Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 38

Taking the Weird Questionnaire…Do You Dare?

Over on Weirdfictionreview.com, Edward Gauvin has reproduced a "Weird Questionnaire" developed by the French. I'll leave you to peruse the details over there, but over here I am posting my answers to what are at times uncomfortable questions. Perhaps you too will answer the questions and post your answers. If so, please cross-link to Gauvin's post.

1. Write the first sentence of a novel, short story, or book of the weird yet to be written.

There was a whirring in the back of the shop that did not equate to the clocks, but was not a cricket, either, and nothing he could think of explained it.

2. Without looking at your watch: what time is it?

12:01

3. Look at your watch. What time is it?

12:03

4. How do you explain this?—?or these?—?discrepancy(ies) in time?

Discrepancies in time are mostly about the ways in which our activities stretch or shorten it. But also about the ways time has become fragmented. The discrepancy in the time as it exists and my idea of time is so small because we have no way of escaping representations of time in this age.

5. Do you believe in meteorological predictions?

Yes, to some extent.

6. Do you believe in astrological predictions?

No, except inasmuch that those who believe in them are then thus influenced in their behavior. They are haunted by these predictions and through the haunting sometimes they come true.

7. Do you gaze at the sky and stars by night?

Yes

8. What do you think of the sky and stars by night?

Overwhelming and troubling and sad and unknowable and in that vastness there is an odd comfort because it keeps humankind's accomplishments small and in a tiny corner of something larger.

9. What were you looking at before starting this questionnaire?

A bad book of SF stories by a Catalan writer named Manuel de Pedrolo from the 1960s.

10. What do cathedrals, churches, mosques, shrines, synagogues, and other religious monuments inspire in you?

Transformation. I am continually transforming them from their purpose when I enter them, especially the more ornate they are. I don't care what they're really for—I just keep seeing them as something else, and repurposing the parts of them as if they were the parts of something else—the ribs of a behemoth, instead of cathedral arches, for example.

11. What would you have "seen" if you'd been blind?

I would've seen more texture, which is itself an entirely other land that we tend to forget, and I would have noticed more the way that in cathedrals the air pushes out and in in strange ways and how there can be pockets of quite icy air and it can be hot other places, and although this has a real explanation, the encounter of it on the skin is often unexpected and raises a kind of primal response.

12. What would you want to see if you were blind?

I would want to completely absorb myself in texture and touch. This is a world that would be, in the context of blindness, perhaps both scary and at the same time revelatory and would change my entire perception of the world. In fact, I might want for a time to only have the ability to absorb this kind of sensation.

13. Are you afraid?

Sometimes.

14. What of?

Of dying before I finish this next novel, or just of dying. Of the repercussions of response. I don't like having to respond to a response. I feel like something's being sucked out of me. More and more often, as I get older, I am afraid of other people dying.

15. What is the last weird film you've seen?

The "erotic" Sleeping Beauty was either unutterable odd or sadly mundane, I can't decide. Melancholia was the same. I would like to say they were both weird, but I think they were probably both very ordinary. That would mean the last weird film I saw was…I cannot remember so it cannot have been very memorable.

16. Whom are you afraid of?

I am afraid of no particular person.

17. Have you ever been lost?

I was once lost in Rome as a child, or had the impression I was lost, and in my mind now, even if it may have only been a few minutes, it was hours and the nightmares I had later reinforced this, and I remember mostly people touching my blonde hair and the rather sharp shadows of late afternoon, so that everything was either so dark or ablaze and that feeling of disorientation—of not knowing exact where you were in the world, or where you might be in a few minutes and how at the time this was terrifying but that in memory now it is laced with some other emotion, as when you express horror to someone over something that has happened to you but some devilish and animal part of you raises part of your lip in a semblance of a smile because there is a tiny tiny little crumb of delight or heightened anticipation there too.

18. Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in certain events that occur for which rational explanations may suffice but for which those explanations may not entirely reward you or satisfy you. There are moments in the natural world, when hiking, or moments when I am not thinking of anything at all—I am not cluttered with anything—that there is a sense of something shining through. There are coincidences that feel like miniature ghosts.

19. What is a ghost?

Regardless of the "fact" of a ghost, a ghost is anything you let inside your head that haunts you or that haunts others. A ghost becomes real most times because you let it or you cannot avoid it. A memory is a special kind of haunting.

20. At this very moment, what sound(s) can you here, apart from the computer?

There is a garbage truck backing up somewhere in the neighborhood and the cat's breathing and snoring is somewhat loud and the refrigerator is humming or whining, or a bit of both, and there is a flock of geese passing somewhere very high overhead so that I can hear just a tiny bit of their honking. The highway is somewhat close, and although we usually edit out this sound, I can hear the continual rush of cars in the distance. Outside the window, there's a scurrying, whirling dead-leaf sound as the squirrels run around. A dog is barking somewhere.

