Marty Halpern's Blog, page 38
February 7, 2012
Would you like to review Alien Contact?
If you would be interested in reviewing an eBook edition of my
Alien Contact
anthology, recently published by Night Shade Books, please read on....I've made this offer previously and thought I would follow it up with one additional post. I have eBook editions -- mobi, epub, and pdf -- available for Alien Contact that I would be happy to provide to book reviewers and/or book review bloggers.
If you would like an eBook review copy, simply post a request below in the Comment section, along with a link to one (or more) of your online book reviews and/or a link to your book review blog. I'll also need an email addy in order to get in touch with you. If contact information is posted with your review or on your blog, no need to include that same contact information with your comment.
Any questions, etc. can also be posted below in Comments.
January 27, 2012
Doing Charles Stross's Laundry with Style
Back in December 2010 I wrote a blog post entitled "Writing with Style (Sheets, That Is)," on my need, as an editor/copyeditor, for the author to provide a style sheet. This blog post was the result of a series of comments to a status update that Theodora Goss had posted on her Facebook page. In addition to Dora's and my comments, Robert Vardeman and Paul Witcover shared comments as well. And with their kind permissions, I included the FB comment stream in that blog post on style sheets. Dora then wrote a complementary blog post of her own, from her perspective on the subject in question. So with my post and hers, the reader is treated to the editor's and author's viewpoints regarding a single copyedit in a short story.
I won't overly bore you with repetitions from this blog post, should you choose to read it in its entirety, but as I mentioned in that post, in the nearly fifteen years that I have been in this business, I've only had two authors -- Michael A. Stackpole and Mark Teppo -- provide me with style sheets along with their manuscripts. That's two authors in nearly fifteen years. In fact, just this past September I worked on Michael's Of Limited Loyalty
, the second volume in his Queen's Command series published by Night Shade Books, and once again he provided the publisher with an updated style sheet for his book.
The second post I want to reference was published on December 10, 2009, shortly after I finished work on Charles Stross's third Laundry Files novel,
The Fuller Memorandum
, for Ace Books. Entitled "Charles Stross: On Her Majesty's Occult Service," this rather extensive blog post covered my working relationship with Charlie Stross: how it all came together, including the genesis of
The Atrocity Archives
, the first Laundry Files volume, and the Hugo Award-winning novella "The Concrete Jungle." (Which, by the way, is still available online -- as a PDF doc or as a web page -- for your reading pleasure.)
As he did in 2009, Charlie again recommended me to Ace Books to proof, line edit, and copyedit his forthcoming (fourth) Laundry Files novel, The Apocalypse Codex
. I have a distinct advantage over an in-house or other freelance editor because I have worked on the first three books in the series, allowing me to maintain consistency across all the volumes. And Charlie and I work well together: I ask a multitude of questions, and he answers, often with links to reference material; I make content suggestions, and he either accepts, rejects, or modifies said suggestions. Just as it should be, between editor and author. In fact, regarding my work on The Fuller Memorandum, Charlie informed me that upon reviewing the marked up (i.e. change tracked) manuscript from his publisher, he didn't have a single STET on any of my copyedits. No STETs means I done good -- very good. No STETs also takes a lot of stress off both the author and publisher, since there is no back-and-forth dickering necessary over changes: I'll give you those three copyedits for my one STET; this inevitably speeds up the production process, too. (I don't know if I'll be as lucky with the the work I did on the latest volume, which I delivered to Ace Books in December.)
In The Apocalypse Codex, our reluctant hero, Bob Howard, skilled in the techniques of applied computational demonology -- as well as all things IT geekery, plus PowerPoint slide shows and departmental time sheets -- is once again called upon to save the world from a diabolical fanatic who plans to open a portal to call forth a nightmare from the vast reaches of spacetime, at the cost of thousands of lives. Sounds like a typical Laundry Files novel, yes? But there the typical ends. The diabolical fanatic is a reverend; and Bob must team up with a couple of "external assets": Persephone "the Duchess" Hazard (code name: Bashful Incendiary) and Jonathan "Johnny" McTavish (code name: Johnny Prince).
Now we have the Laundry, a [fictional] revenant division of SOE. But the Laundry is a peacetime organization, as bureaucratic (in its own way) as MI5/SIS. However, the threats the Laundry needs to deal with will from time to time require highly skilled operatives (wizards, in the terminology of the uninitiated) who can act autonomously. And it's also the case that most sorcerers of great power don't work well within a bureaucratic framework. So there is a mechanism for handling such operatives. The mechanism is designed to protect the organization from the depredations of loose cannons, while providing said loose cannons with [disposable] cannon fodder when they need backup. Within the Laundry in general, the high-level types are known as Mahogany Row; but to the security-cleared folks who work directly with them, they're External Assets.
And Bob is going to undergo an extremely hair-raising apprenticeship that will take him right out of the bureaucracy and give him more than enough rope to hang himself, when I get round to writing book number 5.
For those familiar with the Laundry Files series, Bob Howard's superior, DSS James Angleton (aka Eater of Souls), sits on Mahogany Row. 'Nuff said about that. I don't want to delve too much into TAC as I promised Charlie there wouldn't be any spoilers (well, at least not too many), as the book won't be published until July. So let me get back to the editing.
