Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 200

When You Have Eliminated the Impossible...

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You've probably read about the recent findings about the Type 1a Supernova 2011fe, 21 million light years away, near the Pinwheel Galaxy, which became visible in August.  A team of astronomers from the University of California Berkley has concluded that because the PIRATE telescope in Majorca, Spain, wasn't able to detect the supernova just hours after it exploded (setting a new lower limit on the size of the star which exploded), the star must have been a white dwarf.

But while they were sure that a companion star was feeding into the white dwarf, the composition of that companion star was unknown.


Meanwhile, however, astronomers from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge have been studying SNR0509-67.5 (pictured above in a composite optical and X-ray NASA photograph), the remnant of a Type 1a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the light from which first reached Earth 400 years ago.  They identified the center of that beautifully symmetrical bubble as the likely site of the explosion and, since a large companion star would have survived the explosion and been flung away on a predictable course, searched for that star where it would inevitably be four centuries after the explosion. 
  Nowhere in that region, however, did they find any stars.  Leading them to the only possible conclusion, which is that the companion star had also been a white dwarf, subsequently destroyed in the supernova.
A neat bit of scientific fact-crunching and kudos to all involved.
As a science fiction writer, however, it seems obvious to me that this is not the only possible explanation.  My first thought is that an interstellar war went very hot and that the only way to end it was to eliminate the home system of one side.  My second thought is that a religious war on the home planet went auto-genocidal with identical results.
Nobody in the scientific community is going to take either of those speculations seriously, of course.  But I have to wonder: Has anybody ever taken the number of supernovae per trillion stars and factored it into the Drake Equation?  It could be a very tidy solution to the Fermi Paradox.



Above:  Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Hughes et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)


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"The Mask"

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It occurs to me that I may not yet have told the story here of how I came to write "The Mask."  So . . .

Some years ago, I was reading the Re/Search book on J. G. Ballard,   It was full of stories about how he had created collages which he ran in art magazines as paid advertisements, and put wrecked cars on display in a Soho  gallery as art, and the like.  Included in the book was a black-and-white photo of three potato-shaped white men seated on folding chairs and a young woman wearing only a bikini bottom and a fish net.  The caption read something like:

Potato-shaped white man #1, J. G. Ballard, potato-shaped white man #3, and Miss Tempest Blaze, who in the late 1960s put on a series of performances in which she read excerpts from Ballard's work and select medical texts while removing her clothing.

I put down the book and said, "Jeeze.  I feel like such a stick-in-the-mud."

So I took some surgical gauze and made a life-mask of Marianne.  When it dried, I painted it with white enamel paint.  Then I wrote a short-short story titled "The Mask," which I printed out and then cut into thin strips of paper.  These strips I pasted across the face of the mask in a kind of demi-mask.  Then I sprayed the whole thing with a clear fixative.   Marianne punched two holes in the side, ran a red silk cord through them, and hung the mask on the wall.

And I felt better.

Later, I expanded the story to something like three times its original length and sold it to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine .  And later still, I took the original, made a few changes in it so that the story on the physical mask would remain unique, and included it in Cigar-Box Faust , my flash fiction collection.  So there are three distinct versions of the story.

But, still, its existence is due entirely to the desire not to be a dullard.  So too, I believe, is most art.


Above:  There she is, clad in the original story and smiling enigmatically.

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In Which I Make Jeff Vandermeer's Short List

.Over on Locus Online, the energetic Jeff Vandermeer has included my Dancing With Bears on his list of novels he liked last year, "A Dozen of the Best from 2011."


You'll have noticed the implied qualifier that these aren't necessarily the best, but only some of them.  That's because when you find yourself in a position to compile such a list, you become acutely aware of all the books you haven't read and indeed may not even know exist.  I say that as a former member of the Nebula Jury which failed to notice the existence of Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates in time to put it on the ballot.  You simply can't read everything, and other people often aren't as quick to alert you to works of brilliance as they should be.

This grace note of modesty is why I value getting on the list.   It implicitly acknowledges that such lists are simply one reader's preferences.  There is no, nor can there be, objective "best of" list.  But by compiling an approximation of such a list, a reader can create a kind of psychic map of his or her own year's reading.  Which can be valued in proportion to the esteem in which that reader is held.

