| June 11, 2012
Comments Off on Books, Books, Books!

Books, Books, Books!

My big book haul from Balticon

Ah, books, books! Can’t get enough of ‘em. Running out of room for them, of course, but I’ve never let that stop me before.

One of the appealing aspects of Balticon (and there were many) was the large number and variety of new and used books dealers in the dealers’ room. I picked up some real finds. Looks like I’ve got my reading all lined up for the long, hot summer.

My most unusual and rare find was Far Future Calling, a collection of short fiction by Olaf Stapledon, edited by Sam Moskowitz, featuring a seventy page biography of the writer written by Moskowitz. I hadn’t even known this volume existed. I’m a sucker for any Moskowitz-written nonfiction about science fiction or fantasy, and this volume will make a handsome companion to another book I picked up earlier this year in San Francisco, a collection of Stapledon’s non-fiction and less well-known fiction put out by Syracuse University Press.

I also found a pair of older paperbacks by Theodore Sturgeon, a late-1950s paperback of his short stories put out in an unusually compact format, Aliens 4 (notice how petite it is next to the standard-size mass market paperbacks flanking it), as well as his notable vampire novel, Some of Your Blood, which I’ve been looking forward to reading for years now. Interestingly, the cover of this late-1960s edition advertises the book as Sturgeon’s first “straight crime novel.” Yet I’ve always seen it described as vampire fiction. Perhaps it is about a non-supernatural vampire, like the protagonist of one of George Romero’s early horror films, Martin (1976)?

I was very pleased to find a beautifully designed first edition paperback of Avram Davidson’s initial collection of stories, Or All the Seas With Oysters. Davidson’s short fiction has always been held in high regard, but thus far I’ve only sampled it in small doses. So I’m looking forward to delving into this collection of his early work. I’m also looking forward to diving into a huge collection of Alan Moore’s Supreme stories, Supreme: The Story of the Year. I’ve been perusing that book in stores for a long time now, but have never gone ahead and bought it because of its high price (for a trade paperback). But I finally found a very reasonably priced used copy, so now it is mine, all mine. I have no attachment for the character of Supreme or for Supreme’s world, but what Moore has done with this series of stories is very similar to what he did with Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? — i.e., present a loving, nuanced, affectionate, and very funny tribute to the Superman stories of the Silver Age. Great stuff! The “Silver Age Suprema” stories (which are actually Silver Age Supergirl stories) are worth the price of admission all by themselves. I found a copy of Barry N. Malzberg’s final science fiction novel, The Remaking of Sigmund Freud and bought it even though I had a duplicate at home; but I couldn’t pass up a Malzberg book for a buck, and I can always give my second copy away as a gift (or offer it as a prize for a lucky reader of this website, once I come up with a suitable contest).

Philip Jose Farmer's two "pornos" from the late 1960s

The last book I purchased at Balticon was Philip Jose Farmer’s Traitor to the Living, his third and final novel featuring protagonist Herald Childe, a private eye who sticks his nose into matters cosmic and otherworldly. Traitor to the Living was a departure from the first two books in the series in that it was not sexually explicit. The first two, Image of the Beast and Blown, were written for Essex House, a short-lived, Los Angeles-based publisher of “literary erotica” (or high-toned smut). Apparently, neither of these two novels (nor others from authors such as Charles Bukowski) was well received by the “spank the monkey” readership, because Essex House did not stay in business for very long. Whatever their failings as pornography (thus far, I have gotten around to reading Image of the Beast, and while it is intermittently titillating, it would not be my first choice for nocturnal emissions stimuli), the books must be regarded as minor classics of the erotic horror genre, precursors to the entire sub-industry of paranormal romance. I bought my copies from Awesome Books, a British mail-order firm which maintains an inventory of over two million used books and which offers free shipping to the U.S. when at least two titles are purchased (a great deal, even if one’s order typically takes three weeks to arrive). I’ve recently become a regular customer of theirs, since it is great fun to be able to shop British editions which aren’t typically found in American used book shops, as well as books by British authors who aren’t well published in the States, such as Christopher Priest. The Image of the Beast and Blown, for example, despite being set in Los Angeles, are peppered with British usages in the editions I bought, such as “kerb” for “curb,” “funny house” for “fun house,” and “chutey chute” for… well, I’m not certain what Farmer’s original word choice would have been (chute slide, perhaps?).

All four of Moorcock's Cornelius novels

I’ve also bought a good bit of non-pornographic Philip Jose Farmer from Awesome Books, including The Book of Philip Jose Farmer, Venus on the Half-Shell (written under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout… subject of an upcoming review), and A Feast Unknown (which apparently features a semi-pornographic apocalyptic battle between Farmer’s versions of Tarzan and Doc Savage, something which I’m sure only makes whatever sense it does in the original prose, not any pale summation). Some of the books I’m most looking forward to delving into are the Cornelius Quartet novels of Michael Moorcock, who in the mid-1960s boldly strode through the doorways Philip Jose Farmer had begun flinging open a decade earlier. I recently watched Antonioni’s paean to Swinging London, Blow-Up, and it whetted my appetite for Moorcock’s science fictional version of the London of the late 1960s.

Watch this space for many reviews to come!

Category: Book Love, Conventions and Fandom |
| June 8, 2012
2 comments

Another Ex-Celebrity Fall From Grace Story… That Isn’t One

I don’t generally go in for the commonplace Schadenfreude of lapping up accounts of celebrities’ falls from grace, either into alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, poverty, or gross obesity (well, okay, you’ve got me on that last one… I simply can’t pass up a good National Enquirer spread on the spreading middles, thighs, and bottoms of the formerly stick-thin celebrity class; but that’s just one of my little things, as any reader of Fat White Vampire Blues would recognize). I’ve mostly avoided following the saga of Charlie Sheen’s meltdowns, and the Winona Ryders (shoplifting), Hugh Grants (hookers), Mel Gibsons (alcoholism, girlfriend abuse, anti-Semitism), and Mackenzie Phillipses (the kitchen sink) of the world don’t tend to grab my interest (unless they get fat).

However, a couple of days ago, one such story of a former celebrity’s descent from the heights to a supposed hell did catch my eye (and it had nothing to do with significant weight gain). The New York Post’s somewhat infamous Page Six picked up on a National Enquirer story about one of the stars of the hit 1970s and 1980s sitcom Happy Days:

“These are not ‘Happy Days’ for Joanie Cunningham actress Erin Moran.

“She’s broke, living in an Indiana trailer park and looking haggard well beyond her 51 years, according to the National Enquirer.

“Moran and husband Steve Fleischmann, 45, are reportedly living hand-to-mouth at the Berkshire Pointe Mobile Home Park in New Salisbury, Ind., where they’re said to be caring for his ailing mom.

“It’s a long fall for the actress, best known as Ron Howard’s wisecracking little sister on one of America’s most beloved sitcoms.

“She appeared in 236 episodes of Happy Days between 1974 and 1984 before doing her short-lived spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi.” …

The reason this story caught my eye was that I once knew the mother of one of Erin Moran’s costars on Happy Days. Lynda Goodfriend played Lori Beth Allen, Richie Cunningham’s girlfriend and later his wife on the show. Lynda’s mother, Mrs. Goodfriend, was the school librarian at Thomas Jefferson Junior High, where I attended seventh through ninth grades from 1976 through 1979. Being a book lover (and wanting to stay as far away as possible from members of the school’s large community of thugs and bullies), I spent a lot of time in the library and got to talk with Mrs. Goodfriend quite a bit. Her daughter joined the cast of Happy Days in 1977, when I was in eighth grade. Mrs. Goodfriend spoke with enormous pride about her daughter, not so much because she had joined the cast of TV’s most popular sitcom, but because she had managed to beat the odds – she was making a living from the arts, a field where so many thousands strived but so few earned any money at all. I’ll always be grateful to Mrs. Goodfriend, who lived up to her name for me and provided a safe haven at a school where I felt hunted and harassed.

So that’s why I bothered clicking on the link to the story about Erin Moran. But there was more to the story than the typical “actress gets older, falls from favor, can’t find work, loses home in foreclosure, ends up living in a trailer park” narrative. There was this:

“Despite these tough times, pals admire Moran’s dedication to her sick mother-in-law.

“’She and Steve moved in with his ailing mother at the trailer park a few weeks back. Erin is like an angel to her mother-in-law. She cooks and cleans for her and takes care of her personal hygiene,’ the family pal observed.”

The story goes on, in tabloid fashion, to obsess on Erin Moran’s prematurely aged appearance and the great gap in her lifestyles between her pinnacle as the young star of a hit TV sitcom and her supposed nadir in the trailer park. It doesn’t quote a word from Erin Moran herself.

And that made me wonder: what if Erin Moran is happy doing what she’s doing now? What if she finds caring for her ailing mother-in-law rewarding? Perhaps the writer didn’t obtain any quotes from Erin herself because what she would have said would have ruined the story’s conventional narrative?

I worked fifteen years for the Louisiana Office of Public Health. One of the administrative assistants in my office was an older woman named Mary. She had worked for the State of Louisiana for more than thirty-five years. When I met her, she was in her fifties, but she looked a good fifteen to twenty years older. She was gruff and initially off-putting, but she had a wicked sense of humor, and she got to be one of my favorite coworkers (she was very popular in the office, always helpful and cheerful). After having worked with her for a few years, she shared a little bit about her personal life with me. She had lost her husband a number of years before, and virtually all of her time at home was taken up with caring for her son, who was both mentally retarded and profoundly handicapped, confined to either bed or a wheelchair. She never complained about this; the stories she chose to share were about the laughs she shared with her son and the ways he found to show his love for her.

I remember, as a young guy in my mid-twenties, feeling sorry for her. Her life seemed to me to be a cage that she couldn’t escape. I thought she’d been dealt a truly devastating hand of cards. I admired her toughness, though, and wondered if I’d ever be able to show the same strength and resilience in a similar situation.

From the perspective of an older, more experienced person, now I can see that Mary had a choice of how to view herself, and I suspect her choice made all the difference for her. She could have chosen to see herself as a victim of fate and circumstances. Had she done so, she would have been a much different woman than the one I and my other coworkers knew; she probably would have become an alcoholic or perhaps a suicide. However, Mary was a religious woman, a Catholic. I believe she chose to see herself as a vessel of God’s loving-kindness, and she chose to focus on whatever evidence she could see of God’s design in the relationship between herself and her son. Yes, her life was hard; one look at the wrinkles on her face told you that. But she plumbed meaning from her life’s hardships and treasured the smallest glints of joy her son could provide. That sustained her.

