Marty Halpern's Blog, page 26
April 17, 2014
In Memory of Gabriel García Márquez, 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014
"When I finished one book, I wouldn't write for a while," he said in 1966. "Then I had to learn how to do it all over again. The arm goes cold; there's a learning process you have to go through again before you rediscover the warmth that comes over you when you are writing."- Gabriel García Márquez
April 12, 2014
Journey Through the Past: MS Dos 6.22, Windows 3.11, 1GB HDD
I'm getting ready to retire my Windows XP box (more on this in a future blog post), now that Microsoft is no longer supporting XP. While preparing for this event -- and process: more than 50 software applications to install on the new system when it arrives! -- I was sorting through some boxes of old files and software....
In 1995 I was finally ready to purchase my first Microsoft Windows computer (up to this point I was all Apple). But I didn't want an off-the-shelf box -- in fact, in 1995, I'm not even sure you could buy an OTS PC. So I arranged a lunch meeting in Sunnyvale (California) with my best friend Randy Davis, who worked for Lockheed at the time, and one of his best friends, Kelly Floyd, who, I believe, worked for Hewlett-Packard. And, during lunch, the three of us built -- on paper -- a top-of-the-line Windows PC. Don't forget, this was 1995.
So while I was sorting through those boxes I mentioned above, I came across the original invoice for the purchase of that first PC -- almost 19 years to the day -- on April 15, 1995.
Since this JPG of the invoice is a bit difficult to read, here's a link to the PDF version -- much brighter and easier to read, though I can only post the link to the document.
But for those who aren't into JPGs or links to PDFs, here is the parts list direct from the invoice:
Mind-boggling, isn't it: DOS! Windows 3.11. Western Digital, one of the best hard drives at the time, with a whopping 1GB of storage (I now have a 32GB thumbdrive that I use with my Nexus 7 tablet!), along with a tape backup! Thank gawd I never had to actually use that tape backup to recover files or data.... The Spider Tarantula video card and Sound Blaster sound card were state-of-the-art. And 8 Megs of RAM!
The total price, including sales tax (7.75% in 1995 -- which is quite surprising considering that the current sales tax is only one percent more): $3,325.74. That was not a cheap PC.
Of course, HKG Computers in Sunnyvale is no longer with us; probably hasn't been located in that store front for more than a decade. A lot has changed since then.
---------------
Special thanks to Neil Young for the loan of the title Journey Through the Past.
In 1995 I was finally ready to purchase my first Microsoft Windows computer (up to this point I was all Apple). But I didn't want an off-the-shelf box -- in fact, in 1995, I'm not even sure you could buy an OTS PC. So I arranged a lunch meeting in Sunnyvale (California) with my best friend Randy Davis, who worked for Lockheed at the time, and one of his best friends, Kelly Floyd, who, I believe, worked for Hewlett-Packard. And, during lunch, the three of us built -- on paper -- a top-of-the-line Windows PC. Don't forget, this was 1995.
So while I was sorting through those boxes I mentioned above, I came across the original invoice for the purchase of that first PC -- almost 19 years to the day -- on April 15, 1995.
Since this JPG of the invoice is a bit difficult to read, here's a link to the PDF version -- much brighter and easier to read, though I can only post the link to the document.
But for those who aren't into JPGs or links to PDFs, here is the parts list direct from the invoice:
INTEL P5 PCI MOTHERBOARD 90 W/IDE U00726593
INTEL PENTIUM-9O CPU L502376050179
MID TOWER CASE
8M SIMM (72 PINS) Bl09
MITSUMI l.44M FLOPPY DRIVE 2839806
WESTERN DIGITAL 1GB IDE HARD DRIVE WT2720648236
SPIDER TARANTULA PCI SVGA 2M VIDEO VRAM 16217
MITSUMI 101-KEYS KEYBOARD
MICROSOFT MOUSE (OEM)
MICROSOFT WINDOWS 3.11
MICROSOFT DOS 6.22
SOUND BLASTER 16 SCSI OEM 073320
75W SPEAKERS
PLEXTOR CD ROM 4X SCSI 43CSO35795
850 MB TAPE BACK CONNOR DC013PV
CPU HEAT SINK & FAN FOR P5-75/90/100
Mind-boggling, isn't it: DOS! Windows 3.11. Western Digital, one of the best hard drives at the time, with a whopping 1GB of storage (I now have a 32GB thumbdrive that I use with my Nexus 7 tablet!), along with a tape backup! Thank gawd I never had to actually use that tape backup to recover files or data.... The Spider Tarantula video card and Sound Blaster sound card were state-of-the-art. And 8 Megs of RAM!
The total price, including sales tax (7.75% in 1995 -- which is quite surprising considering that the current sales tax is only one percent more): $3,325.74. That was not a cheap PC.
Of course, HKG Computers in Sunnyvale is no longer with us; probably hasn't been located in that store front for more than a decade. A lot has changed since then.
---------------
Special thanks to Neil Young for the loan of the title Journey Through the Past.
April 11, 2014
"What You Are About To See" by Jack Skillingstead (Part 3 of 3)
What You Are About To Seeby Jack Skillingstead
[Continued from Part 2]
Probabilities shuffled...
* * * *
I woke up next to my wife. In the ticking darkness of our bedroom I breathed a name: "Andy."
Connie shifted position, cuddling into me. Her familiar body. I put my arm around her and stared into the dark, hunting elusive memories. Without them I wasn't who I thought I was. After a while Connie asked:
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I think I was having a dream about Andy McCaslin. It woke me up."
"Who?"
"Guy I knew from the Rangers, long time ago. I told you about him. We were friends."
Connie suppressed a yawn. "He died, didn't he? You never said how."
"Covert op in Central America. He found himself in the custody some rebels."
"Oh."
"They kept him alive for weeks while they interrogated him."
"God. Are you—"
"That was decades ago, Con. Dreams are strange, sometimes."
I slipped out of the bed.
"Where are you going?"
"Have some tea and think for a while. My night's shot anyway."
"Want company?"
"Maybe I'll sit by myself. Go back to sleep. You've got an early one."
"Sure? I could make some eggs or something."
"No, I'm good."
But I wasn't. In my basement office, consoling tea near at hand, I contemplated my dead friend and concluded he wasn't supposed to be that way. My old dreams of pain surged up out of the place at the bottom of my mind, the place that enclosed Andy and what I knew had happened to him, the place of batteries and alligator clips, hemp ropes, sharpened bamboo slivers, the vault of horrors far worse than any I'd endured as a child and from which I fled to the serenity of an office cubicle and regular hours.
But that wasn't supposed to have happened, not to Andy. I rubbed my temple, eyes closed in the dim basement office, and suddenly a word spoke itself on my lips:
Squidward.
* * * *
My name is Brian Kinney, and today I am not an alcoholic. My father was an alcoholic who could not restrain his demons. During my childhood those demons frequently emerged to torment me and my mother. Dad's goodness, which was true and present, was not enough to balance the equation between pain and love. I had been skewing toward my own demon-haunted landscape when Andy McCaslin took my gun from my hand and balanced out the equation for me.
My new world order.
* * * *
I'm driving through the moonless Arizona desert at two o'clock in the morning, looking for a turn-off that doesn't exist. After an hour or so a peculiar, hovering pink light appears in the distance, far off the road. I slow, angle onto the berm, ease the Outback down to the desert floor, and go bucketing overland toward the light.
* * * *
"What goes on?" I said.
"You remember," he said, more command than comment.
And at that instant I did remember. Not just the bits and pieces that had drawn me out here, but everything.
"My survival imperative sought for a probability equation by which my death could be avoided. You are now inhabiting that equation. With your permission I will, too."
"What do you need my permission for?"
"You would be the author of my death, so you must also be the willing author of my continued existence. A law of probability and balance."
I thought about Connie back home in bed, the unfathomable cruelty of my former probability, the feeling of restored sanity. Like waking up in the life I should have had in the first place. But I also thought of Andy, and I knew it had to go back.
"No," I said to Squidward.
"You must."
"Not if my friend has to die. By the way, isn't it a little warm for you?"
Squidward smiled. "I'm already in my ship."
"Only if I allow it."
