We Have Alien Contact

Well, sort of.... "Alien Contact" is the working title for my reprint short fiction anthology, which has been sold to Night Shade Books for publication as a trade paperback in November 2011.

The purpose of this blog post is to solicit recommendations of "alien contact" stories that were previously published within the last 30 or so years. The oldest story I've listed in the database -- link provided below -- is from 1971. (I know, I know, that's nearly 40 years ago, but, hey, it's Stephen King!) Stories must be a maximum of 40,000 words (novella length). Keep in mind, however, that few novellas will be included in the anthology due to word count limitations. Please, no novels.

I have been gathering stories for this project for quite some time; in fact, I began my initial inquiries more than two years ago. If you have previously responded to my queries regarding this project, then hopefully you will find that your entry(s) is in the database already. The list numbers more than 100 stories -- so please check the database first to see if your story recommendation has been added before entering any data below.

I have far more stories already than I can possibly include in the anthology, so the purpose of this solicitation is to find those uniquely intriguing alien contact stories I may have overlooked. If you are a writer, you are welcome to recommend your own previously published work. As you can see from the current data, a number of authors have personally recommended their own stories to me.

I don't recall any Philip K. Dick stories that concern alien contact, but if you know of one, please comment below and add the story to the database. Thanks in advance.

Here is the link to the current listing: Alien Contact Reprint Story Database.

The listing was initially sorted by author's first name; new entries will be added to the bottom of the list.

If you don't find your recommendation in the existing database: Enter as much information about the story as possible. If all you know is the author and title, that's fine. Regarding the length of the story: if you don't know if it is a novella, novelette, or short story, just mark "short fiction" (this being the generic catch-all for those three categories).

On December 15, the entry form will be removed from this blog post. If you come upon this post on or after December 15, you can always leave a story recommendation within the Comment section below. I'm notified via email whenever a comment is posted to this blog.

(My thanks to John Joseph Adams for laying the groundwork -- at least for me -- for the use of Google Docs to create this response-gathering form and spreadsheet.)

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If you want to read the classic "alien contact" stories -- such as Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (the story in which the term "first contact" was originally coined, I believe) or Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey," to name but two -- I direct you to The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964, edited by Robert Silverberg. Or any number of other anthologies of classic SF, because these stories have been widely reprinted over the years, and the volumes are easily obtainable, if not through your local library, then via amazon.com or other secondary markets.

I'm hoping that a collection of contemporary "alien contact" stories will motivate readers new to this material to seek out more such stories, including the classics.

Realms of Fantasy Magazine Rises Yet Again

In true zombie-like fashion, Realms of Fantasy magazine -- thought to be defunct with the publication online of the December issue -- has found a new owner/publisher, Damnation Books, and will arise once more. This means that writers of fantasy fiction still have RoF as a pro market for their short stories. And I will hopefully be able to continue working for the magazine as I have for the past eight issues. Here's the official word(s):

Press Release

Contacts:
Warren Lapine
Or
Kim Richards
(707) 543-6227
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2:00 P.M.PST, November 8, 2010

Damnation Books LLC buys Realms of Fantasy Magazine

Warren Lapine, publisher of Realms of Fantasy Magazine and Kim Richards Gilchrist, CEO and co-owner of Damnation Books LLC announce the sale of Realms of Fantasy Magazine to Damnation Books LLC.

Fans of the largest fantasy magazine in the world will be pleased to know the December 2010 issue will go to print with the new ownership publishing the February 2011 issue. All subscriptions already paid for will be honored.

Future plans include continuing to produce the same quality fiction magazine in print and to expand digital editions for ebook and desktop readers. The April 2011 issue will be themed 'dark fantasy' to coincide with World Horror Convention 2011 where Damnation Books will be hosting a party, and a booth in the dealer's area.

The June 2011 issue is the 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy Magazine. Plans for a larger 'birthday bash' issue are already in place to celebrate this milestone.

Effective immediately, the magazine is reopening to submissions. Information for submitting stories and art can be found on the Realms of Fantasy website at www.rofmag.com. Advertising inquiries can also find information on the website or by writing to Realms of Fantasy.

The new mailing address is:

Realms of Fantasy
P.O. Box 1208
Santa Rosa, California 95402

Damnation Books LLC, publishes dark fiction as Damnation Books. They also own and operate Eternal Press, which is more romance and mainstream fiction. Please direct questions to Kim Richards Gilcrist at kim@damnationbooks.com.

Realms of Fantasy
http://www.rofmag.com

Damnation Books LLC
http://www.damnationbooks.com
http://www.eternalpress.biz

-End-

Catherynne M. Valente: Remixing Prester John

At Readercon in July, I had the pleasure of meeting -- and chatting with -- Catherynne M. Valente. You might recognize her name as the author of the novel Palimpsest (a city that is also a "sexually transmitted disease"), a finalist for the 2010 Hugo Award. In Palimpsest, November, one of the four protagonists in the story, recalls briefly her favorite book as a child, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. After the publication of Palimpsest, in 2009, when income became a necessity, Cat turned that children's book into an actual full-length, crowd-funded novel, which she published -- one chapter a week -- online. The novel has since been acquired by Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, for publication in 2011.

Meeting Cat Valente at Readercon turned out to be most propitious because shortly thereafter Night Shade Books assigned me the project to proof, line edit, and copyedit her forthcoming novel: The Habitation of the Blessed -- subtitled: A Dirge for Prester John, Volume One.

