Auf Wiedersehen, Zwanzigste Jahrhundert

Last week German photographer Bernd Becher passed away. With his wife Hilla, he spent fifty years documenting the hidden beauties of the dying industrial landscapes of the West in incredibly beautiful black and white photographs. What a monumental achievement he made. If you've never experienced their work, you really should check out a tome (you know your coffee table *needs* a collection of rusting cooling towers sitting on top of it).

A Book at Last

Copies of Hurricane Moon have been shipped to bookstores. And to me. And it's wonderful to hold a copy of my novel in the form it was always meant to have. After years of being notes, sketches, Word documents, printouts with comments scribbled in all colors of ink; notebooks and binders with the MSS formatted and printed out for friends to read; the final draft boxed up to go to my agent in the mail; a digital MSS e-mailed to the editor and then sent to the publisher on CD's; the copy-edited manuscript, electronic galleys in PDF, and Xeroxed galleys, now finally, simply, it's a book.

The first three chapters are online at Pyr.

Apollocon in the rear view mirror

Forgive my tardiness in posting these shots taken at last weekend's Apollocon in Houston. I'd claim that I was too busy to post them, but too many people out there know better: I'm simply lazy. One disappointment was the absence of the ever-entertaining Bill Crider, who had to cancel out because of the recent diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in his wife, Judy. We're all pulling for you, Judy.



I didn't arrive until Saturday morning at the convention, and had some time to kill before my first panel. So I ended up talking with Monkeybrain mastermind Chris Roberson about setting up a Wiki to deal with worldbuilding notes and the like for various writing projects, the fact that emails weren't getting through in regards to the upcoming Armadillocon Writer's Workshop and Interzone. After running through the various panels I was scheduled for that day and having absolutely nobody show up for my reading (except for Martha Wells. Instead of reading, we just BSed through my alotted time) I made it up to the various parties going on, and ran into John Moore.



Since the evening rapidly became a blur, I won't even try to figure which party individual photos were taken at. Suffice to say, it was either at the Fencon, Space Squid/RevolutionSF or Armadillocon soirees. I chatted with editor David Hartwell and physicist John Cramer. Hartwell told fascinating stories about his experiences with Phil Dick and James Tiptree, Jr. Cramer talked about quantum entanglement and retrocausality, and my head exploded. Staggering over to the next party, I encountered Chuck Siros and Lawrence Person livin' la vida sofa.



Hartwell gets some editorial pointers from Steve Wilson of Space Squid and RevolutionSF fame. And really, what SF convention would be complete without a roving band of drunken, singing pirates?



Above we have Tim Miller of Fencon fame. Sadly, Tim was not seen wearing his Tim the Enchanter headpiece this year. Also present was Elze Hamilton, best known for her photo documentation and blogging about various Texas conventions.



Sunday I finally caught up with Kim Kofmel, one of the prime movers-and-shakers behind Apollocon and an increasingly significant presence behind the scenes at Armadillocon as well. Since she was slowly going insane from putting out fires at the con, I was able to talk a little with Kathryn Cramer. I've read her blog off and on for years--even before it was a nexus of socio-political-geo-revolutionary controversy. She confessed that she didn't know what she was going to do with the blog, since it'd taken on such a bizarre life of its own and she now figured prominently in several conspiracy theories circling the globe. So instead we switched gears to lighter fare, and traded rants about how Creation Conventions have pretty much fouled the waters for every other genre convention in the world by setting really, really bad precedents in regard to guest relations, fan relations and overall greed. On that happy note, I bade my farewells and went home, shamed by all the brilliant writers I interacted with over the weekend and vowing to be more productive myself in the weeks and months ahead (don't you just love conventions?).

Sam and Frodo What??

In the context of a SFFH convention, here is a topic almost guaranteed to result in a really lame panel or one that gravitates to the gutter: "How Friendly were Frodo and Sam? Was there a homoerotic subtext to Lord of the Rings?"

I had to moderate that at ApolloCon last Saturday morning at 10 AM. Guess what: it ended up being a fascinating panel discussion, perfectly suitable for the younger ears in the audience. As throughout the convention (Programming Director Kim Kofmel does good work!) the composition of the panel was exceptionally apt. We had No Fear of the Future's own Jess Nevins, whose grasp of pulp fiction is literally encyclopedic; Selina Rosen, writer and owner of GLBT-friendly publisher Yard Dog Press; writer and graphic novelist Mel. White with her solid background in academia and anthropology; me, on the grounds that one of my stories won the 2002 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for short fiction; and Lee Martindale, writer, activist extraordinaire, and editor of Such a Pretty Face, an anthology of SFF with fat heroes and heroines.