This was the first book I've edited or copyedited in which the publisher asked that I provide a style sheet! I was quite surprised, to say the least, especially since no style sheet was required for the previous title, The Fuller Memorandum. I always maintain a style sheet for every book that I work on. I keep a "running tab," so to speak, by chapter: I write down every person, organization, and place, every special word, word forms, and so on. I do this by chapter in case I have to reference back to a certain person/place/date/thing; in this way I can find its first appearance easily. But for Ace Books, I had to go beyond my typical style sheet. I first provided a list of my references, in order of preference; I then provided a list of "general rules" as follows:
Charlie also uses an inordinate number of acronyms and organizations throughout each novel. In the first two books, I included a "Glossary of Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Organizations," but this was abandoned beginning with the first Ace title. So I essentially had to resurrect the glossary for this style guide. Here are just a few entries (not inclusive) under the heading "People, Organizations, etc. Specific to the Laundry Files":
The most involved part was transcribing my own personal chapter-based style guide into a section-based style guide for Ace Books, being sure that I didn't overlook any critical entries. I submitted the edited manuscript to Ace Books by the due date, which was definitely a satisfying conclusion to this project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Charles Stross for his support and referral, and for his continued faith in the quality of my work; I would also like to thank Michelle Kasper, Production Editor at Ace/Berkley Books, for yet another opportunity to contribute to the success of the Laundry Files series.
One last note: Charlie has based each of the four Laundry Files novels on the particular style of a British espionage/mystery novelist. The Atrocity Archives was written in the style of Len Deighton, and Charlie even included an Afterword -- entitled "Inside the Fear Factory" -- in which he spoke of Deighton at length, and in which he equated the spy novel with horror fiction. The second novel, The Jennifer Morgue
, was written in the style of Ian Fleming -- "Howard; Bob Howard. Capital Laundry Services, import/export division." -- with a twist at the end as to the identity of the "good Bond girl." Volume three, The Fuller Memorandum, was written in the style of Anthony Price, a novelist with whom I was unfamiliar until I worked on TFM. Which brings us to the present, and The Apocalypse Codex. Does the fact that Bob Howard teams up with a pair of agents -- a female and a male, the Duchess and Johnny McTavish -- ring any literary bells? How about Peter O'Donnell, creator of the character Modesty Blaise, along with her right-hand-man, Willie Garvin.
I won't overly bore you with repetitions from this blog post, should you choose to read it in its entirety, but as I mentioned in that post, in the nearly fifteen years that I have been in this business, I've only had two authors -- Michael A. Stackpole and Mark Teppo -- provide me with style sheets along with their manuscripts. That's two authors in nearly fifteen years. In fact, just this past September I worked on Michael's Of Limited Loyalty
, the second volume in his Queen's Command series published by Night Shade Books, and once again he provided the publisher with an updated style sheet for his book.
The second post I want to reference was published on December 10, 2009, shortly after I finished work on Charles Stross's third Laundry Files novel,
The Fuller Memorandum
, for Ace Books. Entitled "Charles Stross: On Her Majesty's Occult Service," this rather extensive blog post covered my working relationship with Charlie Stross: how it all came together, including the genesis of
The Atrocity Archives
, the first Laundry Files volume, and the Hugo Award-winning novella "The Concrete Jungle." (Which, by the way, is still available online -- as a PDF doc or as a web page -- for your reading pleasure.)As he did in 2009, Charlie again recommended me to Ace Books to proof, line edit, and copyedit his forthcoming (fourth) Laundry Files novel, The Apocalypse Codex
. I have a distinct advantage over an in-house or other freelance editor because I have worked on the first three books in the series, allowing me to maintain consistency across all the volumes. And Charlie and I work well together: I ask a multitude of questions, and he answers, often with links to reference material; I make content suggestions, and he either accepts, rejects, or modifies said suggestions. Just as it should be, between editor and author. In fact, regarding my work on The Fuller Memorandum, Charlie informed me that upon reviewing the marked up (i.e. change tracked) manuscript from his publisher, he didn't have a single STET on any of my copyedits. No STETs means I done good -- very good. No STETs also takes a lot of stress off both the author and publisher, since there is no back-and-forth dickering necessary over changes: I'll give you those three copyedits for my one STET; this inevitably speeds up the production process, too. (I don't know if I'll be as lucky with the the work I did on the latest volume, which I delivered to Ace Books in December.)In The Apocalypse Codex, our reluctant hero, Bob Howard, skilled in the techniques of applied computational demonology -- as well as all things IT geekery, plus PowerPoint slide shows and departmental time sheets -- is once again called upon to save the world from a diabolical fanatic who plans to open a portal to call forth a nightmare from the vast reaches of spacetime, at the cost of thousands of lives. Sounds like a typical Laundry Files novel, yes? But there the typical ends. The diabolical fanatic is a reverend; and Bob must team up with a couple of "external assets": Persephone "the Duchess" Hazard (code name: Bashful Incendiary) and Jonathan "Johnny" McTavish (code name: Johnny Prince).
Now we have the Laundry, a [fictional] revenant division of SOE. But the Laundry is a peacetime organization, as bureaucratic (in its own way) as MI5/SIS. However, the threats the Laundry needs to deal with will from time to time require highly skilled operatives (wizards, in the terminology of the uninitiated) who can act autonomously. And it's also the case that most sorcerers of great power don't work well within a bureaucratic framework. So there is a mechanism for handling such operatives. The mechanism is designed to protect the organization from the depredations of loose cannons, while providing said loose cannons with [disposable] cannon fodder when they need backup. Within the Laundry in general, the high-level types are known as Mahogany Row; but to the security-cleared folks who work directly with them, they're External Assets.
And Bob is going to undergo an extremely hair-raising apprenticeship that will take him right out of the bureaucracy and give him more than enough rope to hang himself, when I get round to writing book number 5.
For those familiar with the Laundry Files series, Bob Howard's superior, DSS James Angleton (aka Eater of Souls), sits on Mahogany Row. 'Nuff said about that. I don't want to delve too much into TAC as I promised Charlie there wouldn't be any spoilers (well, at least not too many), as the book won't be published until July. So let me get back to the editing.