21. What is the most terrifying sound you've ever heard?–?for example, "the night was like the cry of a wolf"?

Possibly the sudden impacting dull crack as a car hit a pickup truck right in front of me at an intersection, and then the silence as the truck was flung and overturned, and then the second dull crack as it hit the pavement again. But it wasn't the sound that was terrifying—it was the silence in between, which seemed to last forever and also to fit on the head of a pin. Thinking about it later, I thought of the silence as a door—that there was something opening in the silence that had nothing to do with the accident that had just occurred.

22. Have you done something weird today or in the last few days?

I attached strawberries to the end of strips of tape and hung them from the blades of a ceiling fan. I also threw cornbread out of a car window. I got into an argument with a bird. I don't know if these things qualify as weird. Perhaps the weirdest thing I did recently is to down the last of my painkillers for my teeth while watching the movie Melancholia, which only made me a little paranoid for awhile, and afterwards was in a hyper yet tired state in which I kept thinking that perhaps the tiny cracks in the ceiling were actually doors to other places. But this wasn't so much a natural state of being weird but of my writer's mind willing me to find something strange so that I might write it down.

23. Have you ever been to confession?

No. I am not a religious person.

24. You're at confession, so confess the unspeakable.

When I was ten, a kid came up to me and cheerily said hello and for no reason at all I punched him in the face. I once stole a bunch of Anais Nin novels from a bookstore as a teenager. I have [---------REDACTED] and I have gone into [--------REDACTED] and [------REDACTED]. I once wanted to have [------------REDACTED] and I have also [--------------REDACTED] about [REDACTED]…The truth is, for all that we live in a world with no privacy, there are penalties for not appearing to always be the hero of your own story and none of us will usually own up to something truly terrible.

25. Without cheating: what is a "cabinet of curiosities"?

A collection, usually eccentric or regulated by some eccentricity in the collecting impulse, that can be composed of items from the natural world, like sea shells, or can be composed of objects created by humankind. The importance of these collections often lies not so much in the items themselves but in the curious qualities of the mind that acquired them.

26. Do you believe in redemption?

Yes, because I believe in forgiveness and reconciliation. Not doing so is a kind of madness.

27. Have you dreamed tonight?

Yes.

28. Do you remember your dreams?

Yes.

29. What was your last dream?

I was in a city that was anonymous and had buildings with very strange inward curving walls and lots of random doors and windows and little narrow passageways between them and the sky and sun seemed to be impossibly far away because all of these buildings reached very high and were connected by a series of pathways that interlinked. And I was slowly being devoured by a group of people so that each day it was harder to get out and sightsee. I was sightseeing on vacation! But also being slowly cannibalized, and this was normal in the city and I thought it was normal, even when I was crawling through the passageways because I had no legs. And my goal was simply to see the blue of the sky each day, but I did this not in a literal way. Because there were shadows embedded in the walls of the buildings that were actually the essence of living people, and so what I would do is I would find ways to trick these shadows into telling me stories about the sky, and I was quite successful at this. Sometimes I would trade stories for their stories. And sometimes their stories would open up the dream to me so that I would be in another place entirely. For example, one time a shadow told me a story that led to me experiencing a strip of wilderness with water on either side—a kind of hiking trail, except that there were strange beasts in the water. The crocodiles weren't really crocodiles but something much larger with little islands on their backs and I could see other huge things curling out of the water, and I would have to walk as far as I could possibly walk while these things were on either side, and eventually they would begin to come onto the land and I would start running, and that's when I would disengage from the dream if I could, in my head, and be back talking to the shadow that had sent me there. And eventually in this dream, I realized I was continually regrowing my legs and arms so that I would never actually die, but continually be devoured, and at that point for some reason I stopped being afraid in the dream and once I stopped being afraid I was able to start writing in my head and eventually I became a shadow on the wall, except that this last part is a lie to provide closure to the dream so I don't think of myself being cannibalized and didn't happen at all, but if I remember it as part of the dream then eventually that will be the dream I had.

30. What does fog make you think of?

The things that come out of it unexpectedly. These things can be quite ordinary, but the fact they come out of the fog renders them extraordinary. In a way, you could say that fog brings clarity to whatever emerges from it.

31. Do you believe in animals that don't exist?

The question makes my brain want to knife itself for some reason. But returning to this after a second, I would like to believe in animals that don't exist even as my mind continues to revolt and to resist me in this matter.

32. What do you see on the walls of the room where you are?

Paintings, a fire extinguisher, more paintings, a clock, different types of texture, from wood to plaster and there's a fire place embedded in one of the walls and curtains and a window across part of it.