Here are the other books Vandermeer included on his own psychic map:


The Great Lover by Michael Cisco (Chômu Press)   The Sacred Band by David Anthony Durham (Doubleday) God's War by Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)   Tattoo by Kirsten Imani Kasai (Del Rey)   A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (Bantam)   Embassytown   by China Miéville (Del Rey)   Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead)     Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)   Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)   Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor Books)   Zone One by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)  

You can read the entire article here.

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Dracula in the Living Room

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Marianne and Sean and I had a great experience the other night.  We saw actor Josh Hitchens put on a one-man version of Dracula in West Philadelphia.   The script, written by Hitchens himself, was a condensed and streamlined version of Bram Stoker's classic novel -- and it brilliantly conveyed the eerie and terrifying qualities of the original.


As an actor, Hitchens was mesmerizing, playing all the major roles with great verve and conviction, in a variety of convincing voices.


It was the venue that made the evening of theater so powerful, though -- or, rather, the way the venue intensified both the script and the acting.  The play was put on in the living room of Kyle Cassidy and Trillian Stars, with a minimum of props (a chair and a book) and a single small spotlight, in front of an audience of twelve.  The intimacy of the space made the story particularly compelling -- you've probably never seen an audience so rapt and still.
The effect was of being in a psychic space midway between theater and storytelling.  IWhich is to say, terrifying and wonderful.  Very much what it must have felt like on that long ago night outside of Geneva when Dr. Polidori first told the tale which introduced vampires to the Western canon.


It was an evening of dark glamor.  I felt privileged to be there.


My friend Victoria Janssen wrote a more detailed account of the evening on her blog.  You can read it here.  


Kyle's LiveJournal account is here.  


And Trillian's is here.  



Above:  Kyle Cassidy took this picture during the performance.  With his cellphone!  The guy is amazing.


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A Free eBook With A Refreshingly Honest Title

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Happy Groundhog's Day!  Exactly one hundred and thirty years ago today, James Joyce was born.  Which is why every year on this date we bring out our copy of Finnigans Wake to see if it casts a shadow.  And if it does . . .  well, we'll have six more weeks of the agenbite of inwit, I guess.

Meanwhile, Tor.com has announced an impending and free mini-ebook, Some of the Best From Tor.Com .  And it has one of my stories in it!  So I feel complimented.

Here's their promo pitch:

We have collected a few of our favorite stories from 2011 and put them together in a mini free ebook, free for downloading. Of course, you can always read the stories for free right here, whenever you'd like, but for those that like to move about Some of the Best of Tor.com 2011 will be available Feb 14th. Kindle readers can pre-order now , it will be available at other retailers on the 14th.

One of the things I like about Tor Books (aside from their astonishing catalogue of authors, I mean) is that their response to a set of circumstances that are extremely perilous to the book industry has been to experiment and innovate.  The Tor.com site, which is a blend of very good online zine and a very shrewd bit of corporate promotion is an excellent example.  As is the free and mini ebook.  Anybody who thinks that the big publishers all deserve to fold because they're not changing with the times just hasn't been paying attention to the folks at Tor.


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And The Winner IS . . .

.If I've learned anything from running the Science Fiction Day and/or Isaac Asimov Limerick Writing Competition (and not everyone agrees that I have), it's  that limerick-writers work fast, so they don't really need a month-long competition.  If I ever do this again, I'll limit the contest to a week. 

But never mind that.  The Blue Ribbon and Not At All Nepotistic Panel of Family has met, deliberated, and pondered, deep into a lunch at Grog, out by the comic book store on Lancaster Avenue, and come up with a decision.  The winner is . . .  Joe Stillman!  For writing:

Some writers who like science fictionFormed a new and exciting traditionDoctor Asimov's heirsAnd his fans and his peersYell hooray and continue his mission

Which, in addition to its obvious virtues, pushed self-referentiality (or perhaps competition-referentiality is the mot juste here) right to the edge, and almost (but not quite) booted it over.  Kudos to Mr. Stillman.
Joe, if you'll send me your street address (email can reach me at miswanwick ["at" sign] aol.com), an autographed copy of the new trade paperback of Dancing With Bears will wing its away toward you.


And there's more . . .

The Blue Ribbon and Not At All Nepotistic Panel of Family has decided to give a special award to . . .  Richard Mason for:

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There once was a robot whose rhymeConsidered this directive prime:"My verses must scanIf they possibly canExcept where doing so would conflict with either the First or Second lines."

