of Duplos and a stuffed toy dog that was as big as a real one. And then we dropped them off at the Toy Drive bin at our bank.

There was an article in the paper this morning saying that, because of the economy, donations to Toys for Tots are down eighty percent this year. So we thought we'd take in a little bit of the slack. As we were carrying the toys back to our car, Marianne said sadly, "Imagine not being able to buy your children Christmas presents."

I can't.

You have no idea how grateful I am to be able to say that.

Watch the Players in White

2011-12-13T14:08:00.000-08:00

This turns out to be a surprisingly nifty video. Watch it and you'll see what I mean. It demonstrates an important principle too.

Marianne and I were in Center City this morning, because we needed black envelopes, and on impulse had lunch at Parc. That's why she looks so happy above. She had a glass of white wine and I had a sazarac. Then three different types of oysters. And then lunch. We sat at a window table overlooking the Curtis Institute. Which is why I wasn't surprised to see a rather punkish-looking young man roller-skating purposefully down the middle of the street with a French horn case in one hand an a trumpet in the other.

If you know an adolescent mired in the Slough of Despond, tell 'em that I've been there and it gets better. Lots, lots better.

Above: I missed the color change AND the gorilla. I like to think it's because I'm admirably focused.

The Parable of the Creche Scene

2011-12-12T00:13:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when some folks get upset about other folks saying "Happy Holidays!" rather than "Merry Christmas!" What makes this particularly ironic is that in my experience the biggest offenders are the church ladies at Roxborough Baptist Church. I've had them wish me "Happy Holidays!" in church on Christmas Eve.

Why? Because they're Christians and they don't want to inadvertently hurt anybody's feelings or make them feel excluded.

People are complicated and nobody could with justice claim that we're a logically consistent bunch. Here's a true story. I call it . . .

The Parable of the Creche Scene

When I first came to Roxborough, thirty years ago, I was amazed to discover that every year a creche scene was erected in Gorgas Park. It was privately funded, I believe, but Gorgas Park belongs to the City of Philadelphia, so the creche was an obvious violation of the principle of the separation of church and state. "Sooner or later," I said at the time, "somebody's going to complain."

And, sure enough, several years later, somebody did. So the city, knowing which side the courts would take, announced that they would not allow the creche to be placed in the park.

This got almost everybody upset. The creche was one of those things that had "always" been done and people looked forward to it. There were angry mutterings and intemperate words.

In the midst of this storm of bad feelings, Leverington Presbyterian Church, which was located directly across the street from Gorgas Park, stepped in to save the day. They found out who actually owned the creche, and arranged for it to be displayed throughout the Christmas season on the lawn in front of the church. Now the creche could be experienced by the community just like before. The only difference was that it was located a few dozen feet away from its original location. It was an act of wisdom worthy of Solomon.

But were people happy?

No. The local weekly paper was flooded with letters complaining that the church had hijacked the creche scene and was trying to use it for their own religious purposes.

And so . . .

Happy Holidays, everybody! And, since I enjoy saying it, Merry Christmas too! I don't give a damn who that offends.

Above: There's the creche scene as it exists today in front of Leverington Presbyterian. It was good of them to adopt it, and I'm always happy to see it come back.

Holy Guacamole!

2011-12-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

Almost . . . almost I didn't blog today. There were reasons, but never mind them. I almost didn't blog. This is a big deal to me because right at the start, some thousand-plus posts ago, I committed to blogging every Monday and Friday. Wednesdays I aspired to but didn't guarantee. Tuesdays and Thursdays weren't even mentioned in the implicit contract.

Imagine my surprise to find myself consistently blogging five days a week, almost every week! Who the hell was this organized man? Assuredly not me. I am the least organized of human beings.

So imagine my dismay when, five minutes ago, lying in bed and falling asleep, I realized that I had let down the side. Wearily, I got up and went to the 'puter. Local time: 11;38 p.m. Not quite midnight. Which meant I hadn't failed yet.

And I wrote this.

Not up to my usual standards, admittedly. But here. Posted.

Honor is served.

The Minion Master Lays Down the Word

2011-12-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, so yesterday I wrote:

One of the Best of the Year editors contacted me yesterday to say that two of my stories were being picked up for this year's volume.

I won't specify which editor or which stories because these guys like to keep their lineups close to the vest until they're ready to issue a press release.

And shortly thereafter, Gardner emailed me:

I don't care if you tell people.
--Gardner

To which I replied:

No, no, no. You're a proud man and quick to anger. It would be worth my life to cross you in even the slightest way.
Anonymous

And Gardner counter-replied:

I would send my dread and fell minions out against you!
--Gardner
The man has minions! No wonder all of science fiction quakes at his slightest frown.

But, luckily, Gardner posted the following on Facebook today:

For those of you who are interested, here's the Table of Contents for my THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection:

THE CHOICE, Paul McAuley
SILENTLY AND VERY FAST, Catherynne M. Valente
THE MAN WHO BRIDGED THE MIST, Kij Johnson
THE ANTS OF FLANDERS, Robert Reed
A SOLDIER OF THE CITY, David Moles
THE INVASION OF VENUS, Stephen Baxter
LAIKA'S GHOST, Karl Schroeder
THE BEANCOUNTER'S CAT, Damien Broderick
THE VICAR OF MARS, Gwyneth Jones
DOLLY, Elizabeth Bear
MARTIAN HEART, John Barnes
ASCENSION DAY, Alastair Reynolds
THE SMELL OF ORANGE GROVES, Lavie Tidhar
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE, Maureen McHugh
A LONG WAY HOME, Jay Lake
WHAT WE FOUND, Gepff Ryman
THE INCREDIBLE EXPLODING MAN, Dave Hutchinson
THE COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION, Paul Cornell
THE WAY IT WORKS OUT AND ALL, Peter S. Beagle
THE DALA HORSE, Michael Swanwick
EARTH HOUR, Ken MacLeod
THE ICE OWL, Carolyn Ives Gilman
DIGITAL RITES, Jim Hawkins
CODY, Pat Cadigan
GHOSTWEIGHT, Yoon Ha Lee
A RESPONSE FROM EST17, Tom Purdom
DIGGING, Ian McDonald
A MILITANT PEACE, David Klecha & Tobias S. Bucknell
FOR I HAVE LAID ME DOWN ON THE STONE OF LONELINESS AND I'LL NOT BE BACK AGAIN, Michael Swanwick
THE IRON SHIRTS, Michael Flynn
THE BONELESS ONE, Alec Nevala-Lee
CANTERBURY HOLLOW, Chris Lawson
THE COLD STEP BEYOND, Ian R. Macleod
THE VORKUTA EVENT, Ken MacLeod
DYING YOUNG, Peter M. Ball

So it's probably safe to admit that two of my stories were picked up by Gardner Dozois for his best of the year volume.

But just to be safe, I'll be hiding in Undisclosed Subterranean Location with a year's supply of food and a surplus minion costume to help me escape any sudden attacks. Just in case.

Above: Miss Helen Hope Mirrlees is not in the least impressed by any of this.

*

Even More Christmasy Than Yesterday.

2011-12-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

As always, I'm on the road again. It's just how I roll these days. In the meantime, I hear you ask: What could possibly be more Christmasy than yesterday's H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu Carol?

Hardly anything. Except Cousin Bobby. Above. Enjoy.

And I had pleasant news recently . . .

One of the Best of the Year editors contacted me yesterday to say that two of my stories were being picked up for this year's volume.

I won't specify which editor or which stories because these guys like to keep their lineups close to the vest until they're ready to issue a press release. But it was very satisfying news for me.

Disturbing Christmas Video du Jour

2011-12-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

This one's for all you fans of H.P. Lovecraft out there. Merry Christmas, guys!

Above: A musical version of 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' by H.P Lovecraft. Set to a song composed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. You can find them here. If you're mad enough to want to.

Set Course for Arcturus!

2011-12-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

I spent the day working on the novel and got three pages done -- not bad for me. In fact, since I still have to go to China to research the novel, it's amazing I'm as far into as I am. So I don't have a lot to report, other than that the mail came today.

But what good mail! I got my contributor's copy of StarShipSofa Tales Volume 3 -- and a very odd enterprise it is too. I contributed "Cold Reading" to it, and this is probably going to be its only appearance in physical print. (It was originally published online.) Here's the table of contents:

Fiction Writers

“Electric Ladyland” by Matthew Sanborn Smith (Illustrated by Daniel Tozer)
“That Blissful Height” by Gregory Frost (Illustrated by Simon Watkins)
“Feedback” by Joe Haldeman (Illustrated by Jack Calverley)
“In The Harsh Glow of Its Incandescent Beauty” by Mercurio D. Rivera (Illustrated by Timothy Booth)
“Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese” by Nicola Griffith (Illustrated by Jerel Dye)
“Nimbus” by Peter Watts (Illustrated by Evan Forsch)
“Luck” by James Patrick Kelly (Illustrated by Patrick McEvoy)
“Where Virtue Lives” by Saladin Ahmed (Illustrated by Ben Greene)
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time” by Catherynne M. Valente (Illustrated by Mike Dubisch)
“The Occurrence at Slocombe Priory” by Paul Cornell (Illustrated by Thomas Crielly)
“Sunsets and Hamburgers by Gareth L. Powell (Illustrated by Bradley W. Schenck)
“Martyrs of The Upshot Knothole” by James Morrow (Illustrated by Brian Thomas Woods)
“Newts” by Kevin J. Anderson (Illustrated by Richard Case)
“Cold Reading” by Michael Swanwick (Illustrated by Peter Snejbjerg)
“Drink For The Thirst To Come” by Lawrence Santoro (Illustrated by Daniele Serra)
“In Pacmandu” by Lavie Tidhar (Illustrated by Graeme Neil Reid)
“Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders” by Aliette de Bodard (Illustrated by Mark Zug)
“World Without End, Amen” by Allen Steele (Illustrated by Brent Holmes)
“The Happiest Dead Boy In The World” by Tad Williams (Illustrated by Ben Wootten)
“Nothing Ever Happens In Rock City” by Jack McDevitt (Illustrated by Dave Krummenacher)
“Halfway People” by Karen Joy Fowler (Illustrated by Patrick McEvoy)
“Friction” by Will McIntosh (Illustrated by Jouni Koponen)
“Just A Couple of Subversive Alien Warmongers Floating All Alone in the Night” by Adam Troy Castro (Illustrated by Doug Holverson)
“News From 2025″ by David Brin (Illustrated by Bradley W. Schench)

Fact Writers

Joy of The Flicks by Dennis M. Lane
Top Ten “Must Read” Time Travel Works by Amy H. Sturgis
Comics: what have they done for Us lately? by Frederic Himebaugh
Science Fiction Through The Looking Glass: the Ape, the Alien and the Android by Morgan Saletta (Illustrated by Timothy Booth)

The book also has a page for each of the contributors showing ourselves and our offices, along with something odd and extra. In my case, it's my autobiography, which consists of two words, one repeated many times and the other not.

And in the same mail . . .

I also got a box of trade paperbacks of Dancing With Bears from Night Shade Books. So It's now in softcover, priced at a quite reasonable $14.99 American.

So I am content, and hope you are too.

Flying Into Philadelphia

2011-12-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Look what I found this morning! There's a new sculpture in Lenfest Plaza by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts -- Grumman Greenhouse by Jordan Griska. It was created by taking a Cold War surplus Grumman Tracker II, folding it, and converting parts of its interior into greenhouses.

Either you like this sort of thing or you don't. Me, I love it.