Our culture used to routinely celebrate people like Mary and the quotidian sacrifices they made. Now I’m afraid we tend to view them more as unfortunates, as victims, as people to be pitied and perhaps assisted through expansions of government programs.

I wonder whether Erin Moran, former TV star, is a woman like my old coworker Mary. If she is, there is a far, far richer story there for a journalist to tell than the “rise and fall” celebrity narrative we’ve come to know so well.

But I suppose that kind of a story wouldn’t be appropriate for Page Six.

Category: Miscellaneous Musings, Slices of Life |
| June 6, 2012
2 comments

Farewell to My Friend, Ray Bradbury

My friend, Ray Bradbury, is now roaming the wind-swept midway of the Dark Carnival. He passed away at the age of 91 in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 5, following what his publisher described as a long illness.

No, I never met Ray, apart from having had the pleasure of hearing him speak a couple of times (once at Tulane University in New Orleans, the second time at Comic Con International). Nor did I ever correspond with him. But I count him as a friend, as well as an influence and an inspiration.

One of the first science fiction books I ever asked for was Ray’s A Medicine for Melancholy. My father bought it for me at a newsstand/cigar store when I was in fifth grade, the day before I was due to get on a bus for my first-ever overnight trip away from my parents and home, a school-sponsored outing to Sea Camp down in the Florida Keys. The bus ride from North Miami Beach down to the Keys would take between two and three hours, and my father wanted me to have something to read on the journey. I picked out the Ballantine Books paperback because the collage of images on its front cover included a dinosaur. At that point, I didn’t know who Ray Bradbury was; I just wanted to read a book that had a dinosaur in it. No particular story of the twenty-two stories I read during those hours on the bus springs to mind; rather, what I recall from those hours I spent thirty-seven years ago is a sense of enchantment, of being gently drawn into a whole new universe of words and colors and textures, very much unlike anything I had read previously. The welcoming strangeness of the stories in the book was undoubtedly reinforced by the happy strangeness of Sea Camp, a place where the red (not pink) lemonade was tart to the point of harshness and one could walk precariously atop a giant ring of stones surrounding a shark pool, an artificial inlet connected to the ocean by a wire mesh gate.

I bought other Ray Bradbury story collections, including The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Machineries of Joy, and R is for Rocket. I read The Illustrated Man and Dandelion Wine. The two Bradbury books which left the strongest imprints on me during the years between my tenth and thirteenth birthdays were The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. I remember that what impressed me so strongly about The Martian Chronicles was that story cycle’s pervading sense of yearning, nostalgia, and ultimate pangs of loss for the Martian culture which was so blithely superseded and discarded. One of the Martian stories (which had also appeared in A Medicine for Melancholy), “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed,” is the only story (apart from Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon,” which devastated me) that I remember from my seventh grade literature sampler. Being on the cusp of the cascade of adolescent physical changes when I read it, “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed,” being all about a young family of Earth people on Mars gradually, unconsciously transmogrifying into beautiful Martians sent quivers, both emotional and physical, all throughout my own transmogrifying self.

(By the way, isn’t it interesting that the only two stories I can remember from my seventh grade literature sampler, which was mostly filled with capital “L” Literary short stories, are both science fiction tales from the 1940s and 1950s? I wonder what percentage of one-time junior high school students would report the same? I suspect many would.)

I think I read Fahrenheit 451 and saw Francois Truffaut’s 1966 film adaptation within a few months of each other (the Truffaut film most likely as part of my local CBS affiliate’s “Science Fiction Thriller Week” of afternoon movies). I’m pretty sure I saw the movie first, which then sent me looking for a used copy of the book. The film had much the same effect upon me as reading A Medicine for Melancholy had – a thrilling immersion into a world of not-unwelcome strangeness, although the Truffaut film certainly struck me as more menacing and dark than any of the stories I had read in the Bradbury collection. I do recall thinking, after having read the original book, that it was rather weak sauce after the experience of the film. I don’t think that Ray would have minded hearing my opinion too much; after all, he has said that Truffaut’s film was his favorite of the many film and television adaptations which have been made from his work. And who can argue about the memorability of Truffaut’s images and visualizations of Bradbury’s words, the fire trucks, the firemen’s uniforms, that haunting suburban landscape, and the hypnotic fires themselves?

Twenty-seven or twenty-eight years after I read Fahrenheit 451 and first saw the movie version, I wrote my own novel-length homage to the book and the film, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, which has been described as “Fahrenheit 451 for the fast food industry.” I originally wanted to entitle the book just Calorie 3501 (3500 being the number of calories which, if consumed and not expended, adds one pound of fat to the human body). My publisher, Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications, wanted a title that reflected Bradbury’s title for the original novella-length version of his book-burning tale, “The Fireman” (published in the February, 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction); he wanted to call it The Good Humor Man. We ended up compromising with the combined title, which, although a bit clunky, sort of satisfied both of us (and which doubly reinforces the connection with Ray Bradbury’s original works).

Another aspect of Ray Bradbury, apart from his writings (although certainly affecting his writings), has always enormously impressed me. He was a genuinely happy man, and he was never loathe to express this to his public. He loved his childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, and frequently referenced it in his fiction, but he loved being an adult, too. My former rabbi in New Orleans, David Bockman, grew up in Los Angeles in a house just up the street from Ray Bradbury’s house. David told stories about how his famous neighbor would throw huge Halloween parties for the neighborhood’s children each year, and how gracious Ray always was. Bradbury’s public talks and published interviews often repeated the same anecdotes, but they were invariably happy anecdotes, about writing Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter at the public library that he rented for ten cents an hour, or about his childhood encounter with Mr. Electro on a carnival midway sideshow, the encounter he credits with turning his imagination toward the fantastic. Ray was also a devoted friend, cherishing his boyhood friendships with Ray Harryhausen and Forry Ackerman throughout his life and always supporting them however he could.

Ray’s death leaves only Frederik Pohl as a living representative of that fabulous generation of science fiction writers who began as fans in the 1930s and turned pro in the early 1940s. In recent years, we’ve lost Jack Williamson (from an older generation still) and Philip Klass (who was three months older than Ray, whose birthdate was August 22, 1920). Ray’s contemporaries, writers of science fiction’s Golden Age, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and A. E. van Vogt, departed Earth many years before he did.

Ray, I will miss you very much. As will hundreds of thousands of your readers. In my mind’s ear, I can hear your fog horn and lonesome dinosaur both bellowing their grief.

Category: Book Love, Science Fiction | Tags:
| May 30, 2012
2 comments

Poof! Instant Story (Almost)

Story prompting items from The Mysterious Bag o' Stuff

This past weekend, my family and I attended our first Balticon. We all had a terrific time; this convention goes high on our list of “not to be missed” cons (a more detailed tale of our adventures will follow in the next day or two). My first event of the weekend, at 2 pm on Saturday, was moderating a panel/writing event called “A Cthulhu Out of the Hat.” Here is the description from the program booklet:

A Cthulhu Out of the Hat
Writing Prompts for the Deranged, panelists and audience write
science fiction stories based on the items pulled out of a hat.
Panelists will read their stories at the end, audience members
will share their resulting stories at 11 PM on Sunday (Salon B).
(M): Andrew Fox, (S): Larry A. Reclusado, Gabe Fremuth, Cindy
Young-Turner, Hildy Silverman, Brandon (Brand) Gamblin

The ground rules laid out for me looked pretty sketchy – did the stories need to center around the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, or could they be any sort of SF or fantasy? Where did the objects come from, the audience or the moderator? How many objects would each participant have to choose from?

Well, that was okay; I never mind making up my own rules. Before the gang and I left our house Saturday morning to head for Baltimore, I grabbed a Food Lion plastic bag and scooped five handfuls of the boys’ toys (and pieces of toys) from our living room table (which has become an extension of their toy box). I decided I’d have each participant (including me) choose three objects at random, then spend twenty-five minutes writing a science fiction or fantasy story featuring at least two of the three items. I’d invite audience members to write stories either utilizing any of the trios of items selected by the panelists or mixing and matching from any of the items pulled out of the bag.

Even though I didn’t require it, the majority of the panelists and participating audience members opted to give their stories a Lovecraftian tint. Three of my fellow panelists completed their stories within the twenty-five minute time limit and presented their stories; the fourth managed to reach his final line a few minutes before we had to vacate the premises, so he had just enough time to read it out loud.

I was the tortoise among this pack of hares. I still had about a third of my story to write at the time I sounded the buzzer and the first panelist began reading aloud, so I cannot claim to have written the following story in twenty-five minutes (forty minutes is closer to the truth). My three objects were: a quart-sized Ziplock bag with the number 9 written on it with magic marker; a small plastic flute; and a pair of plastic construction disks that fitted together sort of like a snowflake.

****************************************************

The Bag of Nine

Simon Pasquali, apprentice mage, had reached the day of his graduation. His Mage Superior, Master Onion – spelled like the vegetable, but pronounced On-YONE – handed him the Bag of Power. This bag contained nine potential magic talismans, one of which would have to serve Simon as his primary source of power for the remainder of his magical career.

“Choose wisely, apprentice,” Master Onion said. “You may only choose one item, and you may not go back on your choice. I am not permitted to tell you beforehand what abilities each of these objects may give you. In fact, I myself do not fully know. Some of them may grant awesome power which you will be able to use to serve humanity well. Others may corrupt your soul and urge you toward evil. Still others may offer you little whatsoever in the way of magical resources. However, know this – there is one object of power in this bag of nine which will allow you to properly and safely use all and each of the other eight. Choosing this talisman will permit you to become the mightiest mage of us all.”

Simon felt a trembling which reached all the way from his jaw through the pit of his stomach and down to the soles of his feet. He knew the next sixty or seventy years of his life depended upon the choice he would make today.

The first object he drew forth from the bag was an ordinary-looking coin. The second was a magnifying glass. The third was a tiny toy flute. The fourth was a dagger with a hilt of finely engraved gold. The fifth was a wheel of six inches in diameter, pierced by an axle made of iron. The sixth was a dragonfly caught in a chunk of amber. The seventh was a hat made of plain, rough cloth. The eighth was a marble made of glass which contained a double helix made from a mysterious substance which Simon could not identify. And the final potential talisman, the ninth, was a snowflake which did not melt.