"You will, I hope."
"It's the feathery thing," I said.
"Behold."
In my mind's eye images of unimaginable carnage appeared, then winked out. I staggered.
"I am a Monitor, coded from birth to your world's psychic evolution," Squidward said. "I subtly shuffle the broad probabilities in order to prevent what you have just seen. Without me there is a high probability of worldwide military and environmental catastrophe. Such eventualities may be avoided and your species may survive to evolve into an advanced civilization."
"That sounds swell, but I don't believe you. You've been doing plenty of shuffling in captivity. With that power why do you need anything from me?"
"That's merely my survival imperative, drawing on etheric energy from my ship's transphysical manifestation. My survival, and perhaps your world's, depends on you permitting this probability to dominate."
I didn't allow myself to think about it.
"Let the original probability resume," I said.
"Please," Squidward said.
"Let it go back to the way it's supposed to be."
"There are no 'supposed to be' probability equations."
I crossed my arms.
Squidward put his suitcase down. "Then because of what you are you will doom me. My probabilities concluded."
"Because of what I am."
"Yes."
* * * *
Shuffle.
* * * *
My name is Brian Kinney, and I am the sum total of the experience inflicted upon me.
But not only that. I hope.
* * * *
The Tahoe's deadly acceleration. Sudden synaptic realization across the probabilities: You are about to murder your wife. The Vault Of Screams yawns open.
Will.
Hanging on the wheel, foot fumbling between pedals.
That big green Rubbermaid trash can bouncing over the hood, contents erupting against the windshield. It was just garbage, though.
Then a very sudden stop when the Tahoe plows into the low brick and wrought-iron property wall. Gut punch of the steering wheel, rupturing something inside my body. And don't forget a side of razor ribs.
Around the middle of my longish convalescence Connie arrives during visiting hours, and eventually a second convalescence begins. A convalescence of the heart. Not mine in particular, or Connie's, but the one we shared in common. The one we had systematically poisoned over the preceding ten years. Okay, the one I had systematically poisoned.
Watershed event.
Happy ending?
* * * *
It sat in a cold room.
Outside that room I watched a perfectly squared-away Marine enter a code into the cipher pad. I was the sum total my inflicted experience, but it was the new math. The door opened, like a bank vault. Andy McCaslin looked at me with a puzzled expression.
He was alone in the room.
[End]
---------------
"What You Are About To See" is copyright © 2008 by Jack Skillingstead and is reprinted here by permission of the author. The story was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 2008.
"What You Are About To See" is one of 26 stories included in anthology Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern and published by Night Shade Books in November 2011. For more information on this anthology, start here.
Jack Skillingstead’s first professional sale was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Since 2003 he has published more than thirty short stories in various magazines, year's best volumes, and original anthologies. His work has been translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, French, and Czech. In June Fairwood Press will publish a reprint of his Golden Gryphon Press collection, Are You There and Other Stories. His latest book, Life on the Preservation
, is a finalist for the Phillip K. Dick Award. Jack is currently working on a science fiction novel based on his short story "Dead Worlds." He lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.
[Continued from Part 2]
Probabilities shuffled...
* * * *
I woke up next to my wife. In the ticking darkness of our bedroom I breathed a name: "Andy."
Connie shifted position, cuddling into me. Her familiar body. I put my arm around her and stared into the dark, hunting elusive memories. Without them I wasn't who I thought I was. After a while Connie asked:
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I think I was having a dream about Andy McCaslin. It woke me up."
"Who?"
"Guy I knew from the Rangers, long time ago. I told you about him. We were friends."
Connie suppressed a yawn. "He died, didn't he? You never said how."
"Covert op in Central America. He found himself in the custody some rebels."
"Oh."
"They kept him alive for weeks while they interrogated him."
"God. Are you—"
"That was decades ago, Con. Dreams are strange, sometimes."
I slipped out of the bed.
"Where are you going?"
"Have some tea and think for a while. My night's shot anyway."
"Want company?"
"Maybe I'll sit by myself. Go back to sleep. You've got an early one."
"Sure? I could make some eggs or something."
"No, I'm good."
But I wasn't. In my basement office, consoling tea near at hand, I contemplated my dead friend and concluded he wasn't supposed to be that way. My old dreams of pain surged up out of the place at the bottom of my mind, the place that enclosed Andy and what I knew had happened to him, the place of batteries and alligator clips, hemp ropes, sharpened bamboo slivers, the vault of horrors far worse than any I'd endured as a child and from which I fled to the serenity of an office cubicle and regular hours.
But that wasn't supposed to have happened, not to Andy. I rubbed my temple, eyes closed in the dim basement office, and suddenly a word spoke itself on my lips:
Squidward.
* * * *
My name is Brian Kinney, and today I am not an alcoholic. My father was an alcoholic who could not restrain his demons. During my childhood those demons frequently emerged to torment me and my mother. Dad's goodness, which was true and present, was not enough to balance the equation between pain and love. I had been skewing toward my own demon-haunted landscape when Andy McCaslin took my gun from my hand and balanced out the equation for me.
My new world order.
* * * *
I'm driving through the moonless Arizona desert at two o'clock in the morning, looking for a turn-off that doesn't exist. After an hour or so a peculiar, hovering pink light appears in the distance, far off the road. I slow, angle onto the berm, ease the Outback down to the desert floor, and go bucketing overland toward the light.
* * * *
"What goes on?" I said.
"You remember," he said, more command than comment.
And at that instant I did remember. Not just the bits and pieces that had drawn me out here, but everything.
"My survival imperative sought for a probability equation by which my death could be avoided. You are now inhabiting that equation. With your permission I will, too."
"What do you need my permission for?"
"You would be the author of my death, so you must also be the willing author of my continued existence. A law of probability and balance."
I thought about Connie back home in bed, the unfathomable cruelty of my former probability, the feeling of restored sanity. Like waking up in the life I should have had in the first place. But I also thought of Andy, and I knew it had to go back.
"No," I said to Squidward.
"You must."
"Not if my friend has to die. By the way, isn't it a little warm for you?"
Squidward smiled. "I'm already in my ship."
"Only if I allow it."
"You will, I hope."
"It's the feathery thing," I said.
"Behold."
In my mind's eye images of unimaginable carnage appeared, then winked out. I staggered.
"I am a Monitor, coded from birth to your world's psychic evolution," Squidward said. "I subtly shuffle the broad probabilities in order to prevent what you have just seen. Without me there is a high probability of worldwide military and environmental catastrophe. Such eventualities may be avoided and your species may survive to evolve into an advanced civilization."
"That sounds swell, but I don't believe you. You've been doing plenty of shuffling in captivity. With that power why do you need anything from me?"
"That's merely my survival imperative, drawing on etheric energy from my ship's transphysical manifestation. My survival, and perhaps your world's, depends on you permitting this probability to dominate."
I didn't allow myself to think about it.
"Let the original probability resume," I said.
"Please," Squidward said.
"Let it go back to the way it's supposed to be."
"There are no 'supposed to be' probability equations."
I crossed my arms.
Squidward put his suitcase down. "Then because of what you are you will doom me. My probabilities concluded."
"Because of what I am."
"Yes."
* * * *
Shuffle.
* * * *
My name is Brian Kinney, and I am the sum total of the experience inflicted upon me.
But not only that. I hope.
* * * *
The Tahoe's deadly acceleration. Sudden synaptic realization across the probabilities: You are about to murder your wife. The Vault Of Screams yawns open.
Will.
Hanging on the wheel, foot fumbling between pedals.
That big green Rubbermaid trash can bouncing over the hood, contents erupting against the windshield. It was just garbage, though.
Then a very sudden stop when the Tahoe plows into the low brick and wrought-iron property wall. Gut punch of the steering wheel, rupturing something inside my body. And don't forget a side of razor ribs.
Around the middle of my longish convalescence Connie arrives during visiting hours, and eventually a second convalescence begins. A convalescence of the heart. Not mine in particular, or Connie's, but the one we shared in common. The one we had systematically poisoned over the preceding ten years. Okay, the one I had systematically poisoned.
Watershed event.
Happy ending?
* * * *
It sat in a cold room.