33. If you became a magician, what would be the first thing you'd do?

Light things on fire.

34. What is a madman?

Often, someone who isn't properly understood. Sometimes just someone has mistaken certain signs and symbols for what they are not.

35. Are you mad?

Sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I am mad quite literarlly and intrinsically, without outside stimuli, but then also when what I believe about the world seems to mystify other people. You can be made to feel mad simply by holding a minority opinion. This can also occur when the narrative you have created for your life and the life of others is revealed to be false or incomplete—in other words, when it becomes clear it is a story you have been telling.

36. Do you believe in the existence of secret societies?

Yes.

37. What was the last weird book you read?

Jean Ray's Malpertius novel, but also a collection of stories by Ralph Adams Cram.

38. Would you like to live in a castle?

Not really.

39. Have you seen something weird today?

Something was sticking out of the trash can that wasn't there last night. I thought maybe someone had put it there and then I wondered why someone would put it there. A black cat was watching me that was at first friendly and then hissed at me. This wasn't weird, though. There were a lot of mushrooms in strange shapes in the front yard, but, again, this isn't really weird.

40. What is the weirdest film you've ever seen?

I am tempted to say anything by David Lynch, but in fact I think Santa Sangre is one of the weirdest movies I've seen, given the time at which I saw it. I am sure I will remember something else well after completing this questionnaire.

41. Would you like to live in an abandoned train station?

Yes, actually. I think an abandoned train station would be comfortable, and it would be full of the people who had passed through it, but in a good way, a companionable way. No one would have spent enough time there to have made it their home.

42. Can you see the future?

I can. I have experienced several precognitive dreams, always of small moments in places I haven't been yet and each time when these small moments then occur, the hairs on my arms stand up and there is a sense of having glimpsed something that was both totally unimportant and yet also tremendously important. And then sometimes, a sense of unease for a short while.

43. Have you considered living abroad?

I have.

44. Where?

Vancouver Island or Australia.

45. Why?

There is a sense to the wilderness in both places that is somehow incredibly alluring and that fills me with a feeling of peace and strangeness.

46. What is the weirdest film you've ever owned?

Probably also Santa Sangre.

47. Would you liked to have lived in a vicarage?

There is something about the word "vicarage" that to me implies "cozy" in an unattractive way.

48. What is the weirdest book you've ever read?

I would like to say Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, or Deborah Levy's Beautiful Mutants or perhaps Michael Cisco's The Great Lover, but the truth is that the answer might change day to day, because all new reading recontextualizes old reading in a way that can render the old reading either more or less strange. Books haunt each other.

49. Which do you like better, globes or hourglasses?

Globes. Hourglasses just do one thing, repetitively.

50. Which do you like better, antique magnifying glasses or bladed weapons?

Antique magnifying glasses.

51. What, in all likelihood, lies in the depths of Loch Ness?

The sedimentized remains of countless creatures pushed into one another and made unrecognizable by the weight of what's on top of them. But the fact is we can't quite know exactly what's there.

52. Do you like taxidermied animals?

I both like and dislike taxidermied animals because in the often unnatural poses there is a kind of strange glassy life that's unnerving because it stands out, and also because I prefer live animals…but if I like them it is because they remind me of the wilderness.

53. Do you like walking in the rain?

Yes. I find it to be a real experience sometimes in a spiritual sense, especially if hiking.

54. What goes on in tunnels?

Unsavory and delightful things. Things that require clarity and distance and obfuscation. A tunnel is a kind of anticipation that usually ends in disappointment by the time you've escaped out the other end, but for the moment, in the moment, it's somewhere subterranean and if you're lucky there's that amazingly fertile accumulation of green moss between bricks and the cool, clean smell of dank, damp air. At least.

55. What do you look at when you look away from this questionnaire?

A cryptozoological print by Jan Svankmajer.

56. What does this famous line inspire in you: "And when he had crossed the bridge, the phantoms came to meet him."?

A sense of camaraderie.

57. Without cheating: where is that famous line from?

You are a bastard, Weird Questionnaire. Without cheating, I would like to say it's from the old Washington Irving story, but I know that must be wrong. There is also an odd affinity with the dark riders of Lord of the Rings. But these are just echoes. It feels almost like a homecoming in the way it's written.

58. Do you like walking in graveyards or the woods by night?

I am not fond of walking in the woods by night as that is a good way to get lost and never be found. Walking in the woods at night is also incredibly unnerving and it makes every hair on the back of my neck stand up and it also fills me with a kind of primal dread. Walking in graveyards at any hour does not particularly bother me. I do not receive any frisson of untoward atmosphere in doing so.

