Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 225

Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 125

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The Windmill.  "I can't go on.  I must go on.  I'll go on."

A cartoon, not well-drawn but arrogantly erudite.  I like it.  Too bad it was ruined by the bleed-through from the previous page.

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LYREC!

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My pal Gregory Frost has just turned his first novel, Lyrec , into an e-book.  Greg is, of course, the brilliant fantasist who wrote Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet , the first two of what many of us hope fervently will be a long series set in one of the most imaginative worlds in the history of fantasy.

As for Lyrec itself, well . . . here's the blurb:

Lovelorn Lyrec and wise-cracking Borregad have been companions through world after world, adventure after adventure. They seek Lyrec's lost lady, and vengeance for the obliteration of their homeworld. But the evil Miradomon is always one step ahead, leaving a dark trail of destruction behind him. In this incarnation, Lyrec is young, strong, handsome, skilled in the arts of war and song. Poor Borregad is stuck in the body of a cat. And Miradomon? 

You can download a free sample of the book at Book View Cafe,  Or just buy a copy for $4.95.  It's a terrific deal on a terrific book.

Click here now.


And . . .

I had more things to say but they'll have to wait until tomorrow.  Busy today.  Very very busy.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 124

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A slogan slogan.

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Marty Greenberg, Rest in Peace

.Another piece of our history is gone.  Marty Greenberg, who, as his friend Mike Resnick pointed out, sold over 2,000 anthologies and packaged something like 700 novels without making a single enemy along the way.

I never met Marty but he was a pervasive presence in science fiction.  The field is going to look a lot different without him.


And because that's a grim note to begin the week on . . .

Here's a video for a product that may make you feel better.

Or, then again, maybe not.   Enjoy!




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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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