Outside that room I watched a perfectly squared-away Marine enter a code into the cipher pad. I was the sum total my inflicted experience, but it was the new math. The door opened, like a bank vault. Andy McCaslin looked at me with a puzzled expression.
He was alone in the room.
[End]
---------------
"What You Are About To See" is copyright © 2008 by Jack Skillingstead and is reprinted here by permission of the author. The story was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 2008.
"What You Are About To See" is one of 26 stories included in anthology Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern and published by Night Shade Books in November 2011. For more information on this anthology, start here.
Jack Skillingstead’s first professional sale was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Since 2003 he has published more than thirty short stories in various magazines, year's best volumes, and original anthologies. His work has been translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, French, and Czech. In June Fairwood Press will publish a reprint of his Golden Gryphon Press collection, Are You There and Other Stories. His latest book, Life on the Preservation
, is a finalist for the Phillip K. Dick Award. Jack is currently working on a science fiction novel based on his short story "Dead Worlds." He lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.
April 9, 2014
"What You Are About To See" by Jack Skillingstead (Part 2 of 3)
"What You Are About To See"by Jack Skillingstead
[Continued from Part 1]
The moon was a white poker chip. The desert slipped past us, cold blue with black ink shadows. We rode in Andy's private vehicle, a late model Jeep Cherokee. He had already been driving all day, having departed from the L.A. office that morning, dropping everything to pursue "something like a dream" that had beckoned to him.
"Care to reveal our destination?" I asked.
"I don't want to tell you anything beforehand. It might influence you, give you some preconception. Your mind has to be clear or this won't work."
"Okay, I'll think only happy thoughts."
"Good. Hang on, by the way."
He slowed then suddenly pulled off the two-lane road. We jolted over desert hardpan. Scrub brush clawed at the Cherokee's undercarriage.
"Ah, the road's back thataway," I said.
He nodded and kept going. A bumpy twenty minutes or so passed. Then we stopped, for no obvious reason, and he killed the engine. I looked around. We were exactly in the middle of nowhere. It looked a lot like my personal mental landscape.
"I know this isn't a joke," I said, "because you are not a funny guy."
"Come on."
We got out. Andy was tall, Scotch-Irish, big through the shoulders and gut. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. A real shit-kickin' son of a bitch. Yee haw. He had a few other sheepskins somewhere, but his walls were wearing those. I followed him away from the Jeep.
"Tell me what you see," he said.
I looked around.
"Not much."
"Be specific."
I cleared my throat. "Okay. Empty desert, scrub brush, cactus. Lots of sand. There is no doubt a large population of venomous snakes slithering underfoot looking for something to bite, though I don't exactly see them. There's also a pretty moon in the sky. So?"
I rubbed my hands together, shifted my feet. I'd worn a Sun Devils sweatshirt, which was insufficient. Besides that I could have used a drink. But of course these days I could always use a drink. After a lifetime of grimly determined sobriety I'd discovered that booze was an effective demon-suppressor and required exactly the opposite of willpower, which is what I'd been relying on up till Connie's death. I have no idea what my father's demons might have been. He checked out by a self-inflicted route before we got around to discussing that. I almost did the same a couple of years later, while in the thick of Ranger training, where I'd fled in desperate quest of discipline and structure and a sense of belonging to something. Andy talked me out of shooting myself and afterwards kept the incident private. I sometimes wondered whether he regretted that. Offing myself may have been part of a balancing equation designed to subtract a measure of suffering from the world.
Now, in the desert, he withdrew a pack of Camels from his coat pocket and lit up. I remembered my dad buying his packs at the 7-Eleven, when I was a little kid.
"Hey, you don't smoke," I said to Andy.
"I don't? What do you call this?" He waved the cigarette at me. "Look, Brian, what would you say if I told you we were standing outside a large military instillation?"
"I'd say okay, but it must be invisible."
"It is."
I laughed. Andy didn't.
"Come on," I said.
"All right, it's not invisible. But it's not exactly here, either."
"That I can see. Can't see?"
"Close your eyes."
"Then I won't be able to see anything, including the invisible military instillation."
"Do it anyway," he said. "Trust me. I've done this before. So have you, probably."
I hesitated. Andy was a good guy—my friend, or the closest thing to one that I'd ever allowed. But it now crossed my mind that my informal status vis-à-vis the Agency was about to become terminally informal. Certainly there was precedent. We who work on the fringes where the rules don't constrain our actions are also subject to the anything-goes approach on the part of our handlers. Was I on the verge of being...severed? By Andy McCaslin? He stood before me with his damn cigarette, smoke drifting from his lips, his eyes black as oil in the moonlight.
"Trust me, Brian."
Maybe it was the lingering wine buzz. But I decided I did trust him, or needed to, because he was the only one I ever had trusted. I closed my eyes. The breeze carried his smoke into my face. My dad had been redolent of that stink. Not a good sense-memory. But when I was little I loved the look of the cigarette cartons and packages, the way my dad would say, Pack a Camels non-filter, and the clerk would turn to the rack behind him and pick out the right one, like a game show.
"Now relax your mind," Andy said.
"Consider it relaxed, Swami."
"Try to be serious."
"I'll try."
"Remember the empty mind trick they taught us, in case we ever got ourselves captured by unfriendlies?"
"Sure."
"Do that. Empty your mind."
It was easy, and I didn't learn it from the Army. I learned it at my father's knee, you might say. Survival technique number one: Empty your mind. Don't be there. Don't hear the screaming, even your own.
Andy said, "I'm going to say a word. When I do, let your mind fill with whatever the word evokes."
I nodded, waited, smelling the Camel smoke, my head not empty in the way Andy wanted it to be. I was too preoccupied by a memory of smoke.
"Arrowhead," Andy said.
I felt...something.
Andy said, "Shit. And then, "What you are about to see is real. Okay, open your eyes."
We were now standing outside a 7-Eleven store. The desert ran right up to the walls. A tumbleweed bumped against the double glass doors. The interior was brightly lit. In the back I could make out a pair of Slurpee machines slow-swirling icy drinks in primary colors. After a while I closed my mouth and turned to Andy.
"Where the hell did this come from?"
"Instant Unconsciously Directed Association. You like that? I made it up. Only I don't know why this should be your Eyeooda for Arrowhead. I was hoping you'd bring up the real place. Anyway, let's go inside while it lasts."
He started forward but I grabbed his arm.
"Wait a minute. Are we still operating under the disengagement of preconceived notions policy, or whatever?"
He thought about it for a moment then said, "I guess not, now that we're sharing a consensus reality. Brian, this 7-Eleven is actually the Arrowhead Installation."
The coal of an extinguished memory glowed dimly. I knew Arrowhead, or thought I did. A top secret base located more or less in that part of the Arizona desert in which we now found ourselves. Or was/did it? The memory was so enfeebled that if I didn't hold it just so it would blow away like dandelion fluff. Still, this wasn't a military base; it was a convenience store.
"Bullshit?" I said.
“Do you remember Arrowhead?" Andy asked.
"Sort of. What is this, what's going on?"
"Listen to me, Brian. We finally got one. We finally got an honest to God extraterrestrial—and it's in there."
"In the 7-Eleven."
"No. In the Arrowhead facility that looks like a 7-Eleven in our present consensus reality. The alien is hiding itself and the installation in some kind of stealth transdimensional mirror trick, or something. I've been here before. So have you. Our dreams can still remember. I've come out to the desert—I don't know, dozens of times? I've talked to it, the alien. It shuffles reality. I keep waking up, then going back to sleep. Here's the thing. It can cloak its prison, reinterpret its appearance, but it can't escape."
I regarded him skeptically, did some mental shuffling of my own, discarded various justifiable but unproductive responses, and said: "What's it want?"
"It wants you to let it go."
"Why me?"
"Ask it yourself. But watch out. That little fucker is messing with our heads."
* * * *
The store was empty. It was so quiet you could hear the dogs popping with grease as they rotated inside their little hot box. Okay, it wasn't that quiet, but it was quiet. I picked up a green disposable lighter and flicked it a couple of times, kind of checking out the consensus reality. It lit.
Andy went around the counter and ducked his head into the back room.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Looking for Squidward."
