Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 26

More Weird…

Just a few things to mention in the aftermath of the Weird Tales debacle. I’m speaking for myself only in this, not for Ann VanderMeer. And if you’re not interested—no worries. There’s lots of interesting stuff upcoming on the blog that has nothing to do with this issue, including updates on Weirdfictionreview.com.

I’ll start with some links that I think are relevant:

—Adam Mills puts the entire incident into a wider context, which lacks only a few items, such as Marvin Kaye posting on author walls on Facebook soliciting stories prior to the announcement of the change in editors; the new editors discarding the electronic submissions portal; imposing erratic submission windows; and offering a terrible e-issue for last year’s World Fantasy convention made worse by a bizarre postcard advertisement that implied Neil Gaiman (or “Neil Fucking Gaiman” as they referred to him) and other World Fantasy Con guests of honor were in the e-issue (they were not). Maybe some of the information in Mills’ post and here will be of use for aspiring magazine editors re what not to do. Although, frankly, most of this appears to fall under the category of Duh.

—SFFWorld has an interesting discussion worth reading in its entirety.

—Larry Nolen offers up a cogent analysis of the controversial novel itself, with which I concur. There are certainly controversies that arise in which the interpretation is debatable. This is not one of them.

—The Guardian also offers a review that hits on some key issues.

“KateG” in the SFWorlds discussion perhaps sums up the situation best: “The controversy is that Weird Tales magazine, a magazine with one of the older histories of speculative magazines, and a magazine that had [recently been] presenting multiple kinds of voices, winning a Hugo, has now in its new launch under a new editor…decided to excerpt the first chapter of this book — without a lot of context as has been noted, although many think the context is even more problematic — and associate this work with Weird Tales in a justifying editorial. It’s further complicated because of this new editor’s publishing history with reference to controversial projects…And even beyond the issue of the story’s approach and controversial content, as a simple post-apocalyptic SF story, it was not the sort of story that had any interest for Weird Tales’ readers in the first place…Essentially, in the SFFH publishing community, nobody cares very much about this novel, although a number of them have read the novel. The grief is over Weird Tales and that one of the leading SFFH magazines we have left, a very distinctive magazine, has essentially hung a sign on the door telling non-white SFFH authors and those who support them that they aren’t welcome anymore. That was, it is understood, not necessarily the immediate intent of the editorial staff, but that is the result.”

The rest of the discussion is also interesting, including the bits that talk about censorship/boycott and the unfairness of piling on, so to speak. I’m not fond of boycotts or censorship, personally. It’s just not in my make-up, although to each their own. On the other hand, I get to decide where I send my fiction, and there are always going to be places I favor over others—just as I try my best not to wind up in anthologies with little or no diversity.

The fact is: Foyt’s book is still available and nowhere did the word “boycott” occur that I’m aware of except in an io9 headline. But the fact is, also, that the series of events outlined by Mills had left many of us with precious little patience for or confidence in the new editor. For Ann and me that was exacerbated by a mind-blowingly awful dinner conversation with Kaye and John Harlacher in New York City in May. The point being: the problematic elements of Foyt’s novel are only one component of the vehemence of my personal response.

For those who may think this is some personal feud of some sort, I’ll point out that Ann worked closely with Kaye and with Harlacher during the transition, despite the difficulties, and had planned to stay on as a senior contributing editor. And we had planned to cross-promote Weird Tales at our own Weirdfictionreview.com. In short, everything had been proceeding in as constructive a way as possible until it became…impossible. (It is worth noting that Ann offered Kaye and Harlacher several useful bits of concrete advice over the past few months that might have saved them grief in other ways…none of which either of them ever took.)

Anything else I’ve already said in the prior post.

More Weird… originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 23, 2012.

The Art of the Literary Fake–Now Online

My essay “The Art of the Literary Fake (with violin)” is now online at the New Haven Review’s website. At over 9,000 words it’s my longest essay since I wrote about Angela Carter almost 20 years ago. I’m appreciative of the opportunity, courtesy of Brian Slattery, and I hope you enjoy the results. The essay references everything from mad penguin researchers to capybaras, bizarre crayfish dictionaries to Nabokov.

Excerpt:

“Play isn’t academically rigorous, can’t be easily quantified, and suggests a border that criticism cannot cross. The Quintus Erectus that lies peacefully in the morgue, awaiting dissection, suddenly slips through our fingers when we produce the scalpel, and then reappears, grinning at us mysteriously from a chair across the room. It’s as if a mischievous but highly intelligent ghost haunts the text. To speak of a ghost directly, and especially an unpredictable ghost, is to be seen as childish or superstitious, even though we are all childish and superstitious.”

The Art of the Literary Fake–Now Online originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 23, 2012.

Feminist Spec Fic Anthology–Now Open Through September 7

We are reposting the call for submissions for the reprint feminist speculative fiction anthology we are editing for PM Press. The deadline for submissions has been pushed back to September 7. All other particulars remain the same, but the publication schedule has also been pushed back: to September of 2013. This gives us more time for research. – Ann & Jeff

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer are pleased to announce a call for submissions for a new anthology on Feminist Speculative Literature. This project will be published by PM Press under the guidance and co-publishing arrangement with Jef Smith of GeekRadical and is scheduled to be released in September 2013. The anthology will emphasize women’s speculative fiction from the 1970s onward, looking to explore women’s rights as well as gender/race/class/etc. from as many perspectives as possible. Although we already have stories and writers in mind we also know that we can’t see everything so are asking for submissions as well as suggestions. If in doubt, send it.