In the background, you may notice the latest Claes Oldenburg installation in my home city, Paint Torch. Not only is it great art, but it lights up at night.

Philadelphia just keeps getting better and better.

And as long as I've got your attention . . .

I was researching Dragonstairs Press's Christmas card yesterday, and I ran across the assertion that the "five golden rings" in the Twelve Days of Christmas refers to ring-necked pheasants, thus making the first seven presents all avian.

I'm not perfectly sold on that (though it does sound convincing that "calling birds" were originally "colly birds" or blackbirds), but I also ran across somebody's speculation that the "drummers drumming" were grouse and "lords a-leaping" were male cock pheasants. Which brings the total to nine.

So, being so close, I thought I'd create an etymologically-dubious version of the song for ornithologists and birders. And I could use your suggestions for the piper piping, ladies dancing, and maids a-milking. Are the pipers sandpipers? Are the ladies dancing kildeers? What on earth could the maids possibly be?

All suggestions welcome.

World Famous Art Dirt Cheap

2011-12-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

This is unexpected. Carhenge is up for sale.

For only three hundred thousand dollars. Which means you only have to be mildly rich to buy a world-famous work of art. And a universally-recognized symbol of America. And the cultural hotpoint where landscape art meets tacky roadside attraction.

You can read the article here.

There's a brief history of Carhenge here.

And the website for Carhenge is here.

And while I'm blogging old-school . . .

Remember when blogs were nothing but lists of interesting links? Sometime back in the Sixties that was, I think. Anyway, here's a link to a National Geographic article (with the usual caveat that the Nat is far from infallible when it comes to paleontology) that suggests that Neanderthals were loved to death!

The coarser among us might choose to use a more Anglo-Saxon verb.

Click here.

And also . . .

A time traveler was arrested at the Large Hadron Collider. He was trying to prevent a hellish future with "limitless energy, the elimination of poverty, and Kit Kats for everybody." Apparently the folks in the future have forgotten exactly how bad things can get.

CERN physicist Professor Brian Cox had the most insightful comment on the matter.

Click here.

And just one more . . .

I just now saw the trailer for John Carter, which raises so many questions: Is this really a Disney movie? Why? And why did they drop of Mars from the title when even the most cursory glance at its contents will reveal that's it's Way Old TImey Science Fiction? But what really struck me about it is the fact that its aesthetic is emphatically derived from video games. This is almost ironic.

It's almost ironic because video games ripped off all the old swords-and-planet SF with both hands and no acknowledgments. Now, when games are big as big but all the biggest games have already been CGI'd and slapped onto the silver screen, Hollywood reaches into the past for the sources to give us a game-like experience.

This would actually be ironic, if it weren't for the fact that this is the way that all literary art works.

Anyway, here's the trailer. This movie would have been so unspeakably cool if it had been made thirty-five years ago, before the first Star Wars film. I would have wept tears of joy.

Autumn Splendor

2011-11-30T00:50:00.000-08:00

Why do I live in the city? Because the city has everything you might want. You want theater? It's got theater. You want extreme art? You got extreme art. You want autumn splendor at an isolated stream with a small watermill? It's the city! You got it.

This is my Philadelphia.

And for a change . . .

I'm not on the road -- my trip got postponed. I plan to spent the entire day doing nothing but lazing about writing.

Above: The Morris Arboretum. Or, rather, a small portion of it.

A Few Heartfelt Words of Praise for the Philadelphia Police

2011-11-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Marianne and I went down to City Hall to see if any of our Occupy Philadelphia friends were going to need to be bailed out. As it turned out, no. The OP folks were still involved in a complex dance of negotiation with the city, and the Philadelphia police continued to show gentlemanly restraint. It made me proud to be a Philadelphian.

Which doesn't mean that things won't go Berkley sometime in the future. But that's just another reason to tell this story while I can.

A couple of years ago there was a big G7 meeting in Philadelphia. Protesters showed up from all over. Back in the days when Frank Rizzo was mayor, there would have been some serious police violence. Luckily, Rizzo was in the distant past and John Timoney was police commissioner. Timoney was a real hard-nosed type and didn't tolerate unlawful behavior from anybody. Not even police.

That's the background. Here's the story. It's a clip I saw on the news at the time.

The protesters were walking on a sidewalk, obeying the laws and chanting slogans. At the curb was a police car and, sitting in it, a fat cop looking bored. Suddenly an -- and I use this term advisedly -- asshole leaned into the car and hit the cop in the face with pepper spray!

In a flash, the cop was out of the car, roaring with anger, and pulling his gun.

And in that same instant, there was a police officer running alongside him, shouting, "Put down the gun! Put down the gun!"

And, coming to his senses, the cop did.

It was the most astonishing proof of the value of good training. The officer on the street knew exactly what to do . . . and two tragedies were averted. One being whatever might have happened had the cop fired his gun. The other being what would have happened to the cop as a result of a moment's perfectly understandable outrage.

Last I heard, Timoney was working in Miami. I hope they deserve him. The guy walks on water.

Above: Big rally at City Hall. Last night. No violence. This is what America looks like.

Fortean FIsh

2011-11-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

We have a small water feature in our backyard, a pot buried almost to its rim. That's it up above. It looks a lot better in the summer when the water lettuce are healthy. There's a small water pump which doesn't show in this shot.

In the pot we keep a few goldfish. Last winter, which was colder than usual, they all died, so this spring I bought five and put them in the pot. We fed them and they grew and thrived.

Over the summer, two disappeared, leaving us with a total of three. I assumed raccoons.

And then one morning I went out to feed the fish and counted five. They were all the same size and we hadn't seen any minnows, so their appearance was astonishing. "Did somebody dump their fish in our pot?" I wondered.

Last August, alas, all the fish disappeared. I kept feeding them for several days anyway. The food floated on the surface for a long time, uneaten. I couldn't find any of the fish when I moved the water lettuce around. And then... And then...

One morning I came out to find all five fish floating dead atop the water. I buried them. I mourned. I moved on.

And of course, I stopped feeding them.

This morning, Marianne spotted a fish in the pot. And then a second one. I looked, and there they were.

Is somebody playing with my head? Are we getting drizzles of Fortean fish-rain? Is it possible that God has a weird sense of humor?

This is worse than New Math.

Happy Evacuation Day!

2011-11-25T00:04:00.000-08:00

It's November 25. I trust that all Americans are observing Evacuation Day today, the one time of the year that we celebrate what Linus called, "the weaselly slinking-back of the British sons of bitches to the pathetic scumbag kingdom they called home" at the end of the War of Independence.

Okay, that quote from A Charlie Brown Evacuation Day is the fictitious creation of the Daily Show. But the holiday itself, celebrating the day when the last of the occupying British troops left New York in 1783, is well worth remembering. As are the eleven thousand American soldiers who died in the prison ships, when they could have been released if only they'd been willing to renounce their country and pledge allegiance to the crown.

You can find Sarah Vowell's explanation here. (I believe it's only up for a brief time.) There's not a lot of laughs, but there is a lot to think about.

It's worth mentioning that, fun though it is to heap vituperation on the British soldiers, they started out the war as good guys -- the troops at Lexington and Concord were under strict orders to put down the rebellion without hurting anyone. And yet they ended up creating something that Jon Stewart compared to Abu Ghraib.

This is something I wish every leader in every country in the world would think about long and hard.

Your REAL Thanksgiving Feast

2011-11-24T03:46:00.000-08:00

What foods are required for a Thanksgiving dinner to be authentic? I like to ask that question of friends because the answers are surprisingly interesting. You'd think the lowest number would be one -- turkey. But I've found any number of people who said ham. Or Chinese food. Or "Anything at all." These last people are probably the holiday's natural citizens . . . folks who are grateful for all the good things they receive and do not dictate what they should be. I admire such people. But I'm not one of them.

For the record, then. Here's what I require for a Thanksgiving feast to be real:

Turkey (of course)
Stuffing (real sausage-and-bread stuffing, not those things involving oysters or cornbread or pecans)
Gravy
Mashed potatoes
Celery
Radishes (cut into radish roses)
Sweet midget pickles
Creamed onions (these last are so important that I cook them myself)
Cranberry sauce (the jellied stuff with the ridges, straight out of the can, and Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish both)

The smallest number of required items was zero. The largest -- and I apologize for not having counted; I was standing stunned with admiration -- came from my New England friend Gail, who required three separate cranberry dishes (one relish, but not Stamberg) and, among many other dishes, three different pies . . . and the squash pie had to be baked in a square dish.

It was only when she was an adult that she realized that the reason the squash pie was always baked in a square dish was that by the time the women of her family got around to it, every round pie pan had been used.

So how about y'all? What do you require for a Thanksgiving feast to be real?

Above: I spray-painted autumn leaves and stamped DEATH on them so I could strew 'em about the parks of Philadelphia. But it's been raining all week, so I didn't have the opportunity. Believe it or not, I found them waiting on the table yesterday, making a natural Thanksgiving centerpiece.

*

Anne McCaffrey, 1926 - 2011

2011-11-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

Today is an international day of mourning for science fiction readers. Anne McCaffrey is dead.

You almost certainly knew this already. The news spread faster than wildfire. Most SF writer blogs will devote today to the great lady's passing. Memories will be shared. Words will be dropped at her feet.

I met Ms McCaffrey only once, at a Forbidden Planet signing in London in the 1980s. She had endless lines of fans -- mostly young women wearing natural fabrics in earth tones -- each with the sort of expression a devout Catholic might have in the presence of the Pope. I had a much shorter line of young men in punk leather who shrank away from me in horror when I said I was working on a fantasy novel.

During the time when my signing was done and McCaffrey's was still going on and on and on, I reflected on the fact that almost every one of her acolytes clutched an enormous stack of her books. There's my mistake, I thought. I haven't written a tremendous number of novels that readers love passionately.

There is much that could be said in praise of McCaffrey's work. But I'll leave that to everybody else. She wrote a tremendous number of novels that readers love passionately. That's the epitaph that we're all working toward.

And now she has it.

Rest in peace, Anne. Thanks for the books.

In Which I Witness Cultural History . . .

2011-11-22T08:05:00.000-08:00

I never watch The Big Bang Theory because my son forbids it. He tells me that it's an ethnic slur against his kind. Marianne and I are expected to watch Community instead. (A friend who works for Community College of Philadelphia tells me that the latter is an ethnic slur against his kind, but that's another story.)

Which makes it ironic that I was present at a historic cultural nerd-moment last Friday at SFContario. I was at a room party when Lawrence M. Schoen, challenged to translate on the spot, sang Soft Kitty in Klingon for the first time in human history.

You may marvel at my cultural on-linedness.

And coming soon . . .

I just got a look at the lineup for Jonathan Strahan's forthcoming The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. It's not public for a few days yet, but there are some really good names there. I'd buy it in an instant, if I weren't going to be getting a contributor's copy.

Above: A fleeting glimpse of the Niagara River from my train window. It took some seventeen hours to get home yesterday, with no delays. Still . . . better than flying.

Leaving Ontario

2011-11-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

I went through all of SFContario without once running into Karl Schroeder who, being guest of honor, had many duties and obligations to fulfill. Which I seriously regretted, because he is a brilliant guy and a font of really good science fictional ideas.

But I caught up to Karl at the end of the closing ceremonies and managed to delay him sufficiently to have a long talk with him about his career as an innovationist. I won't share what he had to say because I didn't ask his permission to post any of it here and, anyway, I might want to steal some of it for my own fiction. But I will say that it was a pleasure to listen to someone who's actively working to ameliorate the world's ills. What a positive guy he is! A genuine force for good.

