Aetheric Ephemera: Horny Werewolf Day Edition

1) I'll let Warren Ellis tell you succinctly why today is Horny Werewolf Day. I can also provide you with a longer explanation. My wife and I, in the spirit of syncretism, kinda celebrate both. Neither of us are big fans of Valentine's Day, but it's an excuse to be even sillier with each other than usual. If you are looking for a quick e-card for that special someone, Chris Sims has just the thing to stimulate geek love. . . .

2) While linking to Ellis' Lupercalia statement, I found this link. Sweet canary conniptions! We have finally arrived at non-Animatronic robotic performers! Well, South Korea has. Given the review of this thespian's performance, and proclivity to knock stuff over on stage, I do not foresee a musical revival of RUR coming to Broadway anytime soon. Well, maybe with Keanu Reeves as the star. . . .

3) I am all signed up for Readercon. I don't see Chip Delany or Paul Park on the guest list yet, but I hope one or both of them can make it. The highlight of the con for me last year was talking to Mr. Delany and thanking him for the inspiration he has given me as a writer. I'm happy to see Lucius Shepard on the list for this year; I definitely want to meet him, since he is another one of my inspirations.

4) A taste of courtship in 2015, courtesy of Paleo-Future.

5) io9 has a great piece on PKD's The Man in the High Castle, which is also about the tension between the idea of the genre as showcase for the future and an author writing in and about the present. It could be a bit more in-depth, but the authors gets points for slipping in an Ezra Pound invocation (Degree of Difficulty: 7.8). I've been thinking about alternate history a lot today, partly due to Jay Lake mentioning his novella "America, Such as She Is," and partly due to me then reading some reviews and discussion about it, and partly because I got an idea for an alternate history story that goes somewhere neither Lake nor Jo Walton in her excellent Half a Crown trilogy venture to in their explorations of WWII What Ifs. But it would require a Super Star Destroyer load of research, so I'm just putting some notes in a folder for later.

If you have never read Dick's take on alternate history, best go read it. The idea that is invokes of "how nebulous reality was about to become" is certainly a central concern in many of Dick's novels, but this particular approach to it has neither the dizzy paranoia of, say, Valis, nor the "are they or are they not human" question behind Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It's about questioning the solidity of reality, the malleability of the future. It is provocative on multiple levels, and oddly inspiring in how it deals with historical turning points.

6) Finally tonight, John Scalzi brings together both the Great E-Book Kerfuffle and authors giving out advice in one blog post. I found the linkage so compelling that I then wrote a response nearly as long as his post, one which was completely ignored by all other commenters. I think I have to learn to either be more interesting, or be pithier and more controversial. But I thought my point, which was that the situation would impact new writers in a number of ways, and thus the way they received and used advice from more established writers, seemed salient. But please note, I will NOT be writing about that for either my FoG or Apex blogs. I kinda want to, but I need to move on.

Currently, I am trying to put The City & The City down, partly as an example for my next Apex column, which is going to be about how authors portray and use "worlds within/parallel to worlds." It will make more sense when I write it, but the examples will be Mieville's book and Star Trek's Mirror Universe.a sort of "When Unfamiliar Worlds Collide." Really, it'll make sense.

A Rousing Roundup of Writeups!

I have not blogged here in the past few days because I'm doing it elsewhere. To wit:

---My regular Forces of Geek column, wherein I milk the Amazon thing for all it's worth. Well, going for a different take by comparing books to donuts.

---I have a piece in the latest SFSignal Mind Meld. I swoon a bit because I'm up there with Mike Resnick and a number of other fabulous authors. What's it about? Um, Amazon. . . .

---I am now totally NOT writing something about Amazon! I am working on "The Last Flight of Chimeric Aetherlines." Away, e-books! Hello hobnailed boots & homunculi with dry wit! here's the opening:

He loved the sound of hobnailed boot on pristine, polished teakwood. He loved it even more when it was the only sound reverberating through a vast space, as it was now. He descended the traverser sprily for his size, the clunk of his boots remarkably resonant on each unmoving step. He remembered when the bass thrum of the moving stairs would set your bones a'singing and drown out the footfalls and slithers of passengers heading down to the gates. They would have to raise their voices to be heard over its sonorous workings, as woodsprites and kami were urged on by the drone of a cajoler to make the ligneous workings hum and spin.