We will read submissions between June 15, 2012 and September 7, 2012. Any English-language story (or translation into English) previously published since 1970 on a website or in a print publication is eligible for consideration. Looking for reprints only (standard reprint rates apply). Prefer works under 10,000 words. Willing to look at all kinds of Feminist Speculative fiction, but mainly interested in work that pushes the boundaries, that is truly unique to the genre.

Submissions up to 10,000 words should be sent in a Word or RTF document attachment to femspecfic at hotmail.com. Please cut-and-paste the first three paragraphs into the body of your email and include prior publication information, but no need to include any biographical information about yourself. If you prefer, use snail mail by sending your work to POB 38190, Tallahassee, FL 32315, USA. Snail mail submissions should be marked on the outside of the envelope as for Feminist Spec Fic consideration. No SASE is required if you prefer email response. All submissions will be responded to no later than September 15, 2012; please do not query about a submission prior to that date. Those sending in their suggestions—thanks so much, and thanks for understanding that we will not have time to reply.

Payment will be on publication, at standard reprint rates of one to two cents per word, against a share of any royalties from the North American or foreign editions, as well as one contributor copy.

(Ann here: if you post questions as comments, I will do my best to answer in the comments as soon as possible – thx!)

UPDATE – Please limit the number of unique submissions per writer to 3 stories. If you plan to send more than one, make sure we see the top, best 3 stories that fit this theme, thanks!

Feminist Spec Fic Anthology–Now Open Through September 7 originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 21, 2012.

Weird Tales, Ann VanderMeer, and Utter Stupidity

Many of you may have seen the disappointing and sad and just plain stupid post by Marvin Kaye, editor of Weird Tales today—except wait! It was deleted (screen capture here). You may also have seen N.K. Jemisin’s great post about it.

Of course, there’s also an apology, including this really blithe and stupid comment from the publisher (yeah, this is all hilarious, John):

John HarlacherReply08-20-2012

Also, the website was hacked and he didn’t write that.

No, that’s not true.

Ann VanderMeer, my wife, was the editor-in-chief before being forced out by Marvin Kaye and his financial backer John Harlacker. She tried to be a team player because they offered her a role picking one story by a new writer every issue. This appealed to her because of her ongoing commitment to up-and-coming writers and new voices—it seemed like she could still do some good work. But ever since a meeting with Kaye and Harlacker in New York in June, it had become obvious that she would be extremely uncomfortable working with them. Although they did not consult with her on editorial decisions, they did mention during that encounter that they planned to publish an excerpt from a YA novel written by the wife of a film director about “the last white person on the planet trying to survive in a world of black people.” This seemed deeply problematic on the face of it, and Ann was kind—perhaps too kind—but adamant and firm in saying that they shouldn’t do this. Ever. During this meal, a startling lack of understanding about international fiction and other subjects was also evinced, to the point that afterwards both Ann and I wished we had not stayed for the entire meal. It was one of the worst experiences we’ve ever had. Still, Ann believed that John Harlacker had gotten the point and that perhaps a lesson had been learned. Clearly not.

Ever since that evening, Ann has been planning her departure, complicated by a few previous commitments to writers. Kaye’s plan to go ahead with publishing this excerpt has led to this statement of resignation on Ann’s part. I know from talking to her today that she is deeply upset about this entire situation—that it troubles her greatly and it also is personally devastating given that the new vision for Weird Tales seems to be so against everything that she envisioned for the future of the magazine. I am just quite frankly livid and utterly enraged.

We are also sickened by the fact we all didn’t just walk out of that dinner, the situation complicated by the fact that no one could hear what everyone else was saying and so none of us had the full picture until afterwards. We are clear on the fact that such a situation will never happen again.

This is Ann’s statement in leaving Weird Tales in any capacity.

Due to major artistic and philosophical differences with the existing editors, I have resigned from Weird Tales as a senior contributing editor, effective immediately. This resignation has been in the works for several months, ever since I was removed as the editor-in-chief, but was delayed by my commitment to writers whose work I had accepted for the magazine and to whom I felt a responsibility. I will, as always, continue to be an advocate for exciting new writers at Weirdfictionreview.com and my various anthologies.

Weird Tales, Ann VanderMeer, and Utter Stupidity originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 20, 2012.

Editors, Influence, and You

SF Signal just posted a podcast dealing with the aftermath of the writer Genevieve Valentine being harrassed at ReaderCon, which included the fall-out from ReaderCon not following its own zero tolerance policy. The panel consisted of Stina Leicht, Mur Lafferty, Jaym Gates, and Carrie Cuinn with Patrick Hester asking the questions. Hester didn’t do the best job in the world this time around, in my opinion, but the input from the interviewees is excellent.

