(Belated) December Links & Things

Whoa... hard to believe that we're in week four of January and I still have yet to post my December links and things. I do have a lot of excuses, like the holidays (and recovery from same), multiple computer, software, and network issues (some good, including a new ASUS Zenbook; most not so good; but all very time consuming), as well as a huge project -- 271,000-plus words! -- I just proofed and copyedited for Night Shade Books (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six, edited by Jonathan Strahan¹) that took far longer than I had anticipated. And I'm still dealing with the aftermath of my mother's passing: emails, phone calls, photocopying, meetings, forms to complete and notarize, and yet another trip to Southern California planned for next week.

But, as they say -- whoever "they" are -- that's life. And better that than the alternative, to be sure.

In fact, by the time I finish typing up and posting these December links it will be time to type up January's links... sigh....

I want to remind you that February 3 is the deadline to sign up for the last Alien Contact giveaway, hosted by SciFiChick.com. The giveaway is open to US residents (a print copy giveaway) and non-US residents (an ebook copy giveaway). So follow the link to SciFiChick.com, read my guest blog post entitled "Twenty-six Stories, Twenty-six Weeks..." and be sure to sign up for the giveaway.

And speaking of Alien Contact: Michael at The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review blog just posted his December Reading Log, and he had these kind words to say about the anthology:

Alien Contact edited by Marty Halpern – Ranging from first contact and last contact to vacationers visiting an alien's home world and being, typically, obnoxious guests, Alien Contact compiles one of the most diverse collections of modern stories concerning the "other." Highly recommended....

Now, on to the links: This is my belated monthly wrap-up of December's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. There is a lot of content this time around, so please return for a second visit if you need to to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Since I'm encouraging you to follow me on Twitter, here are teasers from Angela James's (@angelajames) "10 things authors should know about Twitter": 1) When you start your tweet with the @ symbol... 2) If you have your tweets protected... 3) You should not, really ever, I mean never, query or pitch an editor or agent on Twitter... 4) Please don't use Twitter DMs (or Facebook messages) to do business... 5) Just because the editor/agent is on Twitter at 11pm on a Friday night... 6) When we say you should "engage" on Twitter... 7) You should be talking about other people's books... 8) And while we're on the subject of promotion... 9) It's a good idea to be mindful... and 10) Twitter should be fun. For all the details: Angela James's blog. (via @ColleenLindsay)

• In 1963, at the ripe old age of sixteen, Bruce McAllister (1988 Hugo and Nebula awards finalist for "Dream Baby"; 2007 Hugo Award finalist for "Kin") sent out a 4-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors to learn if "they consciously planted symbols in their work." Remember, this was long before the internet and email: the authors had to be tracked down, envelopes addressed and mailed, etc. He hoped the surveys would "settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren't lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery." Bruce has been sitting on 65 of those responses for all these years, and thanks to the Paris Review, we can now view many of these questionnaire responses from the likes of Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer. This is amazing stuff! Not to be missed! The PR article was posted on December 5; on December 17, less than two weeks later, PR Online reported that they had 120,000 page views of the McAllister survey article -- the most page views they've ever had!

The Meaning of "Going Home"

This is a different type of blog post for me: I'm going to promote a contest, but not one of my own. And the subject of this contest is contrary to something I firmly believe: that we shouldn't analyze fiction to death (as is done in typical high school English Lit classes... gag!) but rather to simply enjoy the totality of the reading experience. But with that said....

This contest is sponsored by two of my favorite authors: my friend, Bruce McAllister, whose Hugo Award-nominated story "Kin graces the pages of my Alien Contact anthology; and Barry Malzberg, who co-edited (with Edward L. Ferman) one of the best SF anthologies ever, Final Stage¹.

First, the caveat: This contest is open to Facebook members only. If you are an FB user, then simply "friend" Bruce McAllister and you are good to go. If not, then just sign up for a free account and then search for -- and "friend" -- Bruce McAllister. FB is no big deal, it's not painful, and you don't have to use the app after you sign up -- other than for this contest, of course.

