Alien Contact Anthology -- Bits 'n' Pieces

My Alien Contact anthology can now be preordered from Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com, as well as other fine bookstores (physical and online). You may notice that the pub date is listed as January 2012; according to the publisher, Night Shade Books, this is incorrect and the book is on schedule for its November publication.

As you can see from the Facebook widget in the right column -- "Find us on Facebook: Alien Contact Anthology" -- I have just set up a "fan page" for the book. If you are an FB user, and you are so inclined, I would appreciate your click on the "Like" button. More stories from the anthology will be forthcoming, as will a giveaway or two, along with news and reviews.

On Sunday, September 11, I attended the Tachyon Publications "Sweet 16" birthday party at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. The party marked not only Tachyon's sixteen years of publishing but also the tenth anniversary of their first birthday party. On hand to celebrate the birthday, in addition to Tachyon's own Jacob and Rina Weisman, Jill Roberts, and Elizabeth Story, were Peter S. Beagle, Kathleen Bartholomew, Nancy Kress, and Jack Skillingstead. Nancy and Jack were in town for the previous evening's SF in SF event, so they hung around an extra day for the birthday festivities. Also on hand were Charlie Jane Anders, Terry Bisson, Grania Davis, Jeremy Lassen, Nick Mamatas, and Pat Murphy, to name just a few.

During the Tachyon birthday party each year, the Norton Awards are also presented. The awards are given for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason," in memory of Joshua Norton I, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico. Norton Awards judge Jacob Weisman presented the book award to Steven R. Boyett for his novel Mortality Bridge (Subterranean Press); and Norton Awards judge Richard A. Lupoff presented the creativity award to Rudy Rucker for his autobiography Nested Scrolls (PS Publishing). Both Boyett and Rucker were on hand to accept their award. Rudy has a lengthy blog post, including photos, on the award. Rudy and I go way back, to the '80s when he was teaching at San Jose State; I wrote in a previous blog post of my interviewing Rudy Rucker regarding the Philip K. Dick Award, and our friendship over the years.

Anyhow, you may be wondering why I'm including the Tachyon Pubs birthday party and related events in this blog post on my Alien Contact anthology. And to answer that, I will share the following photograph with you:

Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead, and the ARC of Alien Contact

I had planned to attend the Tachyon Pubs birthday party since I had received the first announcement, but my circumstances changed a few weeks ago (see Status blog post). In fact, as of Saturday evening, due to work deadlines as well as the cost of public transit to San Francisco ($47.40 round trip for the two of us, using both Caltrain and BART), I had decided to stay home that day and work, in between loads of laundry. Mid-morning on Sunday I turned on the PC to send an email to Rina to let her know I would not be attending, when, to my surprise, I found an email in my inbox from Cliff Winnig letting me know that I could hitch a ride with him to San Francisco for the b-day party. It was a sign....

As both Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead were making a rare Bay Area appearance (they hail from Seattle), this gave me a chance to chat with them (and to meet Jack for the first time) about their contributions to the Alien Contact anthology. I revealed Nancy's story last week -- "Laws of Survival" (Story #19) -- and Jack's story just happens to be Story #20, which will be revealed shortly.

I'm not much of an autograph collector these days, but I did have both Nancy and Jack sign my copy of the ARC, as well as Pat Murphy, too, who contributed the story "Recycling Strategies for the Inner City" (Story #7) to the anthology. [Sorry I didn't get you in the photograph as well, Pat; hopefully next time.]

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."