Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 222

Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 123

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A doodle and a found piece of ephemera.  The opening at its center is, as I note within, the universal symbol for Tintin.

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APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

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I have one new addition to the schedule . . . and it's in walking distance of my house!  (Well, okay, the mile and a half downhill is easy; coming back uphill is a pain.)  The Spiral Bookcase is a very nifty new and used book store in Manayunk.  Anybody local who hasn't checked it out yet really should.


Meanwhile, here's my current public appearances schedule.

July 15-17        Readercon                        Burlington, MA
July 22             Philadelphia Fantastic (reading)                        Moonstone Arts, Philadelphia
July 23-24     Confluence                         Pittsburgh, PA
August 19-21   Renovation (Worldcon)                         Reno, NV
Sept. 10           The Spiral Bookcase (signing)                         Manayunk                         Philadelphia
Sept. 21            KGB Bar (reading)                         NYC  

And in 2012 . . .
Aug. 31- Sept. 2   Chicon 7                             Chicago
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An Afterthought on Society's Child

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I had so much trouble yesterday getting Blogger and my computer and the Intertubes all working together that I completely forgot to tell this story:

After the Janis Ian concert, as we were walking away, I asked my 28-year-old son Sean what he'd thought of "Society's Child."

He looked uncomfortable and said, "It was like a song from another planet.  I mean, it just doesn't seem possible anymore."

"Really?" I said.  "A song about a white girl whose parents won't let her date a young black man seems alien to you?"

"Well, it's just so . . . screwed up.  To somebody of my generation it doesn't seem possible that things could be like that."

"Let me ask you," I said, "does an ax handle mean anything to you?  Lester Maddox?  George Wallace?"

Sean just looped puzzled.

"Well, good," I said.  "That's good."


Above:  Remember the picture I took of my notebook with the Janis Ian concert pass?  I printed it out and glued taped it to the cover of the notebook.  How recursive can you get?  Then I took it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art last night for an Art After Five event and used it as a coaster for a moonflower -- sparkling wine, elderflower liqueur, and a lychee.  Who says the world isn't getting better?

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Mary's Eyes and me

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My friend Janis Ian saw my recent blog about the relationship of my story "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not Be Back Again" and her song, Mary's Eyes .  Then she sent me two mp3 files of different versions of the song and asked if I'd like to post them for people here to enjoy.

Why, yes.  I would.  Very much.  There's the first version up above.

For contractual reasons, I can't post my entire story here.  But I think I'm safe posting the first two paragraphs:

The bullet scars were still visible on the pillars of the General Post Office in Dublin, almost two centuries after the 1916 uprising.  That moved me more than I had expected.  But what moved me even more was standing at the exact same spot, not two blocks away, where my great-great-grandfather saw Gerry Adams strolling down O'Connell Street on Easter morning of '96, the eightieth anniversary of that event, returning from a political rally with a single bodyguard to one side of him and a local politico to the other.  It gave me a direct and simple connection to the tangled history of that tragic land.

I never knew my great-great-grandfather, but my grandfather told me that story once and I've never forgotten it, though my grandfather died when I was still a boy.  If I squeeze my eyes tight shut, I can see his face, liquid and wavy as if glimpsed through candle flames, as he lay dying under a great feather comforter in his New York City railroad flat, his smile weak and his hair forming a halo around him as white as a dandelion waiting for the wind to purse its lips and blow.

There's more truth in this story than there is in most.  To begin with, though I fictionalize it as happening to the protagonist's great-great-great grandfather, that was me who saw Gerry Adams on that bright spring morning on O'Connell Street.  And it is my own grandfather, Michael O'Brien, after whom I was named, who dies in the second paragraph.  I was very young at the time -- three? maybe four? -- but I can still see his smile and know that he loved me.

The holy well in the Burren is exactly as I described it.  The Fiddler's Elbow is a real place, though I borrowed the peat fire and the back room from a pub in Galway.  I never went to the cinder block bar where my protagonist meets the boys but my mother once waited in the tour bus outside while her guide went in to buy her a Fresca bottle filled with illegal potcheen.  And I have lain down on the Stone of Loneliness not only figuratively, as we all must and have, but literally as well.  Once you discount all the science fiction and subtract everything that's plot, what remains is as close to an autobiographical piece as I'm ever likely to write.

So is it any wonder that Janis's song always brings tears to my eyes?  In that mysterious way art has of finding its recipients and making itself theirs, Mary's Eyes was written for me.  And for everyone else who's moved by it as well.

Here's the second version:


And I'm in reprint again . . .
My contributor's copy of David Hartwell's and Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best SF 16 came in the mail today, with my short story "Steadfast Castle."  It's written entirely in two voices and whoever wrote the intro to it (Kathryn, I'd guess) notes that it could be put on as a short play.
Which is almost exactly what Marianne and I have done the couple of times we've done readings of it.  I deliver the policeman's lines and Marianne does Cassie, the intelligent house.  Like every reading we've done together, it goes over very well.  And like every reading we've done together, everybody agrees that Marianne is the better actor.
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Mary's Eyes

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My friend Janis Ian saw my recent blog about the relationship of my story "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not Be Back Again" and her song, Mary's Eyes .  Then she sent me two mp3 files of different versions of the song and asked if I'd like to post them for people here to enjoy.

Why, yes.  I would.  Very much.  There's the first version up above.

For contractual reasons, I can't post my entire story here.  But I think I'm safe posting the first two paragraphs:

The bullet scars were still visible on the pillars of the General Post Office in Dublin, almost two centuries after the 1916 uprising.  That moved me more than I had expected.  But what moved me even more was standing at the exact same spot, not two blocks away, where my great-great-grandfather saw Gerry Adams strolling down O'Connell Street on Easter morning of '96, the eightieth anniversary of that event, returning from a political rally with a single bodyguard to one side of him and a local politico to the other.  It gave me a direct and simple connection to the tangled history of that tragic land.

