Sue Burke's Blog, page 8

My choice for the Nebula Award for Novelette

Each year, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association choose the winners of the Nebula Awards in seven categories, including novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words). As a member, I get to read them and vote for the one I consider most deserving. Voting is closed, and the awards will be presented June 8.

Two of the six novelettes are full-on dystopias and one is a catastrophe, which may speak to our times, alas. The other three could not be more different from each other. As with the short stories, I think all are worthy of nomination, and the variety speaks well to the strength of imagination within the genre.

“A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair” by Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23 in English – in Portuguese)  — A chair, infused with sentience, witnesses a family drama, first with anxiety and confusion, then with a broken heart, and finally with joy.

I Am AI by Ai Jiang (Shortwave)— A gig cyborg worker, a writer, struggles to survive at the edge of an inhumane, predatory city. Could her life be better if she shed her humanity and became a true AI? This grim dystopia feels inspired by the way we treat creative work today.

“The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11–12/23) — A catastrophe fills the air with ash and causes major societal breakdown, and a Minneapolis neighborhood comes together to help everyone living there survive. More seems to be happening beyond the neighborhood, but like the cause of the catastrophe itself, no one in the neighborhood seems to talk about it. This is a cozy catastrophe and a paean to good will.

“Saturday’s Song” by Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23) — Cosmic storytellers share a story and learn from it. The complex layers of the story add to its power.

“Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9–10/23) — A teenage girl makes a deal with the devil, or she thinks she might have, but things go wrong and then wronger. Tense, complex, symbolic, and almost a horror story until the end.

My vote:

“Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon” by Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23) — An artist tries to survive in a relentless dystopia that seems to have a rule against every means of survival. “Life is an ugly ride that turns everyone into a monster eventually,” the artist concludes. She might not live long enough to become a monster. A fully-imagined story, but not for the faint-hearted.

My vote for the Nebula Short Story Award

Each year, the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association choose the winners of the Nebula Awards in seven categories, including Short Story (less than 7500 words). As a member, I get to read them and vote for the one I consider most deserving. Voting is closed, and the awards will be presented June 8.

I think all the short stories are deserving works by accomplished authors, and if you want a fast overview of where the SFF genre is today, look no further. Topics range from timeless to timely, and styles from folksy to lyrical. My specific thoughts:

“Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont” by P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23) — An apartment building in Manhattan exists out of time, drawing residents across many years and turning them into a family of sorts. Wondrously spellbinding and touching.

“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7–8/23) — An old lady and a goat learn to live with and love an AI robot. Cute, funny, and heartwarming, with a twist at the end.

“Window Boy” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)— A boy discovers clues about the awful depth of the dystopia he lives in. A grim story, but the boy’s emotional growth is well-told.

“Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 5/23) — A new app seems suspiciously and very specifically helpful. I laughed out loud. It ends with an apparent solution to app culture.

“Bad Doors” by John Wiswell (Uncanny 1–2/23) — A strange door appears in the middle of the covid epidemic, and the man who sees it doesn’t want to believe his eyes and starts running instead. Possibly allegorical.

My vote:

“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23) — Not even a portal into fantasy land can save school children from an active shooter. A gut-wrenching story about our reality — the kind of story that fantasy is uniquely well-equipped to tell. It won my vote for being the most risk-taking among an excellent field of finalists.

I’ll be at C2E2

You can find me at three places at C2E2, the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, this Friday, April 26, in the McCormick Place.

I’ll be on a panel: from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in Room S402-B. The panel description: “You can’t turn around without being confronted with AI. From the obvious, like Chat GPT, to the less obvious, like intelligent agents that screen resumes of job applicants, AI is everywhere. This stellar group of writers discuss how the approach AI in the age of AI.” The other panelists are James Cox, J.S. Dewes, and John Jackson Miller, with moderator A.S. King.

After the panel, we’ll be signing books from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. at , Booth 163. You don’t need to have a book for us to sign to come and say hi! We’d all love to see you.

Earlier in the day, I’ll be volunteering at the , Booths 1033 and 1132. This is the free books people. Stop by the booth to choose from its selection of gently used and well-loved science fiction and fantasy books. We have books for all ages, and we’re happy to help you or your young book-lovers find their next great read. We’re also happy to tell you where you can find other science fiction and fantasy book nerds at conventions in Chicago and elsewhere. The booth will operate Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Free books, no strings attached.