This was the first book I've edited or copyedited in which the publisher asked that I provide a style sheet! I was quite surprised, to say the least, especially since no style sheet was required for the previous title, The Fuller Memorandum. I always maintain a style sheet for every book that I work on. I keep a "running tab," so to speak, by chapter: I write down every person, organization, and place, every special word, word forms, and so on. I do this by chapter in case I have to reference back to a certain person/place/date/thing; in this way I can find its first appearance easily. But for Ace Books, I had to go beyond my typical style sheet. I first provided a list of my references, in order of preference; I then provided a list of "general rules" as follows:
American English spelling (except where noted below)Of course, there was another list of rules entitled "Rules Specific to The Apocalypse Codex." Even with all these rules, I'll be the first to admit that the four Laundry Files books are not perfect, but I've done my best to keep them as consistent as possible. Certainly not an easy task, and many times while working on TAC I had to open up the files for The Atrocity Archives and/or The Jennifer Morgue in search of a particular word form or phrase.
American English punctuation
But maintain British idioms and speech patterns, particularly collective nouns followed by a plural verb (e.g. the committee have)
Adverbs ending in "ly" that modify an adjective or participle require no hyphen
Blonde – feminine form ends in "e"
Comma preceding final "too"
Serial commas
Possessive "s" after all singular nouns/proper nouns ending in "s" (e.g. Barnes's)
Signs: initial caps and italicized
Time: no hyphen when numerals are used; before noon/after noon designation in lowercase with periods (e.g. six thirty a.m./p.m.)
Titles with no ending periods (e.g. Mr and Dr)
Charlie also uses an inordinate number of acronyms and organizations throughout each novel. In the first two books, I included a "Glossary of Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Organizations," but this was abandoned beginning with the first Ace title. So I essentially had to resurrect the glossary for this style guide. Here are just a few entries (not inclusive) under the heading "People, Organizations, etc. Specific to the Laundry Files":
Dansey House – Laundry HQ, being rebuiltIn addition, the style guide included a section strictly for acronyms, as well as two final sections entitled "Miscellaneous Proper Nouns" and "Miscellaneous Words, Word Forms, Neologisms, etc."
Dominique "Mo" O'Brien – Bob's wife; aka agent CANDID
Dunwich Village – secret Laundry training and R&R center
Field Support Engineering, or FSE (formerly Q Division in previous novels), aka Facilities
Gerald "Gerry" Lockhart – manager of external assets
New Annex – Bob's departmental offices
New Life Church – located in Colorado Springs; where Reverend Schiller will hold his lovefest
Other Place – magical realm where sorcerers go
Pinky and the Brain, or Pinky and Brains – Bob's former roommates, who work for Facilities
Raymond Schiller, Pastor or Reverend or Father – head of the Golden Promise Ministries
Sunningdale Park – HR civil service corporate training center
The most involved part was transcribing my own personal chapter-based style guide into a section-based style guide for Ace Books, being sure that I didn't overlook any critical entries. I submitted the edited manuscript to Ace Books by the due date, which was definitely a satisfying conclusion to this project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Charles Stross for his support and referral, and for his continued faith in the quality of my work; I would also like to thank Michelle Kasper, Production Editor at Ace/Berkley Books, for yet another opportunity to contribute to the success of the Laundry Files series.
One last note: Charlie has based each of the four Laundry Files novels on the particular style of a British espionage/mystery novelist. The Atrocity Archives was written in the style of Len Deighton, and Charlie even included an Afterword -- entitled "Inside the Fear Factory" -- in which he spoke of Deighton at length, and in which he equated the spy novel with horror fiction. The second novel, The Jennifer Morgue
, was written in the style of Ian Fleming -- "Howard; Bob Howard. Capital Laundry Services, import/export division." -- with a twist at the end as to the identity of the "good Bond girl." Volume three, The Fuller Memorandum, was written in the style of Anthony Price, a novelist with whom I was unfamiliar until I worked on TFM. Which brings us to the present, and The Apocalypse Codex. Does the fact that Bob Howard teams up with a pair of agents -- a female and a male, the Duchess and Johnny McTavish -- ring any literary bells? How about Peter O'Donnell, creator of the character Modesty Blaise, along with her right-hand-man, Willie Garvin.
January 24, 2012
(Belated) December Links & Things
Whoa... hard to believe that we're in week four of January and I still have yet to post my December links and things. I do have a lot of excuses, like the holidays (and recovery from same), multiple computer, software, and network issues (some good, including a new ASUS Zenbook; most not so good; but all very time consuming), as well as a huge project -- 271,000-plus words! -- I just proofed and copyedited for Night Shade Books (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan1) that took far longer than I had anticipated. And I'm still dealing with the aftermath of my mother's passing: emails, phone calls, photocopying, meetings, forms to complete and notarize, and yet another trip to Southern California planned for next week.
But, as they say -- whoever "they" are -- that's life. And better that than the alternative, to be sure.
In fact, by the time I finish typing up and posting these December links it will be time to type up January's links... sigh....
I want to remind you that February 3 is the deadline to sign up for the last Alien Contact
giveaway, hosted by SciFiChick.com. The giveaway is open to US residents (a print copy giveaway) and non-US residents (an ebook copy giveaway). So follow the link to SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post entitled "Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks..." and be sure to sign up for the giveaway.
And speaking of Alien Contact: Michael at The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review blog just posted his December Reading Log, and he had these kind words to say about the anthology:
Now, on to the links: This is my belated monthly wrap-up of December's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. There is a lot of content this time around, so please return for a second visit if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.