I only hope that the people who run things listen to what he has to say.

And as always . . .

I'm on the road again. Specifically, the railroad from Toronto to Philadelphia. I expect to reach home by midnight, tired but happy and grateful to the good folks of SFContario for a convention I enjoyed immensely.

Immediately above: The conservatory in Allan Gardens, across from the convention hotel, at night.

Harbinger, Chagall, Toronto, and Me

2011-11-18T20:21:00.000-08:00

I'm at SFContario with such luminaries at John Scalzi, Rob Sawyer, and Gardner Dozois, and from the window of my hotel room I can see Harbinger, a skyscraper-top artwork which changes color depending on the wind speed. If you're here too, I suggest you go out at night and look for it. Pretty neat.

And I took in some art . . .

Over at the Art Gallery of Ontario (highly recommended at all times; don't miss the Frank Gehry staircase) there's a show of Marc Chagall's artwork, along with paintings by his contemporaries in the Russian avant-garde.

Looking at Chagall always makes me want to write. And this time was no exception. I discovered Clowns in the Night, a dark and beautiful work that surely was about the Holocaust. I learned more about the art of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov and Ivan Koudriachov and other artists about whom I know far too little. And then I looked at the biographical data for the artists and saw how many died in the Holocaust or else shortly after returning to Russia.

The Twentieth Century was an evil one. Let's pray the Twenty-First is better.

Remember to Die!

2011-11-17T12:15:00.000-08:00

It's autumn, and autumn is my season. Part of my annual duties is to wander about, stamping the word DEATH on fallen leaves. This year, as an experiment, I spray-painted some of those leaves white. To make them stand out so they'll be easier to find when I strew them about.

The reason I do this is because autumn is the season that implicitly says MEMENTO MORI. Which is Latin for Remember to Die. There's no big hurry on this one. But it's on your list of things to do.

Because if you haven't died, you haven't lived a rich, full life yet.

Days of Future Past

2011-11-16T13:54:00.000-08:00

Look what I found in the twenty-five cent bin of the comic book store -- my childhood! Specifically, two General Electric comic books, Science in Your Future and Our Place in Space. They were benign works of corporate propaganda published in the early 1950s and typical of the goodies which my father, who was an electrical engineer for GE, brought home from work. They were part of what made me a science-mad and space-mad kid. And they both, interestingly enough, came out of the Schenectady plant, where Dad was employed.

Read today, they're intelligent, well-made works (the cartoonist and writer -- almost certainly not Kurt Vonnegut who would have left GE's employment by then -- were uncredited), which do display certain cultural biases. The comic on space, for example, featured not one woman. Apparently we were going to conquer the universe without their active participation. The science comic did feature a young lady and included a few lines about "men and women scientists." But in all the vast lab spaces pictured (and they really were vast! I saw them on the yearly open house for employees' families), there was only woman. And she was so fashionably dressed that it was possible she was meant to be a secretary.

But GE's not to blame for that. It was the times. Women knew then that, with rare exceptions, if they wanted a career, they could choose between teaching and nursing. General Electric was actually being surprisingly open-minded in encouraging girls to think about becoming scientists.

Things got better, later. Not perfect by any means. But better.

And as always . . .

I'll be on the road tomorrow. I'm taking the train to Ontario for SFContario. I was a goh there last year and it was great. This year Gardner Dozois is the editor guest of honor and SFContario is the Canadian national convention, so it'll be even greater.

If you see me, be sure to say hello. Or bonjour, as the case may be.

Easy Money

2011-11-15T18:51:00.000-08:00

My apologies for a second day without a picture. I'm prepping for SFContario.

One of the side effects of being a science fiction writer is that you're constantly coming up with items that you think would make a lot of money . . . if you only had the connections to bring them to market.

Here's one. For all I know, it may already exist. But if so, I've never seen it: Frames for calling cards. Nobody's asking for 'em. But I can't help but think that if they were available businesspeople would buy them.

Let's say an elaborate silver frame for a single card, and four-, eight-, and sixteen-card frames for greater numbers. The single frame you'd reserve for Desmond Tutu's business card, or Ursula K. Le Guin's or Gene Wolfe's. The larger frames you'd use for the cards of all four Rolling Stones, eight Nobel Prize winners, or all the Supreme Court and the seven lawyers who pushed through the decisions of which you most enthusiastically approve.

Let's face it. Business cards are all about status and prestige. Surely, showing off that Steve Jobs or Germaine Greer felt obliged to hand you that rectangle of cardboard is worth overspending on a designer frame.

If you have the connections, take this idea and run. Make a fortune with it. You have my blessing.

Emergency Monday Post

2011-11-14T17:58:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading this blog since forever, as so few have, you know that I do not guarantee to post every day or even every other day but only on two days, Monday and Friday -- if at all possible.

Today, alas, I almost failed you.

This morning I taught a class at the USNA in Annapolis. Young and earnest midshipmen -- some of whom were women -- who listened to every word because they wanted very much to improve themselves in every way possible.

For people like these -- and I have met them in many countries -- I will do almost anything.

After the class (and a couple of other experiences which go into the lockbox of memory, because they might prove useful in future fiction) was over, the students filed out, pausing to shake my hand and thank me, "sir." Then Marianne and I hit the back roads of Maryland and Delaware, through Sassafras and Unicorn and other small towns, homeward but in no particular hurry. Which is why we got home late, and then I had a flurry of business correspondence to deal with, and to kerfluffle went my syntax, and almost, almost, I failed you.

Yet here I am and here we are and I have saved myself from humiliation at the last possible instant.

Whew!

Quiet Friday

2011-11-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet day. Lat night I was in Brookyn at Andy Heidel's bar, The Way Station, having a Manhattan (just as Marianne does, they spice their own cherries; making the drink far superior to those with maraschino cherries) and talking with the local SF folk. Before that, I listened to N. K. Jemisin reading -- and quite well -- from her work and enjoyed a demonstration of stage and movie combat by Mike Yahn. The moves were terrifyingly brutal, even when you've just been shown that they involve no physical contact. A great presentation, and I regret only that I didn't write down the name of his friend and fellow stunt man, who sold the demos by convincingly acting as if he'd been punched. It really is a collaborative art.

Did I mention I had a terrific time? I had a terrific time. Why doesn't Philadelphia have a steampunk bar?

And I couldn't help thinking about steampunk because . . .

Wallace and Gromit movies were running continuously on a monitor by the bar, and apparently the Way Station has a weekly W&G-watching event. So occasionally (not during the readings or demo) I glanced up at the screen and in context was struck by how, well, steampunk that series is. Clunky Victorian machines that nevertheless work brilliantly, on-the-spot engineering, mad inventions, the lot.

Of course, Wallace and Gromit predate the steampunk phenomenon. But there was definitely something in the air. Or water. Or aether.

Not Above: I really should mention the Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza, which organized the evening. Well done, chaps!

Down at the Tardis Bar

2011-11-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

I''m reading tonight as part of the Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza at the Way Station in Brooklyn, along with N. K. Jemisin and a stage combat demonstrator. I lead a strange life.

The Way Station is a steampunk/Dr. Who themed bar and has its very own tardis (pictured above). One of the websites I found claims the tardis is also their toilet.

I lead a very strange life. I keep coming back to that observation.

Anyway, if you're in the area and your evening is free, why not drop by? I'm very eager to hear Jemison read, and I'm looking forward to the stage combat demo. Also, I'll be reading something good. It ought to be a hoot.

Strange, mind you But a hoot.

And here's their press release . . .

Arriving at an EXCITING NEW LOCATION, The Way Station, Brooklyn's greatest Steampunk and Doctor Who themed bar, will be multiple Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy award winner Michael Swanwick, whose new book _Dancing with Bears_ is about con men in a delirious future Russia.

With him will be recently Hugo nominated and critically acclaimed NK Jemisin, in honor of the release of the final book of her Inheritance Trilogy, _The Kingdom of Gods_, which is about deities as weapons of mass destruction, a city on a spire and one hundred thousand kingdoms.

There will also be an exhilarating stage combat demonstration by stage combat instructor, stunt man and kung fu master Mike Yahn. Books will be sold by the Community Bookstore.

WHEN: Thursday, November 10 @ 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: The Way Station
683 Washington Ave
Prospect Heights
Brooklyn, NY 11238

Part reading series, part carnival, the Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza is a speculative fiction event held at The Way Station bar that promises to change the way you look at readings forever and to call you in the morning. It may actually deliver on one of those promises.

http://waystationbk.blogspot.com
http://woldnewtonreading.com

Paul McAuley's "Bruce Springsteen"

2011-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

I used to nominate a lot of stuff for the Nebula, before they changed the rules. If I admired a story and thought it worth being on the ballot, I nominated it. Then, at the end of the year, I used that informal list to help me decide what to vote for. Nowadays, you get only so many nominations (five, I think) per category, and you have only a few months out of the year in which to make them. Which is to say, you have to keep track of what you read through the year and then, when it's over, go through your notes to determine what you think are the five best works per category before you nominate any.

Alas, I'm just not that organized. So the nominating process has to go on without me. However, I do like recommending good stories. So I thought I might occasionally review one here.

Let's hope the following off-the-cuff review is the first of many.

"Bruce Springsteen" by Paul McAuley

Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2012

Novelette

"Bruce Springsteen" pretends to be set on another planet but is actually an exploration of the myth of the American West. The West of the high desert, I mean, not that of cowboys and gunfights and genocide. The roads out there are empty and go on forever. You turn the nose of your car into the Great Lonely and pray to an untenanted sky to dissolve your self and make you into something you are not. I was on Route 50 in Nevada, "the loneliest road in America," recently and I can testify to the pull of that myth. You want to just go down that road forever.

But there's a dark side to the myth.

The nameless protagonist of this story is a working stiff in a dead-end job at the edge of town who may or may not be aware that he's reached the end of his rope, when a woman crosses his destiny. "Rachel was definitely my type," he says. "Older than me by five or ten years, easy with what she was. Someone who'd lived a little and taken some hard knocks, who knew how to look after herself. Someone, I thought, who was passing through. A change from the waitresses and kitchen staff."

The fated pair go the Stardust Hotel and fuck. Then they hit the road, intending to pull an easy and bloodless heist that will be the key to some vast and unspecified alien treasure. Two dead guards later, they're in a car and on the run, carrying an ancient soul stone back to the tomb from which it was stolen. They talk. They steal another car and accidentally kill another person. Along the way, McAuley rather cunningly conflates Bruce Springsteen's work (particularly his Nebraska album) with Samuel Beckett's. One of the two is betrayed. The other is gunned down by the police. The survivor winds up in jail and speaks the epitaph for them both: I thought we'd have a bunch of adventures until the law caught up with us. I thought we'd be together right until the end . . ."

There is a kind of coda at the end of the story which, with the help of a useful alien, makes it clear that the story is about the uncanny power of stories to ride us and make us do their bidding. And here I have to hesitate because I'm not entirely sure the story has earned its own ending.

But I'm also not entirely sure that it hasn't. This is one of those stories you have to think about for a long time. Someday, years from now, most likely, I'll come to a conclusion and turn thumbs up or thumbs down. Either I'll conclude that "Bruce Springsteen" managed to not say but imply something deep . . . or I'll decide that it was a noble attempt.

Good story, either way.

Back when I was in college, I was riding in a pickup truck driven by a young woman who, I realized abruptly after the truck nearly went off the road, was a lot drunker than I had realized. So drunk that, she being who she was, I knew there was no chance of talking her into slowing down or stopping. So, realizing there was a good chance I was going to die, I leaned as far out the window as I could and laughed.