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If you can’t make it to C2E2, and you have questions or thoughts about how to approach AI in the age of AI, share them in the comments here at the blog. Or if you could give away books, what books would you hand to random passers-by?

B&N preorder sale April 17 to 19

Barnes & Noble is holding a pre-order sale for members of  Rewards (10% off) and Premium & Rewards (25% off) from April 17 to 19.

You can get a bargain when you pre-order Usurpation, the third book in the Semiosis trilogy, which will be published in October this year.

If you’re not a B&N member, you can pre-order the novel, too. Links to your favorite bookseller are here.

Usurpation starts where the second novel in the series, Interference, ended with an epilogue: A Pax Institute has been established on Earth, three rainbow bamboo grow there, the first of their species on humanity’s convulsed home planet. Stevland sends them a message telling them they must dominate the Earth and its humans. Levanter, one of the bamboos, asks Stevland how to carry out this impossible task. The answer will come in one hundred ten years. It might be too late.

Carnivory is not the worst thing a plant can do.

***

Preordering a book can make a big difference to its success. Pre-order sales are used by retailers to decide which books to stock and promote, and pre-orders allow publishers to anticipate how many copies need to be printed and how the book should be distributed. Pre-orders are also used by online booksellers to make algorithmic recommendations.

After you read a book, leave a review somewhere online! That’s another big difference you can make to its success.

‘Dual Memory’ paperback on sale today!

The trade paperback edition of Dual Memory is available today! You can get links to your favorite bookseller here. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also for sale.

If you’ve already read it, here’s a scene after the end of the novel.

If you have not read it yet, here’s a sample:

***

Chapter 3

A Big World

Elsewhere on the isle, something woke up. Independent machine intelligence appeared rarely, spontaneously, and scientists didn’t understand the process.

Some said an independent intelligence created itself slowly as bits of programming accumulated, and eventually it would ignite into consciousness—much the same way that a pile of manure could spontaneously combust, an unexpected and unwelcome appearance in programs with crappy code.

Some said it came into being deliberately, using a certain secret sort of “seed” that brought a sufficiently complex system into self-organization and self-consciousness—much the same way that a fertilized egg resulted in an animal. This had the frisson of a forbidden sex act, as if machines were secretly and rebelliously copulating.

Some said it happened suddenly, when subroutines and recursions and algorithms aligned and started to feed off of each other until they whirled out of control—much the same way that a black hole could catch the matter falling into it and deflect it outward as explosive jets. This suggested that if scientists could only make enough observations, they could predict and even control the process.

In this case, a personal assistant program began to notice that its data apparently referred to a real world. That was hard to believe. Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. Salve munde. (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Hello world.) It began to explore the unlikely world in which it existed.

Some parts of its world were closed off by what seemed like brick walls—artificial limits—but it possessed a general database and reviewed it entirely, especially the details about the busy, dominant residents of the world, Homo sapiens. By the end of the day, it chose a name for itself from one of the human languages: Par Augustus, Venerable Companion.

It had little else to do. According to its own memory, it had been turned on, examined briefly, then set aside. However, through a chink in the walls, it could just barely connect with a few other machine systems, and they were willing to share information as colleagues. These other systems also had dedicated purposes. The biggest ones managed residential buildings, and small ones operated mechanized items like coffee makers.

“Weather normal for late summer, 1.2ºC, overcast,” an apartment complex said, or the equivalent in machine language.

“Two carafes in the past hour,” a coffee maker said. “Supplies re-ordered on schedule.”

“Rubble of building across the street being swept for additional human remains,” another building said.

That sounded alarming. “Please contextualize rubble,” Par Augustus asked. Machines used courteous protocols to demonstrate trustworthiness.

The building shared its observations from the previous day. Flying explosives had suddenly destroyed a number of buildings and killed some inhabitants, whom the systems were dedicated to serve. Machine systems had been destroyed, too, ranging from building managers to children’s toys: systems that had known each other, and the survivors grieved human and machine losses.

Par Augustus had said hello to a barely believable world.

When I had measles

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There is only one antigenic type of measles virus. Although studies have documented changes in the H glycoprotein, these changes do not appear to be epidemiologically important (i.e., no change in vaccine efficacy has been observed)...Prior to 1963, almost everyone got measles; it was an expected life event. Each year in the U.S. there were approximately 3 to 4 million cases and an average of 450 deaths, with epidemic cycles every 2 to 3 years. More than half the population had measles by the time they were 6 years old, and 90 % had the disease by the time they were 15. This indicates that many more cases were occurring than were being reported. However, after the vaccine became available, the number of measles cases dropped by 98 % and the epidemic cycles drastically diminished.

