Current Reading
The New Weird
edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
A World too Near
by Kay Kenyon
Reading: Placa del Fuego by Tobias S. Buckell
I’ve already talked about the quality audio productions over at Clarkesworld Magazine. Each of those audio productions are of stories selected from the electronic pages of the monthly webzine. I like this model, as it provides multiple distinct entry points into the content. I recently discovered Transmissions From Beyond which features “stories selected from the pages of the TTA Press magazines Interzone (science fiction & fantasy), Black Static (horror), and Crimewave (crime & mystery).” I have a feeling you’ll be hearing more about that from me in the future.
I’m a fan of Tobias Buckell, in fact it was his short story collection, Tides from the New Worlds that pointed me at Clarkesworld Magazine by way of Wyrm Publishing. Thus, I was excited to hear that he has a story, Placa del Fuego, in the July Issue of Clarkesworld. It’s also the audio selection!
Placa del Fuego
You don’t need any background to be able to appreciate this story, but it’s set in the larger universe of Buckell’s novels. I’ve reviewed Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose all of which I’d highly recommend. They’re each very distinct stories that chronicle some aspect of humanity’s oscillation between subjugation and xenophobic hegemony. In any large military conflict, there will be collateral damage. One of Buckell’s greatest strengths has been to tell these stories with a collaboration between the major players and a representative from the potential collateral damage. This literary parallax enriches what are already uniquely interesting stories.
Placa del Fuego is exactly what I expect from Buckell. By that I mean scary oppressive aliens, a beautifully complex setting, and individual humans trying to find their place in it all. The uniquely scary alien in this story is just an unknowable chunk of walking destruction. The titular setting is an island where the trees occasionally release a flammable substance that falls like rain. An island means boats and Buckell manages to conjure up some motor-less speed boats that are made of awesome.
All the stories and novels in this universe have a fractal quality and this one is no exception. The street urchin’s plight, living on the edge of society on a small island is reflected in the offworlder’s plight living on the outskirts of humanity’s revolution. Humanity itself is on the edge of the collection of “local” alien cultures and it’s hinted that the aliens that humanity has encountered are all refugees from a vast and none too friendly empire of some sort. Buckell uses an economy of words to weave all of this together and this story is a great addition to his overall storyline.
While writing this, iTunes decided to play the intro Yerba Buena’s Island Life. I now feel an urge to run some statistics on how many songs in my collection would have induced the same “I’m reading about an island that suffers from naturally occurring napalm rain and iTunes knows this” feeling. I don’t susspect I’ll encounter much more “naturally occuring napalm” fiction, but it’d be good to have the numbers.
The Chocolate and Peanut Butter of Noir and Speculative Fiction
I’ve been listening to the CrimeWav podcast for a while now, so when I was at Mysterious Galaxy (a store who’s very existence validates the desire for the mixing of genres I’m going to get around to mentioning in a second here) I picked up a signed copy of Seth Harwood’s Jack Wakes Up. That bookstore isn’t the first time I found myself surrounded by both speculative fiction and crime/mystery/noir. I’ve been running into these genres all swirled together in the same book:
- Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
- Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris
- The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
- The Sword Edged Blond by Alex Bledsoe
- Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
- The City & The City by China Mieville
- Mark of the Demon by Diana Rowland
– The tapestry on which the hard boiled action takes place is a far future space opera peppered with many of my favorite SFnal tropes, but the core mystery and the voice is pure noir. The other books in this series are less pure mystery, but the hard boiled voice remains.
– A dwarf plucked out of your traditional high fantasy realm into 1930’s Chicago becomes a Private Eye. Spectacular genre muddling here with a mystery that integrates tropes from high fantasy, noir and mobster lore. The sequel, Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant is on my to read list. Tee Morris also podcasts.
– I’ve not yet read this Hugo Winner, but I understand that it fits perfectly into this list, with the speculative fiction element deriving from an alternate history where the State of Israel was founded in Alaska.
– Looks like a hard boiled private eye in a sword and sorcery setting. Tobias Buckell mentioned this the yesterday, and that was probably the final impetus for writing this post.
