| Dark Faith II table of contents |
[Jun. 1st, 2012|11:07 am] |
A couple of years ago my story "The Last Words of Dutch Schultz Jesus Christ" was in an anthology called Dark Faith. There is now a second volume of the book coming call, Dark Faith II: Faith Darker! (well, maybe not with that post-colon) coming out. Here is the table of contents, with annotations:
“Subletting God’s Head” by Tom Piccirilli+
“The Cancer Catechism” by Jay Lake+
“The Big Blue Peacock” by Nick Mamatas+
“Kill the Buddha” by Elizabeth Twist*
“Robotnik” by Lavie Tidhar+
“Prometheus Possessed” by Matt Cardin+
“Night Train” by Alma Alexander
“The Sandfather” by Richard Wright+
“Sacrifice” by Jennifer Pelland+
“Thou Art God” by Tim Waggoner*
“Wishflowers” by Tim Pratt
“Coin Drop” by Richard Dansky+
“Starter Kit” by R.J. Sullivan*
“A Little Faith” by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens
“The Revealed Truth” by Mike Resnick
“God’s Dig” by Kelly Eiro*
“The Divinity Boutique” by Brian J. Hatcher*
“The Birth of Pegasus” by K. Tempest Bradford
“All This Pure Light Leaking In” by LaShawn M. Wanak*
“Fin De Siécle” by Gemma Files
“The Angel Seems” by Jeffrey Ford
“Magdala Amygdala” by Lucy A. Snyder+
“A Strange Form of Life” by Laird Barron
“In Blood and Song” by Nisi Shawl and Michael Ehart*
“Little Lies, Dear Leader” by Kyle S. Johnson+
“I Inhale the City, the City Exhales Me” by Douglas F. Warrick+
+ Original Dark Faith contributors
* Unsolicited submissions
Co-editor Jerry Gordon has some notes on the story selection process. If Resnick's story is about an old man who finds a broken cat-robot who believes in Jesus...in Space Africa!, I am totally going to plotz. As clever people have undoubtedly already guessed, the theme of my own "The Big Blue Peacock" is the Yezidi. You can read Jarett Kobek's interesting article about the Yezidi here. |
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| When is a science fiction writer not a science fiction writer? |
[May. 31st, 2012|12:01 pm] |
Over at Tor.com, the person who writes their Genre in the Mainstream column—that is, the column which seeks to claim writers such as Brautigan and Millhauser as writers of the fantastic—has this to say about the fiction selections in this week's New Yorker, which is the science fiction issue:
But none of them are actually science fiction or fantasy writers...the lack of inclusion of an actual honest-to-goodness science fiction (or fantasy!) writer made me feel like we weren’t getting a fair shake.
Now, it seems to me that someone who writes a piece of science fiction or fantasy and gets it published is a science fiction/fantasy writer, at least at that moment. In this week's New Yorker is also Jonathan Lethem, who has had novels published by Tor Books, and stories in Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, one of the Starlight anthologies, etc. So even if "science fiction writer" now simply means "someone published by a science fiction publisher", Tor.com's columnist is wrong. Clearly, something else is meant by reading a work of science fiction and declaring its author not a science fiction writer. But what could be meant? You tell me!
Poll #1843971
Why Aren't The People In the SF Issue of the New Yorker SF writers
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 116
There's something different about these people...
View Answers
| lack of visibile stink lines coming off their bodies |
   4 (3.5%) |
| not one of them was ever Guest of Honor at Skiffycon, down at the airport Ramada |
| 9 (8.0%) |
| their stories are too well-written, seem faggy |
| 16 (14.2%) |
| all fail to claim victim status as geeks; must therefore be "Cool Kid" oppressors |
| 18 (15.9%) |
| Junot Diaz works at MIT, where no self-respecting science fiction writer would ever be seen |
| 3 (2.7%) |
| not one story about overweight libertarian supermen saving the universe from the Insecto-Negroids of Sector 7G-Alpha |
| 11 (9.7%) |
| fifth-columnist Nick Mamatas agitating on behalf of the New Yorker; brain parasites at work somehow |
| 20 (17.7%) |
| I get nothing but form rejections from the magazine and these people get in! Conspiracy!!! |
| 7 (6.2%) |
| I've never heard of these people because I don't read very much. |
| 11 (9.7%) |
| it's just not a science fiction magazine if there aren't any space whales getting raped on the cover |
| 14 (12.4%) |
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| A rare email |
[May. 30th, 2012|09:25 pm] |
I always send some preliminary remarks to students whose work is going to be workshopped a day or two before class, to prepare them for what they will hear from me and might hear from their classmates. Today, for the first time, I wrote an email like this:
Hello, thanks for the chapter of your book. I don't have much to say—if this chapter is representative of the work, then this book is publishable. You use commas and one-sentence paragraphs more than I'd like, and there's a graf or two I'd strike just for speed's sake, and the whole thing is a little out of fashion, but fashions change. The marks I made on the ms, another editor might unmake. You may as well start looking for agents immediately, if it's done. I can see DAW publishing this, or maybe Orbit. Let me know if you have any questions about my remarks. I'll see you Saturday!