One thing that came up during the podcast discussion was a report from a prior World Fantasy Con about an editor trading off of his influence to hit on women writers, especially up-and-coming writers where the power imbalance is very severe. The suggestion being, put up with this because I can help your career.

I mention this because I think it’s important that every writer, beginning or otherwise, know that this is absolutely, terribly, awfully wrong and no one ever should have to put up with this kind of behavior. Or any lesser variant of it. And also that no one editor out there has enough influence to have a dampening affect on your career if you have to tell them where to go. And that most all editors out there will be horrified and pissed off to hear of such behavior by a colleague and want to punch their teeth through the back of their face.

Another thing that disturbed me in the account Genevieve Valentine gave concerned panels, and in particular one in which she was heavily condescended to by the male moderator. This is also not okay, should never be okay, and I don’t think it’s entirely out of bounds for audience members to address such an issue as it comes up—or other panelists to do so. The other general issue being men talking over women panelists, not listening to them, etc. Also not okay. Which should be obvious. (For my part, I tend to get into manic modes that sometimes coincide with being on a panel, and I will happily shut the fuck up if told to shut the fuck up, should I forget to stop going on and on. Although I also do try my best to self-regulate and be a responsible member of all panels I’m on—a good moderator is always appreciated in this regard, too.)

***

In a different context, I got to thinking about the editor-writer power balance in general, outside of toxic situations. Which is to say, although I personally am beginning to enter the Old Fart stage of my career, I still often feel like an up-and-coming outsider—and that is certainly the vantage from which I usually conduct my conversations, whether in email or in person. I do not see much distance between myself and some writer in their twenties. If I drop a newbie writer a line, it’s generally in a relaxed and informal mode, for instance. But what I’ve come to realize is that no matter how I might see things, some beginners will attach more weight to your words than you yourself expect. And this, quite frankly, horrifies me. I love that people enjoy the books we put out, but please don’t give too much authority or…whatever the word is…to any editor or writer. Seek out those who produce books you love, learn whatever you think you can from them, and that’s it. (Besides, it has a calcifying effect on Old Farts…we tend to turn to stone much sooner, babbling out of our rapidly solidifying mouth-parts ridiculously boring anecdotes from the old days.)

This blog post feels as if I only kind of got at the meaning I wanted to convey, but hopefully it’s good enough.

Editors, Influence, and You originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 14, 2012.

Notable New Books: Beyond Binary, Lauriat, The Moment of Change, and Yesterday’s Hero

(The cool cover art for Lauriat)

I’m a little behind on blogging about some interesting books that’ve come my way. So here are thumbnails on four of them, all of which you should consider picking up…

Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Charles Tan. “Filipinos and Chinese have a rich, vibrant literature when it comes to speculative fiction. But what about the fiction of the Filipino-Chinese, who draw their roots from both cultures? This is what this anthology attempts to answer. Featuring stories that deal with voyeur ghosts, taboo lovers, a town that cannot sleep, the Chinese zodiac, and an exile that finally comes home, Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology covers a diverse selection of narratives from fresh, Southeast Asian voices.” Written up in Publishers Weekly and on io9.com. I’m still delving into it and finding it very entertaining.

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction edited by Brit Mandelo. An excellent anthology that even includes a reprint from the pirate antho Ann and I edited a few years back. The contributor’s list is awesome: Sandra McDonald, Kelley Eskridge, Nalo Hopkinson, Katie Sparrow, Ellen Kushner, Tansy Roberts, Delia Sherman, Catherynne M. Valente, Sonya Taaffe, Claire Humphrey, Richard Larson, Keffy R. M. Kehrli, Sarah Kanning, Keyan Bowes, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Liu Wen Zhuang, and Terra LeMay. It’s just a really first-rate selection of stories, even if it didn’t also have a fairly unique theme.

The Moment of Change edited by Rose Lemberg. This is such a strong collection of poetry, from a veritable who’s who in the field, from Le Guin to Valente, Nisi Shawl to Theodora Goss. We ran an extended feature with two samples over at Weird Fiction Review earlier this summer. “The range of approaches and voices in this collection is astounding; as Lemberg notes in the introduction, there are ‘works that can be labeled mythic, fantastic, science fictional, historical, surreal, magical realist, and unclassifiable.’”

Yesterday’s Hero by Jonathan Wood. A fun and clever romp that’s somewhat unclassifiable: “Another day. Another zombie T-Rex to put down. All part of the routine for Arthur Wallace and MI37—the government department devoted to defending Britain from threats magical, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and generally odd. Except a zombie T-Rex is only the first of the problems about to trample, slavering and roaring, through Arthur’s life. Before he can say, ‘but didn’t I save the world yesterday?’ a new co-director at MI37 is threatening his job, middle-aged Russian cyborg wizards are threatening his life, and his coworkers are threatening his sanity.”

Notable New Books: Beyond Binary, Lauriat, The Moment of Change, and Yesterday’s Hero originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 14, 2012.

Notes on Writing: The Perfection of Imperfect Comprehension

(Photo by Taylor Lockwood—all rights reserved.)

The following short essay was originally presented as part of a longer powerpoint presentation given in various forms, including at a London architectural conference and at the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine.