This is a story that happens every day in America. In Zen Buddhism, it's called the koan of the strawberry.

Above: According to its YouTube caption, this is the only film footage in existence of Mark Twain. I didn't have anything appropriate to the review, so I threw it in.

VOTE!

2011-11-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty reasonable guy about most things. But not about voting. Charlton Heston will voluntarily turn in all his firearms to the Enemy long, long before they're able to pry the vote from my cold, dead fingers. Patriots died to give me this right. I'm not going to give it up just because there are some ballots that fill the soul with dismay.

In all the time since I came of age, I've failed to vote in exactly one election -- and that's because my college roommate put the absentee ballot atop the furnace, where he figured it would be safe, and by the time I got home a hole had been burned all the way through the center. Every single other election, primaries included, I'm there at the front of the line.

The reason I'm so enthusiastic about representational democracy is that where it counts most -- the presidential election -- my candidate usually loses. And yet, because there's always hope, and because the system confers a strange kind of legitimacy (the kind that has you muttering that people get the kind of government they deserve), I have never once been tempted to pick up a gun and participate in the violent overthrow of a government that sometimes appalls me.

That's worth a lot.

Above: I picked that image off of the Web. I sure hope that those tiny little words I can't render decipherable don't say anything hideous.

And Now For a Commercial Break . . .

2011-11-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

Mea culpa. I've missed two days' blogs -- and it's been a long time since I've done that. (I've got a case of the Grunge, and it's sapped my energy entirely.) So to make it up to you in part, here's a genuinely demented work of advertising art.

See how long it takes you to figure out what they're selling.

And is it just me or . . . ?

Does it seem to anybody else that this is Paprika, played as it if were a good thing?

Celebrating Murray Leinster

2011-11-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm off to the Big Apple for A Tribute to Murray Leinster at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art. If you're in the area, why not drop by? It's only seven dollars and these New York Review of Science Fiction reading series events are always lots of fun.

That's 138 Sullivan Street (between Houston & Prince St.). The doors open at 6:30 tonight.

And because I'm traveling . . .

This will be a short blog. But I thought I'd share the above photo with you. I took it at the Occupy Philadelphia site and it shows some of the protesters' tents with, looming above them from across the street, Jacques Lipchitz's statue Government of the People.

Government of the People is one of Gardner Dozois's favorite statues. He likes to point out that it's a graphic portrayal of human beings being crushed by an enormous load of shit. Over the years I've come around to the viewpoint that that may have been the sculptor's intent.

Boo!

2011-10-31T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's Halloween! So Marianne and I went down to City Hall to donate a case of water, a box of granola bars, and some M&Ms (for the seasonality) to the Occupy Philadelphia people. Then we went to XIX and ordered martinis and raw oysters for lunch.

A rich life defies convincing synopsis.

And if you're in NYC tomorrow . . .

I'll be making yet another public appearance, this one not to promote myself but to pay homage to the late, great Will F. Jenkins at A Tribute to Murray Leinster, part of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series.

Among the celebrities present will be Billee Stallings, the daughter of Jenkins/Leinster. With her sister, Jo-an Evans, she has written a memoir about her father titled Murray Leinster: The Life and Works, published by McFarland & Co. (Copies of the book will be available at the reading.)

I'm assuming you know that Leinster was probably the single most important SF writer between H. G. Wells and Robert Heinlein. But if you don't . . . well, here's your chance to find out why.

At the Soho Gallery for Digital Art, 138 Sullivan Street (between Houston & Prince St.) Seven dollars suggested donation. The doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the event begins half an hour later.

Above: This year's pumpkins, huzzah! I like a bit of plot on my porch at this time of year.

John Mortimer Remembers the Sixties

2011-10-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

I was reading John Mortimer's memoir, Clinging to the Wreckage the other day, and right there near the beginning I ran into the following passage:

The end of the sixties, Flower Power and Children's LIb, the Underground Press and the Alternative Society seem as remote as the Middle Ages; 'Make Love Not War' as dusty an apothegm as some saying of the Early Fathers of the Church. Childhood requires no effort of memory, but it is hard work to recapture the feeling of 1971, a year when Richard Neville, a young Australian writer, asked some vaguely liberated children to help him produce a 'Schoolkids' number of his magazine Oz, thereby promoting an obscenity trial which lasted for six hot weeks of that summer at the Old Bailey. As the trial started the children demonstrated in the street, carrying, as I remember it, banners bearing the legend 'An Orgasm A Day Keeps the Doctor Away'. The front row of the public gallery contained girls whose T-shirts were decorated with a portrait of the Inspector in Charge of the case. He stared up from his position of power in the well of the Court at a repeated view of his own flushed features strained between the small breasts of teenaged girls. The adult editors of Oz, Richard Neville, Jim Anderson, and Felix Dennis, wore, for their first day in the dock, gym-slips and long blonde wigs, treating the proceedings with an apparent levity far removed from the respectful stance and deferential silence of the more acceptable prisoners at the bar. Among the witnesses called was the comedian Marty Feldman, and I remember him whispering to me, on his way to the witness-box, 'Great to be working with you at last.'

What, I now wonder, did everyone think was going on? A children's revolution, the dawn of a new world when long-haired headmasters would chant Bob Dylan songs at assembly and an adolescent House of Commons would rap away in perfect love enveloped in a pungent smell like slow-burning Turkish carpets; and war, shamed by a poem of Allen Ginsberg's, would vanish from the face of the earth? The dream, whatever it was, has faded more rapidly than most, and the schoolkids of the Oz age are no doubt now paying their mortgages and driving their Ford Cortinas with a nodding dog in the back window, and holding down tough jobs as chartered accountants. Even the trial became calmer after its dramatic beginning, and the great majesty of the Criminal Law of England bent itself to a careful consideration of, among other things, Rupert the Bear, an animal long beloved for his docility and innocence, who was unusually portrayed, in Oz magazine, with a gigantic erection.

Which is the best summation of the Sixties I've ever come across. When the old-timers joke that "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there," we're not implying that you were doing massive amounts of drugs -- though you almost certainly were -- but that the reality of what we were doing and the subjectivity of what we thought we were doing were so strange as to be almost unfathomable today.

What were we thinking? I despair of coming up with a logical answer to that question.

And incidentally . . .

Did you notice how well-written that passage was? How every sentence was inherently interesting and how smoothly it all read? That's very fine indeed. John Mortimer has received oodles of praise for his writing. But, honestly, he hasn't received a fraction of his due.

And you may remember . . .

I was on a panel about Ursula K. Le Guin at the Center for Fiction in NYC recently. It was a good panel -- everybody participated equally and we all had intelligent and interesting things to say. But what struck me most was the crowd. It was a more "mainstream" group than I usually speak in front of, so a great deal of this information was new to them and they were really interested. It's not hard to do a good job in front of an audience like that.

In the crowd, as it turned out, was Ryan Britt, who wrote an account of the panel for Tor.com.

You can read what he had to say about the panel here.

Blogging Vs. Facebook

2011-10-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've got this blog and I've also got a Facebook account, and they couldn't be more different. If I say something serious on Facebook, I rarely get any response whatsoever. But post a photo of my breakfast? Twenty to thirty responses. Not to mention the fan letters.

Seriously. I get fan letters. For my breakfasts.

They're good breakfasts, admittedly. But still. I think we can all agree that there's a certain . . . gravitas that's missing from the Facebook experience.

Lately, I've noticed that, increasingly, people are making and posting humorous photo posters, like the above. (Is there a name for them? Thumbnail posters, maybe?) Sometimes they're serious, and when they are, they're usually political.

Here on Blogger, things are the exact opposite. I don't think I'll be posting very many political messages here. But if I do, they almost certainly won't be serious.

Above: Case in point.

Kyle Cassidy Rides Again!

2011-10-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

My favorite Philadelphia photographer, Kyle Cassidy, is at it again! Kyle, for those of you who don't know his work, lives to photograph people. There is a basic decency to Kyle's photos. Whether he's photographing science fiction fans or gun owners sitting in their living rooms holding guns, he manages to show the human being behind the essential eccentricity (the fans, mostly) or normalcy (the gun owners, in the main). So when I heard he'd gone up to New York City to photograph the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I thought it was a really cool idea.

And it was. You can see a selection of his photos at the Huffington Post here.

And, as always . . .

I've been on the road. But I have hopes of spending three or four days at home before the month ends. Which is good because Autumn has arrived and I have work to do!

Details as they happen.

In Tribute to Ursula

2011-10-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well, the month has passed the 2,000-mile point and has shown no signs of slowing down. But before I hop in the car again, I should mention the Wave in the Mind: A Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin panel on Friday at the Center for Fiction in New York City. It was supposed to be a forty minute or so panel, but we pushed it well over an hour and nobody in the audience complained. There are so many good things to be said about Le Guin's work!

We were all articulate and interesting. Nobody hogged the mike and nobody shrank back into the shadows. The audience, being mostly mainstream, were amazed at how much we all knew and a lot of them took copious notes. So I think I can say it was an unalloyed success.

Afterwards, I realized that the key to Le Guin's artistry lies in one passage in The Word for World is Forest. In the novella, humanity colonizes a planet with a native race that is almost infinitely exploitable because they are absolutely peaceful. But one day, a native named Selver who has been mistreated beyond endurance does something unthinkable, and kills a human being. He flees into the forest, where his kind treat him with absolute respect and obedience, because he is a god. And he’s a god because he’s taught them a new word.

Le Guin wrote:

“If a god was a translator, what did he translate? ... Was [he] one who translated the language of dream and philosophy, the Men’s Tongue, into the everyday speech? But all Dreamers could do that. Might he then be one who could translate into waking life the central experience of vision: one serving as a link between the two realities considered by the Athsheans as equal, the dream-time and the world-time, whose connections, though vital, are obscure. A link: one who could speak aloud the perceptions of the subconscious. To ‘speak’ that tongue is to act. To do a new thing. To change or to be changed, radically, from the root. For the root is the dream.
“And the translator is the god. Selver had brought a new word into the language of his people. He had done a new deed. The word, the deed, murder. Only a god could lead so great a newcomer as Death across the bridge between the worlds.”

Le Guin is a more benevolent translator/god than Selver. But that's what she's doing. She's in the god business. As, to the limits of our abilitities, are all we who labor in the vineyards of literature.

Above, l-r: John Wray, me, Ellen Kushner, N.K. Jemisin, and moderator David G. Hartwell.

Ancient Engines

2011-10-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

I'm online again! The Drabblecast has just posted their podcast of my story, "Ancient Engines."

I've always felt particularly fond of this story because of the following passage which lies at the very heart of its argument:

"I remember an incident happened to my late father-in-law, William Porter. He was a fine fellow, Bill was, and who remembers him anymore? Only me." The old man sighed. "He was a bit of a railroad buff, and one day he took a tour through a science museum that included a magnificent old steam locomotive. This was in the latter years of the last century. Well, he was listening admiringly to the guide extolling the virtues of this ancient engine when she mentioned its date of manufacture, and he realized that he was older than it was." Brandt leaned forward. "This is the point where old Bill would laugh. But it's not really funny, is it?”

This always makes me smile because it's a true story and one which my late father-in-law, William Porter, used to tell on himself with great zest. The old man in the story was completely right. Bill was a fine fellow. He's greatly missed.

You can hear the story here. Or you can go the podzine and poke around here.

And if you're in the Big Apple tonight . . .

