Leonard Nimoy, March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015

We remember him as Spock, and Spock Prime, in the Star Trek franchise; and as Dr. William Bell in about a dozen episodes of Fringe. And for a hundred thousand-plus Twitter followers, Leonard Nimoy will be lovingly remembered for his very last tweet:

LLAP. Live Long and Prosper....

Editing in Process...Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction

Cover art by Lius Lasahido

This was my last editing project for calendar year 2014:

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, forthcoming in May 2015 from Tachyon Publications -- and the year 2014 couldn't have ended on a better high note.

Back in early 2010 I was hearing (virtually speaking, that is) a lot of buzz about a new hard-SF writer from Finland, Hannu Rajaniemi, and his first novel entitled The Quantum Thief, to be published in the UK by Gollancz that September.

Then, Charles Stross, in a blog post dated May 14, 2010, recommended Hannu Rajaniemi and The Quantum Thief for the Hugo Awards ballot:

He's Finnish, lives in Scotland, has a PhD in string theory, and — well, if you dropped Greg Egan's hard physics chops into a rebooted Finnish version of Al Reynolds with the writing talent of a Ted Chiang you'd begin to get a rough approximation of the scale of his talent. If that's a somewhat recondite metaphor, then alas, recondite is what you're getting: this is deep SF, and if there's any criticism I can level it's that readers may find "The Quantum Thief" hard to interpret without a prior background in the field. However, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I read it, and I think Hannu's going to revolutionize hard SF when he hits his stride. Hard to admit, but I think he's better at this stuff than I am. And "The Quantum Thief" is the best first SF novel I've read in many years.

And then, I read Rajaniemi's short story "Elegy for a Young Elk" in the Spring 2010 issue of Subterranean Press Magazine.

And by that time I was, like, Wow! -- Who is this writer?

Now, skip forward four years...(It's been four years already?)...to October 2014, during which time I had the opportunity to work on this collection of short stories by Hannu Rajaniemi[1].

The stories in Collected Fiction are more like "Elegy for a Young Elk" than the novel Quantum Thief. To rephrase Charles Stross, readers won't need a prior background in string/quantum theory to enjoy these stories. But you do need to be open-minded about possibilities --

From the story "Shibuya no Love":

They were eating takoyaki by the statue of Hachiko the dog when Norie told her to buy a quantum lovegety.

Riina's Japanese was not very good in spite of two years of Oriental Studies and three months in Tokyo, and the translation software on her phone did not immediately recognize the term, so she just stared at the small caramel-skinned girl blankly for a few seconds, mouth full of fried dough and octopus. "A what?" she managed finally, wiping crumbs from her lips.

...

"You don't have them in Finland? How do you meet boys there? Oh, I forgot, you have the sauna!....

"It's the most kawaii thing! I keep mine on all the time. Look!" Norie held up her wrist. Her phone was embedded in a Cartier platinum bracelet with a jewel-studded Hello Kitty engraving that her boyfriend Shinichi had given her for her birthday. Riina had admired it several times, but had not paid attention to the little teardrop-shaped plastic thing dangling from it until now. It was hardly bigger than the tip of her index finger, and its pink surface had the characteristic teflon sheen of a nanovat-grown product. There was a silvery heart-shaped logo on one side.

And from another favorite story of mine, "Invisible Planets":

Travelling through Cygnus 61, as it prepares to cross the gulf between the galaxies, the darkship commands its sub-minds to describe the worlds it has visited.

...

During the millennia of its journey, the darkship's mind has expanded, until it has become something that has to be explored and mapped. The treasures it contains can only be described in metaphors, brittle and misleading and distant, like mirages. And so, more and more, amongst all the agents in its sprawling society of mind, the darkship finds itself listening to the voice of a tiny sub-mind, so insignificant that she is barely more than a wanderer lost in a desert, coming from reaches of the ship's mind so distant that she might as well be a traveller from another country that has stumbled upon an ancient and exotic kingdom on the other side of the world, and now finds herself serving a quizzical, omnipotent emperor.

What follows, then, in "Invisible Planets" are a half-dozen of what I might call little vignettes, in which the sub-mind describes the planets and people the darkship has visited; for example: "The rulers of the Planet Oya love the dead." -- and then we get to learn about Oya and the dead.