Bruce and Barry have co-written a story entitled "Going Home" that was published in the February 2012 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Now I realize we're still in 2011, but this particular issue has already been printed. In fact, the Asimov's website currently features this February issue. You may be an Asimov's subscriber, or you can find copies on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and certainly at your favorite SF specialty store, and online as well, including ebook editions. And Asimov's has donated 15 copies of the issue to Bruce McAllister for readers who wish to participate in this contest but for one reason or another are unable to obtain a copy.

Here's the issue, and the reason for the contest: Even though Bruce and Barry have co-written "Going Home," they do not agree on the story's meaning. According to Bruce's Facebook post on December 16:

The Asimov's issue with "Going Home" is out and should hit the stands soon. After a brief email exchange yesterday, however, Barry and I discovered we're not at all in agreement about what the story means. (Yeah, you'd think -- co-authors and everything -- but no....) So a contest: FREE copies of my novel Dream Baby and Barry Malzberg's John Campbell Award winner Beyond Apollo to the three readers out there who can come up with the most creative (read: insightful and/or deranged) interpretations of the story. 500 words max. Deadline -- March 15 [2012]. FB members only, yes. Winning entries (or excerpts) will be posted here with much fanfare. This should be fun.

So here's a chance for you to put those interpretive skills you honed in your English Lit class to good use, and possibly score a free copy of the award-nominated Dream Baby from Bruce and the award-winning Beyond Apollo from Barry. And, I assume, the authors will gladly sign/inscribe their respective books for the winners, too.

Courtesy of the authors, here's the opening paragraph to "Going Home":

Bob—

Arrogant as this sounds, I've decided I'm going to bring the Golden Age of Science Fiction back even if I have to do it single-handedly. It's been lost for a long time, and someone's got to bring it back, given what's happening. Yes, I know, Mitchell Litton has been known for three decades for his cynical, earthbound, ankle-biting, technophobic, earthbound novels—and I wrote them because they were my truth at the time (the alcohol, two divorces, Chiara's pregnancy at 16, my mother's and sister's deaths in the same year, the bankruptcy, and the awards nastiness), but I remember what it was like to be young and read those stories; and now that I'm facing, as we all are with the slow spread of this "Armageddon virus" that's taking the world, my own mortality, I see now that those stories held older and bigger truths than the ones I delivered. In any case, I want to be part of it again. Like going home, yes.

—from "Going Home" by Bruce McAllister and
Barry Malzberg, Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2012

As Bruce states on his Facebook page: "Finally, after 40 years, got to co-write a story with old friend and mentor Barry Malzberg."

---------------

Footnote:

1. If you should choose to track down a copy of the Ferman and Malzberg anthology Final Stage, be sure to seek out the reprint Penguin edition only -- not the original Charterhouse hardcover edition. There was some controversy regarding the hardcover edition because a number of the stories were revised and edited by the publisher's editor without Ferman's or Malzberg's -- or any of the affected authors -- knowledge or permission. The original texts of all the stories were restored in the Penguin reprint edition. Anthology historian Bud Webster has written a lengthy essay on the original Charterhouse edition entitled "Anthology 101: The (Non)Final Stage" that you'll find quite enlightening, with input from Ferman, Malzberg, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, and others.

SFSignal's Close Encounters Continues: Nov. 10

SFSignal.com's close encounters with the contributing authors to Alien Contact continues with Bruce McAllister and the "Alien Contact" interview.

The Pen Is Mightier...

I credit my friend, the author Bruce McAllister, with helping me to name this blog More Red Ink. Of course, the idea indirectly came from Jeffrey Ford, when he included the Moses/God quote (you can read it in the right column, below the Blog Archive) in the acknowledgments to his first short fiction collection, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories, which I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press (2002).

Bottom line, if you ever receive a marked up, edited manuscript from me, odds are pretty good that it will have its share of red ink. I've had some manuscripts in years past with so much red that it looked like I had bled all over the pages (i.e. I became so frustrated with the manuscript that I tried to commit suicide).