Sometimes it’s useful to think in abstractions to more clearly see the effects we are trying to achieve in fiction. For example this idea: Everything we see around us, whether functional or decorative, once existed in someone’s imagination. Every building, every fixture, every chair, every table, every vase, every road, every toaster. The world we live in is largely a manifestation of many individual and collective imaginations applied to the task of altering reality.

If this is true, then nothing we see is entirely inert. Everything around us has, to some degree, a point of view. Thus, it may be useful to think of objects and other things embedded in your narrative as characters, too. Which is to say, that they have their own stories and agendas at the micro level of narrative. Paying attention to the possibility in these stories can be closely allied to characterization generally.

In extreme situations, these points of view become powerful influencers of behavior and history. This is the case in the imaginary city of Ambergris as described in my novel Finch, which I offer up as an example. In the novel, the subterranean inhabitants of the city, the gray caps, have Risen and taken over the city, occupying it and trying to maintain power over the human inhabitants through what can only be described as thought viruses given flesh. Their version of the city can be seen as an operational reality in competition with the reality of the original, indigenous peoples and the settlers who supplanted both them and the gray caps.

These operational realities do not play well with one another and the Rising brings everything to a boil. For a long time before this, the majority of Ambergris’s population—the descendants of Manzikert’s whaling clan, and new settlers—had the luxury of forgetting that they live in one of three possible versions of the city. This is something you see often in our real world, and this is also why you see the sparks of seemingly “new” conflict in some cases—because there is something there that has never been resolved. People on the ground have to live with that, and the dissonance it creates. (This is somewhat comparable in some ways to the more personal conflict and interpersonal dynamic between two individuals. It could be said to be a type of macro-characterization when applied to fiction.)

The principle shapers of the city during the time depicted in Finch are the Occupiers, the gray caps, and in Ambergris, the Occupation takes roughly three forms.

—Re/Construction: Rebuilding and new construction that alters the very map of the city in ways that favor the Occupier.

—Renovation: Or perhaps more properly, repurposing, as in the repurposing of existing spaces. This repurposing is meant to erase history or to rewrite it to favor the Occupier—to, in some cases, retro-actively win a lost battle.

—Transformation: More radical than construction or renovation, transformation creates change in an irreversible way while at times revealing the gap between the reach and intent of the occupier and the culture of the occupied. These transactions sometimes lead to situations beyond the ken of even the occupier.

All three of these contexts or states of being impact not just the city’s present, but also its past and its future. It’s almost a kind of time travel, with the intent of eradicating the existing past, or the memory of it, and to attempt to lock in the future—to make a certain future seem inevitable. And all three forms are not just re-imaginings of setting, but part of a war conducted at the dual levels of physical spaces or places, and in the imagination. They are thought-viruses as surely as any aggressive and detrimental internet meme or ideology, and they are meant to inflict wounds in one’s thoughts, to influence or degrade “hearts and minds.” All three impact the lives of the characters and shape behavior. (All three modes can exist in much more benign contexts than the ones used in Finch, of course. Reclamation can be a powerful and positive idea—for example, in urban landscapes taking an abandoned lot and making it into a garden.)

Construction or reconstruction is aggressive, hostile colonization by the Occupier—it requires planning, forethought, a kind of malice. It helps define the overall character of the gray caps in the context of Finch, from a human perspective. Fungal cathedrals, also known as mushroom houses, burst up out of the ground overnight, creating dissonance for the inhabitants. Versions that via spore infiltrate ordinary brick-and-mortar houses and buildings, gradually devouring them, until they look the same but are now both like and unlike what was there before, which is even more unnerving. The two towers being built in the bay, on the other hand, represent an event almost always on the verge of happening—a completing that is never quite complete, causing a suspended and continual sense of dread and speculation. The two towers are a slow-motion, long-term terror campaign waged by the Occupier on the Occupied. The two towers implicates the citizenry in an unknown purpose through the use of slave labor. People become conspirators in the creation of their own terror.

Two creative writing ideas are embodied by these two re-constructions:

—Transference: the embedding of a real-world situation, in this case any situation in which a foreign force occupies land and then attempts to hold it not just through the creation of housing but the destruction of existing structures. In order for transference to work, it must take on the natural context of the fictional situation into which it is introduced; it must be fully “cooked” and the implications of the acts described understood by the writer at a visceral level.

—Inversion: the literal (or in the case of ideas, figurative) opposite of a real-world occurrence found in a fictional text, the inversion intended to help in the full digestion or assimilation of the event for fictional purposes, and also for the more prosaic reason that it makes more sense in the surface of the text. In the case of the two towers being built, I had in mind the destruction of the towers in New York City, but in Ambergris the intent of that destruction is better expressed as construction rather than obliteration. (This is a method of finding personal distance from a horrifying event so as to be able to hopefully write about it in a useful rather than derivative or facile way.)