Simon spread these nine objects before him on the Table of Choosing. Which to select? It seemed easiest to rule out certain items first. The coin – wouldn’t unlimited wealth, if that was what this promised, corrupt him? The same for the dagger – it promised to draw him into a life of ceaseless violence. The dragonfly in amber frightened him; its magic might cause the dragonfly to escape the amber and grow to tremendous size, perhaps to devour him.

The other objects seemed less obviously threatening, and offered potential magicks of great appeal or practicality. The unmelting snowflake seemed to offer the promise of control of the weather. The wheel might enable him to travel effortlessly. He could think of no possible downside to the hat – at the least, it would protect him from the elements, and it might even offer the ability to change his appearance or identity. The magnifying glass would ensure he would never be without a fire, and it might expand a small, meager meal, all that he could afford, into a banquet whenever his stomach demanded.

The marble fascinated him. But he had no notion what the double helix contained within it might mean. And the flute? It was a child’s toy.

“Choose, apprentice,” Master Onion commanded.

As if drawn by a powerful will not its own, his hand lingered above the marble.

“Choose!” Master Onion thundered.

Suddenly afraid of being overpowered by a force he neither understood nor felt a sympathy for, Simon pulled his hand away from the marble and grabbed the flute.

Master Onion looked upon his former apprentice pityingly. “Now you are apprentice no longer,” he said. “You have chosen the one tool you will depend upon for the remainder of your life. The talisman you have chosen is lacking in native power, but it is a seductive companion, one which will make great demands on your time and patience.”

“The marble would have given me command of all the talismans, wouldn’t it have?” Simon asked.

“Yes, it would have,” the Master said.

“Then I am glad I did not select it,” Simon said. “One man should not hold so much concentrated power.”

“I must tell you now,” Master Onion said, “the flute holds very little magic of its own. Any magic which flows forth from it will have to come from you.”

“I will learn to play it,” Simon answered, feeling his confidence grow. “A man who can make music is a man who can earn friends through the gift of pleasure. And a man who can make friends that way exercises the most potent magic of all.”

Category: Conventions and Fandom, Horror and Fantasy |
| May 26, 2012
2 comments

The Good Humor Man Back in the Kindle Store!

Hoo-ray!!! I just got word from the wonderful Jill Roberts at Tachyon Publications that all of their books have been returned to Amazon’s Kindle store. That means The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501 is once again easily available for those of you who do your reading on a Kindle device. Here is Jill’s announcement:

“We’re pleased to report that, as of this weekend, our Kindle e-books will be available through Amazon again. Our e-books in all formats continue to be available on our website and through Weightless Books.

“We don’t have the details of the agreement, but we hope that IPG’s stand will have an ongoing positive effect throughout the publishing community, particularly as future negotiations with Amazon transpire.
IPG made this statement to its client publishers (excerpted):

“‘[We] can’t thank you enough for your input, support, patience, sacrifice, and loyalty over the last few months…. IPG and our publishers also received a tremendous amount of support from much of the rest of the industry, for which we will be forever grateful. I feel that the experience has clarified some things for us and our clients, and that now we are all even better equipped to navigate through this rapidly changing industry.’

“To all of you as well — thank you for your ongoing support as we continue to save the world one good book at a time. See you in the future.”

Category: Book Love, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags:
| May 25, 2012
Comments Off on Happy 9th Anniversary to My Wonderful Wife!

Happy 9th Anniversary to My Wonderful Wife!

Dara and Priscilla

Nine years ago today, Dara Lorn Levinson and I stood under the chupa together at Congregation Shir Chadash in Metairie, Louisiana. And what a nine years we’ve had together since! It’s been a real adventure. We’ve had three marvelous boys together, with all that has entailed – worrying about their health, taking them to the hospital (not too often, thank God), doing our best to help with their speech delays (now none of them ever stay quiet), encouraging them in their interests, trying to ensure they attend good schools, and getting them to go to sleep each night at a somewhat reasonable hour (more often than not sharing a bed with at least one of them, if not all three). We’ve seen our daughter Natalie through her roller coaster ups and downs and have been so very proud of her as she has made a brave adjustment to life on her own. We’ve gone through Hurricane Katrina and being “exiled” from home for two months, had our nerves frayed by the loss of Dara’s job and my chore of having to find new ones, and made the big jump from New Orleans to Northern Virginia when circumstances told us we had to. We’ve adopted a few cats (sometimes inadvertently) and buried a few others. We’ve enjoyed the seasons when I had books published and endured the seasons when I’ve been frustrated by a lack of publishing. We’ve suffered through stomach flus and head colds and high blood pressure and bouts of carpel tunnel syndrome together, doing our best to keep each other cheerful.

Nearly twelve years ago, we “met cute” on the Internet – I was fed up with JDate.com, frustrated by a lack of responses, and had decided to let my paid membership lapse; Dara had just joined. On my final day of eligibility, I decided to do one last search, just for the heck of it. I came across Dara’s self-description, so new that she hadn’t yet had time to upload a photo of herself. It wasn’t a glowing self-description, I remember. It was honest and down-to-earth and pretty funny. Something about it really appealed to me, so, hours before my membership would expire, I fired off a JDate invitation to her, asking her to look at my profile and email me. She didn’t take long at all to get back to me. We had our first date the night before Halloween at Kim Son Vietnamese Restaurant in Gretna, Louisiana. Dara later told me she knew from the start that she wanted to hang onto me. Having been through a shattering divorce just three years earlier, I was extremely cautious. But she persevered, never losing faith that I would come around to seeing things her way, sooner or later.

Honey, you were right! Thank you so much for never giving up. You are the heart of our family. The boys and I would be lost at sea without you; we’d be Gilligan and Skipper and the Professor and the Millionaire without Ginger or Mary Ann. These past nine years have been the best I’ve ever had.

swimming pool at Memphis' Heartbreak Hotel, site of our first trip together

Category: Slices of Life, Stuff I Like |
| May 24, 2012
Comments Off on Heading Off to Balticon

Heading Off to Balticon

Dara, the boys, and I are heading off to Balticon this weekend. We’ll be there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. This will be our first Balticon, and we’re really looking forward to it.

The Balticon 46 hotel is the Marriott Hunt Valley Inn, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031 (Phone: 410-785-7000). The at-the-door rates are $62/$31 (adult/child 6-12) for the full weekend, and daily rates range from a high of $44/$22 for Saturday to a low of $17/$9 for Monday.

Here is my line-up of programming. There is also a ton of kids programming at this convention, so Levi, Asher, and Judah should not get bored.

Saturday, 2:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Salon B)
A Cthulhu Out of the Hat
Writing Prompts for the Deranged, panelists and audience write
science fiction stories based on the items pulled out of a hat.
Panelists will read their stories at the end, audience members
will share their resulting stories at 11 PM on Sunday (Salon B).
(M): Andrew Fox, (S): Larry A. Reclusado, Gabe Fremuth, Cindy
Young-Turner, Hildy Silverman, Brandon (Brand) Gamblin

Saturday, 5:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Salon A)
Readers Ask Why
A changing panel of authors is on the hot seat as their fans ask
why their characters behave as they do, why the author chose
this sort of magic instead of another, why the world a book is
set in has certain dominant properties/elements. Once a panelist
(or moderator) answers a question, they’ll swap seats
with a panelist waiting in the first row to replace them. Audience
members who take over 30 seconds to ask their question
will get buzzed and must sit down and shut up with their question
unanswered! Panelists who take more than 2-1/2 minutes
to answer a question must take the moderator role and can
only answer another question after all the panelists at the table
when they took the moderator seat have swapped out. Oh!
And one more thing: Panelists who write SF/Fantasy/Horror
under more than one name can swap in again under their other
pen name IF they — literally — wear a different hat.
Starting Out: Moderator: Catherine A. Asaro; Panelists: John G.
Hemry, John C. Wright, Danny Birt, Steven H. Wilson
Panelists swapping in: Andrew Fox, Chuck Gannon, Nathan O.
Lowell, Janine K. Spendlove

Sunday, 9:00 am, (50 minutes) (Parlor 1041)
The Technology of Steampunk
A Roundtable Discussion. What does and doesn’t fit into a
steampunk world? How does the setting shape technology and
how people relate to it?
(M): Emilie P. Bush, (S): Elektra Hammond, Rebecca K. Davis,
Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Bernie Mojzes, C.J .Henderson, Andrew
Fox

Sunday, 5:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Parlor 304)
Philip K. Dick — Hollywood’s Favorite Author
A LOT of Phillip K. Dick’s work has ended up on the silver screen.
Panelists discuss what makes his work so Hollywood-sympatico
and talk about the ones that were great, not so great and, well,
blaghhh!
(M): D. Douglas Fratz, (S): Billy Flynn, Andrew Fox, Bernie Mojzes,
Daniel M. Kimmel, Marty Gear, Richard Allen Leider

Sunday, 7:00 pm, (1 Hour) (Maryland Foyer)
Autographing: David Allen Batchelor, Andrew Fox and
Veronica R. Giguere

Sunday, 10:00 pm (50 Minutes) Belmont Room
You Got Your Horror in My Fantasy!
Psychological horror as fantasy exploration. Panelists discuss
what they like and dislike about and what they think does and
does not work with this blending of sub-genres.
(M): Paul Elard Cooley, (S): Andrew Fox, S. Phil Giunta, Richard
Allen Leider, T. C. McCarthy

Monday 10:00 am (50 minutes) (Salon B)
The First Fast Food Joint on Epsilon V
What parts of our culture will we bring with us to the far
reaches of the galaxy and beyond? As we spread our wings
to the stars, what parts of our culture will journey with us?
What institutions and traditions will we carry to new worlds?
Will those cultural trappings be American or other? Or are our
cultural trappings tied to our current world and will we travel
outward without them?
(M): Andrew Fox, (S): Jody Lynn Nye (Guest of Honor),Noam R.
Izenberg, Patrick Scaffido, James Maxey

Monday, 11:00 am, (50 minutes) (Salon B)
Sci Fi In Comic Books Revisited
What is the relation of science fiction to comics? How have
the concepts been used? What shows’ plot points have been
adapted to comics and vice versa?
(M): Larry A. Reclusado, (S): Wayne Arthur Hall, Rebecca K.
Davis, Andrew Fox, Ray Ridenour

Monday, 1:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Pimlico)
Readings: Andrew Fox and Georgiana Lee

I hope to see some of you there!