Seriously, I just wanted to give credit to my red pen of choice: the Pilot G2 Gel Ink Rolling Ball Fine Point. It doesn't get any better than that! My wife came home the other day from shopping and set down a package of the pens in front of me. She said they were on sale. I looked at this as her way of telling me that I should, well, work harder.

"Kin" by Bruce McAllister (Part 2 of 2)

Kin

by Bruce McAllister

[Continued from Part 1]

The alien did not sit on the bed, but remained in the doorway. The boy did not have trouble looking at him this time.

"You know more about us," the alien said suddenly, severely, "than you wished me to understand.... Is this not true?"

The boy did not answer. The creature's eyes -- huge and catlike -- held his.

"Answer me," the alien said.

When the boy finally spoke, he said only, "Did you do it?"

The alien ignored him.

"Did you kill him?" the boy said.

"Answer me," the alien repeated, perfectly still.

"Yes..." the boy said, looking away at last.

"How?" the alien asked.

The boy did not answer. There was, the alien could see, defeat in the way the boy sat on the stool.

"You will answer me...or I will...damage this room."

The boy did nothing for a moment, then got up and moved slowly to the terminal where he studied each day.

"I've done a lot of work on your star," the boy said. There was little energy in his voice now.

"It is more than that," the alien said.

"Yes. I've studied Antalouan history." The boy paused and the alien felt the energy rise a little. "For school, I mean." There was feeling again -- a little -- to the boy's voice.

The boy hit the keyboard once, then twice, and the screen flickered to life. The alien saw a map of the northern hemisphere of Antalou, the trade routes of the ancient Seventh Empire, the fragmented continent, and the deadly seas that had doomed it.

"More than this...I think," the alien said.

"Yes," the boy said. "I did a report last year -- on my own, not for school -- about the fossil record on Antalou. There were a lot of animals that wanted the same food you wanted -- that your kind wanted. On Antalou, I mean."

Yes, the alien thought.

"I ran across others things, too," the boy went on, and the alien heard the energy die again, heard in the boy's voice the suppressive feeling his kind called "despair." The boy believed that the man named Ortega-Mambay would still kill his sister, and so the boy "despaired."

Again the boy hit the keyboard. A new diagram appeared. It was familiar, though the alien had not seen one like it -- so clinical, detailed, and ornate -- in half a lifetime.

It was the Antalouan family cluster, and though the alien could not read them, he knew what the labels described: The "kinship obligation bonds" and their respective "motivational weights," the "defense-need parameters" and "bond-loss consequences" for identity and group membership. There was an inset, too, which gave -- in animated three-dimensional display -- the survival model human exopsychologists believed could explain all Antalouan behavior.

The boy hit the keyboard and an iconographic list of the "totemic bequeaths" and "kinships inheritances" from ancient burial sites near Toloa and Mantok appeared.

"You thought you knew," the alien said, "what an Antalou feels."

The boy kept his eyes on the floor. "Yes."

The alien did not speak for a moment, but when he did, it was to say:

"You were not wrong...Tuckey-Yatsen."

The boy looked up, not understanding.

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #10: "Kin" by Bruce McAllister (Part 1 of 2)

If you are new to this blog and are wondering what's up with this Alien Contact anthology (forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November) and this "Story #10" -- you may want to begin here. Or not....

"Kin" by Bruce McAllister

This story was originally published as the cover story in the February 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, and is approximately 3,800 words in length. And in only 3,800 words, this story packs one helluva punch. (For those wondering, artist Dominic Harman did the cover art for that February issue.)

In February 2006, just as "Kin" was seeing print (yes, I know, the February issue would have been distributed much earlier, but allow me some poetic license here, okay?...), I sent a query email to Bruce McAllister introducing myself, and expressing interest in acquiring a collection of his short stories for Golden Gryphon Press. One of my all-time favorite stories is Bruce's novelette "Dream Baby" (1987), a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and, later, expanded into the novel of the same name. There were other stories, too: "The Ark," "Assassin," "The Girl Who Loved Animals," and "Little Boy Blue" in issues of Omni [I had a subscription at the time]; "Captain China" in Ellen Datlow's anthology Off Limits; and novelette "Hero, the Movie" in F&SF; to name just a few. All of these powerful, intelligent, thought-provoking stories. In fact, had I the available word count, I would have included "Hero" in my Alien Contact anthology as well -- not as a replacement for "Kin," but in addition to "Kin"!

