Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 18

Tom Purdom, Heart of Philadelphia

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Photo by Sally Grotta

This is very hard for me to write. So please excuse its infelicities. I knew this man for a full fifty years.

Tom Purdom is dead. Not enough people will know what a loss this is. While he was as vivid and eccentric an individual as any of the rest of us, he absolutely refused to promote himself. I think he believed it was ungentlemanly. But those who knew him, cherished him.

Tom was the very heart of Philadelphia science fiction long before I came to town in 1974. He and his socially elegant wife Sara Purdom had monthly open houses where all the SF community was welcome--even rowdies like Gardner Dozois and myself. They two served as role models for Marianne and me. 

His gatherings were as glittery events as our crew ever saw. I recall Milton Rothman discussing the physics of nuclear-powered aircraft, and I most vividly remember Jack McKnight (who machined the first Hugo trophies in  his garage) pretending to steal our then-infant son Sean at one of these soirees.

Tom had three careers: First as a science fiction writer (he published his first two stories in 1957). Then, after he was squeezed out of the field by commercial forces, as a freelance writer specializing in biological and medical matters, chiefly for hospitals and universities. When Gardner Dozois became editor of Asimov's, one of his ambitions was to get Tom writing SF again. Under Gardner's prodding, he wrote "A Proper Place to Live," which, if unsold, could serve as a love letter to his wife Sara. Gardner bought it and Tom responded with a series of ambitious stories which put him in direct competition with the best of that era's young writers. "Fossil Games," a Hugo nominee, was my favorite (and in my opinion one of the best stories of the decade) but it was preceded and followed by many stories that were almost as good.

Tom was opinionated and a natural contrarian. Once, I told him I had decided to take his advice on some particular matter and he immediately told me why I shouldn't. But there was never any anger in our disagreements. They were more in the nature of a game, something done for the intellectual of it. 

He was also a strange combination of stoic and epicure. When his publisher told him that his half of a paperback double hadn't sold as well as the other half (and paid him accordingly) he refused to challenge that, because gentlemen took their lumps without complaining. But he also arranged his life to maximize the three great pleasures in his life: family (particularly his wife Sara, to whom he was devoted), witty conversation with interesting people, and what he called "sitting in a room where musicians were making music surrounded by people who like to  sit in rooms where musicians are making music." His gig as a classical music critic allowed him the luxury of never having to listen to recorded music. 

Tom was always worth listening to, always interesting, always full of new ideas. If you knew him, you wished he lived next door to you. If you didn't know him... Well, maybe you should read some of his stories. He was a good man and a very good writer. He worked to make this world a better, more civilized place.

Vaya con dios, Tom. You leave a great many people heartbroken by your absence. But I guess that's the price of your presence in the first place.

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Three Things You Must Know About Terry Bisson (May Stalin Bless His Soul)

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"I enjoyed working as an auto mechanic," Terry Bisson, who would later ghost-write a book for the Car Talk guys, once told me. "But one Saturday, when it was raining and I'd been working on this car for hours and I had just barked my knuckles on a bolt that refused to turn, I looked over to the mechanic on a creeper the next car over and said, 'Manuel, why are we doing this to ourselves?'

"And Manuel grinned and said, "You think this is hard? Try chopping cane.'"

So there's the first thing you should know about Terry. He was grounded in reality. He could fix a car or write a book with equal facility.

Another time, I was at a Worldcon in the SFWA suite with Terry and Sheila Williams and Terry started talking about attending the first (and, as it turned out, only) science fiction convention in the Soviet Union. ("As we got off the boat, they handed us all watermelons and we wandered into the woods, carrying them, as if we were in a surrealist painting...") He said, "I told them, 'I know you guys are all capitalists now, but I'm still a Stalinist. I hold to the old ways.'"

Then he got up and walked off. Sheila looked after him, smiled sweetly, and said, "I really had a hard time not saying, 'You and Fidel, Terry.'"

That's the second thing you should know about Terry. He was a committed Communist. As a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, an offshoot of the Weather Underground, he was sentenced to three months in jail for refusing to rat out friends who has gone on the lam.

You don't have to agree with his politics to admire him for that. He walked the walk.