Category: Conventions and Fandom |
| May 23, 2012
One comment

Sad Prediction: They’re Going to Ruin On the Road

It’s generally not a good practice, I’ll admit, to slam a movie before you’ve seen it. It’s unfair to the filmmakers, and it’s typically a lazy response on the part of the “reviewer.” However, I’m making an exception in this one case. And I promise to revisit this post and my opinion once I have actually seen the film (although I’ll probably wait to get it on Netflix).

The film in question is Brazilian director Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I’ve been waiting a quarter century for this book to finally hit the screen. Lots and lots of folks have been waiting a good deal longer than that. So I was a happy lad indeed this morning when I read this headline on Google News:

Kerouac’s On the Road Hits Screen in Cannes Debut

I grew progressively unhappier as I read through the article, though. Walter Salles is best known for an earlier “road movie” he directed, The Motorcycle Diaries. Generally well received by critics for its acting and cinematography, this was a hagiographic portrait of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s youthful, pre-revolutionary days. Okay… given that this film was pretty much a Valentine to the cult of a charismatic man who went on to help establish an oppressive dictatorship and police state, I figured that Salles is a man of the hard left; not an unusual status for a film maker. His cinematic chops appeared to be in order, however, particularly for a story such as On the Road‘s, which calls for a deft hand with montage. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, to hope that he would accurately reflect the novel’s spirit and would not trowel on an overlay, utterly alien to the novel and to Kerouac’s outlook, of anti-American propaganda.

Well, my optimism lasted all of about fifteen seconds. Until I reached these quotes in the article:

“‘It’s about the loss of innocence, it’s about the search for that last frontier they’ll never find,’ Salles told reporters in Cannes. ‘It’s about also discovering that this is the end of the road and the end of the American dream.'”

May I congratulate you, Mr. Salles, on your spectacularly inaccurate take on your source material? “The end of the road?” “The end of the American dream?” What book did you read, sir? On the Road is about nothing of this sort. What makes Kerouac’s novel so enduring and memorable, more than just a period-piece curiosity or icon of Beat Generation kitsch (as some of its contemporary critics attempted to tar it), is its author’s genuine, ecstatic, and often grandly (or humorously) poetic love for America, for the country’s vastness and richness and strangeness, for the dignity and energy and humor of even its poorest outcasts and hoboes. Kerouac and his novel are in love with jazz and the common man’s automobile, and in love with the country that gave birth to both of those phenomena.

On the Road is not Howl. Kerouac’s novel and Allen Ginsberg’s poem should be seen as the yin and yang of the Beat outlook. Howl, of course, provides an outlook more convivial to the worldview of a film maker such as Mr. Salles. In On the Road, Kerouac portrays his friend Ginsberg as Carlo Marx. From what I can read into another snippet from the article, it appears Mr. Salles has likely upgraded Carlo Marx’s significance in the story:

“Salles’ camera captures America’s vastness – and the promise of something new around the corner – from the lights of New York to the hills of San Francisco and the long expanse of flat road and endless sky in between.

“But as the sun fades on the brief and bright explosion of the characters’ lives, age and responsibility intrude.

“‘This high we’re on is a mirage,’ character Carlo Marx tells Paradise and Moriarty.”

And that one line of dialogue, right there, gives the game away. It is not a line of dialogue from the book. Mr. Salles has added it; I can only presume in order to reinforce his adaptation’s ideological overlay. I fully expect Carlo Marx to end up being the true “hero” of the film, saying many pithy things about the hidden, rotten core of America (pithy statements which will have been creations of the screenwriter’s, not of Jack Kerouac’s).

Those familiar with Jack Kerouac’s biography know that he and Allen Ginsberg suffered a painful falling out during the 1960s, when Kerouac found himself unable to stomach Ginsberg’s high-profile association with elements of the anti-American left. Ginsberg’s political views, to put it mildly, were not those of Jack Kerouac. They are, however, those of Walter Salles.

If Mr. Salles had wished to make a movie with the sort of message he prefers, he should have found a way to adapt Howl, not On the Road. That would have been much more honest.

Category: Book Love, Stuff I Like | Tags:
| May 21, 2012
Comments Off on Nebula Awards Weekend

Nebula Awards Weekend

An unfortunately dim photo (L to R) of Judi Castro, Levi, Judah, Adam-Troy Castro, Scott Edelman, and Asher

What I Saw at the Nebula Awards Weekend; or, the Semi-Bummed Out Observations and Kvetchings of an Underpublished Writer, Who is Ultimately Rescued From Melancholia by the Fruits of His Loins (part XXVIII or thereabouts in an occasional series)

What a difference a year makes… or not. SFWA’s Nebula Awards Weekend was held in the Washington, DC area two years in a row, not far from where I live. Last year my attendance got me all pumped up with enthusiasm and fresh ambition; I kicked off what I thought would be a promising collaboration with Ridan Publications and vowed to restart my website. This year? Not so productive; a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me, with my emoticons shifting from pleasant anticipation to pervasive melancholia to a warm, nourishing appreciation of my kids (and later, as per usual, getting fed up with them and wanting them out of my hair for an hour or two).

Oh, I wasn’t on the same emotional roller coaster, certainly, that I’m sure many of the award nominees were (my friend Adam-Troy Castro was nominated in two categories this year, I believe his sixth and seventh nominations, but, once again, did not walk away with one of the coveted Lucite blocks). I was on the periphery, only putting in my appearances because the awards weekend was being held virtually in my backyard and friends were attending who I wanted to see. My roller coaster was more like one of those miniaturized coasters that occupies the kiddy corner of most carnival midways, the one that you need to be taller than Popeye to ride. It doesn’t go very fast, doesn’t rise very high, and it always brings you back around to wherever you started from, then grinds to a noisy halt.

I’d originally only planned to attend the mass book signing on Friday night, since my father was supposed to be flying in from San Diego Thursday night to spend a long weekend with us. Part of the reason for his visit was so that he could celebrate his 80th birthday with me, Dara, and his three grandsons. Getting my father on an airplane is a tricky business; he doesn’t like to fly, and all of the headaches of flying that have accumulated since September 11, 2001 have only made matters worse. Thursday afternoon, his flight was canceled by mechanical problems, after he’d been waiting in the airport for over three hours. He caught me on my cell phone before I headed to Dulles International Airport, and he said he’d try to reschedule to come in the following night on the same flight. That would still allow me to attend the shared book signing at the Nebs in Crystal City, Virginia, so long as I headed straight for Dulles right after the signing. He called me back to let me know he’d been able to get a seat on the Friday afternoon flight. Since I’d already secured Friday off from work, I made plans to attend a full day of Nebula Awards Weekend events before picking him up.

My Friday got off to a rocky start. Trying to make a 10 AM panel discussion, I battled traffic on I-95 heading towards Washington, DC, got befuddled by my Google Maps directions to the hotel, skipped one parking garage that I considered horrendously overpriced, parked (because I was now running late) at another garage that was even more expensive, and then got completely turned around and walked a mile out of my way toward the wrong hotel before being redirected by a bellhop toward the Hyatt Regency. I arrived at my meeting a bit of a sweaty mess, but Dr. Alice Armstrong’s presentation on artificial intelligence was enlightening and interesting. Then I walked over to the SFWA book vendor, both to browse and to make sure some of my books were sitting on the tables. Big negative on that. The manager very kindly apologized and said that the box from IPG (Independent Publishers Group) had never arrived, so he had no books from either Tachyon Publications or Golden Gryphon Press to offer. Kathy Morrow, who was volunteering at the register, offered to take any books I had with me on consignment. I’d brought along a sample/display copy of each of my books, so I took her up on her considerate gesture.

Lunch at a local deli ended up being one of those happily serendipitous affairs wherein one’s friends and acquaintances pop up every time one turns around. I ended up lunching with Jamie Todd Rubin (frequent contributor to Analog and blogger on Golden Age science fiction), Alethia Kontis (author of AlphaOops! The Day Z Went First, AlphaOops! H is for Halloween, and the recently published YA fantasy Enchanted), and two members of the James River Writers Group. After lunch, Alethia and I hurried back to the “Improving Your Website” workshop, which I’d attended last year (when my old website was long defunct and had been colonized by a porn store, and I hadn’t yet started my new WordPress site). Utilizing me (as they did last year) as a humorous object lesson, the facilitators emphasized the importance of continuing to pay annual fees to domain registry services by demonstrating how allowing one’s domain name registry to lapse allows all sorts of opportunistic businesses to claim jump one’s old web address. Last year, www.andrewfoxbooks.com had been a porn site; this year, we discovered that the site’s registry had lapsed yet again, and the new owners were using the my former web address to sell condominiums in Japan. This represented a social promotion for me, it seemed; maybe come next year, my name will be selling commemorative dinner plates featuring the authorized likenesses of the stars of James Cameron’s Titanic. My new website, by the way, got a clean bill of health from the workshop’s facilitators, whom I thanked for having lit a fire under my tuchis last year.

Judah, Levi, and Asher with the NASA display

My wife left me a message while I was in the workshop. My father wouldn’t be coming, after all; his afternoon of waiting in the airport had drained him, and he’d decided he just wasn’t up for a repeat and for then sitting on an aircraft for five hours. I couldn’t blame him, certainly not at his age, but I was very disappointed. I hadn’t fully realized how much I’d been looking forward to his visit and celebrating his birthday until I learned he wouldn’t be coming. He has been one of the few relatives who has regularly come to visit my kids, and I’ve been anxious to see their ties grow stronger. I’d planned a very full weekend for us and gotten my boys all revved up. I think I ended up at least as disappointed as any of them.

Hoping to cheer myself up, I decided to catch one more panel discussion before the mass signing, the one called “Tragedy is Easy,” discussing the use of humor in science fiction. The panel was loaded with heavy hitters — Connie Willis, James Morrow, James Patrick Kelly, and SFWA President John Scalzi. Illustrating, perhaps, that the mechanics of comedy can be difficult to analyze, even for such a distinguished collection of practitioners, much of the panel consisted of exchanges of bon mots, rather than the program teaching “Comedy Writing for Advanced Writers” that had been advertised. The best exchange of the panel came when the subject of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy arose. James Patrick Kelly compared the impact of that book to the impact of Star Wars. Just as Star Wars in 1977 had precipitated an “extinction event” for the run of post-apocalyptic science fiction films which had preceded it (films like Logan’s Run, A Boy and His Dog, and Zardoz), so did the overwhelming success of Hitchhiker’s Guide wipe out virtually all subsequent editorial interest in any form of humor in science fiction not written in the British music hall tradition. (And perhaps that helps to explain the trajectory of my career in the field.)