"Squidward?"
"Yeah."
Another dim memory glowed in the dark. For some reason I thought of the Seattle aquarium, where my father had taken us when I was little. It hadn't been a fun experience. I remembered being vaguely repelled by some of the exotically alien examples of undersea creatures. Prescient echo from the future?
Andy snapped his fingers. "Right. Squidward likes it cool."
I followed him into the cold storage run behind the beer, pop and dairy coolers. A man sat on a couple of stacked cases of Rolling Rock, his legs crossed at the knees, hands folded over them. He looked Indian, that nut brown complexion. He was wearing a lavender suit.
"Squidward," Andy said.
I tucked my hands snuggly under my armpits for warmth. "Has he asked to be taken to our leader yet?"
"I don't remember."
Squidward spoke up: "You are the torturer."
We both looked at him.
"Sorry, not my gig," I said.
Squidward nodded. "Your gig, yes."
Something unsavory uncoiled in my stomach, then lay still again.
"Andy," I said, nodding toward the door.
He followed me out into the glaring light of the store.
"Talk to me," I said.
He nodded, distracted. "I'm remembering most of it, but who knows what I'll retain next time around. R&D developed some kind of souped-up spectrophotometer gizmo as a hedge against future stealth technology we suspected the Chinese were developing. During a middle phase test in Nevada we saw a vehicle doing some impossible maneuvers, somehow hiding between waves in the visible light spectrum. Naturally we shot it down."
"Naturally."
Andy clutched his pack of Camels, plugged one in his mouth, patted his pockets for matches. I handed him the Zippo.
"Thanks."
He lit up.
"Anyway, it turns out we're as much his captive as he is ours. Uh oh."
Andy's cigarette dropped from his lips, depositing feathery ash down the front of his sheepskin jacket. He blinked slowly, his eyes going out of focus, or perhaps refocusing inward.
"Oh, shit," he said.
"What?"
"Not again. I have to get away from this."
He turned and stumped out of the store with the sloppy gait of a somnambulist.
"Hey—"
Outside the night absorbed him. I stiff-armed the door. Cold desert wind blew in my face. Andy was gone. So was the Cherokee. But he hadn't driven away in it. I looked around where it had been parked. There were no tire impressions, nothing, just my warped shadow cast over the tawny grit.
I turned back to the 7-Eleven, its solid, glaring reality. I don't know what hackles are exactly, but mine rose to attention. Out here in the desert, alone with a persistent illusion, I felt reduced. Childish fears came awake.
Exerting my will to power or whatever, I entered the store. The Slurpee machine hummed and swirled, hotdogs rotated. The fluorescent light seemed to stutter inside my head.
I looked at the coolers, the orderly ranks of bottles and cartons. Damn it.
I approached the door to the cold storage, put my hand on the lever. Fear ran through me like electric current. I felt the world begin to waver, and stepped back. The door, silver with a thick rubber seal, appeared to melt before my eyes. I felt myself slipping away, and so brought the force of my will down like a steel spike. The door resumed its expected appearance. I immediately cranked the handle and dragged it open.
Squidward sat on his beer case stool in exactly the same position he'd been in ten minutes ago.
"Make it stop," I said.
"I don't make things," he replied. "I allow the multiplicity to occur."
"Okay. So stop allowing the multiplicity."
"Not possible, I'm afraid. My survival imperative is searching for a probability in which you haven't killed me."
"But I haven't killed you."
"You have."
I stepped toward him. That steel spike? Now it was penetrating my forehead, driving in.
"What do you want from us?"
"From you I want to live," Squidward said. "We are bound until the death is allowed or not allowed, conclusively. I have perceived the occurrence of my expiration at your direction, unintended though it will be. Having access to all points of probability time in my sequence, I foresee this eventuality and seek for a probability equation that spares me. From your perspective also this is a desirable outcome. Without me to monitor and shuffle your world's probabilities the vision vouchsafed your military leader may well occur."
My eyesight shifted into pre-migraine mode. Pinwheel lights encroached upon my peripheral vision. I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes, fighting it, fighting it, fighting...
* * * *
[To be continued in Part 3]
[Continued from Part 1]
The moon was a white poker chip. The desert slipped past us, cold blue with black ink shadows. We rode in Andy's private vehicle, a late model Jeep Cherokee. He had already been driving all day, having departed from the L.A. office that morning, dropping everything to pursue "something like a dream" that had beckoned to him.
"Care to reveal our destination?" I asked.
"I don't want to tell you anything beforehand. It might influence you, give you some preconception. Your mind has to be clear or this won't work."
"Okay, I'll think only happy thoughts."
"Good. Hang on, by the way."
He slowed then suddenly pulled off the two-lane road. We jolted over desert hardpan. Scrub brush clawed at the Cherokee's undercarriage.
"Ah, the road's back thataway," I said.
He nodded and kept going. A bumpy twenty minutes or so passed. Then we stopped, for no obvious reason, and he killed the engine. I looked around. We were exactly in the middle of nowhere. It looked a lot like my personal mental landscape.
"I know this isn't a joke," I said, "because you are not a funny guy."
"Come on."
We got out. Andy was tall, Scotch-Irish, big through the shoulders and gut. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. A real shit-kickin' son of a bitch. Yee haw. He had a few other sheepskins somewhere, but his walls were wearing those. I followed him away from the Jeep.
"Tell me what you see," he said.
I looked around.
"Not much."
"Be specific."
I cleared my throat. "Okay. Empty desert, scrub brush, cactus. Lots of sand. There is no doubt a large population of venomous snakes slithering underfoot looking for something to bite, though I don't exactly see them. There's also a pretty moon in the sky. So?"
I rubbed my hands together, shifted my feet. I'd worn a Sun Devils sweatshirt, which was insufficient. Besides that I could have used a drink. But of course these days I could always use a drink. After a lifetime of grimly determined sobriety I'd discovered that booze was an effective demon-suppressor and required exactly the opposite of willpower, which is what I'd been relying on up till Connie's death. I have no idea what my father's demons might have been. He checked out by a self-inflicted route before we got around to discussing that. I almost did the same a couple of years later, while in the thick of Ranger training, where I'd fled in desperate quest of discipline and structure and a sense of belonging to something. Andy talked me out of shooting myself and afterwards kept the incident private. I sometimes wondered whether he regretted that. Offing myself may have been part of a balancing equation designed to subtract a measure of suffering from the world.
Now, in the desert, he withdrew a pack of Camels from his coat pocket and lit up. I remembered my dad buying his packs at the 7-Eleven, when I was a little kid.
"Hey, you don't smoke," I said to Andy.
"I don't? What do you call this?" He waved the cigarette at me. "Look, Brian, what would you say if I told you we were standing outside a large military instillation?"
"I'd say okay, but it must be invisible."
"It is."
I laughed. Andy didn't.
"Come on," I said.
"All right, it's not invisible. But it's not exactly here, either."
"That I can see. Can't see?"
"Close your eyes."
"Then I won't be able to see anything, including the invisible military instillation."
"Do it anyway," he said. "Trust me. I've done this before. So have you, probably."
I hesitated. Andy was a good guy—my friend, or the closest thing to one that I'd ever allowed. But it now crossed my mind that my informal status vis-à-vis the Agency was about to become terminally informal. Certainly there was precedent. We who work on the fringes where the rules don't constrain our actions are also subject to the anything-goes approach on the part of our handlers. Was I on the verge of being...severed? By Andy McCaslin? He stood before me with his damn cigarette, smoke drifting from his lips, his eyes black as oil in the moonlight.
"Trust me, Brian."
Maybe it was the lingering wine buzz. But I decided I did trust him, or needed to, because he was the only one I ever had trusted. I closed my eyes. The breeze carried his smoke into my face. My dad had been redolent of that stink. Not a good sense-memory. But when I was little I loved the look of the cigarette cartons and packages, the way my dad would say, Pack a Camels non-filter, and the clerk would turn to the rack behind him and pick out the right one, like a game show.
"Now relax your mind," Andy said.
"Consider it relaxed, Swami."
"Try to be serious."
"I'll try."
"Remember the empty mind trick they taught us, in case we ever got ourselves captured by unfriendlies?"