Why not help me celebrate Ursula K. Le Guin at the Center for Fiction? I don't think the great lady will be there. But there'll be a panel moderated by David Hartwell, with Ellen Kushner, me, John Wray, and N.K. Jemisin. How could it fail to be entertaining?

Details here.

Strandbeests

2011-10-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

You've probably seen this already. How could you not? But even if you have, you're most likely not adverse to seeing it again. And if by some perverse miracle you weren't aware of Theo Jonsen's Strandbeests, then the universe is about to become a better place for you.

Jonsen is one of those people, like Andy Goldsworthy, whom I believed I would grow up to be, when I was a boy. Completely mad. But in a benign way.

And in case you're wondering how Capclave was . . .

Terrific fun. I got to hang with friends like Brenda Clough and Bud Sparhawk. I glanced at the schedule and saw there was a panel on Murray Leinster conducted by notables like Ted White and Lawrence Watt-Evans and wound up getting drafted onto it, was on a number of well-received panels and one (on flash fiction) where every single one of the panelists was brilliant. And I came home happy and exhausted.

But you want to know about Terry Pratchett.

Yes, the Great Man was there, for all of an hour, during which he spoke to a kneeling-room-only crowd (the room was so crowded that toward the end you had to crawl in through a sea of legs). Most of which I missed because it was held at the same time as one of my panels and I am nothing is not faithful. Still, Sir Terry was recognizably himself, a man who not only takes great joy in his intellect but in setting standards for intelligence.

And at this point, I hardly know what to say because, as we all know, the man has contracted early onset Alzheimer's. Luckily, however, Pratchett dealt with the topic of his mortality head-on. You can find out what he had to say in the following video, kindly taken and posted by Scott Edelman.

Thank you, Scott.

Annotating Paris, Part 2

2011-10-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

The first half of the annotations for Paris, a Poem went up Friday. You can find them here. The second half is below.

Page 12

Cloacae: Sewers.

Hot indiarubber: The smell of automobile tires.

Poudre de riz: Face powder.

Monsieur Jourdain, Ballet Turque, Mamamouchi: In Voltaire’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman), M. Jourdain dresses up and joins a Turkish dance, in order to become, he thinks, a “mamamouchi,” or paladin.

Zouaves: The Zouaves, known particularly for their colorful uniforms, were light infantry regiments in the French Army, originally recruited from among the Berbers of Algeria. In the early months of WWI, their uniforms made them easy targets, and so in 1915 they were forced to adopt a plain khaki uniform.

’Ya bon!: “That’s good!”

YANKEES: It is not certain whether these are the Americans in Paris for the Peace Conference or the African Americans who, finding an acceptance in Paris they could not at home, stayed there after the war and became a vibrant part of its creative life.

“and say besides that in Aleppo once...”: From Othello’s speech which includes “Say that I loved not wisely but too well.”

Mardi Gras and Carême Prenant: Mardi Gras is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent, and Carême Prenant is Shrovetide, the period before Lent, both a time of Carnival, here intermingled with the Peace Conference to become a “Peace Carnival.”

“Elles se balancent sur les hanches”: “The women rock on their haunches.”

The tart little race whose brain, the Arabs said, was one of the three perches of the Spirit of God: Julia Briggs suggests this may be a reference to the Armenians, victims of the recent Armenian Holocaust.

Ouiouioui, c’esi passionnant–on en a pour son argent. Le fromage n’est pas un plat logique: “Yesyesyes, it’s passionate – a good deal for your money. Cheese is not a reasonable dish.”

A a a a a oui c’est un délicieux garcon. Il me semble que tout femme sincere doit se retrouver en Anna Karénine: “Ahhh, yes, he’s a delightful boy. It seems to me that any honest woman must recognize herself in Anna Karenina.”

Page 13

The first of May: Mirrlees noted: “On May 1, the Mois de Marie, lily of the valley is normally sold in all the streets of Paris; but on May 1, 1919, the day of the general strike, no lily of the valley was offered for sale.” The general strike was a common tactic of Communists at that time. Putting “There is no lily of the valley” in a vertical line suggests a parade of strikers. May 1, 1919 is also notable for marking the end of the first World War.

Page 14

The wicked April moon: In her notes, Mirrlees explains that “The April moon, la lune rousse, is supposed to have a malign influence on vegetation.” Here it is set in opposition to the Virgin Mary in a year-myth battle between Christianity and Paganism.

The silence of la grève: La grève is French for the shore or bank, rather than the grave, making this a bilingual pun.

the Place du Carrousel: A public square located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre. Carrousel was a form of dressage or equine military drill.

The Seine, old egotist: Again, the poem descends into dream.

king-fishers: A reference not only to the birds but to the fisher-king, damaged and in need of healing, both spiritual and sexual.

Page 15

The Eiffel Tower is two dimensional: In this section, aspects of the physical Paris are reduced to art, the soldiers with their Terre de Sienne (burnt umber) packs are turned to chalk sketches to be sold in the rue des Pyramides as souvenirs.

Poilus: French soldiers; literally “hairy ones.”

Désoeuvrement: Idleness

Vronsky and Anna: Anna Karenina, beautiful and married, and Count Vronsky, wealthy and an officer, were the adulterous lovers in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Mirrlees was studying Russian at the Ecole des Langues Orientales with her companion, the classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, at the time she wrote this poem.

mujik: Variant spelling of muzhik, a Russian peasant.

Clio: The muse of history.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: Just as the three pious Jews are saved by God when Nebuchadnezzar throws them into a furnace, so too Art preserves them motionless and unharmed from the violence of the flames.

Manet’s Massacres des Jours de Juin, etc: This painting, David’s Prise de la Bastille, and Poussin’s Fronde, all portraying violent episodes in French history, do not exist.

Page 16

Waxen Pandoras: A Pandora was a kind of mannequin. Mirrlees’s note reads “During Lent life-size wax dolls, dressed like candidates for Première Communion, are exposed in the windows of the big shops.”

Catéchisme de Persévérance: This catechism was written by Jean-Joseph Gaume, a Catholic theologian who blamed the ills of his day on the Renaissance, which he felt had resurrected classical paganism.

the Seven Oecumenical Councils: The first seven Ecumenical Councils, starting with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 established the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith.

Bibliothèque Rose: The “Pink Library” is the juvenile imprint of the publisher Hachette aimed specifically at girls. Hachette also had a Bibliothèque Vert (Green Library) imprint for boys.

Première Communion: In English, First Holy Communion.

Petits Lycéens: Little high school girls.

Little Saint Hugh: The story of Saint Hugh of Lincoln (c. 1246 - 1255) is one of the more grotesque examples of medieval hagiography. The Jews of Lincoln were said to have scourged the child, crowned him with thorns, and crucified him in mockery of Jesus. The earth refused to accept his body and so it was thrown down a well, where it was later discovered.

THE CHILDREN EAT THE JEW: The sacrament of Communion, of course.

PHOTO MIDGET: A photography studio or service in Paris.

Périgord: A rural region in southwestern France which, like all the regions cited throughout the poem, evokes the suggestion that the city of Paris contains all of France within it.

masks and dominoes: Masks and dominoes serve as carnival disguises. The domino is a large hooded cloak.

A l’occasion du marriage de Monseigneur le Dauphin: Julia Briggs explains that this is the marriage of the future king of France to Marie Antoinette, during which a fireworks display caused a stampede leading to several hundred deaths.

Page 17

rue de Beaune: The Hôtel de L’Elysee, where Mirrlees and Harrison stayed while in Paris was located at 3 rue de Beaune. The narrator has once again fallen into a visionary trance.

Triptolemos: A significant figure in the Eleusinian Mysteries. A son of Keleus, king of Eleus, Triptolemos welcomed into their palace the goddess Demeter when she was mourning her daughter. In return for his kindness, she gave Triptolemos corn, and he became a teacher of agriculture to the whole world. He was often represented on amphorae and vases, an area of interest to Jane Ellen Harrison. An important votive relief in Athens portrays him as a small figure standing between two Demeter and Persephone.

Ovid, an unwilling thrall in Fairyland: Here, Mirrlees has conflated the Roman poet and storyteller with Thomas the Rhymer or possibly the wretched knight of Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” This passage may conceivably serve as a tantalizing first glimpse of her fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist.

Ile Saint-Louis: One of two natural islands in the Seine.

Place des Vosges: The oldest planned square in Paris.

Page 18

[music]: From Handel’s Rinaldo, “Let me weep for my cruel fate, and let me sigh for my liberty.”

Saint Thomas d’Aquin: A church very close to Mirrlees’s hotel on rue de Beaune.

l’impasse des Deux Anges: An impasse is a dead end.

Sebastopol: This Black Sea port was besieged by French and English forces and captured in 1856. The Zouaves distinguished themselves during the fighting.

MOLIERE, etc: These are commemorative plaques for Moliere, Voltaire, and Chateaubriand set up at their places of death.

Page 19

les Champs Elysees!: Les Champs Elysees, the most famous avenue in Paris, has a name meaning “the Elysian fields,” the land of the dead.

Sainte-Beuve: Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) was France’s first major professional literary critic. His affair with Madame Victor-Hugo, wife of the famous writer, his best friend, inspired a semi-autobiographical novel. However, he considered his greatest work to be Port-Royal, a history in six books of Jansenism and a whole section of 17^th-century French society. Jansenism, a rather dour Catholic sect, informed Mirrlees’s first novel, Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists.

the Pont-Neuf: The New Bridge, completed in 1604, is now Paris’s oldest.

the duc de la Rochefoucauld: François de La Rochefoucauld was a seventeenth century writer, famed for his Memoires and Maximes.

salon d’automne: A reference to the Salon d’Automne , created in 1903 out of dissatisfaction with the conservative Paris Salon, which displayed art by such artistic giants as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso, at least two of whom Mirrlees knew.

Madame de Lafayette: Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette was the author of La Princesse de Clèves, France’s first historical novel and one of the first novels in literature. She was close friends with François de La Rochefoucauld.

Il fait lourd: The weather is heavy, sultry. Again, the narrator is slipping into lassitude and trance.

Benediction: A short Catholic ceremony, not involving Communion. This is the second and last use of the first-person plural in the poem.

Notre-Dame-des-Champs: Our-Lady-of-the-Fields, one of the oldest churches in Paris.

Seven Stages of the Cross are cut in box: There are fourteen stations of the cross. It is not clear whether these are carved in boxwood or are boxwood topiary.

Page 20

votive offerings From a converted Jap: Julia Briggs has identified the donor as Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita, who was at the time in the early stages of his success. He was to achieve fame as a painter of women and cats.

troubadour: Many of the songs of the medieval troubadours, exponents of courtly love, have been absorbed into the cult of Mary, particularly for. May Day celebrations.

venial sins: Minor sins, which do not automatically damn one’s soul to Hell, as do the deadly sins.

fret: To gnaw at, or eat.

The plums of Paradise: Again, the color of Lent is evoked. It should be noted that Lent is a time of waiting for rebirth, and that during the time between Good Friday and Easter, God has withdrawn His presence from the world.

La Liberté La Presse!: These are the names of two newspapers, here being hawked by vendors.

le Petit-Palais: A museum built for the Universal Exhibition in 1900.

the Algerian desert: French Algeria, which lasted from 1830 to 1962, was one of France’s longest-held possessions, though never considered a proper part of France.

shouting the Koran: The muezzin’s call to prayer at sunset, not actually a quotation from the Koran itself.