Since I'm encouraging you to follow me on Twitter, here are teasers from Angela James's (@angelajames) "10 things authors should know about Twitter": 1) When you start your tweet with the @ symbol... 2) If you have your tweets protected... 3) You should not, really ever, I mean never, query or pitch an editor or agent on Twitter... 4) Please don't use Twitter DMs (or Facebook messages) to do business... 5) Just because the editor/agent is on Twitter at 11pm on a Friday night... 6) When we say you should "engage" on Twitter... 7) You should be talking about other people's books... 8) And while we're on the subject of promotion... 9) It's a good idea to be mindful... and 10) Twitter should be fun. For all the details: Angela James's blog. (via @ColleenLindsay)
In 1963, at the ripe old age of sixteen, Bruce McAllister (1988 Hugo and Nebula awards finalist for "Dream Baby"; 2007 Hugo Award finalist for "Kin") sent out a 4-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors to learn if "they consciously planted symbols in their work." Remember, this was long before the internet and email: the authors had to be tracked down, envelopes addressed and mailed, etc. He hoped the surveys would "settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren't lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery." Bruce has been sitting on 65 of those responses for all these years, and thanks to the Paris Review , we can now view many of these questionnaire responses from the likes of Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer. This is amazing stuff! Not to be missed! The PR article was posted on December 5; on December 17, less than two weeks later, PR Online reported that they had 120,000 page views of the McAllister survey article -- the most page views they've ever had!
Ari Marmell (@mouseferatu) on the need for professional editing in a blog post entitled "Pro Means Pro": "I'm not going to identify the novel or the author. What I will say is that this was a self-published novel on Kindle, written by someone who has published multiple books with major publishers in the past, and whose past books I very much enjoyed....Formatting-wise, though? Error-wise? A disaster of brobdingnagian proportions....You want to be a pro? You want people to treat you as a pro, and the burgeoning field of modern self-publishing as a professional one? Act it." (via L. L. Soares's FB page)
"I can't plot my way out of a paper bag," begins Kameron Hurley (@KameronHurley) in blog post "Write Fast. Fail Hard." She goes on to say: "At some point, you have to make a choice. You can continue to focus on your strengths, and create the most epic worldbuilding/character wandering novel ever that you can never sell, or you can tuck those talents into your hindbrain and put them on autopilot while you actively concentrate on what you're bad at."
Kay Kenyon (@kaykenyon) welcomes guest blogger Brian McDonald, an award-winning writer/director/producer, who shares with readers "What is the job of a storyteller?": "Notice that in the title for this piece, I said storyteller rather than writer. That is because it is my belief that we use the wrong verb to describe what we do....We know that stories existed long before anyone learned to write them down. We know that those cultures that were late in adopting written language had a long tradition of storytelling. Would you call people with no concept of writing 'writers'?... In my book The Golden Theme
I explore the idea of why human beings tell stories. Why does every culture on earth tell stories? Because stories teach us to survive. This is why stories need conflict – because conflict is what we need to learn how to survive. No one needs to learn how to survive the good times." McDonald goes on to call the storyteller "a noble and important job."
A book I recently added to my own library is Rudy Rucker's (@rudytheelder) autobiography Nested Scrolls
(Tor Books). io9 has posted an excerpt from Rucker's book entitled "The Death of Philip K. Dick and the Birth of Cyberpunk." Here's an excerpt from the excerpt: "I first met my fellow cyberpunks Sterling, Gibson, and Shiner in September of 1983 at a world science fiction convention in Baltimore.... Gibson was a remarkable guy, and I liked him immediately. He was tall, with an unusually thin and somewhat flexible-looking head. At one of the con parties, he told me he was high on some SF-sounding drug I'd never heard of. Perfect. He was bright, funny, intense, and with a comfortable Virginia accent.... I met the other canonical cyberpunk, John Shirley, two years later, in 1985, when he and I were both staying with Bruce and Nancy Sterling in Austin, Texas, in town for the North American science fiction convention, which was featuring a panel on cyberpunk. John was a trip. When I woke up on Sterling's couch in the morning, he'd be leaning over me, staring at my face. 'I'm trying to analyze the master's vibes,' he told me...." Not to be missed.2
James Gunn, Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, has announced a new magazine, Ad Astra , which is now open for submissions. "We are looking for submissions that express the idea of gathering knowledge and sharing it with others as a central element of the story or article." Check the link for submission guidelines. (via Cynthia Ward's FB page)
From mediabistro.com's @ebooknewser: "John W. Campbell...is widely considered one of the giants of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While he is not a famous author, he was the editor in chief of Analog SF Magazine. He held this post from late 1937 until his death in 1971....[This free ebook] is a collection of the editorials that Campbell wrote in most of the issues of Analog. But it's not a complete set, just the ones that were selected by Harry Harrison." This free ebook is available from the Internet Archive in a variety of formats, including PDF, Kindle, and mobi.
And mediabistro.com's @galleycat reports that the mysterious Voynich Manuscript is now available for viewing online courtesy of the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. From the library: "Written in Central Europe at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, the origin, language, and date of the Voynich Manuscript—named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912—are still being debated as vigorously as its puzzling drawings and undeciphered text. Described as a magical or scientific text, nearly every page contains botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings of a provincial but lively character, drawn in ink with vibrant washes in various shades of green, brown, yellow, blue, and red."
From Reuters via Yahoo!news: Action Comics No. 1, which featured the debut of Superman, and with a cover price of 10-cents when it was published in 1938, has sold in an online auction for a record $2.16 million. U.S.-based ComicConnect described it as "the most important comic book in the history of comics.... What makes this copy so special...is it's the highest graded copy known to exist -- it's a 9.0 on a scale of one to 10." (via @AuthorAnswers)
SPACEdotcom reports that the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office launched a secret robotic space plane, the X-37B, on March 5, 2011. The vehicle was boosted into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas 5 rocket. As of November 30 -- 270 days later -- the spacecraft was nearing an orbital flight record. When this flight finally does end, "it is designed to carry out an automatic guided-entry-and-wheels-down runway landing, likely at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with neighboring Edwards Air Force Base serving as a backup." The article links to a set of 20 very cool photos.
---------------Footnotes:
1. If I may be so bold as to promote myself, Jonathan Strahan (@Jonathan Strahan) sent out this tweet after receiving the page proofs copyedits:
But, as they say -- whoever "they" are -- that's life. And better that than the alternative, to be sure.