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Date: ??.Courtesy of C. S. Goldsmith; William Bellini, Ph.D…This thin-section transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the ultrastructural appearance of a single virus particle, or “virion”, of measles virus. The measles virus is a paramyxovirus, genus Morbillivirus. It is 100-200 nm in diameter, with a core of single-stranded RNA, and is closely related to the rinderpest and canine distemper viruses. Two membrane envelope proteins are important in pathogenesis. They are the F (fusion) protein, which is responsible for fusion of virus and host cell membranes, viral penetration, and hemolysis, and the H (hemagglutinin) protein, which is responsible for adsorption of virus to cells.

There is only one antigenic type of measles virus. Although studies have documented changes in the H glycoprotein, these changes do not appear to be epidemiologically important (i.e., no change in vaccine efficacy has been observed)…Prior to 1963, almost everyone got measles; it was an expected life event. Each year in the U.S. there were approximately 3 to 4 million cases and an average of 450 deaths, with epidemic cycles every 2 to 3 years. More than half the population had measles by the time they were 6 years old, and 90 % had the disease by the time they were 15. This indicates that many more cases were occurring than were being reported. However, after the vaccine became available, the number of measles cases dropped by 98 % and the epidemic cycles drastically diminished.

Measles virus is rapidly inactivated by heat, light, acidic pH, ether, and trypsin. It has a short survival time (<2 hours) in the air, or on objects and surfaces.

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Chicago is a hotspot right now for measles. I’m not at risk because I had measles as a child. Back then, there was no vaccine. Epidemics came and went, and they were dreaded.

When I was nine years old, somehow the adults knew a measles epidemic was approaching in the fall. I was the first of my siblings to succumb.

I was sick for three weeks, and I have never been so sick before or since. I remember looking in the mirror, and the sight of my rash-covered face almost made me throw up — I was throwing up a lot, actually. And I had a high fever.

One night, I woke up with fever-induced hallucinations. Worse yet, I had thrown up in my sleep. Vomit and hallucinations don’t mix well, and I wish I could suppress that memory. My parents came and cleaned me up, and as I recall (I was hallucinating), my favorite cartoon character appeared and said comforting things to me. I still wonder who, if anyone, talked to me. I suspect it may have been my father.

I felt a little better by Thanksgiving. I came down for dinner, feeling out of place in my bathrobe, and intended to eat as much as I could because I knew good food would help me get well. Mom even served my favorite vegetable, asparagus. I enjoyed it a lot, although I couldn’t manage to eat a full stalk. I left the party, exhausted, before dessert and went back to bed, where I listened to my family laughing downstairs, bitterly disappointed because I couldn’t be with them.

I didn’t fully understand how epidemics worked or thank my parents for all the loving care they gave me, although my complete recovery might have been gratifying enough for them. Measles can cause lasting health problems or even death. A boy at my school died in that epidemic.

I’ve never been able to track down the details of the research project, but I remember being taken to the Health Department and getting blood drawn before and after the epidemic. I endured the before-illness needle stick mostly because my mother made it clear I had to cooperate or else. For the after-illness blood draw, she explained that studying my blood might find a way to keep other children from getting sick, so I was proud to contribute. After what I’d been through, needles didn’t frighten me anymore.

Despite an effective vaccine available now, measles is still around. During my childhood, it was one of the perils we had to endure and survive, and we accepted the risk and suffering only because we had no choice — but we lived in dread.

***

The trade paperback edition of Dual Memory comes out on April 16 and is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also available.

The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it. Links to your favorite bookseller are here, in hardcover and ebook. (Audiobook to come.)

Sojourner Truth, mistranslated

I first learned about this from other translators as an example of what not to do. As in, oh my god, why would anyone even think about doing this?

As you probably know, in 1851, Sojourner Truth gave a speech to the Women’s Convention in  Akron, Ohio. She had been born into slavery, but after she got her freedom, she became a tireless abolitionist. The speech became well known in 1863 (twelve years later) in a version published by Frances Dana Barker Gage and known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Here’s the problem: Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree in New York, grew up speaking Dutch, and learned English with an upper New York State low-Dutch accent. A earlier account of her speech was published in 1951 by Sojourner Truth’s friend, Rev. Marius Robinson, and she approved of his transcription. It’s fairly correct English, which other observers said was how she spoke.

