Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 223
June 21, 2011
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 119
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June 11, 2009
I watched two hours of television and then went outside. The cat came and sat upon my legs, outstretched from a resin chair to a metal bayou chair. His paws are warm as warm.
By contrast with the TV, the outside world is quiet and still. A jet loudly passes overhead for far more time than seems necessary. Trucks. A honk so brief it must be robotic. Another jet. A defiant yakyakyak of maybe laughter. Cars. Jet. Repeat is necessary for verisimilitude.
I can hear, I think, the surf of insect noises, though it has to compete with the ringing in my ears.
The sky is the dullest of oranges.
*
June 11, 2009
I watched two hours of television and then went outside. The cat came and sat upon my legs, outstretched from a resin chair to a metal bayou chair. His paws are warm as warm.
By contrast with the TV, the outside world is quiet and still. A jet loudly passes overhead for far more time than seems necessary. Trucks. A honk so brief it must be robotic. Another jet. A defiant yakyakyak of maybe laughter. Cars. Jet. Repeat is necessary for verisimilitude.
I can hear, I think, the surf of insect noises, though it has to compete with the ringing in my ears.
The sky is the dullest of oranges.
*
June 20, 2011
Mary's Eyes and the Stone of Loneliness
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On Saturday my contributor's copies of the new Asimov's arrived, with my story, "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not be Back Again." Which was really good timing because on Sunday I had tickets to see Janis Ian perform in Voorhees, New Jersey. So I was able to give her a copy.
How the story came about was that, some years ago, upon discovering how greatly she was appreciated by the science fiction community, Janis decided to put together an anthology. Stars was made up of original stories based on (or spun off from) her songs. I was asked to contribute and promised I would try. I knew what song I would use.
"Mary's Eyes" is a beautiful song and a particularly interesting one in that it has two separate aspects. One is the song that Janis wrote, in praise of the musician Mary Black. The other is the one that no Irish American can fail to hear. She didn't know, when she wrote it, that her Mary was an avatar of Deirdre of the Sorrows. But there you are. When you create a work of art, you tear a hole in reality and sometimes things you weren't aware of slip in from outside.
It's a song that brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it.
One of the hardest tasks in fiction is putting real life into a story. There's a lot more truth in "The Stone of Loneliness" than usually makes its way in. The man who saw Gerry Adams was me. The holy well in the Burren is exactly as I described it. And by the gate to a lonely cemetery up on a hilltop in the West I lay down on the Stone of Loneliness and felt exactly what my protagonist did. This is a lot more personal story than will be obvious to its readers.
Stars came out from Baen Books in 2007. It took me another four years to find the story. But now it's in print and it's all because of "Mary's Eyes."
I tell you this because you might chance to read the story and, coming upon the sentence, "It seemed to me then that we were each and every one of us ships without a harbor, sailors lost on land," wonder why I'd included lines from a Janis Ian song.
And now you know.
And on the lighter side . . .
There's an interview with Shaun Tan in Spiegel Online International , in which all the artist's answers are in the form of drawings. Quite nice.
Click here and then scroll down
Above: My VIP pass. Maybe I can bundle that up with a copy of the magazine and a Worldcon badge and contribute it to the next auction for Janis's Pearl Foundation. That would be good.
*
On Saturday my contributor's copies of the new Asimov's arrived, with my story, "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not be Back Again." Which was really good timing because on Sunday I had tickets to see Janis Ian perform in Voorhees, New Jersey. So I was able to give her a copy.
How the story came about was that, some years ago, upon discovering how greatly she was appreciated by the science fiction community, Janis decided to put together an anthology. Stars was made up of original stories based on (or spun off from) her songs. I was asked to contribute and promised I would try. I knew what song I would use.
"Mary's Eyes" is a beautiful song and a particularly interesting one in that it has two separate aspects. One is the song that Janis wrote, in praise of the musician Mary Black. The other is the one that no Irish American can fail to hear. She didn't know, when she wrote it, that her Mary was an avatar of Deirdre of the Sorrows. But there you are. When you create a work of art, you tear a hole in reality and sometimes things you weren't aware of slip in from outside.
It's a song that brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it.
One of the hardest tasks in fiction is putting real life into a story. There's a lot more truth in "The Stone of Loneliness" than usually makes its way in. The man who saw Gerry Adams was me. The holy well in the Burren is exactly as I described it. And by the gate to a lonely cemetery up on a hilltop in the West I lay down on the Stone of Loneliness and felt exactly what my protagonist did. This is a lot more personal story than will be obvious to its readers.
Stars came out from Baen Books in 2007. It took me another four years to find the story. But now it's in print and it's all because of "Mary's Eyes."