I never knew my great-great-grandfather, but my grandfather told me that story once and I've never forgotten it, though my grandfather died when I was still a boy.  If I squeeze my eyes tight shut, I can see his face, liquid and wavy as if glimpsed through candle flames, as he lay dying under a great feather comforter in his New York City railroad flat, his smile weak and his hair forming a halo around him as white as a dandelion waiting for the wind to purse its lips and blow.

There's more truth in this story than there is in most.  To begin with, though I fictionalize it as happening to the protagonist's great-great-great grandfather, that was me who saw Gerry Adams on that bright spring morning on O'Connell Street.  And it is my own grandfather, Michael O'Brien, after whom I was named, who dies in the second paragraph.  I was very young at the time -- three? maybe four? -- but I can still see his smile and know that he loved me.

The holy well in the Burren is exactly as I described it.  The Fiddler's Elbow is a real place, though I borrowed the peat fire and the back room from a pub in Galway.  I never went to the cinder block bar where my protagonist meets the boys but my mother once waited in the tour bus outside while her guide went in to buy her a Fresca bottle filled with illegal potcheen.  And I have lain down on the Stone of Loneliness not only figuratively, as we all must and have, but literally as well.  Once you discount all the science fiction and subtract everything that's plot, what remains is as close to an autobiographical piece as I'm ever likely to write.

So is it any wonder that Janis's song always brings tears to my eyes?  In that mysterious way art has of finding its recipients and making itself theirs, Mary's Eyes was written for me.  And for everyone else who's moved by it as well.

Here's the second version:


And I'm in reprint again . . .
My contributor's copy of David Hartwell's and Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best SF 16 came in the mail today, with my short story "Steadfast Castle."  It's written entirely in two voices and whoever wrote the intro to it (Kathryn, I'd guess) notes that it could be put on as a short play.
Which is almost exactly what Marianne and I have done the couple of times we've done readings of it.  I deliver the policeman's lines and Marianne does Cassie, the intelligent house.  Like every reading we've done together, it goes over very well.  And like every reading we've done together, everybody agrees that Marianne is the better actor.
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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 122

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More diagrams!  In the top one, the straight line is a physical screen.  The jagged line is Surplus, approaching the Pearls amiably, being turned down by various functionaries in his attempt to arrange a meeting with the Duke of Muscovy, and then chatting with the Pearls a second time.  The first chat results in this (telescoped) exchange:

When do we meet our bridegroom?

[something]

We are anxious to . . . make him happy

The second chat results in Surplus being told:  You have no idea how much trouble we can make.


The second diagram I cannot explain unless it is a first attempt to block out Zoësophia's flirtation with the poet whose name she cannot be bothered to remember.  But that happens in chapter five, so maybe not.


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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 121

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February 10, 2009

Three plot diagrams for Chapter 4 of Dancing With Bears.

In the first one, the top line represents the Pearls.  The bottom line is probably Surplus, dealing with several functionaries, interacting periodically with the Pearls, and ending with a meeting with the character who was originally named Molochov.  You can see that it's here where I spontaneously changed his name to the far superior Chortenko.

In the second diagram, Z is obviously Zoësophia.  But whether A stands for Aetheria or Arkady or somebody else entirely, I don't know.  It may be a reference to the faked suicide note incident.


The third diagram baffles me.  My best interpretation is that the line represents Surplus, who is continually present in the chapter, beset by frequent interactions by the Pearls, various functionaries, and finally Chortenko.  In the second appearance of the Pearls, the A is almost certainly Aetheria and I'd have to guess that I meant to suggest "the Pearls A to Z" -- a reminder to keep all of them in play as distinct individuals.


But that' only a guess.


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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 120

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The first-draft review continues:

the wall flickers [something something], and are (the explanatory material explains) meant to convey a sense that everyone is under surveillance.

. . . what that has to do with

. . . as I was leaving, I saw the docent of a group of schoolchildren calmly but firmly trying to talk the children down.  They had climbed up into and atop of the [something] beds, and were jumping up and down.  Happy with the art, blind to its darker message.

The two places where I jumped ahead, I was scribbling down thoughts to use later -- in the latter instance at the end of the review.  Probably I was working from the scribbles then, copying them out in improved form on the word processor.

Down at the bottom is a flyer for Ubu , a version of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi that I saw in the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh.  When Yeats saw the original play, he wrote, shaken, "What more is possible?  After us, the mad gods."  Theatre Modo made the play even more scurrilous.  It was easily the most extreme piece of theater I've ever seen.  There are no words that do justice to how flat-out brilliant it was.

Probably I'd found the flyer lying about the house and pasted it into the notebook to preserve it.

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The 100 Best Fantasy & SF Books Ever.

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A brief post today because I'm, yes, on the road.  The inimitable Gordon Van Gelder has requested that I blog about NPR's annual readers poll of best science fiction and fantasy novels of all time.  "I gather they got 17,000 votes last year when they did the same thing for thrillers," he says.  "I'd like to see the SF/fantasy community double that."

Done and done, Gordon.  Those who'd to lodge their opinions can do so here. 

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A Modest Proposal

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If I have any fault at all (and everybody agrees I do), it's that I want everything to be nice.  I've had an idea -- a good one, I think -- which costs nothing and makes the world a better place, particularly for new and as-yet-unknown writers.  Because I wanted it to get maximum distribution, I gave it to Patrick Nielsen Hayden to post on his blog Making Light .

You can find it here.

If you like my notion, please spread it around.


And as always . . .

I'm on the road again.  More as it transpires.

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