Нежные и прелестные красотки
Привет, мои дорогие! Как ваши дела? Соскучились? Со мной всё в порядке, просто совсем некогда. Везде карантин, самоизоляция, а у меня нет времени на любимое дело, потому что даже в самозаточении у меня забот-хлопот выше крыши. Вот так и живём. Зашла в бложик и удивилась, что последний пост был аж 3 апреля – вот так [...]
Красивые девушки – услада для глаз и мыслей
Привет, мои дорогие! Как ваши дела? Как самочувствие? Как настроение? В свете последних событий я надеюсь, что у каждого из вас всё в порядке. Главное – не забывать про меры предосторожности и соблюдать режим самоизоляции, насколько бы трудно и накладно это ни было. Придётся напрячься и пережить этот период, и лучше это сделать живым и [...]
Готовим в путешествии вкусно и дёшево! Тыква и банан в рисе с корицей. Цены в Таиланде 2019
Правда о тыкве и рисе, которую вам не рассказывают из жадности, во всеуслышание только на za7gorami.ru! Небольшой, но революционный текст о кулинарном сладострастии, которым упиваются путешественники, скрываясь в дешёвых азиатских отелях! Острый путешественнический маст-рид сегодняшнего дня, не пропустите!
Безответственная Камбоджа. Воровство, грабёж и не безопасность в Пномпене
Воровство в Пномпене - насколько всё плохо и как с этим жить - делюсь мнением после месяца, проведённого в хостелах и на улицах роковой столицы Камбоджи.
Приятно ли быть в Дананге (Вьетнам)? На 250 долларов в месяц
Перспективы лонгстея. Фотки, впечатления, цены.
Получение визы во Вьетнам в Саваннакхете, Лаос (обновлено в марте 2019 года)
Не так много сказано об этой опции, поэтому делюсь кратенько основным.
Краби летом (в июле) - можно ехать, море класс! Аонанг, Рейлей, про погоду и обезьян
Мечты сбываются! Я побывал в Краби зимой 2011 года! И ещё и ещё в самые разные сезоны. А летом выпало съездить только сейчас, в 2018-м. Поездка всего на три дня, и, конечно, беспокоила мысль о погоде - хотелось солнечных фотографий с лазурными водами - ведь это Краби! А что на улицах Аонанга? - пусто ли, уныло, собаки ли одни или и люди тоже?..
Путешествие на Мальту по следам Бурерождённой. За английским языком и загаром (гостевой пост)
Мальта так мала и незначительна, что, раз о ней узнав, несложно о ней и забыть. Не государство, а морской конёк в водах Средиземного моря, затерянный где-то между жаркой Сицилией и ещё более знойным побережьем Северной Африки - на краю Вестероса, на подступах к Эссосу в водах Узкого моря...
Питаемся в Таиланде дёшево (2018). Цены на еду и советы как сэкономить
Чем поживиться за 1 доллар и дешевле, цены и лайфхаки. Путешественникам и зимовщикам.
Из Хошимина в Бангкок на автобусах. Цены и лайфхаки
Если ваш пункт назначения - тропики, если вам всё равно куда, лишь бы - в ЮВА, то стоит проверить цены на авиаперелёт Петербург / Москва - Хошимин - как-то регулярно стало случаться, что дешевле всего лететь именно в Сайгон. До 15 дней во Вьетнаме - без визы (для граждан РФ), а дальше либо - самолётом в соседнюю страну, либо - автобусами в Таиланд. О последнем сценарии и поговорим.
Сайгон (Хошимин)
Нравится - не нравится -- вопрос индивидуальный. Тонко чувствующий, эмоционально и интеллектуально развитый человек всюду разглядит красоту. Вот и я, вот и я такой.
Дружба начинается с "How are you?!" Английский для путешествий
Путешествие - это ещё и знакомства. В хостелах с незнакомцами ещё и делишь удобства, в в гестах - общее пространство. Как знакомиться, как держаться в международной англоязычной среде путешественников - интересует многих трэвел-ребят, тем более тех из них, для кого английский язык не родной.
Torontoist has been acquired by Daily Hive
In 2008, a few friends in Vancouver recognized that a voice was missing from reporting in our country. National news was increasingly international in nature. Provincial was disappearing. And, local seemed out of touch with its audience. So, they started writing the kind of content they wanted to read. Hyperlocal stories aimed at helping people […]
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Civic Tech: We tried to get a copy of the Sidewalk Toronto agreement
Why all the secrecy?
