John Walters's Blog, page 5

Book Review: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The first I heard about the novel Orbital was when I read that it had won the Booker Prize for 2024. It seems I wasn’t the only one whose radar it passed under. The Seattle Public Library, usually top-of-the-line in its acquisitions, didn’t have a copy, or at least they had so few that the sudden demand ensured that it would be a long time before it was available. Even Amazon had run out. I could order it in advance, but the delivery date would be months in the future. In fact, the book appeared to be completely out of print, and after it unexpectedly won a major award, its publisher was scrambling to catch up.

I think that at least part of the sudden interest in it is that a book that appears to be science fiction so seldom wins a major literary award like the Booker. It isn’t really science fiction, but it comes close. It concerns a twenty-four hour period in the lives of six astronauts, four men and two women from five different countries, on the International Space Station. It’s a short novel, not much longer than a novella, and it has very little plot. It is more in the nature of a prose poem. It drifts from the viewpoint of one astronaut to the next, and there are extended passages describing the appearance of Earth as the space station revolves around it. In a twenty-four hour period, the station makes sixteen orbits, and the chapters are divided according to each orbit.

Harvey goes into the backgrounds of the characters, but ultimately what it amounts to is this: “Whatever they were before they came here, whatever their differences in training or background, in motive or character, whatever country they hail from and however their nations clash, they are equalized here by the delicate might of their spaceship.” The author also emphasizes that from their vantage point the politics of Earth have little significance. From space no national boundaries can be discerned; instead, the astronauts perceive the Earth as home to all, a home that needs protection. “Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold. It’s the desire – no, the need (fueled by fervor) – to protect this huge but tiny Earth.” And: “Can humans not find peace with one another? With the Earth? It’s not a fond wish but a fretful demand.” As if the microcosm of the space station and its denizens from various lands working in harmony signifies what humankind in general could and should be like.

At heart this is a very personal novel. If you want to learn about the real intricacies of living on the space station, read the fascinating memoir Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly, an American astronaut who spent a year there. However, often as I read Orbital I felt that just behind the musings of the characters was the author Harvey, watching the International Space Station’s live stream and using it as a springboard to ponder philosophical and existential matters. Plot appears irrelevant when confronted with such grand ideas. I liked the artistic freedom that the unusually simple structure represented. Sometimes educators and critics put literary works into stringent categories from which, they intimate, authors should not deviate, when in fact writers should feel free to approach their art in whatever damn way they please. On the other hand, I grew up reading the so-called new wave science fiction of Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delaney, Ursula Le Guin, and others, and sometimes Harvey’s prose, in comparison, strikes me as slow-moving and ponderous. Ultimately, though, I realize that every literary work is different and has to be taken on its own terms. In the case of Orbital, you should settle in for a slow, stately, elegantly-written prose poem that provides insight into the human condition from a cosmic perspective.

The Perennial Nomad

Introducing The Perennial Nomad, a weekly Substack newsletter.

I began writing with a focus on science fiction stories. Many of the books I read as a teen and young man were science fiction and fantasy, and it was a science fiction story that impressed me so much that I felt I had to become a writer. As a result, my early efforts were in that genre.

However, more and more I began to see writing as a metaphysical experience, as a method of observing and defining our place in the universe. I developed a deep desire to give everything I had to the art of writing, and I began to make life decisions that would hurtle me into the realities of life. I couldn’t accomplish my goals by remaining ensconced in the city of my birth. I had to get out and live, to discover what life was all about so that then I could write of it. I sought that “one true sentence” that Hemingway spoke of. Inspired by writers such as Jack London, Jack Kerouac, and Henry Miller, I left my hometown and set out on the road.

Hitchhiking was common in those days or I would never have been able to get as far as I did. I traveled back and forth across the United States, through Central America as far as Guatemala, around Europe, across the Middle East, around the Indian Subcontinent, and eventually to Southeast Asia and New Zealand. But this was not tourist travel; this was total immersion. I never had much money, and when I ran short I’d stop and get temporary work. Sometimes when I went broke I’d keep going and trust in the vicissitudes of the road to somehow supply my needs. When I settled down with my wife to raise our family of five sons, we did it in Greece, not in the States. All together, I lived overseas for thirty-five years, only returning to the States when the Greek economy crashed and there were no opportunities there for my sons.

Somehow now I have found myself alone in Seattle, my starting point, as an empty nester, but for me it is not the same place. I see people around me who were born and raised and have spent their whole lives here. For them it is home, but not for me. I have no home. In the course of my wanderings I have come to realize that I am a perennial nomad. For me, the journey is never-ending. The truth is that it’s the same for everyone, whether you venture out into the unknown or snuggle up close to where you first arrived. We are all, ultimately, strangers and pilgrims in this life. We are all in transit. None of us are here permanently.

