Christopher Rowe

"I am different," he wrote, "let this not upset you."

Here's something science fictioneers and others might find interesting and useful. It's a quote from a fascinating new book by Andrew Ball that I picked up today at the library, The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science.

If we really want to see where science came from, it is no good starting from today's perspective. Now we have the luxury of being able to regard astrology and magic as forms of foolishness. There was very little luxury in the sixteenth century, when ideas like this were all that was on offer. Science resulted not from efforts to get rid of them but to make sense of them.

PS: The title of this post is the first line of the book, by the way.

PPS: Yes, yes, I'm trying to creep back onto the internet and pick up my responsibilities after losing July to injuries resulting directly and indirectly from a moderately ugly bicycle accident. More later.

Of Nebulas and Novels

I'm serving on the Nebula Novel jury this year. The Nebulas are the awards given annually by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and one interesting wrinkle (among the many, many devastatingly uninteresting wrinkles) in how the awards process works is the existence of "jury adds."

To wind up on the final Nebula ballot, a work must either have survived a round of recommendation and preliminary voting that makes up in Kafka what it lacks in elegance, or it must have been "added" by one of several juries, each of which look at different kinds of work (short fiction, produced screenplays, novels) and each of which operates under its own set of rules and protocols.

Still with me?

A jury consisting of myself and several of my peers may or may not elect to add one novel length work of fiction published in the USA in 2006 to the final ballot of next year's Nebulas (for our purposes a novel is a work of fiction 40,000+ words long).

Our job is to keep an eye out for the rum and the fey, for excellent works that might have escaped the notice of the SFWA membership at large owing to details of the work's publishing history. Perhaps they're books that were under-publicized or which were published by small houses. Perhaps they were published "out-genre," that is, presented as a mystery or a romance or even "straight" fiction while still fitting a generously broad definition of "science fiction" or "fantasy." Perhaps they were tightly targeted at particularly gendered readers, or readers of a particular race or ethnicity, but have things to say to everybody.

If we find one (and there can be, as the man with the sword said, only one), we'll add it to the final ballot. If we don't, we won't.

So your job, reader, is three-fold. First, if you happen to be a writer, publisher or publicist involved with putting out a book in calendar year 2006 that you feel might fit the bill(s), please send it to me:

Christopher Rowe
PO Box 1304
Lexington, KY  40588-1304

Second, if you're not a writer, publisher or publicist etc etc, but you happen to read such a book that you're enthusiastic about, please let me know about it via e-mail and I'll try to track down a copy (if you have info on obtaining a review copy, please send that along as well).

Third, if you have an electroblog yourself, and you think some folks read it who might fit category the first (keywords: writer, publisher or publicist 2006 sf/fantasy might be overlooked etc), will you please let them know that I'm over here, looking for books? Thanks!

UPDATE: It's been suggested that I emphasize that the jury is empaneled for all of 2006--the awards  will be given in  Spring of '07--so we'll be looking for work all year long. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

The Future Isn't Through With You Yet

Tomorrow is apparently the publication date of Beyond Singularity, a book that reprints my story The Voluntary State along with thirteen other stories by authors I would list if I knew who they were (I haven't seen a copy yet). The editors were Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. Here's a squib from the publisher's page about the book.

Featuring stellar contributions from some of today's most masterful practitioners of speculative fiction, Beyond Singularity presents fourteen visions of a tomorrow where rapid technological and genetic breakthroughs have rendered humanity obsolete.

Available wherever books are sold, I'm sure. I'll add it to the books over to the left when I get back from my Kentucky history class, so you can click through that if you're interested. Oh, and my story doesn't technically render humanity obsolete, but why quibble?

Books for Geeks by Girls

Lots of folks are talking about this ridiculous list of the "Top Twenty Novels for Geeks" that resulted from a Guardian survey. And yeah, pretty much anybody who looked at the list was immediately struck by the complete absence of any books by women. That's not the list's only deficiency (not by a long shot), but it's the one that's easiest to correct with our own lists, as folks are doing in this post at Velvet Threads.

Clearly, the list below is incomplete. And I'm not saying that these are (necessarily) the best books by these authors or that the books are, in and of themselves, geeky. But I definitely think you're a geek if you've read 'em all. And if you haven't read 'em all, you should get to it, 'cause your geek street cred is weak!

Alphabetical by author, natch:

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Synners by Pat Cadigan
Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Rats & Gargoyles by Mary Gentle
Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Life by Gwyneth Jones
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh
Golden Vanity by Rachel Pollack
Natural History by Justina Robson
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone by JK Rowling
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

A girl named Cigarette

This is the way the web works, this is what it's for.