"I'm writing a story with Terry Bisson," I told Gardner Dozois. Gardner looked astonished. Then, savvy editor that he was, he said, "No, you're not."

Gardner was right, of course. When I proposed that we collaborate, Terry had given me some notes he had made for a story in which the protagonist was griping about everything around him even as he was living, as Terry put it, "in a fucking Utopia." I took the notes, wrote a solid beginning to the story, and sent it to him for continuation. And... He apologized that he couldn't do it, and gave me full ownership and carte blanche of the story. So I named the protagonist "Terry Bissel" and published it. 

"Walking Out" placed on the Hugo ballot. At the time, I joked that it would have won if Terry had participated. But awards aren't what matters. What matters is that if he'd participated, it would have been a better story.

That's the third thing you need to know about Terry Bisson. He was a hell of a good writer. "Bears Discover Fire" was one of the best stories of the nineties. Talking Man deserves a place on the Pantheon of Fantasy Fiction. 

Terry wrote far too little and far too rarely. But what he did write was of the finest quality.

And here's a fourth thing you don't need to know but all his friends were aware of: He was one sweet guy.

Vayo con dios, mi amigo. May Stalin himself welcome you into Commie Heaven.

And from Terry's New Yorker profile . . .

On his Web site, Bisson once quoted the Surrealist and communist Paul Eluard: “There is another world, but it is in this one.” When asked about it, he said, gently, “That’s the world I want to be in.”

You can read the profile by Margret Grebowicz here. Read  today, it's a first-class obituary. But it was published while Terry was alive and so he got to read it. Thank you and God bless you for that, Ms. Grebowicz.

And a glimmer of good news  . . .

If you're a subscriber to Locus, you know that Terry has been publishing a series of mini-micro masterpieces of sf under the title of This Month in History, a future history in the form of two or three sentence entries. All are witty, most are satiric, and by slow degrees I found them addictive.

The last time I communicated with Terry, I asked if they would ever see book form. He told me that a small press (I forget its name) would publish them in 2024.

When they do, whoever they are, I'm going to buy a copy.

Above: This picture of Terry Bisson was taken from the PM  Press site. PM Press is leftist, sincere, literary. Terry did a lot of work for and with them. Start here and search for their science fiction publications. You won't be disappointed.

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Stations of the Tide in Ukraine

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I have learned that Zhupansky Publishing House in Ukraine will be publishing Stations of the Tide. This is the same publisher that published The Iron Dragon's Daughter in 2021.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I find it incredibly moving that ordinary life can go on in the midst of a horrific war--and that my book can be a small distraction from that war. On the other hand, I feel bad about taking money out of a country that very much needs it.

So I'm giving it all back.

The four organizations I've chosen for this purpose are:

Future for Ukraine: Founded by displaced Ukrainian women, FFU aids displaced Ukrainian children and women coping with the psychological consequences of war. They also provide prosthetics for wounded Ukrainians abroad and humanitarian aid to affected regions within Ukraine.

GlobalGiving Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund: This supports locally-led organizations throughout Ukraine providing essentials for refugees, health and psychological support, and access to education and economic assistance.

Malteser International: This is the humanitarian relief agency of the Sovereign Order of Malta. It provides food, shelter, and emergency medial care within Ukraine and neighboring countries.

Global Empowerment Mission: To date, GEM has helped relocate nearly 39,000 refugees, placed some 14,000 people in temporary housing, and repaired hundreds of buildings and homes.

I chose these organizations from Forbes Magazine's list of charities working to relieve some of the suffering the war has imposed upon the people of Ukraine. If you wish to donate to any of them, you can find the list and more information on them here.

Above: I found this graphic at the US Department of State's travel advisory page for Ukraine. They advise against traveling there.

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Celebrating the Queen of Cocktails . . . the Manhattan!

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Today is the 149th anniversary of the invention of the Manhattan.  It was invented at the Manhattan Club in (of course) New York City at a gala celebration in honor of Samuel Jones Tilden, who had just been elected governor. To make the history even more glittery, the event was held in the home of Jennie Jerome, mother of Winston Churchill. Some even say the drink was made specifically for her.

And already I've told more lies than you could count after a third drink. All the above was once documented as being true--and every word of it has since been disproved by cold, solid scholarship.