In 1165, a Letter of Prester John appeared throughout Europe. According to Wikipedia [I know... I know....] the letter was supposedly written to Emperor Immanuel Comnenus of Constantinople by Prester John, "descendant of one of the Three Magi and King of India. The many marvels of richness and magic it contained captured the imagination of Europeans, and it was translated into numerous languages....It circulated in ever more embellished form for centuries in manuscripts, a hundred examples of which still exist. The invention of printing perpetuated the letter's popularity in printed form; it was still current in popular culture during the period of European exploration. Part of the letter's essence was that a lost kingdom of Nestorian Christians still existed in the vastnesses of Central Asia." Cat Valente's novel opens with this letter, and then the author expands upon, remakes, and remixes the essence of this letter into one of the more unique stories -- and uniquely written stories -- that I have had the pleasure to read in a very long time. The fact that I also had the opportunity to work with the author on this book made it doubly rewarding.

The kingdom of Prester John is inhabited by strange beings such as the amyctryae ("whose mouths jut from their skulls and provide a deep bowl in which they brew all manner of things"), the astomii (who "have no mouths, but eat scent from the air itself"), the blemmyae (who "carry their faces in their chests and have no heads as men do"), the cametenna (who "have hands like boulders, but their fingers are deft"), and the panotii ("their great and silken ears drawn over their bodies like mourning veils"). And a great tree that bears books as its fruit, and from the fragments and remains of this fruit, we learn the story of Prester John, as told by Brother Hiob von Luzern, who happened upon this land during his missionary work in the Himalayas in 1699.

In a recent guest blog post on John Scalzi's "The Big Idea," Cat Valente states emphatically that The Habitation of the Blessed "is a science fiction novel." Included among the many points she makes is this one, on science: "It is a story rooted in science -- just not 21st century science. The series takes as a given that every legend and folktale concerning Prester John was true, including the Fountain of Youth, which came into Western myth with this very letter, and the various grotesque monsters which may or may not have been allegories for human failings, but here are given serious considerations as races and cultures with their own deep histories. So too Ptolemaic cosmology is taken wholly seriously, with the Crystalline Spheres a hard fact of the world. How this world changes into and acquired the physics of our own is part of the long game of the series." You can read more on Cat's Big Idea, which also includes a video entitled "Prester John: International Man of Mystery" -- the legend of Prester John as told by action figures. The vid, and more, can also be found on Prester John Online.

I was going to provide a snippet from the Publishers Weekly review of The Habitation, and then point you to the review itself, but it appears that the review tends to shift pages, because the link I have no longer points to the correct page. So, I'll just quote the brief review in its entirety here:

The Habitation of the Blessed:
A Dirge for Prester John, Vol. 1

Catherynne M. Valente, Night Shade, $14.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-59780-199-7

In 1165, a letter ostensibly written by the distant Christian king Prester John describing a kingdom of wonders rocked medieval Europe. In this enchanting retelling of the legend, the first volume in a projected trilogy, Hugo nominee Valente (Palimpsest) imagines what might have been discovered by Rome's ambassadors if the letter had not been a hoax. Nothing is quite as fabulous as the pious priests had hoped. Prester John and St. Thomas the Twin married nonhuman women; the Fountain of Youth does not sparkle, but instead "oozes thick and oily, globbed with algae and the eggs of improbable mayflies." Three very different personalities narrate: the brooding Prester John himself; his carefree and openhearted wife, the blemmye Hagia; and maternal Imtithal of the elephant-eared panotii. Filled with lyrical prose and fabled creatures, this languorous fairy tale is as captivating as Prester John's original letter.(Dec.)

As the PW review states, The Habitation of the Blessed is the first volume of a trilogy, and I'm hopeful I'll have the good fortune to be able to work with the author on volumes two and three as well. The Habitation will undoubtedly be one of the most talked about novels in the months ahead, and will assuredly appear on multiple award lists next year.

Tweet This

Richard Bausch: The case against writing manuals.

Reading through my Facebook News Feed this morning, I came upon an entry from Bud Webster, who wrote: "This is one of the single ballsiest, most dead-on and cogent articles on writing (and how NOT to do it) that I've ever read." Bud linked to an article in today's The Atlantic, by Richard Bausch, entitled "How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons," and subtitled: "The case against writing manuals." Bud added this additional comment about Richard Bausch: "Amongst other things, he is the author of The Fireman's Wife and Other Stories, and [currently serves as] The Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writing Program at the University of Memphis. Trust me, this guy has chops like nobody else has chops, and knows whereof he speaks."

With an intro like that, I not only had to read the article, I also assumed it would be a great link to tweet and to include in my monthly Links & Things post. But, until I read the article, I couldn't fully appreciate what the author had to say about writing; this is an article that every novice writer, and even newly published writers, should read. I'm going to quote one paragraph from the lengthy article, but you won't understand the significance of this particular quote unless you read the entire piece.

"Finally, a word about this kind of instruction: it is always less effective than actually reading the books of the writers who precede you, and who are contemporary with you. There are too many 'how-to' books on the market, and too many would-be writers are reading these books in the mistaken idea that this will teach them to write. I never read such a book in my life, and I never will. What I know about writing I know from having read the work of the great writers. If you really want to learn how to write, do that. Read Shakespeare, and all the others whose work has withstood time and circumstance and changing fashions and the assaults of the ignorant and the bigoted; read those writers and don’t spend a lot of time analyzing them. Digest them, swallow them all, one after another, and try to sound like them for a time. Learn to be as faithful to the art and craft as they all were, and follow their example. That is, wide reading and hard work. One doesn’t write out of some intellectual plan or strategy; one writes from a kind of beautiful necessity born of the reading of thousands of good stories poems plays… One is deeply involved in literature, and thinks more of writing than of being a writer. It is not a stance."

— Richard Bausch

October Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of October's Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. But in these month-end posts, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and comments. Note, too, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these posts.

