Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 213
August 29, 2011
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 168
.
Another collage, posing a question which I'm sure R. Crumb has frequently asked himself.
*
Another collage, posing a question which I'm sure R. Crumb has frequently asked himself.
*
August 28, 2011
APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update
.
I'll be beating the drums for the next two weeks about my appearance at The Spiral Bookcase in Manayunk. There are three reasons for this: First, The Spiral Bookcase is an independent bookstore, and independent bookstores are to be cherished and encouraged. Second, it's a relatively new bookstore (it just celebrated its first anniversary) so it can use all the attention it can get. And third, it's a very nifty bookstore, which means that it's the kind of place I want to keep in my neighborhood.
So if you live in the Philadelphia area and you have that Saturday afternoon free . . . why not drop by? The world needs good bookstores.
You can check out their website here.
Here's the basic info:
When: Saturday, 9/10, 3pm-5pm
Where: The Spiral Bookcase, 112 Cotton St. (right off Main St.), Manayunk, PA 19127
And, oh yeah, the basic schedule . . .
You'' note that, along with the days, my schedule is getting shorter. That's because the publicity cycle for Dancing With Bears is drawing to a close. Soon I will retreat to my cave and do nothing but work on the next novel. Such is the cycle of life.
Sept. 10 The Spiral Bookcase (signing) Manayunk Philadelphia
Sept. 21 KGB Bar (reading) NYC
November 10 Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza (reading)
NYC
And in 2012 . . .
Aug. 31- Sept. 2 Chicon 7 Chicago
Above: On the way back from Berlin, Nevada, the Diane Mine, and the Shonisaurus display, we ran across another shoe tree. People need superstitions and this seems to be a harmless one.
*
I'll be beating the drums for the next two weeks about my appearance at The Spiral Bookcase in Manayunk. There are three reasons for this: First, The Spiral Bookcase is an independent bookstore, and independent bookstores are to be cherished and encouraged. Second, it's a relatively new bookstore (it just celebrated its first anniversary) so it can use all the attention it can get. And third, it's a very nifty bookstore, which means that it's the kind of place I want to keep in my neighborhood.
So if you live in the Philadelphia area and you have that Saturday afternoon free . . . why not drop by? The world needs good bookstores.
You can check out their website here.
Here's the basic info:
When: Saturday, 9/10, 3pm-5pm
Where: The Spiral Bookcase, 112 Cotton St. (right off Main St.), Manayunk, PA 19127
And, oh yeah, the basic schedule . . .
You'' note that, along with the days, my schedule is getting shorter. That's because the publicity cycle for Dancing With Bears is drawing to a close. Soon I will retreat to my cave and do nothing but work on the next novel. Such is the cycle of life.
Sept. 10 The Spiral Bookcase (signing) Manayunk Philadelphia
Sept. 21 KGB Bar (reading) NYC
November 10 Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza (reading)
NYC
And in 2012 . . .
Aug. 31- Sept. 2 Chicon 7 Chicago
Above: On the way back from Berlin, Nevada, the Diane Mine, and the Shonisaurus display, we ran across another shoe tree. People need superstitions and this seems to be a harmless one.
*
August 27, 2011
Hearts, Herons, and Hurricanes
.
I'm supposed to be on my way home now. But there's a hurricane headed for New York City, which means that every airport from Atlanta to Maine is closed.
So I went birding.
Nevada isn't known for its marshlands, but what little it has is prime bird habitat. Marianne and I went to Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge and saw:
Also a coyote, bounding through the grasses.
Some of the birds were in such profusion as to be an event. When eight great egrets tumble out of the only tree in sight and into the air at your approach, your heart lofts. When four night herons lift from the reeds at once, you catch your breath. When pelicans are coming and going, flying surely and landing softly in the water, swimming in a stately fashion in pairs, and lifting off again, so that there are always six in the water before you, only a curmudgeon could be unhappy.
And earlier . . .
Marianne and I went to Lovelock to take advantage of their self-promotional scam. When you want tourists and have no attractions and your city is named Lovelock, what to you do? You borrow a recent romantic folk-notion from China and declare it a tradition. Declare that lovers lock a padlock to the chains behind the courthouse and throw away the keys as a symbol of their eternal love. Sell padlocks in the nearby stores.
It's nonsense, of course, and in its origins cynical nonsense to boot. And yet . . .
And yet knowing all this Marianne and I bought a lock, inscribed it with our names, and threw away the keys, miles away, in the desert. It made us happy. Such is the power of symbols.
Above: Two pelicans swim past a great egret. You can imagine how happy I was.
*
I'm supposed to be on my way home now. But there's a hurricane headed for New York City, which means that every airport from Atlanta to Maine is closed.
So I went birding.
