jonathancarroll

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2009/12/carrollblog_1131.html

For the first time in her life, adult Danielle realized it is all of our selves that have lived up until this moment that decide what we do: not only the me who is living right now.
And there is no saying which one of those selves will prevail.
Out of that revelation grew the second one: *all* of our selves-- past and present-- determine what we do every minute of our lives.
Danielle Voyles did not start stealing when she was twelve. She started stealing when her six-year-old self ordered her twelve-year-old self to do it.
Having realized these things, her hands began to shake. She was twenty-nine. She'd had a so-so life. Some of it had been her doing, some not. But how much of her mediocre life had happened the way it did because the wrong Danielles had made the wrong decisions? How many times should the final decider have been younger or older, more cynical or more trusting, than the one who'd had the last say?
Of course six-year-old Danielle was still alive in the twelve- year- old. She was alive in the twenty-nine-year-old too. The six-year-old was part of her history, one of the first rings of the Danielle Voyles "tree." But what the adult had never known until this minute was that child not only continued living inside, but she also played a significant role at least once in determining her later destiny.

from THE GHOST IN LOVE

jeffvandermeer

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/11/30/whats-your-geekiest-moment/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/?p=6425

A few years ago I had breakfast with my friend Nir. I was trying to get the attention of the waiter, who ignored me completely, and so I turned to Nir - quite a large gentleman, with a shaved head – and asked for his help.

Nir raised one very large hand and in a bellowing voice shouted: “Waiter! Here! Now!”

And as if by magic, the waiter, looking rather nervous, materialised by our table. Nir turned to me and barked: “Order!”

And so it was that, after I ordered, and the frightened waiter skulked away back to the kitchen, that I turned to Nir and said, without thinking: “You know, in Kzinti your name would be Speaker-to-Waiters”.

There was a moment of silence. And then Nir burst out laughing.

It’s the kind of moment you sense your inner geek bursting forth and refuses to be any longer detained. I don’t think Nir ever let me forget that – but what about you? What was your Geek Moment?

Lavie Tidhar is the author of linked-story collection HebrewPunk (2007), novellas An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2009) and Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God (2010) and, with Nir Yaniv, of The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009). He’s lived on three continents and one island-nation, and currently lives in South East Asia. His first novel, The Bookman, will be published by HarperCollins’ new Angry Robot imprint in 2010, and will be followed by two more.

warren_ellis

Discovered Xela just the other day. If you come across an EP by Xela called THE DIVINE, grab it. This is from the album THE DEAD SEA:

cmpriest

Hey. Guess how many words I wrote today? NONE! HAHAHA! THAT’S RIGHT, NARY A SINGLE SYLLABLE OF FICTION, SO THERE. Ladies and gents and everyone else, I’ll have you to know that every single Draft Zero in my queue has officially been composed. And this morning I sent “Reluctance” off to its editor (squeaking in under deadline, BOOYAH), which means that my deadline list is looking MIGHTY FINE.

Of course, any minute now editorial feedback and rewrites are going to come down the pike for Dreadnought, Clementine, and Fort Freak … but please — let me enjoy the moment while it lasts. I can scarcely tell you what a leisurely day this has been, with no obligations except my day-job work. This must be what it’s like to only have one job! It’s been so long, I’d nearly forgotten the sensation.

To celebrate the occasion, I shall give you links!

• First up! Mark Henry - As you know Bob, Mark is our Chief Male Member of Team Seattle (which somehow sounds filthy, but ’tis only fitting). In short, his books are absurdly awesome — irreverent, hilarious, disgusting, and intensely perverted. Something for everyone! I swear, his Amanda Feral stories are a guaranteed recto-stick-ectomy. So please click the link and go show him some love … some dirty, dirty love …

• Because Subterranean Press is evil - Bill is offering 50% off preorder titles. This is your chance to pick up some great reading material at unbelievable prices - just click that-there link and follow the directions to textual bliss. Offer lasts until end-of-day Friday, December 4th. Merry Christmas, y’all! (Sorry — Clementine isn’t available for preorder yet, so there’s nothing of mine to be nabbed. But I’m sure that even the most casual browser among you will find something of interest.)

• Kyle Cassidy and Crew - Yesterday, Kyle and his lovely wife (plus two lovely guests) came to visit, and it was just plain amazing. He even took some shots for the Where I Write series, of which you can see an iPhone outtake right here. I don’t know why I look a little pissy, staring off like that. I was listening to/looking at Trillian over on the couch. It’s hard not to look at her. She’s really pretty. Anyway, I know for a fact that Kyle has about a jillion pictures of me laughing and looking like my usual cheerful dork self, on account of how he had me laughing most of the time he was holding the camera :)

• Steampunk Exhibition Ball — Right here in Seattle, at the Museum of History and Industry, Saturday night. I SHALL BE THERE. I won’t have any books for sale, I’m afraid; but if you bring me yours, I’ll be happy to scribble all over ‘em for you, at your discretion. I believe I’ll be reading a bit? Details remain a little fuzzy. But trust me to be there, bedecked as a shipwrecked steampunk pirate — via a costume I’m building around this gob-smackingly lovely corset (which is even more gob-smackingly lovely in person, believe it or not). Anyway, if you’re also at this event — do stomp up and say hello! I love meeting new people, and will talk your ears off if you give me half a chance.
  