• If you read short fiction, then you are most likely aware that, early last year, Sovereign Media ceased publishing Realms of Fantasy magazine. Warren Lapine and Tir Na Nog Press then purchased the rights to RoF and, after a few months hiatus, resumed publication with the August 2009 issue. I copyedited the next eight issues -- from October 2009 through December 2010, which has since become the magazine's final issue -- yet again, unfortunately. Warren Lapine has posted a Farewell Message explaining the magazine's demise. There are rumors of interested parties, one of whom may inevitably purchase RoF, but only time will tell if we will ever see another new issue. In the meantime, through the courtesy of the publisher, you can view/download the December 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. If you're not familiar with this magazine, I think you'll be surprised at the quality of the material, particularly the short stories. Enjoy! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank editor Doug Cohen: he respects his staff, which is most important, and every other month I could always count on the next issues' files arriving in my inbox on the specified date.

• Sheila Finch's novel Reading the Bones was the first major freelance project I worked on for Tachyon Publications. The book, published in 2003, was an expansion of Sheila's Nebula Award-winning novella of the same name, originally published in the January 1998 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The novella is part of the author's Xenolinguist (aka "lingster") series of stories. The online Oxford English Dictionary (OED), credits Sheila with coining the term "xenolinguist" in 1988. Read more of the Xenolinguist series in her recent blog post: "The Evolution of a (Fictitious) Universe."

• During my one year as an acquiring editor for Fantastic Books, two of my acquired titles saw publication: Judith Moffett's long-out-of-print first novel Pennterra, and gonzo novel Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo, which had been previously published only as a limited edition by a British small press. [Note: I use the cover of FD as my icon for both Twitter and Fasebook.] John Berlyne has a review of Fuzzy Dice in the October issue of SFRevu: "Where he is most successful is in his depiction of abstract and/or abstruse ideas. He is able to convey these illustrative situations without straying into the surreal and it is a testament to Di Filippo's skill and imagination that he is able to share his visions with the reader with such extraordinary clarity."

• Before you start whining about all your rejection letters, about the fact that you're not some hugely popular author, you just might want to read Robert "Bob" Weinberg's account of his experiences in publishing and why Hellfire: Plague of Dragons may just be the best damn dragon art book you will never see.

Reflections on the 2000 World Fantasy Convention

With this year's World Fantasy Convention quickly approaching [alas, I won't be attending....], I began to reminisce about past WFCs -- and concluded that possibly my most memorable WFC was in 2000 in Corpus Christi, Texas, on October 26-29. The Author Guests of Honor were K. W. Jeter and John Crowley, the Artist GoH was Charles Vess (whose wonderful art graced the cover of the convention book, pictured at the left), and the Toastmaster was Joe R. Lansdale hisownself.

But regarding these memories, I'm specifically referring to positive memories; my worst convention -- ever! -- was the World Fantasy Con in Montreal the following year. Let's just say it put me off toward Canada and I have never returned, nor do I intend to. But don't get me started on that con....[though maybe I will blog about it one of these days....]

When I think of WFC 2000 in Corpus Christi, a number of names come immediately to mind, and all for specific reasons for which I will elaborate: Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, John Picacio, Michael Moorcock, and Gordon Van Gelder.

Andy Duncan:

Andy's first short story collection -- and first book -- Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, was published by Golden Gryphon Press in time for the 2000 World Fantasy Con. Though at the time I was acquiring and editing for GGP, I wasn't involved with the publication of Andy's book. Nevertheless, I was intrigued with Andy's writing and made certain to attend his reading on Friday at 2:30 pm. Andy read from his story "Lincoln in Frogmore," about President Lincoln's visit to the town just after the slaves were freed, as told in 1936 by a man who remembers the event. [The story is available online courtesy of asimovs.com.] As I listened to Andy read, I was amazed at how well he voiced a Southern drawl to portray the protagonist in the story. At the end of the reading, someone in the audience asked a question -- and when Andy responded I realized that his drawl wasn't simply for effect during the story: he really did talk that way!

By the way, at the WFC the following year, in Montreal, Andy was honored with a pair of matching bookends: a World Fantasy Award for best collection for Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, and a second award for best short fiction for "The Pottawatomie Giant." [Note: Since I did mention that the 2001 Montreal WFC was my worst con ever, I wanted to add that Andy Duncan's award wins were, in fact, one of the highlights of that convention for me.]

Jeffrey Ford:

In addition to wanting to meet Andy Duncan, I also attended this convention with the specific intent to meet Jeffrey Ford. I was already a fan of his fiction, having read "At Reparata" and "Pansolapia" online on Event Horizon, "Malthusian's Zombie" online on SCI FICTION, and "The Fantasy Writer's Assistant" in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Jeff's reading was also on Friday, though earlier in the morning, at 10:00 am. Jeff chose to read a new story, "Creation," which hadn't as yet been sold. What can I say? "Creation" -- particularly Jeff's reading of the story -- absolutely knocked me out. After listening to that story, I knew that he was a writer to watch, and I wanted to be the editor to snag his first collection. So after Jeff's reading, I introduced myself and complimented him on "Creation," and then told him straight up that I wanted to publish his first short story collection. I won't go into further details at this point other than to say that it took a few months for the collection to come together -- Jeff's New York publisher had "first look," so we had to wait for the publisher to pass on the collection.

The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories was published by Golden Gryphon Press in August 2002. FWA received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was later selected as one of PW's best SF/F books of the year. And, at the 2003 World Fantasy Convention in Washington, DC, Jeffrey Ford, like Andy Duncan, was honored with a pair of matching bookends: a World Fantasy Award for best collection for The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories and a second award for best short fiction for -- what else? -- "Creation."

Is Anybody Out There? -- Recent Reviews

As I've posted previously, and you may have read elsewhere, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the SETI program: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And unlike movies such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T. or Independence Day, scientists have as yet discovered no sign, good or ill, of extraterrestrial intelligence. But now that 50 years have passed with no such sign, these very same scientists are beginning to rethink their methodology.

