Well, since Laird Barron mentioned it, the wrapper of secrecy is officially off Ellen Datlow’s forthcoming anthology, Lovecraft Unbound (due in 2010 from M Press). (2010 is the most fun date to type since 2001.) I’ve been waiting to say something about it, since I wrote a story specifically for this collection. The title is “Leng.” If you believe it to have been inspired by my recent travels, you’d be correct.
RE/Search Publications has been publishing amazing books for years, works by and about Charles Willeford, William Burroughs, Survival Research Laboratories, punk culture, urban primitives, the list goes on and on. Their early book on J.G. Ballard had a huge influence on me, probably being the biggest single spark to my first novel, Dad’s Nuke (along with the simple fact that I was stewing in the grey elevated bowels of Pacific Gas & Electric). Of only slightly lesser impact, their hilarious Pranks. Today, I received, courtesy of RE/Search founder V. Vale, a copy of their latest Ballard book, J.G. Ballard: Conversations. A fat collection of Ballard interviews, full of those bright meaty nuggets that spark complete psychic rearrangements and little things like, oh, novels. Many thanks, Vale. I hope this link brings you at least one lucky new soul who had never before known of all the treasures stored at RE/Search.
Ellen Datlow has posted the first I’ve heard of it on her livejournal. This is very sad. Disch’s books and stories are remarkable and have been a big influence on me since I was a teenager, plowing through White Fang Goes Dingo. 334 is one of the great works of American sf, although others might pick Camp Concentration or another of his books for that honor. He has always been a writer whose work I looked up to. I only met him once, at a Norwescon in 1982, and my memories are mainly of him looming through crowded convention suites. He had arrived to announce the creation of the Philip K. Dick award, and summed up PKD’s passing with these words (which I believe he cribbed from Dick): “Fucking Death.”
Indeed.
Some months back, I pointed people toward Disch’s own livejournal, where he was turning out poetry at an astonishing rate. It’s all still there, and more besides.
And here is a recent podcast, along with a more recent photograph of Disch. I remember him looking like the fellow in the photo I posted above, so I’ll leave that where it is. Today I was in a bookstore buying a used SF Book Club edition of Triplicities. The cashier said, “That’s a great collection. He’s a wonderful writer.” I said, “He just died. Did you know that?” And then the most quickly stifled, embarrassed, conversation-ending sort of “Yeah” I’ve ever heard in conversation. Neither of us knew what to say. I took my book and left.
The August 2008 issue of F&SF is out, featuring my latest Gorlen Vizenfirthe story, and the magazine is hosting online feedback in its forums. Instant reader response to magazine fiction is a new wrinkle. I’m used to stories appearing in magazines with nary the plop you’d hear from dropping a stone in a scum-coated puddle. Anyway, “Childrun” is taking a bit of a drubbing, but my hide is thicker for it. I must get better at playtesting these things! And I’m content knowing that the next two Gorlen stories, whenever they may appear, are much better. “Childrun” was a warm-up exercise, a way of reacquainting myself with a favorite old character, just to see what he’s been up to. It doesn’t advance his life story much. The next one, “Quickstone,” will.
Could an autonomous AI be prone to self-deprecation?
This Locus notice gives word that Algis Budrys has passed away. Among his accomplishments, it fails to note that in the 70s, Locus itself ran Budrys’s monthly column on the art of writing, which was highly technical, precise, and illuminating. These formative essays deeply colored the way I thought about the thing I most wanted to do with my life.
I saw this shirt in Berkeley several months ago, in a shop on Telegraph Ave. By chance I tracked it down this morning, only to learn that they are all sold out.
Anyway, Travis Pitt’s other designs are also awesome.
And this YTMND is suitably ubiq.
And don’t miss this beautiful variation on the theme. The theme of Pac-Man.
Justin Timberlake’s shellshocked music video from Southland Tales.
Lucius Shepard has a good take on the movie, which is an entertaining mess that most will hate, but which I enjoyed. It reminded me of the great sloppy sf satires of the 50’s–far more like a real Philip K. Dick novel than the sanitized Seinfeld-like sketches of Linklater’s adaptation of A Scanner Darkly. I guess it’s what Kelly did after realizing his Cat’s Cradle screenplay was never going to get made. People don’t make movies like this anymore. They don’t even write books like this. I’m a fan.
David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 13 is available today, featuring a reprint of “An Evening’s Honest Peril,” which first appeared (and remains available) online at Flurb. Finding a copy of the anthology is quite straightforward, but I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the free version on Flurb. Should you seek it, you will encounter other worthy tales too strange and slippery to be caught in the Hartwell-Cramer gill-net.
A standout line from Momofuku, the best Elvis Costello album in years. Really, the best since Spike.