If you follow the news in Toronto or if you’re interested in technology, you’ve probably heard of Sidewalk Toronto by now. It’s a joint project of Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, and Waterfront Toronto. This is the tech giant’s first foray into urban development and infrastructure, with Toronto hosting the pilot project. In […]
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Habitat: Environmentalists eye city’s investment policies
Divestment is “more urgent” in Toronto than NYC
A growing list of large institutional investors around the world – state and provincial pension funds, university endowments, and most recently, New York City itself, have been aggressively divesting from fossil fuel investments so as to do their part in mitigating against climate change. Here in Toronto, it’s been a different story. Prominent institutional investors, […]
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Another Glass Box: The Stalinist “Bunker” Edition
Mayoral foibles, Google's urban charm offensive, finalists for George Brown's new wood building, and how many avocado toasts will you need to give up?
1 Please don’t poke the mayor – Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson found himself criticized in light of calling George Bemi’s award-winning Ottawa Library a “Stalin-ist bunker”. Watson’s rebuke wasn’t so elegant, but the following debate explored how contemporary ideas of wellness and accessibility requires real investment in restoration and renovation. Here in Toronto, Mayor John […]
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Our One Chance to Fix Yonge Street
The re-imagining of the city’s main artery must look to the future, not the past.
It’s clear that Toronto is changing; it’s not so clear that our political leaders have noticed. The debate about the revitalization of Yonge St. in North York Centre, where the cityscape is now dominated by residential towers, highlights the problem. ‘RE-imagining Yonge’, a city initiative covering the area between Sheppard and Finch Avenues, goes to […]
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Has Toronto Become a City of Instagram Photo Ops?
Food, art, even public space now seems to revolve around aesthetic value as judged by the social network.
Whether it’s a small new restaurant or a major art gallery exhibition, it seems Toronto’s cultural institutions must cater to the “like” seeking set. The price of success today is a sacrifice made at the altar of Instagram. Of course, to some, it’s not viewed as a sacrifice at all, especially when it boosts business […]
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Introducing: Another Glass Box, a new weekly architecture feature
Keesmaat’s Next Venture, Shitty Architecture Men, Mod Squad, Presto Problemo, Bench Press, and more in this debut edition.
Another Glass Box is a weekly roundup of urban design news in Toronto (and occasionally beyond), in bite-size pieces. It’s curated by Dan Seljak, who’s done marketing and communications work for architecture and construction companies for the last seven years—and who still loves this city enough to line up for brunch. Content warning: some of the […]
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Toronto’s Long-Term Financial Plan: The Bill is Due
As his parting gift to Toronto Council, City Manager Peter Wallace spells out the effect of years of promised new services and infrastructure unmatched by revenue to build and operate our dream city.
Toronto Council is good at making promises, voting for better services, new transit lines, a revitalized expressway, but too many of these promises depend on money the city does not have. At budget time, city staff work their magic and trim spending to fit the available dollars. Programs are stretched to make do with less […]
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Civic Tech: Hackers! To Your Stations!
For those who care about data, the City’s new Open Data Master Plan is about to change everything.
One Saturday afternoon earlier this month, more than 100 people gathered at the Toronto Public Library for an annual gathering called CodeAcross, the city’s annual open data and civic tech event. This year, the theme was the Future of Work. One of the challenges centred on the City of Toronto’s freshly approved Open Data Master […]
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Our addiction to driving is costing lives, and more
The solution is not to scold drivers but to make structural solutions.
I must confess: I was tempted to write a column along the lines of “Yes, it’s a war on the car, and it’s a just war!” But we don’t need a war on the car. What we need is an intervention. We need a serious conversation about our collective, structural addiction to this substance, […]
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Extending the Yonge line will only make crowding worse
Line 1 is over capacity—adding more stops isn't the solution.
We need to talk about this idea to extend the Yonge line up to Richmond Hill. The Yonge line is already congested. Anyone who rides the subway regularly is aware of this. The immediate plans to address it are, shall we say, unimpressive. The Yonge Relief Network Study done in 2015 for Metrolinx [PDF] focused […]
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A Last Minute Ten, Nine, Eight … Point Transit Plan
The mayor's list of ideas to alleviate crowding offers little relief in the short term.