I tell you this because you might chance to read the story and, coming upon the sentence, "It seemed to me then that we were each and every one of us ships without a harbor, sailors lost on land," wonder why I'd included lines from a Janis Ian song.
And now you know.
And on the lighter side . . .
There's an interview with Shaun Tan in Spiegel Online International , in which all the artist's answers are in the form of drawings. Quite nice.
Click here and then scroll down
Above: My VIP pass. Maybe I can bundle that up with a copy of the magazine and a Worldcon badge and contribute it to the next auction for Janis's Pearl Foundation. That would be good.
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 118
.
*
"This continual [something] has had a strange effect on urban sculpture (. . .) they have started to grow, like giant, thirsty tropical plants" and so they have been brought inside, to keep them from growing faster. Well . . . though this is a work that grows out of science fiction and uses science fiction tropes throughout, the artist does not claim it is a work of pure science fiction. Our genre is only a jumping-off point for her purposes and obsessions.
In fact, the sculpture is the best part of the installation. A supersized version of one of Louise Bourgeois's spiders steps into the visual footprint of Calder's Flange. No museum would dare overlap the two sculptures thus, but seen together they comment on each other, to the detriment of neither.
To the front of the installation, clips from SF and art films play continually, commenting on the fix of those caught in the shelter. A lone radio plays an awful song. And ranks of spiderlike machines on
*
June 17, 2011
Dancing With the Hour of the Wolf
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Wednesday night, Marianne and I went down to Wall Street, NYC, to be interviewed by Jim Freund at WBAI. Both of us. Separately.
I was, of course, promoting Dancing With Bears , my shamelessly diverting Darger & Surplus novel. Which is important, because if enough people buy it, I'll write another one. Also predictable, because I'm a responsible guy who supports his publisher -- in this case, Night Shade Books.
Marianne was up to something interesting, though. She was being interviewed on tape for a forthcoming show which will feature my interview of her in the persona of Hope Mirrlees, the brilliant fantasist and poet who wrote Lud-in-the-Mist and Paris, a Poem . We performed the interview at a convention last year and Marianne was brilliant. I say that objectively. I knew the interview would be well-received and I was expecting thunderous applause at the end. What I did not expect was the rapturous cheers.
Luckily for us, Jim was present and recorded it all. For a forthcoming show, he interviewed Marianne about Mirrlees and about her "nano-press" imprint Dragonstairs Press. The plan is to stitch the interview with Hope and the interview with Marianne together for a future episode of his late-night show, Hour of the Wolf . When it comes available, you'll be the first to know.
Meanwhile, Jim's interview with me is available, for the next two weeks, online. You can listen to it here.
And speaking of Hope Mirrlees . . .
There's good news for the well-heeled art book collector! More on Monday.
Above: The South Street Seaport, a hop-skip-and-jump from Wall Street and the WBAI offices. Looks great on a spring evening, dunnit?
*
Wednesday night, Marianne and I went down to Wall Street, NYC, to be interviewed by Jim Freund at WBAI. Both of us. Separately.
I was, of course, promoting Dancing With Bears , my shamelessly diverting Darger & Surplus novel. Which is important, because if enough people buy it, I'll write another one. Also predictable, because I'm a responsible guy who supports his publisher -- in this case, Night Shade Books.
Marianne was up to something interesting, though. She was being interviewed on tape for a forthcoming show which will feature my interview of her in the persona of Hope Mirrlees, the brilliant fantasist and poet who wrote Lud-in-the-Mist and Paris, a Poem . We performed the interview at a convention last year and Marianne was brilliant. I say that objectively. I knew the interview would be well-received and I was expecting thunderous applause at the end. What I did not expect was the rapturous cheers.
Luckily for us, Jim was present and recorded it all. For a forthcoming show, he interviewed Marianne about Mirrlees and about her "nano-press" imprint Dragonstairs Press. The plan is to stitch the interview with Hope and the interview with Marianne together for a future episode of his late-night show, Hour of the Wolf . When it comes available, you'll be the first to know.
Meanwhile, Jim's interview with me is available, for the next two weeks, online. You can listen to it here.
And speaking of Hope Mirrlees . . .
There's good news for the well-heeled art book collector! More on Monday.
Above: The South Street Seaport, a hop-skip-and-jump from Wall Street and the WBAI offices. Looks great on a spring evening, dunnit?
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 117
.
A drawing by R. Crumb, torn from an art magazine. I love this guy's line. Someday I'd like to see a show that skipped all the psychosexual stuff to examine him just as an artist who draws extremely well.
I turned the drawing into a collage so I wouldn't be simply ripping off Crumb and pasting his material online. It came out pretty well, considering.