He jumped down the last three steps, landing heavily on the reception platform. He was briefly irked that it did not splinter, and that the dig of the hobnails vanished immediately. The wood of the floor, and all around him, was still saturated with charms and wards. Possibly the most magical place in the Worlds, one pedantic hag had told him. She was right; the place stank of spell and scrawl like chintzy maquillage on a Red Court dame.

Have a lovely day.

Oh,Yeah, That.

I am working on something for SFSignal's Mind Meld at the moment, but as I was reading a few previous posts here to remind myself of a point that I wanted to make, I realized that I had never put up the link to my Apex blog post! You can find it here. I am quite happy with it, and I would like to write at greater length about this idea in the future.

Juggling ideas for the next Forces of Geek column, and squirreling away scenes for fiction projects, unfortunately at the same time that I am trying to finish the piece I need to finish today! Writing just gets the mind working, which is great, but I wish that I could queue my thoughts rather than have them all rush through the conceptual door like a pack of kids vying for the biggest cookie.

Aetheric Ephemera: Scattershot Kaleidoscope Edition

1) It's funny, in that stomach-churning way, to hear how authors are being deluged with e-mail from readers complaining about the Great E-Book Kerfuffle. Fortunately, Cherie Priest tells us just how powerful authors are in the system. Hint: less powerful than Jeff Bezos or John Sargent. Authors have creative control, and input in some business aspects, but the publisher is the one making the big decisions. Might that change in the future? I wonder what the next stage for e-books will be after this situation is resolved. I have some thoughts, but I think I will save them for an actual blog post.

2) Despite what seems to me to be an obvious misrecognition of what's going on, people also continue to chide authors for chiding Amazon. Jay Lake wrote an open letter to Kindle users today, and some folks responded in unkind fashion to it. I always wonder what people are really worried about when they decide to upbraid someone who does not have a lot of power in a situation, but a lot at stake. The most annoying thing I have read so far have been those moments where readers dismiss authors entirely as easily substituted.

As an aspiring author I bristle at that, but when I look at the market, it is easy to see why some people would feel this way. Some people just go for genre, while others go for series or thematic books (such as Magic the Gathering novels). The author's artistry is secondary to their demands for a certain type of story or narrativity. I see it all too often as a bookseller. Almost as bad is the author as generic brand, from people buying every James Patterson co-author to someone asking me how "kerouac" a certain book was.

3) This is a great gallery of dinosaur illustrations that demonstrate the evolution of our understanding regarding their appearance. The progression is fascinating, to the point where the last illustration is a bit unsettling to me, having grown up with the gray, armadillo-skinned sorts of dinos. The science behind the identification of their colors is pretty cool as well.

4) Warren Ellis talks about his kit. No, not THAT kind of kit! I am referring of course to the stuff he uses to help him write. I too am a big fan of the notebook and pen. We carry cheap journals at the bookstore and one of those can be easily filled with ideas, although my fervent scribbling sometimes becomes hard to decipher later. I find the MP3 player to be handy when not writing at home also. I'm happy to hear that other writers still get results from lo-tek. . . .

5) The 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List is out, and there's a lot to admire here. But boy is it an expensive list! That awesome Jack Vance book Wild Thyme and Green Magic alone is going for at least $50 and is already OOP. The (sadly) late Kage Baker's The Empress of Mars retails at $60. Ack!

I have read 3.75 books on this list, and only a few of the shorter works. I am soooooo behind. But there are a lot of works on here I really want to read, and, in the case of The City and the City, finish reading. Hopefully by then Boneshaker will be back in the library for me to snag. I have some catching up to do. . . .

Aetheric Ephemera: In Dubious Battle Edition

So, welcome to my new links post! Aetheric Ephemera is where I point you to some items of interest on These Our Intarwebs, with scintillating comments to provide you with insight and delight. Ready?

1) Folks should go read Charles Tan's take on the Great E-Book Kerfuffle. He makes some points that many others have not, points worthy of thought and debate. Also, take a look around. He is a prince among link-conjurers and has loads of info on SF. It is easy to get lost poking around his blog, but sooooo much fun!

