Bristolcon!

Well, I went to my very first UK science fiction convention, which was loads of fun, but a little disconcerting. After having been to a few US cons, I had started taking for granted knowing a few more people. I knew two of the people there, Joanne Hall (who was one of the main organizers) and Fran Jacobs, through an internet writing site, but that was it for me.

I should probably start by mentioning the Ghost of Honor, Colin Harvey, who passed away recently. A number of the Bristolcon attendies have put together a memorial anthology in his honor.

The first panel we attended was on Colonizing the Solar system, with Guy Haley, Michael Dollin, Aliette de Bodard, Ben Jeapes, and Dev Agarwal. All in all, the panelists came down pretty hard on the side of this idea being more science fiction than science fact, citing the astronomical cost and the lack of will, but it was still a very fun panel in terms of people's reasoning- particularly people's assessment of the material cost to the people on earth to keep even a few people up in space. Good moderation, very informed panelists.

We also attended the panels on collaboration, and Toilets in Space, the latter of which went lowbrow very quickly (quick summary: Nick Walters believes teleportation will solve all logistical problems, Michael Dollin has unpopular ideas about recycling, Kim Lakin-Smith reminds us being a girl may actually be less dangerous in these endeavors, and everyone agrees that we don't write sex or poo realistically, because that would make it hard to romanticize space).

We broke for a little while here because Joe Abercrombie was just a few blocks away signing his latest book and we wanted in on that.

We came back to Battle of the Books, which was one of my absolute favorite panels, and one I'd like to see adapted to every con I go to. Four panelists each picked a book (respectively Paul Graham Raven picked Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Nick Walters picked Brian Aldiss's Hot House, Janet Edwards picked Terry Pratchet's Wyrd Sisters, and the fourth woman (whose name was not on my program, sorry) picked Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere). Then the authors got time to summarize a bit of their book and tell you why it was the best one there. There were two elimination rounds, and Hot House took home the prize. It was all very genial though, and I think this is a great way to get people talking up books you might not have read. Both the husband and I agreed our pick probably would have been The Dispossessed, by LeGuin.

The Apocalypse panel was also great. Lots of talk about Zombies, but that's to be expected. I was particularly impressed by Tim Maughan, who is a particularly Bristol type of person, in the best possible way. We also took in the Steam Punk panel, the best part of which was Alex Dally MacFarlane and Nimue Brown sitting both literally and figuratively across the table from each other and going back and forth about representation, apology for empire, appropriation, and romanticizing the past. It was also fun to watch how many other panelists had no idea what steam punk was before they were told they had written it. We attended an artist's panel about medium and how digital people are comfortable going, which was lovely, and I think broadly applicable in that everybody has to find what they're most comfortable with.

The last panel we attended was on YA: What's the deal with it being dominated by girls now? This turned out to be an excellent panel, also dominated by girls (which is funny, because it ended up being mostly about boys' reading habits, whereas I've been to plenty of "strong female character" panels that were all or mostly dudes, or diversity panels that were entirely white. It's both fun and sad to see that works in reverse as well). Foz Meadows and Moira Young impressed me especially, though the audience participation was really key here. There was one gentleman who made the excellent point that perhaps an equal stigma to YA books being effeminate insofar as reading was girly and the characters were chicks, was the idea that what was being presented was explicitly labeled as for children at a time in boys' lives where it's very important to feel grown up. Personally, I don't think there's an overwhelming majority of girl stuff in YA, I think it's just parity being misconstrued as advantage, but that's me. It was a really good panel.

All in all it was a really lovely time, and I'm very glad I went. 

Short Story Greats

A list I'm on took some time recently to organize a list of great science fiction and fantasy stories throughout the medium. Here are the ones they came up with, with links to free versions online if they were available, and amazon if they were not. You can thank me later.

The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford

26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss by Kij Johnson

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Story of your Life by Ted Chiang

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury

Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke

All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein

A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury

Nick Mamatas on Laurel K. Hamilton (which, in retrospect, sounds kind of dirty)

Just an article on why Laurel K. Hamilton commands as much market share as she does, and why she deserves to. 