"Alien hunters should look for artificial intelligence" is the title of an article by Jason Palmer, a science and technology reporter, for the BBC News. (via @daj42) The article includes an audio link to a 3-minute, 30-second recording by Dr. Seth Shotak on "what form 'aliens' may take." Dr. Shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and he "argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short....that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than 'biological' life."

This comment on "alien AI" brought to mind one of the stories included in my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (with Nick Gevers, from Daw Books, June 2010), which includes the story "A Waterfall of Lights" by Ian Watson. In the story, ophthalmologist Roderick Butler (who teamed up with an artist to create an experimental project at the Museum of Modern Art), says to the visitors on opening night: "...let me introduce you to the aliens in our midst, the super-intelligent evolved immortal creations of aliens from another cosmos which preceded ours! They are in your very own eyes! We don’t see the aliens in our universe because it is through those alien intelligences that we perceive!"

To paraphrase Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strip, "We have met the aliens, and they are us."

Last month, Ray Vukcevich (@rayvuk), one of the contributors to the anthology, sent me a link to yet another BBC News article, which revealed the Top 10 "unanswerable" questions. The data was based on approximately 1.1 billion queries made on the Ask Jeeves search engine since its launch in 2000. Amongst questions like "What is the meaning of life?" (#1) and "Do blondes have more fun?" (#4) and "What is love?" (#7), can be found question #5: "Is there anybody out there?"

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Howard Jacobson on Comic Novels

Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question -- a comedy about anti-Semitism -- won the $79,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today in London. Today's Washington Post has a lengthy article on Jacobson and his award-winning comedy and the Man Booker Prize. And thanks to Christopher Barzak's post on Facebook, I learned about an interview with Jacobson in The Guardian in which he speaks on "taking comic novels seriously." This is another instance where a quote was so poignant, so awe inspiring, that I just had to post it here. I'll leave the entire Jacobson interview for you to read if/when you choose, but for now there is this:

"Trawl through the world of blogs and tweets and you will find readers complaining when they stumble upon a word they don't recognise, an attitude that doesn't accord with their own, a passage of thought they find hard work, a joke they don't get or of which they don't approve. Anyone would think that the whole art and pleasure of reading consisted in getting helter-skelter through a novel, unscathed, unchallenged, and without encountering anyone but oneself. Once we wrestled with the angel when we read; now we ask only to slumber in his arms.

But the greatest novels won't let us. The novelist, at his swelling comic best -- a Dickens or a Dostoevsky, a Cervantes or a Kafka, a Joseph Roth or a Henry Miller -- goes where Hamlet dares the skull of Yorick to go, straight to my painted lady's chamber, rattling his bones and making her laugh at the terrible fate that awaits her. His comedy spares nothing and spares no one. And in the process asserts the stubbornness of life. Why would we want to read anything less?"

― Howard Jacobson

September Links & Things

My wrap-up of September's Links & Things is tardy, as usual. If you have been checking in here awaiting said post, I thank you for your patience. With my nine days in Southern Cal last month to look in on the mom, and some lengthy line/copyediting projects -- plus catching the start of a number of the fall TV shows -- well, this blog hasn't received the attention it rightly deserves. And, unfortunately, the remainder of October doesn't look to be any less busy -- for which I am grateful, in the overall scheme of things (because "busy" pays the bills).

Consequently, there are not many links this month given my schedule; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and occasional comments. Though I do want to add that not all of my tweeted links make it into the month-end post.

• In last month's Links & Things I encouraged you all to read Kathleen Bartholomew's blog Kathleen, Kage and the Company. To reiterate, Kathleen is Kage Baker's sister, and in between her fiction writing -- she is currently working on the sequel to Kage's The Women of Nell Gwynne's -- Kathleen tells many wonderful stories of growing up with Kage, the two of them living together in various locales, their travels, their hobbies, the food they loved, and more. Kathleen has tons of Kage's notes, and years and years of long discussions with Kage about her stories and characters. And some of the tales that Kathleen tells are simply wonderful to read, especially if you are a fan of Kage's Company stories in particular.

• Lit agent Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford) posted this tweet on Wednesday, September 29: "Which book would prompt you to strike up a conversation with a stranger you saw reading it?" And it reminded me of an occurrence quite a number of years ago. In my recent blog post on Philip K. Dick and Rudy Rucker, I mentioned attending my first Armadillocon in Austin, Texas -- Armadillocon 10 in October 1988 -- in which K. W. Jeter was the Author Guest of Honor, and both Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock were on the guest list as well. I flew American Airlines from San Jose to Austin, with a plane change in Dallas-Fort Worth. I boarded the plane in DFW for the last leg of the flight; as I was walking down the aisle to my seat in the rear of the plane (I always sit toward the back of planes), I noticed a woman in a seat to my left reading a copy of K. W. Jeter's Infernal Devices (St. Martin's Press, 1987). [Note: Jeter is credited with coining the term "steampunk" to describe the types of fiction he and fellow authors Powers and Blaylock were writing at the time.] I stopped in the aisle and asked her if she was going to Armadillocon, to which she responded "yes" -- and I could see from the look on her face that she just might be wondering how I would know that, so I commented on her reading Jeter's book. We later saw one another at the convention, chatted a bit and exchanged names -- hers being Spike Parsons -- and since then, for more than 20 years, we regularly see one another at Bay Area and national conventions.

• In my mini blog post on September 30, I quoted Christopher Mims from his article "The Death of the Book Has Been Greatly Exaggerated" in MIT's Technology Review. In the article, Mims states that "Tech pundits recently moved up the date for the death of the book to sometime around 2015, inspired largely by the rapid adoption of the iPad and the success of Amazon's Kindle e-reader." He goes on to say that this prognostication is "the peak of inflated expectations" and that we need to "Get ready for the next phase of the hype cycle: the trough of disillusionment." Mims goes on to refute a lot of the book is dead hype, stating: "Finally, and most importantly, as a delivery mechanism, Ebooks are nothing like music or even movies and television, and the transitions seen in those media simply don't apply to the transition to electronic books." Excellent article with more than 25 Comments.