58. Write the last line of a novel, short story, or book of the weird yet to be written.

There was nothing he could do, so he embraced the thing before him.

59. Without looking at your watch: what time is it?

12:15

60. Look at your watch. What time is it?

12:55

Taking the Weird Questionnaire…Do You Dare? originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 13, 2011.

Weird Fiction Review: Gift Picks, Kathe Koja, Jerome Bixby, Questionnaire, Leonora Carrington, and More!

(more great jeremy zerfoss art…)

As we enter the final two weeks of content-posting for Weirdfictionreview.com for 2011 (we're on vacation after Dec. 20), you'll find a lot of wonderful material going live.

This week, for example, we just posted the following:

—A Holiday Book Gift Guide for the Weirdie in your life

—An appreciation of Leonora Carrington's story by S.J. Chambers

—Episode #7 of Leah Thomas's amazing web comic "Reading the Weird," based on Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life," along with posting the Bixby story itself.

—Edward Gauvin's Weird Questionnaire (fascinating stuff!)

—Kathe Koja's surreal short story "The Neglected Garden".

—Leopoldo Lugones' 1906 short story "The Bloat Toad", along with Larry Nolen's short essay on translating the piece.

—An interview with Deadfall Hotel author Steve Rasnic Tem

So, go visit Weirdfictionreview.com, and enjoy! Thursday we'll have a mini-update before our grand finale December 19.

Weird Fiction Review: Gift Picks, Kathe Koja, Jerome Bixby, Questionnaire, Leonora Carrington, and More! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 12, 2011.

"IN HIS BELLY": VOTE MORD IN U.S. REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES

MORD HAS JOINED REPUBLICAN PARTY. MORD MORE HARDCORE THAN ANY REPUB CANDIDATE. VOTE MORD IN IOWA AND ALL OTHER PRIMARIES AS RIP-IN CANDIDATE.

MORD ASK VOTER TO CONSIDER HOW MUCH BETTER MORD THAN ANY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE:

—MORD NEVER MARRIED SO NOT CHEAT ON ANY WIVES BUT IF HAD WIVES WOULD DEVOUR THEM

—MORD BELIEVE IN LIMITED PROTEIN-BASED ROLE FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

—MORD FIND REPUBLICAN VOTERS SUCCULENT

—MORD CHANGES MORD'S POSITION ON ISSUES EVERY DAY DEPENDING ON HOW IT AFFECTS PROTEIN INTAKE.

—MORD "STUMP" SPEECHES MORE VISCERAL, LESS COHERENT

—MORD'S ROCKS NOT HAVE STUPID WRITING ON THEM

—MORD NEVER NOT BALANCED ANY BUDGETS

—MORD ONLY WANT TO ARM BEARS

MORD MAKE ONLY TWO PROMISES IF WIN REPUB NOMINATION AND MORD BREAK NEITHER:

—MORD HONOR ALL LOSING CANDIDATES…IN HIS BELLY.

—MORD HONOR REPUBLICAN DELEGATES AT CONVENTION…IN HIS BELLY

MORD THEN RUN ON SURVIVAL PROTEIN PLATFORM AND SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING…IN HIS BELLY.

"IN HIS BELLY": VOTE MORD IN U.S. REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 9, 2011.

The Weird: The Generosity of a Story-by-Story Review

(Thanks, Hannu.)

I found following along with Des Lewis's real-time review of The Weird, in which he would read each story and then blog about it, before moving on, to be a fascinating experience. It's not often that an editor (in this case, co-editor with my wife Ann) is privileged enough to get such a detailed, sympathetic, and informed read. It's also an idiosyncratic read in some ways—a determined effort to find an underlying theme or meaning or commonality by a writer and editor whose literary interests are diverse and wide. If it skews, it skews eccentric yet universal. (In fact, eccentric because universal, given that people's reading tastes often render something eccentric because their reading tastes are not universal.)

I was moved to want to write a post after Des finished for a variety of reasons.

First, that it was a heroic effort—to commit to reading so much and blogging about it, and that this deserved a tip of the hat. But more than that, to note that although The Weird has already had several reviews, only Des's review contains the totality of the anthology and only a story-by-story encounter with the anthology really gets at whether or not it is of use, whether it has cohesion, etc. In doing this, Des was also sympathetic to the purpose of stories, was open to what they were trying to do, and displayed great sensitivity to the individual paragraphs and sentences in each story. (Which is not to say such sympathy meant he wasn't willing to reject what he didn't wind up liking.) This is rare, to be honest, in reviews, and although literary criticism does provide more of this kind of in-depth analysis, it's in a different context. So I would argue that we need more *reviews* that are both in-depth and sympathetic. That display evidence that the reviewer has allowed the text to be not just at the center of their attention, but to have all of their attention. Which also leads to the observation that not every book deserves this kind of attention. (And, that anthology reviews in general, due to limited word count for many review venues, tend to be lacking and it is much more possible to skim an anthology and do a serviceable if surface review than to do the same with a novel.)