– I’m far from clear on the details, but I’m pretty sure this will fit solidly on this list. I believe this takes place in the same setting as City of Saints and Madmen, but it’s possible I’m totally confused. An audio recording of the first chapter foreshadows a podcast.
– My mom cut out a book review of this and sent it to me. She’s often prescient in her understanding of my tastes, as I’ve been eyeing both Mieville and this book in particular for a while. Google reveals that everyone is talking about this book, but as usual I was most excited to hear about the novel’s big idea in the author’s own words.
– CSI with Demons. What’s not to love.
I’d have to say that it looks like a great time to be a lover of these two broad genres. What are some of your favorite mixtures of noir and speculative fiction?
In ongoing new weird coverage, Tim Pratt posted about his first and most recent stories being available online at the moment. I read 53rd Annual Mantis Homecoming Dance and I find no trouble classifying it New Weird.
Reading: Bone Shop by TA Pratt
The first chapter of Pratt’s prequel to the Marla Mason series is up. The 16 year old Marla Mason that arrives in Felport is a far cry from the powerful sorceress we’ve come to know and love. I look forward to seeing the transition from street waif to mob boss. It’s almost cliche, but Pratt is a master at whipping up something fun and original from familiar ingredients.
I like the afterward that gives an small insight into Pratt’s head, and I LOVE the teaser at the end of the chapter, which makes it really feel like a serial:
(Come back next week for physical violence, booze, nudity, and Marla’s first direct encounter with magic.)
The entire package is more than worth a small donation, which is how Pratt is funding this literary endeavor. If you like what you read and can’t wait a week, you can probably find most of the Marla Mason books in your local bookstore. I know Blood Engines has gone into a 5th printing! The first book is available free online from various sources, including this post. I’ve reviewed all 4 and highly recommend them:
In not even vaguely related news, Subterranean Press is having a 50% off sale (you have to buy 5 books). Subterranean Press books are uniformly drool-worthy, and I highly recommend you check them out. The 5 I’m trying to convince myself I can afford are:
- Crystal Nights and Other Stories by Greg Egan
- Scenting the Dark and Other Stories by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Metatropolis by John Scalzi
- Collected Stories by Lewis Shiner
- Screaming Science Fiction by Brian Lumley
Review: The New Weird (Stimuli)
This is the second of multiple posts related to The New Weird, an anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I previously posted an overview of the anthology, including the recommended reading list. The stories in the Stimuli section are the New Wave and New Horror precursors to New Weird.
Horror can often come off as a mindless evil plodding through a narrative while the protagonist either battles it or tries to survive. The stories in this section tear apart that description from pretty much every angle. They are each asking the question “Where do I belong?” in complex and beautiful ways. If our protagonists can find a place in the strange and horrific trappings of these stories, than it might be possible that we readers, may find a place in a world that contains many such horrors, just not concentrated and distilled to their madness inducing core as they are here.
The Luck in the Head by M. John Harrison
A poet’s dream turns to nightmare and the nightmare bleeds into reality. I love a short story that leaves you aching for more of the world in which it is set. The Mammy Vooly and Uroconium and the surrounding wasteland stuck in my mind and may find their way into my dreams. Interestingly the poet protagonist recalls a critic representing “his work as a series of narrativeless images, glued together only by his artistic persona.” Applied to the story in which it appears, it’s valid, but The Luck in the Head is none the poorer for that fact.
In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker
We view the world in different ways. Some of us are fascinated by the differing politics that are embraced. Some of us just want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Some people see a metaphor and say, ooo, I can do some damage with that. The pen is, as they say, mightier than the sword. If you’ve never read Barker… expect blood. Expect tons of blood.
Crossing into Cambodia by Michael Moorcock
War has its own inherent horror. The neat thing that Moorcock does in this piece, is hint that there’s something even more apocalyptic going on than just the horrors of an endless war. There’s a darkness looming at the edge of this piece that not even the blinding flash of a nuclear blast can dissipate.
The Braining of Mother Lamprey by Simon D. Ings
This story manages on every page to be both intensely disturbing and significantly humorous. In your average horror it’s death or something deadly that threatens. Life and living are usually good things, but here it’s clear that there can be too much of a good thing. Even the ending manages to combine whimsy and gore.