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction contains approximately 80,000 words and includes 19 stories, sort of, plus a couple mini introductions (all to be explained shortly). Here's the table of contents:

Deus Ex Homine

The Server and the Dragon

Tyche and the Ants

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB

His Master's Voice

Elegy for a Young Elk

The Jugaad Cathedral

Fisher of Men

Invisible Planets

Topsight

Ghost Dogs

The Viper Blanket

The Oldest Game

Shibuya no Love

Paris, in Love

Satan's Typist

Skywalker of Earth

Snow White Is Dead

Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories

The final two "stories" in the list each has its own mini-introduction. We learn that "Snow White Is Dead" is actually one result of a neurofiction experiment, sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but in reverse: the story chooses you, based on brain activity. The last story, "Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories," is a collection of 140-character Twitter stories that Hannu Rajaniemi wrote while Twitterer-in-Residence at New Media Scotland in August 2008.

I told you...you have to be open to the possibilities....

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Footnote:

[1] Typically I link an author's name to the author's website or blog, but I found neither for Hannu Rajaniemi. And if I missed said link(s), my sincere apologies. I did find the author on Twitter (@hannu; last tweet was February 13), Facebook (last post was December 30, 2014, at which time he changed his profile pic), and LinkedIn. If I've missed a link, feel free to post a comment below.

Book Received: The Very Best of Kate Elliott

In my blog post on June 12, 2014, in which I wrote about working on this Kate Elliott collection for Tachyon Publications, I opened the post with the following paragraph:

Cover Art by Julie Dillion

The beauty of any "best of" collection is that it allows the reader to experience the full expanse of the author's writing and story telling. And, if the collection is indeed worth its (literal) weight, then the book will hopefully have some small treasure, a story unfamiliar to the reader, even if the reader is one of the author's biggest fans....and it holds true on my most recent project, The Very Best of Kate Elliott....

Of the twelve stories in this collection, six were published in various anthologies from DAW Books, and another story, "On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New," is original to this volume; I suspect even Ms. Elliott's faithful fans haven't had the opportunity to read all of these stories.

Here is the contents list (in order of appearance) for The Very Best of Kate Elliott:

Riding the Shore of the River of Death

Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine

The Queen's Garden

On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and
   the Birthing Winds of the New

The Gates of Joriun

The Memory of Peace

With God to Guard Her

My Voice Is in My Sword

Sunseeker

A Simple Act of Kindness

To Be a Man

Making the World Live Again

And here is the starred Publishers Weekly review of The Very Best of Kate Elliott:

Elliott's delightful first collection contains pieces set in the worlds of her major fantasy series—the Spiritwalker Trilogy, the Crossroads Trilogy, the Crown of Stars series, and the Jaran novels....No familiarity with any of the novels is required to understand the stories set in those worlds, but the existing settings lend depth, complexity, and intrigue to what might otherwise be simple tales. "Riding the Shore of the River of Death," a bildungsroman about a young female horse-nomad who wants to be a warrior, benefit greatly from the depth of setting, as does the slapstick comedy "To Be a Man," about a shape-shifting saber-toothed cat with an eye for the ladies. But the standalones especially shine, and the political intrigue and subtle humor that Elliott brings to the fascinating culture and government system of "The Queen's Garden" make it perhaps the finest work in the book. This collection serves beautifully both as an introduction to Elliott and as a treat for fans who want more of her marvels."

—Publishers Weekly, December 1, 2014

In addition to these twelve stories, the collection also includes four essays as well as an introduction written specifically for this collection. The Very Best of Kate Elliott was officially published on February 10.

[Addendum 18 February 2015] Interview on SFSignal.com: "Kate Elliott Discusses The Very Best of Kate Elliott and More."

Book Received: Stinky Robots

When a robot got old or worked on mechanical parts or ran on stinky fuel like diesel, people called them Stinky Robots.

Stinky Robots, written by Matthew & Elijah Yerington and illustrated by Nikola Radulovikj, is the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign that concluded on July 30, 2014.

Stinky Robots is a slim hardcover book of 24 slick pages (including front and back matter).

Though Nikola Radulovikj did the overall book illustrations, some dozen other illustrators were involved in the design of the robots themselves. The StinkyRobots.com home page showcases each of the robots in the book, and you can purchase copies of the book from this site as well.

Editing in Process...Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

I'm using the "Editing in Process" tag so that this blog post tracks with my other posts in this category --

However, this project was actually completed last year. As I mentioned recently, I'm about three months or so behind on my blog posts[1]. But I digress....

Tachyon Publications has been publishing critically acclaimed novellas for a number of years, and I've had the opportunity to work on quite a few of them, including James Morrow's The Madonna and the Starship, Daryl Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine, and most recently Nancy Kress's Yesterday's Kin.