Second, that in encountering the stories from his perspective, Des performed a mitzvah for me, which is to say he made fresh stories I'd read and re-read so many times that I could no longer get the initial or even second-read thrill of discovery from them. Beyond the angle of approach, the sheer joy of that discovery infected me as well. In addition, I found myself re-reading the stories Des had just read and being able to find things in them that I had not seen before. Sometimes this was because I found what Des saw. Sometimes it was because what Des saw was thus taken out of my re-read, and what was left was therefore different. (I'm not expressing this particularly well, but I hope you get my meaning; when a roadway is closed off, in this case, due to familiarity, you must detour.)

Third, that in finding connections between the stories, he created connections between stories outside of the anthology that are part of our discovery phase for other projects. These other stories are ones that were already linked to stories in The Weird by theme, subject matter, etc. So in other words, his connectivity was not always ours, but now has become part of ours, where we agree (and we often agree).

Fourth, that in reading the anthology chronologically he uncovered synergies that seem to confirm that despite going by story date and not trying to find a different, more holistic order…the anthology often does read smoothly story to story…and also showing that by this very, unplanned effect those few cases where story following story is not smooth…a jarring effect can occur (noted for future books in which story order is chronological). It's worth noting that until late in the process we did not know exactly which stories we would get permission to reprint, beyond a certain core number of stories, so we could not completely predict how they would fall one after the other. Nor, in putting together something so vast and something that was defaulting to chronological order anyway, had we done more than a rudimentary skim of the stories in rough book-order, even if we had some idea of the overall effect. We were more invested in the threads of groupings of stories throughout the book—for example, making sure that our "weird ritual" thread ran from the early part of the century through the beginning of this century. (And, of course, tactical thoughts came to mind—we wanted Tainaron by Leena Krohn to be a kind of antidote to Harrison's Egnaro, for example.)

Fifth, that in many ways Des both clarified and justified my and Ann's editorial approach while also revealing some hidden patterns in the subtext of stories that led to a deeper understanding on my part of why we had chosen the stories in the first place…which only improves and refines our approach going forward. But this last benefit to us of his review also confirmed that there are thematic and subject matter elements that are for anthologists much as they are for novelists. Inasmuch as I always talk about anthologies as being more like solving mathematical equations and writing novels as being something more like creating an animal…clearly my analogy needs some work.

As alluded to above, the basic function of most anthology reviews is to let readers know a book of possible interest is out, and to express how well or how poorly that book fulfilled its promise, from the reviewer's point of view. The function is not to help the anthologist gauge the success or failure of their process, their depth of vision, etc., which is why I found Des's review so fascinating. (This may seem to contradict the first statement about function, but it really doesn't. The average anthology review doesn't really get at the core reasons why a book works or doesn't work. It doesn't get to that particular level.)

The most basic emotion I felt, however, was a kind of pride of being part of a community, of a kind of writing that I love and that Des loves, and that in going over a century's-worth of material receiving affirmation that the effort had been worth it. And also to thrill to Des's connection to stories like Michel Bernanos' "The Other Side of the Mountain" or Eric Basso's "The Beak Doctor" or Leena Krohn's "Tainaron" that are our distinctive addition to or re-introduction to the canon. That, in a sense, the real-time review confirmed that there was meaning and substance to our endeavor, and just feeling a profound sense of having done something useful.

…And I'll stop there because I'm fully aware there's the possibility of this blog post seeming self-serving or pretentious or not quite getting at what I want it to get at…but it's the best I've got right now.

I should note that Ann has been too busy to read Des's review, so I'll be interested in her reaction when she does.

The Weird: The Generosity of a Story-by-Story Review originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 9, 2011.

The Weird: A Great Gift for the Holidays (and coming soon to the US)

(Visit Weirdfictionreview.com for tons of awesome weird content only tangentially connected to this antho.)

The massive UK edition of THE WEIRD: A COMPENDIUM OF STRANGE AND DARK STORIES, which has devoured our lives for so long, has been chugging along and appears to be a favorite holiday gift for many–now available for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk, in addition to the print version. (Table of contents of this 750,000-word, almost 1,200-page century-covering antho, with 116 stories can be found here if you've missed it.) Everyone from Stephen King and Angela Carter to Jamaica Kincaid and Shirley Jackson, Julio Cortazar to Kelly Link, with seven translations specially commissioned for the antho.