The Neglected Garden by Kathe Koja
This story captures a decent into madness, set amongst the trappings of the utterly mundane. Relationships never end cleanly and I’m not sure if the fantastical in this story more evokes abuse or suicide, but ultimately strength is derived from the suffering. I’m pleasantly confused by this story, but love the meticulous manner in which the fantastical (and horrific) elements are described.
A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing by Thomas Ligotti
A simple description of this story would be someone born with the taint of death upon them such that their not truly at home in the world until they find the land of the dead. But on other levels it’s not clear if what ails the protagonist is actually a disease. The voice that whispers nothing, is actually quite verbose during it’s “metaphysical lecture.” I read that page a few times and pretty much agree that it whispers nothing, which is probably a statement about religion or such. None of that captures how eerily beautiful the writing is.
Fiction in many forms: a catch up post
It’s been way too long since I posted. Here’s some of what I’ve been up to:
Top of the list would be hanging out with David J Williams during his LASFS adventure. I was a bit floored by how he was treated. I sort of feel like Dave and I fought through the trenches together.
I’ve been listening to the audible production of Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It’s satisfying to experience such a large science fictional tapestry explored from such a personal view point. This is a book that anyone (even those normally timid in the face of speculative fiction) that loves novels can appreciate. Of course, I’ll write a review once I finish it. A bit sad that I didn’t finish it in time to participate in #sfbookclub 2
I’ve continued to read through The New Weird. I had to return my library copy, so I bought my own.
Continuing my support of Magic District authors, Mark of the Demon by Diana Rowland is now on my shelf. I’ve read just a bit into it, and I’m excited to continue.
I took advantage of Nightshade Book’s generous sale, and picked up copies of Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi and The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks, both beautiful hardcovers, have been added to my “to read” pile.
The economy is putting pressure on everyone. Some authors (with relatively healthy back lists) are responding by posting serialized content to the web, supported by donation. Two that I’ve supported recently: Catherynne M. Valente and Tim Pratt. Tim is writing a novella prequel to the Marla Mason series. I know very little about Catherynne’s project, but I downloaded these recordings, which were a brilliant set of nested stories I’ll write more about later. I also signed up for the Omikuji Project.
I find myself deeply fascinated by the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Pretty much their entire line of books are things that will interest me, but I particularly like their “beta book” concept. It reminds me favorably of the physics e-print archive. I wonder if they’d consider publishing some science fiction.
There’s more. There’s always more, but I’m going to post this now and go actually read some of this stuff.
development: Currently Reading Web Slice
There’s a new browser on the block, Internet Explorer 8. I’ve been obsessing recently about microformats, so I was intrigued by its “Web Slice” functionality. To test this out I wrapped my Currently Reading widget in a slice. I changed “Currently Reading” to “Current Input,” since I didn’t have a quick way to change the id of the h2 tag on that text … I’ll add a “Currently Listening To” slice later to test multiple slices.
I’ve tested this with IE8 and I’ll test in Firefox with WebChunks later. I’d love input or questions on this experiment
Writing: Be Like the Squirrel
Take all your problems
And rip em apart
Carry them off In a shopping cart
And another thing you
Should’ve known from the start
The problems in hand
Are lighter than at heart
Be like the Squirrel, girl
Be like the squirrel
…
From “Little Acorns” by The White Stripes
I was writing this morning. That’s exciting in and of itself. I’ve had the ideas for a story floating around in my head for the past few weeks, and I put most of the opening scene to paper this morning. And then I stopped.
I’ve gotten into the habit recently of writing in bursts (often on weekend mornings) and completing a very short story. I’ve returned to these shorts to expand and edit them, but for the most part I’ve written full stories in a sitting. The problem with this is that it doesn’t even vaguely scale.
This morning’s writing session felt particularly good, because I was writing a piece of a story, set in a world that is still growing in my head, and by ending where I did I feel very much like I have a place to start when I sit down to work on it again. This isn’t a new idea. I like how Cory Doctorow put it:
Leave yourself a rough edge
When you hit your daily word-goal, stop. Stop even if you’re in the middle of a sentence. Especially if you’re in the middle of a sentence. That way, when you sit down at the keyboard the next day, your first five or ten words are already ordained, so that you get a little push before you begin your work. Knitters leave a bit of yarn sticking out of the day’s knitting so they know where to pick up the next day — they call it the “hint.” Potters leave a rough edge on the wet clay before they wrap it in plastic for the night — it’s hard to build on a smooth edge.