2) Kage Baker has died. I never met her, and have only read a bit of her work, but she sounds like a great person and was admired by many in the field. And I hate, hate, hate the fact that cancer took her. It's really exhausting to watch people get cut down by this stupid condition. It happens far too often. . . .

3) SFSignal has a cool ebook giveaway from Bookview Cafe. DARE you enter?

4) The Cleveland Plain Dealer had a great interview with Bill Watterson today. What was great about it was Watterson's utter lack of pretension. He made something that people loved and were mad for, but lays all of the hullabaloo squarely at their feet. "[T]he work takes on a life of its own. . . " and it is obvious that while he enjoyed creating Calvin & Hobbes he does not lose sleep wondering why they became so popular or if he made the right decision to stop. I really admire that.

I leave you, dear reader, with this one final link. PLEASE, if you ever try this libation, READ THE WARNING LABEL!

Let There Be (E-book) War: A Few Thoughts and Points of Information on the Amazon-Macmillan Dustup

I write this with the notion that you, Dear Reader, know what I am referring to in the title of this post. If you don't, here is the AP article that lays out what is the opening round in the new Literary Range War. And, there has already been a resolution of sorts to this battle: Amazon just announced a short time ago that they are capitulating to Macmillan's position. This after a day of copious discussion of this in a number of circles, but most intensely, perhaps, in the SF world (as evidenced by the fact that the AP article quotes John Scalzi and CoryDoctorow), as many authors took up their keyboards to respond to this situation and analyze it.

I have a few thoughts on this matter, but they come from an odd perspective. I am an aspiring author, an avid reader, an observer of SF's social milieu, and a fan. So what I offer here are reflections on how this has been received and what significance it might have for the producers and buyers of SF literature, beyond the harsh business details. Several authors who know a lot more about the business have already responded, and for sometimes mind-bending amounts of detail about book pricing, distribution, etc., I urge you to check them out: Tobias Buckell, Charles Stross, and Scott Westerfeld have all expounded on this hullabaloo at length, with industry insights that illuminate the larger issues quite well. As for me, well:

1) The hegemons at Amazon are being dicks. Yes, I think that is the proper cultural term for them. Having read a lot of the responses to this from authors, publishers, readers, and clueless business reporters who know nothing about how publishing works, I believe that I can safely use this characterization. Macmillan wanted to talk price restructuring, and before John Sargent got back home from the negotiation Amazon pulled physical and e-book titles, dropped the titles off of wishlists, and reportedly even removed sample chapters from Kindles. As Jay Lake put it, "[i]t's bullying, pure and simple..." as Amazon tries to flex its rippling market musculature to intimidate a publisher into doing what it wants (as it has done in the past). Personally, I don't care if they have the right to do it, or if it is some tactical maneuver to gain position for more negotiations, or even if it is just Jeff Bezos being crazy. It is purely a dick move, an attempt by an entity with a lot of market power to force other players in the bookselling game to let them write the rules. It disrespects the market, it disrespects their suppliers, and even disrespects their readers, although many of the latter seem to not realize this.

I know that using the word "disrespect" in relation to the American business-scape may be cause for a chuckle, as businesses routinely undercut, deceive, and strongarm each other and everyone around them to turn a profit, or at least appear to try to turn a profit. But I mean it; Amazon has demonstrated that in this instance it: cares nothing for how the market works; thinks its suppliers are chattel who must bow to their feudal overlord, and; trusts that its customers are loyal and blinkered and easy to sway with promises of low prices that are artificially kept low to lure them into buying an expensive contraption for reading their books. That is a mountain of churlish disdain that should tell all involved that Amazon is at the higher levels no longer in the business of selling books, but of gathering influence and control to deepen its dominance in the online world. It is both a business move, and a grab for symbolic capital.

2) This situation has created a lot of frustration, anger, and pre-emptive bitterness, particularly from the most vulnerable quarter of the bookselling world: the authors, but it has also spurred many authors to examine the issues surrounding Amazon's tactics. SF authors such as Jay Lake were the first to bring attention to this situation, and have written at length and with great passion about it. Most of them have approached it from a business perspective (as seen in the blogs cited above), but in reading these pieces there is a sense of not just defending one's livelihood, but of defending one's position as a creator, as a dynamic part of the book industry. SF authors, moreso than many others I think, are not just keenly aware of their structural position in the book business, but have a strong sense of identity as the engine of that business.