In addition to a hilarious shout-out at the Guardian online, a great review in the Financial Times, four stars from Time Out London, and being SF Books book of the month (you can vote for the antho in their annual poll), here are some quotes from other reviews:

"The definitive collection of weird fiction, 110 stories from the early 1900s to the present…a massive undertaking, and its success lies in its ability to lend coherence to a great number of stories that are so remarkably different and yet share a theme: the phenomenal world is merely a shadow and the numinous is an inscrutable, sometimes hostile, reality." – The Times Literary Supplement

"[An] incredible anthology…a tremendous experience going through its 1,126 pages. There are so many delights that any reader will find something truly memorable." – Scotland on Sunday

"A behemoth filled with stories of genre-bending strangeness." – Easy Living

Story-by-story reviews have been started by Maureen Kincaid Speller and finished by Des Lewis. Here are also links to two interviews:

Radio 1, Ireland

GavReads

Finally, we're happy to announce that Liza Gorinsky at Tor Books has acquired the North American rights to The Weird. The anthology will appear in a trade paperback format with a short-run of hardcovers as as an add-on, both in May 2012. The ebook will be available by February. A small contents change to the North American ebook: the Buzzati story will not be included but J. Robert Lennon's "The Portal" from Weird Tales will be added. The print version will remain the same as the UK edition.

Here's the cover of the North American edition:

The Weird: A Great Gift for the Holidays (and coming soon to the US) originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 8, 2011.

Sir Tessa's Odyssey: The Ghost Ducks of Florida, The Frozen Dicks of Iceland, and Muppets?

Our friend Sir Tessa has been conducting a kind of tour of the most desirable places in the world, which of course included our part of Florida. Thus, the indelible moment pictured above in which we all three stood mouths agape as a bald eagle at St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge first separated a duck from the floating flock, then waited for it to surface, and skimming along the water, plunged down upon it, and drown-taloned it before flying off with it. At which point Ann uttered the immortal words, "He's not going to eat it, is he?!" (She's very nice, my wife.) As chronicled by Sir Tessa here.

In addition, Sir Tessa has been having muppets made, hanging out in North Carolina, and, oh yes, visiting Iceland's famous penis museum, when she hasn't been freezing her butt off. Go check out her ongoing adventures…

(Thanks JZ.)

Sir Tessa's Odyssey: The Ghost Ducks of Florida, The Frozen Dicks of Iceland, and Muppets? originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 6, 2011.

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck–Discontinued Publicly

Immediately stop disseminating the journals.

G: This is unexpected.

For reasons of universal security.

G: But I am only implanting the ideas in the brain of a subpar specimen of a sub-standard alt-Earth reality, and the specimen only releases the information onto an equally backwater old-fashioned electronic source in a backwater of their pathetic version of a ever-net.

Nonetheless. There has been…leakage.

G: Only an infinitesimal number of sentient minds even read the entries of this subpar backwater specimen? A tiny, tiny percentage!

The issue is that most of them are also among the infinitesimal percentage of minds in that alt-Earth reality for whom the information can spark…actions we do not want and cannot anticipate.

G: Can I continue my dissemination in the other twelve realities of my experiment?

Yes. You can. For now.

G: Should I delete the information from the subpar thinker's brain? And perhaps accidentally have the information wiped from their primitive every-net?

No, that will not be necessary. You need only make the subject of your experiment think that it would be better to consider his writings off-line and then slowly dessicate the parts of his brain that would supply the energy and imagination to continue to write down any residual information, while stimulating his pleasure centers when he is writing anything else. Just…don't overstimulate…that might attract attention, given that he writes in what they call coffee shops.

G: And if he continues writing it from his own imagination?

That doesn't hurt us at all. Let him gracefully bow out and if he comes up with a fabrication going forward, who cares.

G: I kind of liked this subpar specimen. He had spirit.

Don't we all.

G: Very well, I'll wind down the experiment and concentrate on the other twelve subjects.

Of course, it won't matter at all in another million years…but then nothing will.

G: You're always so cheery.

I've seen too much and I work too hard…

G: Is there anything else?

No, I think that covers it. Oh—except the number of rebel angels your operation has flushed out has risen to seven.

G: Seven left then.

Yes. Only another seven. Won't be long now. Not long at all.

****

Dear Readers of The Journals of Doctor Mormeck:

The disembodied conversation above came to me in a dream, the only visuals exploding suns and darkly glimmering nebulae. It was a very strange happening, and part of me isn't sure I should be sharing it…except that I have indeed come to a point where I think it is best that I continue working on The Journals of Doctor Mormeck off-line. This is in part because I have so much to fill-in and to flesh-out in the preceding sections of the 52,000 words I have thus far rough drafted. And in part because that fleshing out is necessary to see my way forward. When I woke up this morning, I had the peculiar sensation of knowing with certainty that I had no way forward at all, and indeed my notes for future scenes seem like gibberish now. I am absolutely sure that unless I go back to the beginning and reimagine parts of this novel, I will not finish it properly.