In fact, by the time I finish typing up and posting these December links it will be time to type up January's links... sigh....
I want to remind you that February 3 is the deadline to sign up for the last Alien Contact
giveaway, hosted by SciFiChick.com. The giveaway is open to US residents (a print copy giveaway) and non-US residents (an ebook copy giveaway). So follow the link to SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post entitled "Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks..." and be sure to sign up for the giveaway.And speaking of Alien Contact: Michael at The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review blog just posted his December Reading Log, and he had these kind words to say about the anthology:
Alien Contact edited by Marty Halpern – Ranging from first contact and last contact to vacationers visiting an alien's home world and being, typically, obnoxious guests, Alien Contact compiles one of the most diverse collections of modern stories concerning the "other." Highly recommended....
Now, on to the links: This is my belated monthly wrap-up of December's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. There is a lot of content this time around, so please return for a second visit if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.
Since I'm encouraging you to follow me on Twitter, here are teasers from Angela James's (@angelajames) "10 things authors should know about Twitter": 1) When you start your tweet with the @ symbol... 2) If you have your tweets protected... 3) You should not, really ever, I mean never, query or pitch an editor or agent on Twitter... 4) Please don't use Twitter DMs (or Facebook messages) to do business... 5) Just because the editor/agent is on Twitter at 11pm on a Friday night... 6) When we say you should "engage" on Twitter... 7) You should be talking about other people's books... 8) And while we're on the subject of promotion... 9) It's a good idea to be mindful... and 10) Twitter should be fun. For all the details: Angela James's blog. (via @ColleenLindsay)
In 1963, at the ripe old age of sixteen, Bruce McAllister (1988 Hugo and Nebula awards finalist for "Dream Baby"; 2007 Hugo Award finalist for "Kin") sent out a 4-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors to learn if "they consciously planted symbols in their work." Remember, this was long before the internet and email: the authors had to be tracked down, envelopes addressed and mailed, etc. He hoped the surveys would "settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren't lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery." Bruce has been sitting on 65 of those responses for all these years, and thanks to the Paris Review , we can now view many of these questionnaire responses from the likes of Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer. This is amazing stuff! Not to be missed! The PR article was posted on December 5; on December 17, less than two weeks later, PR Online reported that they had 120,000 page views of the McAllister survey article -- the most page views they've ever had!
Ari Marmell (@mouseferatu) on the need for professional editing in a blog post entitled "Pro Means Pro": "I'm not going to identify the novel or the author. What I will say is that this was a self-published novel on Kindle, written by someone who has published multiple books with major publishers in the past, and whose past books I very much enjoyed....Formatting-wise, though? Error-wise? A disaster of brobdingnagian proportions....You want to be a pro? You want people to treat you as a pro, and the burgeoning field of modern self-publishing as a professional one? Act it." (via L. L. Soares's FB page)
"I can't plot my way out of a paper bag," begins Kameron Hurley (@KameronHurley) in blog post "Write Fast. Fail Hard." She goes on to say: "At some point, you have to make a choice. You can continue to focus on your strengths, and create the most epic worldbuilding/character wandering novel ever that you can never sell, or you can tuck those talents into your hindbrain and put them on autopilot while you actively concentrate on what you're bad at."
Kay Kenyon (@kaykenyon) welcomes guest blogger Brian McDonald, an award-winning writer/director/producer, who shares with readers "What is the job of a storyteller?": "Notice that in the title for this piece, I said storyteller rather than writer. That is because it is my belief that we use the wrong verb to describe what we do....We know that stories existed long before anyone learned to write them down. We know that those cultures that were late in adopting written language had a long tradition of storytelling. Would you call people with no concept of writing 'writers'?... In my book The Golden Theme
I explore the idea of why human beings tell stories. Why does every culture on earth tell stories? Because stories teach us to survive. This is why stories need conflict – because conflict is what we need to learn how to survive. No one needs to learn how to survive the good times." McDonald goes on to call the storyteller "a noble and important job."A book I recently added to my own library is Rudy Rucker's (@rudytheelder) autobiography Nested Scrolls
(Tor Books). io9 has posted an excerpt from Rucker's book entitled "The Death of Philip K. Dick and the Birth of Cyberpunk." Here's an excerpt from the excerpt: "I first met my fellow cyberpunks Sterling, Gibson, and Shiner in September of 1983 at a world science fiction convention in Baltimore.... Gibson was a remarkable guy, and I liked him immediately. He was tall, with an unusually thin and somewhat flexible-looking head. At one of the con parties, he told me he was high on some SF-sounding drug I'd never heard of. Perfect. He was bright, funny, intense, and with a comfortable Virginia accent.... I met the other canonical cyberpunk, John Shirley, two years later, in 1985, when he and I were both staying with Bruce and Nancy Sterling in Austin, Texas, in town for the North American science fiction convention, which was featuring a panel on cyberpunk. John was a trip. When I woke up on Sterling's couch in the morning, he'd be leaning over me, staring at my face. 'I'm trying to analyze the master's vibes,' he told me...." Not to be missed.2James Gunn, Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, has announced a new magazine, Ad Astra , which is now open for submissions. "We are looking for submissions that express the idea of gathering knowledge and sharing it with others as a central element of the story or article." Check the link for submission guidelines. (via Cynthia Ward's FB page)
From mediabistro.com's @ebooknewser: "John W. Campbell...is widely considered one of the giants of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While he is not a famous author, he was the editor in chief of Analog SF Magazine. He held this post from late 1937 until his death in 1971....[This free ebook] is a collection of the editorials that Campbell wrote in most of the issues of Analog. But it's not a complete set, just the ones that were selected by Harry Harrison." This free ebook is available from the Internet Archive in a variety of formats, including PDF, Kindle, and mobi.