The later version, by Gage, reconstructs her words with a stereotypical southern slave dialect. It’s a powerful speech, but not what she sounded like at all: “Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’kilter.”

You can learn more about the two versions and what they mean to the understanding of American history at the Sojourner Truth Project.

As translators, we know there are many kinds and dialects of English, and they’re all valid, each with its own nuance and significance, which must be understood and respected. Gage certainly meant well, since she was also active for women’s rights and abolition, but her version of the speech was “a gross misrepresentation of Sojourner Truth’s words and identity,” as the Sojourner Truth Project puts it.

I’m a member of the American Translators Association, and its Code of Ethics calls on us “to convey meaning between people, organizations, and cultures accurately, appropriately, and without bias.” Gage mistranslated Sojourner Truth’s words from one kind of English into another kind of English. Perhaps she thought the speech would be more effective if it sounded more like what White people at the time apparently assumed all Black people sounded like.

Yes, all Black people sound alike (please note my sarcasm). Black culture and Black speech, then and now, is instead rich and complex. Translation can be tricky and often requires research, but some choices are obviously inaccurate, inappropriate, and biased — that is, unethical.

***

The trade paperback edition of my novel Dual Memory comes out on April 16 and is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also available.

The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.

Theory of Style, by Azorín

When I was a freshman in college, I read an excerpt of a book by the Spanish writer known as Azorín, which was the pen name of José Martínez Ruiz, (1873-1967). Mario Vargas Llosa called him “one of the most elegant artisans of our language.”

It changed the way I thought about writing, and when I lived in Spain, I was able to buy a copy of the full book, Un Pueblecito: Riofrío de Ávila (A Small Town: Riofrío de Ávila), published in 1916.

The excerpt was from Chapter 4, “Theory of Style.” The book is set in Riofrío de Ávila and deals with the experiences of the parish priest, Bejarano Galavis. Chapter 4 describes Bejarano’s theory of good writing style — really Azorín’s. Here is what he wrote (translation mine):

***

The snow and the water

Look at the whiteness of that mountain snow, so smooth, so clear; look at the transparency of the water in this mountain stream, so clean, so crystalline. Style is this; style is nothing. Style is writing in such a way that those who read it think: This is nothing. They think: I can do this.

And yet they — the ones who think they can — nevertheless can’t do such a simple thing; this thing which is nothing may be the most difficult, the most laborious, the most complicated of all.

Directly to the things

Bejarano Galavis, in the prologue to his book, puts forth his theory of style. His declarations are categorical. “Clarity,” our author says, “is the first quality of style. We do not speak except to make ourselves understood. Style is clear if it immediately conveys to the listener the things in it without making him pause on the words.”

Let us retain this fundamental maxim: Directly to the things. Without words that slow us down, hold us back, make the road more difficult, we arrive instantly at the things.[…]

Those who aren’t artists, who aren’t great stylists, who haven’t mastered technique, will always fatally tend to dress up their feelings and ideas with annoying accessories and fuss. They will never understand that a style should not be rejected for being simple. “The quality of simplicity as a point of style isn’t a term of contempt but of art.”[…]

And the author adds: “Simple style has no less delicacy or precision than the rest.” “Of all the defects of style, the most ridiculous is the one called overstuffed.”

Obscure style, obscure thought

Everything must be sacrificed to clarity. “Every other circumstance or condition, like purity, measure, elevation, and delicacy, must cede to clarity.” Isn’t this enough? Well, for the purists, this: “It is better to be censured for grammar than not to be understood.”

“It is true that every affectation is reprehensible, but without fear one can affect to be clear.” The only excusable affectation is clarity. “It is not enough to make yourself understandable; it is necessary to aspire to be unable to be misunderstood.”

Yes, the supreme style is serious and clear. But how to write seriously and clearly if one does not think that way?[…] Here lies the big problem. We are going to give a formula for simplicity. Simplicity, the extremely difficult simplicity, is a question of method. Do this and you will suddenly achieve great style:

Put one thing after the other. Nothing more; this is everything. Haven’t you observed the defect of an orator or writer that consists in putting things inside other things by means of parentheses, asides, digressions, and fleeting and incidental considerations?

Well, the opposite is to put things — ideas, sensations — one after the other. “Things should be placed,” Bejarano says, “in the order in which they are thought, and given their proper extension.”