The fact that even those who do not move a fraction of a percentage as many books as James Patterson, Inc. feel that they can and should defend the publisher and their own stake in this skirmish says a lot about the social position that SF authors occupy, one bolstered by fans and often by adherents in the publishers themselves. SF authors also have a strong sense of their creative abilities that is heightened by the challenges of the genre itself, I believe, and often have a more critical perspective on the world. While partisans of the publisher, they try to take the wide and the long views of this situation and have provided some solid analyses of Amazon's actions. I think that the citations of John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow in the AP article are not just a matter of the reporter's preference, but stem from the strong, thoughtful stances that they publicly took as soon as the situation unfolded, stances that reify their positions even as they shed some insight on this battle.

3) I am reading widely on this and taking lots of notes, because I think this is the beginning of the next stage of the publishing market's transformation. This is just the start of the Great E-Book Kerfuffle, which won't end until, like the music industry, publishers and e-sellers relinquish control over the books themselves, forced by consumers and, perhaps, creators to cede to the market's evolution. Part of Amazon's control scheme is to maintain DRM on its Kindle e-books, and while some publishers demand it, those that don't are overridden by Amazon when it sells their e-titles. The question of control is going to be the central dispute as this mercantile war unfolds. Price control, product control, format control: how the players deal with these issues will likely determine the success of the e-book market.

Master of Space and Time (Well, I'm Trying.. . .)

Busy at this end, but mostly with things not writing or SF-related, save for the following:

1) My latest Forces of Geek column! "Science Fiction Dies Infinite Deaths, and is Reborn Anew Each Time." Another one that was fun to write, and that I could write much more about.

2) I will be blogging over at Apex Book Company starting this Thursday, January 28th. It will be a monthly blog, with a more literary focus in general than my FoG column. I'm very excited to be writing over there, if only once a month.

3) There's quite a conversation going on over at Jeff Vandermeer's blog about genre, started by a post by Rachel Swirsky. I'm enjoying it, although it has begun to come down to two writers arguing a fine point. I commented, for what it's worth. I thought about saying more but my thoughts seem tangential, and I'm pretty sure no one over there is concerned with my opinion as a humble unpublished fiction writer.

But I think the point about experience is very relevant. Jeff commented that each writer has a different process, and that some may not even think in terms of genre. True, but I wonder if it isn't there embedded in some sense within our experience and how it comes out on the page. One of the points of my F0G article (which riffs off the idea of genre as creative framework) is that even those who say they reject may well have it in mind as they write, but subsumed. If your literary experience is mostly SF, it can certainly creep into your work. And given that some of the creative process works at the subconscious level, I think that for many people who write SF genre can inform what we write or even serve as a foil or something to rebel against. It depends on what you're creating.

Books are never books. They are always given some label, whether it emerges from the work itself or is overlaid on by author, publisher, or reader. And labels can be in contention (as many others have noted in terms of Margaret Atwood's later work, for example). Genre is a label and a set of conventions, and often the two do not line up. What interests me is how genre can be a factor in a writer's creativity, how it shapes what you produce.

Aetas Nex is, obviously, a zombie novel. It is sort of horror, but is actually much more of a fantasy novel, impacted by SF and by apocalyptic fiction. As I write, I rarely think of the horror angle explicitly, because it is just an element of a larger story about the world changing and people struggling to live with the changes, especially as they happen not just to the environment, but to the people themselves. I sometimes consciously, sometimes accidentally work within and push against various borders of genre. But I don't think about some distinction between genre and literary; I just write what seems evocative and interesting, using an array of creative tools that include some genre conventions and literary devices.

With short stories it varies as well. "A Fine Day to Watch the Dragons Die" is a pure fantasy, trying to wring some insight into people out of a fantasy trope stabbed in the kidney. "Skull-face, Hogtamer, and the Dead Cricket Society" is a fable that owes surrealism a few favors. And the latest one in progress, "The Last Flight of Chimeric Aetherlines" is a loose riff on urban fantasy, twisted folklore, and steampunk. It depends, in the end, on what the writer wants to create.

And with that, I think I will go off and do some creating.