*
A drawing by R. Crumb, torn from an art magazine. I love this guy's line. Someday I'd like to see a show that skipped all the psychosexual stuff to examine him just as an artist who draws extremely well.
I turned the drawing into a collage so I wouldn't be simply ripping off Crumb and pasting his material online. It came out pretty well, considering.
*
June 16, 2011
Crank-Down Thursday
.Yesterday evening, Marianne and I drove up to the Big Apple to be interviewed by Jim Freund for the Hour of the Wolf show on WBAI. The show ended at 3 a.m. and we got home at 6 a.m.
Do I need to mention that I'm tired today? Very, very tired.
More tomorrow!
*
Do I need to mention that I'm tired today? Very, very tired.
More tomorrow!
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 116
.
Then, moving back to fill in the middle of the paragraph:
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refurbished power plant and the turbine hall (the TH in the show's title) is reserved for very large and very ambitious installations. Ms Gonzalez-Foerster -- who was born in Strasberg and lives in Paris -- has temporary control over it and she has created . . .
Well, primarily it is a shelter. Hundreds of blue and yellow metal bunk beds. Scattered among them are oversized reproductions of famous sculptures. As the artist explains, "
Then, moving back to fill in the middle of the paragraph:
on the (bare, mattressless) beds are copies of science fiction disaster novels. NAME as it transpires was a fan of SF from an early age and her choices are pleasantly literate: Fahrenheit 451, The Purple Cloud, Vurt, Make Room! Make Room!, Hiroshima Mon Amour, We, The [something] of [something], The Man in the High Castle, and so on . . . Scattered among the beds are giagantic sculptures. As the artist explains, "The
*
June 15, 2011
Nothing to Say Today
.
I'm playing hooky from blogging today. I finished a short, tragic, and romantic science fiction story called "The Woman Who Shook the World-Tree" this morning, and just now placed it in the pie closet to cool off.
Later today Marianne and I drive to NYC for separate interviews with Jim Freund of WBAI. And early tomorrow morning, we drive back.
So I think, right now, I'll take a nap.
*
I'm playing hooky from blogging today. I finished a short, tragic, and romantic science fiction story called "The Woman Who Shook the World-Tree" this morning, and just now placed it in the pie closet to cool off.
Later today Marianne and I drive to NYC for separate interviews with Jim Freund of WBAI. And early tomorrow morning, we drive back.
So I think, right now, I'll take a nap.
*
Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 115
.
Did you know that if you go to Elk County in Pennsylvania during the mating season, you can see elk? The alpha males form up harems and the betas hang around hopefully. Sometimes one will build up the courage to challenge the alpha and they'll fight. It's a lot like high school.
Marianne and I have been out to look at the elk twice. It's an extraordinary experience.
I forget why I pasted that business card in there. I may have promised to send something to its owner. At any rate, there's no reason to put his name and contact info out on the Web.
*
Did you know that if you go to Elk County in Pennsylvania during the mating season, you can see elk? The alpha males form up harems and the betas hang around hopefully. Sometimes one will build up the courage to challenge the alpha and they'll fight. It's a lot like high school.
Marianne and I have been out to look at the elk twice. It's an extraordinary experience.
I forget why I pasted that business card in there. I may have promised to send something to its owner. At any rate, there's no reason to put his name and contact info out on the Web.
*
June 14, 2011
"Glaciers . . . Really, Really Fast Glaciers!"
.
This trailer would be the very best disaster movie spoof ever, except for one thing . . . It's not a spoof. It's for a real movie.
Watch and enjoy.
And there's an article about me in the Roxborough-Manayunk Patch . . .
Every few years somebody writes up something about me in the local media, and it always makes the folks in Roxborough, my Philadelphia neighborhood, happy. Because I'm one of those people you see wandering around at odd times of day and have to wonder about. So it's a relief to them to know that there's a reason for this and that I'm not simply mentally deranged.
This is my first time in a local e-paper, and it went pretty well. Writer Tom Sunnergren did a good job with what I gave him.
You can read the article here.
*
This trailer would be the very best disaster movie spoof ever, except for one thing . . . It's not a spoof. It's for a real movie.
Watch and enjoy.
And there's an article about me in the Roxborough-Manayunk Patch . . .
Every few years somebody writes up something about me in the local media, and it always makes the folks in Roxborough, my Philadelphia neighborhood, happy. Because I'm one of those people you see wandering around at odd times of day and have to wonder about. So it's a relief to them to know that there's a reason for this and that I'm not simply mentally deranged.
This is my first time in a local e-paper, and it went pretty well. Writer Tom Sunnergren did a good job with what I gave him.
You can read the article here.
*
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