This month’s Apex Magazine features ”Bear in Contradicting Landscape” by David J. Schwarz and ”My Body, Her Canvas” by A.C. Wise; the classic reprint is “Useless Things” by Maureen McHugh, who is interviewed by Maggie Slater. Donata Giancola provides the cover art and Alex Bledsoe and editor Lynne M. Thomas penned columns round out the issue.
Further details about this on-line publication can be found here.
So it now it seems publishers are counting on Barnes and Noble to help them stay in business. Which is funny because it wasn’t that long ago when Barnes and Noble was a slayer of independent bookstores and an enemy of the books business; now it’s considered the only thing that stands in the way of total world domination by Amazon.
Interesting that the notion of a bookstore is beginning to look more and more like an Apple store. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. My kid just got a Nook and she goes to our local Barnes and Noble because she can read certain e-books online for free there. Meanwhile she can consume some mocha lattes and maybe even take home a real book. Like everyone else I shop on-line, but the atmosphere of a bookstore leads to impulse buys that isn’t the same as scanning some algorithm’s suggested reads.
Speaking of physical books, I just finished Richard Morgan’s The Cold Commands, Book Two of presumably a trilogy ironically titled A Land
Fit for Heroes (in which the land is neither fit for heroes nor populated with behavior typically classified heroic) by Richard K. (whose middle initial is used on book jackets only on the American side of the pond for some reason) Morgan describe it as “genre busting.” That’s not just some publicist’s hyperbole. You can read the complete review over here at the SF Site.
The January issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard, “What Everyone Remembers” by Rahul Kanakia and “All the Painted Stars” by Gwendolyn Clare. Non fiction by Christopher Bahn, Jeremey L. C. Jones and Neil Clarke. The cover art is by Arthur Wang.
All of this is available online for free; there’s even an audio podcast version of all three stories read by Kate Baker. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more.
We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #63.
Of potential interest to readers of this space is my review of The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde over at the SF Site.
This is one of those books where you know exactly what to expect. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I know what to expect from Häagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream and just because the high-fat content is not necessarily the best thing to consume doesn’t make the experience of eating it any less enjoyable.
If you’ve somehow managed to miss the Jasper Fforde juggernaut, he is the author of several serial parodies that variously poke fun at super agents and literary theory (Thursday Next), detective noir and kid stories (Nursery Crime Division) as well as dystopias and Wizard of Oz allusions (Shades of Grey). Think whimsical. Think smart-ass. Think about that unkempt guy in college who never attended classes but was obviously pretty smart and never at a loss for a wisecrack.
You’re thinking Jasper Fforde.
Black Gate contributor Mark Rigney’s story, “The Demon Laplace,” inspires the cover art by Rik Rawling for the December 2011-January 2012 Black Static. A variation of the “be careful what you wish for” trope, Rigney’s protagonist, Alan, is a 27 year-old postal worker whose lackluster love life has him worrying that he’ll never find someone to settle down with or, worse, he’ll settle for whoever might come along. Then he meets mercurial Michael Wish (ostensibly short for Wyczniewski), a postal colleague of Alan’s who is taking a break from grad studies in statistics. Michael in Hebrew means “he who is like god” and who better than a god to grant wishes; unless, that is, the god is really a devil.
Further complicating the picture is whether mathematics can actually predict future behavior (if you aren’t familiar with Laplace’s equation, Google can explain it for you). After a series of what could be clever parlor tricks, an initially dubious Alan comes to invest god-like powers in Michael when the prediction that Alan will marry the next woman he talks to comes true.
The question is does it come true because Michael actually can predict the future or is it because Alan is so thorough convinced of Michael’s prestidigitation that he acts to make it true? Knowing, or at least believing, that someone can foretell future events leads to Alan’s obsession with finding out what he should do next. Problem is, Michael disavows that he was really doing anything more than “messing” with Alan:
“You little jackass. You want what really happened. Fine. When we met, sorting mail? That was a break from grad school–statistics,yes, probability curves — but I was halfway through my thesis, I was bored stiff, and I needed some kind of inspiration. Turns out what I needed was a live. unsuspecting subject. And there you were, a walking tabula rosa, just going with the flow…You fell for everything I said, hook, line and sinker. There. Is that what you came to hear?
Problem is, that’s not what Alan came to hear. Which results in tragedy (you are reading a dark horror magazine so why would you expect anything less?) that may, or may not, have been easily foreseen.
In your future I see some interesting reading ahead.
This month’s Apex Magazine features new fiction from Cat Rambo (“So Glad We Had This Time Together”) and Sarah Dalton (“Sweetheart Showdown”), as well as a reprint of “The Prowl” by Gregory Frost, who is also the featured interview. Stephan Segal provides the cover art and John Hines discusses “Writing About Rape.”