Then came the signing. Ask most writers: group signings of almost any size or venue are slightly humiliating at best, mortifying at worst. The first mass signing I participated in was at Comic Con International in 2004, just after Bride of the Fat White Vampire came out. Del Rey had invited me. They had also invited China Mieville, whose The Iron Council came out at the same time. I sat next to China, who could not have been nicer. His line remained two dozen deep throughout the signing. I had no line at all. I think one person wandered over to talk with me. If we had been movies at a multiplex, China would have been Avatar and I would have been Jerry Lewis’ magnum opus The Day the Clown Cried. The best one can do when participating in an event of this sort is to consider it a social venue and squeeze in as much fun conversation with your fellow sufferers as possible.

Friday night, I at least had the good fortune to be sitting with Adam-Troy and Judi Castro. Adam, as I mentioned above, had been nominated for two Nebula Awards and had also just embarked on what promises (we all hope) to be a super-duper successful middle grade horror-fantasy series that is slated to receive big-time support from its publisher. Adam and Judi are dear friends; when Dara, Levi, Asher, and I were stuck down in South Florida after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Adam and Judi collected clothes and books and toys for my two baby sons (Levi was 21 months and Asher was 6 months old), and they even found us a Cozy Coupe play car that the boys adored. I hadn’t seen the Castros in a number of years, so we had lots of catching up to do. Their presence saved me from being a complete grump, between my father’s canceling his visit and my vague sense of being a beggar at a banquet. (One’s sense of being Charlie Brown at Halloween time — “I got a Hershey’s bar!” “I got a bag of candy corn!” “I got a rock…” — is all relative, it turns out; during the signing, a couple of my pals with recent book publications under their belts and better deals on deck, who’d been merrily signing away throughout the evening, conferred with each other regarding who among the assembled writers had attracted the longest autograph lines. Another friend in the biz once told me that he’d heard that Ursula K. Le Guin would never read the People and Publishing column in Locus because she found it too painful to learn about the advances and deals other writers were receiving.) Anyway, after the signing was through, I wandered back out to the book selling area to see whether any of my sample copies had sold. I gathered all three and trudged home with them. And here I’d had the audacity to worry about IPG’s failure to deliver a carton of my books. That’ll learn ya…

The next day I decided to take Levi, Asher, and Judah back to Crystal City with me. The Castros had hoped to see the boys the previous night (I’d been planning to have the whole gang with me prior to my father’s travel plans changing). Also, Gordon Van Gelder and I had been trading fatherly gibes on FaceBook about fixing up his beautiful six-year-old daughter Zoe with one of my boys (who range in age from five to eight), and Zoe had seen our exchange and had been looking forward to meeting my crew. Gordon and Zoe had showed up at my table at the signing, expecting to see Levi, Asher, and Judah, and I’d had no boys to share and had felt like a heel for disappointing such a vivacious young lady. So I shlepped the boys out of the house, tried (unsuccessfully) to burn off some of their excess energy by letting them jump in bounce houses for an hour at the Prince William County Healthy Families Expo, drove them up I-95 to Crystal City, and fed them lunch at Subway before taking them into the Hyatt Regency. We ran into my good friend Mark Sarney, SFWA’s newest member (he’d joined two days earlier), then wandered over to the NASA table where a presenter (who was actually Colonel E. Michael Fincke, a retired astronaut, but I didn’t learn that until after the boys had talked with him, darn it) was handing out fistfuls of cool free stuff, photos of nebulae and galaxies and holographic postcards of parts of the International Space Station. Adam and Judi Castro came down from their room and met the kids, whom they hadn’t seen since 2005 (and they’d never met Judah before). When the boys became restless (as boys will tend to do), Judi suggested that we ride the hotel’s glass elevator, which provided panoramic vistas of Crystal City and parts of Washington, DC. That amused the boys and stanched the complaints of, “I’m bored!”

Then Adam mentioned that there was a SFWA hospitality suite up on the 18th floor, and my boys have been to enough science fiction conventions that their eyes instantly light up when they hear the words, “hospitality suite.” So back up we rode. Jackpot! The H.S. had cheese, crackers, grapes, Diet Coke, juice boxes, mini chocolate bars, and a bowl filled with malted milk balls — all the basic food groups necessary to bridge the insufferable stretch between my boys’ lunch and dinner times. Plus, the view out the suite’s windows was even better than the view from the glass elevator.

Judah, Zoe Van Gelder, Asher, and Levi in the SFWA hospitality suite

Gordon Van Gelder gave me a call to let me know that his wife Barbara and daughter Zoe had gotten back from their sightseeing in Washington. They joined us in the hospitality suite. Even though I was supposed to get Levi to a birthday party back in Woodbridge for 5 PM, I decided to stick around for a while and let the kids get to know each other. Zoe was a little shy at first, but after ten minutes or so the four kids formed themselves into a little gang and took over the suite, commandeering the couches closest to the windows so they could lean over the window sills and stare at the big world outside the windows. Judah entertained (at least some of) the adults with his renditions of Japanese kaiju monster roars. Levi worked on one of his street map pictures and asked the Castros if he could consider them his “fake grandparents” (they graciously said yes). Asher, my social butterfly, talked with Zoe and pointed out interesting landmarks eighteen stories below (“Look! There’s the swimming pool, see?”). I talked shop with Gordon, which I enjoyed greatly (Gordon, apart from being one of SF’s most distinguished editors, is very charming), although I gradually grew more and more guilty about making Levi late for his birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Finally, it was time to go. The kids had gotten along so well that I felt my typical pangs of “Darn! I wish they lived closer!” As soon as we got back down to the lobby, Judah, my five-year-old, announced, “I have a girlfriend now!” He repeated this assertion all the way back to the car and until we got back onto I-95 and headed south, at which point his brothers managed to hush him by insisting that if he said it one more time, they would both vomit. I told them this wasn’t a nice thing to say to their younger brother, who was only expressing honest affection (if in an irritatingly repetitive way). Judah decided to get the last word in by insisting that Zoe was HIS girlfriend, not Asher’s. Asher said disdainfully that Zoe was his friend, not his girlfriend. Which seemed to satisfy Judah. Who later reported to his mother, “I am in love now!”

One thing about having three young boys… I find it impossible to stay bummed out for very long. They simply won’t allow it. Exhausted from them? Yes. Pushed to wit’s end with them? Sometimes. But blue and melancholy? My boys, God bless them, are kryptonite to the blues.

Category: Conventions and Fandom, Slices of Life | Tags:
| May 17, 2012
Comments Off on The Good Humor Man: Food Police Updates

The Good Humor Man: Food Police Updates

This is the third in an occasional series of links round-ups to news and commentary on the growing reach of the Food Police, whose future exploits are chronicled in my novel, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501 (selected by Booklist as one of the Ten Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2010!).

A San Francisco-Bay Area community, Richmond, becomes the first city in the U.S. to place on the ballot a “sin tax” on sodas

One writer suggests that Richmond skip the sin tax on soda and go straight to a sin tax on giving birth, the logical progression of sin taxes

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health issues rules outlawing bake sale fundraisers at public schools; public outcry leads the Massachusetts Legislature to pass a law forbidding the Department of Public Health from issuing such a rule; the Boston Globe ridicules the public and sides with the Food Police

“Fat Tax:” a study in the British Medical Journal advocates for a minimum twenty-percent additional tax on foods and beverages judged by public health officials to be excessively fattening

“Obesity in America is a crisis that threatens the national security:” the National Institute of Medicine issues a 478-page plan calling for “bold actions”

Is there a Good Humor Man in your future? Or will public backlash against the overreaching nanny state hand the Food Police their walking papers?

The Good Humor Men live! Or they certainly are being midwifed into life by Big Nanny and the people who love her.

Earlier round-ups:

The Good Humor Man: Truth is Stranger Than My Fiction

Friday Fun Links: Thanksgiving Greetings From the Food Police

And here’s a link to an excerpt from The Good Humor Man, or Calorie 3501, depicting a Good Humor Man raid on a surreptitious Hanukkah party where illegal fried latkes are being consumed. Enjoy (and remember — reading is not fattening, if done without a bag full of chips next to you)!

Category: Science Fiction | Tags:
| May 14, 2012
Comments Off on Nebula Awards Weekend Book Signing–Hope to See You There!

Nebula Awards Weekend Book Signing–Hope to See You There!

This Friday evening, May 18, I’ll be taking part in the mass book signing at the Nebula Awards Weekend from 5:30-7:30 P.M. This is an event that is free and open to the general public (not just folks who register for the awards weekend). It’s a great opportunity to get your books signed by several dozen of your favorite science fiction and fantasy writers (and to buy their books, too, which will be on sale in a display outside the autographing and meet-and-greet room). The Nebula Awards Weekend will be held at:

The Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel
2799 Jefferson Davis Highway
Arlington, Virginia

The Book Depot will be open on Friday from 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. and will then reopen during the two hours of the mass signing.

Some of the writers who plan to participate in the book signing include:

Brad Aiken

R.J. (Rebecca) Anderson

Lou Antonelli

Franny Billingsley

Marilyn Mattie Brahen

Robert Brent

Grant Carrington

Michael Cassutt

Adam-Troy Castro

Brenda Clough

Myke Cole

A.C. Crispin

Wendy Delmater Thies

Michael S. Dobson

Gardner Dozois

Andy Duncan

Scott Edelman

Timons Esaias

Cynthia Felice

E. Michael Fincke, Col, USAF (Ret); NASA Astronaut

Jim Fiscus

Andrew Fox

Nancy Fulda

Charles E. Gannon

Carolyn Ives Gilman

Joe W. Haldeman

James Patrick Kelly

John Kessel

Alethea Kontis

Mary Robinette Kowal

Ellen Kushner

Maria Lima

Richard A. Lovett

Lee Martindale

Jack McDevitt

James Morrow

Diana Peterfreund

Geoff Ryman

John Scalzi

Stanley Schmidt

Lawrence M. Schoen

Darrell Schweitzer

Delia Sherman

Bud Sparhawk

Katherine Sparrow

Rachel Swirsky

Brandie Tarvin

Sandra Tayler

Mary A. Turzillo

Genevieve Valentine

Jo Walton

Bud Webster

Richard White

Walter Jon Williams

Connie Willis

That’s some list, isn’t it?