Conscious renovations or re-purposings of space, meanwhile, tend to be crude in their transference, and it’s no different in Ambergris under the Occupiers. The detention camps, for example, are erected over the remains of the source of Ambergris’s industrial and military might. Finch’s police station was once the headquarters of Hoegbotton & Sons, one of the two trading companies that ruled before the Rising. By repurposing this space and de-emphasizing its original importance, the gray caps are sending a clear message. They have also turned the space, from detective John Finch’s POV, inside out. As the H&S HQ, it was, with its small, high windows and imposing barricade-like desks in the front, akin to a bank—a stronghold to keep money safe and people out. As a police station, those same windows and barricades seem to Finch to make the space a miserable prison for those who work inside of it. It creates a surreal sense of place, as Finch has experienced it in both functions. He sees an overlay of the old along with the new. The new world is a harder experience to bear because of it.

What am I creating here? Is it setting or is it characterization? I guess it depends on how you see the influence of place on people. (It’s worth noting that these kinds of changes can be witnessed in our daily lives, and although we may not see them as sinister or bad, they still signal a change in context: the strip mall that is now a church; the church turned into a homeless shelter; the movie theater torn down to make way for a Best Buy.)

As for transformations, these include the half-human Partials and the fungal guns and bullets that Finch and the other detectives are forced to use by the gray caps. These weapons constitute a more organic form of colonization by the Occupier. Deadly effective against other human beings, the guns fire fungal bullets that colonize when they meet flesh—or any surface. In this sense, then, the bullets are emissaries of the Occupying force, mindless anti-negotiators who give no quarter. They conduct terminal interrogations. This, then, is one advantage of contextualization within the fantastical: as extended, literalized metaphor, an object that functions as a physical thing embedded into the narrative, and bringing with it the context of the setting’s history but also the resonance beyond that of the real world.

Partials, meanwhile, have abandoned the human cause and metastasize the transformation of the city willed by the Occupiers within their own bodies. The bodies of Partials become micro-cities of voluntary contamination within the larger macro city. They carry their full context with them, self-contained, like a badge of honor, and represent the most uncomplicated relationship between Occupier and Occupied: unabashed traitor, become converted to the cause. And thus they also become evidence put forward by the Occupier that their will is supported within the city, for the Partial wants only to be Whole: to be the Occupier. The Partials exist embedded into the story as real people but also as a literalization of the situation of the kind of traitor who abandons him or herself to the ideology of the opposition—here, it shows up as a colonization of the body that works in the context of the fantasy setting.

But a renovation or transformation also can imply an augmentation or improvement, and it is one of the gray caps’ failures that they provide “enhancements” for the police force and the general populace that don’t, in fact, augment or improve. For example, in the police station, the gray caps have supplemented telephones with “memory holes,” which are the ends of living pneumatic tubes leading to the underground. The dynamic here is another common one. Either through cultural, religious, or technological differences, Occupiers sometimes provide what they think are benign objects to the populace, only to find out later that they have made a massive, almost inexplicable mistake. It’s a very dark joke, peeking out through the surface of the text: the gray caps’ find this method of communication ordinary, standard, non-threatening—it is a non-issue. But to Finch and the others who have to use these enhancements, the experience is horrific and alien, and causes extreme discomfort.

Such situations, in which different operational realities slide off of each other—the ways in which they do not connect—are important to realistic depictions in all types of fiction. When in fiction we match up too perfectly the meeting points between cultures or differing world-views, we make assumptions that can degrade the quality of our fiction—and we miss opportunities for further complexity. The kind of complexity that organically creates conflict, characterization, and more specificity of detail.

Said another way, a seamless landscape and a seamless harmony of ideas intertwined as the backdrop to the events in a novel can be a sign that not enough thought has been put into the elements of the setting/milieu. Surely if there is conflict in the foreground, between characters, then it is possible that elements of the setting may also be conflict in some way? Failure to think about these issues can create gross simplification in the characterization as well.

(There’s another point to be made here as well: This kind of conflict can be said to create motion at the micro, or paragraph, level in fiction—and this kind of motion is important because it generates interest and can compensate for lack of motion at the macro level, in places where lack of motion is important to the narrative. Also, the character can’t consider these elements just as part of a flat tapestry of a backdrop, but must react. John Finch will forever be reacting to the disconnect of the memory holes.)

Directly related to characterization, then, there are questions imposed by the setting that are unique to the particular situation of each character: How does the weight of every-day existence (the personal, the past, that history) affect the character? Is it a light, almost imperceptible weight? Is it a heavier weight that impinges on the character’s ability to thrive, to live, perhaps even to perform basic functions? The answers to these questions are, as ever, affected by elements like ethnicity, class, religion, etc.

Similarly, how does the environment contribute to the operational reality created by the character, and how is that reality either more or less in line with what one might call “the official story”? For example, how does it affect point of view and action if a character’s operational realities includes one or both of the following statements: (1) The United States guarantees more freedoms for its citizens than any other country in the world and we must defend those freedoms and/or (2) All policemen are corrupt and going to the police should always be a last resort.

Clearly, there are real, concrete elements or facts—dangers and opportunities—that influence a person’s operational reality and thus affect their life (and thus a character’s life). But there is also interpretation of the world, the subjective ways in which a person chooses to analyze, interpret, and internalize, that makes them unique as a character and defines the self-narrative of their lives. This also speaks to the idea of agency because moving past simplistic ideas about character agency is fairly important to creating complex effects. Unadulterated, unexamined agency is boring—and potentially deadly in the context of fantasy, where because everything is potentially possible constraint is often an important principle.

