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Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Two, edited by Kathe Koja

Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Two, edited by Kathe Koja

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Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume 2-smallThe first volume of Year’s Best Weird Fiction looks like it has been an unqualified success.

In his review, James McGlothlin wrote:

We are long overdue to have a year’s best anthology dedicated specifically to the weird… The craft of fine writing is quite exemplar here… Barron has successfully compiled an excellent anthology.

Now Undertow Books has revealed the cover and the complete Table of Contents for Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Two, to be published later this year. Here’s the TOC:

“The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful Symmetries)
“Wendigo Nights” by Siobhan Carroll (Fearful Symmetries)
“Headache” by Julio Cortázar. Translation by Michael Cisco (Tor.com, September 2014)
“Loving Armageddon” by Amanda C. Davis (Crossed Genres #19, July 2014)
“The Earth and Everything Under” by K.M. Ferebee (Shimmer #19, May 2014)
“Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story” by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014)

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When I Win the Lottery; Or, I Should Be So Lucky

When I Win the Lottery; Or, I Should Be So Lucky

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Jackson LotteryThe phrase “when I win the lottery” seems to be used in two distinct ways. The first and, I hope, the most common usage, has the same “ain’t gonna happen” meaning as “when pigs fly,” and connotes a certain sense of realism on the part of the speaker. The second, and I think sadder, usage stands for a certain lack of foresight. It’s been said, for example, that a sizable percentage of people include winning the lottery as an element in their retirement plans.

In our house the phrase also stands for any unlikely event beyond our control that we would nevertheless welcome. Like “when they finally come up with a retina chip that will fix my right eye,” or, “when the Dhulyn and Parno novels are optioned for TV.”

The lottery as a phenomenon is now so pervasive that it’s almost impossible not to think about lotteries and winning/losing them. The concept has formed the basis of a wide variety of movie and TV plots – mostly on the negative aspects of winning, but I think that’s meant to comfort those of us who, well, lost.

How are lotteries treated in Fantasy and SF writing? I don’t mean games of chance as such, though that gives us magnificent stories like “Gonna Roll the Bones” from Fritz Leiber. Nor do I mean criminal activities like numbers running, or even straightforward betting, whether on or off track or line. No, I mean actual lotteries. You get your ticket, and you wait your chance.

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Geek Parenting: D6 Thoughts for Tabletop Gamer Parents

Geek Parenting: D6 Thoughts for Tabletop Gamer Parents

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2kg of Halo Megablocs. It's hundreds of pounds worth of plastic, but we'll only get a few quid for it because the sets are all jumbled.
2kg of Halo Megablocs… hundreds of pounds worth of plastic, but we’ll only get a few quid for it because the sets are all jumbled.

At the moment, Kurtzhau and I are trying to flog off 2kg of Halo Megablocs. It’s hundreds of pounds worth of plastic, but we’ll only get a few quid for it because the sets are all jumbled. Worse, he only got 18 months play out of the lot, less out of recent acquisitions. He’s 11 now and Bolt Action and Warhammer 40K have swept away all his toys.

So, this set me thinking about things I wished I known when I started parenting.

1. Your old games are rubbish

Seriously, your old edition of AD&D is unplayable — too many subsystems, too much obscurantism for anybody growing up a digital native. This is also true of those older boardgames that tried to emulate some aspects of role playing, but without the verbal problem solving and character stuff that make RPG worthwhile. In terms of making interesting decisions, Talisman, for example, is not really much better than Snakes and Ladders.

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British Museum uses CT Scans to Unwrap Mummies

British Museum uses CT Scans to Unwrap Mummies

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A mummy undergoing a CT scan at the Royal Brompton Hospital. © Trustees of the British Museum
A mummy undergoing a CT scan at the Royal Brompton Hospital. © Trustees of the British Museum

A remarkable exhibition at the British Museum is revealing the secrets hidden inside mummy wrappings.

Ancient Lives, New Discoveries showcases eight mummies from the Nile valley, Africa’s greatest center of ancient civilization. Seven were found in Egypt and an eighth was uncovered in Sudan. They have all been analyzed with the latest model CT scanner at a London hospital to reveal information about the people without their having to go through damaging analysis.

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Ancient Worlds: Claiming the Lost from the Underworld

Ancient Worlds: Claiming the Lost from the Underworld

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Kratzenstein's Orpheus and Eurydice
Kratzenstein’s Orpheus and Eurydice

We live in an age of reboots. I for one think this is an excellent thing. Most of the great of history has fallen into the category of reboots, retellings, recapitulations and reimaginings.

Without the concept of fanfic there is no Aeneid, and while many a college Sophmore may rejoice at that idea, world literature would be the poorer for it. That is, as well, what Ovid is doing with the Metamorphoses. He’s compiling and retelling, weaving several hundred different strands together into one long rope of story. And that work is still bearing fruit today.

One of the better and most wideley known tales that Ovid retells is the myth or Orpheus. This one is so commonly read that I’ll just sketch down the bones here: Orpehus was the greatest musician who ever lived. He was married to a young woman named Eurydice, but she died very soon after the wedding. Heartbroken, he made his way down to the Underworld, and with the power of his music, convinced Hades and Persephone to let Eurydice come back to the light. They agreed, the only time in all of history they have done so, because they were so moved by his music. But there was a condition: Eurydice would follow him up to the surface, and he couldn’t look back once.