So, if you’re in the area or will be passing through, come on over and see me (and all those other terrific folks) on Friday night. I’ll have my whole family with me (we’ll all be rooting for our friend Adam-Troy Castro to win at least one of the two Nebula Awards he’s up for this year). We’d love to see you!

Category: Book Love, Conventions and Fandom |
| May 9, 2012
36 comments

What Kind of Literary Ecosystem Do We Want to Build?

As readers and as writers, we’ve been watching the ecosystem of publishing, book distribution, and book retailing morph before our eyes on a continual (and seemingly accelerating) basis for at least the past five years. Are we stuck being onlookers to the March of Progress, having to content ourselves with whatever sort of literary landscape market forces leave us with? Or can we harness our powers as literary consumers and literary producers to help steer the market and possibly create a literary landscape we’d actually like to inhabit?

Many thousands of words have been written recently analyzing the evolving publishing world. Many issues are a-swirling in the present unsettled climate—agency pricing vs. wholesale pricing; Amazon vs. Apple and the Big Six publishing houses; Amazon vs. an alliance between Barnes and Noble and Microsoft; the efficacy and marketplace side effects of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for ebooks; and whether print books will survive into the third decade of the twenty-first century. Being both a reader and a writer myself, and potentially a publisher in the near-term future, the following articles have led me to do a good bit of pondering; so before we get around to my prognosticating, let’s take a look at a few recent articles, shall we?

Mark Corker, the founder of Smashwords, a major ebook publisher and distributor, discusses the implications of the federal lawsuit brought against Apple and five of the Big Six publishers for allegedly conspiring to fix ebook pricing and counter Apple’s rival, Amazon; Corker comes down in favor of the practice of agency pricing, favored by Apple and its publishing allies, versus the wholesale pricing preferred by Amazon, stating that allowing publishers and writers to control the pricing of their books will serve customers by ensuring a diverse marketplace. Preston Gralla, writing for Computer World, amplifies many of Corker’s points. Both articles came on the heels of author Scott Turow’s broadside, distributed to the members of the Authors Guild, of which he is the current president. Meanwhile, author Libby Sternberg (among others) supports Amazon and says the demonization of the company is out of line, as its competitive zeal is providing lower prices and greater accessibility to readers and consumers.

Amazon’s aggressiveness with its retail partners, typified by its pulling of 5,000 titles distributed by the Independent Publishers Group from its Kindle Store, has been inspiring a good deal of criticism and pushback. The Educational Development Corporation, a small publisher of children’s books, declared Amazon to be a “predator” and removed all of its titles from Amazon’s virtual shelves, costing itself $1.5 million in revenue but declaring they “were better off without them (Amazon).” Amazon’s sales of the Kindle Fire may have “fallen off a cliff” recently; big-box retailer Target will no longer sell the Kindle in its stores; and online retailing rivals eBay and Wal-Mart are both set to roll out greatly improved search engine technologies on their sites to better compete with Amazon.

Cory Doctorow, in a column written for Publishers Weekly entitled, “A Whip to Beat Us With,” describes how the Big Six publishers, in their zeal to not lose purchasing dollars to pirates, have actually shot themselves in the foot with their insistence on only selling books with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This has allowed Amazon to essentially “lock in” its vast customer base to its Kindle platform, since DRM does not permit Kindle owners to legally transfer their libraries of ebooks onto a competing platform. The Big Six publishers have thus ceded a great amount of market power to Amazon, allowing that company to steadily increase its fees and charges to the publishers who wish to have their books sold on Amazon’s Kindle Store, reducing the publishers’ margins (or blocking their access to the Kindle Store should they not come to terms dictated by Amazon, as has happened with Independent Publishers Group, distributors for the books of over 700 small presses).

Tor Books, the largest publisher of science fiction in the US, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Holtzbrinck, recently reversed their policy on DRM. More than a decade ago, Tor released some of their titles as ebooks through a deal with Baen Books, but was forced by top Holtzbrinck managers to cease, due to Baen’s stand that they would only distribute ebooks without DRM. However, now Tor and their subsidiary imprints will return to their prior practice of distributing ebooks minus any DRM, citing customers’ preferences.

In a boost to Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-readers, currently second in sales to Amazon’s Kindles, Microsoft will be investing heavily in the Nook platform, and rumors are swirling that Microsoft will the Nook app a part of their upcoming Windows 8 operating system. This alliance represents Microsoft’s latest attempt to compete in the tablet market and Barnes and Noble’s latest effort to raise enough funds to remain competitive with Amazon.

So that’s the news of the publishing world. The majority of recent commentary regarding the changing literary ecosystem tries to gauge where things are most likely headed — i.e., what sort of literary ecosystem are we most likely to get stuck with? What will market forces dump in our laps five, ten, or fifteen years down the pike? What elements of the current ecosystem are most likely to survive, which will perish, and what may replace those elements that die off?

Based on these recent developments, I’ll put on my own Amazing Criswell sequined tuxedo and make a few predictions.

Within a few years, the Big Six Publishers will be down to the Big Five or Big Four, and one of them will be Amazon.

Margins are getting tighter and tighter in the publishing business. Several of the big publishers have traditionally made the bulk of their profits from their textbook publishing, which has benefited from a “captive audience” and whose continual cost increases have been absorbed by federal student loans. However, a great portion of textbooks will soon be distributed in ebook form, which should reduce prices (and margins) considerably. Also, pricing competition from Amazon (and other online retailers which rise to fight for pieces of Amazon’s market) will continue to put pressure on the profit margins of the traditional big publishers.

Here’s the rub — most of the current Big Six publishers are fairly small components of much bigger multinational conglomerates. Random House is a part of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann, which also owns the RTL Group (European radio and TV), Arvato (international media and communications), and Gruner and Jahr (European magazine publishers). Simon and Schuster is owned by CBS Corporation, whose primary businesses are commercial broadcasting and television production. HarperCollins is part of the sprawling News Corp, which owns newspapers in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and throughout the Pacific, in addition to running Fox Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox Studios, and satellite and cable television operations throughout Europe, Asia, and the U.S. The Hachette Book Group is a subsidiary of the French multinational corporation Lagardere, which operates radio and television stations, advertising firms, retail stores, aerospace firms, and sports and talent management agencies in forty countries. Only the Penguin Group (a division of the British conglomerate Pearson) and Macmillan (owned by the German company Holtzbrinck) are owned by larger companies whose main business is publishing (Random House may also be considered part of this grouping, since book publishing makes up at least half of Bertelsmann’s business — although a lot of their revenue comes from textbook publishing). The other conglomerates, for whom book publishing represents a relatively small part of their operations and a smaller part of their profits, may be greatly tempted to sell off or even dismantle their publishing arms as margins get tighter and tighter. Those members of the current Big Six who opt to remain in the publishing business will likely merge many of their existing imprints and concentrate more and more on sure-fire best-sellers (or those projects thought to be sure-fire best-sellers): books by celebrities, media figures, or prominent politicians, or based on popular media properties. A handful of old-line literary imprints, such as Alfred A. Knopf, Scribner, and Little, Brown & Company, may survive as money-losing prestige or “halo” businesses for their corporate ownerships. Alternatively, such famed imprints may be sold off and reemerge as independent small presses.

Independent bookshops will see a modest resurgence as superstores pull back to their strongest markets.

Just as our small, ratlike, mammalian ancestors found some breathing room to expand and evolve upon the extinction of the dinosaurs, so will independent bookshops and small, regional chains of bookstores reclaim some of their former market share as Barnes and Noble shrinks the brick-and-mortar retail side of their business to focus on their most profitable locations. Membership in the American Booksellers Association, the nonprofit industry association of independent bookstores, peaked at 5,500 members with 7,000 retail locations in 1995. Their membership continuously declined for the next fourteen years, bottoming out at 1,401 members in 2009. In 2010, they saw their first increase in membership in a decade and a half, a modest increase to 1,410 members. I don’t foresee their bouncing back to anywhere close to their peak of 5,500 members, but an increase to about half that number would not surprise me, as small business people in more and more communities, which have already lost their Borders Books and Music and which may soon lose their Barnes and Noble, seek to feed an appetite for book browsing and coffee drinking which was whetted by the superstores. I foresee a decent percentage of independent bookstores having a print-on-demand instant bookmaking machine on site to supplement their physical stock, perhaps relying upon catalogs that customers can browse through before making their POD purchase (see more below regarding how I would prefer to see the independent bookstore sector evolve).

A number of literary agencies will evolve into small publishing firms.

This shift is already beginning to occur. As the numbers of imprints and editors at the Big Six publishing firms continue to contract, and the majority of midlist authors move either to self-publishing or small presses, literary agents will find themselves with fewer and fewer opportunities to make money through selling clients’ books to publishers. To make up their losses, they will need to increasingly rely upon their skills as macro-editors and project packagers, adding value to writers’ work (and earning commissions and fees from writers) through pulling together teams of cover artists, book designers, publicists, and copy editors.

The lines between small presses and self-publishers will begin to blur.

As certain self-publishers show special skill or capability at promoting their works, they will begin attracting other writers who write similar books, but who lack the time or proclivity for successful publicity campaigns, who will request the self-publisher to distribute their work in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Ridan Publications is a good example of this; Robin Sullivan, who had prior experience in both software design and public relations, began electronically publishing her husband Michael J. Sullivan’s fantasy novels, and she proved to be so successful at this that other writers, including Joe Haldeman and A. C. Crispin, began flocking to Robin’s imprint to distribute their ebooks. I believe Gavin Grant’s and Kelly Link’s Small Beer Press had a somewhat similar genesis.

Meanwhile, existing small presses will move more aggressively into the ebook realm and will find new ways to capitalize on their small staffs, short decision-making chains, and relatively quick production cycles (versus the traditional large publishers) to rival self-publishers in their speed of putting out fresh, tightly targeted product lines. The most successful small presses will emulate Baen Books in developing publisher-specific brand identities, as recognizable to the reading public as the personal brands established by certain best-selling authors (such as Stephen King and Tom Clancy).