• Colleen Lindsay (@ColleenLindsay), former genre literary agent and now a member of the business development team at Penguin Group (USA), has a blog post "On word counts and novel length" in which she presents a "comprehensive list of suggested word counts by genre and sub-genre." Colleen writes: "Somewhere out there a myth developed -- especially amongst science fiction and fantasy writers -- that a higher word count was better. Writers see big fat fantasies on the shelf and think that they have to write a book just as hefty to get published....And the fact of the matter is, most of those 'big fat fantasy' books you see on the shelf actually only have a word count of about 100k to 120k." Word counts are provided for middle grade and YA fiction, and all types of genre fiction. And if you doubt the importance of this blog post, check out the more than 70 Comments.

• Science fiction author Paul McAuley, whose blog Earth and Other Unlikely Worlds, has a recent post entitled "Plumbing": "the cardinal rule of world-building: details are useful only if they have some kind of interaction or intersection with the protagonist, which is to say, something to do with the narrative....It's plumbing. You know it's there, but unless it goes wrong you don't need to worry about it." A fairly brief, but no less important piece on world-building. (via @daj42)

Christopher Mims on Books

I was just sharing a link via Twitter for an article in Technology Review by Christopher Mims entitled "The Death of the Book Has Been Greatly Exaggerated" -- when I was so awe struck by his ending paragraph that I absolutely had to post it here, now. And as a book collector myself (more so in past years), I felt this quote -- and the entire article -- to be pertinent to the current and constant deluge of articles and discussions on how ebooks are taking over the world.

"Books have a kind of usability that, for most people, isn't about to be trumped by bourgeoisie concerns about portability: They are the only auto-playing, backwards-compatible to the dawn of the English language, entirely self-contained medium we have left."

— Christopher Mims

Judith Moffett's Pennterra: Going Native

During my one year as an acquiring editor for Fantastic Books, two of my acquired titles saw publication: Judith Moffett's long-out-of-print first novel Pennterra, and gonzo novel Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo, which had been previously published only as a limited edition by a British small press.

Recently Pennterra was reviewed by a British print magazine, H&E Naturist. Since the review is not available online, I've taken the liberty of entering the full review below for your reading pleasure.  I'm posting this review on More Red Ink because the author is currently involved in writing a memoir, to which she is devoting all of her writing time; thus her blog and website have not been updated for quite some time. If you don't know who Judith Moffett is, or you are curious what she has to write a memoir about, you may want to check out her Wikipedia entry: Judy is not your typical SF/F genre writer! You can also read my previous blog post about Judy's published work entitled "Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit."

Before posting the review, I would first like to reiterate the quote from Nebula Award-winning author Michael Bishop that appears on the cover (pictured above) of this reprint edition of Pennterra: "Stunning... the best first novel I have read in at least a decade... dangerous and breathtaking to behold."

Tim Powers: Not So Strange Itineraries

I spent nine days in Southern California -- Orange County, specifically¹ -- returning home in the early evening on Saturday, September 18. What with preparing for the trip, the trip itself, and then the necessary catching-up on business projects upon my return, well, that's why little has been heard from me for these past three weeks.

A wee bit of background (and I'll try not to bore you) on why I was in SoCal for those nine days: My mother had her knee replaced eighteen years ago. That knee had deteriorated, and it finally gave out on her about two and a half months ago. The knee was reset in the hospital, then my mother was carted off the next day to a rehab facility for two weeks (where I visited her during one of those weeks, as I previously reported in this blog). Unfortunately, four weeks later, the knee dislocated again, so the mum underwent full knee replacement surgery. The surgery went well, and she is now recovering in that same rehab facility yet again. I arrived just prior to her surgery on Friday, September 10, and stayed through the following week.

The rehab facility is on Old Tustin Avenue in Santa Ana -- just across the street and about a half-block away from Benjie's, a New York-style deli, and one of only two such delis (the other being Katella Deli in Los Alamitos) in the OC.

I have only eaten at Benjie's once before, and promised myself that I would make it back there for dinner at least once before departing SoCal this time around. I had three evenings from which to chose: Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday (September 15-17). I chose that Wednesday evening because, to put it bluntly, I was starving. By the time I had dinner at 7:00pm, it had been eleven hours since I had last eaten -- and you must be starving in order to consume completely one of Benjie's humongous "hot corned beef on rye" sandwiches.

So the waitress seats me, and I'm not paying much attention to the surrounding environment: I'm tired (sat with the mum in the rehab facility for eight straight hours), I'm hungry, I need to use the facilities, especially to wash my face and hands.

A short while later, my dinner is served. About the time that I've eaten nearly half the sandwich -- which, by the way, was wonderful -- motion to my left catches my eye. I automatically turn my head to look, and to my surprise, I recognize Tim Powers walking down the aisle toward the front of the restaurant.

I'm sitting in a booth; in the aisle next to mine (to my left), one booth back I now see Serena Powers, Tim's wife. When I had been seated, Tim's back was toward me, and he was sitting across from his wife, thus blocking my view of her.

So I waited for Tim to return, and then I stood and greeted him in the aisle before he reached his seat. Tim recognized me, but I was out of context and thus I had to remind him of where we had last seen one another, when we had last worked together.