But what the heck. When the truth becomes legend... print the legend.

So the Manhattan is 149 years old this evening. 

If you look up the earliest printed recipes for this noble drink, you'll find that in keeping with the taste for sticky-sweet drinks that was prevalent at the time, they called for equal portions of sweet vermouth and rye or even twice more vermouth than rye. Don't do that. 

Even today, many will tell you that the proportions should be 2-1-2, the same as the borough of Manhattan's area code--two parts rye, one part sweet vermouth, two dashes of bitters. That's close but why settle for close? Here's the taste-tested recipe for the Queen of Cocktails:

The Manhattan

3 ounces rye

1 ounce sweet vermouth

1 or 2 dashes of bitters, depending on your preference

1 spiced cherry for garnish

Unlike the Martini, there's wiggle room here. I prefer Angostura bitters, where Marianne favors cherry bitters. Orange bitters are also good as are--wait for it!--Aztec chocolate bitters. It's all a matter of taste. 

Oh, and spiced cherries are far, far superior to those awful candied things you buy by the jar. But nobody's going to give you a hard time if they're what you have on hand.

À votre santé, la Reine de la Nuit!

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Richard Bowes (1944-2023)

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Richard Bowes is dead. Normally, I write "has left the planet" when a fellow science fiction writer dies. But in this case,  I'd have to write has left New York City. Oh man, did he love New York! Particularly Old New York, the city that can only be found in remnants and nostalgia. It was not so much a theme in his writing as a character. 

Which makes it ironic that he was born in Boston. But when he came to the City, he came to stay. He made it a part of himself.

Bowes was a fine writer and a good man. He had a quick wit and a warm heart. He was a gay activist back when they were greatly needed. 

Over on Facebook, his niece wrote a long and loving post of what he meant to his extended family. Here's one small part of it. It captures the essence of the man better than I could hope to:

To our family, Ricky was the heart and soul of our holiday gatherings. His hilarious "backrub train" and unmatched wit brought laughter and joy to every occasion. More than his written words or his advocacy for equality, Ricky's legacy lies in the laughter, love, and resilience he shared with us all. He had a remarkable knack for engaging with every person and experience, from discussing various subjects like history, baseball, pop culture, and politics, to taking joy in the ordinary. His genuine interest and delight in our lives made him both endearing and fascinating.

Farewell, my friend. New York City is a sadder place without you.

Above: I swiped the pic of Richard Bowes from SFWA's Nebula Awards entry on him at https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nominees/ric...

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The Grinch and I

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Today, I was at the ROTfest in Highland Park, NJ. This is Alex Dawson's attempt to make the world a stranger place via a series of odd performances (Elvis was there, singing his version of Christmas carols) and opportunity to display his truck/bookstore/work of folk art, the Rac-On Tour. I was there to read some of  my Solstice flash fictions as a last-minute replacement for a fire eater who'd had a dental emergency.

And I missed, people tell me, one of the best performances of the day. That's because I was in it.

When I arrived, Alex told me that I'd also be reading Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. (He likes to throw this kind of thing at you  unannounced; I think he has a theory that the unexpected is the parent of creativity. And since JB was there in a Grinch suit, he was told to stand in front of the stage and do whatever came to him.

So I read. I read well and I could tell this was one  of my better readings. But because I was focused on the words, I could only spare a glance or two at the Grinch. Who, apparently, acted the whole thing out. Even though nobody had told him about this before either.

Marianne told me he was wonderful, "a first-rate actor." Then she said, "Your reading was also  excellent. The two of you worked really well together."

So I missed something worth witnessing, it seems.

But if you have to miss a good performance, the next best thing is to be in it.

And I should mention . . .

I don't know JB's full name. But I have his card. He does, it says, Animation, Cosplay, Illustration, Sculpting, Voice Acting, Music Parody, Puppetry, and Etc. He sells things at Etsy.com/shop/JackSquatJBcrafts and will create an original character design at Patreon.com/JackSquatJB for "ANY support amount!"

He also seems to be a nice guy, 

Oh, and also . . .

I just now learned that JB made the Grinch suit himself! In the picture, it looks great. In real life it looks even better. Easily the best Grinch costume I've ever seen.