The sky is apricot … celestial apricot: Possibly just a carefully-observed color. However, it is worth noting that traditionally, the apricot is a symbol of female genitalia and that in medieval France, abricot was slang for the vulva. The apricot was also considered to be an aphrodisiac.

Pont Solférino: A Napoleon III construction, destroyed in 1960.

fiacre: A hackney coach, named after the Hôtel de St. Fiacre in Paris.

tippeted pelisse: A tippet is an ecclesiastical garment, a band of silk or similar cloth worn around the neck with the ends pendent in front. A pelisse is a short, tight-fitting jacket.

silhouettes of Louis-Philippe: During the reign of the Citizen King, black paper silhouette portraits were in style.

the Quais: The streets along the banks of the Seine, where the bouquinistes ply their trade.

bouquinistes: Second-hand booksellers, famed for their small green stalls on the quays of the Seine.

Page 21

the VIIme arrondissement: Paris is divided into 20 districts. The 7^th is on the Left Bank and includes Mirrlees’s lodgings on the rue de Beaune.

The winds are sleeping in their Hyperbórean cave: In Greek mythology, Hyperborea was the land of perpetual sunshine beyond the North Wind. In the Aeneid, Aeoleus kept the storm winds captive in a cave within his floating island – but that was in the Mediterranean. In La Sepmaine, the 16th century poet Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas wrote (as translated by Joshua Sylvester) that "Gray-beard Boreas / (As the most boistrous and rebellious slave) / Is prisoned close in th' Hyper-Borean Cave." Which is a possible source but not a necessary one.

ramparts: In its first iteration, the Louvre was a fortress with literal ramparts. A distinction is being drawn between the Apollonian high art inside the museum and the low Dionysian realities outside.

Freud has dredged the river and, grinning horribly, waves his garbage in a glare of electricity: Freud and electricity were emblematic of modernity. Freud’s theories and analysis relied heavily on the interpretation of dreams.

Taxis … in rut: It is, as male travelers to distant cities quickly learn, one of the primary functions of a taxi driver to know the location of whorehouses. That the taxis appear in a row suggests there is a great demand for such specialized information.

like lions ... seeking their meat from God: A paraphrase of Psalm 102: 21, The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The Biblical verse refers to the lions as nocturnal hunters, as are the whores.

An English padre tilts with the Moulin Rouge: Don Quixote, evidently, has arrived at the notorious Red Windmill in the person of a Catholic priest.

Crotchets and quavers: Quarter-notes and eighth-notes in musical annotation, their black circles imagined as “the heads of niggers.” In the bowdlerized version of the poem, this is one of the few non-religious bits to be cleaned up. The association of jazz with houses of ill repute was quite strong at the time, hence the reference to “obscene syncopation.”

Toutes les cartes marchent avec une allumette!: A reasonable stab at a translation might be, “All the cards work with a match.” The meaning of this phrase, possibly slang, has yet to be parsed.

A hundred lenses: Fifty pairs of spectacles, worn by Americans as they gaze at the sinful splendors of Paris.

Masque of the Seven Deadly Sins: This may be Spenser’s Masque or Marlowe’s or, more likely, a jaunty reference to a risqué stage show. Or it may simply be how the lusting Americans view all of Paris.

“I don’t like the gurls of the night-club – they love women”: During the nineteen-twenties, Paris was the center of the lesbian universe, to such a degree that at least one biographer of Harrison takes her moving there with Mirrlees as absolute proof that the two women were lovers.

Page 22

Verlaine: Paul Verlaine is equally famous for his poetry and for his stormy affair with Arthur Rimbaud. After firing two pistol shots at (and lightly injuring) his lover, he was arrested and jailed, which led to his conversion to Catholicism.

Alchemy: In addition to the obvious alchemy of night turning into golden dawn, this is likely a twin reference to the alchemy of words turning into poetry and of words turning into love. It may also refer to “Second Delirium: Alchemy of the Word” in Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell.

Absynthe: Absinthe is an anise-flavored spirit whose heavy concentration of wormwood may, depending on which source you believe, cause hallucinations. It was popular with the decadents, such as Verlaine.

Algerian tobacco: Algerian tobacco was not only from Northern Africa, thus continuing the poem’s thematic involvement with that part of the world, but cheap as well, and thus associated with the poor or louche.

Manuring the white violets of the moon: To manure is to fertilize. This metaphor appears to be original to Mirrlees.

The President of the Republic: Raymond Poincaré was a conservative and disapproved of the results of the Paris Peace Conference, believing that France should receive the Rhineland as part of the reparations. He seems to be here as a heterosexual and respectable counterweight to Verlaine.

the Abbaye of Port-Royal: The Abbaye featured prominently in Mirrlees’ first novel, Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists. Mirrlees’ own note reads, “The Abbaye de Port-Royal is now a maternity hospital.”

le Crime et le Châtiment: Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment in French translation.

The sun is rising: The climax of the Eleusinian mysteries was seeing the sun rise at midnight – though no one today can explain exactly what that meant. The climax of the Catholic liturgical year is Easter when the Son rises from the dead. There can be little doubt that both readings were intentional.

les Halles: The wholesale food market for Paris. Poetically, a return to the everyday world.

the two towers: Possibly another coded reference to the narrator and her lover.

JE VOUS SALUE PARIS PLEIN DE GRACE: “Hail Paris, full of grace.” A play on the first line of the Hail Mary.

[the sign of the bear]: Hope Mirrlees ended Paris, a Poem with a representation of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, as she did all three of her novels. She and Jane Harrison often signed their letters to each other with this symbol, and most of Harrison’s biographers take this to represent their symbolic marriage.

Page 23

[notes]: It was highly unusual at the time for a poet to annotate her own text. This and other elements of Paris, a Poem have led scholars to suspect an influence on T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. All research to date, however, has failed to produce any direct evidence one way or the other.

Above: I forget who it was who recently pointed out to me that this iconic image of Mirrlees was originally a photo of her and Jane Ellen Harrison together. So it has been obtained by literally removing Jane from the picture.

Annotations for Paris, A Poem

2011-10-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

The life and works of Hope Mirrlees have been something of a passion and a hobby for me for quite some time. Mirrlees has two separate claims to fame -- the extraordinary fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist and the poem that Julia Briggs called "modernism's lost masterpiece," Paris, a Poem. Each is totally unlike anything else she ever wrote.

Mirrlees's fans break into two camps, admirers of the book and admirers of the poem, without a great deal of crossover. Part of the reason for this is that the poem is extremely daunting . . . On my first reading, I will confess, I could not make heads or tails of it.

Still, after many readings, I came to the conclusion that the academics were right. It's a major work. So I've written a set of annotations to help the reader encountering the poem for the first time. You can find a PDF download of of at Hope Mirrlees on the Web (click here) and my complete annotations below.

After I posted this, I discovered that the annotations exceed Blogger's maximum. So I'll post the second half of this on Monday.

A Pilgrim's Guide to Paris

Of necessity, I make no claims of completeness or depth of insight for these notes. They are provided only for the reader’s aid in comprehension of a poem which at first glance can be dauntingly referential, to say nothing of bilingual. A more comprehensive set of annotations was provided by the late Julia Briggs in Gender in Modernism (Bonnie Kime Scott, ed.), to which the scholar and completist are referred.

Dedication Page

A NOTRE DAME DE PARIS EN RECONNAISANCE DES GRACES ACCORDEES: Roughly, “To Our Lady of Paris, in gratitude for graces accorded.” Whether you read “Notre Dame de Paris” as being the titular church, the city proper, the Virgin, a particular individual, or some combination of them all depends entirely upon your interpretation of the poem.

Title Page

1919: The original chapbook of Paris, a Poem was published by Hogarth Press in1920. Given the extreme care taken with the typography, including Virginia Woolf’s hand corrections of the typos, this is not likely to have been a mistake. Rather, it was an artistic decision and an indicator that the poem takes place at a specific point in time.

Page 3

holophrase: Literally, a single word that expresses a whole phrase or combination of ideas. By extension, this poem is a holophrase of Paris itself. By further extension, it is a statement that the physical city of Paris is a poem. Hence, the title.

NORD-SUD: An underground railway connecting Montparnasse and Montmartre, and also the name of a Dadaist journal edited by Pierre Reverdy.

ZIG-ZAG: A brand of cigarette papers. This, Lion Noir (shoe polish), Cacao Blooker (cocoa), and the many Dubonnets (aperitif) are posters on the walls of the underground station.

Black-figured vases in Etruscan tombs: A particular interest of Mirrlees’ companion, Jane Ellen Harrison. Brian Attebery points out that they represent traces of the past beneath the surface of the present, a thematic concern of both Harrison and Mirrlees.

RUE DU BAC: A station stop near the rue de Beaune, where Mirrlees had rooms with Harrison. Solferino and Chambre des Desputes are also Metro stops.

Brekekekek coax coax: Part of the chorus from Aristophanes’ The Frogs, here meant to evoke not frog-song but the sound of wheels on rails.

we are passing under the Seine: The first of several passages across water or into the earth (here, both), indicating the beginning of a spiritual journey. The pilgrim’s unnamed companion is referred to directly only once more in the course of the poem.

The Scarlet Woman: A scarlet woman is, of course, a prostitute; but the identity of the Scarlet Woman in the Book of Revelations is the cause of much speculation. The conventional reading is that she represents corrupted religion, and many Protestants interpret her as referring to the Church of Rome. Since Mirrlees did not alter this line after her conversion to Catholicism, it is doubtful she had the latter interpretation in mind.

BYRRH: Founded in the 1860s by the brothers Simon and Pallade Violet in Thuir, France, Byrrh Vin Tonique (a blend of red wines and quinine, aged in oak) is one of France’s best-known apéritifs. It was heavily advertised on posters with a picture of a woman in red beating a drum and shouting its name in large capital letters.

St. John at Patmos: St. John supposedly wrote the Book of Revelations while in exile at Patmos, and the image of him drawing inspiration for his writing from the ruins of ancient Greece became a Renaissance commonplace, one with which many classics scholars, Mirrlees included, identified. This is an early indicator of the visionary nature of this poem.

Vous descendez Madame?: “Are you getting off here, madame?” Here, the poet is invited to descend into the underworld. The rest of the poem can be read as a contemporary enactment of the Eleusinian mysteries.

QUI SOUENT SE PESE BIEN SE CONNAIT/QUI BIEN SE CONNAIT BIEN SE PORTE: Roughly, “Who weighs oneself often, knows oneself well; who knows oneself well stays healthy.” The motto on scales found in the Metro, and a possible rationale for this voyage of self-discovery.

CONCORDE: A station stop and, I believe, the one nearest the Louvre. It fits well with Mirrlees’s thematic intentions that its name means “Peace.”

Page 4

The Tuileries: A spacious formal garden surrounded by the Louvre to the east, the Seine to the South, the Place de la Concorde to the west and the Rue de Rivoli to the north. It was designed by landscape architect Andre Le Notre in 1664. This introduces the notion that the entire poem occurs during a trance, a vision. The spacing of the words here is meant to suggest the layout of the garden.

Little boys ... ride round and round on wooden horses: They are on a carrousel in the Tuileries. The merry-go-round recurs in Lud-in-the-Mist, where the Crabapple Blossoms are held captive on one in Fairyland. The most common reading of this line is that it is an evocation of the boys-turned-soldiers who were lost in the first World War. Which would make this image an evocation of the Medieval concept of the Great Wheel and a comment on the eternal recurrence of war.