Mayor John Tory announced a ten-point plan to fight congestion and delays on the TTC at a press conference just before Toronto Council began its final debates on the 2018 budget. Through the entire budget process, starting with Tory’s cohort on the TTC Board and continuing through the City Budget and Executive committees, transit has […]
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"Paris, a Poem" in SWEDISH!
Yet again, something astonishing has arrived in my mailbox. This time, it's a chapbook titled Paris ett poem, containing a Swedish translation (surely the first) of Hoope Mirrlees' modernist masterpiece, Paris, a Poem. Mirrlees, you'll recall, is best known in genre circles for her fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist, in academic circles for being on the fringes of Bloomsbury, and in poetic circles for this poem.
Ylva Gislén translated the poem, wrote an introduction, provided explanatory notes, and created two collages for inclusion in the chapbook. All of it, clearly, a labor of love.
Quite a lovely book. Published by Ellerströms.
And Speaking of Good Things . . .
The Temporary Culture chapbook assembled by Henry Wessells, "She Saved Us from World War Three," was reviewed by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post. Here's what he said:
Besides being one of the stars of “The Booksellers,” Henry Wessells is also the proprietor of the micro-publisher, Temporary Culture. His latest booklet, “She Saved Us From World War Three,” brings together an interview, essay and two letters highlighting the friendship between Gardner Dozois, the longtime editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Alice Sheldon, the former Washington intelligence agent whose intense, sometimes feminist sci-fi — no one ever forgets “The Women Men Don’t See” — was written using the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. In one letter Sheldon explains that she has pretty much stopped writing because “the stories were getting to hurt too much.”
Which is pretty good coverage for a micro-press.
Zero Notebook 10: Helen
Our revels now are ended. These our images, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air...
But before we go, one more page, the back inside cover to be specific. It contains two more images of Helen. One is a publicity shot from a period she was going to leave out of the autobiography she never wrote, when she made a brief, ill-fated stab at acting. The other is from a dark period in her middle age.
She was far better-looking than she'd ever admit to being.
And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?
To find that out, you're just going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Mother, now aren't you?
Above: Tenth image. Tout finis!
Zero Notebook 9: Dragon Skull
Dragons are, as everybody knows, half fighter jet and half fire spirit.
Here's the skull of one.
Above: Image Nine. One more to go.
The Postutopian Adventures of Michael Swanwick
Look what came in the mail! My contributor's copies of The Postmodern Adventures of Darger and Surplus. Which I can now honestly tell you are beautiful books. Marianne--owner, reditor, and sole entrepreneur of Dragonstairs Press, remember--especially admired the texture of the endpapers.
This is the first Darger and Surplus collection of short, and it collects everything except the two novels. But I should caution you that it is a slim book--five previously published stories, four related short-shorts, and "There Was an Old Woman..." a story written expressly for this collection. Bloated this volume is not.
Subterranean Press has created, as I said, one lovely volume. It costs $40, because it's a high-quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand. But for a high quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand, that's pretty cheap.
Here's the table of contents:
Introduction:
- Mother Goose’s Errant Sons
- The Dog Said Bow-Wow
- The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
- Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
- Tawny Petticoats
- There Was An Old Woman
- Appendix:
- Introduction to Appendix: A Little Smoke and a Mirror or Three
- Smoke and Mirrors: Four Scenes from the Postutopian Future
If you're interested, you can buy a copy of the book here.
Or you can buy an e-book version for $5 here.
Oe you can simply go the the Subterranean website and poke around here. Mine isn't the only book there you want. Far from it.
"She Saved Us From World War Three"
Now, Henry has created a chapbook, She Saved Us from World War Three, containing the two most significant letters from that correspondence. The first is from Sheldon, telling Gardner that the secret of her identity was about to go public and that she was not a man but a woman. The second is her relieved response to Gardner's assurance that they were still friends.
Which understates how Gardner felt about Sheldon/Tiptree. He was in awe of her as a writer and remained so after the murder-suicide that ended her life.
To go with the letters and give them some context, I interviewed Gardner about his friendship with Alice Sheldon and this introduction now forms the bulk of the chapbook.
Today is the publication date for She Saved Us from World War Three and it is currently available for sale. It costs $20, which is not cheap for twenty pages of prose but is cheap for a beautifully made limited edition chapbook with fold-out facsimiles of the letters themselves.
