Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 212

Dragonstairs Press is Off and Running!

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Dragonstairs Press (owned and operated by Marianne Porter) is now offering its first publications for sale.  At the moment, five items are available for purchase:  Four of them are the mini-chapbook adventures of Darger & Surplus which were published in a limited edition of100 signed-and-numbered copies each, most of which I gave away as promotions for my novel Dancing With Bears over the past four months.  There's also the chapbook reprint of A Midwinter's Tale , issued in an edition of approximately fifty, most of which were sent to friends as Christmas cards.

Part of Dragonstairs' business plan is to start small and very limited, so I don't think the remaining copies will last long.

But Marianne has bigger plans on the horizon!  Working with talented local artist Adam Cusack, she's currently putting together Sam the Asteroid:  One Swell Children's Story.   The working blurb for which is:

Black Humor For Small Children!
I wrote this story for my son Sean over a quarter-century ago and read it to him while he was sitting on my knee.  At the end, he laughed and laughed.  So the humor is appropriate for at least one child.

You can find the Dragonstairs Press website here.


And while I'm away . . .

I'm on the road again!  But I'll be back in time for my Saturday appearance at The Spiral Bookcase, 110 Cotton Street, Philadelphia, just off of Main Street in Manayunk.  Three to five p.m.  It ought to be great fun.

So if you have the opportunity to miss it . . . by all means don't.


Above:  A sample page from Sam the Asteroid.  Pretty cool, eh?

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 175

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The day Santa died, there were riots in Djakarta and Khartoum, the Premiere of Cambodia called for calm, and all of China, where the great bulk of his toys were made, fell into mourning; but Gideon Elf, his surrogate and successor, sent a reassuring message.

Another story I decided not to write.  Nobody likes to think about it, but the Big Guy Up North can't possibly last forever.  We should be making preparations now for how to deal with that sad event.


That's not a bad likeness of Gideon Elf.


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The Flaming Mechanical Octopus of Truth

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What would contemporary art look like if there were no grand tradition, no art schools and universities, no peer-reviewed journals and experts and collectors and critical papers?  With no one to tell you whether you'd gotten it right or wrong?  With nothing but the artist, the art, and the viewer?

Probably it would look a lot like this.


And don't forget . . .

I'll be making an appearance/reading/signing at The Spiral Bookcase in Manayunk this Saturday.  I expect to have a good time.  And it would be a great opportunity for you to discover a terrific new bookstore.

Because, let's face it, you don't own enough books.






Above:  A clip made when Duane Flatmo was building his wonderful Pulpo Mecanico.  Don't you desperately want the small, hand-cranked version?

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 174

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Basically, things to do:

versiontracker.com

Small dog for Ms. Software
[Norton}

Mac Mall or PC Mall

Xerox SFWA Directory for Kyle

That would have been to help Kyle Cassidy contact specific writers for his Where I Write project.

Gargar photograph


Our local nickname for Gardner Dozois there, derived from a story one of his friends wrote which featured him as Gargar the Barbarian.  I am not making this up.

URL Chowhound to Tom

And then some computer peripheral info.


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The Devil's Toothpick

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An image came into my head the other day of the Devil -- and since all such images enter the mind from the same place, you know it must be true.  He was picking his teeth with a splinter of the True Cross, and when he was done with it, he just threw the thing away.

You might think that unnecessarily wasteful, but there are a lot of pieces of the True Cross out in the world.  They proliferated in medieval times to such a degree that somebody estimated that, reassembled, there'd be enough wood to build a barn.  The nun who taught my second grade class had a sliver of it in crucifix-reliquary she kept around her neck.

So the Devil could be as profligate as he wanted, knowing that every year more pieces of the True Cross would appear than even he could desecrate and throw away.

The Devil is an atheist, of course.  So it makes no difference to him whether the slivers of the True Cross are counterfeit or not.


And I just read some sad news . . . 



William H. Patterson, Jr. , the author of Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, suffered an attack of Diabetic Keoacidosis while (if I interpret this correctly) at Renovation.  He was hospitalized upon returning home and underwent a transmetatarsal foot amputation.

This was particularly shocking to me because I had a very pleasant conversation with Patterson at the Worldcon.  When I observed how old-fashioned Heinlein came to seem, he said, "Heinlein was always a throwback to an earlier age, even in his youth.  He was a Teddy Roosevelt republican."  Which was a good and true and insightful thing to hear.  It was the kind of conversation one goes to these conventions to have.

Book 1 of Patterson's biography lost a Hugo to Chicks Dig Time Lords this year.  He'll have a second chance at the brass ring in a year or so when the second half of the biography comes out.  Assuming it's as good as the first half, you should give it serious consideration when it comes onto the Hugo ballot.

You can find Patterson's blog here.  In typical writer fashion, he appears to feel that the big news was losing a Hugo.



And only five days away . . .

I'll be appearing at The Spiral Bookcase (112 Cotton Street, Philadelphia; right off of Main Street in Manayunk) this Saturday, from 3 to 5 p.m.

If you follow this blog, you know that I do a lot of readings and autographings and bookstore appearances.  But his one is important to me.  Why?  Because The Spiral Bookcase is a neighborhood bookstore.  It sells both new and used books.  And I very much want it to be a success and stay in the neighborhood well into my old age.

So if it's at all possible, why not drop by?  Show the flag.  Have a good time and maybe buy a book or three.  Manayunk is a lot of fun on a Saturday afternoon. 

And did I mention that it has a bookstore?

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 173

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A brochure for a local theater company whose work I have inexplicably never seen.  This was a reminder to correct that omission.  But then things got busy again.  This year for sure!

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Writers Are Hurt Into Being

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This is the second excerpt from my Worldcon conversation with James Patrick Kelly.  In it, we discuss the origins of art in pain and for the first time I publicly talk about the event that drove me into becoming a writer.  It's been something like forty-five years, so it was about time.  But it was still extremely difficult for me.  More difficult, probably, than you, reading this, can realize.

The link to YouTube is here.


And on a lighter note . . .


Here's a quote (ellipsis mine) I recently found in an article in the New Yorker :

The collapse of the World Trade Center towers, nearly ten years ago, registered as minor earthquakes (with magnitudes of 2.2 and 2.4) on a seismometer locked in a former root celler . . . in Palisades, New York.  A blown-up seismogram of hte impacts from that morning now hangs on a wall of Thomas Lamont's onetime swimming pool, which has been converted into a kind of seismological museum, beneath the cafeteria at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Wow.  Doesn't that sound exactly like J. G. Ballard?  Another case of life imitating art.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 172

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Various cards I wanted to save.  I believe the top one is artwork by Judith Clute.

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"What Have We Learned?"

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I've uploaded onto YouTube the first of what I expect will be several excerpts from my public conversation with James Patrick Kelly at Renovation, this year's Worldcon in Reno, Nevada.  It's titled "What Have We Learned?" and that's it up above.

Ennjoy!

I'd have more to say but this morning I brought a cup of coffee up to my office, spilled a thimbleful over my keyboard, and lost the letters c, i, and o.  So a lot of my day went into getting a new keyboard.  Not that I'm complaining.  I know people who have real problems.


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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 171

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A bread-and-butter note from the illustrious Gordon Van Gelder.  Feeling too lazy to file it, I pasted it into the notebook.

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