In part, then, I am trying to make the case for being multi-directional to your approaches to setting and character—that the flow chart showing the relationship isn’t a double-headed arrow between the two but something more three-dimensional and organic that has layers and confluence that can’t easily be diagrammed. (A multi-directional approach is in a sense akind of martial arts stance from which you can create many different actions.) Throw-away settings are like throw-away characters: A missed opportunity but one that is prevalent enough in fantasy to be problematic. Indeed, throw-away settings may help create throw-away characters. When writers get into trouble in their novels and stories, it can be because of misjudging the nature of this interwoven relationship between character and setting—because if you don’t address the complexity of that relationship, you can wind up with something that engages in stereotype quite easily.

Finally, Finch is an extreme example in some ways, and thus a good way to show some of these concepts clearly. (Whether it handles them well or poorly isn’t for me to say.) But these places and opportunities exist all around in even the most seemingly mundane moments and settings. We do the real world a disservice when we pretend otherwise.

Notes on Writing: The Perfection of Imperfect Comprehension originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 10, 2012.

World Fantasy Award Nominations for The Weird, The Lambshead Cabinet, and The Steampunk Bible

The World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, and two anthologies co-edited by Ann and me are up: The Weird and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities.

In addition S.J. Chambers and I are up for The Steampunk Bible.

We’re all extremely grateful for the acknowledgment of these books, each of which was lovingly and meticulously put together, and each of which had many, many moving parts. Hundreds and hundreds of creators are represented in these three books. And as I said on facebook this morning, I’m going to send my WF Award nomination pin to Gio Clairval in recognition of her amazing translation work for The Weird.

For the full list of nominees, click here.

World Fantasy Award Nominations for The Weird, The Lambshead Cabinet, and The Steampunk Bible originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 8, 2012.

Summer Road Trip Book Haul: More Than You Might Think…

(An anthology of Bruno Schulz-inspired fiction ffrom Ex Occidente and the latest from Wendy Walker–check out Wendy Walker’s back catalogue.)

I never intend to buy books on trips, and I especially didn’t intend to on this latest one, where from July 10 through August 5, I went from the Stonecoast MFA program to ReaderCon to the Shared Worlds teen SF/F camp. But, as usual, no matter what I plan, books accrete to me without conscious thought…So here’s the run-down on what I acquired, or was gifted to me.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar—A book Ann bought that looks of interest.

The middle book is a novel in translation from Tor. Haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet.

Journey to the End of the Night—So far this classic by Celine is impressing me about as much as Nietzsche—which is to say not at all. There’s something in the style that annoys the fuck out of me.

Don’t Read This Book—Will Hindmarch gifted me with this Chuck Wendig-edited antho. Haven’t gotten to it, but I’m very impressed with Wendig and look forward to it.

Bullettime—New novel out from Nick Mamatas. One thing you can expect from Nick: No Stupid and interesting ideas and an unique stylistic approach. Okay, so that’s three things.

Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology—Latest antho from Tachyon, a mix of fiction and nonfiction. It’s hard to do an antho like this that isn’t obsolete in about 60 seconds, but it looks like a meaty book.

Growing Up Dead in Texas—Stephen Graham Jones’s latest novel is out, and it looks like his break-out book.

Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime from Tin House—This collection from Tin House includes some of my favorite stories from their fantastical women issues, plus more

Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction—Just brushing up on a few things…

Karin Lowachee’s Warchild and Burndive–Picked up some Lowachee I don’t think I have at Shared Worlds, and got it signed!

Michael Innes Omnibus–I’ve always liked Innes’ mysteries, and the omnibus includes a few I last read almost eight years ago, so I’ve forgotten the particulars. When Innes was on, he was awesome, and some of the books are very strange indeed.

The Nabokov I’m sure you’re familiar with–just continuing to flesh out my Complete Collection of the master in all editions with these mass markets I didn’t have.

The Twin (Rainmaker Translations)—I love Archipelago Books and anything that looks remotely interesting I pick up. This looks to be mainstream lit, which is just fine. I don’t need no stinkin’ dragons.

Small Lives—Another Archipelago title. Happy to take a chance on it

Stories and Essays of Mina Loy (British Literature Series)—”Aligning herself with Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, Loy influenced pivotal figures such as Marcel Duchamp and Djuna Barnes.” Um, yeah, Dalkey Archive Press does great work, and Id never heard of Loy before, so this was a true find. “This volume brings together her short fiction, as well as hybrid works that include modernized fairy tales, a Socratic dialogue, and a ballet. Loy’s narratives address issues such as abortion and poverty, and what she called the sex war is an abiding theme throughout…also contains dramatic works that parody the bravado and misogyny of Futurism and demonstrate Loy’s early, effective use of absurdist technique. Essays and commentaries on aesthetics, historical events, and religion complete this beguiling collection.”

Ransom River–The new novel from a writer who continues to impress and grow.

