Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 33

Today Only! TALES OF OLD EARTH E-Book Sale!!!

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Yes, it's time for a commercial again. I apologize, but these guys are working to sell copies of my books so I really ought to support them.

 Open Road Media has announced that the e-book of my brilliant short story collection, Tales of Old Earth, will be on sale TODAY ONLY for $1.99. This sale applies to the US only.

So if you like e-books and you like (or are curious about) my short fiction... well, this deal's for you.

There. I couldn't have posted a softer sell than that.

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Brief Essays on Genre, Part 24: On Endings

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On Endings

 

The Iron Law of Existence is this: All stories must end.

 

Given that all lives are mortal and even the universe must someday die, it could hardly be otherwise.

 

--Michael Swanwick

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 11

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This Halloween, you will go, alone, to the graveyard on a dare.

(Continued tomorrow)

 

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 10

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Thinking, all the while, only of you.

(Continued tomorrow)

 

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 9

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 Then the burrowing began through graveyard dirt, gnawing the dirt and loosening the soil.

(Continued tomorrow)

 

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 8

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It took months to claw free of the coffin.

(Continued tomorrow)

 

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 7

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Worms ate the corpse, leaving only bones and sinew--and will.

(Continued tomorrow)

 

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Robert Holdstock's MYTHAGO WOOD

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Look what came in the mail recently! It's a copy of Robert Holdstock's classic work of maybe-fantasy/maybe-SF, Mythago Wood, which has been reprinted as a "Tor Essential."

This is a terrific book which I strongly recommend to all intelligent readers. And I got it for free because I wrote the introduction. Here's the very beginning of it:

Decades ago, my wife and I were motoring in Scotland, our first time in that country, when we saw a historical marker for the Birnam Oak, a 600-year-old survivor of the forest made famous by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Naturally, we pulled over. Following a dirt path down toward the River Tay, we came upon the oak—enormous and imposing but feeble with age. Its heart was hollow and its lower branches were propped up by wooden supports. A class of preschoolers was being urged to clasp hands and form a ring around its trunk by their teachers. They were small and beautiful, boys and girls alike. A Victorian would have had no difficulty calling them fairies. It took all of them to encircle the tree.

A minute later, the ring was broken and the children were led away. Without them, the woods seemed empty and the Birnam Oak forlorn.

 

After which I go on to discuss the influences of birthplace on writers, Holdstock's biography, the Mythago series, the one time I met the man, and very much more. It's a good introduction if I do say so myself.

 

But it's a much better book.

 

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A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT'S MADNESS Part 6

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 Even as dirt rained down on the coffin, your true love’s thoughts were fixed on you. (Continued tomorrow)
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Curiosity du Jour

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Here's an oddity I unearthed from the bottom of my wardrobe. (Hence the wrinkles.) It's the only t-shirt I ever created. It reads: A DAY WITHOUT SEMIOTICS IS LIKE A HORSE'S HEAD ADRIFT IN VACUUM.

I made this sometime in the early Eighties and gave the shirts all away save one, I forget to whom. Except Mike Ford, who reminded me years later that I'd written it was in an edition of twelve, of which his shirt was February.

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