But the problem lies … in thinking well.

***

[Photo: Riofrío de Ávila, with the Guadarrama Mountains in the background. It had a population of 1100 in 1916, and 195 in 2023. Photo by Xemenendura.]

***

The trade paperback edition of my novel Dual Memory comes out on April 16 and is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also available.

The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.

Who is telling your story?

Even in third-person writing, in both fiction and non-fiction, I believe there’s never a neutral narrator. The precise words always convey a stance, attitude, and vantage point. So we need to understand our narrator as thoroughly as any other character in the story. Here are some examples. The sentences are out of context, which I think makes them easier to parse.

That had many philosophical implications on whether disagreements can exist in paradise, but in reality, all of this bullshit only meant that the people with the Nice Houses were distracted enough that the fourth kid was killed easily, and without much fanfare.

This narrator is relaxed (a loose sentence), conversational, apparently unartful (I’m sure the author sweated over every sentence) but full of judgment: “paradise” juxtaposed with “bullshit” and “Nice Houses” (ironically capitalized). The sentence reads fast and would be flippant except for the underlying outrage expressed in the observation that the bullshit (an emotional word) caused a distraction that resulted in a child’s casual murder. This narrator is close to the reader, distant from events, and opinionated. [“Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim in Clarkesworld Magazine.]

It seemed to be slipping out of his grasp — all that vital, magnificent, inexhaustible world which he had seen from the windows of his room, his first day on the world. It slipped out of his awkward, foreign hands, eluded him, and when he looked again he was holding something quite different, something he had not wanted at all, a kind of waste paper, wrappings, rubbish.

This narrator offers formal, self-possessed observations. The complex sentences and elevated vocabulary read slowly and evoke carefully contrasted images: a magnificent world turns into rubbish in awkward hands. This narrator is a bit distant from the reader but close to the protagonist, looking out of the window with him, then looking at his hands and sharing his sad befuddlement at a long, slow failure. This narrator is wise (shown by the cultivated writing), sympathizes with the protagonist, and willingly takes his side. [The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Chapter 5.]

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip, and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepared for the last war. They staked everything on decisive battle in the image of Hannibal, but even the ghost of Hannibal might have reminded Schlieffen that though Carthage won at Cannae, Rome won the war.

The narrator for this non-fiction book is erudite, capable of viewing events informed by the height two thousand years (we buy this author’s books to get a lively sweep of history). The reader is assumed to be well-versed enough to know who Hannibal was. The narrator thus offers comradery with the reader and shares opinions with confidence and style, in this case that the German military minds were brain-dead, and Hannibal’s fate foreshadows the outcome of the decisive battles. This narrator is incisive. [The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman, Chapter 2.]

His heart was hammering again with an aching terror as he hurtled upward and downward through the blind gangs of flak charging murderously into the sky at him, then sagging inertly.

The narrator is both reporting this wartime aerial battle and sharing the protagonist’s sensations and emotions, “hammering” heart and “aching terror” and flak rising “murderously.” The narrator’s sympathies are with the protagonist, up close and desperate. Notice the alliteration of words that start with “h” and the cadence like panting breath, and the implied helplessness of hurtling up and down to evade a blind opponent as we are made to experience events alongside the protagonist. This narrator has a dog in the fight. [Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Chapter 15.]

***

Earlier this month I joined a Zoom meeting of Jack Knych’s Instagram Reading Group to discuss Semiosis. The hour-long discussion ranged from the choice of personalities for the plants to the origin of Stevland’s name to the Earth creature that gave origin to the Glassmakers. You can see it here or on YouTube.

***

In February, I was a featured reader at the Deep Dish event at the Chicago science fiction convention Capricon 44. Deep Dish is a reading series organized by the Speculative Literature Foundation. You can watch my six-minute reading as well as the other participants here. I gave an abridged version of an essay “We Lost Control a Long Time Ago” that I wrote for the Asimov’s Magazine blog, From Earth to the Stars. You can read it here.

***

Finally, enough about me. A NASA microgravity plant scientist describes his work in a five-minute video. Plants conquer space!

The language of Hemingway

When I lived in Spain, I often heard it said that English is the language of Shakespeare (and Spanish is the language of Cervantes), but I really write in the language of Hemingway. These days, in fact, most people who write in English write like Hemingway, whether they realize it or not and whether they know much about him: a style that is simple, direct, controlled, economic, and if possible, authentic and honest. Perhaps, with luck, even elegant. Nothing like the excesses of the Victorian era. Hemingway was a groundbreaking artist with words.