This newsletter, The Perennial Nomad, celebrates our transitory existence. In it I will share accounts of my far-flung travels and also narratives of my efforts to rediscover Seattle. Many of the essays will be previews of works in progress, and I will also offer excerpts from my already-published works. If you too are a global citizen and have an affinity with all of humankind, I urge you to subscribe.

Thanks so much for your support and encouragement.

Here’s a link to The Perennial Nomad.

Book Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

I hesitated before deciding to go ahead and write and post this review. After all, my intention is to attract readers, not repel them. But then again, the type of readers I am interested in reaching is not going to be offended by the F-word, which, by the way, is liberally sprinkled throughout this book. (And in the book’s interior, an asterisk is not used when spelling f*ck.) However, to each his or her own. If expletives offend you, that’s okay; simply skip to the next review and book and give this one a pass.

One of the reasons I decided to proceed with this review concerns one of my sons. A passage struck me as relevant to his situation, and so I read it to him while we were video-chatting. When I had finished, he told me that he was at that time into his third reading of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck via audio book. The coincidence was too unusual to be ignored. The main reason, however, is that though some of the advice Manson shares is tangential, much of it is sensible, relevant, and practical. As for the risk of offending bluenosed puritanical readers, I decided that I don’t give a f*ck.

Manson states that: “The key to living a good life is not giving a f*ck about more; it’s giving a f*ck about less, giving a f*ck about what is true and immediate and important.” He goes on to clarify that: “This book will help you think a bit more clearly about what you’re choosing to find important in life and what you’re choosing to find unimportant.” And: “If suffering is inevitable, if our problems in life are unavoidable, then the question we should be asking is not ‘How do I stop suffering?’ but ‘Why am I suffering – for what purpose?'” An important example in my own life concerns rejection. Everyone hates rejection and considers it something that should be avoided. And yet to attempt publication as a writer, rejection is inevitable, especially if you want to follow one of the traditional paths. For instance, I write a lot of short stories. I eventually compile them into volumes and publish them, but before I do that I try to sell them to magazines and anthologies. I have successfully sold dozens of them, but to do so, I have to send them out to editors. Every time I do, I risk rejection, and every rejection hurts. The only way to avoid that pain is to not send out the stories, but then I am waving the white flag of surrender before the battle even starts. Very few of my stories sell on the first try; I often have to send them out again and again before they find the right literary home. And every rejection hurts. Every damn one. But this is a pain I have chosen to accept because it aligns with my long-term vision. To take this analogy one step further: Recently I have endured what you might call failure’s perfect storm. I sold stories to several anthologies and was looking forward to seeing them appear in the completed books around now; at the last minute, though, the editors have informed me that they have cancelled the anthologies for various reasons – mainly having to do with finances. So in the publishing world, even after acceptance disaster can strike. Nevertheless, despite the inevitable wounds, this is a battle I have chosen to fight. Manson calls it: “The willingness to stare failure in the face and shove your middle finger back at it.”

For me, as a writer, one of the associated pains is the all-but-inevitable rejection. For you it might be something else. Regardless of your particular circumstances, Manson writes: “Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.” And: “It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something.” Ultimately, this book does not tell you to not care about anything, but to focus on what is most important to you, regardless of the associated pain. Since pain accompanies any endeavor, choose to endure the pain that will take you where you want to go. In my opinion, there is enough important practical advice herein to justify wading through the abundance of expletives to reach it. For this reason, I recommend this book.

Book Review: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman

When you think of iconic film makers of the early twentieth century few, if any, shine as brightly as Charlie Chaplin. The man was a comic genius and helped to define an art form. My personal favorite among his films is Modern Times. I consider it his masterpiece, but I am also very fond of The Gold Rush, City Lights, The Kid, and others. In addition, one of my favorite films of all time is Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. When I was living in Greece, I found a copy of Chaplin’s My Autobiography in a library and eagerly read it; later, I came across the door-stopper of a book Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson (my two-part review is here and here), which along with the autobiography supplied source material for Attenborough’s film.

For a time early in his career, Chaplin was the darling of the cinematic universe. Charlie Chaplin vs. America, though, deals with the time later on, in the early stages of America’s Red Scare, when Chaplin began to be investigated by the FBI and the State Department. Postwar America was a strange place; many people, especially politicians, became ultra-conservative and rabidly anti-communist, and Chaplin got caught in the crosshairs. As Eyman tells it: “Chaplin became the most prominent victim of what amounted to a cultural cold war – a place where art always loses.” This book clarifies that so-called “cancel culture” is nothing new. Public opinion shifts according to historical and political trends, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s Chaplin went from being one of the most popular movie stars ever to being ostracized as a cultural pariah. It all culminated when in September 1952, soon after embarking by ship on a trip to Europe, Chaplin was informed that his re-entry visa to the United States had been revoked.

