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Blogging from the Nebulas Weekend

Blogging from the Nebulas Weekend

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I’m in Chicago, at the 50th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend, and so far, it’s all pretty amazing. For Annihilation_by_jeff_vandermeerthose who don’t know, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America hold an annual Nebula Awards weekend that feels kind of like a very small fan con, except most of the attendees are SFWA members and networking and casual business discussion dominates.

My first Nebulas Weekend was in San José two years ago. Chicago is pretty impressive and the hotel, the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, is even moreso. And like at World Fantasy, attendees got loot bags upon arrival, provided by publishers. A small selection of by book bag contains: Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose, an advance proof of Aliette de Bodard’s House of Shattered Wings, Daryl Gregory’s Afterparty, Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings, Nick Cutter’s The Acolyte and many more.

I don’t tend to go to as much programming as I used to at cons; I go more to meet editors, agents, publishers, and other writers, because hey, common interests. This weekend is an exception because the speakers are pretty uniformly the people who are steering the field itself.

I checked out a panel with Sheila Williams (Asimov’s) and Jacob Wiesman (Tachyon Press) about what editors are looking for. This is a bit in the same theme as Neil Clarke’s recent and excellent and data-based post about what he’s looking for at Clarkesworld. Based on the conversation, it struck me how much building Asimov’s each month is like building an anthology, where tone and editorial vision and story offering have to balance.

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R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells

R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells

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MacAvoy KellsLately I’ve been exploring portal fantasies, and last time I talked about Charles de Lint’s The Little Country. This week I’d like to take a look at R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells.

John Thornburn is a Canadian artist living and teaching in Dublin. He’s a bit of a klutz socially and emotionally, and has a tendency to focus on his work to the exclusion of everything else. His friend and sometime lover Derval O’Keane is an academic historian. The story begins when a young, injured girl suddenly appears in  John’s bathroom, having come through a portal  he inadvertently opened while working on the tracing of an old Gaelic pattern. It takes a bit of doing, but John and Derval finally figure out that Ailesh is the survivor of a Viking attack on her village in the Ireland of 985, saved by her father’s throwing her through the portal.

John and Derval take Ailesh back to her own time, and find the injured poet Labres MacCullen among the dead. John doesn’t know how to open the portal from this side, or even if it can be opened, so they accompany Ailesh and Labres to Dublin, where they hope to get help and justice from the King. Though the King in Dublin is himself a Dane at this point in history, they also want to warn him that the Vikings seem to have come as invaders, not as mere raiders who, having struck, will now go away.

Unknown to them, however, these same Vikings offered the lives of all the villagers to Odin, and the fact that Ailesh and Labres escaped puts them in a bit of a quandary. The leader decides that they must find and kill those who escaped, or forfeit their own lives – and the success of their expedition – to Odin’s displeasure.

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Unknown, September 1939: A Retro-Review

Unknown, September 1939: A Retro-Review

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Unknown September 1939 None But Lucifer-smallMy last post was a review of Galaxy’s September 1952 issue. So I’m jumping back more than a decade to an issue of another magazine I’ve wanted to get into for a few years.

At last year’s World Fantasy Convention, while John O’Neill was trying to set a world record for the number of books carried in a single stack (seriously, if you had seen it, you would have been impressed), I came across a dealer selling old issues of Unknown. Actually, I told my wife I was trying to find some, and she actually found a bin of them. While not impossible to come by, collecting issues of Unknown is somewhat more cost prohibitive than collecting issues of Galaxy.

Unknown (later retitled Unknown Worlds) was a speculative fiction magazine that ran from 1939 to 1942. It was published by Street & Smith, who also published Astounding. It was edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., who also edited Astounding. The early issues have art on the cover, like the September 1952 issue. These are also the more expensive ones. But if you don’t care too much about quality because you’re just going to rip it while reading it, you can find some inexpensive copies. Mine was $15.

What I find perhaps most interesting about this particular issue is that it contains a novel written by H. L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp. Not only that, but I think (prove me wrong or right, Rich Horton) that this may have been the first time Gold used this particular pseudonym. He’d had stories published as Horace L. Gold but not the familiar H. L. Gold that he continued to use as his soubriquet at Galaxy. Am I the only one geeking out about this? Please tell me I’m cool in a Galaxy/Unknown/pulp sort of way.