Above: My good friend and I. Photo by Marianne C. Porter.

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Alvaros Zinos-Amaro's "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick," His Blog Tour, and What I Concluded From It

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A few years ago, I was talking with my wife, Marianne Porter, about a novel I may someday get around to writing and said, "You'll never guess what happens to the protagonist at the end of the first chapter."

"She dies," Marianne said.

I was astonished. "How in the world did you know that?" I asked.

"It happens all the time in your fiction," she replied

This incident was brought to mind recently when I read  Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's article in Tor.com,  "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick." Alvaro is currently doing a blog tour to bring to public attention his remarkable year-and-a-half long series of conversations/interviews with me published by Fairwood Press under the title Being Michael Swanwick. 

In the article, Zinos-Amaro lists what he feels are the best of my stories and novels, along with the first sentence for each. That for my novel Vacuum Flowers was She didn't know she had died. And right away, I was struck by the fact that there were more works on the list where the protagonist was dead right from the very beginning. 

It was a strange discovery when Marianne first pointed it out to me, and it remains a strange observation today. I have no explanation for it.

But thinking about it, I realized that after I die--many long decades from now, I hope--the stories and novels will remain, living after me. It's pleasant to think that a vital fraction of my life will go blithely on, neither knowing nor caring that the rest of me is gone.

And, really, that's where, after a literary flourish or three, I was going to conclude this post. But then I thought deeper and came up with a different conclusion.

If you read Being Michael Swanwick (and, again, you already know if you will or will not) and pay close attention, you'll note that Alvaro has a crisper, cleaner voice than I do. It's as if I were speaking in first draft and he in final draft. Readihng his blog tour posts I was struck by the strength of his prose and inventiveness of his thought. I write the occasional nonfiction piece, so I'm aware of how hard that is.

Judge for yourself. You can find "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick" here.

You can find Alvaro's post on Mary Robinette Kowal's blog here.

John Scalci hosted Alvaro here.

And Black Gate hosted Alvaro here. 

And if you're a gonnabe writer . . .

It would be worth your while to study these pieces and see how Alvaro Zinos-Amaro wrote very  different pieces to promote the same book. All of them varied, honest, and interesting. When you finally are published, you're going to be expected to promote yourself. (When I was first published, the Internet didn't exist and publishing houses took care of all that.) And when that happens, remember to make your self-promotion:

1) Varied

2) Honest

3) Interesting

Remember that you're not trying to outwit the system. That never works. You're just trying to bring your work to the attention of people who would enjoy reading it.

End of lecture.. Go thou and sin no more.

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Alvaros Zinos-Amaro's "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick," His Blog tour and What I Concluded From It

 .

A few years ago, I was talking with my wife, Marianne Porter, about a novel I may someday get around to writing and said, "You'll never guess what happens to the protagonist at the end of the first chapter."

"She dies," Marianne said.

I was astonished. "How in the world did you know that?" I asked.

"It happens all the time in your fiction," she replied

This incident was brought to mind recently when I read  Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's article in Tor.com,  "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick." Alvaro is currently doing a blog tour to bring to public attention his remarkable year-and-a-half long series of conversations/interviews with me published by Fairwood Press under the title Being Michael Swanwick. 

In the article, Zinos-Amaro lists what he feels are the best of my stories and novels, along with the first sentence for each. That for my novel Vacuum Flowers was She didn't know she had died. And right away, I was struck by the fact that there were more works on the list where the protagonist was dead right from the very beginning. 

It was a strange discovery when Marianne first pointed it out to me, and it remains a strange observation today. I have no explanation for it.

But thinking about it, I realized that after I die--many long decades from now, I hope--the stories and novels will remain, living after me. It's pleasant to think that a vital fraction of my life will go blithely on, neither knowing nor caring that the rest of me is gone.

And, really, that's where, after a literary flourish or three, I was going to conclude this post. But then I thought deeper and came up with a different conclusion.

If you read Being Michael Swanwick (and, again, you already know if you will or will not) and pay close attention, you'll note that Alvaro has a crisper, cleaner voice than I do. It's as if I were speaking in first draft and he in final draft. Readihng his blog tour posts I was struck by the strength of his prose and inventiveness of his thought. I write the occasional nonfiction piece, so I'm aware of how hard that is.