For years Chaplin had been accused of being a communist; J. Edgar Hoover had a notorious grudge against him, and his FBI file ran to thousands of pages of material. However, amidst all of it, no agent ever found proof of the accusation. Chaplin himself professed to being apolitical; it’s true that he had attempted to help raise support for Russia during World War II, but this was a period when the Soviets were American allies, and Chaplin supposed that promoting Russia would help bring the war to a swifter close. And of course, Chaplin was not the only well-know public figure the FBI went after; a quick internet search shows that the FBI had files on Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Groucho Marx, Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Mickey Mantle, Michael Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – to name but a few.

Chaplin was also accused of being a sexual deviant. It’s true he had a penchant for younger women, but it was one case in particular that aroused the authorities. A woman named Joan Berry, who had been not only having an affair with Chaplin, but also seeing numerous other men, accused Chaplin of being the father of her infant daughter. The trial that resulted became notorious in its farcical ridiculousness. Blood tests proved without a doubt that Chaplin was not the father, but the ultra-conservative judge ruled that evidence inadmissible; he also did not allow Berry’s other affairs to be mentioned in court. Chaplin ended up paying support for a child that was not his, and the public took the findings of this absurd kangaroo court as fact.

Of course the persecution he was undergoing affected Chaplin’s filmmaking and his personal life. Eyman details Chaplin’s efforts to keep working despite the pressure he was experiencing; the movies he made during this period, such as Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, and later A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong, are drastic departures from his earlier work and reflect the changes he was going through. As for his personal life, in the midst of the confusion he met Oona O’Neal; his marriage to her, which endured and resulted in a family of eight children, provided stabilization in the midst of outward turmoil.

Once Chaplin was out of the country, journalists attacked him with outright lies; it reminded me of the disinformation that is rampant on the internet these days. Eventually, decades later, public opinion changed and when Chaplin returned to the United States to receive his honorary Oscar, he was met with great fanfare and adulation.

This strikes me as a profoundly contemporary story. In the media these days artists in music, film, literature, and other mediums have to face a barrage of commentary on social media, and fact-checking seems to be a thing of the past. I sometimes inadvertently, in the course of browsing the web, come across news of scandals and improprieties by this person or that, and it is often difficult to tell what’s true and what isn’t. The tendency seems to condemn first and verify later, if ever. This is a worthwhile story to read in the light of modern political and cultural realities. Recommended.

Book Review: No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir by Jane Ferguson; Part Two

As I read of Jane Ferguson’s adventures in war-torn countries in the Middle East, I was reminded of my own travels in the area. During a narrow window of time in the 1960s and 1970s, it was possible to travel by road from Europe to the Indian Subcontinent through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This became known as the Hippie Trail, or the Overland Trail, and many young travelers took this route in search of drugs, thrills, and cheap living in exotic locales. Numerous tour buses decked out in psychedelic colors made the journey; however, when I followed this path, I hitchhiked with European truckers and sometimes local people as far as Kandahar, Afghanistan, before switching to public transportation. These countries and their peoples were fascinating but frightening. I felt most in danger in Pakistan, with Afghanistan as a close second, but overall during that period those regions welcomed budget tourists. There were even so-called Freak Streets, areas with hostels, restaurants, and cafes specifically designed for hip young travelers, in Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan. This route became effectively closed, though, in the late 1970s when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and decades later, when Ferguson visited these countries, they were hotbeds of turmoil and war.

Early on, in Afghanistan, Ferguson realized that her motivation had been initially misplaced. She writes that “this obsession with being a war reporter was bullshit. It was a total distraction from the real work, which was capturing experiences of war.” Instead of a self-centered effort to prove herself, she came to understand that “the stories of the war were those belonging to the millions of people around me living through it.” She writes that sometimes it was difficult not to feel guilt as she captured the pain of others in images. The only way to maintain balance, she asserts, was to “be as compassionate and respectful as possible. To do that, you must allow yourself to be vulnerable,” and “by sending as much love to the person you are filming as you can. People recognize real empathy.”

On one occasion she was smuggled into Syria all alone to report on the insurgency efforts at a time when the government was capturing and torturing to death all dissidents and journalists. She writes: “I knew I was there because I was disposable and brave – my two greatest assets so far at this point in my career.” However, the importance of what she was accomplishing – letting the world know about the atrocities that were happening there – made the risk worthwhile. By the time she was ready to leave, the government had tightened its security, and getting out was even more dangerous than getting in. Concerning the situation at one checkpoint she says: “This was the first and only time in my career since that I felt quite certain I would die.” She carried the fear of that encounter with her for months, but it did not deter her from her chosen path.