"Sure."
"Do that. Empty your mind."
It was easy, and I didn't learn it from the Army. I learned it at my father's knee, you might say. Survival technique number one: Empty your mind. Don't be there. Don't hear the screaming, even your own.
Andy said, "I'm going to say a word. When I do, let your mind fill with whatever the word evokes."
I nodded, waited, smelling the Camel smoke, my head not empty in the way Andy wanted it to be. I was too preoccupied by a memory of smoke.
"Arrowhead," Andy said.
I felt...something.
Andy said, "Shit. And then, "What you are about to see is real. Okay, open your eyes."
We were now standing outside a 7-Eleven store. The desert ran right up to the walls. A tumbleweed bumped against the double glass doors. The interior was brightly lit. In the back I could make out a pair of Slurpee machines slow-swirling icy drinks in primary colors. After a while I closed my mouth and turned to Andy.
"Where the hell did this come from?"
"Instant Unconsciously Directed Association. You like that? I made it up. Only I don't know why this should be your Eyeooda for Arrowhead. I was hoping you'd bring up the real place. Anyway, let's go inside while it lasts."
He started forward but I grabbed his arm.
"Wait a minute. Are we still operating under the disengagement of preconceived notions policy, or whatever?"
He thought about it for a moment then said, "I guess not, now that we're sharing a consensus reality. Brian, this 7-Eleven is actually the Arrowhead Installation."
The coal of an extinguished memory glowed dimly. I knew Arrowhead, or thought I did. A top secret base located more or less in that part of the Arizona desert in which we now found ourselves. Or was/did it? The memory was so enfeebled that if I didn't hold it just so it would blow away like dandelion fluff. Still, this wasn't a military base; it was a convenience store.
"Bullshit?" I said.
“Do you remember Arrowhead?" Andy asked.
"Sort of. What is this, what's going on?"
"Listen to me, Brian. We finally got one. We finally got an honest to God extraterrestrial—and it's in there."
"In the 7-Eleven."
"No. In the Arrowhead facility that looks like a 7-Eleven in our present consensus reality. The alien is hiding itself and the installation in some kind of stealth transdimensional mirror trick, or something. I've been here before. So have you. Our dreams can still remember. I've come out to the desert—I don't know, dozens of times? I've talked to it, the alien. It shuffles reality. I keep waking up, then going back to sleep. Here's the thing. It can cloak its prison, reinterpret its appearance, but it can't escape."
I regarded him skeptically, did some mental shuffling of my own, discarded various justifiable but unproductive responses, and said: "What's it want?"
"It wants you to let it go."
"Why me?"
"Ask it yourself. But watch out. That little fucker is messing with our heads."
* * * *
The store was empty. It was so quiet you could hear the dogs popping with grease as they rotated inside their little hot box. Okay, it wasn't that quiet, but it was quiet. I picked up a green disposable lighter and flicked it a couple of times, kind of checking out the consensus reality. It lit.
Andy went around the counter and ducked his head into the back room.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Looking for Squidward."
"Squidward?"
"Yeah."
Another dim memory glowed in the dark. For some reason I thought of the Seattle aquarium, where my father had taken us when I was little. It hadn't been a fun experience. I remembered being vaguely repelled by some of the exotically alien examples of undersea creatures. Prescient echo from the future?
Andy snapped his fingers. "Right. Squidward likes it cool."
I followed him into the cold storage run behind the beer, pop and dairy coolers. A man sat on a couple of stacked cases of Rolling Rock, his legs crossed at the knees, hands folded over them. He looked Indian, that nut brown complexion. He was wearing a lavender suit.
"Squidward," Andy said.
I tucked my hands snuggly under my armpits for warmth. "Has he asked to be taken to our leader yet?"
"I don't remember."
Squidward spoke up: "You are the torturer."
We both looked at him.
"Sorry, not my gig," I said.
Squidward nodded. "Your gig, yes."
Something unsavory uncoiled in my stomach, then lay still again.
"Andy," I said, nodding toward the door.
He followed me out into the glaring light of the store.
"Talk to me," I said.
He nodded, distracted. "I'm remembering most of it, but who knows what I'll retain next time around. R&D developed some kind of souped-up spectrophotometer gizmo as a hedge against future stealth technology we suspected the Chinese were developing. During a middle phase test in Nevada we saw a vehicle doing some impossible maneuvers, somehow hiding between waves in the visible light spectrum. Naturally we shot it down."
"Naturally."
Andy clutched his pack of Camels, plugged one in his mouth, patted his pockets for matches. I handed him the Zippo.
"Thanks."
He lit up.
"Anyway, it turns out we're as much his captive as he is ours. Uh oh."
Andy's cigarette dropped from his lips, depositing feathery ash down the front of his sheepskin jacket. He blinked slowly, his eyes going out of focus, or perhaps refocusing inward.
"Oh, shit," he said.
"What?"
"Not again. I have to get away from this."
He turned and stumped out of the store with the sloppy gait of a somnambulist.
"Hey—"
Outside the night absorbed him. I stiff-armed the door. Cold desert wind blew in my face. Andy was gone. So was the Cherokee. But he hadn't driven away in it. I looked around where it had been parked. There were no tire impressions, nothing, just my warped shadow cast over the tawny grit.
I turned back to the 7-Eleven, its solid, glaring reality. I don't know what hackles are exactly, but mine rose to attention. Out here in the desert, alone with a persistent illusion, I felt reduced. Childish fears came awake.
Exerting my will to power or whatever, I entered the store. The Slurpee machine hummed and swirled, hotdogs rotated. The fluorescent light seemed to stutter inside my head.
I looked at the coolers, the orderly ranks of bottles and cartons. Damn it.
I approached the door to the cold storage, put my hand on the lever. Fear ran through me like electric current. I felt the world begin to waver, and stepped back. The door, silver with a thick rubber seal, appeared to melt before my eyes. I felt myself slipping away, and so brought the force of my will down like a steel spike. The door resumed its expected appearance. I immediately cranked the handle and dragged it open.
Squidward sat on his beer case stool in exactly the same position he'd been in ten minutes ago.
"Make it stop," I said.
"I don't make things," he replied. "I allow the multiplicity to occur."
"Okay. So stop allowing the multiplicity."
"Not possible, I'm afraid. My survival imperative is searching for a probability in which you haven't killed me."
"But I haven't killed you."
"You have."
I stepped toward him. That steel spike? Now it was penetrating my forehead, driving in.
"What do you want from us?"
"From you I want to live," Squidward said. "We are bound until the death is allowed or not allowed, conclusively. I have perceived the occurrence of my expiration at your direction, unintended though it will be. Having access to all points of probability time in my sequence, I foresee this eventuality and seek for a probability equation that spares me. From your perspective also this is a desirable outcome. Without me to monitor and shuffle your world's probabilities the vision vouchsafed your military leader may well occur."
My eyesight shifted into pre-migraine mode. Pinwheel lights encroached upon my peripheral vision. I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes, fighting it, fighting it, fighting...
* * * *
[To be continued in Part 3]
April 7, 2014
"What You Are About To See" by Jack Skillingstead (Part 1 of 3)
In 2011, prior to the release of my
Alien Contact
anthology (from Night Shade Books), I decided to take a different approach to introducing the anthology to readers: Instead of simply listing the table of contents -- a boring list of story titles and authors' names -- I blogged about each story, one story per week for 26 weeks. Of course, about four or five weeks into the project I realized the magnitude of the task I had set for myself: 26 weeks, one-half of a year! I won't go into the details here, you can check out my "Alien Contact" page where you'll find a listing of all the related blog posts.As part of this project I obtained permission from a number of authors to post the complete text of their stories. Most of the stories were posted here, on More Red Ink. One story, however, Jack Skillingstead's "What You Are About To See," was posted on the Night Shade Books website and also on the NSB Facebook page. So it was to my surprise -- and dismay -- to discover a few weeks ago that the story had been wiped from both the NSB website and Facebook page.
After conferring with Jack Skillingstead, we agreed that the story should remain available online (and free) for future readers -- and so I am posting the story here (below) in three parts. I encourage you to first read my original blog post on the story, which provides the genesis and history of the story as well as how I selected it for the anthology.