Non-Western Science Fiction Roundtable, Again

A separate take on the question, this time by non-westerners. 

Non-Western Science Fiction Roundtable

Locus Magazine Roundtable of folk talking about non-Western Science Fiction. It goes deconstructionist pretty fast, but I think it's worth reading and thinking about. Ends a little abruptly though. 

Outside Over There

I didn't realize how much of my childhood was written by Maurice Sendak until I was an adult. You never pay attention to that sort of thing when you're little. But when my sisters had kids, my mothers and I would tuck them into bed with In the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are. I can close my eyes and see the illustrations of a little bear in a cardboard space suit coming home or the melting ice baby from Outside Over There.

There's an amazing feeling, when you open up a book that your parents read to you, as if suddenly the world warps and you're warm in somebody's lap, and the universe is composed of sugary cereals and climbable trees, and problems that the distant adult part of you knows weren't ever problems at all. You remember how much bigger the world looked, and that sense of wonder. And these little things, these incantations of memory- "Ida played her wonder horn", "Max, the king of where the wild things are"- are anchors that keep you from drifting too far away from that part of yourself.

We lost a man today to whom I owe some of the first dreams planted in the garden of my imagination. Thank you, Mr. Sendak. I'll read you to my children, and I hope they will read you to theirs. 

David Brin at io9

The writer behind the Uplift series talks about science fiction, the singularity, and the outlook of humanity over at io9.

The Romantics

So very cute.

John Skipp!

John Skipp (New York Times bestselling author, editor, zombie godfather, compulsive collaborator, musical pornographer, black-humored optimist and all-around Renaissance mutant" per Amazon, and, I might add, fabulously nice guy) has a brand new blog and so far it's lovely! Go check it out.

Dungeons. With Dragons in Them

The recounting of a Dungeons and Dragons game at ConFusion populated and led by a mess of Sword and Sorcery authors. It's a hoot.

Review: Arcane, Edited by Nate Shumate

Arcane, edited by Nathan Shumate, can be bought here. Kindle versions also available.

Short Version (for those who hate to read, but still want to buy a sizable anthology):

Good solid mix of dark, unsettling stories, with more light and funny stories thrown in than I expected. Some prose-pretty and interesting format pieces, some faster paced and action oriented ones. There's going to be something here you like, especially if you like the undead.

Disclaimer:

In the interest of full disclosure, Jonathan S. Pembrook, whose story "A Capella" is the second in the book, is a good friend. As such, I feel it's incumbent on me to tell you fine internet folks that you may as well just hand him the Hugo and Shirley Jackson Awards now, and not bother with the formalities of voting. In all seriousness though, he does get first mention because he's my buddy, but this is a story that made me wince. Physically. In the good way and more than once. And that's coming from somebody who accidentally writes cannibalism stories. It's a story about disassociation and making art, and it lives up to that promise with startling acts of casual cruelty. The format is classic style soft sci-fi, the detail is close-up horror. It's a nice mix, which is actually a pretty good microcosm for the rest of the anthology.

My Favorites:

CORPORAUTOLYSIS by Christopher Slatsky

I love language and atmosphere, and this story layers on ambiance like a fine and desolate parfait. It's about grief and losing touch. It's also about mushrooms. And it's awesome.

IT’S NOT THE BOYS IN THIS FAMILY THAT HAVE TO WORRY by Brady Golden

It's really something when a story can take a setting that is in and of itself a little horrific (an isolated, controlling, cultish family compound), and take it to a place that's infinitely more horrible. The fact that you see the end coming is, I think, part of the appeal. The story itself is about inevitability.

INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH by David McGillveray

There's a theory that what you don't show is always scarier than what you do, and I think that makes the oblique found-object structure of this Lovecraft-esque avant garde band story such fun. There are some more traditional and straightforward stories in this book, but this one does the best at coming at things sideways.

THE BEST AND BITT’REST KISS by S.K. Gilman

A story about poetry, love, habit, and the mortuary arts. The character of the mortician in this particularly shines.