What gives the book added depth is that Ferguson does not only write of her adventures in the field; she also shares the toll the constant travel and dangers take on her own psyche and her relationships with others. For a time she went on sabbatical, convalescing in an apartment in Beirut, Lebanon, but after a time she felt the call of her destiny and desired to get back out into the field. She also points out that despite the acclaim she received for her incomparable journalistic efforts, she was often low on finances and struggled with temptations to take on less risky reporting work because the money was better. Eventually, though, she would realize that war reporting was her calling, and she would return to the work for which she felt best suited.

I can relate to this memoir on so many levels. I have traveled for much of my life, and my wife and I raised our children overseas in Greece. In a sense I feel isolated, cast aside even, in my present situation in an apartment in my hometown of Seattle. I long to be back out on the road. I really do. At present, however, I have no resources for doing so. In the meantime, I feel a sense of kinship with Ferguson and great inspiration from her efforts to do her best in the work she feels compelled to do, and I highly recommend this book.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!

Book Review: No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir by Jane Ferguson; Part One

This is an extraordinary, exciting memoir written by one brave badass woman. And when I use the word badass, I in no way imply disrespect. To the contrary. I mean it in the sense that the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines it as “of formidable strength and skill.” Ferguson is a war reporter, and she has plunged into extreme danger in pursuit of stories in violent hotspots such as Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Iraq, and Afghanistan. During these adventures she is sometimes terrified, but she nonetheless remains steadfast in her resolve to do her job the best she can. In an author’s note at the beginning of the book she says: “I wrote No Ordinary Assignment with one main purpose in mind: to answer with total honesty the question, Why do you do this work?” The answer she provides is not only thrilling, but it exposes the horrifying human cost of war and the insane and selfish motivations that prompt the conflicts in the first place.

Ferguson initiates her tale with a tense prologue in which she is among the final group of journalists to leave Kabul in 2021 and is in danger of being captured and killed by the Taliban. She then flashes back to her youth in Northern Ireland, during which she and her family, relatives, and friends were in constant danger of being maimed or murdered by bullets and bombs. She managed to obtain a scholarship to study in the United States. Later, after a stint working in a filthy chicken factory and a brief internship at the BBC, an aunt provided the money to allow her to travel to Sana’a in Yemen to study Arabic. During this and subsequent stays there, she came to think of Yemen as a second home and as one of the most beautiful spots on Earth. As I read her description of the pleasant challenge of learning the Arabic language, I recalled my own stint of studying Bengali at Dhaka University in Bangladesh. I too had to learn a new alphabet as well as a new system of grammar, but at least Bengali reads left to right instead of right to left. And at that time in the 1970s and 1980s, I felt safer and more secure on the Indian Subcontinent than on the violent and unstable streets and cities of the United States. I think that at least some part of this feeling has to do with destiny, with where you are meant to be.

Ferguson’s first gig as a journalist was with Gulf News in Dubai. However, she quickly became disenchanted with her assignments to report on cricket matches, fashion shows, and celebrity parties. She had an epiphany moment while on a story at a car dealership in Dubai and decided instead to travel as a freelance journalist to Kabul, Afghanistan, which was in the midst of civil turmoil and attacks from the Taliban. She managed to obtain an arrangement as a freelancer with CNN, and after Afghanistan she headed to Yemen, which was in the midst of a civil war, traveling deep into the rebel zone to visit camps full of Yemenis displaced by the conflict. When she returned to Dubai she was fired by Gulf News after CNN aired her reportage from Yemen. This did not slow her down. She continued her freelance work, including a period embedding with African Union troops in war-torn Mogadishu in Somalia.

Throughout her accounts of these adventures, she is often frightened and vulnerable as she encounters life-threatening situations, but she never wavers from her determination to do her job of exposing the truth as best she can.

(To be continued)

The Writer Considered as a Prospector in the Klondike Gold Rush

Not long ago I wrote an essay called “Panning for Gold in the Literary River.” It was about my ongoing struggle to monetize my words. I love writing. I do it whether I have hope of selling the results or not; I can’t help myself. However, I also love eating, wearing clothes, having a place to live, and a multitude of other things for which we need money – and a significant amount of it if we want to be reasonably comfortable. It’s a struggle, though; for every writer who makes a decent living through their writing, there are dozens of others who are unable to manage and have to fall back on other ways to raise the cash so that they can keep creating.

Another gold rush analogy came to me as I was pondering this topic, and before I wrote about it I decided to return to the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park, a small museum located near Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle. On the day I planned to go, though, the temperature was around freezing, and there was a fairly brisk wind that made it seem much colder. I shivered as I waited for the bus to the light rail station where I’d catch a train to get me within walking distance of the facility. But when I reached the station, a security guard told me it was shut down for repairs. He directed me across the street to a bus stop from which, he said, I could catch a shuttle bus to the next station. I waited, shivering, with a few other people, but when the clearly marked shuttle bus passed by, the driver waved at us but didn’t stop. I couldn’t stand the cold any longer; I went back across the street and caught a bus back home. I’ve been to the Klondike Gold Rush Park on two other occasions recently, though, so I can remember its ambiance and most of its exhibits. And the cold causes me to empathize with those inexperienced gold seekers in the late 1800s who had no idea of the hardships that were ahead.