Nevada isn't known for its marshlands, but what little it has is prime bird habitat. Marianne and I went to Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge and saw:
Swainson's hawks, Brewer's blackbirds, a common tern, mourning doves, coots, quails, kestrels, ruddy ducks, buffleheads, redheads, cinnamon teals, Canada geese, a white-faced ibis, black-crowned night herons, great egrets, great blue herons, cormorants, Clark's grebes, and American white pelicans.
Also a coyote, bounding through the grasses.
Some of the birds were in such profusion as to be an event. When eight great egrets tumble out of the only tree in sight and into the air at your approach, your heart lofts. When four night herons lift from the reeds at once, you catch your breath. When pelicans are coming and going, flying surely and landing softly in the water, swimming in a stately fashion in pairs, and lifting off again, so that there are always six in the water before you, only a curmudgeon could be unhappy.
And earlier . . .
Marianne and I went to Lovelock to take advantage of their self-promotional scam. When you want tourists and have no attractions and your city is named Lovelock, what to you do? You borrow a recent romantic folk-notion from China and declare it a tradition. Declare that lovers lock a padlock to the chains behind the courthouse and throw away the keys as a symbol of their eternal love. Sell padlocks in the nearby stores.
It's nonsense, of course, and in its origins cynical nonsense to boot. And yet . . .
And yet knowing all this Marianne and I bought a lock, inscribed it with our names, and threw away the keys, miles away, in the desert. It made us happy. Such is the power of symbols.
Above: Two pelicans swim past a great egret. You can imagine how happy I was.
*
August 26, 2011
The Road Goes Ever On
.
You know how you have mixed feelings at the end of a vacation? You want to get back to work, but you kind of wish the vacation could go on longer?
Well, that's how I was feeling until I learned that my flight home tomorrow had been cancelled. Now I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I want my vacation to go on longer, but I really wish I could get back to work. Particularly since I've snapped a tendon on the little finger of my right hand, so my handwriting is even worse than usual -- and slower! I really need to get back to my keyboard.
More as I know it. He said exhaustedly.
Above: You think Route 50 is lonely? Try the road through Ruby Valley. That's where the Secret Creek flows.
*
You know how you have mixed feelings at the end of a vacation? You want to get back to work, but you kind of wish the vacation could go on longer?
Well, that's how I was feeling until I learned that my flight home tomorrow had been cancelled. Now I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I want my vacation to go on longer, but I really wish I could get back to work. Particularly since I've snapped a tendon on the little finger of my right hand, so my handwriting is even worse than usual -- and slower! I really need to get back to my keyboard.
More as I know it. He said exhaustedly.
Above: You think Route 50 is lonely? Try the road through Ruby Valley. That's where the Secret Creek flows.
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 167
.
Swipe cards from the London Metro.
Marianne and I took Sean to London when he was nine. The recorded voice saying, "MIND . . . THE GAP!" really cracked him up.
*
Swipe cards from the London Metro.
Marianne and I took Sean to London when he was nine. The recorded voice saying, "MIND . . . THE GAP!" really cracked him up.
*
August 25, 2011
Night of a Billion Stars
.
I have been to the mountaintop and seen the lights of the holy city. I have traveled through the Secret Pass and heard the waters of the Secret Creek. I have been to Poverty Gulch and returned.
There's the problem with going into the Great Empty at the heart of America. After a time, all that emptiness, those meaningless vistas, that free-floating nihilism call up a response from within. A spiritual fire infuses all one sees. Place names turn to allegory. That's where all those religious loons come from -- that and the fact that so many of our ancestors were religious loons to begin with, before they got kicked out of Europe.
Last night, I went up on Mount Wheeler to do some star-gazing. Standing in one of the darkest spaces in the lower forty-eight I saw the stars the way they were meant to be seen. You . . . okay, here,\'s an example: If you follow the pointer stars of the Big Dipper, you'll come to the North Star, which is the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper. Once you have both of them clear in your mind, the string of stars in between the two constellations reveals itself as Draco, the Dragon.
Only it rarely does. It has to be an extremely clear night to see more than two or three of its stars.
But last night I could see all of Draco, and the myriad stars between it and the two dippers as well. The Milky Way was a great cloudy arch of stars looping overhead from horizon to horizon. There were five, ten, fifteen times the number of stars you normally see. It was a glorious experience to look up and see what looks to be the entire universe. You think about infinity. You think about life on other worlds and what it might be like. You think about alien civilizations.
Me, I looked up at all that astral glory and wanted to create science fiction all over again from scratch. And made me want it to come out exactly as it did. It's a pretty good genre. I have no complaints about it.
And speaking of rainbows . . .
When I was a kid, I used to chase after rainbows. Not that I believed there was a pot of gold at the end -- I knew that was a lie. But from something I'd read, I conceived the notion that where rainbows touched the earth, they formed a circular rainbow, in sort of a rainbow pattern.
Yesterday I saw a rainbow, so I chased it. In my car. To take snaps. There's one of the pictures above.