KISS OF DEATH by Jeremy Zimmerman

This is one of the light ones. Actually I was delighted by every single funny story in this anthology ("The Truth About Mother" and "All Coated in Bonemeal" are also straight up hilarious, which you don't always get in horror). Of the three of them, this is my favorite, because it speaks to the part of me that has played Dungeons and Dragons since I was a kid. It's also a very special sort of relationship drama.

I could go on. "We Belong to Her" is a great opener with a pitch-perfect feel of being in the historical moment. "Reyes Rides the Deville" is delightful post-apocalysim. "Mallecho" has a very Shirley Jackson vibe to it, and I mean that in the best way. "Beneath the Arch of Knives" is whimsical and playfully cruel. "God of the Kiln" plays off its two narrators nicely to tell a story that feels very classic, even Kipling-esque in its presentation. "In One There Is Many" features a zombie feeling tenderly paternal toward his maggots. "Black Bush" has a beautiful, poetic, trashy, intensely southern voice that's just as welcome at the end as it was in the beginning. I actually feel kind of guilty not mentioning every story, but it's a very big book.

The Less Shiny Spots:

I think no matter what you like within the realm of dark stuff, there's going to be something here for you. The flipside to that is that there will be a few that are there for somebody else. I couldn't get into "The Delivery," for example, but I bet if you're a fan of Grant Morrison you'll enjoy it quite a bit. It's got that manic surrealness to it that feels like his work.

There were also a couple of places where I wondered why stories were positioned as they were. A third of the way through the book seemed like an exceptionally masculine anthology (not an inherently bad thing, just something that stuck out). Not flatten-a-beer-can-against-your-head macho; the stories were about fatherhood and obligation and being master of your own house/world/workplace or not. Enjoyable but definitely enough to make me notice. Then suddenly it shifted and the ratio went in a different direction. There was also a place or two like "The Best and Bitt'rest Kiss" running right before "Visiting Hours" where I feel like the subject matter being so close worked against one of the stories. On the other hand, it's an anthology, and you're really free to skip around as much as you like.

In Summary:

This is a very solid collection. You might not like everything because it's very varied, but that's to its strength. It showcases a broad range of talent and stories that bring in a myriad of subgenres. Did I mention how big this book is? Even if you're a very fast reader, it's days of entertainment.

Actually I feel like I've already said everything I need to. Go pick it up. Support dark fiction authors and expose yourself to a few surprises. There's no way you're anticipating everything in this book, and the best part of the genre is the things that jump up behind you and go "boo".

Table of Contents:

5 INTRODUCTION: YOU GOTTA HAVE A GIMMICK Nathan Shumate

7 WE BELONG TO HER Joe Mirabello

17 A CAPELLA Jonathan S. Pembroke

27 THE TRUTH ABOUT MOTHER Van Aaron Hughes

41 THE WEB OF LEGENDS Damien Walters Grintalis

45 REYES RIDES THE DEVILLE Dan Cavallari

57 THE HEART OF THE MATTER Paul L. Bates

67 EL DIABLO DE PASEO GRANDE Milo James Fowler

83 THE DELIVERY A.A. Garrison

97 CORPORAUTOLYSIS Christopher Slatsky

107 MALLECHO Stephen Willcott

111 GOD OF THE KILN Eric Francis

123 TIED D.T. Kastn

137 LADY OF THE CROSSROADS Christine Lucas

149 BENEATH THE ARCH OF KNIVES James Lecky

159 ALL COATED IN BONEMEAL Bartholomew Klick

165 POSSESSED OF TALENT Thomas Allein

173 SWEET HEAVEN IN MY VIEW Frank Stascik

179 IT’S NOT THE BOYS IN THIS FAMILY THAT HAVE TO WORRY by Brady Golden

191 KISS OF DEATH Jeremy Zimmerman

205 LEGACY S.M. Williams

221 AN UNQUIET SLUMBER Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

233 A FRIEND, THE SPIDER Caitlin Hoffman

239 DESTINATION UNKNOWN Anthony J. Rapino

245 IN ONE THERE IS MANY Max Vile

257 INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH David McGillveray

265 BLACK BUSH Gemma Files

289 THE BEST AND BITT’REST KISS S.K. Gilman

305 VISITING HOURS Josh Strnad

309 SWEET DREAMS Fran Walker

321 THE BUSINESS OF HERMAN LACZKO Mark Beech

333 CONTRIBUTORS

(If you're one of the authors and I was not able to find your personal webpage, or have linked to an incorrect or outdated page, just let me know and I'll fix it)

Horror Film Festivals and Awards!