Tachyon Publications released the long-out-of-print The Stress of Her Regard in August 2008. Toward the end of 2007 through February 2008, I scanned in that entire book -- 180,000 words! -- cleaned up said scan, and then copyedited the manuscript. The book that I had scanned had an inordinate number of typos and formatting errors, all of which I hope I caught. Tim also provided a dozen or so changes that he wanted included as well in this new edition, so I would say that the Tachyon Publications edition of The Stress of Her Regard is undoubtedly the author's preferred text. Tim did tell me that I did a "great job" on the book, so I'll simply take his word for it.

A few months later, at BayCon 2008 -- in which Tim Powers was the Writer Guest of Honor -- we participated in a panel discussion² entitled "Is the Short Story Dead?" on Friday, May 23, at 4:00pm (along with panelists Irene Radford and Tony Todaro). And as I'm sure you have surmised already, we all agreed that the short story is indeed not dead! In fact, even in 2008, the genre saw an increase in online magazines as well as an increase in anthologies, and though some  'zines (online and print) have ceased publication since then, there have been others to take their place.

Prior to these events in 2008, I copyedited Tim's short story collection, Strange Itineraries, also from Tachyon Publications. I completed work on this book in February 2005, and it was published in July of that year.

As I said, I could have chosen any one of three evenings to eat at Benjie's; but I chose that evening, Wednesday, which just happened to be the evening that Tim and Serena Powers were having dinner at the same restaurant. (They were also with a third person whom I didn't recognize.) It's just another example of how very small the SF/F community really is. I live in San Jose in Northern California, Tim lives in San Bernardino in Southern California, and there we were at the same restaurant in Santa Ana on this one particular Wednesday evening.

---------------
Footnotes:

¹ Orange County is one of my least favorite places. Though I spent a number of years growing up there (age thirteen through high school graduation), I got the hell out as soon as I could. I returned for a few years simply because of the booming job market, but then left (forever) when I was offered a job in Silicon Valley. Over the past twenty-five or so years, I visit the OC at most once a year, unless a family emergency or a business opportunity (e.g. the 2006 L.A. WorldCon in Anaheim) demands my presence otherwise.

² Note to Tim Powers fans: Tim is a doodler! When he sits on a convention panel, and there is a notepad in front of him (typically one provided by the hotel), he will doodle. Page after page of doodles, on as many pages as the notepad has. And best of all, he always leaves the notepad on the table at the end of the panel discussion. So, feel free to snag said notepad once Tim leaves the table. You won't find any doodles as elaborate (or colored) as the one below, but this will give you an idea of what you can expect:

This sketch, entitled "Blackbeard Angry," appears on the half title page of my first edition copy of On Stranger Tides (Ace Books, 1987). Tim did the sketch itself at the 1998 World Fantasy Convention, Halloween weekend, in Monterey, California.  Upon completing the sketch, Tim told me that he would have colored it had he had some colored pencils. So, the following year, at the World Fantasy Con in Providence, Rhode Island, I accommodated Tim by providing him with a set of colored pencils! The colors in this scan, unfortunately, don't appear as bright and bold as they actually are.

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August Links & Things (Part Two)

Part Two of my "August Links & Things" blog post is of a more personal nature, primarily on authors with whom I have worked, books I have edited. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and occasional comments.

• RTBookReviews.com [Romantic Times] has "Kage Baker Remembered" -- heartfelt memories of the author as seen "through the eyes of her younger sister, Kathleen Bartholomew." I would like to add that in all the years I've known Kage -- and through lunches, dinners, bookstore readings, convention panels, hotel lobby chats, etc. -- she and Kathleen were inseparable. Reading about Kage through Kathleen's eyes is a pure joy. [Note: I have written my own remembrance of working with Kage Baker.]

Kage, age 6, with her first typewriter,
and her godfather, Irish actor Sean McClory

• And if you are a reader and/or fan of Kage's writings, then you'll want to be following Kathleen's blog: Kathleen, Kage and the Company, in which Kathleen is -- to use her word -- "channeling" Kage. In between her fiction writing, Kathleen tells many wonderful stories of growing up with Kage, the two of them living together in various locales, their travels, their hobbies, the food they loved, and more. Kathleen has tons of Kage's notes, and years and years of long discussions with Kage about her stories and characters -- and Kathleen plans to write the novels that Kage was unable to complete. She is currently working on the sequel to The Women of Nell Gwynne's.
  

August Links & Things (Part One)

I'll begin with a quick status: I currently have three copyediting projects in process: 1) the December 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine; 2) Phil and Kaja Foglio's Agatha H and the Airship City (a novel based on the "Girl Genius" comic series) forthcoming from Night Shade Books in January 2011; and 3) Joe Lansdale's Crucified Dreams anthology for Tachyon Publications. And I have a couple other projects in the works that I hope to announce shortly. Until then....

Due to content, I'm splitting the "August Links & Things" wrap-up into two parts; hopefully Part Two will follow within a few days at most. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here in my blog post, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and the occasional comments.

• If, like me, you're waiting for that Android tablet (because you simply don't like Apple and/or you are not satisfied with the iPad's features), then there is much to be pleased with in the world. Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy tablet at the IFA trade show in Berlin; the tablet will be released in Europe this month and in the U.S. "in coming months." PCMag.com has a features comparison between the Galaxy and the iPad.

• Also in the news: According to InformationWeek.com, Google, Motorola, and Verizon are partnering in what may be the first Android 3.0 tablet. This is only a PR announcement, no real details, but enough to pique one's interest in the future of the Android tablet. (via @News4Android)

• Best-selling author Seth Godin made headlines throughout the publishing industry when he announced on his blog: "Linchpin will be the last book I publish in a traditional way." Godin provides some background and thoughts on the current state of publishing, and concludes with: "...my mission is to figure out who [my] audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it's not a traditionally published book." (via @GalleyCat)

• In fact, nearly all of the links in this post are concerned with non-traditional publishing. As I've mentioned in previous month-end posts, author Dean Wesley Smith is writing a series of blog posts entitled "The New World of Publishing." In the current entry, "Books Are No Longer Produce," Dean discusses how books were/are treated as little more than grocery store produce in traditional publishing, and he provides a bit of history on how this thinking -- and treatment of books -- came about. But, as Dean states: "books don't spoil." And because "books don't spoil" (Dean states this six different times in the course of the post.) traditional publishing must change if they are to survive. A well-written piece worthy of your time; and check out the more than 45 Comments as well.