And mediabistro.com's @galleycat reports that the mysterious Voynich Manuscript is now available for viewing online courtesy of the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. From the library: "Written in Central Europe at the end of the 15th or during the 16th century, the origin, language, and date of the Voynich Manuscript—named after the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912—are still being debated as vigorously as its puzzling drawings and undeciphered text. Described as a magical or scientific text, nearly every page contains botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings of a provincial but lively character, drawn in ink with vibrant washes in various shades of green, brown, yellow, blue, and red."
From Reuters via Yahoo!news: Action Comics No. 1, which featured the debut of Superman, and with a cover price of 10-cents when it was published in 1938, has sold in an online auction for a record $2.16 million. U.S.-based ComicConnect described it as "the most important comic book in the history of comics.... What makes this copy so special...is it's the highest graded copy known to exist -- it's a 9.0 on a scale of one to 10." (via @AuthorAnswers)
SPACEdotcom reports that the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office launched a secret robotic space plane, the X-37B, on March 5, 2011. The vehicle was boosted into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas 5 rocket. As of November 30 -- 270 days later -- the spacecraft was nearing an orbital flight record. When this flight finally does end, "it is designed to carry out an automatic guided-entry-and-wheels-down runway landing, likely at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with neighboring Edwards Air Force Base serving as a backup." The article links to a set of 20 very cool photos.
---------------Footnotes:
1. If I may be so bold as to promote myself, Jonathan Strahan (@Jonathan Strahan) sent out this tweet after receiving the page proofs copyedits:
Hats off to @martyhalpern for another topnotch copyedit job on the Best of the Year. Along with @lossrockhart an unsung hero of the series!2. I personally know, and have visited with, Rudy Rucker; I interviewed him back in the '80s for a small 'zine; and I recently wrote about these meetings and interview in a blog post about PKD and Rudy Rucker, completely unrelated to Rucker's autobiography.
January 19, 2012
Close to the EDGE....
Kilian Melloy, Assistant Arts Editor for EDGE, poses some difficult questions for me in this
Alien Contact
interview, originally posted on EDGE:Boston.
When Kilian asked:
I responded:
You can read the full interview, including my response to this, the last question:
---------------
Footnote:
1. My previous blog post, just prior to the publication of Is Anybody Out There?
on Paul Davies and his book The Eerie Silence.
interview, originally posted on EDGE:Boston.When Kilian asked:
As a follow-up to last year's Is Anybody Out There? (which you co-edited with Nick Gevers for Daw Books), Alien Contact is a logical theme. Both books pose big philosophical questions. Is Anybody Out There? examined the paradox of why, if there is alien intelligence in the galaxy (as, mathematically, there ought to be) no extraterrestrial race has yet, to our knowledge, paid Earth a visit. Do you have a personal opinion on the best explanation for this conundrum?
I responded:
There are others who are far more qualified to respond to this question than I am... I would have to agree with Paul Davies1, whose book The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was published nearly simultaneously with Is Anybody Out There? Davies states that focusing on radio signals for 50 years of the SETI project has been to no avail; we need to start thinking out of the box. One suggestion Davies makes is that ET might use biological organisms as a means of sending information, so we should dispatch retroviruses that would insert DNA into any found DNA-based organism. Coincidentally, the British edition of The Eerie Silence from Allen Lane Publishers is subtitled Are We Alone in the Universe?
You can read the full interview, including my response to this, the last question:
The collection includes a story by a well-known anti-gay writer, as well as one whose remarks on a blog got her disinvited as Guest of Honor from a convention a couple of years ago because some people saw her remarks as bigoted. When it comes to publishing a story by a writer who has generated such controversy, do you simply ignore his politics and rely on the quality of his work? Or do you have to weigh the political against the artistic when making your choices?
---------------
Footnote:
1. My previous blog post, just prior to the publication of Is Anybody Out There?
on Paul Davies and his book The Eerie Silence.
January 10, 2012
To the Core...
Keith Soltys reviews
Alien Contact
on his blog Core Dump 2.0. Here's the concluding paragraph to Keith's review, which I believe speaks to the heart (the core!) of Alien Contact:
Keith isn't a book blogger, per se; his blog is subtitled "Things that interest me," in which he blogs "about science and technology, music, technical communication, computers and software, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like writing about." Hopefully his review of Alien Contact will reach a wider audience than just strictly book readers, and science fiction book readers at that.
on his blog Core Dump 2.0. Here's the concluding paragraph to Keith's review, which I believe speaks to the heart (the core!) of Alien Contact:Alien Contact is a strong anthology that showcases the diversity of modern SF. Given how central the idea of alien contact is to science fiction, you might think that all of the good ideas were taken long ago, but this anthology demonstrates clearly that that's not the case.
Keith isn't a book blogger, per se; his blog is subtitled "Things that interest me," in which he blogs "about science and technology, music, technical communication, computers and software, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like writing about." Hopefully his review of Alien Contact will reach a wider audience than just strictly book readers, and science fiction book readers at that.
January 8, 2012
Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks...
...is the title of my guest blog post on SciFiChick.com, whom I would like to thank for providing me the opportunity -- and the space -- to share with a new group of readers some background on my
Alien Contact
anthology.
Here's an excerpt from my blog post:
Following my guest blog post is yet another Alien Contact giveaway: An opportunity for a US reader to win a signed/inscribed print edition, and for a non-US reader to win an ebook edition. The deadline to enter this giveaway is February 4. [Note: This is the final Alien Contact giveaway!]
Please check out SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post while you're there, and be sure to sign up for the giveaway if you don't already own a copy of Alien Contact. (And if you don't, why not?)
anthology.Here's an excerpt from my blog post:
By April 2011, I had finalized the story order for my Alien Contact anthology. So I was ready to announce the contents list. Most anthologists accomplish this by simply posting a list of the stories. SF news sites pick it up, as do SF bloggers and tweeters, and that's how readers learn of an anthology's contents. But a list is, well, a list — and boring.