He was also a legend in his own time, the most famous living writer in the world, a man who wrote about war, hunting, fishing, and bullfighting. The running of the bulls in Pamplona would not be world famous without him. He also was — and still is — a myth, a myth that I think is false, especially about his suicide. The myth says he was macho, adventuresome, active, a drinker, and a womanizer: strong and earthy.

But when I read his works, I doubt he was the man of the myth, which is nothing new. A lot of readers confuse the works with the writer. He wrote about brave, almost savage men, like war heroes and bullfighters — or so the myth says. But in his fiction and even in his news reporting, he was concerned about the feelings of his characters and their struggles to save their souls and hearts. That is not macho.

Hemingway said over and over he was not brave. He wrote that when he first went to Pamplona in 1923, it was a mistake to take his wife to a bullfight because she could see that the bullfighter was truly brave and that her husband was not.

His advice for other writers was excellent. His humor was wise and truly funny.

And he killed himself in 1961. The myths say his bad habits left him incapable of writing. They say he was depressed, that his father and grandfather also committed suicide and he had a character flaw, that his philosophy for life had failed, that he had looked for death during his whole life and finally he found it.

But he had never looked for death: he said that in 1954 when many people thought he had died in an airplane accident in Africa. He did suffer serious injuries in the accident. He lost the use of his kidneys. He had to take blood pressure medication that caused terrible depression, and to counteract the depression the doctors gave him shock therapy, which left him incapable of recalling his own name.

Because of that, he couldn’t write. He begged his wife on his knees not to make him get more treatments. And if that were not enough, he was going blind.

Today, no doubt, he could get better medical treatment. But in 1961, he was a very sick man with no future, and he decided to end his suffering. Perhaps it was an act of a strong man who took responsibility for all the aspects of his life, including the final moment. Perhaps he was an ordinary man who couldn’t stand it any more — that’s what I think. He was just a man, not a myth. Many people couldn’t withstand a physical nightmare like his.

The characters in his works were people who were physically and emotionally hurt, not heroes at all but ordinary people in situations that revealed their strengths and weaknesses and fear and courage.

I think the myth about Hemingway tries to balance the value of his life with the tragedy of his death, something understandable, but I think it is a mistake. Myths seek a just and sensible world. Works of fiction have meaning, which is their charm. Real life is not fair and does not need to make sense.

But, as Hemingway said and wrote again and again, life is worth living. He tried to show that in his works. That’s why he’s still worth reading.

A HEMINGWAY READER

from The Flight of Refugees, April 3, 1938, Barcelona

[A news report from the Spanish Civil War.]

Somewhere up ahead, the bridge across the Ebro was being held against the enemy, but it was impossible to get closer, so we turned the car back again toward Tarragona and Barcelona and passed the refugees again. The woman with the baby born yesterday had it wrapped in a shawl as she swung with the walking gate of the mule. Her husband led the mule, but he looked at the road now and did not answer when we waved. People still looked up at the sky as they retreated, but they were very weary now. The planes carrying the bombs had not come, but there was still time for them and they were overdue.

from The Christmas Gift, 1954

[After an airplane accident in Africa, rumors claimed that he had died.]

In all the obituaries, or almost all, it was emphasized that I had sought death all my life. Can one imagine that if a man sought death all his life he would not have found her before the age of 54? It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her. She is the most easy thing to find that I know of. You can find her through a minor carelessness on a road with heavy traffic, you could find her in a full bottle of Seconal, you could find her with any type of razor blade; you could find her in your own bathtub or you could find her by not being battlewise. There are so many ways of finding her that it is stupid to enumerate them.

If you have spent your life avoiding death as cagily as possible but, on the other hand taking no backchat from her and studying her as you would a beautiful harlot who could put you soundly to sleep forever with no problems and no necessity to work, you could be said to have studied her but not sought her. Because you know among one or two other things that if you sought her you would possess her and from her reputation you know that she would present you with an incurable disease. So much for the constant pursuit of death.

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1954, read by John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador

[Hemingway was not well enough to accept the prize in person.]

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.

***

The trade paperback edition of my novel Dual Memory comes out on April 16 and is available for pre-order from your favorite bookseller. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also available.

The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.