jeffvandermeer

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/11/30/sculpture-fest-a-surreal-fascinating-experience/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/?p=6421

Our friend Eric Schaller took Ann and me to the remains of Sculpture Fest outside of Woodstock, Vermont, over the weekend. Some of it had already been dismantled, but the stuff still there was fascinating. Enjoy the slideshow, which you can make full-screen.

warren_ellis

Out from this Wednesday, several pages up for your inspection at this link.

jeffvandermeer

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/11/30/review-soulless-book-one-of-the-parasol-protectorate-by-gail-carriger-orbit-2009/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/?p=6419

When I first laid hands on Gail Carriger’s Soulless (Orbit, 2009), I began to wonder if the book had been written specifically to irritate me.

1. To start out, the novel is urban fantasy. Already we’re on bad terms.

2. Also, there are vampires.

3. Too, werewolves.

4. And romance!

5. In case that’s not enough, Carriger mixes in a Victorian setting and a hint of steampunk. Neither of these inherently annoy me, but combined with items 1-4:

6. The novel is heavily weighted down by trendy genre elements.* In my experience, this usually leads to books that are poorly constructed, badly integrated, and the literary equivalent of a chess club stereotype wearing star-shaped sunglasses – trying much too hard to be cool.**

Soulless should be like combining salmon and chocolate while I, in this metaphor, am an ichthyophobe with no sweet tooth. However, it appears that skilled chefs can pair salmon and chocolate. And sometimes a novel that’s full of everything wrong can go terribly, tragically right.

Soulless is the first book of the Parasol Protectorate, with the next book, Changeless, due from Orbit on March 30, 2010. The novel begins when a young Victorian woman, Alexia Tarabotti, finds herself alone in a library with a vampire. For any other unmarried miss, this situation would be frightening. However, Alexia has no soul which means that vampires can’t eat her and, in fact, her touch temporarily turns supernatural creatures into humans.

There are three types of supernatural creatures in Carriger’s universe: werewolves, vampires and ghosts. Werewolves come in packs, and vampires come in hives, but somehow this vampire doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. Alexia gets caught up with the Bureau of Unnatural Registry, or BUR, in helping to investigate this strange appearance as well as a number of strangely coincidental disappearances.

In the interview at the back of the book, Carriger reports having asked herself, “if immortals were mucking about, wouldn’t they have been mucking about for a very long time?” She considers the cultural implications of supernatural interference: “Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functioned on werewolf pack dynamics… [and then I] realized that if Victorians were studying vampires and werewolves (which they would do, if they knew about them)… technology would have evolved differently. Enter a sprinkling of steampunk…” (p. 364)

In my opinion, most traditional urban fantasy fails because it doesn’t consider the long-term, global ramifications of its conceits. This isn’t helped by the fact that a great deal of urban fantasy poses a secret underworld filled with werewolves and vampires (or fairies and elves) who covertly affect the real world. Small-scale stories revolving around this conceit can be fine, but secrets are difficult to keep, and many stories pose so many supernatural events of such import that it strains credibility to believe that magic could remain a secret. Buffy – to take an at-hand example – made a joke of it. But non-humorous texts are out of luck if they want us to believe that people die every night from vampire bites and yet no one ever notices.

Carriger’s world is one in which vampires and werewolves are fully integrated. They interact with and affect politics and society, and in turn are affected by them. For instance, there’s a post specifically designated for a werewolf to advise the Queen, but simultaneously the alpha werewolf is constrained by high society mores.

Soulless also benefits from the fact that Carriger doesn’t seem to have approached the elements of her book as disparate. As she says, Victorians investigating magic lends itself to steampunk; one genre element follows from another, creating the sense of a fully integrated world.

The novel’s action-oriented main plot takes place against a Jane-Austen-like background. Alexia, the product of her mother’s first marriage to a – gasp – Italian, is a spinster with a number of unflattering traits, such as her blunt speech and tan complexion, all of which make it clear she’ll never find a proper English husband. Nevertheless, she falls in love with one of the country’s most eligible bachelors, the werewolf alpha Lord Maccon.

No, wait. She doesn’t fall in love with him. She can’t stand him. No, I’m sorry. I mean, he can’t stand her. Wait. He’s in love with her – that’s it. It’s just that he’s strong and manly, but also messy and uncivilized. While she’s proud and intractable, but also busty and tenacious. Wait, are we reading Pride and Prejudice with Werewolves?