Those of you who need it know who you are. Me, I already have my copy. I'm going to dig up the oversized paperclip which Sheldon gave to Gardner as a souvenir of their meeting and Gardner gave to me because souvenirs meant nothing to him and keep the two of them together. This is a very meaningful publication for me.
You can find ordering information here.
Above: The chapbook's cover. Photo by John DeChancie and used with his permission. John is a Mensch. I esteem him highly.
Zero Notebook 8: Frog
Originally, this was going to be a character named Frog--one who never materialized in The Iron Dragon's Mother. A wood-fey, obviously, and possibly a marsh-weller.
But look at that wistful, lost expression. I think this guy eventually became Fingolfinrhod. I really do.
Above: Image Eight. Two more to go.
Zero Notebook 7: Helen
Introducing Helen. There's more to her than meets the eye.
Written upside-down--so they won't necessarily be taken as gospel by any readers are three quick notes scrawled to myself:
Mother as Mind Spider
Storyteller as Spider & Weaver
Chrone as Spider
I apologize for the misspelling of "crone." But I was writing (and thinking) too fast to care much for accuracy.
But what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?
The influence of Louise Bourgeois is pretty obvious here. Late in life, she created those wonderful, terrifyingly realistic giant spiders with long steel needles at the end of their legs and said that they were all about her mother. Who made a living repairing tapestries, using long steel needles. So it's not the slap in her face it might seem.
I liked the spider representing the archetypal woman-as-maker, which fit Helen right down to the ground. I was also fighting a fight all the way through with received archetypal images of women were were almost all pretty or dainty or passive. I wanted to get at that primal fierceness that lurks inside us all.
And, ounce for ounce, you don't get much fiercer than a spider.
And tomorrow and Friday . . .
There will be news.
Above: Seventh image. Three to go.
Zero Notebook 6: Mother Eve
She never appears in person in The Iron Dragon's Mother, but Mother Eve is central to the entire enterprise. Unsettling, isn't she?
Judith Berman once told me that most of the First People have Trickster tales. But of the hundreds of tribes in North America, only two--and they small tribes--have a female trickster. The female trickster is, apparently, difficult for people to imagine.
So you can imagine my delight when I found one right inside my own culture.
But what, you ask, does it mean . . .?
Trickster is a strange and difficult character, neither a good guy nor an evil one. She exists somewhere in between, a creator of chaos and a provider of a special Something that it seems human beings require. It might be corn and it might be fire. Trickster gets blamed for a lot of the woes of existence, but it seems that without him/her, we're skunked.
I wonder if Pandora was originally a Trickster, before they allegorized her to hell and back? It bears thinking on.
Above: Image Six. Four to go.
Zero Notebook 5: Hermes/Fire Sprite
Another character that didn't make it into The Iron Dragon's Mother. Industrialized Faerie is a rich world. The three novels I've set in it can only only hint at how rich and strange it is.
This image, for a rarity, was hardly altered at all.
And where, you ask, did I find this. . . ?
The image came from the Body Works show that toured the world some years ago. A large number of corpses were flayed and then carefully preserved, in order to display the wonders of anatomy. The show was controversial at the time because the corpses came from China and there were those who claimed the bodies hadn't been voluntarily donated but those of criminals who had died in prison. The truth of the matter was impossible to ascertain.
The show, however, was extremely popular. My son, Sean Swanwick, worked for a summer as a guide when it was displayed at the Franklin Institute and he told me that they had to watch the people touring it like hawks... Every now and then, someone would try to snap off a finger or other appendage to take home as a souvenir.
Above: Image five. Five more to go.
Citywide Blackout: Steampunk Dragons
Zero Notebook 4: A Vision of God
Zero Notebook 3: Jinx
Excerpt 3 from the Zero Notebook for The Iron Dragon's Mother. Jinx is a pretty neat character. I'm sorry I couldn't find a place for her in the novel. She looks like trouble, doesn't she?
And I have to apologize . . .
I promised to post these on every day I didn't have news and then got so caught up on writing chores I lost track of the blog entirely. My bad. I'll do better, I promise.
For a while, anyway.
Above: Third image. Seven to go.
E-Book Sales Sunday and Monday!
