Book Received...Peter Watts

Arriving on my doorstep (actually, the mail carrier rang the doorbell, as he always does when there is a package to be delivered) is the most recent release from Tachyon Publications: the short story collection from Canadian SF writer Peter Watts.

I worked on Beyond the Rift back in June, and you can read more about that in my blog post entitled "Wattsworld," published on June 25, 2013.

The collection includes 13 of the author's most notable stories, including the Hugo Award-winning novelette "The Island." In "This Fall's Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books," Annalee Newitz for io9 writes:

A new book from crazy genius Watts is always cause for celebration — and this collection of short stories brings together some of his greatest work, including his mind-altering retelling of The Thing called "The Things." Known for his pitch-black views on human nature, and a breathtaking ability to explore the weird side of evolution and animal behavior, Watts is one of those writers who gets into your brain and remains lodged there like an angry, sentient tumor.

And author Paul Di Filippo, in his book review column for Barnes & Noble, had this to say about Beyond the Rift:

Canadian author Peter Watts is a biologist by training and a visionary by inclination. His novels are hard-edged yet coolly psychedelic extrapolations of our gene-modded future. Possessing the stern moral acuity of James Tiptree, he also exhibits the intellectual zest of Arthur C. Clarke. His afterword to his new story collection, Beyond the Rift, is one of the best essays in recent memory about the nature of the kind of science fiction that mates these qualities. Watts is expert at inhabiting the mind of the Other, whether it's a Cambellian shape-shifting alien in "The Things," a future soldier high on techno Rapture in "A Word for Heathens," or a deep-sea dweller with mysterious origins in "Home." His killer opening sentences ("First Contact was supposed to solve everything"; "Wescott was glad when it finally stopped breathing") are rabbit holes to strange futures.

Firefly-class Serenity

"They" say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case, this one photo is simply not enough to do justice to this amazing wonderwork: a minifig-scale model of the Serenity spacecraft created with Legos. That's right, boys and girls: Legos!

This model was recently featured on io9:

The designer is 37-year-old Adrian Drake. According to Adrian, the model took 475 hours to build over a span of 21 months; it measures 7 feet 2 inches in length, weighs 135 pounds, and contains approximately 70,000 lego pieces. Adrian states that he spent $800.00 specifically for the model in addition to the "many many many thousands of dollars I've spent on Lego over the years."

Adrian debuted the Serenity on August 4 at Brickfair in Chantilly, Virginia. And to get a sense of the size of this model, you need to see this picture, taken at the Brickfair:

But even this photo doesn't do this masterpiece justice -- because... the interior features the bridge (in fact, Wash has his toy dinosaur to hand), crew accommodations, the dining room, and cargo bay, plus Inara's shuttle. And, the cargo bay and Firefly drive light up.

Seeing is believing: Adrian has posted a 31-photo Flickr set entitled "Serenity Construction," and the coup de grâce: a 75-photo Flickr set featuring a look at the finished model, inside and out, from every angle imaginable.

Please do check out these 106 photos, which showcase Adrian Drake's Serenity.

Now, who's for getting out their Lego sets?

"Angel" -- A Visitor of a Different Kind

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

On July 21, nearly halfway into my 26-week project to blog about each of the 26 stories included in Alien Contact, I introduced Story #12 -- Pat Cadigan's "Angel."

When I posted my original blog about "Angel," I had Pat's permission at that time to reprint her story online in its entirety -- and I really wanted to do so, right here on More Red Ink. But io9.com had expressed an interest in a guest blog post from Pat, and, as a follow-up, I suggested they also post her story, "Angel," to which they agreed.

So, after much impatient waiting on my part, Pat Cadigan's very astute, very personal guest blog post -- entitled "Why Science Fiction Writers Love Meeting the Other" -- is now available on io9 for your reading pleasure.

In her guest blog post, Pat writes:

One of the first SF books I ever bought was an anthology called Invaders of Earth, edited by Groff Conklin.... Invaders of Earth was divided into three sections — invaders in the past, the present, and the future. I wish I could lay hands on that old book and name all the stories and authors.¹ I do remember Mildred Clingerman's "Minister Without Portfolio," in which a grandmother fails to recognise green-skinned people as aliens because she's colour-blind; there was also a story by Donald Wollheim about an attempted invasion by alien weather, and "The Greatest Tertian," told by Martians who uncover evidence on a dead Earth of its greatest hero, Sherk Oms.

Times sure have changed.

They've changed so much that if you were to put Conklin's Invaders of Earth side by side with Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern, you'd be tempted to think they were books from different planets. Which, of course, they are. The past isn't merely a different country — it's a whole different world.

There are nearly 1,500 words to this guest blog post; and if you enjoy reading speculative fiction, and alien contact stories in particular, you'll find much to appreciate in her essay.