His ingenuity, alas, ran afoul of my stated rule that the limerick must be formally correct.  But the panelists liked this one so much that they demanded I send out a second book.  So, Richard, if you'll give me your address, as above, I shall comply.


And also  . . .


There was a limerick which almost smoked the two winners.  It was written by the pseudonymous oneoftheMichaels and went as follows:

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Asimov, Heinlein and PohlBova, Bear, Gibson & CloughZelazny and SwanwickWilliams and Phil DickGaiman, LeGuin, Doctorow 

The ingenuity of this (plus  the fact that it included my name) was almost enough give it the laurel wreath.  Unhappily, it relied on Brenda Clough's name rhyming with Doctorow, when it actually rhymes with "rough, tough, and dazzling stuff."

So close!  But a very good try.

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Three Typescript Pages

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I was sorting through a pile of partial manuscripts, tossing those which weren't needed anymore into the recycling bin, when I came across a couple of intensely doodled pages and thought I'd share them with you.

Above:  Page 6 of what was in the process of becoming "Slow Life."  You can see my thought processes at work.  Also the fact that I can't remember the elementary school formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit.    I thought sure I'd know that by now.


 

This one's pretty cool, actually.  It was drawn on the back of a typescript page for "Slow Life" and I was trying to work out the chronology of the ballooning section and make sure I included details I hadn't mentioned yet.  Either that or I was avoiding actual work by doodling.  Either one is eminently possible.
If only I could draw, this would be worth saving!


This is the first page of "Tin Marsh."  Here I absolutely, no question about it, was doodling. 
I'm sure this thought occurred to me at the time, but it's a pity I couldn't fit giant alien lizards into the story.  Pretty much any story can be improved by the addition of giant alien lizards.
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A Massive Failure of Science Fiction's Imagination

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I've been looking for an article or video clip that would, in a sensible and nonpartisan way, examine Newt Gingrich's proposal for a permanent moon base which would evolve into a lunar colony.  The clip above of Neile deGrasse Tyson does a pretty good job.

There's also an interview with Warren Ellis which (no surprise) does get a little hard on Mr. Gingrich.  But I include it because Ellis goes into the nuts-and-bolts about the difficulties, and mentions the Outer Space Treaty, which makes Luna becoming the 51st state unlikely.  You can find it here.

Here's the short take on a moon colony:

Could we do it?  Yes, if we really wanted to.

Is it likely to happen anytime soon?  No, because there's not the enthusiasm for it.

I don't want to bash Mr. Gingrich here, and I don't want to go into the politics of the proposal.  What interests is the fact that I didn't feel even a twinge of enthusiasm for the idea.  That caught me by surprise.  So I examined the idea and realized that it was because the vision being offered up for our consideration was straight out of Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress .

Heinlein's book was published in 1966.  Only four years short of half a century ago.

Now, Heinlein put a great deal of his career into plotting a plausible path for humanity's emergence into outer space.  But he never meant it to be the last word.  And there's been a lot of technological and scientific growth since then.  Yet when a space enthusiast, running for president, reaches for a workable vision to inspire the electorate, he has to go four and a half decades into the past for it.

This is a massive failure of imagination on the part of science fiction.

I understand how this came about.  After Heinlein's book appeared, NASA was roaring into the future by itself and it only made sense to let them do it, while writing fiction set after the deed was already done.  Even Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, which demonstrate, step by step how to terraform that planet, assume the hard work of moving large numbers of people into interplanetary space has already been accomplished.

But now that the space program has lagged and only a few diehard holdouts -- most of them specifically fans of Heinlein -- believe in the dream anymore, that gap has become more and more obvious.

Somebody really ought to do something about that.


And since you ask . . .

Why not me?  Because that's not where my talents lie.  But, for what little it's worth, here's my own admittedly sketchy and not at all inspiring synopsis of how it could be done.

1.  Start with John Barnes's idea of sending hundreds of cheap probes everywhere in the Solar System.  "Build a big enough database," he said, "and it will tell you what to do.

2.  Send robots first to construct whatever colonies the database tells you to build.

3.  Learn enough about ecosystems to have self-contained farms producing food and oxygen before the human being arrives.

4.  (And this is implicit in the previous three items.)  Accept that the first permanent Moonbase or Marsbase of Whereverbase is probably not going to happen in our lifetimes.