The Second World War—I’m a sucker for Antony Beevor; his Stalingrad was a huge influence on my writing…but even I am wondering how he’s managed to stuff the entire second world war into one volume.

Limassol–I also love the Europa editions, and this one by Yishai Sarid looked interesting. “A high-ranking official in the Israeli secret service is handed a new brief: go undercover as an aspiring novelist to befriend Dauphna, an Israeli writer, and her friend Hanai, a renowned Palestinian poet.” (Reminds me I’ve got to write a blog post about how inadequate the current conversation about international fiction is within genre circles.)

You Deserve Nothing: A Novel—Another Europa edition book from a French writer named Maksik: “Set in Paris, at an international high school catering to the sons and daughters of wealthy families, You Deserve Nothing is a gripping story of power, idealism, and morality.”

Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea–I heard Morgan read from this novel at Stonecoast; she’s a Stonecoast alumn…I was so impressed I decided to buy it and have the author sign it to me and Ann. “When her mother disappears during a weekend trip, Florine Gilham’s idyllic childhood is turned upside down. Until then she’d been blissfully insulated by the rhythms of family life in small town Maine: watching from the granite cliffs above the sea for her father’s lobster boat to come into port, making bread with her grandmother, and infiltrating the summer tourist camps with her friends. But with her mother gone, the heart falls out of Florine’s life and she and her father are isolated as they struggle to manage their loss.”

Some essential research/re-visiting for the feminist SF antho we’re editing:

—Women of Wonder

—Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century

—Secret Weavers: Stories of the Fantastic by Women Writers of Argentina and Chile; this antho in particular might give readers some insight into our thinking about what might be included in the feminist antho…this is an absolutely fabulous book!

We’re revisting Kathy Acker and also reading Clarice Lispector for the first time.

—Kathy Acker’s books

—Clarice Lispector’s books

Women of Other Worlds: Excurions Through Science Fiction and Feminism—Another interesting antho.

The Nightmare Thief—Another Meg Gardiner title; I think we have all of her novels.

Dark Desires and the Others (Argentinian Literature Series)—Luisa Valenzuela’s autobiographical fantasia on the ten years she spent living in New York City. Valenzuela has called this book her “apocryphal autobiography,” and in it she says very little about her work as a writer, about the city itself, or even about literature. Instead, Dark Desires is a dialogue between the sometimes harmonious, sometimes contradictory worlds of writing and human interaction: for Valenzuela, writing, like love, is an attempt to reach out to another person, to make some sort of connection possible. valenzuela didn’t quite fit our Weird antho, but we loved what we read, and we’re exploring more of her work.

Summer Road Trip Book Haul: More Than You Might Think… originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 7, 2012.

Dreaming Well: Does the Future of Publishing Need More Imagination?

For the past three or four years, the book world has been inundated with advice, predictions, and knowing winks about the next phase of what it means to be a writer. We’re told to exploit social media, to cater to our fans, to turn to self-publishing through e-books, to eschew copyright in favor of giving readers material for free. But what value does any of this actually have? What actual results, and at what cost? Is the salvation for writers the same thing that will wind up killing off good books? Who is rendered invisible by all of this, and what does it mean for the future of literary quality?

Just for those who don’t know me, I’ve been a writer for over 25 years, with novels out from major and indie publishers, as well as self-published titles. I’ve got multiple awards nominations, and wins, and write-ups in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. I’ve run an award-winning publishing company. I help run a teen writing camp and write book reviews for major national newspapers. I’m also the author of what is still the only internet/new media-based book on what it means to be a writer in the modern era, Booklife, which has such spin-off sites as Booklifenow. I’m not at all shy about using social media, and getting my hands dirty with promotion and all of the other things that we are increasingly told we must do.

But I feel passionately that some of the information we are getting is increasingly wrong and motivated by selfishness and, yes, to some degree, a form of hyperbolic illogic. We are so hung up on predicting the next big thing, on getting in on the next gold rush when it comes to ways for authors to promote themselves and market their work that we often seem to be active participants in our own destruction. We are voluntarily committed at times to dismantling those elements of traditional publishing that actually work and adopting the new simply because it’s shiny and seems to offer an easy way out. We may talk now about accessibility and visibility instead of distribution and publicity, and the delivery system and format of books may be changing, but those are just matters of terminology and translation. At the same time, we’re not able to truly dream well about what e-books might mean beyond things like making them look more like videogames or annotating them. Honestly, who cares? That’s pretty much dressing something up, not dreaming well.

The problem right now really isn’t the “tyranny” of big NYC commercial publishers or an Amazon monopoly. The problem is the virus of mediocre and received ideas coursing through the collective brains of the book world, infecting too many of its writers, commentators, reviewers. It’s a kind of fundamentalism at its heart, and we want to believe in it because it’s easy to do so. Then we don’t have to think for ourselves and we can also worship at the altar of a God of E-Plenty.