So when I contacted Alastair Reynolds last year about submitting a novella for Tachyon Publications, he responded with -- much to my delight: "I am working on a novella right now which does not yet have a home." It doesn't get any better than that because I obviously had the perfect home for that novella. That novella is entitled Slow Bullets and will be published in June.

For the past fifteen years, I have been a fan and advocate of Al Reynolds's short fiction. I first approached Al about a short story collection in April 2001, when I was acquiring and editing for Golden Gryphon Press. That short story collection didn't happen for many years (and when it did happen, I edited the collection for Night Shade Books[2]), but what I did receive from Al in 2002 was novella Turquoise Days set in the Revelation Space universe. TD was the first in a series of signed and numbered limited edition chapbooks from Golden Gryphon Press[3]. You can read the details on how the novella and short story collection came about in my blog post of July 16, 2009, entitled "12 Stories Do Not a Collection Make."

But back to Slow Bullets: The first draft of the manuscript that Al sent me clocked in at around 40,125 words. To meet novella requirements, the story had to have a maximum word count of 40,000 words, so I asked Al to review the manuscript and cut a minimum of 250-300 words, to ensure the story was safely below the 40K word cap. Having worked with Al previously, I knew that he would accomplish this self-editing with the skill of a surgeon -- make that a brain surgeon. When I read the second draft of Slow Bullets, the story flowed so flawlessly that I couldn't tell where words had been cut or changed; I would have had to use the "compare two versions of a document" option in MS Word to determine the specific edits. I also suggested a couple tweaks to the content itself for clarity.

The revised draft was delivered to Tachyon Publications on August 13, 2014: the word count was 39,775 words.

After Tachyon formatted the final ms. to their own specifications, my next task was a full line edit and copy edit. I communicated directly with Al on any questions or issues that I encountered, and after I completed my markups (using MS Word change tracking), I emailed the file to the author for his review. Once both of us were in agreement with all the changes (and I don't recall there being that many anyhow), I mailed the final manuscript to Tachyon on September 8. Al and I still need to proof the layout pages, and these should be arriving by the end of this week. Slow Bullets is still on target for a June publication.

Back in June of last year, before the manuscript was finalized, I asked Al for a couple rough paragraphs describing the story's main character and plot, this is what the author sent me:

Scur is a soldier in a vast war between two human political groupings, [a war] that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems. Finally, a ceasefire is brokered ― and Scur begins to think about her life after the war, the world and the family she has left behind. But it is not be. On the brink of peace, Scur is captured by a sadistic war criminal and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. Scur makes a desperate effort to save her life ― and wakes up, disorientated, aboard what appears to be a prisoner transport vessel.

But something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. The passengers ― combatants of both sides of the war, as well as civilians ― are waking up too soon. The ship is damaged, the crew powerless ― and half the occupants are about to try to kill the other half. For these are not just ordinary prisoners of war, being repatriated ― these are the worse of the worse ― and Scur is among them. But in truth, her problems have only just begun.

Scur finds herself at the crux of a struggle not just for her own survival, but to preserve civilization itself.

Now you are probably wondering what is the significance of the title -- just what is a "slow bullet"? A "slow bullet" is a bullet-like projectile that is injected into the body of every soldier, Central Worlds or Peripheral Systems (the two opposing sides in the war). The bullet contains a transponder and full history of the individual, including photographs. Here's a brief description:

Orvin smiled tightly. "Do you remember when they put the bullet into you?"

"I'm a soldier. Who doesn't remember?" [Scur speaking]

He gave a little nod of sympathy. "Yes, we used them on our side as well, or a virtually identical technology....Normally there's not much pain. The medics military use a topical anaesthetic to numb the entry area, and the slow bullet puts out another type of drug as it travels through your insides. It goes very slowly, too—or at least it's meant to. Hence the name, of course. And it avoids damaging any vital organs or circulatory structures as it progresses to its destination, deep enough inside your chest that it can’t be removed without complicated surgery."

Slow Bullets from Tachyon Publications will be published in June 2014. You may preorder the book at this time on Amazon.com and hopefully from all other booksellers everywhere.

Further reading:

Alastair Reynolds on the Genesis of his story "Slow Bullets"

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Notes and Footnotes:

In a recent blog post I used hyper-linked footnotes, i.e. you click on a footnote in the body of the blog post and you jump to the actual footnote at the end of the post. Sounds cool... Unfortunately, using hyper-linked footnotes in Blogger is a complete nightmare: When blogger saves the post, it adds data to all of the footnotes' hyperlinks. Initially, that data is a number link associated with the draft file, and a different number link when the blog post is actually published. So, just before the post is published, this added draft data must be removed otherwise the links won't work. And if you edit the published blog post for any reason, you have to remember to again remove this added data from all the footnote links before updating the post (otherwise the published number link will be there twice). I hope this all makes sense. Consequently I won't be using hyper-linked footnotes going forward -- unless someone knows of an easier, more user-friendly solution....