• And if the idea of self-publishing has even barely touched the outer fringes of your mind, then this next blog post is an absolute must read: "Self-Publishing and Subsidy Presses." If you've ever wondered what the difference is between self-publishing and vanity presses, this is the place to start. The post includes quotes from noted folks in the field, links to even more resources (SFWA, Writers Beware, Scribd, Lulu, etc.), breakdown in percentages of publishing costs, plus more than 30 Comments. I can't stress this enough: Before you consider the self-publishing route -- and more importantly, a self-publishing press -- you need to do your homework.

Philip K. Dick & Rudy Rucker's Warez

I've been reading Philip K. Dick's stories and novels ever since I learned to read and think at the same time. Seriously, I've been reading (and collecting) PKD's work for many years. On my bookshelves, I have all of his more esoteric "mainstream" novels, including Confessions of a Crap Artist (Entwhistle Books, 1975), The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (Mark V. Ziesing, 1984), In Milton Lumpky Territory (Dragon Press, 1985), Puttering About in a Small Land (Academy Chicago, 1985), Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (Victor Gollancz, 1986), as well as a few others, in addition to the 5-volume Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, edited by Paul Williams¹ and published by Underwood-Miller in 1987.

I was a member of the PKD Society beginning in the mid-1980s, and as I wrote in a previous blog post, I used to help out at the newsletter mailing parties at Paul Williams' San Francisco home. And it was this involvement with PKD and the PKD Society that led me to attend my first Armadillocon in Austin, Texas: Armadillocon 10 in October 1988. K. W. Jeter was the Guest of Honor, and when I learned that James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers were also scheduled to attend -- all three former members of the "Thursday Night Gang"² -- then I knew this was one convention that I simply could not miss.

During that convention, Jeter, Blaylock, and Powers held a panel discussion entitled "Memories of Philip K. Dick;" the panel met at midnight, but I don't recall on which night, Friday or Saturday. I recorded the entire discussion on a mini-cassette recorder, obtained the three panelists' permission to reprint the content in the PKD Society's newsletter, and then sent the tapes to Paul. He transcribed the tapes himself, and the highly edited panel discussion³ was included in issue #20 of the newsletter, April 1989, under the title "The Phil Wars."

The Facebook "Like" Button

After quite a bit of code crunching, I've added a Facebook "Like" button to this blog; the button will appear after the header on each individual blog post. So if you like what you read, I'd appreciate it if you would click on the button. The "Like" should then appear on your FB page (assuming, of course, that you have an FB account and are currently logged in). I was hoping that I could add it to only future posts, but alas, this is the only way that I, at least, have figured out how to have the button automatically appear on each post. And I'll be the first to test this post!

A Philip K. Dick Quote

While working on my new blog post, which covers some Philip K. Dick territory, I came upon this quote by the man, and just had to post it here. Given the political times in which we now live, this is probably one of the most apropos quotes I have ever seen, especially when one considers that it had to have been spoken, or written, prior to March 2, 1982, when PKD passed away.

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." ―Philip K. Dick

Is Anybody Out There? plus more on SETI

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, this year marks the 50th Anniversary of the SETI program -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This is why we've seen far more than the usual number of articles, interviews, and new books and their corresponding reviews on the subject.

In fact, not too many months ago -- April 25, to be exact -- the UK's Sunday Times Online ran an article on Stephen W. Hawking's (pictured above) new Discovery Channel documentary, with the following quote from the physicist: "The aliens are out there, and Earth had better watch out." Now, in a new audio recording with Big Think, Professor Hawking warns us that humanity's survival depends on inhabiting the stars: "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load." And, of course, while we're at it, we need to be wary of ET! The Big Think piece is quite compelling; Hawking states that he is an optimist, but his outlook for the human race is very bleak. And there are more than 50 Comments to the article, some as intriguing as (if not more so than) the article itself.

This past weekend, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, hosted SETIcon, a convention that brought together representatives from science and research (Frank Drake), space exploration (Astronaut Rusty Schweickart), television & media (producer Andre Bormanis, actor John Billingsley), literature (authors Mary Roach & Robert J. Sawyer), music (Mickey Hart), and many others, and was open to the public. Speaking at the convention, Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said: "I actually think the chances that we'll find ET are pretty good....Young people in the audience, I think there's a really good chance you're going to see this happen." (quote courtesy of msnbc.com)

Of course the big questions continue to be: "How will we discover ET?" and/or "In what form(s) will we discover ET?" -- which was touched on in my previous blog on "50 Years of SETI" -- but if you haven't figured out where I'm headed with this then you haven't been reading my blog regularly.

July Links & Things

I've lost a week of work this month with a trip to Southern Cal to visit the mum in hospital rehab. She entered the hospital the morning of Friday, July 9 (about the time I arrived in Boston for Readercon), and she should be home, finally, by the end of this week. Then we'll have to see how she does on her own, though I suspect she'll have some in-home care for at least the first week.

Thus my recap of July's Links & Things will have less entries than normal due to time constraints. I do want you to know that I review all the links I pass on to ensure that they will be worth the time spent to read them (or in the case of video, to view them); if my readers aren't going to gain something that I feel is of value, then I don't include the link. It's as simple as that. Of course, I do have my own personal preferences and prejudices, but then who doesn't?

So, here are my links and such for the month of July. I've listed them here, with a bit of additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern.

