Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 120

Seven Words of Wisdom From Alexis Gilliland

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"NEVER LET A BIBLIOSEXUAL INTO YOUR LIBRARY"

And in case you're wondering...

In my infallible and indisputable judgment, Alexis Gilliland is one of the very best cartoonists most people have never heard of. Mordant, witty, and very very funny. An extremely small fraction of his prolific output is collected in three books: The Iron Law of Bureaucracy, Who Says Paranoia Isn't "In" Anymore?, and The Waltzing Wizard, any one of which will set you back a pretty penny, provided only you can find someone willing to part with it.

My second favorite, after the above shows a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk with a small box on it. "This box of gravity-proof material contains a micro-black hole," he says, smiling nastily. "Doubters open it every time!"

Alexis is also a novelist and as such won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, beating me out for the honor the one year I was on the ballot. But I have long ago forgiven him that.


Above: Yes, this sage counsel resides in my library.

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Is Clarion West Right For You? Maybe Yes, Maybe No

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I just this morning received Clarion West's annual notice that they're accepting applications for next year's workshop. I've taught at Clarion and the now-defunct Clarion South and it was always a great experience. But I have a particular fondness for Clarion West in part because it was the first such workshop I taught and in part because it was Lucius Shepard who convinced me to accept their teaching invitation, "You gotta do it, Michael, he said. "Helping new writers warms the soul. It'll make you feel like Mr. Chips."

This was a startling thing to hear coming out of the mouth of the legendary wild man of science fiction. But of course Lucius was right.

So, assuming you're an unpublished new writer... should you prepare to empty your bank account, quit your job, and apply?

Well, maybe yes, maybe no.

Partisans of the Clarion method (six weeks of story critiques; a different teacher each week; a new story expected to be written every week; I oversimplify) hat it when I suggest it may not be for everybody. But it's true. And it may even be necessary that it's true. A workshop has something like eighteen students. If it worked for everybody, that would be thirty-six newly published writers a year. An editor once estimated that there are only one hundred writers making a living solely by writingf fantasy, SF, and/or horror. That includes both Steven King and the guy who's living in a cardboard box but brings in just enough to keep from starving. All the rest -- many of them big-name people whose work you love -- are in academia or doing editing work or are supported by spouses with good jobs that include medical benefits.

So there's that. But there's also you.  Before you fill out the application, you should ask yourself three questions:

1. How well do I work under pressure?

There's a lot of pressure at Clarion or Clarion West. When they call it "boot camp for writers," they're not exaggerating how it's going to feel by Week Four. Some people discover that they don't want to learn to master the drive and discipline it takes to make a living from writing. They want to write leisurely and at their own pace. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some of your favorite writers are like that.

2. How fast can I write?

I'm not talking about writing well here. The point of writing a story a week is not to come up with something publishable but to make mistakes which the instructor (and other students) can explain to you how to fix. Can you turn out a crappy story every seven days for six weeks? Or, if you're not sure of that, does the prospect of trying to do so excite you? Then you're probably okay.

3. Am I already publishable?

I've known writes who came into a workshop with stories that could be sold to a major market -- and which did sell, substantially unchanged, after they came out. To be fair, they'll all tell you it was a wonderful, formative experience. But I have to wonder if they wouldn't have been better off taking that time and money and hitch-hiking across Siberia or having a mutually destructive love affair in Paris. Not that I'm urging you to do so. I'm just pointing out that the Clarion West or Clarion experience is not mandatory.

Which is all I have to say, really. You're an adult and can be trusted to decide what's best for you. In the meantime, if you're curious, the notice is immediately below. That's a really good lineup of instructors, by the way.


Level up your fiction in 2016

Clarion West is pleased to announce that applications are now open for its 2016 Six-Week Workshop. You can apply today at http://www.clarionwest.org/workshops/summer/apply/.
Apply by February 10, 2016 and get $20 off the application fee.
All applicants are encouraged to apply for scholarships. For more information about the workshop, the Clarion West experience, and the application process, please see the workshop page and the workshop FAQ. For a taste of the summer workshop experience, download our 2015 Workshop Report.
2016 instructors

Paul Park • Stephen Graham Jones • Elizabeth Bear • N. K. Jemisin • Sheila Williams • Geoff Ryman 
Find out more on our instructors page.

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The Phantom in the Maze

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"The Phantom in the Maze," the seventh and latest story in the Mongolian Wizard series, has just been posted on Tor.com. With this story, all the pieces are in place, the gloves are off, and the war can be fought to its inevitable conclusion.

This is only the second series of stories I've ever attempted, unless you count "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O," which introduced Crow and Annie, true lovers and extremely difficult people who might yet get a second story, and possibly more, someday. The first series, of course, are the Darger & Surplus stories. But those are different in kind from what I'm doing here. They're lighter, for one thing, and the reader knows that the two rogues won't come to any serious harm. Whereas Kapitänleutnant Franz-Karl Ritter exists in deadly danger of his life, his limbs, and his soul. Were he suddenly teleported to Westeros, his situation could be no more dire.

But the man difference between the two series is that the Darger & Surplus stories have only the loosest of structures. Yes, they're on an accidental journey around the world and, yes, their travels will have consequences. But I could add or subtract stories without changing the overall shape. I could send them to Tahiti or the North Pole, if I wished, without changing how they will ultimately end up. But the Ritter & Sir Toby stories exist in a moral universe in which all acts have consequences. Every victory leaves a scar. Every lost love has its effect on loves yet to come. In this way, Ritter's life is very much yours and mine.

It also means that the series has to have an overall structure and pace.

This story marks the one-third point in the overall arc. My best estimate is that there will be twenty-one stories total before Ritter reaches the end of his adventures. But now, as I said, all the pieces are in play. And we finally get to learn what morally dubious decision Sir Toby feels that the events in "The Pyramid of Krakow"  justified.


You can read "The Phantom in the Maze" here.  Or just go to Tor.com and poke around. There's always a lot of interesting stuff to read there.


And if you want to catch up...

The good people at Tor.com have put together a page listing all the Mongolian Wizard stories in the order in which they appear, with links to the text for each.  You can find it here.


Above: Art by Gregory Manchess. The beautiful illos he's doen for each of stories so far have been a blessing and a joy for me.


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The Parable of the Creche

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Did everybody have a pleasant Thanksgiving? I hope so. Here in Roxborough, we had the traditional combination of family and food and happiness, just the way things are supposed to be. If I could carry away but a single image of the day, it would be Sean taking Aunt Evangeline into the back yard to show her the laser lights. At his urging, she raised her arms and saw how the lights flowed over her, as if she were afloat in some otherworldly cosmic ocean.


Now the one holiday is done and the Christmas season begun. I am old enough that I can remember people being shocked when stores put up the Christmas decorations immediately after Thanksgiving. Today, when they start going up, this seems wonderfully naive.
Well... times change and our perceptions of time with them. In years past, I've posted "The Parable of the Creche" on Christmas Eve. But this year, I plan to replace that traditional retelling with a more sentimental one.  So here, a month earlier than used to be, I reprise...





When first I came to Roxborough, a third of a century ago, the creche was already a tradition of long standing.  Every year it appeared in Gorgas Park during the Christmas season.  It wasn't all that big -- maybe seven feet high at its tip -- and it wasn't very fancy.  The figures of Joseph and Mary, the Christ child, and the animals were a couple of feet high at best, and there were sheets of Plexiglas over the front of the wooden construction to keep people from walking off with them.  But there was a painted backdrop of the hills of Bethlehem at night, the floor was strewn was real straw, and it was genuinely loved.
It was a common sight to see people standing before the creche, especially at night, admiring it.  Sometimes parents brought their small children to see it for the first time and that was genuinely touching.  It provided a welcome touch of seasonality and community to the park.
Alas, Gorgas Park was publicly owned, and it was only a matter of time before somebody complained that the creche violated the principle of the separation of church and state.  When the complaint finally came, the creche was taken out of the park and put into storage.
People were upset of course.  Nobody liked seeing a beloved tradition disappear.  There was a certain amount of grumbling and disgruntlement.
So the kindly people of Leverington Presbyterian Church, located just across the street from the park, stepped in.  They adopted the creche and put it up on the yard in front of their church, where it could be seen and enjoyed by all. 
But did this make us happy?  It did not.   The creche was just not the same, located in front of a church.  It seemed lessened, in some strange way, made into a prop for the Presbyterians.  You didn’t see people standing before it anymore.
I was in a tappie shortly after the adoption and heard one of the local barflies holding forth on this very subject:

"The god-damned Christians," he said, "have hijacked Christmas."



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Writers and the Mail

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Writers have a passionate relationship with the mail. I recall visiting a friend who was a writer and who lived in an apartment where he could hear when the mailman delivered the mail. We'd be talking, there'd be the sound of mail, and up he'd leap. If his wife was there, she'd snap, "Sit down! The mail will be there later. Why do you always have to make such a fuss over the mail?"

Then my friend's wife made her first sale. And my friend was never again the first person to reach the mailbox.

All of which is prelude to my saying... Look what came in the mail!  It's the Subterranean Press limited, oversized edition of Rogues , edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Slipcased, with a stellar lineup of fiction, and a cover and interior illustrations, all pretty nifty, by Ken Laager.  Autographed by both editors and all the authors. Issued in a limited edition and a lettered edition, both rather pricey and both already sold out. Pretty much immediately, apparently.

Luckily for me, I had "Tawny Petticoats," a Darger & Surplus story in the volume, so now I own a copy.

I also get money in the mail. But it's little perks like this that make the whole process so much fun.


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A Question

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Is it the function of science fiction to Tell The Truth? Or to Provoke Thought?