As Amazon continues to encroach on what has been the territory of the Big Six publishers, relatively new online competitors will seek to compete with Amazon in the publishing space, copying its model or seeking to improve upon it.

Amazon has built and continues to refine a vertically integrated production, sales, and distribution company not dissimilar from the Hollywood studios of the first half of the twentieth century. Those studios locked in their talents and draws, the actors, actresses, directors, and screenwriters, through exclusive contracts, then distributed the films they produced through chains of movie studios that they owned. They then made money off ticket sales and the sales of concessions. Similarly, Amazon is in the process of signing top-tier authors to contracts, whose books they distribute both through internet sales and shipping of printed editions and electronic distribution through their Kindle devices. Amazon is also currently the favored distribution channel for self-publishers. Of even greater benefit to the company is that wide distribution and use of Kindle devices by their book-purchasing customers gives Amazon continual opportunities to cross-sell those customers on Amazon’s thousands of other types of items for sale, based on that customer’s past buying history (all with “free,” or rather pre-paid but subsidized, shipping included if the customer has signed up for Amazon Prime).

Until the federal government decides to insert itself and break up Amazon’s production and distribution arms (as they did with the movie studios in the middle of the last century), this is simply too lucrative a business model to not attract imitators. The Nook alliance recently entered into by Microsoft and Barnes and Noble may presage such an effort. Other major players in the internet commerce space, Apple or Google or Wal-Mart or eBay, may combine their resources to create business entities to directly compete with Amazon. A business such as the Independent Publishers Group (IPG), which currently distributes the books of over seven hundred small presses and which has recently crossed swords with Amazon over fees and percentages, may decide to move into the online retail space. Or companies which have not yet been formed may arise to challenge the current eight hundred pound gorilla of e-commerce. I believe a gradual abandonment of DRM by most publishers of ebooks will make it easier for competitors to Amazon and its Kindle platform to emerge, as existing Kindle owners will feel less trepidation at the thought of switching to a newer e-reader platform if they know they will be able to (legally and easily) transfer their e-libraries.

Print books will not go away. However, there will be relatively fewer of them; certain types of books will continue to be published primarily as print books, while other types will be published primarily as ebooks.

I anticipate that the majority of textbooks, technical books, reference books, popular nonfiction, and what I’ll term “disposable” fiction (fiction meant to be consumed as entertainment and then discarded, rather than held onto for further reference and re-readings) will be published primarily in ebook form. Books relying heavily on illustrations, books intended for children (many parents won’t want to entrust an e-reading device to a young child), “permanent” fiction (fiction which a reader intends to display on a shelf or to re-read), books purchased to be given as gifts, and books intended to be collectibles will continue to be published primarily in printed formats. Some publishers will do quite well by focusing on the book as a beautiful, cherished object and producing books which can be appreciated as handicrafts, as well as platforms for prose.

So that is where I believe the literary landscape is trending in the next five to ten years. While there is certainly value to be had in this type of prognostication, I feel that it is not sufficient. As readers, we do not need to act as passive consumers in the literary marketplace; as writers, we do not need to act as helpless, powerless “small cogs” in the publishing machine. Perhaps more so now than at any time in the past, we, writers and as readers, have the potential ability, if we wish to exercise it, to influence and to build portions of the emerging literary ecosystem. We can become, in law professor/author/blogger Glenn Reynolds’ term, an “Army of Davids.” But before we can do this, we need to figure out just where it is that we wish to go from here. As a reader, what sort of literary world do you want to be enjoying ten years from now? As a writer, what sort of publishing world do you want to be working in ten years from now? Here are questions we need to be asking (to which I add some suggested answers):

What do readers want?

— quality fiction that they enjoy and feel is worth their expenditure of time and money
— a reasonably reliable system of recommendations, i.e.: gatekeepers they can trust
— convenience and accessibility
— reasonable prices

What do some, but not all, readers want?

— a sense of community; the ability to share their love of particular books with others
— the joy and excitement of stumbling upon an interesting book they had no prior knowledge of
— the ability to communicate and interact with their favorite writers
— the ability to combine the acts of reading and book browsing with other pleasurable pastimes, such as eating and drinking, listening to music, or hearing a lecture
— beautiful, durable editions of favorite works, which are pleasing to the eye, nose, and hand

What do writers want?

— time to write
— opportunities and guidance to improve their work
— an audience
— opportunities to earn money from their work
— the appreciation of their peers and critics

What do some, but not all, writers want?

— the opportunity to write full-time
— control over the editing, formatting, and presentation of their work
— opportunities to interact directly with their readers
— opportunities to collaborate with other writers
— opportunities to promote themselves, their works, and works by other writers whom they admire and enjoy

So, taking these various needs and wants into account, what kind of literary ecosystem do I want to live in five or ten years down the road? If I could terraform that future ecosystem (to use a science fictional term), what would I create, within the bounds of the powerful trends I mention above?

Book Publishing

For the overwhelming majority of midlist writers, those without a history of best-selling books and those without a pre-existing “platform” of fame and public recognition, traditional publication by a large publishing house will be (and, for the most part, already is) a fading dream, a “winning the lottery” type of event. Most of us are simply going to have to do a whole lot more of the business end of things ourselves, if we hope to attain any presence in the literary marketplace. By the business end, I mean publicity, reader outreach, editing, and book design.

Some fortunate writers will find themselves with both the skills and the time to do all or most of these tasks themselves. Some will have the financial resources, thanks to a financially supportive spouse, inherited money, investors, or a stable and remunerative “day job,” to contract out all or some of these functions to specialists who perform work for hire. Some will have a spouse or significant other who is willing and able to perform these tasks. Some writers, whether working as a solo act or as the nucleus of a micro-publishing team, will discover great success at amassing an audience, whether through the exceptional quality of their books or through a highly effective business plan, or a combination of these.

Other writers, however talented they may be, will find themselves less gifted with resources. They will not have the time or the money to engage intensively with the business side of publishing or to hire contractors to do this for them. They may have some time and some money to invest, but not enough to amass more than a token readership. Or, like many writers throughout literary history have been, they may be socially withdrawn or self-isolating individuals, who lack the personality traits which allow for successful self-promotion and social networking.

As a reader, I don’t want writers who fall into that second group to be de facto barred from the marketplace, or only able to enter the marketplace in a feeble, exceedingly limited fashion. Just think how many immortal books we would now be denied had the skills of successful self-promotion been essential to publication and distribution during the past few hundred years. Hemingway and Vonnegut were formidable self-promoters. But was Kafka? Was Raymond Carver? In the realm of science fiction, was Philip K. Dick? Their works have only survived and come down to us readers of subsequent generations because they have had champions. Editors at major publishing houses, in the past, have often served as champions of writers unable or unwilling to champion themselves. But as I note above, there will be fewer editors at fewer major publishing houses in years to come, and those editors will have less freedom to take risks on pushing the work of obscure figures.

I think many writers enjoy helping other writers. I think this is so because writers were readers before they ever became writers, and thus learned to cherish other writers, and because writing is a solitary, lonely business and many writers hunger for a community of their fellow enthusiasts. I think as it becomes more and more crucial for us to assume greater responsibilities for the business side of our writing careers, it behooves the more successful among us to help our less fortunate, less resource-endowed fellow writers to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Because we will benefit as readers and potentially as business people, and because creating community is a source of joy and fulfillment.

I envision the growth and spread of writers’ co-ops. Such co-ops may have as their nucleus a self-publisher who has achieved notable success on the business side and who wishes to share that success and share profits with other writers (such as the example of Robin and Michael J. Sullivan’s Ridan Publications). Or they may arise from a teaming of a group of writers who seek to pool and multiply their limited resources, each of whom can contribute something in the way of editing, book design, reader outreach, distribution, or publicity. Ideally, these writers’ co-ops would be made up of writers with broadly similar or compatible works, so that the co-ops, essentially small presses, could develop strong, memorable brand identities that set them apart in the minds of potential readers. The Baen Books brand means military-oriented, action/adventure science fiction and fantasy. Tachyon Publications has come to be known for highly specialized anthologies of science fiction or fantasy, compiled by erudite and opinionated editors. The Night Shade Books brand implies literary fantasy and horror in non-traditional settings. Purchasers of books from these publishers don’t only shop the books’ authors; they also shop the publishers’ full lines, because they have a good idea of the qualities books in those lines will have, and they like those particular qualities.

Much has been written about the diminishment of traditional gatekeepers in the literary marketplace. Some applaud this development. However, I believe that gatekeepers, as signalers of quality to potential readers, will continue to play a key role in the literary ecosystem. Otherwise, how can readers be expected to choose from the millions of ebooks and POD books which will soon be or are already available? Clogging one’s e-reader with too many poorly written but inexpensive ebooks can lead readers to throw up their hands and seek out more reliable sources of entertainment and pleasure. Writers’ co-ops can serve as a new mode of gatekeeping/quality signaling. In order to be desirable entities for writers to join, writers’ co-ops would have to earn in the marketplace a reputation for putting out quality work. In turn, in order to preserve their hard-won reputations for quality, the writers within a writers’ co-op would vet potential newcomers’ work before bringing them onboard. Promising beginners whose skills aren’t quite polished enough could be referred to writers’ workshops organized by the co-op, and their early, “not quite ready for prime time” works could perhaps be published as free or near-free editions, either online or as downloads, available for readers who would like to sample the works of promising up-and-comers and offer feedback. The co-ops could develop talent the same way major league baseball uses the minor leagues to develop promising ballplayers. Writers’ co-ops could hire outside editors for the books they publish, or they could utilize internal talent, with writers editing each other’s books.

All members of a writers’ co-op would be expected to publicize, not only their own works, but the co-op’s full line of books, utilizing personal blogs and websites, appearances at their region’s bookstores and libraries, and appearances at conventions and festivals. Baen Books has pushed this model very successfully; I’ve been to a number of science fiction conventions where a particular Baen author or editor has served as an advocate for the full line of Baen’s books, often presenting slide shows or multimedia presentations featuring the cover art of recently published or soon-to-be published books from a number of Baen’s stable of writers. This model lifts a good bit of the publicity burden from individual writers’ shoulders (who but the wealthiest or best supported can attend conventions or bookstore appearances all over the country, or even much more than an eight-hour drive from their home?). It also multiplies the publicity reach of a small press, assuming that small press features writers who live and travel in different parts of the country and whose websites, blogs, or Facebook or Twitter feeds are followed by separate audiences.