Open Road Media, my main e-book publisher, appears to be on a tear these days. Maybe because a lot of self-isolated people need books these days and aren't willing to wait for them to be delivered through the mails? I don't know and I haven't asked. I just pass along their promotions to you.
On Sunday, April 19th for one day only, my classic Grand Tour of the Solar System novel, Vacuum Flowers, will be on sale for $1.99 in Canada and the US.
Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark has a headful of stolen wetware, enemies that want her dead, and a Solar System full of colorful human and posthuman cultures that is far too small for her to hide in. She doesn't want to change everything. But she has no choice...
(Vacuum Flowers was written at the height of the Cyberpunk/Humanist wars and was meant to belong to neither camp. But I did throw in a short nod to each camp in the novel. Widely separated, of course.)
Here's their chart:
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504036504 | Vacuum Flowers | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Portalist NL | US | 2020-04-19 | 2020-04-19 | $1.99 |
| 9781504036504 | Vacuum Flowers | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Portalist NL | CA | 2020-04-19 | 2020-04-19 | $1.99 |
Immediately after, on Monday, April 20th, my short story collection, ,Tales of Old Earth, goes on sale in the US and Canada for $2.99.
Tales of Old Earth contains nineteen of my best and strangest stories, including two Hugo Award winners and I forget how many also-rans. Featuring a planet-sized grasshopper, the train to Hell, an amorous sphinx, the last elves in the world, a civilization inside an International Harvester refrigerator, and much, much more!
Here's the second chart:
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504036511 | Tales of Old Earth | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | US | 2020-04-20 | 2020-04-20 | $2.99 |
| 9781504036511 | Tales of Old Earth | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | CA | 2020-04-20 | 2020-04-20 | $2.99 |
Enjoy!
A Glorious Review of The Postmodern Adventures of Darger and Surplus
My Subterranean Press collection, The Postmodern Adventuers of Darger and Surplus, has received quite a splendid review for Locus by Gary K. Wolfe, which has now been posted on Locus Online. Darger and Surplus are, as you probably know, gentlemen grifters in the future civilization that rises from the ashes of our own, after a failed revolution by the Artificial Intelligences we are currently hard at work creating. Humanity mostly won that war and the demons and mad gods were banished to a subterranean infrastructure too widespread and well-defended to be rooted out. But, as a result, the mechanical sciences have languished while the biological ones thrive.
All this is spelled out in the review more entertainingly than I have put it here. I encourage you to read it.
Meanwhile, here's the pull-quote I'd grab from the review if I were the sort of person who did that sort of thing:
As those Hugo voters apparently recognized nearly 20 years ago, Darger and Surplus not only join the small company of SF’s classic rogues, but the world they occupy is as complex, detailed, and morally chaotic as we’ve come to expect from the best of Swanwick’s fiction.
You can find the review in its glorious entirety here. Or you can just go to locusmag.com and poke around. Bot Locus and Locus Online make for informative, enjoyable reading
And as long as you're there . . .
Like everything else, Locus is feeling the financial stress of the lockdown. If you can afford it, and if you, like me, value the publication, consider contributing a little toward its survival.
Zero Notebook 2: Caitlin
Here on the inside cover of the Zero Notebook is a first glimpse of Caitlin. It's a photograph of a young Russian doctor and, although it misrepresents Caitlin's ethnicity entirely, it does capture her innate seriousness. Added to which are birds in flight, because flight is in her nature, and a miniature of a painting by Lucian Freud. This last was included for its lack of glossy magazine glamor but also, with a touch of irony, because I knew that the novel would be going deep into Carl Jung territory.
And what, you ask, does it mean . . .?
It doesn't. The page is a first, fumbling-in-the-darkness attempt to find the heart and soul of the novel.
Above: Second image. Eight to go.
Zero Notebook 1: Cover
Look what I found!
Some time ago, I posted every page of the Image Notebook I created to help me imagine the world and people of Industrialized Faerie for The Iron Dragon's Mother. What I didn't mention was that it was actually the second such notebook I'd made. The first notebook I lost--forever, I thought. But as it turned out, it had been misfiled in my office.
This is why you should clean your workspace at least once a decade.
The Zero Notebook, as I think of it, was begun all the way back in 2009. I pasted images from magazines and newspapers into it, created collages, some of which I altered, sought inspiration from the uncanny but visualizable. The end result is something very close to (but not identical with) outsider art.