Le départ pour Cythère: The Embarkation to Cythera (sometimes translated as The Pilgrimage to Cythera) is a painting by Watteau. Cythera is the Island of Love, for which pilgrims embark but never arrive. Again, the poet equates the crossing of water with the start of a voyage of discovery, this time explicitly evoking passionate love.

Pasteur: Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine against rabies.

Against the bite of Nymphs: Julia Briggs rather brilliantly writes, “The Nymphs’ soft mouths also suggest female genitals (‘nymphae,’ labia minora); their ‘bite’ may refer to venereal disease.”

Gambetta: A grandiose monument to this French political hero stood in front of the Louvre, with his statue, surrounded by allegorical figures, standing at the foot of an obelisk top which was a nude figure riding a winged lion, representing “the Genius of France.” The bronze elements, including the lion and the nude, were melted down by the Vichy government in 1941 and the remainder disassembled in 1954.

tutoiment: The use of the informal tu and toi rather than vous, usually as a form of endearment.

Mais c’est logique: But it is logical, it makes sense.

The Esprit Francais: The aforementioned Genius of France.

Page 5

plastic: Not the material, but the adjective, meaning “alterable.” The plastic nature of life, under the ceaseless drip of event was an underlying theme for all of Mirrlees’s work.

the XIIIth Duchess of Alba: This was Goya’s Duchess of Alba.

Fathoms deep in haschich: This is Mirrlees’s second evocation of a dreamy, trancelike state in the poem, and it will be far from her last.

Pointing invisible Magi to a little white Maltese: The purpose of this blasphemous slight-of-hand, substituting a dog for the Christ child is not immediately clear.

Lysistrata: Eponymous heroine of the comedy by Aristophanes, who ends a war between Sparta and Athens by convincing the women of Athens to withhold sex until peace is achieved.

the Arc de Triomphe: This famous monument honors those who died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the year following the poem’s composition a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from WWI was created beneath it.

Julius Caesar: When Caesar conquered Paris in 52 B.C., it was a fishing village on the Île de la Cité. Under the Romans the town spread to the left bank and grew considerably more important.

Salle Caillebotte: A room in the Musée de Luxembourg containing impressionist art.

the Etoile: A large intersection, the meeting point of twelve straight avenues (which is why it is called "Star Square") including the Champs-Élysées. At the center of the Place Etoile stands the Arc de Triomphe.

The Bois: The Bois de Boulogne is a park on the western edge of Paris. It was created under Napoléon III in the second part of the 19th century, and is a favorite destination of walkers, bicyclists and equestrians.

Page 6

Tortoises with gem-encrusted carapace: A reference to Huysman’s A Rebours, where a tortoise expires under the weight of its jeweled decoration.

A Roman boy picking a thorn out of his foot: A bronze sculpture, and one of only a few to survive from antiquity. Very influential on Italian Renaissance artists, it was later confiscated by Napoleon. After his defeat, the Spinario, as it is called, was returned to the Capitoline Museums of Rome.

discalceated: Shoeless.

Madame Récamier: Madame Récamier presided over the most fashionable salon in Paris during the Napoleonic era. She was widely admired for her beauty, intelligence, and character. David’s portrait of her is perhaps the most famous, but there are many more.

the Chateaubriand de nos jours: The Chateaubriand of our times. François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.

rue Saint-Honoré: An old street running parallel to the Seine, on which Chateaubriand lived.

Grand Seigneur: Great lord.

Brittany: The westernmost region of France. Auvergne is the mountainous region of central France.

Do do do miii: A cock-crow in musical notation. The rooster is a symbol of France.

Hesiod: Greek poet, best known for the Theogeny and a work of didactic advice for farmers, Works and Days.

Acheron: Literally, “river of woe,” one of five rivers in Hell. In Greek mythology, Charon ferries the dead across the Acheron, though the Romans had him plying his trade on the Styx.

Spirit of the Year: In mythology, the Goddess’s son and lover, whose life, death and resurrection are continually being enacted. This poem can be read as an enactment of the year-myth.

Page 7

Pigeon vole: “Fly pigeon,” a French children’s game, similar to Simon Says.

AU BON MARCHE ACTUELLEMENT TOILETTES PRINTANIERES: At Bon Marché, Spring Outfits Available Now. Le Bon Marché is a department store located at 5 rue de Babylone.

jeunesse dorée: Literally, “gilded youth.” Fashionable and wealthy young people. Here, the trees’ buds.

mauve veils: During Passiontide, the latter two weeks of Lent, the statues and crucifixes in Catholic churches are covered with purple cloths. Mirrlees is here evoking Christ as another exemplar of the Spirit of the Year.

Chionodoxa: Not really the Princess in a Serbian fairy-tale, but “Glory of the Snow,” a flower prized by gardeners for its early blooming. Serbia is, it goes without saying, where World War One began.

The goldsmith’s chef d’oeuvre – lily of the valley: A chef d’oeuvre is, of course, a masterpiece. In a playful twist, Mirrlees has here figuratively gilded the lily. Note that the lily of the valley is in French Mois de Marie, “month of Mary,” thus continuing her thematic evocation of the Virgin.

Dog-roses: Rosa canina, a prickly wild rose native to Europe, the stylized rose of medieval European heraldry. In the language of flowers, “The pleasure is worth all of the pain.”

wanes: Variant spelling for wains, wagons. It’s worth noting that the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, is also known as Charles’ Wain, after Charlemagne.

Page 8

Ingres: According to Briggs, Ingres did not in fact paint Madame André. Edouard André and his wife Nélie Jacquemart bequeathed their mansion and art (including one of the finest collections of Italian art in France) to the Institut de France as a museum. The Museé Jacquemart André, billed as “the most sumptuous residence in Paris,” opened to the public in 1913.

The Pieta of Avignon, etc.: The Pieta is a medieval oil of Christ in the arms of his grieving mother, variously attributed, from Villeneuve-lès-Avignon; L’Olympe is Edouard Manet’s Olympia; Giles as Poirrot is a painting by Antoin Watteau; Mantegna’s Seven Deadly Sins is properly titled, Minerva Chases the Vices from the Garden of Virtue; and the Chardins are works of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, a painter renowned for his portraits of domestic life.

unetiolated: Not drawn and pale.

one by one from their subterranean sleep of five long years: The paintings mentioned were restored to the Louvre in 1919, after being stored underground to protect them during the Great War.

Like Duncan they slept well: A reference to the murdered king in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

President Wilson: Woodrow Wilson was in the city for the Paris Peace Conference, which established the terms for the defeated Central Powers.

diluvial: Of or related to a flood.

Gargantua: A giant, here representing Old Europe. Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel chronicled the satiric adventures of Gargantua and his son.

Page 9

the cyclic Grand Guignol of Catholicism: This line was removed from the expurgated version of the poem reprinted in the Virginia Woolf Quarterly, the only reprint during Mirrlees’s lifetime. The performances at the Grand Guignol theatre are still famed for their sensationalistic representations of violence.

Shrieks, Lacerations, Bloody sweat: Ritual self-flagellation was a feature of Good Friday processions.

Le petit Jésus fait pipi: “Baby Jesus made peepee.” This line was one of several cut from the poem after Mirrlees’s conversion to Catholicism.

SPRING IS SOLOMON’S LITTLE SISTER; SHE HAS NO BREASTS: Almost certainly a reference to the Song of Solomon, 8:8: We have a little sister and she has no breasts. Earlier in that same book of the Bible, 2: 11-17, is the passage: For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

LAIT SUPERIEUR DE LA FERME DE RAMBOUILLET: Quality milk from the Rambouillet Farm. Julia Briggs points out that the Queen’s Dairy in Rambouillet was where Marie-Antoinette and her ladies played at being milkmaids and also that the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris, the first great French literary salon, featured in Mirrlees’s novel Madeleine.

ICI ON CONSULTE LE BOTTIN: “Consult Phone Directory Here.”

CHARCUTERIE: A charcuterie lies somewhere between a butcher shop and a delicatessen. “Comestibles de Ire Choix” translates as Best Quality Cold Cuts

APERITIFS ALIMENTS DIABETIQUES: Aperitifs (and) Food for Diabetics.

DEUIL EN 24 HEURES: Mourning in 24 Hours – clothes dyed black in 24 hours. A frequent necessity for those who had recently lost loved ones.

Messieursetdames: Gentlemenandladies. Later in the poem it is established that this is the plea of women collecting money for victims of the war.

Little temples of Mercury: A temple to Mercury once stood in Montmartre at the highest point of the city, where the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (completed in 1914, but formally dedicated in 1919) now sits. It seems likely Mirrlees is using the term as slang, however, for something else. Briggs suggests either the kiosks or the public pissoirs.

 templum: Latin for a holy space.

Page 10

A golden drop of Harpagon’s blood: Harpagon was the title character of Moliere’s play, The Miser. Hence, a golden drop of his blood would metaphorically be a coin, money.

Great bunches of lilac among siphons, vermouth, Bocks, tobacco: The color of Lent is omnipresent, among the seltzer, drinks, and smokes of the bars.

NE FERMEZ PAS LA PORTE S.V.P.LE PRIMUS S’EN CHARGERA: Please don’t close the door, the Primus [an air device] will take care of it.

ouvriers: Workmen, craftsmen, or mechanics.

La journée de huit heures: The eight-hour day, a favored cause of labor unions.

Landru: Between 1915 and 1919, the infamous Henri Landru profited greatly by marrying and then murdering ten separate women he met by advertising for a wife in the newspapers. He disposed of their remains by incinerating them in his kitchen oven. For his crimes, he was guillotined on February 25, 1922.

the learned seal: The Nouveau Cirque was a circus specializing in lavish water pantomimes. The tireless Julia Briggs managed to track down a program dated May 2, 1919 and determined that the learned seal was named Bichette and her trainer was Capitaine Juge.

Cottin: Six weeks before the poem takes place, an anarchist named Louis Emile Cottin attempted to assassinate Georges Clemenceau, the French president and chairman of the Peace Conference.

Bossuet: Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was a celebrated bishop, a prolific writer, and a pulpit orator who was, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “greater than Chrysostom and greater than Augustine; the only man whose name can he compared in eloquence with those of Cicero and of Demosthenes.” He was, moreover, closely associated with Jansenism, a Catholic heresy (though Bossuet is not considered a heretic) of particular interest to Mirrlees at that time.

méticuleux, belligerents, hebdomadaire, immonde: Meticulous, aggressive, weekly, foul. Snippets, apparently, from newspaper headlines, possibly about the Landru case.

The Roman Legions: Julius Caesar famously came, saw, conquered, and, like the more recent Germans, his occupying forces eventually departed.

Page 11

Père Lachaise: A cemetery, opened in 1804, on land once belonging to Louis XIV’s confessor, Father Francois de La Chaise d’Aix, known as “Le Père de La Chaise.” Molière, La Fontaine, Abélard, and Héloïse were reburied there, but it is best known today for containing Jim Morrison’s grave.

the Letter H: In French, pronounced ash.

Rousseau: Henri Rousseau, at that time a newly popular artist. Since he worked for the Paris Customs Office, he was often called Le Douanier, the Customs Official.

The unities are smashed/The stage is thick with corpses: Here the Grand Guignol theatre is evoked to describe the horrors of World War One.

gaillards: Big fellows.

eidola: Images, spirits, ghosts. Also a reference to the common practice of placing a photograph of the dead in a frame on the gravestone.

MORT AU CHAMP D’HONNEUR: Died on the Field of Honor, killed in action.