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Chaotic and Lawful Alignments in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions

Chaotic and Lawful Alignments in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions

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ThreeHeartsI’m willing to bet that Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions published in 1953 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and Anderson’s close friend and frequent collaborator Gordon R. Dickson’s St. Dragon and the George, published likewise in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at about the same time – later republished as The Dragon and the George) owes quite a bit to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. And Anderson doesn’t disguise this, for he at least once overtly references Twain’s historical romance when he has his protagonist, Holger Carlsen (a “Carl” again!), unconvincingly scare away a band of barbarians by using his tobacco pipe to blow smoke out of his mouth. The work further encourages comparisons to Twain’s book through Holger’s use of other “Enlightenment” tricks in a secondary world, and Anderson uses bookends reminiscent of Twain’s. Anderson’s bookends here are worth a closer look.

Holger Carlsen’s history, as relayed by an unspecified narrator, funhouse-mirrors Anderson’s personal history. In a book profiling Supernatural Fiction Writers, Ronald Tweet reports that Anderson was born to Danish parents and lived in Denmark for a while previous to WWII. Holger of Three Hearts and Three Lions is a Dane who, after wandering Europe, starts attending an Eastern university in the U.S. When WWII breaks out, he goes back to Denmark, where, through fairly compressed and elliptical telling, the narrator says that Holger eventually ends up in a pistol fight with Germans. At this point, “all his world [blows] up in flame and darkness.” And Holger finds himself in a fantasy world.

In light of Anderson’s own biographical information, one is tempted to believe that much of this work is the result of a highly personal fantasy, a kind of daydream out of which many fantasies certainly must arise. I’m sure that most of us have fantasized about being an important person in an important place – If only we could get there, somehow!

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By the Numbers: Encountering Classic Fairy Tales with a Box of Crayons

By the Numbers: Encountering Classic Fairy Tales with a Box of Crayons

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color by numberTonight my kids and I took some 40-year-old coloring books — vintage uncolored collectibles — opened a box of Crayola crayons and went to town!

Let me back up. A few weeks ago I was reminded that some of my earliest experiences of classic fairy tales came from a series of color-by-number books. Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves — my Nan had the whole set for my cousins and me to color in.

Vintage books and toys on eBay that catch my attention fall into roughly three categories: 1) ones I cherished as a kid and have long wanted to reclaim, 2) ones I never heard of but are so cool I can’t believe they never crossed my radar before, 3) ones I had as a kid but had completely forgotten until coming across them by accident and feeling a sudden rush of recognition and nostalgia.

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Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

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THE TREASURY OF THE FANTASTIC-small The Uncertain Places-small The Best of Michael Moorcock-small

While I was at the World Fantasy Convention last November, I kept being irresistibly sucked into the Dealers Room. Seriously, the place was like a giant supermarket for fantasy fans. There were thousands of new and used books on display from dozens of vendors — books piled high on tables, books crammed into bookshelves, books being pressed into your hands by enthusiastic sellers.

When I came home I moped around for a few days, and then mocked up some HTML pages with dozens of thumbnail jpegs of books so I could pretend I was still at the convention. I waved a crisp twenty dollar bill in front of my computer screen and said things like, “I’ll take the new Moorcock collection, my good man.” I even haggled over the price of The Treasury of the Fantastic. Truly, it felt like I was there.

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SFWA Announces the 2015 Nebula Award Nominations

SFWA Announces the 2015 Nebula Award Nominations

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The Goblin Emperor-smallWow, it’s almost the end of February. And that means that the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) finally put an end to all that suspense, and announced the nominees for the 2015 Nebula Awards, one of the most prestigious awards our industry has to offer.

Last year there were no less than eight nominees for best novel; this year that number has dropped back to six. Does this mean there will be less infighting and disagreement over who should win?

You’re kidding, right? (In truth, the debate is half the fun — and it generates a lot of interest in a lot of deserving books.)

This year’s nominees are:

Novel

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Tor)
Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor)
Coming Home, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals)

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Writers as Barbarian Conquerors!

Writers as Barbarian Conquerors!

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This is possibly the most brilliant way to think about writing ever. I can’t believe I’m just thinking about it now, and certainly won’t have to beat the metaphor into shape. Well, maybe a bit. But, who the heck cares. You can now view your writing as a freaking barbarian invasion! Like I said: brilliant.

BattlePlan_small
Barbarians don’t post plans on the Internet, so I interviewed one and drew this. You’re welcome.

PLANNING THE BATTLE

Like any good invading army, you must first plan which of your troops are going where. It’s known as “plotting” in the writing world. It doesn’t need to be super detailed, but you should know the attack plan of your knights (aka hero) and archers (aka secondary characters. Sorry, Hawkeye). Plus, you should know a bit about your enemy’s defenses (aka villain).

Build up enthusiasm in your barbarian army with awesome speeches (aka writing down cool scenes).

FIRST WAVE OF ATTACK!

This is where you plunge in and WRITE! KILL! DESTROY! Your armies are in place. Your knights are totally rocking it! Your archers are shooting those little wooden arrows like they can’t run out AND THEY DON’T BECAUSE IT’S YOUR BOOK!

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