And now, enjoy....
"What You Are About To See"by Jack Skillingstead(©2008 by Jack Skillingstead.Reprinted with permission of the author.)
It sat in a cold room.
Outside that room a Marine handed me an insulated suit. I slipped it on over my street clothes. The Marine punched a code into a numeric keypad attached to the wall. The lock snapped open on the heavy door, the Marine nodded, I entered.
Andy McCaslin, who looked like an overdressed turnip in his insulated suit, greeted me and shook my hand. I'd known Andy for twenty-five years, since our days in Special Forces. Now we both worked for the NSA, though you could say my acronym was lowercase. I operated on the margins of the Agency, a contract player, an accomplished extractor of information from reluctant sources. My line of work required a special temperament, which I possessed and which Andy most assuredly did not. He was a true believer in the rightness of the cause, procedure, good guys and bad. I was like Andy's shadow twin. He stood in the light, casting something dark and faceless, which was me.
It remained seated—if you could call that sitting. Its legs, all six of them, coiled and braided like a nest of lavender snakes on top of which the alien's frail torso rested. That torso resembled the upper body of a starving child, laddered ribs under parchment skin and a big stretched belly full of nothing. It watched us with eyes like two thumbnail chips of anthracite.
"Welcome to the new world order," Andy said, his breath condensing in little gray puffs.
"Thanks. Anything out of Squidward yet?"
"Told us it was in our own best interests to let him go, then when we wouldn't it shut up. Only 'shut up' isn't quite accurate, since it doesn't vocalize. You hear the words in your head, or sometimes there's just a picture. It was the picture it put in the Secretary's head that's got everybody's panties in a knot."
"What picture?"
"Genocidal carnage on a planet-wide scale."
"Sounds friendly enough."
"There's a backroom theory that Squidward was just showing the Secretary his own secret wet dream. Anyway, accepting its assertions of friendliness at face value is not up to me. Off the record, though, my intuition tells me its intentions are benign."
"You look tired, Andy."
"I feel a little off," he said.
"Does Squidward always stare like that."
"Always."
"You're certain it still has the ability to communicate? Maybe the environment's making it sick."
"Not according to the medical people. Of course, nothing's certain, except that Squidward is a non-terrestrial creature possessed of an advanced technology. Those facts are deductible. By the way, the advanced technology in question is currently bundled in a hanger not far from here. What's left looks like a weather balloon fed through a shredder. Ironic?"
"Very." I hunched my shoulders. "Cold in here."
"You noticed."
"Squidward likes it that way, I bet."
"Loves it."
"Have you considered warming things up?"
Andy gave me a sideways look. "You thinking of changing the interrogation protocols?"
"If I am it wouldn't be in that direction."
"No CIA gulag in Romania, eh."
"Never heard of such a thing."
"I'd like to think you hadn't."
Actually I was well familiar with the place, only it was in Guatemala, not Romania. At its mention a variety of horrors arose in my mind. Some of them had faces attached. I regarded them dispassionately, as I had when I saw them in actuality all those years ago, and then I replaced them in the vault from which their muffled screams trouble me from time to time.
Andy's face went slack and pale.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. All of a sudden I feel like I'm not really standing here."
He smiled thinly, and I thought he was going to faint. But as I reached out to him I suddenly felt dizzy myself, afloat, contingent. I swayed, like balancing on the edge of a tall building. Squidward sat in its coil of snakes, staring...
* * * *
Now return to a particular watershed moment in the life of one Brian Kinney, aka: me. Two years ago. If years mean anything in the present context.
I was a lousy drunk. Lack of experience. My father, on the other hand, had been an accomplished drunk. Legendary, almost. As a consequence of his example I had spent my life cultivating a morbid sobriety, which my wife managed to interrupt by an act of infidelity. Never mind that she needed to do it before she completely drowned in my legendary uncommunicative self-isolation. The way I viewed things at the time: she betrayed me for no reason other than her own wayward carnality. You'd think I'd have known better; I'd spent my nasty little career understanding and manipulating the psychology of others.
Anyway, I went and got stinking drunk, which was easy enough. It was the drive home that was the killer. The speedometer needle floated between blurred pairs of numbers. By deliberate force of will (I was hell on force of will) I could bring the numbers into momentary clarity, but that required dropping my gaze from the roller-coaster road sweeping under my headlight beams—not necessarily a good idea. Four. Five. Was that right? What was the limit?
Good question.
What was the limit?
I decided it wasn't the four whiskeys with beer chasers. No, it was the look on Connie's face when I waved the surveillance transcript at her like a starter's flag (Race you to the end of the marriage; go!). Not contrite, guilty, apologetic, remorseful. Not even angry, outraged, indignant.
Stone-faced. Arms folded. She had said: "You don't even know me."
And she was right; I'd been too busy not knowing myself to take a stab at knowing her.
Off the roller-coaster, swinging through familiar residential streets, trash cans and recycle containers arranged at the curb like clusters of strange little people waiting for the midnight bus. I lived here, when I wasn't off inflicting merry hell upon various persons who sometimes deserved it and sometimes didn't. These days I resorted to more enlightened methodologies, of course. Physical pain was a last resort. Guatemala had been an ugly aberration (I liked to tell myself), a putrid confluence of political license and personal demons unleashed in the first fetid sewage swell of the so-called War On Terror. Anyway, the neighborhood reminded me of the one I wished I'd grown up in. But it was a façade. I was hell on façades, too.
And there was Connie, lifting the lid off our very own little strange man, depositing a tied-off plastic bag of kitchen garbage. Standing there in the middle of the night, changed from her business suit to Levi's and sweatshirt and her cozy blue slippers, performing this routine task as if our world (my world) hadn't collapsed into the black hole of her infidelity.
Connie as object, focal of pain. Target.
Anger sprang up fresh through the fog of impermissible emotion and numbing alcohol.
My foot crushed the accelerator, the big Tahoe surged, veered; I was out of my mind, not myself—that's the spin I gave it later.
The way she dropped the bag, the headlights bleaching her out in death-glare brilliance. At the last instant I closed my eyes. Something hit the windshield, rolled over the roof. A moment later the Tahoe struck the brick and wrought-iron property wall and came to an abrupt halt.
I lifted my head off the steering wheel, wiped the blood out of my eyes. The windshield was intricately webbed, buckled inward. That was my house out there, the front door standing open to lamplight, mellow wood tones, that ficus plant Connie kept in the entry.
Connie.
I released my seatbelt and tried to open the door. Splintered ribs scraped together, razored my flesh, and I screamed, suddenly stone-cold and agonizingly sober. I tried the door again, less aggressively. My razor ribs scraped and cut. Okay. One more time. Force of will. I bit down on my lip and put my shoulder to the door. It wouldn't budge, the frame was twisted out of alignment. I sat back, panting, drenched in sweat. And I saw it: Connie's blue slipper flat against what was left of the windshield. Time suspended. That bitch. And the Johnstown flood of tears. Delayed reaction triggered. As a child I'd learned not to cry. I'd watched my mother weep her soul out to no changeable effect. I'd done some weeping, too. Also to no effect. Dad was dad; this is your world. Lesson absorbed, along with the blows. But sitting in the wreck of the Tahoe, my marriage, my life, I made up for lost tears; I knew what I had become, and was repulsed. The vault at the bottom of my mind yawned opened, releasing the shrieking ghosts of Guatemala.
You see, it's all related. Compartmentalization aside, if you cross the taboo boundary in one compartment you're liable to cross it in all the others.
By the time the cops arrived the ghosts were muffled again, and I was done with weeping. Vault secured, walls hastily erected, fortifications against the pain I'd absorbed and the later pain I'd learn to inflict. The irreducible past. Barricades were my specialty.
* * * *
The Agency stepped in, determined I could remain a valuable asset, and took care of my "accident," the details, the police.
* * * *
Flip forward again.
You can be a drunk and hold a top secret clearance. But you must be a careful one. And it helps if your relationship with the Agency is informally defined. I was in my basement office carefully drawing the cork out of a good bottle of Riesling when Andy McCaslin called on the secure line. I lived in that basement, since Connie's death, the house above me like a rotting corpse of memory. Okay, it wasn't that bad. I hadn't been around enough to turn the house into a memory corpse; I just preferred basements and shadows.