The panel fluidly ranged from academic angles to activism. From Jess, we learned how far back into literary history goes the impulse to re-interpret or retell a story to meet the reader's emotional needs. We discussed the extensive impulses of media and book fans to write fiction pairing off their favorite characters in improbable and x-rated ways in "slash fiction." That topic segued into authors' legal and artistic rights to control how their own characters are used. Before the end, we got around to acknowledging how important it is to so very many readers - and writers - of fantasy and science fiction that an imagined universe be one where all kinds of people can exist and belong, including aliens, misfits, and flavors of humanity that no one even imagined until an author invented them!

~~~

Here was a fun little thing at ApolloCon. There were cartoon cows everywhere. That was the volunteers' mascot and they were proud of it. Meanwhile in the dealers' room at the Instant Attitudes table, there were oodles of plush toy microbes from Giant Microbes™. You could pick up all kinds of dire diseases. Sleeping sickness, Flu, Guardia, HIV, Heartworm... and a fuzzy little cow-spotted cylinder with cutely glaring eyes: Mad Cow!

Size matters!

Apollocon 2007 has now come to a successful conclusion, and as far as I know, all No Fear of the Future contributors in attendance have safely returned to their normal lives. Myself, Jess Nevins and Alexis Glynn Latner were there, which represents half of our merry little band of commentators. I wanted to get the three of us together for a group shot, but alas, it was not to be. Instead you'll have to settle for this pic of the Sunday morning panel "Size Matters: Knowing or choosing the correct length to tell your tale." Pictured, from right to left, are Julia Mandala, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel, Shanna Swendson, Alexis Glynn Latner and Chris Roberson, fine writers and good persons one and all. Well, maybe with the exception of that Roberson fellow. You never can trust publisher-types.

ApolloCon Go for Liftoff

You'd think Houston - the fourth largest city in the USA, with nationally and internationally prominent universities, the home of NASA-Johnson Space Center; the first word from the Moon - would have had a first-rate annual SFFH convention ever since, oh, the late Cretaceous. Off and on over the years we've had such. Happily, we do now. It's ApolloCon, and in only its fourth year it's already shaping up as a very fine regional convention. This weekend, Jayme and I will be there. I'll post photos and/or vignettes here....

The Final Voyage of La Riaza

My story, "Being and Account of the Final Voyage of La Riaza: A Circumstance in Eight Parts," is now available in the current issue of Interzone, no. 210. The fine illustration below is by the talented Doug Sirois. Here's the opening chapter of the piece for your enjoyment:

I. Grand Dame of the Brazos Fleet

A gust of thick, salty air lashed La Riaza. The airship, third-largest of the Brazos fleet at 537 feet bow-to-stern, groaned and strained against her moorings. Her phantom shadow lumbered up the thick, stonework mooring towers, then retreated. The fore gangplank shifted, and a pair of bare-chested airmen carrying a nested stack of turtle shells aboard stumbled, losing their sweat-slick grip on the load. The man-sized shells clattered onto wood, then down to the trampled black mud below. Their polished turquoise- and cobalt-blue surfaces glinted in the fading light.

The outer cloudbands of the approaching storm had thickened throughout the day, and now effectively ruled the sky with their gray murk. The entire city of Puerto Jabrón seemed to hold its breath against the oncoming storm.

“Madre dios!” shouted First Mate Diego Brazos, running over to the fallen shells. He knelt, running his hard, brown hands over their smooth surfaces. A nick on one. A bad scuff on another. Nothing serious. The third, however, the third had an ugly crack running from its edge halfway to the center. “You’re worse than groundlings, the both of you! It’s cracked, and won’t even bring a quarter of the others’ worth at auction. Next time, drop yourselves and break you stinking necks. It’ll save me both headache and money.”

The two airmen scrambled down the gangplank to collect the shells, not daring to look directly at Diego.

“And don’t think I’m not taking the difference out of your salaries, because I am.”

“Winds change all the time, Señor Brazos. No one can anticipate every spot of turbulence,” said a tired, dusty voice. Diego spun to find Capitan Ancira behind him. Whip-thin, bald and shrunken with age, Ancira had outlasted many younger capitans--and ships as well. “I doubt docking these crewmen’s pay will make or break the company’s profits margins. Don’t you agree, Señor Brazos?”

“Aye,” Diego answered tightly. “No need to dock anyone’s pay.”

The airmen bobbed their heads in acknowledgment of their good fortune, and--lest Capitan Ancira depart and leave them to face Diego’s wrath alone--hurried up into the ship with the recollected shells.

“Now, Señor Brazos, I believe you owe me some ballast sheets?” Capitan Ancira said, clamping his hand on Diego’s shoulder. The thin fingers were hard as steel.

“Here, Capitan. You’ll find everything in order.”

Ancira accepted the sheaf with a grunt of acknowledgment. “You’ve got La Riaza unbalanced in sections three and four of the aft hold,” he said almost immediately.