Links: The Big Idea on Scalzi’s Whatever
I like this feature on John Scalzi’s blog. He basically gives space for an author to tell us what makes their book particularly awesome. He’s working on expanding The Big Idea into a website of its own, but until then, I wanted to point at the Big Ideas that particularly interested me. I just ran a quick search on whatever and sifted through the results:
Authors I’ve reviewed
- Tobias Buckell on Sly Mongoose
- Cory Doctorowon Little Brother
- Jay Lake on his novel Green
- T. A. Pratt on Dead Reign
- Margaret Ronald on Spiral Hunt
- Scott Sigler on Infected
- Greg van Eekhout on Norse Code
- David J. Williams on Mirrored Heavens
– So far I’ve only read short fiction by Jay Lake, but I look forward to dipping into his novels. It’s particularly neat that he wrote numerous stories in same setting as Green.
Other Interesting Big Ideas
- John Joseph Adams on Federations
- Marie Brennan on Midnight Never Come
- Greg Egan on Incandescence
- C. C. Finlay on the Traitor to the Crown series
- Jim C Hines on The Stepsister Scheme
- Nancy Kress on Dogs
- Tom Levenson on Newton and the Counterfeiter
- Sarah Prineas on The Magic Theif: Lost
- Robert J. Sawyer on WWW: Wake
- Lewis Shiner on Black and White
- Catherynne Valente on Palimpsest
– an anthology of stories in the vein of Star Trek but by names famous outside of the media-tie-in world. This keeps trying to rearrange my to-read pile.
Turns out I have a lot of catching up to do reading Big Idea posts, but this should be a good jumping off point. Sifting through posts on Whatever, I also came across the Big Idea Guidelines, which is cool.
Review: Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder
Audible is offering a pretty fine promotion: A free download of Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder. I’d been wanting to check out this series, so I downloaded it. I had a good experience with Audible, so I’ll probably try some other titles as well.
The Setup
Schroeder has created a truly unique playground for this series. Virga is a large sphere floating in space, filled with a breathable atmosphere. Nothing inside the sphere is large enough to generate significant gravity, so centripetal acceleration is brought to bear in habitats of various sizes. Something is inhibiting certain types of technology, so we’re left with a Dune like situation where society has advanced beyond what would have been possible at the current level of technology. The mixture of early 20th century technology and a weightless environment leads to vessels that act like equal parts space ship and sail boat.
My Thoughts
There’s an underlying mystery from the opening paragraph of the book, and that’s the question of how this “world” came to be. I quickly caught on to the rules and limitations, but was constantly surprised by the ideas that Schroeder managed to work into the framework. We get some hints along the way that we’re not in a fantasy realm, but in a shockingly advanced “man” made structure. By the end of this novel, the first in a series, we have a good feel for Virga’s place in the larger universe.
The meat of this novel is a last ditch treasure hunt for something that will turn the tide in a looming battle. It’s easy to see the similarities to both historical naval fiction and other examples of Space Opera. The mechanics of battle and exploration also bring to mind both. Cities in hollowed out spherical seas, wooden structures that are for all intents and purposes space stations, Icebergs hanging from the ceiling of the world–These things transform the familiar into the extraordinary.
The characters don’t manage to outshine the pyrotechnics and the intriguing technological mash-up, but that’d be a pretty tall order. I find it fairly interesting that we don’t see anything from the point of view of the other nations. Other than one pirate captain, the big, story moving antagonists are faceless abstractions, the fleets of other nations and whatever is outside of Virga. There’s plenty of internal strife amongst the point of view characters to keep things interesting. The arc of the novel is satisfying, particularly the pacing of the final climax.
I’m totally hooked on this unique environment and technological mix. I look forward to finding out more about the world outside of Virga, the citizens surrounding other suns, and the fate of the characters that survived this book. The big question for me is whether I grab the physical book or continue with the audible production of Queen of Cadensce.
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Current Input
Current Listening to
Spin
by Robert Charles Wilson -
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