"Andy," I said into the receiver, my voice Gibraltar steady, even though the Riesling was far from my first libation of the long day. Unlike Dad, I'd learned to space it out, to maintain.
"Brian. Listen, I'm picking you up. We're going for a drive in the desert. Give me an hour to get there. Wear something warm."
I wore the whole bottle, from the inside out.
* * * *
[To be continued in Part 2]
April 4, 2014
Book Received: Lovecraft's Monsters
Back in July 2013 I published a blog post entitled "Do You Fear Lovecraft's Monsters?" -- referring to the anthology
Lovecraft's Monsters
, edited by Ellen Datlow, which I had just finished copy editing at the time of the blog post.The anthology has now been officially released by Tachyon Publications, and should be available from booksellers, real and virtual, everywhere.
And this post is just to acknowledge receipt of my comp copy, courtesy of Tachyon Pubs.
April 1, 2014
Editing in Process...Nancy Kress
Cover art by Thomas CantyAbout two years ago, I worked on a Nancy Kress novella for Tachyon Publications. That novella, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall -- which I blogged about here -- won the Nebula Award last year, as well as the Locus Award, and was also a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.So when I was called upon to copy edit the new, forthcoming novella, Yesterday's Kin
, I knew that I would be working on another potential award-winning story. The author is, after all, Nancy Kress!The difficulty I'm having in sharing details of this story is due to the fact that nearly anything I say about Yesterday's Kin will be a spoiler. It's that kind of story: right up in your face from the very first section. And trust me, that's a good thing.
So what I'm going to do is share with you first the advertising copy that Tachyon Publications is using for this novella. That's not to say there aren't spoilers here, but at least it's what the publisher and author are willing to release about the story line:
Aliens have landed in New York.
A deadly cloud of spores has already infected and killed the inhabitants of two worlds. Now that plague is heading for Earth, and threatens humans and aliens alike. Can either species be trusted to find the cure?
Geneticist Marianne Jenner is immersed in the desperate race to save humanity, yet her family is tearing itself apart. Siblings Elizabeth and Ryan are strident isolationists who agree only that an alien conspiracy is in play. Marianne's youngest, Noah, is a loner addicted to a drug that constantly changes his identity. But between the four Jenners, the course of human history will be forever altered.
Earth's most elite scientists have ten months to prevent human extinction—and not everyone is willing to wait.
The story is told from two alternating points-of-view, that of geneticist Marianne Jenner, and her youngest son Noah. Marianne is living in the lab, night and day, working with a team of scientists to try to find a cure for, or at least a vaccine against, the deadly spores. Noah, on the other hand, is less -- and more -- than what he initially appears to be. While Marianne seeks a cure, Noah seeks out the aliens. And what of these aliens? Many believe the "Denebs" have arrived on Earth merely to use humans as guinea pigs; Marianne and her fellow scientists trust the aliens, but there is a limit to that trust because the Denebs are not very forthcoming with their own research on the spores.
Here's a very brief excerpt from the story:
A spore cloud doesn't look like anything at all.
A darker patch in dark space, or the slightest of veils barely dimming starlight shining behind it. Earth's astronomers could not accurately say how large it was, or how deep. They relied on Deneb measurements, except for the one fact that mattered most, which human satellites in deep space and human ingenuity at a hundred observatories was able to verify: The cloud was coming. The path of its closest edge would intersect Earth's path through space at the time the Denebs had said: early September.
Marianne knew that almost immediately following the UN announcement, madness and stupidity raged across the planet. Shelters were dug or sold or built, none of which would be effective. If air could get in, so could spores. In Kentucky, some company began equipping deep caves with air circulation, food for a year, and high-priced sleeping berths: reverting to Paleolithic caveman. She paid no more attention to this entrepreneurial survivalism than to the televised protests, destructive mobs, peaceful marches, or lurid artist depictions of the cloud and its presumed effects. She had a job to do.
Yesterday's Kin
will be published by Tachyon Publications in September; the book is available now for preorder.
March 14, 2014
City of Burning Shadows Revealed
Cover art by Jordan GrimmerJoshua "Ash" Drake is a man in hiding.
Hiding from the past, from the horror of his life as a priest after the gods disappeared.
Hiding from his emotions, denying the nightmares that haunt his sleep and the anger that fuels his days.
Most of all, hiding from the truth―
that no matter how much he keeps his head down, no matter how he clings to the echoes of everyday life, his city—his world—is dying.
When a new technology offers salvation to his desperate city, Ash must reach out to people he left behind and step back into the world that almost killed him. But coming out of hiding now could be the worst mistake Ash has ever made.
Because there are monsters in the darkness, feeding the chaos, watching the city burn. And once those monsters know his name, Ash will never be able to hide again.
City of Burning Shadows
is the first volume in Apocrypha: The Dying World, a new series from author Barbara J. Webb. Back in mid-January, I posted about my work on Barbara's novel, which she planned to self-publish. At the time of my blog post, however, the cover art had not yet been finalized.
As you can see, not only is the cover art complete, but City of Burning Shadows is now available as a Kindle ebook
as well as in a trade paperback print edition.In that previous blog post I recommended that you make a note -- in whatever note-taking manner you utilize -- to add City of Burning Shadows to your forthcoming books list. Well, now is your opportunity to snag a copy of the book itself, show your support for an independent, self-publishing author, and enjoy a quality read as well.
March 9, 2014
The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Denouement
Finally,
Tiny Tango
by Judith Moffett was published as a Kindle ebook on Amazon. I had the idea for an ebook (Step 1), we obtained a cover design based on an original Janet Aulisio black and white illustration (Step 2), and after much cursing at the Machine (Step 3) we had a published ebook.So why "Tiny Tango"?
"Tiny Tango" the novella was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award; and as I mentioned in the first part of this series, had the James Tiptree Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (the first award was presented in 1991 so "TT" missed it by one year) I am certain that "Tiny Tango" would have made the short list, and quite possibly won the award for that year.
I first read "TT" in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It was one of those stories that, when you came upon a certain scene, you could be heard saying out loud -- to yourself, to no one in particular -- "You gotta be kidding me!" I don't mean that in the sarcastic sense, or the "ha ha" sense, I mean it in the sense of scratching your head, realizing no one had written of this, and in this way, before. As I also previously mentioned, Matthew Cheney, in a Mumpsimus blog post in 2009, included "Tiny Tango" in his list of twenty-one "Mindblowing!" stories; Matthew went on to say:
"Tiny Tango" is a story I read when it first appeared in Asimov's, and it completely blew me away and broke my heart. I was young and just learning what science fiction could do, and it was one of the key stories in showing me the breadth of emotional and conceptual possibilities.And here's what Judy wrote about the story, which appears on the next to the last page in the published ebook:
"Tiny Tango" forms Chapter 3 of The Ragged World, the first volume in Judith Moffett's Holy Ground Trilogy; the other two volumes are Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream
, and The Bird Shaman
. The trilogy deals with the arrival on earth of two symbiotic alien races, the Hefn and the Gafr, whose technology enables them to take control of the planet in an effort to save it from environmental disaster. The alien takeover is important at this story's end, but the tale of Nancy Sandford and her struggle to survive HIV stands by itself, enriched but not enabled by the larger context formed by the trilogy. Writing in 1987, Moffett's educated guesses about the course of the AIDS epidemic, its treatments and social consequences, fall wide of the mark. But it hardly matters. What we have here is not a predictive study of medical and technical know-how, but the timeless tale of a particular individual's refusal to accept defeat, the means she finds and invents to cope with a desperate plight. "Tiny Tango" was a finalist in the novella category for the Nebula Award in 1989, and for the Hugo Award in 1990. Volumes I and II of the Holy Ground Trilogy were named New York Times Notable Books for 1991 and 1992, respectively. "Tiny Tango" is also included in Ian Sales's list: "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women."
How can you not want to read this story?