[1] Lots of reasons for my behindness: family and the holidays (Did I mention my first grandchild's birthday was in October?), new tech toys, a few hard-deadline projects (blog posts hopefully to follow), and even a bit of the "I don't feel like writing a blog post today" syndrome (which none of you have ever experienced, right?). But that's not to say I haven't been working, just not blogging.

[2] Zima Blue and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2006) has long been out of print, but the book can be purchased through Amazon sellers and other used booksellers, in either the NSB or Gollanz UK editions.

[3] The Turquoise Days chapbook is also out of print; however, Ace Books published TD alongside another Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space novella in a single volume: Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days, which can again be purchased through Amazon sellers and other used booksellers.

SFWA Welcomes Self-Published and Small Press Authors!

In a referendum with a third of voting members participating and over 6 to 1 in favor, the membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has approved bylaw changes that enable SFWA to accept self-publication and small-press credits for Active and Associate memberships in the organization. We are using existing levels of income but are now allowing a combination of advances and income earned in a 12 month period to rise to the qualifying amounts.

SFWA President, Steven Gould, states, “Writers write. Professional writers get paid a decent amount for what they write. For the past five years it’s been apparent that there are ways to earn that decent amount that were not being covered by our previous qualification standards. Though these changes took a substantial amount of time, I’m grateful to everyone who worked toward this end.”

According to SFWA Vice President Cat Rambo, “I’m very excited to see SFWA moving forward and adapting itself to the changing face of modern publishing. SFWA will be much richer for the influx of knowledge and experience that the new members who have focused on independent and small-press publishing will bring with them.”

Specific details will be posted at sfwa.org by the first of March, but the basic standards are $3,000 for novel, or a total of 10,000 words of short fiction paid at 6 cents a word for Active membership. A single story of at least 1,000 words paid at 6 cents a word will be required for Associate membership. Affiliate, Estate, and Institutional membership requirements remain unchanged.

Self-published and small-press works were already eligible for the Nebula and Norton Awards, SFWA’s member-voted genre award, and will remain so.

SFWA will open to applications from small press and independent publishing qualifying members on March 1, 2015. Further information will be available at that time here: Membership Requirements

For membership questions not answered at the link above, please contact Kate Baker, at operations@sfwa.org. For information on SFWA or the Nebula Awards, or to request interviews or other information, please contact Jaym Gates, at communications@sfwa.org.

About SFWA

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world.

Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 1800 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals. Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction.

For Release: February 03, 2015

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Note/Caveat: I am not a SFWA member: I can join as an editor, but since such option has no voting power, then I see no purpose in paying for a membership. By posting this news release here on More Red Ink, I neither encourage nor discourage readers who are eligible from joining SFWA. It's an individual decision. I am posting this because a number of my "clients" ― and readers ― are self-published authors and/or authors who sell much of their work to small (often micro) indie publishers.

Book Received: The Children of Old Leech Anthology - trade paperback edition

During April of last year I had the opportunity to work on a unique collection of stories edited -- and published -- by Ross E. Lockhart, under his Word Horde label.

The book is entitled The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron -- and it has just been published in a trade paperback edition.

I previously wrote about my work on this book last April (Editing in Process...), and then followed up with another blog post in July (Book Received...) after the deluxe hardcover edition (with all its accompanying swag) arrived in the mail. Fortunately, for those who prefer paperbacks, or in this case a trade paperback, TCoOL is now available in an easy-to-hold edition that won't break the proverbial bank.

Around the same time the book was initially published, Ross began showcasing excerpts from each of the 17 stories, beginning with "The Harrow" by Gemma Files. If you're unfamiliar with -- or undecided about -- this anthology, click "The Harrow" link and read the excerpt. And at the bottom of the page you'll see a link to the next story, and so on.