At the museum there is a game you can play, called Strike It Rich, to test your luck in comparison to other gold seekers. You spin a wheel that’s at least four or five feet across, and the object is to have an arrow point to a tiny inch-wide wedge that reads “wow, you struck it rich.” A plaque next to the game tells us that it is estimated that 100,000 people embarked for the Klondike, 40,000 reached the Klondike, 20,000 worked claims or prospected, 300 made $15,000 or more in gold, and only about 50 of those 300 kept their wealth for any length of time. Think of it. Only approximately 50 of the 100,000 who set forth with dreams and determination ever obtained the lasting rewards that all of them had sought.

This made me think about writing, and by extension any creative endeavor. How many creative writers are there in the world? I’d guess at least hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions who dream, at one time or another, of a career in writing. Like the Klondike gold seekers, many of them never get close, that is, they might try to write but never manage to complete anything; a smaller percentage of those who attempt to write actually finish stories or essays or novels or whatever; an even smaller percentage either send out their work to editors or agents or try to publish it themselves; a much smaller percentage make it to publication, at least occasional publication; and only a handful of published writers make a comfortable living at it. It’s the Klondike all over again. As an aside, a man who went to the Klondike seeking not gold but experiences he could turn into stories probably made more money after his journey than any of the prospectors who struck it rich. His name? Jack London.

The point of this analogy is that if the accumulation of wealth is the primary reason you’re a writer, you’re in the wrong business. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a wonderful thing when you get paid. I’ve occasionally received checks for story sales that have come at the right time and gotten me out of significant financial binds. But you can’t count on steady money coming in. Sometimes it comes, and sometimes it doesn’t. I can’t speak for everyone, of course; in fact, I can only speak for myself. But in my experience, writing is something I have to do no matter what else is going on in my life. It is essential that I use words to interpret my life. I cannot imagine existence, at least my existence, without writing. So odds be damned, I’ll head for the Klondike, or wherever else I feel compelled to go, and I’ll write about my adventures and hope that someday, somehow, it pays off. Whether it does or not, you’ll keep hearing from me as long as I’m alive. And even beyond, in fact, because my sons have assured me that they’ll keep my books available even after I’m gone.

In closing, let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with your desire to become rich and famous as a writer, but that’s not what’s of primary importance. It’s the words that count. Your voice. Your art. Keep at it no matter what. Never throw in the bloodied towel. And eventually, who knows? Anything can happen.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!

Thoughts on The Last Dangerous Visions Edited by Harlan Ellison and J. Michael Straczynski

This is not a book review, because at this time I don’t plan to read the entire volume. I borrowed The Last Dangerous Visions from the library to read the introduction and afterword by Straczynski, which comprise almost seventy-five pages, and to see what has become of Ellison’s original compilation. In fact, not much is left of what would have been the monumental conclusion of the Dangerous Visions trilogy. Although only Ellison’s name is on the cover, this iteration was edited by Straczynski, and few of the one hundred twenty stories Ellison gathered for TLDV, which he had intended at one time to release in three volumes, made the cut. So this is a new anthology using some of the original stories and other stories that Straczynski solicited, along with a lengthy treatise on TLDV and why it never got published as it was supposed to in 1974 but instead remained in a sort of limbo.

When I attended the Clarion West Workshop in 1973, the second volume, Again, Dangerous Visions, had just been published, and Ellison was actively seeking stories for TLDV. Some of my classmates, including David Wise and Russell Bates, had already sold him stories, and I was deeply envious of those sales. However, my own work was not yet up to professional standards.

Russell Bates was a Kiowa Native American, and Ellison had bought two stories from him, which were combined and appear on the table of contents as “Search Cycle: Beginning and Ending: 1. The Last Quest; 2. Fifth and Last Horseman.” For a time, Russ became a houseguest at Ellison Wonderland, Ellison’s home in Sherman Oaks, and he inspired and assisted with two chapters, called “The Red Man’s Burden,” in Ellison’s compilation of TV and film criticism The Other Glass Teat. Besides the particular excellence of Russ’s stories, including these tales would have relieved the monotony of white male authors in much of the rest of the book. Ellison was especially pleased about that. However, Russ’s stories did not make it into Straczynski’s anthology.