None But Lucifer by H. L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp — William Hale has realized the truth about Earth. It isn’t Earth, at least not in the sense people think of it. Everyone on Earth is actually living in Hell.

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Faces of Iraq

Faces of Iraq

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Proud dad in Nasiriyah
Proud dad in Nasiriyah

The Iraqis we see in the news almost always fall into three types–The Evil Fundamentalist, The Useless Official, and The Wailing Victim. The media have a hard time dealing with a broad range of characters, so they tend to fall back on these types again and again.

Of course the reality is more complex. While there’s no shortage of bloodshed and corruption, most of Iraq’s 33 million people go about their day-to-day affairs trying to live a normal life.

Back in 2012 I traveled to Iraq to write about it for the now-moribund travel blog Gadling. Click the link to read the series. Sadly, the photo galleries have been taken offline, but you can still read the articles for the moment.

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A Gateway to Fantasy for Young Readers: Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

A Gateway to Fantasy for Young Readers: Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

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amulet coverWith the height of the “Harry Potter phenomenon” nearly a decade past, we now have a new generation of seven- and eight-year-olds who were born after the final book in that series came out. A perennial question comes up: What will be the next “gateway” work that ushers young readers into a lifelong love of fantasy and speculative fiction?

Well, some may rightly ask, why can’t it be Harry Potter? Or A Wrinkle in Time, or The Dark is Rising sequence, or The Chronicles of Prydain, or The Chronicles of Narnia, or The Hobbit, or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or…?

Many do still find their first taste of enchantment in books that are decades or even a century old, but there is no denying that — at least in the publishing and bookselling world — there has to be a “latest model.” Librarians still push those beloved older books faithfully, but their sales pitch is a lot stronger when it comes as a follow-up to a young reader who, having just read something that is currently “all the rage,” asks, “What else out there is like this?”

I’m here today to suggest that if you want a contemporary work that will introduce 3rd to 7th graders to the pleasures of epic fantasy, steampunk, people with animal heads, and wise-cracking robots, you could do a lot worse than hand them the graphic novel Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper (2008) by Kazu Kibuishi. But be prepared: odds are good that they will immediately be demanding books 2 through 6. And then they will be waiting with bated breath for book 7 and cursing that there is now a two-year interval between volumes (welcome, Young Reader, to the Pains of Following a Series that is Ongoing. To better understand what you are in for, see any conversations referencing George R.R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss).

But I’m also here to recommend them to anyone who likes this sort of stuff, regardless your age. I mentioned “3rd to 7th graders” in the last paragraph because those are the perimeters the publisher, Scholastic, says they are written toward. As someone who does not fit that demographic, I can vouch for them being worthwhile reads even if you are middle-aged.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Magnifying Glass, Pipe and Deerstalker

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Magnifying Glass, Pipe and Deerstalker

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Pipe_RathboneThe curved pipe. The magnifying glass. The deerstalker cap. These three objects are intimately associated with the enduring image of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was quite astute to use these rather uncommon devices for his singularly uncommon detective.

Well, not quite. In addition to Doyle, we should also credit three other men for creating the picture we see of Sherlock Holmes, over a century later.

Along with Doyle, we must tip our deerstalker (and puff on our pipe in honor of) illustrators Sidney Paget and Frederic Dorr Steele, a well as the great stage performer, William Gillette.

It is the contributions of the latter three upon which Eille Norwood, Arthur Wontner, Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and others based their portrayals. Of course, since Rathbone’s Universal films were set in the 1940’s, his wardrobe was contemporary to the times. But his two films for Twentieth-Century Fox fit the classic image.

Let’s take a look at three “props” that have been commonly associated with Holmes for over a century.

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Eight Barbarian Body Building (3B) Tips

Eight Barbarian Body Building (3B) Tips

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Luke would be more buff if he wasn't such a tauntaun riding wuss.
Luke would be more buff if he weren’t such a tauntaun riding wuss.