Sometimes people take a class and all the need from it is to be told that they don't need the class. |
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| Raising Our Children to Be Gay |
[May. 30th, 2012|01:30 pm] |
This is today's freak-out:
For those too lazy to click, it's a toddler singing a song in church, to the applause of the congregation. The refrain, and I presume the title, of the song is "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make it to Heaven." People are screaming brainwashing! and child abuse!
I guess I'd just like to point out two things:
1. most adults don't believe the same things at age 40, or even age 18, as they do at age 4.
2. gays and musical theater go together like chocolate and peanut butter.
I'm pretty sure we'll see this kid on whatever passes for The Advocate in 2026, shirtless, with ripped abs, and maybe wearing an oversized crucifix featuring a similarly shirtless, ripped Jesus. It's a cosmic inevitability, honestly. Good job, church! |
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| Wednesday Notes, Also TIDELAND |
[May. 30th, 2012|11:14 am] |
Over at Team Rocket, we're pleased to note that both Mardock Scramble and The Lord of the Sands of Time are getting some Hollywood action.
Red Plenty is out in the US! (I read the import a few years ago; it was really obscure, you probably hadn't heard of it.) The gang at Crooked Timber has a symposium going. Sadly, the the best piece has that Yakov Smirnoff "In Soviet Russia _____ [blanks] you" headline type, and Kim Stanley Robinson's piece simply weighs in to assure us that Red Plenty is a novel. Gosh, thanks.
The other day, I saw Tideland, the notorious Terry Gilliam movie. You know there is going to be trouble when a movie starts like this:
You're not going to like this movie. Also, I am a little girl.
And it really is a bad film. Not quite interesting bad either. Really, it's the kind of movie that is best heard about from an enthusiast and then simply imagined. It starts off well enough, but the middle hour of the movie is basically a little kid talking to doll heads on her fingers. The story: girl's smack addict parents die, she wanders around daydreaming, meets two weirdos who act all weird at her, then a train explodes. And two of the doll heads weren't even given interesting personalities. Also, there's a Magical Retard in the film, but at least he's incredibly destructive. Jodelle Ferland was actually good as the little girl—she did have to carry much of the film playing against either dead Jeff Bridges or a dirty Barbie head—but she's not starred in a film since then. She did, however, act all spooky in Silent Hill and have a turn in one of the Twilight films, see?
The poor thing will be signing autographs for smelly pedophiles at Comic-Con forever. If only she could be spared such a fate by Terry Gilliam taking her place in hell! |
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| Kindle notes |
[May. 28th, 2012|11:43 am] |
After several months exile due to the conflict between Amazon and IPG over giving Amazon three percent of for a "co-op", my novel Sensation is back on Kindle. I'm sure IPG backed down, and charged its publishers four percent more to pay for the three percent! Also, the prices of the IPG-distroed Kindle titles are lower now. Hmmm...
Two free-today Kindle books I'd like to recommend: Jason Ridler's pro-wrestling themed hardboiled story Death Match (favorite chapter title: "Of Strong Men With Small Cocks") and Barry Graham's Scots horror/noir Of Darkness and Light.