*
I have been to the mountaintop and seen the lights of the holy city. I have traveled through the Secret Pass and heard the waters of the Secret Creek. I have been to Poverty Gulch and returned.
There's the problem with going into the Great Empty at the heart of America. After a time, all that emptiness, those meaningless vistas, that free-floating nihilism call up a response from within. A spiritual fire infuses all one sees. Place names turn to allegory. That's where all those religious loons come from -- that and the fact that so many of our ancestors were religious loons to begin with, before they got kicked out of Europe.
Last night, I went up on Mount Wheeler to do some star-gazing. Standing in one of the darkest spaces in the lower forty-eight I saw the stars the way they were meant to be seen. You . . . okay, here,\'s an example: If you follow the pointer stars of the Big Dipper, you'll come to the North Star, which is the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper. Once you have both of them clear in your mind, the string of stars in between the two constellations reveals itself as Draco, the Dragon.
Only it rarely does. It has to be an extremely clear night to see more than two or three of its stars.
But last night I could see all of Draco, and the myriad stars between it and the two dippers as well. The Milky Way was a great cloudy arch of stars looping overhead from horizon to horizon. There were five, ten, fifteen times the number of stars you normally see. It was a glorious experience to look up and see what looks to be the entire universe. You think about infinity. You think about life on other worlds and what it might be like. You think about alien civilizations.
Me, I looked up at all that astral glory and wanted to create science fiction all over again from scratch. And made me want it to come out exactly as it did. It's a pretty good genre. I have no complaints about it.
And speaking of rainbows . . .
When I was a kid, I used to chase after rainbows. Not that I believed there was a pot of gold at the end -- I knew that was a lie. But from something I'd read, I conceived the notion that where rainbows touched the earth, they formed a circular rainbow, in sort of a rainbow pattern.
Yesterday I saw a rainbow, so I chased it. In my car. To take snaps. There's one of the pictures above.
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 166
.
*
Afternoon at Schrafft's
[Ancestral Voices]
A Midwinter's Tale
[Midnight Express]
Four of my stories, two of them collaborations. I have no idea what I was working on. Tweaking the lineup for a collection?
*
August 24, 2011
Ten Thousand Feet and Only Two Pairs of Socks
.
Sometimes I wonder if other people see these thing as well. I was on my way to the Grand Basin National Park when I saw a rusted-out old flivver in a field. There was something white inside, so I went to take a closer look . . .
. . . and discovered a ghost cow out on a joyride!
The park itself was a hoot, twelve miles of winding two-lane no-passing road up the side of Wheeler Peak. The altitude was 6,500 feet at its foot and we went up as far as cars could go to 10,000 feet. Pretty wonderful. At that altitude I couldn't manage the mile-and-a-half trek to see the 4,000-year-old bristlecone pines -- not with my lungs! But it was a strange and beautiful environment, which I enjoyed immensely.
Mount Wheeler is so large it creates its own weather systems. Which may be why it rained on me on the way down the mountain.
Rain in Nevada! Sometimes I think my experiences aren't the same as everybody else's.
*
Sometimes I wonder if other people see these thing as well. I was on my way to the Grand Basin National Park when I saw a rusted-out old flivver in a field. There was something white inside, so I went to take a closer look . . .
. . . and discovered a ghost cow out on a joyride!
The park itself was a hoot, twelve miles of winding two-lane no-passing road up the side of Wheeler Peak. The altitude was 6,500 feet at its foot and we went up as far as cars could go to 10,000 feet. Pretty wonderful. At that altitude I couldn't manage the mile-and-a-half trek to see the 4,000-year-old bristlecone pines -- not with my lungs! But it was a strange and beautiful environment, which I enjoyed immensely.
Mount Wheeler is so large it creates its own weather systems. Which may be why it rained on me on the way down the mountain.
Rain in Nevada! Sometimes I think my experiences aren't the same as everybody else's.
*
August 22, 2011
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 163
.
Still plotting. All of this is gloss on the facing page. And pretty much all of it was abandoned in the writing.
*
A
P
D
S
Z
Chortenko is plotting . . . what?
One of his autistics
openly refers to his plan
"You shouldn't know that, Max."
Max: There once was an economic system that would suffice . . .
Still plotting. All of this is gloss on the facing page. And pretty much all of it was abandoned in the writing.
*
August 20, 2011
Jay Pride!
.
Normally I don't blog on Saturdays. Especially during Worldcon. But I can't resist sharing this with you: Jay Lake has a Hugo fade!
Above: You'll have to take my word for it that that's a photo of Jay. But who else COULD it be?
*
Normally I don't blog on Saturdays. Especially during Worldcon. But I can't resist sharing this with you: Jay Lake has a Hugo fade!
Above: You'll have to take my word for it that that's a photo of Jay. But who else COULD it be?
*
Michael Swanwick's Blog
- Michael Swanwick's profile
- 546 followers
Michael Swanwick isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