Soulless’s treatment of romance in its early chapters is the novel’s only major misstep. The text improves once Lord Maccon and Alexia acknowledge their romantic feelings – although there is one awkward, late-chapter sex scene that occurs in the middle of an action sequence, which could have been dramatically shortened while still serving its purpose as a release valve for romance and humor. But the early romantic sallies are winceably cliché. As soon as a male character gazes upon the heroine with a passage like–

Miss Tarabotti might examine her face in the mirror each morning with a large degree of censure, but there was nothing at all wrong with her figure. He would have to have had far less soul and a good fewer urges not to notice that appetizing fact. Of course, she always went and spoiled the appeal by opening her mouth. In his humble experience, the world had yet to produce a more vexingly verbose female. (p. 8-9)

–we readers know where we’re headed. We don’t need tingling near her abdomen or stirring he can’t explain, interspersed with fury! at his lack of manners and yet–! to guide us along the way. Carriger so facilely avoids other clichés that it’s a shame this one mars the text.

Overall, though, the Austen elements are charming. Carriger’s Victorian voice is sharp and funny. Witty observations provide a plethora of humorous clashes between action sequences and rigid etiquette. The descriptions of Victorian fashion are very nice for those readers with a weakness for bustles and lace, and I suspect I’m not the only one since the book is marketed with a Victorian dress-up doll flash game.

If there’s one weakness the Victorian voice lends itself to, it’s the underdevelopment of Alexia’s mother, step-father and sisters, who play the compliant foils for unconventional Alexia. Their insipidness is fine at the beginning of the book, but grows less convincing as their roles increase near the end. Still, this is a small complaint and easily remedied. Hopefully Carriger will toss them a few lines of character development in one of the sequels.

Other characters are created quite well. Alexia, for instance, is a fun and well-portrayed heroine, full of vigor and flaws. She, her friend Ivy, and their friendship are memorably captured in a few sentences: “Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats. This last being the facet of Ivy’s character that Alexia found most difficult to bear.” (p. 33) Lord Maccon and his assistant, Professor Lydell, are good characters as well, although Lord Maccon is at times brushed in with slightly-too-broad romantic strokes and could use a little more development within his archetype. The best character is the vampire Lord Akeldama, an outrageous gossip-monger with a penchant for gaudy attire whose underlying intelligence and immortal weariness are deftly revealed as the novel progresses.

In the end, Soulless is not a profound novel. It imparts no revelations about the human experience. I don’t expect it will change anyone’s life or that I’ll remember the plot intricacies in ten years. But it was a fun, adventurous romp that diverted me for a few hours. I might even read it a second time. I will certainly pick up book two of the Parasol Protectorate and I look forward to meeting Alexia Tarabotti again in 2010.

–

*It seems possible that Carriger began writing with the intent of forecasting what tropes would be popular a few years down the line. If this is the case, kudos to her for guessing correctly.

**It should go without saying that any of these things can be done well. It’s just that while 90% of everything is crap, I find these tropes to suffer from even worse odds. Nevertheless, here are some successful examples: Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (vampire), N. K. Jemisin’s “Red Riding Hood’s Child” (werewolf), Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale” (urban fantasy), and Paula Guran’s anthologies of romantic fantasy which contain Coates’s “Magic in a Certain Slant of Light,” Parks’s “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” and Copley-Woods’s “Desires of Houses” (romance). Michael Swanwick is famous for combining disparate genre elements with strength and grace, and I was recently impressed with new writer Tina Connolly’s “Moon at the Starry Diner” for successfully condensing an epic plotline and several incompatible tropes into a short story.

coppervale

Holiday Gift Ideas, for those of you who missed the book tour - I'm still signing (and drawing dragons in) all four IG books. Order here and get them in time for Christmas!

warren_ellis

Third in a possibly infinite list of music wot I liked this year:

"Love Is A Wave," Crystal Stilts: I don’t care what it’s derivative of, I don’t care what you think, I loved this and I consider it one of the great pop records of the year. You can disagree with me, but at the end of the argument I will be Right and you will be Severely Bruised. There is a Narrative Purity to this record. It says: what if the Libertines, that great music-press delusion of the 00s, that band that only made one great single and it was their last one, that band who became invited into the Rock Canon because they had a great story… what if they had, one time, tried to get the rush they gave people down onto a bloody record. Then it would have been this one. But ultimately they were a bit shit at being a band, so the Crystal Stilts did it instead.

THE TRANSACTIONAL DHARMA OF ROJ, Roj: you really need the CD of this, not least because of the gorgeous booklet written by Ken Hollings and designed by Julian House. This is a Ghost Box record, and as such has its roots in the cosmic hauntological weird. DHARMA, however, is a lot more about rhythm than most Ghost Box records. And it’s frequently absolutely gorgeous. It’s still coming out of that box of strangeness, don’t get me wrong. But it’s less concerned with building a sonic friction and weirding you out than it is with conjuring an interplanetary drum seance. And an interplanetary drum seance should first be beautiful.

coppervale

They will all take some time to manage - but what coming next is Magic. Three miracles: one soon, one a bit later, and one that will be a surprise. Real Magic, literally, is what's next. ;)

warren_ellis

On my internet shithole today:

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Mysta Of The Moon – return of the artist game thread, all are welcome

* Changing SF Magazines’ Business Theory – I didn’t start this, I swear

* 2009 Music Retrospective – your favourites, this year?

* HAPPY()SAD

* Johnston & Mitten’s WASTELAND: #1 Free Online

* The Starry Wisdom Of Warren 30nov09