Note to book reviewers: If you have a book review blog and/or you review regularly on Goodreads and/or you review for the Kindle community, and you would like to review Tiny Tango
, please send an email to: marty.halpern@gmail.com.Include in the email a link to your book review blog, community, and/or your Goodreads book review page, and I'll be in touch. Keep in mind that you will be reviewing a Kindle mobi ebook.
Note to potential readers of The Holy Ground Trilogy: For those who may consider purchasing this trilogy, please be aware that signed (and inscribed, if you wish) copies of The Bird Shaman may be purchased directly from author Judith Moffett. Here's the link: you'll find the order form in the right frame of the web page.
March 7, 2014
The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 3
When last we saw (virtually speaking, that is) the intrepid ebook adventurers:In Step 1 I came up with the idea to publish Judith Moffett's award-nominated story Tiny Tango
as a Kindle ebook; and by the end of Step 2, we had the final design for the ebook's cover.But even before we had begun work on the book cover, Judy and I had already copy edited the story itself, multiple times in fact. Judy provided me with a Word file of the "Tiny Tango" story, we each did a copy edit, comparing notes and edits until we were both satisfied.
Not having created an ebook from scratch prior to this, I relied on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) "Simplified Formatting Guide" on the KDP website.
After reviewing KDP's suggestions for what to include in the book, I then asked Judy to draft a dedication page as part of the front matter, and, for the back of the book, an author bio page as well as a page that would introduce readers to "Tiny Tango," its genesis and how it is part of a larger trilogy of novels. I in turn wrote the copyright page. And, as we are wont to do, all pages went through a series of tweaks and copy edits.
When I entered this additional content into the "Tiny Tango" Word doc, I took advantage of the hyperlink capability of a digital ebook: I entered links to Jenn Reese's Tiger Bright Studios and my More Red Ink blog on the copyright page; I entered links to Amazon for all three volumes of the Holy Ground Trilogy, of which "Tiny Tango" is just a small part, in addition to a few other appropriate links; and on Judy's bio page I linked to her website.
I know there are a variety of tools available for creating and formatting files for ebooks -- I have one author friend who uses Scrivener exclusively. But I'm an MS Word guy all the way. Here are a few noteworthy points for aspiring ebook publishers who use Word: Use margin indents, rather than tabs or spaces, to set off each new paragraph.Use page breaks to separate parts of the book (e.g. title page, copyright page, dedication page, preface, etc.) as well as to separate chapters within the story itself.Use bold formatting and/or italics formatting when needed, as the conversion process will pick up these formats.Insert images into the document using the Insert → Picture option from the menu; do not use cut&paste to insert images.
Since "Tiny Tango" was just a single story, I didn't need an "active" (i.e. hyperlinked) contents page, nor did I need to set up "Go To" functionality (Kindle users will understand this).
The one question that I had, though (at least as far as I knew at that point!), concerned the relationship between the book cover and the ebook: Did I need to insert the book cover into the MS Word file manually? Or, did the KDP conversion process do this for me? The KDP site has a number of instructional resources and FAQs, but I wasn't able to find my answer. So, based on what information I did have at the time, I assumed that I had to manually insert the cover image into the MS Word file. This, of course, turned out to be an incorrect assumption, which I figured out later, after the fact.
So, I inserted the "Tiny Tango" cover image as page one of the MS Word file; and then I inserted the full black and white illustration by Janet Aulisio on page 3, the page after the title page.
Speaking of image files, a couple other pointers: Amazon charges for digital transfer services, so you need to have your ebook file as small as possible. This means using the best image format, which is JPG, ensuring that the image size is no larger than absolutely necessary, and using image file compression as well. KDP also has dimension requirements for the ebook cover, but I wasn't worried because I knew Jenn Reese had our backs. She provided a cover image of 2250 x 3000 pixels, along with a smaller (600 x 800 pixels), thumbnail-size graphic.
At this point I was ready to save my completed MS Word file in the format that Amazon required: a "Web Page, Filtered" htm file. So far so good.
Then it was time to upload the htm book file. I uploaded the file and then waited for what seemed like hours, well, probably a minute actually, and again received the most welcome response: "Upload and conversion successful."
When the process completed, I was then able to view online a preview copy of the book: The ebook opened on the title page, so I clicked on the back arrow and came upon a very strange, blurry image of a camera and a red triangle:
The back arrow remained, indicating that the book could be paged backward yet again; I did so and there was the "Tiny Tango" book cover. I paged forward again, past the title page, and came upon yet another camera and red triangle image.
I had inserted two image files into the Word doc: the book cover and the b&w illustration; and since I now had two of these funky graphic images I assumed that they represented my two inserted images. Obviously I had done something incorrectly regarding the inserted image files.
Since the book cover was visible, I realized that the KDP process automatically inserted the uploaded cover graphic as the first page in the book -- so I needed to delete the book cover image that I had manually inserted. Then I needed to figure out why the b&w illustration wasn't showing up correctly.
I did a bit of web searching and found an excellent YouTube video entitled "How to Add and Format Images in Your Kindle eBook." The vid lasts about four and a half minutes and was published on September 13, 2013, so it's fairly current. I opened the MS Word doc file, and deleted the cover image I had inserted; I then followed the vid step-by-step to ensure that the b&w graphic image was the ideal size and compression for the ebook. I saved the doc file as a filtered htm file, and, once again, uploaded the book file to KDP. Upon previewing the ebook online -- you guessed it: I had that camera and red triangle image showing up once again in place of the black and white illustration....
I did eventually figure out what I was doing wrong, and I'll try to explain the process without causing anyone's eyes to glaze over out of sheer boredom.
I know from my early years of web page development (I'm a former raw html coder who used Notepad) that when an MS Word file containing graphics is converted to a web page (i.e. an htm/html file type), a folder is also created that contains the graphic files. The htm file and the folder are thus linked; separate the htm file from that folder (i.e. delete the folder or move it to a different directory) and no images will appear in the htm file.
When I uploaded my book file to KDP, I was only able to upload one file: I chose the actual htm file. Now, not knowing exactly how KDP worked -- and I certainly didn't find any instructions on the site that clarified any of this -- I assumed (and wrongly so yet again) that, since the file and folder were linked, the KDP upload process would, well, be intelligent enough to handle everything. How technically silly of me!
So I tried a zipped file, combining the htm file and the graphic file into a single zip file. This didn't work either: I still got the camera and red triangle image. Note that I had to zip just the htm file and the jpg file because the zip process that I used would not allow a folder to be zipped -- only files.
My question remained: How do I create one file to upload to KDP that contains the htm book file as well as the folder containing the image file? [We're getting into the Man vs. Machine situation I hinted at in Step 2.]
Enter the Amazon KDP Community: post a question, and hopefully someone within the community will respond with a resolution to the question. I did some searching for the "camera and red triangle image" and found the help that I needed: a community contributor, who goes by the name "jtbigtoad," posted a response1 to the exact same question on June 29, 2013. I was pleased, in a way, that I wasn't the only one encountering this particular problem.
Since this was such an issue for me, and required a bit of web searching to find the resolution, I'm going to list the necessary steps here; if this doesn't interest you, then essentially you are done with this post, and I'll ask that you please check back in another day or so for the conclusion of this series of blog posts.
So, here's how you create a zipped file that contains the htm book file along with the folder that contains the graphic images. This is for Windows users only; Mac users, check out the footnote below.
Create a folder; in my case, I called it "TinyTango-FinalForAmazon."Open the MS Word doc file, and then Save it as a Web Page, Filtered htm file -- be sure to save it in the folder created in step #1 above.Close MS Word.Now, find the folder created in step #1 above.Right click on the folder, and select the option Send To → Compressed (zipped) Folder.
That's it. These 5 steps create the zip file -- a single zipped file that correctly ties the graphic images to the book file. And this is what I uploaded successfully to the KDP site. We had an ebook, finally.
After selecting a price and royalty rate, I published the ebook. A few hours later the book appeared, for sale, on Amazon's Kindle site.
Whew!
To be continued:The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Denouement
---------------Footnote:
1. If you are a Mac user, click on this link, and scroll down to the entry by "jtbigtoad." She/he included in her/his response a link to the "Mac stuff" -- but since I'm not a Mac user, you are strictly on your own figuring this out.