And then, much to my delight, a few days later io9 graciously posted the full text of Pat's multi-award-nominated story "Angel." I still wish the story was here, on my blog, but I realize that the io9 website gets thousands (and thousands) of daily hits, which will definitely bring "Angel" -- and Pat Cadigan -- to the attention of a wider audience. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do!

P.S. One of the commenters to Pat's guest blog post included the following quote, which impressed me enough to include it here, just in case you don't read those blog comments:

Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

— The Prophecy, 1995, First Look Pictures

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Footnote:

1 Courtesy of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB.org), here are the contents to Groff Conklin's Invaders of Earth; sadly the listing isn't broken down in the three groups -- past, present, and future -- to which Pat refers. However, the online listing does include four additional uncredited essays having to do with the past and future. One other comment: I'm presenting the stories here as they are listed on ISFDB; you'll note that they are not in any particular order, so I'm assuming this may be the order (the Introduction aside) in which the stories appear in the anthology:

Invaders of Earth, Groff Conklin, editor, Vanguard Press, 1952.

"The Waveries" (1945) by Fredric Brown

"Tiny and the Monster" (1947) by Theodore Sturgeon

"Castaway" (1941) by Robert Moore Williams

"Not Only Dead Men" (1942) by A. E. van Vogt

"The Man in the Moon" (1943) by Henry A. Norton

"Impulse" (1938) by Eric Frank Russell

"Minister Without Portfolio" (1952) by Mildred Clingerman

"Crisis" (1951) by Edward Grendon

"Angel's Egg" (1951) by Edgar Pangborn

"Pen Pal" (1951) by Milton Lesser

"Pictures Don't Lie" (1951) by Katherine MacLean

"An Eel by the Tail" (1951) by Allen Kim Lang [as by Allen K. Lang ]

"Invasion from Mars" (1938) by Howard Koch

"The Discord Makers" (1950) by Mack Reynolds

"Child of Void" (1949) by Margaret St. Clair

"This Star Shall Be Free" (1949) by Murray Leinster

"A Date to Remember" (1949) by William F. Temple

"Will You Walk a Little Faster?" (1951) by William Tenn

"The Greatest Tertian" by Anthony Boucher

"Top Secret" (1948) by Donald A. Wollheim [as by David Grinnell ]

"Enemies in Space" (1907) by Karl Grunert

"Storm Warning" (1942) by Donald A. Wollheim [as by Millard Verne Gordon ]

"Introduction" by Groff Conklin

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #12

If you are wondering what's up with this Alien Contact anthology (forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November) and this "Story #12" -- you may want to begin here.

"Angel" by Pat Cadigan

This story was originally published in the May 1987 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and is approximately 6,800 words in length. And this was an excellent issue of IASFM, too. Just look at the names on the cover! -- plus additional stories by Bruce Boston, Dave Smeds, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Roger Dutcher & Robert Frazier.

If I may, I'd like to repeat three sentences from a blog post I wrote just over a year ago, on May 17, 2010. In that post I introduced a story -- "The Taste of Night" -- that appeared in my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books, 2010), and following that mini introduction, I posted the entire text of the story, serialized over three blog posts. If you look to the right of this blog post, under the header MOST POPULAR POSTS, you will see that, even more than a year later, that story remains one of the most read entries on this blog. Here are those three sentences:

I first met Pat Cadigan at my first ArmadilloCon in Austin, Texas, in 1988, and we've remained friends ever since. I recall writing to Pat prior to that convention, informing her that I was specifically reading some of her fiction ahead of time so that we could chat about it during the con. I was then, and always will be, a fan of her work.

Bottom line, there was no way that I would be involved in this anthology project and not include a story by Ms. Pat Cadigan. In fact, I had four stories from which to choose, and I read them each multiple times, but in the end I selected "Angel."

I asked Pat to share some thoughts on the story, and this is what she wrote:

"Angel" is still one of my favourite stories....it's my justification for never throwing anything away. I had thrown away the original typed draft because I couldn't come up with an ending. Later I reconstructed the story from handwritten drafts, and typed it up on the new computer I'd just bought—and there was the ending, along with the whole point of the story.

This story was actually a few years in the making.... What was significant about the time when I finally finished the story, what had changed between the time I started it and the time I finished it were two things: 1) I had just finished my first novel, and 2) I was a new mother. The former was a major milestone for me—after years of producing short fiction, I had had to learn how to think in terms of a whole forest rather than focusing on a single, intriguing tree, as it were. But the latter was really the more dramatic change. Having my son changed everything. Not just in the obvious ways, either. I like to believe that I became not just a better writer but a better person, not because I had all the answers but because I understood that I didn't. I like to think that I was finally able to finish "Angel" because being a parent showed me that there could be no neat ending, that you can try to do what's best but there's no certainty.

Understanding extraterrestrials will take some doing when we don't really understand ourselves—especially those of us who, through no choice of our own, were born outsiders.