Hey! Yeah you! If you're interested in Indie Horror Film (which is actually really quite interesting. You'd be surprised how much of it there is out there!), you should pick up Thomas M. Sipos's Horror Film Festivals and Awards.

I've met this guy, and this is a cool subject he's legitimately passionate about. Also, check out the Tabloid Witch Awards, especially if you're the kind of person who has a camera, a dream, and a pressurized hydraulic gore cannon.

(Incidentally, if you DO have a pressurized hydraulic gore cannon, why not fill it with Hawgfly brand Hawg's Blood? Hawg's Blood, now in smooth AND scabby varieties for all your high definition arterial spray needs!)

Surveys on Symbolism

This is a really cool article- to settle an argument with an English teacher, a 16 year old student in 1963 sent out about 100 surveys to serious literature heavyweights and asked them if symbolism in their work was deliberate. And a bunch of them wrote back. Some of the responses are collected in the linked piece above.

"Improved" Shakespeare, Orson Scott Card Style

Wow. Just Wow.

Fworg

I've been involved in an online critique site called Fantasy-Writers.Org for several years now. I'm not as frequent a participant as I used to be, but I've helped to set up a rolling list of the blogs for people who are part of the site.

ArmadilloCon Roundup

Alright! ArmadilloCon was this weekend, and it was both a hoot and a holler. Now we begin a veritable orgy of name-dropping and promotion.

The writer's workshop, organized by Stina Leicht, was fun. There were some great writers' workshop presentations: Lou Anders Hugo Award Winning Editor of Pyr Books gave very thorough talk on Hollywood story structure, and the panel on publishing traditionally vs. electronically (also including Mr. Anders) was very thought provoking. There was also a hack-for-hire group game where one of the editors on the panel went through our three sentence story ideas and "improved" them with ideas like "this would be better if it had mexican wrestlers" and "this needs a redemptive arc, and a mecha robot made of bread", which was a nice exercise in writing to spec.

(incidentally, mine is as follows: An overworked female baker trying to make a new cupcake flavor accidentally creates a highly addictive flour-based narcotic that, in excess, has effects much like leprosy. Before the side-effects come to light, the baker buys herself deeply into debt with a mansion, a yacht, a gold-plated dog, and a trophy husband. When her baking is outlawed she has to bake gingerbread men for the mafia to pay off her creditors, all while being pursued by a vigilante celiac hit squad (note: food fight over industrial ovens a la Terminator 2). The baker escapes by diving through an industrial mixer that chops off some of her limbs (in the original version she ended up in a cupcake rehab house, already creating a recipe for her next drug, but the editor said redemptive arc and bread mecha). At her lowest point she constructs herself a biscotti mech armor suit/prosthetic shell in order to go on a revenge killing spree. She defeats the mafia boss and his thugs, but is greviously wounded. Standing over the ill gotten fortune she helped create, she decides to use the last of her time for good, and bakes the money, prosthetic recipes, and instructions for a foundation into a stripper-sized cake to get it past the police. The story ends with her trophy husband receiving a cake delivery. (My guess is this would be about 5000 words, and I really should write it))

For my group instructors I got J M McDermott and Matthew Bey, both of whom were full of trenchant comments. I'm hoping to get the story edited and out tonight.

I also got to hang out a bit with Nate Southard, Scott A Johnson, and Marshall Ryan Maresca, all of whom are very sweet gentlemen.

The toast was also darling, and you can see it on Lou Anders webpage. No one can accuse the toastmaster of not being literal enough.

Of the panels, my favorite hands down was the one on Class with Maresca, Will Shetterly, Scott Lynch, and the fabulous, fabulous Joe R. Landsdale, who talked at length about his own childhood in poor East Texas. It doesn't hurt that I could sit for hours and listen to Landsdale, but everybody brought some interesting points to the panel, with Lynch making the point that he tried to set his fantasy full of con artists in the middle ages and then realized that the middle ages lacked the social mobility and range of classes that would be necessary for confidence crimes.