Book Selling and Book Buying

I love bookstores. I don’t want to see bookstores go away. I enjoy the act of browsing and the pleasures of discovery. I like “romancing” a book before I buy it, browsing it at different stores or on several visits to the same store, allowing my desire for it to build before I surrender to the purchase and take it home.

That said, as a dedicated book browser, I find that large chain stores can become boring. The temptation upon traveling to a different town to visit that town’s Barnes and Noble is lessened by my knowledge that this new Barnes and Noble will carry 99% of the same stock as my Barnes and Noble store back home.

A good part of the charm and attraction of visiting independent bookstores is not knowing what they may carry. Many commentators on modern American culture bemoan the creeping homogenization of American regions, cities, and towns, how a traveler to the outskirts of Albuquerque will find many of the same stores and restaurants as he would in the suburbs (or center) of Albany. In my preferred future of a gobsmacking multiplicity of small presses and writers’ co-ops, bookstores could differentiate themselves and offer increased value to readers by partnering with their regional presses and becoming advocates for those regional presses and regional writers. Most independent stores cannot carry the breadth of stock that a Barnes and Noble superstore can carry; none, of course, can carry the breadth of choices offered by an Amazon. At least not physically. However, new and greatly improved (and continually improving) print-on-demand (POD) services can conceivably allow even a small, intimate independent bookstore to offer the same choices as an Amazon, without the delay of shipping (for those readers who will continue to prefer printed books). I expect the most forward-looking bookstores to maintain at least one book-making machine in their store, in addition to their physical stock of books. Adjacent to the machine, they could offer browsers computers, printed catalogs of books, and, from the regional small presses, pamphlets with the cover and first chapter or first story of their various offerings. That way, bookstore owners could maintain on hand “sample” copies of their slower sellers and of tomes from their regional small presses, printing individual copies for customers as needed, avoiding the cost of maintaining a large inventory. Customers could enjoy a cup of coffee and a pastry while their selection is being printed and assembled (or, having sampled a book in the store, they could have an electronic copy downloaded to their device).

Bookstores could partner with regional small presses and local writers to offer book discussion groups and other social events. Local stores would still offer a full range of nationally distributed books (particularly those stores with book-making machines), but they could specialize in regional offerings. Conversely, small presses could rely upon both print-on-demand services (such as CreateSpace and LightningSource) and on book-making machines at their local booksellers to distribute printed copies of their works, selling their ebook versions on their own websites or through e-commerce sites. A terrific example of this sort of symbiosis between an independent bookstore and its local small presses is the mutually beneficial relationship between Borderlands Books in San Francisco and both Tachyon Publications and Night Shade Books (in fact, Jeremy Lassen, one of the founder partners of Night Shade Books, once worked at Borderlands Books). I could imagine tour groups setting up regional bookstore tours for avid readers; such tours would be justified by the fact that different stores in different communities would specialize in works from different regional small presses, offering literary tourists true diversity.

So, my fellow readers and writers, that’s my vision of tomorrow’s literary ecosystem. What’s yours? What would you like to build?

Category: Publishing | Tags: , ,
| May 4, 2012
Comments Off on Modern-Day C.S.S. Virginia for Sale by GSA!

Modern-Day C.S.S. Virginia for Sale by GSA!

Well, this was just too cool not to repost. According to CNN, the GSA (General Services Administration) has offered up for auction one of the US Navy’s technology testing platforms from the 1980s, a vessel that look amazingly like a modern-day, stealth version of the famous Confederate ironclad gunboat, the C.S.S. Virginia.

Unfortunately, according to the article, whoever ends up placing the winning bid must agree to reduce the vessel to scrap and recycle its components. So that means no trying to (stealthily) break the Federal blockade at Hampton Roads, and no tussling with (the excavated remains of) the U.S.S. Monitor.

Category: Stuff I Like | Tags:
| May 2, 2012
Comments Off on Visit to Harpers Ferry, WV (part 2)

Visit to Harpers Ferry, WV (part 2)

Potomac River north of the site of Harpers Ferry Armory

Return to Part 1

Detail of the B & O Railroad bridge crossing the Potomac

One of the most fun things to do during a visit to Harpers Ferry is to walk across the historic B & O Railroad bridge to the Maryland side. The National Parks Service constructed a pedestrian walkway next to the railroad tracks, and the walkway is actually a part of the Appalachian Trail, which cuts through Harpers Ferry (one of very few towns bisected by the Trail). The walk provides a panoramic view of the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, the Lower Town section of Harpers Ferry, the cliffs of Maryland Heights, and fascinating ruins of an old highway bridge, now colonized by nesting birds of prey. Rafters and kayakers paddle their way around these crumbling support stanchions, mute testimony to the raw, brute power of rivers at flood stage.

Ruins of the old Bollman highway bridge crossing the Potomac, destroyed by floods in 1924 and 1936

While walking above the Potomac River, you get an eagle’s eye view of the remains of the Bollman highway bridge. This bridge was destroyed twice in a dozen years by floods – the first time in 1924, when the bridge lost three of its spans but was subsequently repaired, and again in 1936, when its destruction was so thorough that all plans of repairing it were abandoned.

Harpers Ferry railway tunnel entrance

The railway tunnel through Maryland Heights was completed in 1931. Between forty and fifty CSX freight trains pass through this tunnel daily, in addition to Amtrak passenger trains and the MARC commuter train. Wouldn’t this make a great setting for some kind of action, suspense, or espionage movie? I could imagine Alfred Hitchcock doing some great things with this setting.

Railroad tunnel on the Maryland side of the Potomac

At the base of Maryland Heights, hikers will find the now waterless Chesapeake & Ohio (C & O) Canal and its towpath, which were constructed in 1833 and which were Harpers Ferry’s first transportation connection with Washington, DC, preceding the beginning of railway service by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad by one year. Like just about everything else in the Harpers Ferry area, the C & O Canal was battered by floods. The flood of 1877 damaged the canal severely, and the flood of 1924 ended its operation for good. Today, hikers can follow the old canal for 184.5 miles, south from Cumberland, Maryland, to the Georgetown Visitors Center in Washington, DC.

Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal

Category: Slices of Life, Stuff I Like | Tags:
| April 30, 2012
Comments Off on Visit to Harpers Ferry, WV (part 1)

Visit to Harpers Ferry, WV (part 1)

Canada geese on a shoal in the Shenandoah

A "gargoyle", part of the remains of an old mill, overlooks the Shenandoah River

Several weeks ago my family and I visited a place that should be on the destination list of any day-tripper in the Mid-Atlantic region with an interest in American history and/or spectacular scenery – Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. This nearly 250-year-old town, whose compact 0.6 square mile is split between a National Historical Park and a Historic District, is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where three states meet: Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. It was the site of one of two original United States Armories, of John Brown’s antislavery raid in 1859, and of a major Civil War battle which resulted in the surrender of a larger number United States troops than at any time in history, prior to the surrender on the Bataan Peninsula in 1942. The town changed hands eight times during the Civil War, which resulted in the destruction of much of its considerable industrial infrastructure. That infrastructure was subsequently almost completely obliterated by the great flood of 1870, only one of numerous ruinous floods which swept through the area during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Shells on a Shenandoah River beach

Parking in the Lower Town area of Harpers Ferry, site of the John Brown Monument, the remains of the Federal Armory and Arsenal, the Amtrak station, and restaurants and attractions, is very limited, so most visitors will want to pay the $10 admission fee to the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, which boasts ample parking located a mile and a half away, beyond Virginius Island and up Bolivar Heights. Every fifteen minutes, a comfortable bus ferries visitors to a stop just outside Lower Town, near the northern tip of Virginius Island, which sits in the Shenandoah River.

No one lives on Virginius Island now. The last inhabitants fled after the record flood of 1936. What remain on Virginius Island are the ruins of numerous nineteenth century mills and factories, all of which took advantage of the power provided by the Shenandoah River. The National Parks Service is currently engaged in archeological excavations (which, ironically, suffered severe setbacks during two floods in December, 1996) to preserve the ruins and to interpret the economic, industrial, and residential life of the thirteen-acre island.

Levi, Judah, and me standing beneath an archway of an old mill

This is gorgeous spot in which to spend an hour or two of quiet contemplation (not that I was able to have too much of that, needing to keep an eye on three boys). On the far side of the Shenandoah River from the island are the Loudoun Heights of Virginia, beautiful tree-lined hills teeming with birds. Several sets of mild rapids dot the river adjacent to the island, and one doesn’t have to stand on its shore for very long before seeing kayakers or rafters. The sandy shore of the river is sprinkled with colorful clam shells, and various types of ducks and geese frequently land on the river’s shoals and small islands. The sounds of traffic from the road on the Virginia side are muted and add to, rather than detract from, one’s contemplative mood.

Firehouse that served as John Brown's "fort"

Virginius Island, the former industrial district of Harpers Ferry, is a short walk from Lower Town. Part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Lower Town features a book store, a museum of nineteenth century industry, and reproductions of Civil War era clothing and sundries shops. It is also the site of the John Brown Memorial and the fire engine house, originally next door to the Federal Armory, which Brown and his followers took refuge in while under siege by a contingent of U.S. Marines temporarily commanded by future Confederal General Robert E. Lee (then a lieutenant colonel and, although on leave, the senior officer closest to Harpers Ferry when Brown attacked the Armory).

Lower Town section of Harpers Ferry

During the late nineteenth century, after war and floods had displaced or destroyed most of the town’s heavy industry, Harpers Ferry became a fashionable summer resort for several decades, hosting many prominent visitors from Washington, DC and Baltimore, including President Woodrow Wilson. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad operated an amusement park, called Island Park, on a piece of land that jutted out into the Potomac River. However, the Great Depression and the great flood of March 18-19, 1936, when the rivers crested at 36.5 feet at Harpers Ferry, the all-time record, ended the resort trade in the town.

The site of the old U.S. Armory and Arsenal, destroyed during the Civil War, is located between the Harpers Ferry Amtrak Station and a pair of railroad bridges, including the historic B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing. On the far side of the Potomac from the old armory lies Maryland Heights. The Heights are pierced by a railroad tunnel, and a cliff face of naked shale still holds an early twentieth century advertisement for borated toilet powder (whatever the heck that was!).

Rocky bluff across the Potomac from Lower Town

More photos to come!

Category: Slices of Life, Stuff I Like | Tags:
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »