Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 129

The Return of Ritter

.


This is a good day for me. "The Night of the Salamander," the latest story in the Mongolian Wizard series, is up at T or.com . With, it almost goes without saying by now, another very fine illustration by Gregory Manchess.

It's not obvious from the story itself, but " The Night of the Salamander" introduces the second of the three great loves of Kapitänleutnant Franz-Karl Ritter's life. That's assuming that the rest of the series goes as currently planned.

This is, incidentally, the fifth story in the series. Tor has two more in inventory and will publish them at their pleasure. So the chronicles of Ritter, Sir Toby, and the Mongolian Wizard's conquest of Europe are one-third written.  That's seven down and fourteen to go.

You can find the story here. Or you can just go to Tor.com and have a pleasant time wandering about.


And speaking of Tor.com . . .

The current issue (page? iteration?) of Tor.com has an enthusiastic review of Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. I have a contributor's copy, of course. But if I didn't, this review would send me out to buy a copy.

So it seems that the good folks at Tor conspire to make me happy.

You can find the review here. Or, as I said, go to Tor.com and start poking around. They've always got interesting stuff to read there.


*

My Scheduled Appearances

.I have a new addition to my public appearances! This September 8, I'll be opening the 25th season of the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series.  That's one quarter of a century that this series has been presenting the greats and unknowns of science fiction. With, it should be mentioned, frequent promotion from the latter category to the former.

More details as they come available.  Meanwhile, here's my current schedule.


Scheduled Appearances


Saturday, August 15 - Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh, NC

Sunday, August 16 - Oak City Comic Show, Raleigh, NC

Monday, August 17 - Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC
There'll also be an appearance on WCOM with Samuel Mongomery-Blinn of Bull Spec and Mur Lafferty of Carolina Book Beat

Tuesday, August 18 - Malaprop’s, Ashville, NC

Friday, August 21 – Sunday, August 23 – Sasquan World Science Fiction Convention
Tuesday, September 8 – New York Review of Science Fiction Readings, Brooklyn, NY.

Wednesday, September 9 – Philadelphis Free Library Central Branch, Philadelphia, PAA panel on the history and future of science fiction and fantasy in Philadelphia

Monday, September 21 - University of Pennsylvania (B&N College), Philadelphia, PA


*

Darger & Surplus Explained!

.



Episode 243: Michael Swanwick and his two rogues | The Coode Street Podcast


This is a great week for anybody who's ever wondered about Darger & Surplus -- where they came from and where they're going to.  From very close to the beginning, I've had an overall plan for their adventures... which are not as random as they sometimes look.

I've explained everything -- twice.  First, in a conversation on Gary K. Wolfe's and Jonathan Strahan's Coode Street Podcast.  And then in "A Brief History of the Notorious Tricksters Darger and Surplus," an essay on the Tor/Forge Books blog.

You can find the Coode Street Podcast here. Or you can click the link above.

And you can find the Tor/Forge essay here.


And I'll be reading in Brooklyn this September . . .

I'll put my updated schedule of appearances up here tomorrow.


*

Ask Unca Mike

.


Science fiction and fantasy writers are a group are extraordinarily generous with advice to new writers. A moment's thought, however, reveals that this is just encouraging talented young people to occupy the publishing niches and win the awards that would otherwise go to to us Old Hands. Ask Unca Mike is an attempt to rectify this deplorable situation.

The following are Classic Unca Mike questions. Just to give you some idea of what I'm up to This column will begin running new questions in a few weeks.


Pol asks: Was science fiction in the last century actually opposed to literary modernism? Or is it possible that both sf and modernism were two sides of a larger literary movement? I will point out that both sf and modernism were intellectualist, given to complex literary games (there is no more playful form of literature than sf), deeply connected to the western literary tradition (think of the Shakespeareanism of both James Joyce and Frank Herbert with his Hamletian God Emperor), given to innovation, and a host of other similarities despite their surface antagonism.
It was only a recursive self-involvement with the tragedies of their own age that ever led SF writers to think that the Twentieth would be the "last century." Now that we are safely into the year 2002 and have somehow survived, it is possible to refute this ad hoc declaration not only by challenging the patriarchal assumptions built into such consensual structures as "centuries" and "sequence" but by direct apperception: The "century" is "gone" and therefore it did not "last."

But to answer your question: Probably not. But thanks for writing.

2003: Filler
Dan Donahue writes: I have trouble coming up with believable "filler" for my stories. I prefer the short story form but when I think I've finished and revised and revised and revised, I feel as though I need more to add dimension to my characters without making the background info seem pointless and superficial. Have there been times in the past where you have experienced this sort of block, and if so, how did you overcome it? I try not to sound like a bullshitter but in the end I got nothing but horns and tail. Thanks.
Well, the stock answer here is that if you thoroughly research your subject, not only the science but the locales (by actually visiting them or someplace analogous and taking notes of everything there), and if you know the sorts of people you'll encounter there, you'll find that the problem is not coming up with good background details but pruning them down to something manageable.
But that's too much like work! Try keeping a single-volume desk encyclopedia next to your computer. Then, when you need to puff out a sentence like, He walked past the potted plants and entered the red sandstone building," a few quick flips of the page and you've got "He walked past the potted geraniums, a widely grown house and bedding plants of genus Pelargoniumnative to South Africa, and into a building constructed of red sandstone which, as everybody knows, consists of sand grains cemented by iron oxide, calcium carbonate, and quartz."
See how easy it is? Two minutes' research and already you've made the reader feel ignorant and inferior. And that's what "filler" is all about, isn't it? 


2004: First story

Jack writes: Tell me this, EXACTLY how DID you get your first short story published? How in the hell did you get the editor (who was it?) to consider a raw untested writer.
I've read you, I've read me, I'm just as good as you are.

Well, you're absolutely right. No editor in his right mind is going to give a chance to a raw untested writer when he's got the likes of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and J.R.R. Tolkien hammering on the door every month with exciting new cutting-edge fiction that they're eager to sell for six cents a word. So, since you can't win this one with talent, you'll have to do it with image: motorcycle, black leather, mirrorshades, drug dependency, the works!

Good luck. I see that you've already got the attitude down already.


 If you have a question for Unca Mike, you can post it below. Or write to AskUncaMike ("at" sign) gmail.com.  I'll respond to those I have the best answers for.


*

Book Touring!

.


My advance author's copies of Chasing the Phoenix have arrived!  I'd be telling a life if I pretended not to be thrilled with how it came out.  This is one well-made book.

And in related news, here's the list of public appearances I'll be making in the next two months. (Not counting the Worldcon, which I'll be attending, because it would be kind of cheeky to presesnt it as being a promotional event for my book):



Tuesday, August 11
Book Launch: Main Point Books – 7pm1041 West Lancaster AveBryn Mawr, PA 19010

Saturday, August 15
Event: Quail Ridge Books – 7pm3522 Wade AveRaleigh, NC 27607

Sunday, August 16
Event: Oak City Comic Show – 10am to 5pmNorth Raleigh Hilton3415 Wake Forest RoadRaleigh, NC 27609

Monday, August 17
Interview: “Carolina Book Beat” WCOM  300-G E. Main StreetCarrboro, NC 27510

Event: Flyleaf Books– 7pm 752 MLK Jr BoulevardChapel Hill, NC 27514(919) 942 7936

Tuesday, August 18
Event: Malaprop’s Bookstore and Cafe – 7pm55 Haywood StreetAsheville, NC 28801(828) 254 6734  
Wednesday, September 9
Panel: Philadelphia Free Library, with other Philadelphia luminaries – 7pm Geekadelphia Presents: The Future of Philly Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Monday, September 21
Event: Penn Bookstore– 6pm 3601 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104


I'll be updating this list if other events pop up.

*

Darger & Surplus At The Beach

.


I'm on the road again -- this time a day trip "down the shore," as we say here, to Mile Zero where Marianne and I will eat seafood, swim, and not do a lick of work all day.

It's a tough life, but somebody's gotta live it.

Meanwhile, here's the latest review of Chasing the Phoenix from the Barnes & Noble blog. Which is, I acknowledge, a marketing tool and thus unlikely to say anything bad about any of the books they're trying to peddle. But it certainly is enthusiastic.

Here's a for-example:

Much like its stars, the world of Darger and Surplus is utterly unique and easy to be seduced by. The setting is a distant future, long after our high-tech civilization has collapsed and the demons—literal—of the internet have been banished. It is a speculative fiction tour de force: a future dystopia populated with mythology and dealing in tropes of high fantasy.    

I won't pretend that such praise doesn't please me.

You can read the entire review here.


*

The Pyramid of Krakow

.


"I love montage. I don’t care whether it’s out of style or not. It’s excellent for capturing a multi-layered story. I’m looking forward to working on the next one coming up soon."

Gregory Manchess has blogged about how he went about creating the illustration for my new Mongolian Wizard story, "The Pyramid of Krakow."

Any aspiring illustrators should head over there immediately, because in a simple and straightforward manner, Manchess explains how the montage moves from thumbnails to the final image. There's much to be learned here.

Me, I don't have the talent to benefit from the post, though I can appreciate it the saame way I might a similar post by an acrobat or a magician. But I do notice that this particular image is even darker than usual. Which is appropriate because "The Pyramid of Krakow" is the story in which the series takes a turn into moral darkness.

You can see the blog post here.

You can also read about crumping (Manchess's own term) here.


*

Ask Unca Mike

.


Long, long ago, in the early years of this century, I ran a feature on my webpage called Unca Mike's Bad Advice . It was based on the realization that science fiction writers in particular are extremely generous with our advice to aspiring writers and that this practice was only encouraging them to replace us in the affections of our readers and budgets of our editors. So I decided to engage in a little written self-defense by providing advice that would cut off the next generation ofwriters at the knees.

In a few weeks, I'm going to resurrect this column under the new name of Ask Unca Mike.  It will run here every Friday.  In the meantime, here are a few classic responses from the archives:


October 2001: Income
Joseph asks:    In today's market, what could a moderately successful science fiction writer expect to pull down per year? Will he or she be able to live, or just feed his or her goldfish?

A moderately successful writer – we're talking midlist here, and reasonably prolific (say one novel every eighteen months) – ought to be able to pull down eighty to ninety thou a year, easily. Toss in a couple of short fiction sales, and call it an even hundred thousand bucks. If you've been writing more than two or three years and haven't hit this mark yet, I'd advise you to throw in the towel.


September 2001: Selling Ideas
KC asks: I have writted SF since JUne last year, n only F&Sf send any replies. Analog does not n Asimovs nor Amazing. As for F & Sf, they keep rejecting my works. maybe I don't know how to write stories but some of my ideas have even been praised by Greg Bear n Ian Stewart. How do i turn them into engaign, saleable stories?THank u very much!
Bye!

The solution to your problem is so simple, you'll kick yourself for not coming up with it on your own: Sell your ideas to Greg Bear and Ian Stewart! Or, for that matter, to just about any science fiction writer. All the top writers are always in the market for hot ideas. You should see how their eyes light up when a stranger approaches them with a great notion for a novel and an offer to "split the profits." Not me, though – I just bought fifteen years' worth of ideas from a guy in Newark. But anybody else.      


July 2001: Dialogue
Steve Taylor asks: How do you avoid incredibly duff dialogue? The stuff I write down is so awful that it pains me to read it. My ear can tell good dialogue from bad. Why can't my writing hand?
Avoid duff dialog? Why on earth would you want to? Do you for an instant believe that someone like, say, Lucius Shepard, who on a good day writes like God's own Stasi agent, outsells a talentless purveyor of multivolume fantasy pap like [name accidentally lost to line noise]? Absolutely not. Here's an exercise: Go to any book store and pick up volume 8 of any fantasy trilogy. Don't drop it on your foot! Now ask yourself, could any reader possibly wallow through 1,200 pages of this bilge, if he had to read ever word? No chance. "Thou foul caitiff!" the spunky heroine cries. "Hast never thou ..."

Okay, thinks the reader. Princess Whatserface doesn't like the Dark Lord. His finger moves halfway down the page.

Personally, I like to work out my dialogue out loud, when there's nobody else in the house. That's how I snapped a tendon. One character said something that needed correction. The other had a snappy comeback. I delivered it with a hand-waving flourish ... and there was a wall in the way. Ouch.


Back in the Sixties, we used to say, "A clean mind, a clean body - take your pick." Today, it's seven-figure tripe or nine-finger art. The choice is up to you.


If you have a question for Unca Mike, you can post it below. Or write to AskUncaMike ("at" sign) gmail.com.  I'll respond to those I have the best answers for.

*

In the Company of Dragons

.


Here I am, in my natural habitat -- in the company of dragons.  This was taken outside of Yangshuo at Moon Bridge Mountain.
Just wanted you to see that.
I've been working on promotional materials all day and have to go pick up some relatives at the airport now.  But this would be a good place to mention that I'm going to be running classic Unca Mike's Bad Advice columns for the next few Fridays. Then, after I've garnered enough new questions to proceed onward, I'll be making Ask Unca Mike a regular Friday feature for the foreseeable future.
Be there, as we used to say back in the Neolithic, or be square.
I miss Wooly Mammoths.

Above: Photo by Eileen Gunn. Used by her permission. All rights reserved.
*

You're Invited To My Book Launch!

.


The launch for my new Darger & Surplus novel, Chasing the Phoenix , is only weeks away! And you're invited, of course.

The event will be held on August 11 starting at 7:00 p.m. at Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr.  Or, to be specific, at 1041 West Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010.

I expect it will be a lot of fun. I hope to see a lot of my friends there. And I hope to autograph a lot of books.

But I should warn you that Main Point Books is quite a nice bookstore. If you can get out of it without buying more than one book, you've got a lot more self-controle than I do.
 
And for the same of gonnabe writers out there . . .

The critic and book collector John Clute once explained to me that, when autographing a book,  an author should only add the date during the year of publication or on days significant to the book's career -- the day it wins an award, say, or the author commits suicide. Any other time, the date adds nothing to the book's collectibility. Though if a reader requests one, it's only polite to oblige.

(I tell my friends that if they ever find me autographing and dating all my old books, they should buy me a drink and try to cheer me up.)

The date of the book's first appearance is, of course, a particularly desirable one.


*