That last doesn't have to be true.  But it will be unless somebody comes up with a viable and inspiring alternative.


And speaking of limericks . . .

The Blue Ribbon And Not At All Nepotistic Jury of Family will be announcing the winner of the low-rent SF and/or Isaac Asimov limerick contest on Wednesday.  Brilliant writers of light poetics have only today and tomorrow in which to pull off a last minute upset.

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Pushkin the American

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I have a story coming out soon in the latest Postscript anthology, #26/27 Unfit for Eden. It's the second of two stories that I dreamed up while I was in Yekaterinburg, Russia.  The first one was "Libertarian Russia," and every time I meet a émigré Russian who's read it, he or she inevitably takes me aside to demand I explain what I meant by it.

I'm expecting an intensified version of this reaction for the second story.  It's called "Pushkin the American."

Here's how it begins:

The American, whose name has since been forgotten, came to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains in the year 1817.  He was a young man and whatever disgrace had driven him so far had been left behind in his native Philadelphia.  Somehow he had found work as the secretary of an American industrialist who, along with his wife, was making a tour of Russia with a particular eye to the natural riches of the Ural Mountains.

You probably know this already, but suggesting that Pushkin was an American is like saying that Shakespeare was French or George Washington was a spy for the British, or possibly some combination of the two.  It's every bit as impossible as a libertarian Russia, while running the risk of being taken as an insult to a national hero.

But of course the story has nothing to do with Pushkin at all.  I conceived of it on my last day in Yekaterinburg.  I'd been pushing myself hard, trying to see as much as I could during my stay and suddenly, less than half a mile from a museum that held some Kandinsky paintings I very much wanted to see, discovered I could go no further.  Totally exhausted, and feeling that strange psychological pressure that comes from being immersed in a language you cannot speak, I asked myself:  What if I couldn't go home?  I'd have to get a menial job in order to support myself and I'd also have to learn Russian.  But if I was ever to become a writer again -- ever to become myself again -- I'd have to know Russian as well as a Russian does.  I tried to imagine what that would be like.

Of course, nobody would want to read a story about Swanwick the Russian.  But the idea had its talons in my imagination.  So I wrote about Pushkin the American instead.

The Russians are one of the most literary peoples on earth.  I hope they understand that this story was written with nothing but admiration for their literature and their culture.


And as long I brought it up . . .

Here's the table of contents for the anthology.  If you can't find something there to like, you're far, far pickier than I am.


# Michael Bishop - Unfit for Eden# Darrell Schweitzer - True Blue# Mike Chinn - Saving Prince Romero# Richard Calder - Madeline Smith# Quentin S. Crisp - Non-Attachment# Matthew Hughes - The Scribe of Betelgeuse V# Eric Brown - The Room Beyond# Thomas Olde Heuvelt - The Boy Who Cast No Shadow# Christopher Harman - The Reader# Robert Reed - Emergence# Greg Ouiring - The Man Who Hated Shakespeare# Amber D. Sistla - The Summer of Our Discontent# Mike Resnick - A Weighty Affair# George Hulseman - The Sea Witch# Vaughan Stanger - First and Third# Lavie Tidhar - Black Gods Kiss# Robert T. Jeschonek - Warning! Do Not Read This Story!# Steven Utley - Crime and Punishment# Simon Unsworth - Borough Station# Jessica Reisman - The Bottom Garden# Kit Reed - Tasmin# Andrew Drummond - Dr. Calvin's Grand Illuminated Bestial Pleasure Dome# Michael Swanwick - Pushkin the American# Michael Kelly - Conversations with the Dead# Eric Schaller - The Parasite# Neal Barrett, Jr. - Trash# Matthew Bialer - Found Fresh Footprints Again


Above:  There's the cover.  

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Space Nazis

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I took the day off yesterday but even so I've managed to finish two stories this week, the second one just a few minutes ago.  Now both of them go into the pie closet to cool off.  I'll take a critical look at 'em in a week or three.

Meanwhile, here's a trailer for a movie that, fingers crossed, might turn out to be good trashy fun.  On the basis of this one trailer, it looks like a sure thing.  Unhappily, some of the other trailers I've seen are not so encouraging.  We'll all have to keep our fingers crossed.

Except for those of us who don't like kitschy melodramatic fun.  But for them there's always Merchant Ivory.

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