I'll spare you the bulk of the images. But starting today I'll be posting ten images from the notebook. One on each weekday when I don't have any other news to pass along. This is the first one: the notebook's cover.
And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?
The eye, of course, represents the eye of a dragon. It's slashed across the oval to create a zero. The dot to the lower right is meant to suggest that the glyph represents the letter Q., though, of course, not exactly. That's because I wasn't looking for Answers. Just Questions.
There are a few (not many) words in the notebook. Here's an entry I ran across that begins with (almost) the cover glyph:
Q. What does the Goddess want?
A. Wrong question.
All of the above carried through into the novel and became a major, if close to undetectable, theme. The Iron Dragon's Mother would have been a very different book if I had started it with a different image.
The crinkly stuff is wide transparent tape, used to seal the image onto the cover. If this notebook ever winds up in somebody's collection, that's going to be a major conservation issue. Not my problem.
Above: First image. Nine to go.
Classifying Books: Some Early Lessons Learned
Flushed with the feeling of success that comes from having cleaned my office to such a degree that the rugs are now visible, I thought today that I would take on the problem of excess books. Surely there are some I don't actually need. So I chose a shelf at near-random (it was one of those actually accessible without moving the boxes of books stacked before it to another location), and started going through both rows (the shelves are double-stacked, of course) to see what they contained.
Only to discover that the shelf was stocked with books placed there at seeming random. Mr. Evelyn's diary lies cheek-to-jowl with Gertrude Stein's Picasso. Jeff Danziger's Teed Tales abuts, appropriately enough, a history of Vermont. There is a collection of stories by T. Corgahesson Boyle, Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, a novel by Sean Stewart, and a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin. These last two, by the way, are misfiled since I have a science fiction section arranged almost alphabetically by author and a designated place for stacks of SF criticism and related essays. Which is where Gwyneth Jones' Joanna Russ should be as well.
Here's T. H. White's wonderful collection of mythical animals from medieval bestiaries, The Book of Beasts. The Return of Fursey! Mosses from an Old Manse. Flann O'Brien's The Best of Myles reappears from hiding; after I've obsessively reread it a few times, I'll have to hide it somewhere else among my books, if I'm ever to read anything else. Oh, but there's also John McPhee's The Pine Barrens, which some of us persist in thinking his best book. Though it has competition. And here is a battered but charming old hardcover of Charles Fort's The Book of the Damned. I have a biography of Fort around here somewhere, though I doubt I'll find it today. Some few of these I haven't read--Fishing from Earliest Times is one example, though I'm sure I'll get to it soon. But I've read every story in The Corrector of Destinies, Melville Davidson Post's extremely odd collection of detective fiction (sort of), and I'll have to blog about it here someday.
There are thirty shelves of books on one wall of my office and my first attack upon the one provided me with nothing to cull, And I've put aside a short stack of books to read or reacquaint myself with. Not have I done much to organize it--but wait! Here, just one shelf below is Damon Knight's Charles Fort. Up it goes, alongside The Book of the Damned, so nobody could say the last hour was wasted. Though it came close.
Nor was I able to impose a theme upon the shelf, other than Books I Am Delighted to Possess. But maybe that's enough.
In any case, it will have to do.
Above: For technical reasons, I'm having difficulty uploading a picture of the wall of books in my office. So here's a pic of part of the wall of books in my bedroom.
The Best (and Simplest!) Writing Advice You Will Ever Receive
Over on Facebook, Samuel R. Delany, answering a question in a post, offered the best and most succinct writing advice anyone has ever codified. Here, in its entirety, it is:
Writing advice: Read and reread. Think of a story you have never read but wish you had; then write it as carefully as you can. Finish it, and send it around till it's published.
The third sentence, as Chip noted at the time, was a condensation of advice that Robert A. Heinlein offered. So what you have above is the combined wisdom of two of the greatest careers science fiction has ever seen.
I could unpack that brief paragraph at enormous length. But, honestly, there's no need. You read it and you understood it. Now you only have to live it.
Above: The photo by James Hamilton was lifted from The Nation, where it illustrated a typically thoughtful and enlightened interview with Chip. You can find it here.
The Devil's Bestiary
Marianne Porter's nanopress imprint, Dragonstiars Press, has just announced its latest chapbook!