Russ and I became good friends, even being roommates for a short time in Los Angeles while we worked on a teleplay that never got produced. We lost touch for a few decades while I took off on my worldwide wanderings, but after my Greek wife and I settled in Thessaloniki to raise our sons, we reconnected via email. In one note he confided that he had withdrawn his stories from TLDV so he could sell them elsewhere, supposing that the anthology would never be made, and that Ellison had been furious. But then Russ died, and the stories never did get published. When I heard that Straczynski was reviving TLDV, I wrote to him about Russ’s stories and encouraged him to try to get them back from Russ’s family if he could. I never received an answer; I don’t know if Straczynski ever got my message. I have read both of Russ’s Native American-themed stories, though, and their inclusion would have greatly strengthened the book. After fifty years, omissions are of course inevitable, but the loss of Russ’s stories is grievous.

“Ellison Exegesis,” the lengthy essay by Straczynski that opens the book, is mainly an explanation of why Ellison never finished The Last Dangerous Visions. I found it extremely traumatic to read. My testimony is similar to Straczynski’s: reading a story by Ellison, in my case “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” is what gave me the inspiration to become a writer, and having Ellison as a teacher at Clarion West stoked the flame. For a time I devoured anything I could find of Ellison’s books. When Pyramid reissued numerous Ellison titles in a series of paperback editions in the 70s I bought them all and eagerly read them; I kept them with me as I moved from place to place and only sold them when I got rid of almost all my possessions before setting out on the road to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. As a result of living overseas for thirty-five years, I missed the whole horror story of Ellison’s decline and fall. To me, he was a literary hero, and in the mid-1970s when I left the country he was at the top of his form, winning awards right and left and in great demand as a teacher at workshops and a guest at conventions.

Reading Straczynski’s account was a profound shock. He explains that Ellison suffered severely from bipolar disorder and manic depression, and the condition manifested more and more as he aged. The symptoms had been there all along, but for a time he managed to use his gregariousness and his literary genius to shroud them. However, as decades passed, the depression and erratic behavior intensified, until Ellison was hardly getting any work done, let alone a huge project such as The Last Dangerous Visions. He became more and more unstable until he attempted to kill himself with a gun and was briefly involuntarily incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. In desperation, he finally agreed to seek help and take medications. Soon after this, though, he died after a series of strokes.

It hurt me to read this. It hurt a lot. To realize what had happened to one of my literary heroes. I almost wish I hadn’t read it, but I suppose it was important that I did. However, when I finished, I could hardly bear to hold the book in my hands. As a result I won’t, at least for now, be reading the stories that Straczynski has compiled. I mean no disrespect to the authors; maybe I’ll get back to them later. For now, I just can’t.

I did, though, skim to the back of the book and read Straczynski’s afterword, “Tetelestai! Compiling The Last Dangerous Visions,” in which he explains his selection process. In it, there is a three page spread with Ellison’s original table of contents of one hundred twenty stories, including the stories of my classmates, which didn’t make the cut. It’s sad, really, because Russell Bates, David Wise, and others waited most of their lives for the privilege of being included in this anthology, but now that time will never come. What was once conceived as a monumental literary achievement has been pared down to a single volume of more manageable but far less gargantuan length. In expressing this, I do not mean to criticize Straczynski. I believe he did the best he could when faced with an all-but-impossible task. It’s just that the dream was so much more stupendous that the eventual reality. Anticipation built for decade after decade, and now that it is here, well, it’s better than nothing, but I can’t help but lament for what might have been.

As for Harlan Ellison, all I can say is rest in peace. I know that he was a staunch atheist, but I can’t help but fantasize that he was pleasantly surprised and that he and his wife Susan are reunited and enjoying a bit of rest and fun – somewhere, somehow.

As a postscript, I’d like to mention that John Grayshaw has conducted extensive research on what happened to the unpublished stories that Ellison bought for The Last Dangerous Visions. You can find the fascinating article on his findings, called “The Last Orphan Stories,” on the Amazing Stories website here.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!

Panning for Gold in the Literary River

I love to write. If it can be said that particular occupations or pursuits are destinies, then writing is mine. For me it is a vocation, a calling, a mission, a pleasure, a joy, a delight, a thrill, a task that enhances the meaning of my existence – to name but a few of the many superlatives that could be attributed to it. I stumbled upon it as if by accident while taking a course in science fiction as literature during my one year at university and immediately I knew that nothing else in life would satisfy. In the ensuing years, most of the profound life-decisions I made were tied to my desire to write. While raising my children in Greece I taught English as a second language to pay the bills, but I continued to write on the weekends and during the summer when school was out of session. When the economy collapsed in Greece and I brought my sons to the States so that they would have more options and opportunities, I continued to write my novels, stories, memoirs, and so on, but I also looked for a job – any job – with a steady salary. Finding none, I turned to internet employment listings and took freelance work ghostwriting articles and blog posts. Of course, I didn’t consider these on the same level of quality as my creative work, but nevertheless I always did my best.