I had already invested more than two years in putting together this anthology, and I was determined to maintain that energy level until the book was published. So, after a bit of brainstorming, I decided to blog about each of the stories — one story each week, in their order of appearance — over the course of twenty-six weeks, concluding by the end of October, just in time for the book's publication.
[...]
...if the reader thinks of Alien Contact as a DVD, then these twenty-six weeks of blog posts serve as the DVD extras....
Following my guest blog post is yet another Alien Contact giveaway: An opportunity for a US reader to win a signed/inscribed print edition, and for a non-US reader to win an ebook edition. The deadline to enter this giveaway is February 4. [Note: This is the final Alien Contact giveaway!]
Please check out SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post while you're there, and be sure to sign up for the giveaway if you don't already own a copy of Alien Contact. (And if you don't, why not?)
January 5, 2012
Ommmmmmmmmmm....
Coming soon....
December 27, 2011
Grasping at Aliens
In previous blog posts I've mentioned the significant role that book review bloggers play in today's publishing wars -- by bringing titles that aren't always reviewed by the mainstream press to the attention of book readers and buyers. Take
Alien Contact
for example: it's an all-reprint anthology from independent press Night Shade Books, and even though the book contains stories by such "name" authors as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to name only three, it hasn't gotten a great deal of attention amongst mainstream publications, with the exception of
Library Journal
and
The Guardian
.That's why book review blogs are so important to an anthology like Alien Contact and to a publisher like Night Shade Books. A typical reader doesn't have access to Kirkus Reviews or Publishers Weekly -- mostly because these publications are designed for libraries and bookstores and are far too expensive. But what a typical reader does have access to are the hundreds (thousands?) of free online book review blogs, such as John Ottinger's "Grasping for the Wind science fiction & fantasy news & reviews" blog.
I mention this blog specifically because John recently reviewed my Alien Contact anthology.
What I appreciate in particular about this review is that John addresses each of the twenty-six stories in the anthology. He doesn't necessarily like, or even understand, all of the stories, but he gives equal attention to each, which allows the reader to assess the overall content and quality of the book as a whole. As the book's editor, I'm gratified to see every author mentioned, not just the most popular or well-known authors.
Here are just a couple (well, maybe three) of Ottinger's individual story reviews:
Karen Joy Fowler's "Face Value" is a tragic story of a man and wife team sent to an alien planet to make contact with the moth-like intelligence found there. Taki is the xenobiologist and Hesper, his wife, a poet. Taki thrives, but Hesper becomes more and more depressed until even her poet's soul is lost. Fowler's sad story is about transcendence and the place where beauty comes from. It's about relationship too. Taki and Hesper's inability to understand one another has its echo in Taki's inability to communicate with the natives. There is a haunting beauty to Fowler's story that will leave you pondering long after you read it.
I have to admit that I don't really get "Guerrilla Mural of Siren's Song" by Ernest Hogan. The story appears to be about a street artist who encounters sirens deep in the winds of Jupiter. It's also a love paean to a dead woman. Art and experience combine in an experiential tale of whirling emotions and unreliable narration. It's likely to be the favorite story in the anthology of people with a less analytical and more artistic bent than myself, but for me it was rather confusing.
"If Nudity Offends You" by Elizabeth Moon is another story I have read before. In this one, a court secretary, living in a trailer park, finds that her neighbors have been illegally tapping into her electricity. Most of the story is about her confrontation with these odd foreigners who wear no clothes in their trailer, talk funny, and seem slightly off. The whole story builds up to a surprise ending that makes you wonder if these foreigners were not just from a distant land, but from a different planet entirely. It's a close encounter that is discovered only after the fact.
John concludes his review with the following observation:
Alien Contact is a title that might be slightly misleading. This is not an anthology of first contacts but rather a collection of encounters with the other, what we choose to call the alien, the ineffable, the different and unknowable. Halpern's anthology is an excellent collection of tales that share a theme in common, but that manage to postulate widely different scenarios
As I said, these are only three of the twenty-six individual story reviews; for John Ottinger's complete review, please click on over to Grasping for the Wind.
Redux: Another Alien Contact Giveaway
Just a reminder that this current giveaway [there will be yet another after the new year] ends in 4 days for a print edition (US residents) and ebook edition (non-US residents) of my
Alien Contact
anthology. To be eligible FTW you only need to send a very, very brief email -- no blog comment required, no Facebook "Like," no retweeting -- just an email with either your mailing address (US residents) or your country (non-US residents).
Click on over to Mad Hatter's Review blog for the details on how to enter the giveaway for a copy of Alien Contact. The deadline is midnight, December 31st.
Happy New Year everyone! And happy reading
anthology. To be eligible FTW you only need to send a very, very brief email -- no blog comment required, no Facebook "Like," no retweeting -- just an email with either your mailing address (US residents) or your country (non-US residents).Click on over to Mad Hatter's Review blog for the details on how to enter the giveaway for a copy of Alien Contact. The deadline is midnight, December 31st.
Happy New Year everyone! And happy reading
The Meaning of "Going Home"
This is a different type of blog post for me: I'm going to promote a contest, but not one of my own. And the subject of this contest is contrary to something I firmly believe: that we shouldn't analyze fiction to death (as is done in typical high school English Lit classes... gag!) but rather to simply enjoy the totality of the reading experience. But with that said....
This contest is sponsored by two of my favorite authors: my friend, Bruce McAllister, whose Hugo Award-nominated story "Kin graces the pages of my
Alien Contact
anthology; and Barry Malzberg, who co-edited (with Edward L. Ferman) one of the best SF anthologies ever, Final Stage1.