Judge for yourself. You can find "A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick" here.

You can find Alvaro's post on Mary Robinette Kowal's blog here.

John Scalci hosted Alvaro here.

And Black Gate hosted Alvaro here. 

And if you're a gonnabe writer . . .

It would be worth your while to study these pieces and see how Alvaro Zinos-Amaro wrote very  different pieces to promote the same book. All of them varied, honest, and interesting. When you finally are published, you're going to be expected to promote yourself. (When I was first published, the Internet didn't exist and publishing houses took care of all that.) And when that happens, remember to make your self-promotion:

1) Varied

2) Honest

3) Interesting

Remember that you're not trying to outwit the system. That never works. You're just trying to bring your work to the attention of people who would enjoy reading it.

End of lecture.. Go thou and sin no more.

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The Boy and the Heron and Miyazaki and Us

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Marianne and Sean and I went to see Hiyao Miyazaki's newest anime, The Boy and the Heron yesterday and were glad we did. It's a good movie.

But it's not one of Miyazaki's best. It's not up there with Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke.  

The Boy and the Heron has been receiving rave reviews and it's easy to see  why. Miyazaki is old and has announced his retirement more than once before this, so we're very, very grateful for another touch of the maestro's magic. And the movie is chockablock with familiar elements from older, beloved movies: strangely aggressive shreds of paper, dwarfish but benign old women, intriguing ruins, World War Two fighter plane engineering... the list goes on and on. And even I, knowing nothing of Miyazaki's life, could see that there were strong autobiographical components here. No wonder so many critics are acclaiming  The Boy and the Heron as a summation of his entire career.

Oh, yeah. The movie never goes where you expect it to. That's brilliant.

But while he Boy and the Heron is filled, from start to finish with striking and extraordinary imagery, the story itself is...

Oh, it's okay. But as a long-time working fantasist, I know when a plot is not fully under control of its creator. The rules change in order to keep the action moving along. You've got a fire witch, so why can't she use her powers to get you out of this fix you're in? Well, her powers are diminished while in this particular location. (Why? Don't ask.) The carnivorous budgerigars close in on our unconscious heroes with vocalized intentions to eat them and then leave one where he lies and take the other to their (previously unmentioned) king. (Why? It advances the plot.)

There's a great deal of running back and forth with things collapsing behind or under our hero. The animation is great. The fact they're running back and forth with things collapsing behind or under them, not so much.

And yet...  and yet...

Hiyao Miyazaki's universe is so beautiful, so evocative, so surprising, that you want to spend a year or three simply wandering about it. Two hours and four minutes only whetted my appetite for it.

If you have the chance to see it in a movie theater, I recommend that you do. If not... Keep Watching the Screens. 

Meanwhile, Miyazaki has once again announced that he has not quite retired. There's another movie in the works.

I can hardly wait.

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The Parable of the Creche

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Hey, kids! Christmas is coming! Which means it's time to post my classic  holiday story...  


The Parable of the Creche
by Michael Swanwick
When first I came to Roxborough, over forty years 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 the tip of the roof--nor was it very fancy. The figures of Joseph and Mary, the Christ Child, and the animals were a couple of feet tall at most, and there were sheets of Plexiglas over the front of the wooden structure 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 with real straw, and the neighborhood folk genuinely loved it.
 It was a common thing 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 the wonder then displayed was genuinely moving. It provided a welcome touch of seasonality and community to the park.
Alas, Gorgas Park is public property, and it was only a matter of time before somebody complained that the creche violated the principle of separation of church and state. When the complaint finally came, the creche was taken out of the park and put in storage.
People were upset, of course. Nobody likes seeing a beloved tradition die. There was a certain amount of grumbling and disgruntlement. One might even say disgrumblement.
So the kindly folks of Leverington Presbyterian Church, located just across the street from the park, stepped in. They adopted the creche and put it up in the yard in front of their church, where it could be seen and enjoyed by all.
But did this make up 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 don't see people standing in front of it anymore.
I was in a local tappie shortly after the adoption and heard one of the barflies holding forth on this very subject:
"The god-damned Christians," he said, "have hijacked Christmas."


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