“We’re holding that space for the Baumgarten cargo. We’ve contracted for transport of four mermaids. They’ll command an outstanding price on Ansuly.”

“Baumgarten, you say?” Ancira scratched his sparse beard as he studied the ballast sheets. “Move one barrel of whale oil from section seven to three, and two from eight to four. That ought to keep us trim enough.” He thrust the ballast sheets back at Diego. “Hermann Baumgarten’s been promising live mermaids to anyone who’ll bargain going on nine years now, and I’ve only seen him deliver twice. I’ll not risk that coming storm on his account. Make ready to cast off, Señor Brazos. I want us off this Dios-forsaken ball of mud in ten minutes. And I expect those ballast sheets to be corrected.”

Diego caught two airmen in the keel catwalk and set them to reordering the oil barrels as the ship’s bells began clanging liftoff warnings. The ground crews scrambled for the mooring towers.

Clambering down the stair to the pilot house, Diego held out the revised ballast sheets. “Corrected, Capitan.”

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it on time. Breathing a little hard, are we?” Capitan Ancira took the offered pages. “Assume your station, and signal cast off.”

Diego took the elevator wheel, then rang out the “cast off” signal. Immediately, La Riaza drifted back with the wind. The loosed mooring lines slipped free of the towers, quickly pulled in and stowed by airmen in the bow and stern. The silver ship rose smoothly into the sky. Emerald striping ran along the lines of the ship’s ribs from the folded masts and rigging at the bow to the low-slung pilothouse and horizontal, boxy complex of rudders and elevators at the stern.

“Keep us trimmed up against this wind, Señor DeLuna,” Capitan Ancira said to the Pilot at the rudder wheel. “Señor Brazos, kindly inform Pedemaestro Cisneros we’ll be wanting full velocity from his gigapedes.”

Diego grabbed the brass whistle dangling from the speaking tube and blew a sharp shriek into it. “All ahead full!”

Four nacelles boxed the stern of La Riaza, just ahead of the rudder complex, just behind the pilothouse. The tell-tale squeal of the long drive shafts pierced the air as the gigapedes began their march in the prophouse within the bowels of the ship. The nacelles’ great props began to turn, slowly at first, then faster, pushing the airship into the oncoming storm. Below, Diego saw crews moving two smaller airships from the whaling fleet into hulking hangars to wait out the storm. A moment later, La Riaza passed above the Jabrón Cliffs, and black sea roiled beneath her.

The pilothouse lamps flickered on as the nacelle dynamos roused to life.

La Riaza shuddered as the buffeting increased. Lightning flashed in the distance.

“I’m a fool, men. An over-confident fool. I delayed our departure too long,” Capitan Ancira said gravely. “Never fly a lady into a gale, least of all a fat-bellied, fully laden one like La Riaza. Señor Brazos, increase our pitch 15 degrees. We’ve got to get above those clouds.

“Aye, Capitan,” Diego said, spinning his wheel. The deck shifted beneath him, and bits of leaf and pebble skittered down the slope. Fat raindrops splattered against the glass windscreen. Far below, Diego saw a whaler trying to outrun the oncoming wall of clouds, its lone triangular dropsail flailing wildly. The whaler was doomed.

“Closing rapidly on the ceiling, Capitan,” said DeLuna as rain pelted his forward windscreen. Far off the starboard bow, a funnel cloud dropped down, wrenching up the sea into a towering waterspout. “It’s going to be rough going for a while.”

“That it is, that it is,” said Capitan Ancira. “Señor Brazos, sound for heavy weather.”

Diego sounded the whistle signal as black cloud enveloped La Riaza. The ship shuddered and shook. Sheets of water splayed across the windscreens in a constant barrage. The wind and rain bellowed so that Diego could barely hear the worrisome groan and creak of the airship’s timbers. Barely.

“La Riaza’s an old lady, but she’s a strong one,” Capitan Ancira said, as if reading Diego’s mind. “We’ve weathered worse than this, she and I. She’ll hold together.”

Lightning flashed, throwing a blinding blaze through the pilothouse. Thunder slammed the ship, shattering Diego’s windscreen.

Diego blinked, phantom snakes of light corkscrewing across his vision. He was lying on the floor. Water sprayed in on him. Confused, he lifted his arm. Blood ran crimson from a dozen embedded shards. A strong hand grabbed his collar and hoisted him up.

“Tie it down!” Capitan Ancira shouted in his ear. “Help me tie it down, damnit! And for Dios sake, don’t fall through!”

Diego nodded, and staggered to the opening. His wheel’d been locked into place. Fighting the inrushing rain, Diego reached above the shattered glass, untying the rolled canvas. Capitan Ancira did the same on the opposite end, and the pulled it down over the windscreen, clamping it into place through brass eyelets.

Breathing heavily, Capitan Ancira leaned against the elevator wheel and began to laugh.

“What?” gasped Diego. “What’s so funny?”

“You can hear me, and I can hear you,” Capitan Ancira said, grinning.

“Look outside, Diego,” DeLuna said from his station.

White cloud billowed past.

“Ironic, no?” said Capitan Ancira. “We catch the worst of it right at the end.”

Interzone is now available in the U.S. at Hastings, Barnes & Noble and Borders locations. Or, you can head over to the Interzone website and take out a subscription. Either way, you win.