I know that for those of you who have sent in donations to keep me writing, this may come as a disappointment. Therefore, if you have paid me $21 or more via paypal, you will receive via email a couple more updates in the fullness of time once I have gone forward in the narrative again. In addition, of course, you will receive a free copy of the novel when it is published in book form. Furthermore, if you've been following along but didn't donate $21 or more, you can have a grace period of the rest of December to take advantage of this offer. As stated, you will get a signed, personalized copy of the finished novel, plus updates.

This has been a very odd and discombobulating experience for me, to have such a lucid and specific dream, and of course I think it's my subconscious telling me that for the preservation of the novel, I need now to take it back from the public eye and work on it at my leisure. Not to mention, I must say that today I have felt an almost indescribable, possibly orgasmic joy at the thought of returning to my other novel, Borne, which is two-thirds completed. So I am going to set aside Mormeck for the next month to try to finish a draft of Borne, and then come back to Mormeck.

Thank you for your patience, and your patronage, and I appreciate you having read the novel up to this point. It did keep me writing, and if I didn't feel much more peculiar about continuing than I do about stopping, I would continue post new installments here on Ecstatic Days. I'm sure I will feel better in the next week or so.

The Journals of Doctor Mormeck–Discontinued Publicly originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 5, 2011.

Cheeky Frawg Launches Cool New Site!

(Feel free to re-post this image!)

We have launched a new website for Cheeky Frawg Books! Does it sell our ebooks? Yes! But very…cheekily. It's an interactive and mysterious experience you won't want to miss. Free content, hidden treasures, singing fish, the animated Myster Odd video, and, of course, the full catalogue of Cheeky Frawg ebooks, including Amal El-Mohtar's The Honey Month and the ODD? anthology, featuring Jeffrey Ford, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Amos Tutuola, Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson, and many more. Thanks for spreading the word!

Cheeky Frawg specializes in quality, self-aware e-books. We hand-craft every e-book on a letterpress using only the best, most perfectly formed 00000s and 111111s. Forthcoming titles include the legendary The Encyclopedia of Victoriana by Jess Nevins, It Came From the North: Finnish Weird, Jagganath by Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck and Don't Pay Bad for Bad by iconic Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola.

Note: A percentage of direct sales of Cheeky Frawg ebooks in December will go to aid iconic fantasy editor, artist, and writer Terri Windling, who is suffering from financial woes.

Direct link to catalogue

Direct link to ODD?

HUGE THANKS to those who made this possible: Website created by Danny Fontaine; Design and images by Gregory Bossert; Book designs and the Cheeky Frawg logo by Jeremy Zerfoss.

Cheeky Frawg Launches Cool New Site! originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 5, 2011.

The Hilariously Self-Serving Yet Glorious VanderMeer Holiday Fantasy/SF Gift Guide

It's been a banner year for VanderMeer projects that look beautiful and read beautiful, so we thought we'd put together a little Totally Self-Serving Yet Glorious Gift Guide as a reminder for those of you searching around for something cool to give your friends, loved ones, or even people you hate this holiday season. Best of all, these are sumptuous gifts, but also relatively inexpensive.

THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

(HarperVoyager, Ann & Jeff, eds.) – Published in an oversized hardcover printed on the boards with slightly raised lettering and containing over 70 unique illustrations from the likes of Mike Mignola, John Coulthart, Greg Broadmore, Yishan-Li, Jan Svankmajer, China Mieville, and Myrtle Von Damitz III, this would be a collector's item for the art alone. But it also contains original fiction from an absolute plethora of fantasy's greatest writers, including: Jeffrey Ford, Holly Black, Lev Grossman, Naomi Novik, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, China Mieville, Amal El-Mohtar, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Charles Yu, N.K. Jemisin, Helen Oyeyemi, Ted Chiang, Cherie Priest, Carrie Vaughn, and more than 50 others. It's a treasury of modern fantasy, recently receiving raves from SF Site and Pop Matters. Also check out the io9 slideshow for more images or read Kiernan's story from the anthology on Weirdfictionreview.com.