Also exceptional was the world post fossil fuels panel, in which guest of honor Paolo Bacigalupi really got to shine. He was also good in Building Societies from the Ground Up.

The Erotic Writing panel was a barrel of laughs, and I got to use the phrase "cock-holster" in appropriate context in public conversation (the question being worst/best genital circumlocution). I really enjoyed the poetry panel, even if it was a touch slim on attendance (I was not expecting McDermott to be as awesome as he was there, but I especially enjoyed, of all things, his football poem). The late night ghost story panel was creepy in the best possible way. Scott A Johnson is the kind of person you want to be around a campfire with, far enough away from civilization that no one can hear you scream. The Pyr books presentation was unexpectedly delightful, and I really want to get a copy of Black Dog by K. V. Johansen. I also wish I had a book to sell to Pyr, so that Anders could bubble over with enthusiasm about it the way he did about every one of the titles he was promoting. It's really awesome to watch someone enjoy books that much.

The Elizabeth Moon/Wiscon discussion was... interesting. I'm somewhere between Lee Thomas and Scott Lynch's positions (basically, Wiscon as an organization totally has the right to disinvite a guest over a public statement they feel either does not conform to their core principles or threatens the financial stability of the con, and Elizabeth Moon has a right to say what she likes on her personal blog, and both do have to accept the consequences of it. Frankly I really like Wiscon's new mission statement, and I feel like there's a big difference between telling Moon she's no longer welcome at Wiscon (which they did not do) and expressing that they are no longer comfortable having her specifically as a guest of honor), and it was kind of heartbreaking to see how discouraged Thomas got with how many people were putting Wiscon totally at fault as the bad guy.

That's ending the post on kind of a down note, which really wasn't my experience of the con. I had a great time, the panels were interesting, the readings were cool, and the people were, without exception, lovely to speak to and open to talking. It was a great time and I encourage everybody to get out and mingle with the fandom.

Heinlein's Tea Party

A fun article about Heinlein and the American Conservative movement.

Exciting Syllabus!

Mary Anne Mohanraj is teaching a course on minority writers in speculative fiction, and she's been posting her process for choosing a syllabus. Check it out, it's a good survey from someone who cares deeply about the topic.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If we're making a list of authors I'd like to grow up to be, Ursula K. Le Guin is always near the top. It's probably surprising to many people who know me, but I never managed to read the Earthsea Cycle. Left Hand of Darkness, however, was very big for me, and The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is one of my favorite books in any genre. I've also gotten a good deal of use out of Steering the Craft and Dancing at the Edge of the World. I highly recommend both.

Le Guin has been hugely prolific, both in terms of fiction and essays, many of which you can find either on or linked from her site.

So the thing about Le Guin is, first, that's she's brilliant. Not just in terms of her prose, but this is a woman with a tremendously expansive mind, capable of keeping track of and treating subtly dozens of interconnected imaginary mores and social nuances, while never losing sight of all the things she has to say about real society- and she's always struck me as someone using her immense creative power for good (and by good, I mean social justice, greater understanding between cultures, gender equality, basic human dignity, and so on, roll your eyes if you must, Jonathan).

As a point of trivia, Le Guin's father, Alfred L. Kroeber, was a student of Franz Boas and one of the first and foremost American anthropologists. Her mother was also an anthropologist and biographer, particularly noted for her english recountings of native american myths and legends.

Here are some of the awards Ursula K. Le Guin has won:
-five Hugo awards
-six Nebula awards
-Gandalf Grand Master Award
-SFFWA Grand Master Award
-nineteen Locus awards
-Lifetime Achievement (World Fantasy Awards)
-National Book Award for Children's Books
-Living Legends (Library of Congress)
-PEN/Malamud Award
-Emperor Has No Clothes award (Freedom From Religion Foundation)

So, yeah, basically she's my hero.

Because John Skipp is a Wonderful Man

John Skipp has an editorial on women in horror. He's also putting together a Zombie Puppet Musical, which, if you know me on any social media site, you should have gotten several links toward already.