This morning, I saw a "blinked" news item on Locus Online which led me to an entry in Rick Klefel's Agony Column all about an extraordinary new book called The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, written by Jess Nevins and published by MonkeyBrain Books (awesome cover, Picacio!). Reading the sample entry--describing an early novel of the Chasseurs d'Afrique (kind of a gentleman's version of the Foreign Legion) titled Under Two Flags by one Ouida, neé Marie Louise de la Remée--convinced me to figure out how to put in a purchase request with my local library via their website.

Which, if you don't have the fifty bucks to buy that book right now (which is what I'd do if I had the fifty bucks), is what you should do too.

If it was in print, I'd also request a copy of Under Two Flags because of Nevins's description of the character Cigarette. It's Cigarette who merits the encylopedia entry, by the way, more than the book itself. And how could she not?

Cigarette wins the reader's affections almost immediately. She is a camp follower for the Chasseurs, but she is no whore. Rather, she is the Chasseurs' mascot and mother figure. Her mother was a camp follower and her father a soldier unknown to her. She was an infant during the 1848 revolt in Paris, sitting on the barriers and laughing as "La Marseilles" was sung and the bullets flew. After that she wandered to Africa with her mother, and then, after her mother's death, Cigarette attached herself to the Chasseurs. She is seventeen years old during the events of Under Two Flags. She is a patriot for France, devoted not to the government or the upper classes but to the people, to the soldiers, and to the country itself, and when she wins the Cross of the Legion of Honour, for gallantry on the battlefield, it is the crowning moment of her life and something she has dreamed about from when she was young.

{...}

Cigarette is beloved of the Chasseurs, feared and respected by the Arabs, a "swearing, killing, fighting, laughing, dancing bastard heroine," and a woman who can ride like a cavalryman, drink like a Zouave, and fight like a Chasseur.

While describing how cool a woman is by stressing how much like a man she is doesn't rest all that comfortably on my mind, in this case I'm willing to cut a little slack owing to the 1867 publication date.

The book's table of contents is online, and is tantalizing to say the least. My favorite entry titles (right this second, anyway) are: the list of various Captains that would leave a comics encyclopedia in the dust, starting with Captain Black, ranging through two(?) Nemos and ending with Captain Virex; an equally impressive list of Doctors, the best of which is Doctor Materialismus; Electric Elephant (Schwartz, wake up!); Arsène Lupin; Lord James Marauder; Martians (I) and Martians (II); six separate entries for Nameless Man; Nora van Snoop; and, of course, the Undying Thing.

Well put!

Today in my literature class ("Kentucky Masters of the Short Story") we were discussing Robert Hazel's challenging "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant." Hazel is probably best known outside the Commonwealth for his poetry, but within it, he's most often mentioned for the years in the late fifties he spent teaching writing at the University of Kentucky, where he mentored people like Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, Wendell Berry and Bobbie Ann Mason. (Here's a good article about that particular spike on the Kentucky literary timeline).

Hazel's story is a troubling look at racism and sexism among leftist Village intellectuals in the sixties, so naturally, the conversation turned to category romance novels. (Don't ask me, I couldn't track it and I was there, taking notes even.)

One young lady in class was very emphatic in expressing her view of Harlequins in particular. As she put it, "Nothing in them slut novels is true!"

I can't think of anything to add to that, really.

Tricked!

Oh, how I loves me some Alex Robinson funny books. His first graphic novel, Box Office Poison, was a revelation (forget the mutoids in tights, if I get to be somebody from a comic I want to be Stephen Gaedel). Now, finally, after a four year wait, I have in my hands tonight all 350 pages of Tricked, a tale, it says here, that "follows the lives of six people--a reclusive rock legend, a heartbroken waitress, a counterfeiter, an obsessive crank, a lost daughter, and a backstabbing lover--whose lives are unconnected until an act of violence brings them spiraling in on each other." I have student work to critique and, from the other side of the desk, student work to produce. I have some freelance assignments that need polishing and some proposals that need propositioning. So I'm only gonna read the first half tonight.

Probably.

Two more things to note. First, the image here (even if you click on it to see an enlarged version, which you can) doesn't do even a tiny bit of justice to the cover, with its hypnotic background paintings by Bwana Spoons backing up Robinson's always deft characterization. Design is by Robinson and Brett Warnock. Second, you can buy Robinson's books--gorgeous editions from Top Shelf Productions all--straight from the man himself. Just click right here.

Tomorrow, we ramp up to the next "virtual collection" entry by whining about the desire to have every story you write "contribute to the conversation," and the angst that desire produces in light of reading your own juvenilia. Then again, why should I subject you good people to the whining and the angst, when the juvenilia has a guy parallel parking a Peterbilt in the very first paragraph. Plus, Elvis.