Let’s pause here and ruminate on Rudyard Kipling’s admonition in the famous poem “If” to treat success and failure the same. This is wise counsel, and it especially applies to the pursuit of the creative arts. Very few writers get rich through their writing; in fact, very few even manage to make a living. The vast majority have unrelated jobs that bring in most of their income and write in their spare time. It’s a matter of survival. You can hardly continue to produce your art if you and your loved ones end up on the streets and starve. For much of my writing life I have maintained this balance of having a money-making job and writing on the side – apart from a period when I was traveling full-time, back in the 1970s when I was in my twenties, hitchhiking around the world, content and even happy to be broke and to only take temporary work when I needed some quick cash for transportation or whatever, footloose and fancy-free, always carrying a notebook and pen so I could write down my observations and rhapsodize about the situations in which I found myself.

Now we will return to the present. As I mentioned above, for a decade or so I supported my sons and me by doing freelance writing work I found online. In the past few years, though, those jobs have dried up and the websites that offered them have shut down. Why? Because the businesses that commissioned those jobs from freelance writers have taken to using AI to produce their articles and blog posts. The results are far inferior to those composed by human writers, but the companies that want a steady barrage of content on their websites don’t seem to give a damn. For them it’s the quantity that counts, not the quality.

However, this leaves writers like me who made their living supplying content to these websites in the lurch. My income, which was already sparse and barely survival-level, has dwindled. I am of what most workers in the United States would consider retirement age, but I am in no position financially to retire. Because I spent so many years earning a living overseas, Social Security provides me with a pittance of only a few hundred dollars. I have to seek my sustenance elsewhere. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to start flipping burgers or bagging groceries at my age. I’d rather take my chances on the streets.

All this to say that I found myself in need of finding ways to monetize my writing work. I make a bit of money by selling short stories and collecting royalties from my almost forty published books, but it’s not nearly enough.

Lately I have been drawn to spending more time writing book reviews and essays and posting them on my website’s blog. As a result, my blog’s readership has more than tripled in recent months. I always hoped that eventually blog readers would become buyers of my books, but that effect has been minimal. One of my sons suggested that perhaps I should open an account on Substack, a fairly new site that specializes in subscriptions of emailed newsletters. He thought that I might have more opportunity for monetization there. So I sauntered on over to have a look. In fact, I did more than give it a glance; I dug deeply into researching the possibilities on Substack. At first glance, it seemed an attractive alternative. Some people were making good money on the platform. I even discovered that prestigious writers such as George Saunders and Salmon Rushdie were publishing on Substack. In my initial enthusiasm I wrote pages of material for introductions and so on in preparation for a launch on the platform. But then I hit a few snags. For one thing, I found out that Saunders and Rushdie and other big names did not elect to try out Substack like everyone else; in fact, the platform paid them large -up to six figures – sums for their contributions. For another, the Substack payment system is severely limited. If you want to put some of your content behind a pay wall, you have only one option as to how much to charge; you can’t offer a gradation of payment scales like you can on, for instance, Patreon. (More on Patreon in a moment.) When I wrote a well-known science fiction writer and editor with hundreds of Substack subscribers what he thought of the platform, he said he didn’t think much of it. He said that most people could do much better on Patreon, and though some people who jumped on Substack when it first launched saw rapid growth, now it was very difficult to engage new subscribers.

Wow. That posed a dilemma for me. My website’s blog was having a growth spurt in followers, and if I moved to Substack, although I could announce the move and invite people to come over, basically I would be starting again from scratch. In contrast, I have been posting on my blog ever since I started it up in 2010 when I was living in Thessaloniki, Greece. I didn’t really want to start again, but I couldn’t see an alternative.

As for Patreon, well, I have a Patreon account and for awhile a few years ago I was posting on it, but it didn’t really take off. If I transferred my efforts there, I would again have to basically start from scratch. And I didn’t really want to hide my book reviews and essays behind a pay wall, which is what Patreon is all about. What I wanted to do was give an option for readers to leave a donation, either one-time or recurring, if they felt so inclined.

It was a real dilemma. I was befuddled, bewildered, bemused, flummoxed, perplexed, and discombobulated.

After I poured out my perplexity to him, another of my sons provided a key to the escape from my difficulty. He said that sometimes after reading something particularly informational or revelatory online he would find a donation button at the end, and he was happy to click on it and contribute a few bucks. It had never occurred to me that WordPress, my website host, might have this option. After a quick search, I discovered that – lo and behold – it did. This was my answer! I could monetize my already growing website instead of starting again somewhere else. The donation block WordPress offers uses the Stripe payment system, and you can set various amounts, either one-time or monthly recurring, and also provide an option for contributors to enter a custom amount.

This was just what I was looking for. It was an elegant solution to my concern about having to start fresh on another platform: I didn’t have to!