It’s beach season! In the frozen north where I live, we’re currently shedding our polar bear and Sasquatch skins to show off our tummies once again!  Except, after six months of trudging through snowdrifts and blizzards, our thighs may be tree trunks of victory, but our abs have lost that chainmail bikini flattering glory.

Fear not, there is hope. Here are some tips for fighting off that winter bulge!

Chase Down a Pack of Wild Wolves

Nothing will get you sweating faster than chasing down wild canines, especially when they turn on you and you have to fight them off with nothing but your wit and might. Make sure to pack your wit or, failing that, lots of sharp steeled might.

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A Modest Proposal to Improve the Hugos

A Modest Proposal to Improve the Hugos

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The Hugo AwardIn thinking about the recent unpleasantness (regarding the Hugo ballot, I mean), it occurred to me that one source of the issues with the Hugos right now has nothing much to do with slates or bloc voting or Sad Puppies or Social Justice Warriors or even taste (that much). It is simply this: there are a lot more SF stories published now than there were in the past. That makes it really hard for any reader to even come close to reading them all – something that was quite possible, I am told, back in the 1960s. I can testify: I used to try very hard to read every SF story that came my way, and there were years I read over 2000 stories. And every year I missed hundreds, at least, and some of those very good.

In a way this is one function of ballots and shortlists (and, indeed, recommendation lists): to try to condense the mass of stories published each year to a manageable set of the “the best.” My Best of the Year anthology every year serves that function (secondarily – the main function is to give readers a great book to read). So does, for instance, the Locus Recommended Reading list. But even there, note that our lists are by no means inclusive. Indeed, I signal that (as do other Best of the Year editors like Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow) by including a long list or recommended stories in addition to those in my book. And the Locus list is painstakingly cut from a much longer list of recommendations by all the contributors – a list that highlights the problem I cite, as all of us realize that our fellow recommenders have seen outstanding stories we have missed.

Though, I ask myself, why do I use the word “problem?” Surely it is a feature, not a bug, that there are so many stories published each year that are worthy of our attention? Indeed it is, but a result of that, I feel, is that if we want the Hugos to represent the very best stories of the year, we are failing, in the sense that it’s easier than before for a great story to slip under the radar.

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Ancient Worlds: Medusa and the Viral Impact of Sexual Assault

Ancient Worlds: Medusa and the Viral Impact of Sexual Assault

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restoration_of_the_bust_of_medusa_by_gian_lorenzo_bernini_largeI may ramble on a bit this week, and I apologise in advance. You see, I have a deep attachment to Medusa. She’s the center feature of the aegis tattoo I have on my right arm. My doctoral dissertation (which I do not recommend anyone read) was entitled Medusa’s Blood because of its discussion of a lot of what I’ll cover today. And, fittingly, a review of Clash of the Titans was the first thing I ever wrote for Black Gate, a handful of years back.

Most of us know Medusa from Clash of the Titans. Hopefully the 1970s version because the newer one is pretty terrible. In any case: she’s easily recognized. Scary looking woman, snakes for hair. Turns people into stone when they look at her. Came to bloody, hero-induced end. But what we learn from Ovid is that Medusa was not always a Gorgon. In her youth, she was one of the most beautiful human women alive.

Until she was raped by Neptune.

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Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

Paolo Bacigalupi on Black Swans, Crashing a Drought Conference, and Being in a Weird Place

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headshotTheWaterKnife-PaoloBacigalupi-201x300Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel, The Windup Girl, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten novels of the year, and yet he still talks to people like me, which makes him either very strange or very cool (probably a little of both.)

On May 25th his latest, The Water Knife, will be out, and this near future science fiction novel is set in a mega-drought-stricken, American southwest. The story explores issues of water rights, climate change, and the gratuitous destruction of the state of Texas, all of which we discuss in the interview.

He also takes the time to talk about his long and winding path towards a writing career. Anyone who’s ever reached the point of despair (in other words, all aspiring writers) will want to give this a listen.

After getting off Skype with me, he had another interview with NPR. So, without further ado: Paolo Bacigalupi’s warmup interview on the day he spoke to NPR.

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