Here is the contents list, once again, for The Children of Old Leech:

Introduction: Of Whisky and Doppelgängers — Justin Steele

The Harrow — Gemma Files

Pale Apostle — J. T. Glover & Jesse Bullington

Walpurgisnacht — Orrin Grey

Learn to Kill — Michael Cisco

Good Lord, Show Me the Way — Molly Tanzer

Snake Wine — Jeffrey Thomas

Love Songs from the Hydrogen Jukebox — T.E. Grau

The Old Pageant — Richard Gavin

Notes for "The Barn in the Wild" — Paul Tremblay

Firedancing — Michael Griffin

The Golden Stars at Night — Allyson Bird

The Last Crossroads on a Calendar of

Yesterdays — Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

The Woman in the Wood — Daniel Mills

Brushdogs — Stephen Graham Jones

Ymir — John Langan

Of a Thousand Cuts — Cody Goodfellow

Tenebrionidae — Scott Nicolay & Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay

Afterword — Ross E. Lockhart

I wouldn't be surprised if a story or two (or three, or...) ended up on one or more of this year's awards lists. Don't miss this opportunity to read some of the best "weird" horror fiction in recent years. I'll close this blog post with a couple sentences I wrote back in April 2014:

But it is the subtitle that's the clincher: "A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron." Imagine, 17 stories (by 19 authors) and more than 100,000 words of fiction, written using characters, situations, and locales created by Laird Barron. It gave me the willies just thinking about it... And that was even before I worked on the book!

Laundering Reality: Charles Stross's Laundry Files

I'm about three months behind on blog posts, so....

During the latter part of October (that's 2014) I received in the mail my comp copies[1] of The Rhesus Chart, volume 5 in the continuing Laundry Files series by Charles Stross.

Interestingly enough, at about that same time, Charlie published a blog post on his public Diary entitled "The Curse of the Laundry."

In the opening paragraph, the author writes:

There's some kind of bizarre curse hanging over my Laundry Files series. Or maybe it's a deeper underlying problem with writing fiction set in the very near future (or past): I'm not sure which. All I'm sure is that that for the past decade, reality has been out to get me: and I'm fed up.

Here's the first example that Charlie provides in his post:

[in 2001] I'd just finished writing "The Atrocity Archive" and it was being edited for serial publication in issues 7-9 of the Scottish SF magazine Spectrum SF....

In Chapter 4 of "The Atrocity Archive" Bob learns from Angleton who the Middle Eastern bad guys who kidnapped Mo, intending to use her sacrifice to open a gateway to somewhere bad, really were ... and when I originally wrote the story, in 1999-2000, they were a relatively obscure bunch of anti-American zealots who'd blown up the USS Stark and an embassy in Africa. I know this may boggle the imagination of younger or more forgetful readers, but Al Quaida and Osama bin Laden had not at that time hijacked any airliners, much less etched themselves into the pages of world history....

So, on the 12th of September 2001, the score stood at Reality 1, Fiction 0. And I hastily did an edit job, replacing ObL and AQ with Yusuf Qaradawi as inspiration behind a hypothetical radical group based in groan Iraq (hey, this was before the invasion, all right?). And lo, part one of "The Atrocity Archive" was published in November 2001, and parts 2 and 3 in March and June of 2002.

I'm not sure if the Laundry Files take place in the recent past or in the very near future, or in an alternate reality -- or all three of those at once! In his "Curse" post, Charlie goes around and around on this given how current events always seem to catch up with -- and overtake -- most of the novels. The "Laundry Curse" came back to haunt Charlie with The Fuller Memorandum, written in 2008; The Apocalypse Code, written in April 2010 and March 2011; and again in the recently published The Rhesus Chart, written between September and December 2012. Of course, not to be left out, the forthcoming The Annihilation Score also gets bit by reality.

You can read all of the events to which Charlie refers -- including his declaration about the reality of the Laundry-verse -- in his post "The Curse of the Laundry." And don't forget to check out the nearly 300 comments!

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Footnotes:

[1] I have been involved as an editor in one form or another with all six volumes of the Laundry Files. I acquired and edited the original hardcover editions of The Atrocity Archives (novel The Atrocity Archive and Hugo Award-winning novella "The Concrete Jungle) and The Jennifer Morgue for Golden Gryphon Press. With volume three in the series, The Fuller Memorandum, Charlie moved to Ace Books -- and I was hired as a freelancer by Ace to line edit and copy edit the novel. Ace obviously was satisfied with my work, because I was called upon to work on the next three volumes. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to work on future Laundry Files volumes as well. And yes, I did mention volume 6, The Annihilation Score, which I just completed work on, and will be published by Ace Books this coming July. But more on this title soon (though Charlie does reveal a major plot point in this novel in the blog post).

[Addendum note 3 February 2015: Since I mentioned my initial involvement in acquiring and editing the first two Laundry Files books, I really should have included a link to my blog post on how these two books came about: "Charles Stross: On Her Majesty's Occult Service"]