This and more of the Lynne M. Thomas edited on-line publication can be found here.
In other news, this is the time of year where”Best of” lists proliferate; I tend not to bother if only because I doubt anyone cares (and for those who might care, I just don’t want to get into an argument about why I didn’t pick the books they think should be on my list). I do find it interesting that three of the Top 5 fiction books selected by The New York Times contain elements of fantasy. Two are literary fabulism (meaning no elves, dwarves or heroic quests) that doesn’t get shelved in genre. I haven’t read Swamplandia! by Karen Russel yet, though I heartily recommend The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht, which employs motifs of Eastern European folklore to recount a doctor’s reconstruction of her grandfather’s life in a country obviously modeled on war-torn Yugoslavia.
The third is clearly genre, 11/22/63, a time travel story by the literal king of of genre, Stephen King (and which also made other best of lists). I was a little surprised by this, as King is usually considered lowbrow by book critics. This may be a case of being around long enough that you finally get some respectability, the sort of grudging acknowledgement that Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut earned later in their careers (though at that point their “rehabilitated” reputations rested primarily on work produced early in their careers). But it has to be more than tenure, as this same respect hasn’t been accorded to other widely popular genre writers who’ve been around such as Robert Ludlum (who continues to write from the grave) or Nora Roberts, or even the dreaded Dan Brown. Maybe this is because these writers are formulaic hacks (caveat: I haven’t read Ludlum or Roberts, so I’m just assuming from their reputations that they are, which I concede is unfair of me, though I have read Brown who is, albeit mildly entertaining). So perhaps King has worked hard enough, and well enough, that being popular is no longer a drawback, at least from the viewpoint of the literary sophisticates?
This month’s Apex Magazine features E.E. Knight’s essay on holiday-themed movies, with a couple of odd picks. Other things you might want read after finishing your gift wrapping (or your bah-humbumbing) include fiction by Christopher Barzak, Sarah Monette and Michael Pevzner’s first professional sale. Poetry by Sandi Leibowitz and F.J. Bergmann and an interview with Jennifer Pelland.
This and more of the Lynne M. Thomas edited on-line publication can be found here.
Whether you believe in Santa or not, happy holidays.
So it would seem that the death of the physical book and the physical bookstore is greatly exaggerated. According to The New York Times, bookstores are having a banner year. In part this is because some of the competition (i.e., Borders) is no longer a factor in brick-and-mortar retailing, a number of popular books (ironically including the biography of Steve Jobs, the very guy who sought to digitize and commodify the object in question) and a desire among consumers in a slowly recovering economy to give gifts that are attractive in a way that bits on a screen don’t quite emulate.
Also, content owners are, as they are prone to do, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to digital retailing. Despite the fact the e-book readers are more affordable than ever with a growing proliferation of titles in e-book format, pricing strategies are frequently rendering physical books as less expensive than their digital counterparts, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Long live the dog-eared book, if only for another few years.
On another note, and though it has nothing to do with the normal realm of Black Gate matters, I’m sad to note the passing of Christopher Hitchens. Right up to the end, he was one gutsy bastard. Here’s what I presume was his last piece of Vanity Fair.
The December issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Sirius” by Ben Peek, “In Which Faster-Than-Light Travel Solves All Our Problems” by Chris Stabback and the conclusion of Catherynne M. Valente’s “Silently and Very Fast.” Non fiction by Brenta Blevins, Jeremy L.C. Jones and Neil Clarke. The cover art is by Folko Stresse.
All of this is available online for free; there’s even an audio podcast version of “Sirius” read by Kate Baker. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more.
We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #62.
The November – December issue of Interzone contains substantial new stories by Lavie Tidhar (“The Last Osama”), Jim Hawkins (“Digital Rites”), Douglas Lain (“Erasing the Concept of Sex from a Potobooth”), and Caspian Gray (Caspian Gray); artwork by Richard Wagner, David Gentry, Steve Hambidge; “Ansible Link” genre news and miscellanea by David Langford; “Mutant Popcorn” film reviews by Nick Lowe; “Laser Fodder” DVD/Blu-Ray reviews by Tony Lee; book reviews by Jim Steel and other contributors.
Interzone alternates monthly publication with sister dark horror focused Black Static, published by the fine folks at TTA Press.
You can subscribe to the print version here, or the electronic edition here; there’s also a special discounted rate for a joint subscription to both Interzone and Black Static. Lifetime subscriptions are also available. What you’re buying, in essence, is a 10-year subscription at the current rate. If you think you’re going to live for at least another decade, and you think Interzone will also be around for as long, this could be a bargain for whatever time you and the magazine have after that. If that weren’t enough, you can also opt for joint lifetime sub that gets you sister publication Black Static for a slightly reduced rate. Sign your life away here.