The Devil's Bestiary, a dark, brooding, and occasionally scabrous piece of fun composed by your truly, will be made available for purchase tomorrow, Thursday April 9, at noon Philadelphia Time (that's 4 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time) at the Dragonstairs Press website, www.dragonstairs.com.
But not a minute before then.
Here's the official announcement:
The Devil's Bestiary is Michael Swanwick's cynical,whimsical take on twenty nine creatures of myth and fables. It is 5 ½ inch square format, with an outer wrapper of hand-dyed kozo paper, hand-stitched, numbered, and signed by the author. It is published in a limited edition of 45, of which 40 are available for sale.
The signed and very limited edition chapbook will go for $12 in the USA and $14 elsewhere, postage included. (When I tell Marianne she's not charging enough, she just glares at me.) Which means that it will sell out pretty much immediately.
It's a lovely thing and I'm proud, as the content provider, to own a copy.
And rather than buy a pig in a poke with a blind horse . . .
Here are a couple of typical entries from The Devil's Bestiary:
Those, at the low-rez pic above, should tell you right away whether you need a copy or not.
Defamiliarizing Faerie
The Iron Dragon's Mother received a long, thoughtful, and positive review from Matt Hilliard in the March 30 issue of Strange Horizons. Rather than give you the usual pull-quote carefully excised from the corpus of the text, I thought I'd share with you one of Hilliard's observations:
That raises the question: what is Swanwick up to with this setting? If he wants to write fun faerie stories, why not just write about faeries the normal way? Or, since a valid way to describe this book is to say it’s “about a faerie fighter pilot, but it’s reallyabout living in a corrupt world and dealing with death,” why not just write about corruption and death in the real world where both can be found in abundance? To answer the second question, a common defense of genre fiction is that both fantasy and science fiction give us a different perspective on things that don’t change. They defamiliarize the world around us by situating us in the future or a past that never existed, and in doing so they can teach us things about humanity that we wouldn’t otherwise have known.
It’s been sixty-five years since J. R. R. Tolkien published The Fellowship of the Ring and spawned a host of imitators, and for most of Swanwick’s readers, fantasy has become deeply familiar. If it’s too familiar, it no longer defamiliarizes. What to do? Some authors, such as those of the New Weird, responded by moving away from Tolkien’s folklore influences, pushing into stranger territory. Swanwick has done the opposite, hewing closely to the peoples and monsters of folklore traditions from around the world (albeit with the occasional references to Tolkien himself, as with Caitlin’s brother, named Fingolfinrhod). But by mixing together elves and Gucci handbags, dwarves and cigarettes, or dragons and jet fighters, Swanwick continually shifts the context his reader must use. Whenever you find yourself getting comfortable, the novel suddenly sounds like this: “With the easy, racist phrasing of his class, her brother said, ‘Well, the kobold is in the henhouse now, to be sure’” (p. 289).Overall, the review is positive, the sort of thing that warms a writer's heart. Hilliard has some negative things to say along the way, but since they're based on a careful reading of the book I actually wrote, I don't see that I have any right to complain.
You can read the whole review here. Or go to Strange Horizons here and wander around, maybe read a story or two while you're there.
Above: Cleaning office, I came across the above photo of myself at age 23, when I was new to Philadelphia and determined to be a science fiction writer. It captures my mood then pretty well.
A Message From Chengdu
My friend Renne, who works for Science Fiction World in Chengdu, China, gave me permission to share the above video. It was made by the science fiction community in Chengdu. Here's what he says about it:
And sorrow returns, though we drown it with wine,
Since the world can in no way conform to our desires,
Tomorrow I will let down my hair and go fishing.
The Mysteries of the Faceless King
Coming soon from PS Publishing is The Mysteries of the Faceless King, the first of two volumes collecting the best of Darrell Schweitzer's short fiction. Beautifully made, with a cover by the estimable Jason Van Hollander.
Also, an introduction by (cough) me. Here's how that begins:
Once upon a time . . .None of the stories collected herein begin with those words, though some come close. But they might as well. For Darrell Schweitzer writes a very traditional sort of story. His fiction is almost always fantasy, which is a mode nested deep in the roots of Story; usually horror, a mode as old as nightmares; and very often weird fantasy, a much more recent mode but one that is dear to his heart. Most could have been written a hundred years ago—or, with equal ease, a hundred years in the future. This is not a criticism. Timelessness is precisely what he is after.