Le pauvre grand!: “The poor man!” The use of grand, like galliard, suggests a big man.

petits bourgeoises: Lower middle class women, here collecting money for war victims.

the ruined province of Picardie: Picardie lies in northern France and was the location of the Battle of the Somme, which resulted in over one million casualties.

the Marne: The Battle of the Marne resulted in half a million dead or wounded, and stopped the German push for Paris, after which both sides settled in for four years of trench warfare.

the Grand Boulevards: A favorite locale for strolling. From here to partway through page 13 is a description of the Grands Boulevards.

Walking on Air

2011-10-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

I've added another item to my bucket list: Walk across the Hudson River. I approach the whole bucket list thing differently than the movie tells me I should. I don't add anything to it until I've actually done it. So when I look down the list -- win a Nebula . . . marry the most beautiful woman in the world . . . raise a son . . . visit Finland and China . . . and so on -- I have the satisfaction of knowing that I've done it all. How many of us can say that?

Yesterday I went onto the Walkway Over the Hudson. Fabulous thing. They took a 1.28 mile long railroad bridge and retooled it for exclusively foot traffic, connecting Poughkeepsie and Highland, New York. So Marianne and I took a leisurely stroll on a perfectly beautiful day high over the river. For most of human history, this simply wasn't possible.

Above: The Mid-Hudson Bridge, as seen from mid-river.

Cool People I Hang With

2011-10-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of being a science fiction writer is the cool people you get to hang out with. Physicist-writers, for example.

I was hanging with David Hartwell yesterday when Greg Benford called. He said he'd just been at DARPA's Hundred Year Starship Symposium, and that so far as he could tell he was the only one there who'd blogged about it.

Then I was hanging with John and Pauline Cramer and John said that he'd recently had the pleasant experience of being on an airplane sandwiched between two Benfords -- Greg and Jim. That must have been lively conversation!

John also told me that he'd been en route to the Symposium when news broke about the supposed faster-than-light tachyons. So he immediately logged onto the Web and read the articles about it, and then the original paper. After running a few calculations, he contacted the symposium organizers and asked if they'd like him to do a presentation on that morning's news. They said yes, so he quickly wrote a science article on the topic for Analog.

I was just chatting, so I can't synopsize Cramer's argument with any accuracy. Essentialy, he said that the numbers didn't come out consistent with the claims.

You can read Greg's blog here. You can read John's article in Analog in the not-too-distant future.

Above: My shadow visiting Lester Park in New York State. Those rock formations are 490-million-year-old fossil stromatolites. That just made my month.

APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

2011-10-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

I've added a new item, a panel in praise of Ursula K. Le Guin on the 19th. This is part of a month-long celebration of Le Guin at the Center for Fiction, and if you're within striking distance of NYC, you'll want to check it out. You can find the entire lineup of events at this convenient page, crafted by sponsor Tor Books here.

October 15-16: Capclave

Gaithersburg, MD

October 19: The Wave in the Mind: a Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

7 PM, the Center for Fiction

NYC

November 1: Murray Leinster Tribute

7 PM NYRSF Reading Series

NYC

November 10 Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza (reading)

The Way Station

Brooklyn

November 18-20: SFContario 2

Toronto

And in 2012 . . .

Aug. 31- Sept. 2 Chicon 7

Chicago

Above: Jim's Pretty Good Books in Westport, NY. Jim used to sell groceries, but that brought in too many customers. So now he sells books. Not all of the books in the store, mind you. But some of them.

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday!!

2011-10-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

Look at those shelves of books! Do you find yourself involuntarily salivating? Then tomorrow you should go to the Dragon Press Store at 10 Champlain Street in Westport, New York. Which is your quintessential open-by-chance-or-appointment used book store. The kind you wish would open somewhere near you.

I'll be there too. Details here. Or in the flyer below.

Another Reason to Love Orkney

2011-10-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

I visited Orkney some years ago, after driving slowly through the highlands of Scotland, which is one of the most beautiful countries on Earth -- and it managed to trump Scotland! Incredible but true. The land is low and dun and almost treeless, but it tugs at the heart.

On my second day there, I got into a rental car and visited the Ring of Bookan, the Ring of Brodgar, the Barnhouse Settlement, the Cairn of the Hounds, and Maes Howe . . . and then broke for lunch. I'd traveled less than ten miles down the road from my landlady's house. Which I could see from the top of Maes Howe.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Instead, I'll note that archeologists have found an "anomaly" in Loch Stenness. It may be an ancient monument, a quarry, or something else. You can read about it here.

And as always . . .

I'm on the road again. I'll be home briefly late tonight, but in the morning I'll be jumping in the car and off on the road again. So if you're waiting on me to do something I've promised and I'm behind schedule . . . well, that's why and don't hesitate to send me a reminder.

Above: Science illos. Gotta love 'em.

Thrillin' at the Mill 'n' Swill

2011-10-05T01:33:00.000-07:00

Check it out! I went to the SFWA editors and publishers bash -- known informally as the Mill 'n' Swill -- on Monday. It was held at Planet Hollywood in NYC and it was thronged as hell. But fun. The big players mostly stayed for the first hour, did serious business, and left. Young new editorial people drifted through in small clumps of friends, looking hopeful and optimistic and unaware of how much power they're going to wield ten years from now. And writers hung out with other writers . . . because it wouldn't do us any financial good whatsoever and because it felt good.

And do I walk the walk, you ask . . . ?

Yes. And to a degree I would not ask of you. Last night, I checked out to see if Terry Pratchett's new novel Snuff is available yet. And I discovered two things: First, that the American edition comes out in one week. And second, that you can buy a book that would cost you twenty-six bucks from an independent bookstore for only fourteen dollars from Amazon-- less than it costs them to buy, merchandise, and sell!

So I'm buying it from one of my local independent bookstores.

It's crazy to pay that much more than I have to. But I do it because I can afford it, and because I want those bookstores to stay around.

You, though, being more reasonable than I am, might want to go with the loss leader and then take that extra money to your local bookstore and buy something nice.

Above: Master editor David Hartwell and master writer Tom Purdom. I can just barely imagine not having a great time in the presence of one of them. But two? Not possible.

An Astonishing Pile of Manuscripts

2011-10-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

I was in the Asimov's offices yesterday to meet Sheila Williams, who was taking Tom Purdom and me out to dinner. And, while there, I took the above photo of a stack of story manuscripts on Sheila's desk.

Would you care to guess their significance?

I'll give you a second to ponder and then, in the very next paragraph, give you the answer.

Made your guesses? Good. What you see above is all the paper manuscripts that Asimov's received in the past month. Every single one of them. The other manuscripts, something like five hundred of them, were all submitted electronically.

The world is changing fast these days.

What I Read On My Summer Vacation

2011-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a pleasant week doing absolutely nothing. Now I have to drive to NYC tonight (along with the legendary Tom Purdom) for SFWA's Editors-Publishers Party -- better known as the Mill 'n' Swill. Then it's off to Pittsburgh, to Newport NY, and to Kingston NY. I've got a busy schedule this week.

But what, I hear you ask, did I read during those halcyon idle days Down The Shore? Well . . .

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. This is the novel we all want to write when we grow up. Either that or else Byatt's Possession.

Life in a Putty Knife Factory by H. Allen Smith. Light and inconsequential essays by a New York City newspaperman, back in the days when men word fedoras and Damon Runyan walked the streets.

Percy's Reliques. This is one of those crosses between scholarship and amateurism gone mad, a collection of ballads and poems, largely from Elizabethan times. The Dragon of Wantley alone would be worth the price of this eighteenth-century reissue (three bucks at the Baltimore Book Festival), but there are lots of gems to be found.

You Can't Win by Jack Black. The memoirs of a yegg and a hobo. Unapologetic and great fun to read -- though less fun to live, I imagine. One of the very few books that William S. Burroughs admitted was an influence on his own work.

Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees. This is the long-awaited Carcanet Press collection, edited by Sandeep Parmar, of the poetry written by the author of the fantasy masterwork Lud-in-the-Mist. Mirrlees wrote one major modernist poem, Paris, a Poem, which was published by Virginia Woolf and which many suspect (but none can prove) was an influence on T. S. Eliot, a good friend of Mirrlees. All her other poems are conventional formal. As Parmar remarks in her extensive and illuminating introduction, "The poems . . . will not necessarily appeal to those who admire Paris." But those who wish to understand an artist who created a single important work in two seemingly-unrelated forms must start here.

By Space Ship to the Moon by Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt. Actually, I just looked at Coggins' wonderful pictures. I bought this, in pristine collection, in an antique shop for six bucks. Not bad.

And for those who are curious . . .

Why do I admire The Dragon of Wantley so greatly? Consider only these lines:

Oh, quoth the dragon, with a deep sigh,

And turn'd six times together,

Sobbing and tearing, cursing and wearing

Out of his throat of leather;

More of More-hall! O thou rascal!

Would I had seen thee never;

With the thing at thy foot, thou hast prick'd my arse

And I'm quite undone for ever.

Off I go to New York!

A Culinary Invention of Genius

2011-09-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

There are many qualities a great fast food should have. First, it should be fast -- you order it standing up and receive it before you get tired of standing. It should be filling. If at all possible, it should involve cheese. It should be incredibly tasty in a very obvious way. And it should leave you feeling pleasantly guilty at the self-indulgence of it all.

If it's served to you by a cheerful man wearing a hot-dog hat, well, that's just one step beyond perfection.

Those in the know can guess that I just had a Potato Tornado.

The Potato Tornado is only available at HotDog Tommy's at the intersection of Jackson Street and Beach Avenue in Cape May, New Jersey. In fact, now that the main tourist season is over, it's only available Fridays through Sundays from 10:57 a.m. to 5:01 p.m. But, oh man, is it worth it.

The tornado was invented here and so far as I know, it's the first mashed-potato based junk food. It starts with a cup of hot whipped mashed potatoes, topped with chili sauce, cheddar cheese, salsa, slivers of banana peppers and a blob of sour cream.

Great stuff. I feel guilty just thinking about it.

Right now there's only one place in the world you can have a Potato Tornado. But someday somebody's going to steal the idea and make billions and billions off of it. If it's you, don't forget to send me a Maserati in thanks.

Above: Nudity and other serious topics will return when I return from vacation. Right now I'm headed for the beach, clutching a book containing no socially redeeming value whatsoever.

Dead Tropes of SF: The "Robes of Dignity"

2011-09-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

[INSERT NAKED PICTURE HERE]

I was on a panel at the SFWA tent at the Baltimore Book Festival last week when somebody asked for an example of a science fiction prediction that didn't pan out.

"The 'Robes of Dignity!," I cried.

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, a period roughly coterminous with the New Wave, a lot of specifically young and male writers predicted that, because the human body is a beautiful thing, in the future everybody would walk around totally naked. {Subtext: Thus allowing them, the writers, to see naked women.] Then, when they reached age 40, they'd put on the Robes of Dignity, covering their bodies from neck to foot. [Subtext: And sparing them, the writers, from the sight of their parents' naked bodies.]

This was, I said, in essence an adolescent male fantasy.

"And one made up by adolescent boys who weren't spending any time with adolescent girls!" Brenda Clough added. "Or they'd have noticed that adolescent girls spend every penny they can get hold of, buying new and novel things to wear."

How I Suffer!

2011-09-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

Dinner at the Lobster House in Cape May. Actually, it wasn't at the Lobster House but on the schooner American moored to the dock behind it. And it wasn't a proper dinner. It was martinis with platter after platter of oysters Rockefeller and clams casino.

The uncreated conscience of my race will just have to wait unforged until I get back from vacation.

Above: Marianne, also suffering.