• SFSignal.com reviews Hespira, the third volume in Matthew Hughes' Henghis Hapthorn series, which I edited for Night Shade Books; the first two volumes in the series are Majestrum (2006) and The Spiral Labyrinth (2007). In his review, John DeNardo writes: "...Hughes' writing style is the real star, using a pitch-perfect delivery of stylistic prose that sets the mood and dry humor that is sure to elicit a few smiles.... The usual caveat of a latter-series novel applies here: you do not need to read the previous Henghis Hapthorn stories to enjoy Hespira, but you will gain even more enjoyment out of it if you do."
  

• Of all the books that I've edited over the years, the most-reviewed are undoubtedly the Laundry Files titles by Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives (2004) and The Jennifer Morgue (2006), both from Golden Gryphon Press, and the recently published The Fuller Memorandum from Ace Books. I could fill an entire blog post with blurbs from all the TFM reviews I've read over the past two or so weeks, but for the sake of brevity, I'll only refer you to one of those reviews, which I felt was especially astute and articulate -- and that would be the review by Russell Letson, posted on Locus online on July 16, 2010. I've linked to the review for your reading pleasure, but what I wanted to do here was include a quote from the novel itself that Russell quoted in his review. Here are geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire Bob Howard's thoughts on the iPhone: "About the only smart phone that doesn’t stink like goose shit is the JesusPhone. But I've steadfastly refused to join the Cult of Jobs ever since I saw the happy-clappy revival tent launch." Unfortunately, before too long, Bob succumbs to the shiny. [I've written a lengthy blog post about my working with Charlie Stross on this series.]
  

• New eBook publisher Weightless Books (catch phrase: Books That Don't Weigh You Down) -- a branch, or subsidiary, or imprint, or whatever of Small Beer Press -- has published an eBook of the definitive edition of Judith Moffett's first novel Pennterra. This is the edition of Pennterra that Judith and I worked on over a period of weeks last year (published in a trade paperback edition in 2009 by Fantastic Books) to ensure that it was indeed the definitive version. And while you're at it, you may as well snag the eBook edition of her latest novel, The Bird Shaman, volume three in her Holy Ground Trilogy; but as with volume three of the Hughes trilogy above, you do not need to read the previous two volumes to enjoy The Bird Shaman.
  
  If you're into physical books, you can also purchase a signed (or signed and inscribed) copy of The Bird Shaman direct from the author's website. [And last, but certainly not least, you can read my earlier blog post on Judith Moffett and her various books and stories.]
  

• As long-time readers here know, I'm a fan of the axed-by-Fox-before-its-time TV series Firefly. Well, io9.com (@io9) felt that the introductory credits sequence that opened Firefly needed a bit of sprucing up. To use io9's words: the intro needed "a kick-ass, old-school, synth-happy, guitar-solo" and "Spaceships, 1980s-style." So, click the io9 link above, click the vid, sit back, and enjoy. Oh, and turn the sound up on your monitor! (via @charliejane)
  

Is Anybody Out There? and 50 Years of SETI

Henry Thomas stars in Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
(courtesy of Universal/Everett)

The Daily Galaxy (@dailygalaxy) posted an article online on June 20, 2010, entitled "Invisible Extraterrestrials? World Leading Physicist Says 'They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive.'" The physicist to whom the article refers is Lord Martin Rees, president of Britain's Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Earlier, in May, Lord Rees hosted a National Science Academy Conference -- "The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society" -- at which he stated that he believes the existence of extraterrestrial life may be beyond human understanding. To quote Rees directly:

"They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology.

"I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains."

Also participating in this conference was noted SETI-founder Frank Drake (of the Drake equation fame), who presented an interesting theory on how the "digital revolution" is making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting [to the vanishing point] the transmission of analog TV and radio signals into space.

The article goes on to define three propositions to explain why "there is no direct and/or widely apparent evidence that extraterrestrial life exists." If you're intrigued with all of this, then by all means please read the entire Daily Galaxy article, including the Comments section, in which a reader suggests a fourth proposition.

Last week, while visiting "the mom" in a medical rehab facility (see blog post dated Friday, July 23, 2010), I managed to steal away for a few hours to meet my friend -- and author -- Bruce McAllister for dinner. The last time we got together (during the Thanksgiving holiday last year), the anthology Is Anybody Out There? was still a work in process. But now that it has been published, I was able to chat with Bruce about the many reviews, in addition to the Readercon book launch. Then, a few days ago, on July 27, Bruce sent me an email with only a lone link attached -- to a TIME online piece entitled "Listening for Aliens: What Would E.T. Do?"

The article focuses on the work of Gregory Benford, professor of physics at the University of California at Irvine and an award-winning science fiction writer, his twin brother James, and James' son Dominic. The Benfords have been rethinking the SETI project, which now marks its 50th year.

After exhaustive analysis, the Benfords believe that aliens who want to be detected would most likely send out short, powerful bursts every so often rather than continuous transmissions. Unfortunately, these "Benford beacons" would be easy to miss if scientists weren't listening right at that exact time.  The article concludes with an extrapolation:

"Of course, all the new work [on SETI] may be unnecessary, since it's just possible we've spotted E.T. already. Several times over the past 50 years, searchers have picked up radio signals that flashed once or twice, then disappeared. The best known of these is called the 'Wow' signal, because that's what an astronomer who picked it up wrote on a printout from a radio telescope at Ohio State University in the 1970s. SETI searchers went back to the star in question immediately, but heard nothing. It may well be, suggests Benford, that we detected extraterrestrials more than three decades ago — and because we weren't taking into account what E.T. would do, failed to confirm it."

All this is great stuff: food for thought, grist for the mill, and confirmation that we -- all the contributors -- done a good thing with the publication of Is Anybody Out There? to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the SETI project.