PS Publishing has posted the entirety of the introduction online, preparatory to publication of the book sometime this month. So if you're curious as to what I said, you have only two options. You can buy the book. Or you can read the intro online for free.
But if you don't buy the book, you won't get the stories. You're in a quandary.
You can find the entire introductory essay here. Or you can just go to the PS Publishing website and wander about, marveling at how many of their books you want by clicking here.
And I should remind you . . .
The ebook of The Iron Dragon's Daughter, the first of three stand-alone fantasies in the Iron Dragons Trilogy, goes on sale tomorrow (Wednesday, April 1, 2020) for the one day only for only $1.99. That's a good deal. But only tomorrow and only in Canada and the US.
Didn't We Just Do This?
And the answer is: Yes, we did. Last week. But Open Road Media is putting The Iron Dragon's Daughter on e-sale again. $1.99 on this Wednesday, April 1, only. I don't have to tell you what holiday that is. But apparently they really mean it.
I expect most people who read this blog and wanted an e-copy of that book got one during last week's sale. But I publicize the event for two reasons:
1) Writers should always be as cooperative to their publishers as they can stand being.
2) Maybe the reason for this promotion is that they're putting a lot of books on sale at once.
If you're an ebook reader, you might want to look into the second possibility. Or maybe subscribe to one of the newsletters below.
Here's the e-letter they sent me, with all the boilerplate:
Dear Michael Swanwick,
We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Portalist NL | US | 2020-04-01 | 2020-04-01 | $1.99 |
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Portalist NL | CA | 2020-04-01 | 2020-04-01 | $1.99 |
Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.
| Newsletter | Link |
|---|---|
| Early Bird Books | Subscribe Now |
| The Lineup | Subscribe Now |
| The Portalist | Subscribe Now |
| Murder & Mayhem | Subscribe Now |
| A Love So True | Subscribe Now |
| The Archive | Subscribe Now |
| The Reader | Subscribe Now |
Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!
Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team
The Iron Dragon's Daughter #-Book Sale TODAY ONLY!
Just a reminder that people in Canada and the US can buy an e-book of The Iron Dragon's Mother, the first book of my stand-alone fantasy trilogy for only $1.99 today. Tomorrow will be too late:
Here's the boilerplate:
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | US | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | CA | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.
| Newsletter | Link |
|---|---|
| Early Bird Books | Subscribe Now |
| The Lineup | Subscribe Now |
| The Portalist | Subscribe Now |
| Murder & Mayhem | Subscribe Now |
| A Love So True | Subscribe Now |
| The Archive | Subscribe Now |
| The Reader | Subscribe Now |
The Iron Dragon's Daughter E-Book Only $1.99--MONDAY ONLY!
More than a quarter-century ago, I was driving to Pittsburgh, with my wife, Marianne Porter, and we were talking about fantasy and about steam locomotives. I made a joke about the Baldwin Steam Dragon Works and Marianne laughed. Then, another mile or so down the road, I said, "Write that down, please."
Thus was born the Iron Dragons Trilogy, a trio of stand-alone books, the third of which, The Iron Dragon's Mother, was published just last year.
Far more recently, just an hour or so ago, I got an email from my associates at Open Road Media, telling me that The Iron Dragon's Mother, first of the three, will be on sale for $1.99 this coming Monday, March 23.
That's one day only BUT this time the sale includes Canada. Which I am very grateful for because the Canadian science fiction community has always been very warm and kind to me.
Anyway, here's the boilerplate below, cut-and-pasted from the corporate email:
We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | US | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | CA | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.
| Newsletter | Link |
|---|---|
| Early Bird Books | Subscribe Now |
| The Lineup | Subscribe Now |
| The Portalist | Subscribe Now |
| Murder & Mayhem | Subscribe Now |
| A Love So True | Subscribe Now |
| The Archive | Subscribe Now |
| The Reader | Subscribe Now |
So if you (1) read e-books, (2) don't own a copy of The Iron Dragon's Daughter, and (3) would like to... well, here's your opportunity to do it on the cheap.
Hollywood and Brine
One thing is getting to Hollywood; the other is staying here. You can’t just stay here in the hopes of becoming a celebrity and take a job at a bank or some other menial office job in the Valley. Heaven forbid.