I ask because I have not the least idea what the answer is.

Do you?

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The Phantom in the Maze

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"The Phantom in the Maze,"  the seventh and newest story in my Mongolian Wizard series is coming soon from Tor.com. Of it, I shall only say that it marks a significant turn in the wizard war enveloping Europa. With this story, the essential parameters of the series have all been established. The as-yet-unwritten stories will chronicle the consequences of decisions that have already been made.

One of the great pleasures of this series for me is that the good people at Tor have paid Gregory Manchess to illustrate them, and he's done fantastic job with the assignments. Over at the  Muddy Colors  blog, he's posted the illo for my story (that's it above), along with notes of the process by which he found the images he wanted and how they ultimately came together.

One of many things I like about this illustration is how many plot elements of the story it contains without giving a single one of them away. When the story comes out, I advise that you look at it carefully and then, after reading the story, look at it again. It really is a very different image when you know what's going on.

You can read Manchess's blog post here.


And as usual, this time of year...

I'll be at Philcon in Cherry Hill pretty much all weekend. If you're there, be sue to say hi.


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My Philcon Schedule

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Philcon is this weekend and, as usual, I'll be there. Here's my schedule. But if you want to say hi, you can just walk up to me pretty much anytime. I'm a pretty easy-going guy.

Fri 7:00 PM in Plaza II (Two) (1 hour)
ELVES WITH TRANSISTORS (2158)

[Panelists: Michael Swanwick (mod), Ken Altabef, Anastasia
Klimchynskaya, Christie Meierz, Alexis Gilliland]

Discussing the scientific rationales in fantasy worlds. Who created
the most coherent and believable premises for how their worlds
worked


Sat 2:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
STORY STRUCTURE (2124)

[Panelists: Dina Leacock (mod), Michael Swanwick, Michael F. Flynn,
Marilyn Brahen, Gordon Linzner, Robert Kauffmann]

You need a beginning, middle and end...but not necessarily in that
order. How do you avoid losing a reader's interest when you're
telling a story in a non-linear manner


Sat 7:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
USING REAL LIFE IN FANTASY (2132)

[Panelists: Michael Swanwick (mod), A.T. Greenblatt, April Grey, Ken
Altabef]

Is the way writers of fantastic fiction use their life experiences
in their work inherently different from the way mainstream writers
apply it


Sat 9:00 PM in Plaza IV (Four) (1 hour)
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SCIENCE FICTION AWARDS (2172)

[Panelists: David M. Axler (mod), Michael Swanwick, Neil Clarke]

They're intended to reward quality and ensure that outstanding
writers of an overlooked genre received proper recognition, but are
they still serving that purpose? Or have our awards become nothing
more than a popularity contest

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Christopher Morley in the Twenty-first Century

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I have on hand a copy of Christopher Morley's collection of essays,   Plum Pudding . There is a particular pleasure to reading the the urbane Mr. Morley with an iPad in hand. When he writes (the book was published in 1921, remenber) that as a lunch-place the American Hotel was worth adding to the private list of those in which the Three Hours for Lunch Club was serenely happy -- "Consider corned beef hash, with fried egg, excellent, for 25 cents" -- one immediately googles the hotel's name and city... Only to discover that it was destroyed in a three-alarm fire in 1981. Many of the guests and tenants, the article states, took refuge in the Clam Broth House.

Which turns out to have been a cultural landmark of Hoboken since the dawn of the Twentieth Century, when it was a bar and restaurant for dock workers. The floor was covered with sawdust and discarded clam shells, and there was an enormous coffee urn at the bar dispensing free clam broth. The beer was served ice cold.

All of the above was nostalgically recalled in the comments section under an article about how the Clam Broth House had been rehabbed, sold, and reopened as a Biggie's Clam Bar. The writer also reminisced that through the 1970s, a holdover of Victorian standards, women were allowed in the restaurant but not in the bar.

Some people can get nostalgic about ANYthing.


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Guess What Made the Kirkus Best Fiction List!

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I received some pleasant news today.   Chasing the Phoenix is one of eleven books on the  Kirkus Reviews list of the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2015. Which apparently automatically also put it onto their list of the 100 Best Fiction Books of 2015 . Because there it is as well.

So I am happy for me and hope you are too.

You can see the long list starting here. You can read the genre list here. And you can read Kirkus's original review here.

Somewhere in the back of my head, however, I can hear Darger and Surplus muttering to one another, trying to work up a scheme to turn this to their advantage.


Oh, and...

Congratulations are due to the others on the science fiction and fantasy list: Carolyn Ives Gilman, Scott Hawkins, C. A. Higgins, Ann Leckie, Cixin Liu (and translator Joel Martinsen), China Miéville, Natasha Pulley, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, and Robert Charles Wilson.

Doesn't that list of names make you want to take the afternoon off and do nothing but read? I honestly think you should. Tell your boss that I said it was okay.


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