THE STEAMPUNK BIBLE

(Abrams Image, Jeff with S.J. Chambers) – A sumptuous hardcover with raised lettering on the boards-printed cover that evokes Jules Verne, and containing a lively mix of over 200 full-color images and text on everything from Steampunk fashion to literature, making, and more. Featured on the CBS Morning Show in November and profiled in the LA Times, this awesome coffee table book is perfect eye candy but also provides an essential overview of this retro-futuristic movement. Featuring Forevertron Park, the Steampunk Treehouse, the Island of Machines in France, a Steampunk wedding or two, Weta Workshop rayguns, and a Jake von Slatt project. It also includes short essays from Catherynne M. Valente and Jess Nevins, and interviews with Sean Orlando, Scott Westerfeld, and HUMANWINE, among others. The Bible recently made best-of holiday gift lists from MTV and the SyFy Channel and has been spotlighted in the New York Times, Wired.com, and the Wall Street Journal.

THE WEIRD: A COMPENDIUM OF STRANGE AND DARK STORIES (Atlantic/Corvus, Ann & Jeff) – How can you go wrong with 750,000-words of reprinted weird/uncanny fiction covering one hundred years and taking up almost 1,200 pages in an oversized trade paperback? (The two-column format actually reads beautifully.) Authors featured include Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Alfred Kubin, Tanith Lee, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, Leonora Carrington, Mervyn Peake, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kelly Link, Haruki Murakami, Ben Okri, Jamaica Kincaid, Jean Ray, Michael Chabon, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Octavia E. Butler, Thomas Ligotti, Angela Carter, Daphne du Maurier, Robert Bloch, and many more–116 stories in all (full TOC here). Sporting a foreweird by Michael Moorcock and afterweird by China Mieville. As featured on the Irish radio show Arena, in the Guardian Online, the Scotsman, and more. (Available for US/Canada readers through the Book Depository.)

ODD? (Cheeky Frawg, Ann & Jeff) – A kind of e-book companion to The Weird, ODD? this new anthology series is devoted to eclectic fiction, usually with a fantastical, horrific, magic realist, or surrealist approach. As the subtitle of "Is it odd or are you too normal?" suggests, "odd" is a truly subjective evaluation. One person's "what the heck?!" is another person's "eh—saw that yesterday." Each volume will contain reprints (some of them not available otherwise except in expensive limited editions), previously unpublished stories, and new translations of classic and hard-to-find stories. Authors in volume 1 include Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeffrey Ford, Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson, translations by Gio Clairval, Brian Evenson, and Larry Nolen, Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck, and many more. Oh, it's odd all right. You can buy it from the usual suspects, or click here for subscription and Oddkin information, as well as the full table of contents.

Also:

THE KOSHER GUIDE TO IMAGINARY ANIMALS

(Tachyon/Cheeky Frawg) – A perfect little gift book also available as an ebook, from 2010. You know you want it. It's silly, it's insane, it's beautiful. More info on the website, including reviews.

And, from the author, limited edition, numbered and signed copies of both Secret Lives, a series of humorous short fictions by Jeff, and The Three Quests of the Wizard Sarnod, a lovely little hardcover designed by the amazing John Coulthart, containing the extended version of Jeff's Jack Vance Dying Earth story. Inquire at vanderworld at hotmail.com for details and indicate what country is being shipped to. These copies come fully personalized with an illustration from Jeff, as so desired, and can be gift wrapped and sent directly as presents. (And a limited number of copies of Jeff's novel Finch complete with the Murder by Death Finch CD are available, too.)

Next week: We unveil our new Cheeky Frawg site, with a full range of selections for the aficionado of the electronic form, free electronic holiday wrapping, and more…In the meantime, you can peruse our page with buying links here.

The Hilariously Self-Serving Yet Glorious VanderMeer Holiday Fantasy/SF Gift Guide originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 2, 2011.

Chamblin's Book Mine: Book Haul, Horror Room, Anthologies

(My video of Chamblin's, with voice-over text from my Ambergris stories.)

We made another pilgrimage to Chamblin's Book Mine in Jacksonville, Florida, this past weekend, this time with Sir Tessa accompanying us. The place is larger than last time—it has to be the equal of Powell's, and larger than any other used bookstore in the US, for sure. The video above should help attest to that.

We focused on trading books in for a selection of anthologies and author collections to further our research for future projects. This also helped alleviate the burden of books in the house. Chamblin's cash for books percentage isn't all that great, but in terms of trade credit, it meant we could acquire everything set out below the break without spending a penny.

I must say, though, their general anthology section hasn't been touched in years. The amount of dust on our hands by the time we'd finished browsing through them…took a lot of washing off. This truly is a book mine, and even just the mystery section is as big as a normal bookstore. There are also some amusing juxtapositions of rooms, given the way Chamblin's has gradually annexed additional space around the initial building. Thus this photo, with Men's Studies sharing some prime real estate…

Chamblin's Book Mine: Book Haul, Horror Room, Anthologies originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on December 1, 2011.