I have nothing to say about today's holiday, except that all holidays should be reclaimed for the spirit of sloth. Never feel a moment's guilt about a moment away from work, no matter what the cause. |
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| Back into the valley |
[May. 24th, 2012|11:39 pm] |
So, I've been reading Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, which is a quasi-pornotopia. Sex is utterly everywhere in the book, and it's post-capitalist—no scarcity and quantity becomes quality. There's a lot of fetishistic counting of orgasms, doses of semen and urine, etc. Being a Samuel Delany novel, the sex largely involves sucking off dirty and/or homeless guys, dickcheese under foreskins, ass-eating, piss-drinking, and lots of happy strangers. I had to take a break for a while—not because of the incest or the discussion of licking dried shit out of assholes, but because of the nose-picking. And the eating of mucus. And the sharing of mucus. And picking other people's noses.
For a break, I read The Primal Screamer (a recent quote of the day entry!) by Nick Blinko, and Green Girl by Kate Zambreno, both of which were fantastic. They also had some similarities—the main character is observed and manipulated by the narrator; that action is seen in bits and pieces, as though through to hands worth of laced fingers; both are thematically obsessed with another creative medium (music in Primal, film in Girl); both are set in England. In these attributes, they are also utterly different than Spiders, which carries on in a straightforward manner, offers minute detail, finds non-libidinal activity suspicious, and doesn't just take place in the US, but is all about it. And eating snot for sexual purposes.
I'll get back to it in the morning. At 800 pages, I actually left it at work rather than carry it on my commute while reading the other titles. I'm told the mucophilia gets a break about 400 pages in. We'll see... |
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| My Father vs Katy Perry |
[May. 24th, 2012|08:14 pm] |
Regular readers may remember the time when my father met Tom Cruise and taught him how to fake operating a crane for The War of the Worlds. Well, yesterday, he met Katy Perry, also on the pier. She gave a private show for Fleet Week, and my father was involved on hanging a banner on one of the cranes—"Gloria" is the crane's name.
According to my sister who reported the claims of my father to me, Katy Perry managed the hanging of the banner herself and made him re-do it a few times to get it right. This was difficult work, as the banner was pretty high up. Later, he dropped a box of flags from the cherry-picker he was in, sending Perry running for safety. All went well though, and Perry got into her ridiculous outfit and put on a show for the sailors:
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| The Presidential primary season is heating up! |
[May. 22nd, 2012|08:59 am] |
What? The primaries are getting hot? Well, if you live in California and actually believe in peace and freedom*, they are. Kinda. PFP is a California-only party right now with national aspirations, so there's some push and some pull. For the upcoming election, this means that the party's Presidential candidate will necessarily be cross-endorsed by parties active in other states. So, here are my choices for the primary next month:
* Stewart Alexander, nominee of the Socialist Party U.S.A.
* Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson, nominee of the Justice Party
* Stephen Durham, nominee of the Freedom Socialist Party
* Peta Lindsay, nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation
Three of the four will appear on my ballot. Lindsay was struck from the ballot by the state of California because she's not yet 35 and thus too young to win the Presidency. As if too [fill in the blank] to win really means anything for this party's nominating slate.
Anderson appeals to, I imagine, the "practical" PFP voter. As the one-time mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, he's the only formal former officeholder. Of course, that's also the problem. He's a Democrat who hit the ceiling of his influence, so went into business for himself. Party is also a major issue for Lindsay—PSL is an odd split from Workers World, a strange Stalinoid party with Trotkyist roots. There's been no public comment on the split between PSL and WW, and nobody's managed to suss out a political difference by reading their publications and comparing the two. So the whole party smells like a trap to me.
Then we have Durham of the Freedom Socialist Party, which I know primarily through their feminist front Radical Women. They're not terrible. I like that Durham talks about his running mate a lot. The Socialist Party is a** daughter party of the classic party of Eugene Debs, and their candidate is an automotive sales consultant? Is that a used-car salesperson? I could get behind that!
So, Alexander or Durham. Obviously, the question, ultimately, is which campaign is not just trying to raid Peace and Freedom, and which would do more for ballot access for a left alternative. I'm leaving toward Alexander in this, as the SPUSA will probably be on the ballot on eight states by itself, and PFP would make nine, but I am still contemplating. One wouldn't want the SP to swamp PFP either!
See, being a "swing" voter is hard! Aren't you glad all of your decisions have already been made for you?
*Am I saying that Californians who are members of other parties are interested in war and slavery? Yes, yes I am.
**They would say they are the daughter party, and I am inclined to agree. |
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