First, the caveat: This contest is open to Facebook members only. If you are an FB user, then simply "friend" Bruce McAllister and you are good to go. If not, then just sign up for a free account and then search for -- and "friend" -- Bruce McAllister. FB is no big deal, it's not painful, and you don't have to use the app after you sign up -- other than for this contest, of course.
Bruce and Barry have co-written a story entitled "Going Home" that was published in the February 2012 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Now I realize we're still in 2011, but this particular issue has already been printed. In fact, the Asimov's website currently features this February issue. You may be an Asimov's subscriber, or you can find copies on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and certainly at your favorite SF specialty store, and online as well, including ebook editions. And Asimov's has donated 15 copies of the issue to Bruce McAllister for readers who wish to participate in this contest but for one reason or another are unable to obtain a copy.
Here's the issue, and the reason for the contest: Even though Bruce and Barry have co-written "Going Home," they do not agree on the story's meaning. According to Bruce's Facebook post on December 16:
So here's a chance for you to put those interpretive skills you honed in your English Lit class to good use, and possibly score a free copy of the award-nominated Dream Baby from Bruce and the award-winning Beyond Apollo from Barry. And, I assume, the authors will gladly sign/inscribe their respective books for the winners, too.
Courtesy of the authors, here's the opening paragraph to "Going Home":
As Bruce states on his Facebook page: "Finally, after 40 years, got to co-write a story with old friend and mentor Barry Malzberg."
---------------Footnote:
1. If you should choose to track down a copy of the Ferman and Malzberg anthology Final Stage, be sure to seek out the reprint Penguin edition only -- not the original Charterhouse hardcover edition. There was some controversy regarding the hardcover edition because a number of the stories were revised and edited by the publisher's editor without Ferman's or Malzberg's -- or any of the affected authors -- knowledge or permission. The original texts of all the stories were restored in the Penguin reprint edition. Anthology historian Bud Webster has written a lengthy essay on the original Charterhouse edition entitled "Anthology 101: The (Non)Final Stage" that you'll find quite enlightening, with input from Ferman, Malzberg, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, and others.
This contest is sponsored by two of my favorite authors: my friend, Bruce McAllister, whose Hugo Award-nominated story "Kin graces the pages of my
Alien Contact
anthology; and Barry Malzberg, who co-edited (with Edward L. Ferman) one of the best SF anthologies ever, Final Stage1.First, the caveat: This contest is open to Facebook members only. If you are an FB user, then simply "friend" Bruce McAllister and you are good to go. If not, then just sign up for a free account and then search for -- and "friend" -- Bruce McAllister. FB is no big deal, it's not painful, and you don't have to use the app after you sign up -- other than for this contest, of course.
Bruce and Barry have co-written a story entitled "Going Home" that was published in the February 2012 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Now I realize we're still in 2011, but this particular issue has already been printed. In fact, the Asimov's website currently features this February issue. You may be an Asimov's subscriber, or you can find copies on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and certainly at your favorite SF specialty store, and online as well, including ebook editions. And Asimov's has donated 15 copies of the issue to Bruce McAllister for readers who wish to participate in this contest but for one reason or another are unable to obtain a copy.
Here's the issue, and the reason for the contest: Even though Bruce and Barry have co-written "Going Home," they do not agree on the story's meaning. According to Bruce's Facebook post on December 16:
The Asimov's issue with "Going Home" is out and should hit the stands soon. After a brief email exchange yesterday, however, Barry and I discovered we're not at all in agreement about what the story means. (Yeah, you'd think -- co-authors and everything -- but no....) So a contest: FREE copies of my novel Dream Baby and Barry Malzberg's John Campbell Award winner Beyond Apollo to the three readers out there who can come up with the most creative (read: insightful and/or deranged) interpretations of the story. 500 words max. Deadline -- March 15 [2012]. FB members only, yes. Winning entries (or excerpts) will be posted here with much fanfare. This should be fun.
So here's a chance for you to put those interpretive skills you honed in your English Lit class to good use, and possibly score a free copy of the award-nominated Dream Baby from Bruce and the award-winning Beyond Apollo from Barry. And, I assume, the authors will gladly sign/inscribe their respective books for the winners, too.
Courtesy of the authors, here's the opening paragraph to "Going Home":
Bob—Arrogant as this sounds, I've decided I'm going to bring the Golden Age of Science Fiction back even if I have to do it single-handedly. It's been lost for a long time, and someone's got to bring it back, given what's happening. Yes, I know, Mitchell Litton has been known for three decades for his cynical, earthbound, ankle-biting, technophobic, earthbound novels—and I wrote them because they were my truth at the time (the alcohol, two divorces, Chiara's pregnancy at 16, my mother's and sister's deaths in the same year, the bankruptcy, and the awards nastiness), but I remember what it was like to be young and read those stories; and now that I'm facing, as we all are with the slow spread of this "Armageddon virus" that's taking the world, my own mortality, I see now that those stories held older and bigger truths than the ones I delivered. In any case, I want to be part of it again. Like going home, yes.
—from "Going Home" by Bruce McAllister and
Barry Malzberg, Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2012
As Bruce states on his Facebook page: "Finally, after 40 years, got to co-write a story with old friend and mentor Barry Malzberg."
---------------Footnote:
1. If you should choose to track down a copy of the Ferman and Malzberg anthology Final Stage, be sure to seek out the reprint Penguin edition only -- not the original Charterhouse hardcover edition. There was some controversy regarding the hardcover edition because a number of the stories were revised and edited by the publisher's editor without Ferman's or Malzberg's -- or any of the affected authors -- knowledge or permission. The original texts of all the stories were restored in the Penguin reprint edition. Anthology historian Bud Webster has written a lengthy essay on the original Charterhouse edition entitled "Anthology 101: The (Non)Final Stage" that you'll find quite enlightening, with input from Ferman, Malzberg, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, and others.