I had a few trials and errors in implementing it. At first, I put the donation block at the end of the book review I was posting. However, it was too large and ostentatious; I couldn’t do that on every post. Instead, I created a separate donation page that could be accessed by clicking a simple link, and I wrote a small blurb with the link embedded that could be added to the end of my book reviews and essays. I also added a conspicuous blue “Leave a Tip” button that appears in my website’s right column above my featured book covers. It may not be perfect, but it works for me, at least for now. The words remain free, but I need the help, and I think that this is an appropriate and unobtrusive way to ask for it. Your answer may not be exactly the same, and that’s fine. The point is to persist until you find the solution that fits your situation, and then make it happen.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!

Book Review: Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits Edited by J. Michael Straczynski; Part Three

These days we are constantly beset by entertainment that features extreme acts of violence. We see violent deeds so often in film and television that we have become inured to them; they have, in a sense, lost their shock value. This was not so in the sixties, seventies, and eighties when Ellison was turning out most of his best, groundbreaking work. Other writers dealt with extreme subjects, of course, but Ellison was one of the first to really rub readers’ noses in it, to put a microscope to it, to create prose poetry out of descriptions of violence. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is an example of this, but the epitome of creating art out of acts of extreme violence has to be his story “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” It takes place in New York, and it is based on the real murder of a woman named Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside her apartment building. A New York Times article, which was later disputed, claimed that up to thirty-eight people witnessed the murder and did nothing to stop it. This incident formed the basis for Ellison’s story, which involves a cult of worshipers of a god that feeds on violence. When I attended my first-ever Harlan Ellison reading, he had the lights of the auditorium dimmed so that the reading lamp on the lectern was the only illumination. And then he read this terrifying tale with great verve and elocution. I’ve been to a lot of author readings, but nobody could dive into a story and bring life to it like Harlan Ellison. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” though intense, works on all levels.

On the other hand, Ellison was often prone to excess, and as an example I offer the novelette “Mefisto in Onyx,” the longest story in this collection. It is out-and-out horror, and when it was first published it won the Bram Stoker Award for best horror story of the year. I did not enjoy it when I first read it, and I felt uncomfortable while reading it this time too; it deals with a serial killer that commits unspeakably foul murders (which Ellison describes in detail) and for me it is simply too gruesome and nasty to appreciate as art. Many others disagree, and that’s fine. It does have a satisfactory ending, I must admit. As a footnote to my opinion, I point out that it is the only story in the collection that carries a content warning above the title. I would have preferred that instead of this story Straczynski would have included the novella “A Boy and His Dog,” which does not appear herein, possibly because of its length. There are also other stories in the table of contents that I would not have included because I feel that they are mediocre and not representative of Ellison’s best work, but as Ellison expressed a popular adage referring to personal taste, “One man’s nightmare is another man’s wet dream.” I won’t point out the other stories that did not appeal to me, as your opinion, of course, may differ, and you’re entitled to it, but I will mention a few of my favorites that were excluded but that I would have added if I were editor: “Punky and the Yale Men” and “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer.”

Before I close, I will mention a couple of stories that well-earn their places in this book. The novelette “Paladin of the Lost Hour” is more subdued than much of Ellison’s work. There is little violence, and the speculative element is introduced subtly and then only becomes significant in the closing moments. For most of its length, it is a character study about two men who seem very different, but they bond in their loneliness and become friends. This story not only won the Hugo Award, but it was also adapted as an episode of the Twilight Zone, and that episode won a Writers Guild of America Award. The other story I find particularly impressive is “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.” The meaning of the tale and some of the elements therein are somewhat obscure, but it is another example of a collage of seemingly disparate pieces in which the whole adds up to considerably more than the sum of its parts.

The final story in the volume is a novelette called “All the Lies That Are My Life.” It is set apart in a section of its own, “The Last Word.” Despite having no science fiction or fantasy elements whatsoever, it was published in a science fiction magazine and even nominated for a Hugo Award, presumably because it is about an author who writes science fiction and fantasy. The main character is an abrasive but brilliant and popular writer, an obvious allusion to Ellison himself, who has just died in a car accident. The narrator, another writer of lesser talent and popularity, has come to the dead author’s mansion for a reading of his will, and as he describes the proceedings and the other attendees, he reminisces about the dead writer’s life and career. Spoiler alert: at the end, the deceased writer names the narrator as his literary executor. The placement of this particular story as the last entry in Greatest Hits leads inevitably to the conclusion that Straczynski, Ellison’s literary executor, identifies with the narrator, although “All the Lies That Are My Life” was written and published almost forty years before Ellison’s death.

My conclusion? Greatest Hits, like so many of Ellison’s short story collections, has a mix of brilliant and timeless classics as well as stories of lesser, one might even say mediocre, quality. At least it starts out with a bang, with many of the best stories in the first two sections: “Angry Gods” and “Lost Souls.” I hope that the wish in the introduction by Straczynski is fulfilled: that it helps Ellison’s works become known to a new generation of readers.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!