Just a few prominent examples, although there are more, and more subtle, cases…

—War on copyright and the fervent belief that content should be free. This belief isn’t based on any scientific facts showing that this will benefit the majority of writers (the midlist, which often is the bedrock of literary quality) but often based on anecdotal experience from gatekeepers who mistake their own immense personal power for signal boost as distributing evenly across the book culture. When it most assuredly does not. The idea, meanwhile, that non-US/British Commonwealth writers do not in fact want some form of international copyright in place is just plain wrong for the most part, not to mention insulting to the wealth of diverging opinions across countries, regions, and traditions.* (This is leaving aside the ridiculous length of copyright in the US/UK right now; it is too long.)

–Mega-selling self-published authors war on traditional publishing, specifically the Mighty Konrath. This belief, again, isn’t based on scientific fact—note the recent study showing less than 10 percent of self-published authors make any kind of money at all—but on anecdotal evidence related to a unique situation in already having an audience built up through traditional publishing. Any crusade against traditional publishing is selfish to the extreme—it wants to replace diverse ways to publication with One True Way. The same call is often taken up by budding writers, because it can be very seductive to think publication is so very, very much closer than ever before…even if time put into getting rejected can be extremely important to developing writers. Self-publishing a tool and like any other tool it can be used well or poorly. Putting it on a pedestal is a pointless exercise. I AM BOLDING THIS STATEMENT SO I DON’T GET ANY COMMENTS ABOUT HOW I HATE SELF-PUBLISHING, BECAUSE I DON’T. (Any such comments will be deleted.)

–Advocating against the use of an agent. I’ve seen more than one experienced writer who should know better rail against the use of an agent in the new publishing atmosphere. All I can say is, if you think agents are evil sycophants who want to suck all of your money out of you and cheat you, feel free. I’ll be over in this corner getting a lot more done for more money because of my agent.

–No one at New York publishing houses edits books any more. This is something I really find to be propaganda in the worst sense, in the context of bolstering the case for self-publishing (the case for which doesn’t need bolstering, depending on the context). All I can say is that everywhere I’ve been published in NY, I have had amazing editors who rolled up their sleeves and suggested, in some cases, major changes that had a big impact on the quality of the book in question. And many of my friends who also publish with NY publishers will tell you the same thing. This little inaccuracy used to be relatively benign back in the day, but it now more and more harmful, since it also suggests that since writers with big houses don’t get edits, editing in general really isn’t necessary. Not true.

–Claiming you know how things are going to look five years down the road and recommending strategies based on your Sacred Knowledge. There are a lot of different elements in play right now in a market in flux. No one can really be sure of what book publishing will look like in five years except that e-books will be a hugely important part of it. But one thing you can be sure of: that future will have built-in tumors and cysts due to your promulgation of shit-ass ideas now, infecting the mind-stream of the internet and taking hold when they needn’t have.

–Telling writers to establish some social media presence well in advance of finishing or selling a novel or other type of book. Another one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t useful for all writers or all kinds of books. For some writers, depending on their personality, it is downright destructive. For others, it is like being a hamster in a wheel trying to power your career, and expending lots of energy for little gain. Writers over-extending themselves, losing track of their art, all concerned that otherwise they’ll be rendered invisible.

This invisibility concerns me the most, especially in the context of those who scoff at traditional publishing these days. Trad publishing offers something to the shy writer, the introverted writer, the writer who will *always* trip over themselves trying to yank at the levers of social media. And that thing is advocacy and support. Is the advice we’re being given actually coming with the subtext that “if you’re not good at social media and selling yourself, don’t become a writer”? If so, fuck that. Some of my favorite writers wouldn’t know a facebook from an effing hole in the wall and yet, gasp, somehow manage to have careers.

Taken together, advocates for the wholesale dismantling of the current system and, to a lesser extent (lesser because it’s not as prevalent) other advocates who too frequently defend the inadequacies of the current system represent the biggest threat to the majority of writers. By spreading a more-or-less ideological virus that is then repeated by ever-growing numbers of people who do not stop to analyze what they then put out there as gospel, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs that may do long-term damage to the ability of writers to survive in this new age of publishing.

As noted, I’m no luddite. I use social media strategically and well. I write very surreal books that reach a larger audience than they otherwise would because of these tools. But I also know what doesn’t work, and that old-fashioned word-of-mouth and many of the traditional ways still hold true. I am not at all interested in being complicit in the impoverishment of the literary community by adopting new ways without thinking them through thoroughly first. I also am not at all interested in some becoming more visible at the expense of making others into ghosts.

Now, of course, you’ll ask if I have the answers. Well, I don’t. I’m smart enough to know I don’t, but also savvy enough to know bullshit solutions when I see them, and not to promulgate them to new writers. We live in an exciting age for books, but the jury’s out on whether we’ll have enough imagination to make it a Renaissance or a Dying Fall. And lest anyone misunderstand, I am as at-fault as anyone in not yet having been able to see clearly on this issue. I just know there must be better ideas out there, better ways of doing things. Before we become Locked In to just One Idea or Two Ideas.

* In other cases, artists coming in from other media suggest ludicrous things like “all you have to do is have your own popular band and then you can write a novel that easily reaches people.” Yes. Form your own musical group. Then use that popularity to write a novel. Next idea, please.

Dreaming Well: Does the Future of Publishing Need More Imagination? originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on August 6, 2012.