To make a long story short, the collection did move forward -- but not with the stories that Bruce and his agent (at that time) Russell Galen had originally planned (hey, I had to earn my meager pay as an acquiring editor some how!) -- and The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories was published in October 2007. And with John Picacio cover art, too. "Kin," of course, was included in the collection. And I include it once again in Alien Contact. The story is one that every reader and fan of science fiction needs to read, and I'm doing my best to spread the word.

With less than 3,800 words, an author can't do too much world building, but there is just enough in this story to allow the reader to fill in the blanks, to use one's imagination -- and isn't that what science fiction is really all about? In this world there are the "haves" and the "have nots".... hmm... doesn't sound like science fiction to me, but I digress.... In this world, on this Earth, aliens walk among us. We meet an Antalou, but we learn through him of other worlds, of other wars on those worlds, and this implies, too, that others, besides the Antalou, walk among us. If only....

Bruce wrote a lengthy afterword to "Kin" in The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories, and with his most kind permission I'm including some of those words here [Note: There's a bit of a spoiler here, so you may want to skip this quoted text for now and scroll a bit farther down]:

I'd always been attracted, even as a young writer, to the question of what it would REALLY be like to be a human being in the universe of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and it was through Harry Harrison's Deathworld trilogy that I first got a glimpse. Harry's trilogy had its heroes, sure, but its heroes also had their human flaws; and common sense and character-as-destiny ran through them and to such a degree that I was surprised that John Campbell had seen fit to publish them in Astounding. But John Campbell was always surprising me.

"Kin" was, then, an attempt to evoke the Golden Age in fable-form but to do it as Harry Harrison had done in his trilogy: show that survival is simply that―human beings reaching into themselves to survive even if what they find that allows them to do so isn't necessarily the most noble traits of human nature. In other words, the boy in this story, though he loved his family, will indeed become an assassin―because it is in him to become one.

In addition to allowing me to excerpt part of his afterword, Bruce has also given me permission to post the contents of "Kin" in its entirety here on More Red Ink. So I'll stop my typing and allow you to read this very fine story, which was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Locus Award in the short story category.

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.

Welcome to More Red Ink

I've been debating whether or not to actually begin blogging for a number of months now -- the primary point of contention being the amount of time involved to blog consistently, and to blog with intent/content. Regardless, here I am!

I first want to thank author Bruce McAllister (whose first short fiction collection, The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (2007), I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press) for suggesting the blog title "More Red Ink." It's an intriguing title to use in these current economic conditions, when "more red ink" implies yet another financial loss to one's bottom line. With the extreme hit all of our retirement savings have taken over the past year (and which will unfortunately continue through this year), well, Warren Zevon's words, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," take on greater significance for most of us, in that we'll all have to continue working 'til we drop, with no retirement in sight. My intent, however, with this blog title, is that "more red ink" potentially improves the bottom line, so to speak, of any particular written work in which I am involved. But that's really for the authors and the publishers to judge.

I also wish to thank author Jeffrey Ford for allowing me to use his "Marty/Moses and God" quote in the header -- even though Jeff specifically expressed that it not be used in the header. Sorry, Jeff -- really! -- but this is where the quote belongs.

I first met Jeff at the 2000 World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas. I attended his reading, during which he read the yet-to-be-published story "Creation" (which won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for best short story). I was so knocked out by this story that I went up to Jeff after the reading, introduced myself, and told him that I would like to publish his first short fiction collection. I was only familiar with about four of Jeff's other stories, but after hearing "Creation" I knew that he was a writer to watch, and I wanted to be the editor to snag his first collection. It took a number of months for the collection to come together (Jeff's NY publisher had "first look," so we had to wait for the publisher to pass on the collection), and The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories was published by Golden Gryphon in 2002; it won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for best single-author collection. For Jeff, that made two World Fantasy Awards in the same year: matching bookends!

So, welcome to "More Red Ink"!