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.

Think about this

Jayme having noted that the rest of us have also been tagged with the Thinking Blogger Award, which requires us to each identify five other blogs that make us thing, here's my partially considered selection:

1. Mark Dery's Shovelware. America's greatest living culture critic is the model for the blog post-as-essay approach to weblogging that some of us here aspire to emulate. Every post a densely packed treatise of connections between disparate threads no one but Mark could interweave, consistently lighting up one's brain while making one squirm at the white slippery things this cultural spelunker spots with his headlamp in the dark subterrain of American consciousness. If you want the full treatment, Mark's The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is mandatory reading for understanding the current Zeitgeist.

2. The Bad Plus' Do the Math. When not exploding your head with cascading cool improvisational jazz renditions of such jazz standards as Rush's Tom Sawyer, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Vangelis' Theme from Chariots of Fire, and their own superior compositions, Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and Dave King of The Bad Plus (mostly Ethan) maintain a consistently outstanding blog annotating and reinventing the history of contemporary jazz (and its interrelation with other popular music) as well as riffing on their own pop and pulp cultural interests.

3. Simon Sellars' Ballardian. The persistent Mr. Sellars has taken the idea of a site devoted to the works of an author and transformed it into something far more powerful -- a blog that documents the world's increasing memetic resonance with the peculiar "Earth is the alien planet" worldview of the author. Welcome to life in the Ballardosphere.

4. Geoff Manaugh's BLDG BLOG. "Architectural conjecture, urban speculation, landscape futures." Blog as documentary futurism of our three-dimensional space and its reflections on the back of our foreheads. Beautiful, crisp, and deep, realizing the Ballardian notion that the application of a science fictional sensibility to the present is the only true way to understand it.

5. The Chronicle of Higher Education's Arts & Letters. An old school compilation of links with thumbnail blurbs in the manner of Robot Wisdom, Arts & Letters scours the Internet mediascape for the day's freshest nuggets of intellectual interest for a primarily academic audience -- philosophy, aesthetics, literature, language, ideas, criticism, culture, history, music, art, trends, breakthroughs, disputes, and ivory tower gossip. Mandatory daily stop-off point.

Critical Mass

Don D'Ammassa reviews my novel Hurricane Moon on his Critical Mass Web site, and has nice things to say. Including this: "Extremely well written, tightly plotted, full of that old fashioned sense of wonder about the universe."

It's a very good feeling when a reviewer seems to have read the same book that the writer intended to write. There are a lot of reasons why it doesn't always pan out that way - but how wonderful when it does.

Yeehaw!

Ain't no flies on me, boy.

The rest of the world sneers at the South, and at Texas, and especially at rural Texas. I know--I've done a lot of the sneering. (I'm a Yankee, I'm practically required to).

But when the world ends, I know where I want to be: behind thick walls, in the company of a bunch of wild-eyed rednecks who have more guns than teeth, who've been using those guns since before they could walk, and whose willingness to squeeze a trigger isn't diminished or affected by the amount of alcohol they've consumed or by the sight of a human (or what looks like one) appearing in their sites.

I saw what was happening fairly quickly. I'm online all day, every day, and when the blog posts started popping up on my Bloglines roll, I knew what was going on. (Trust me: when you live on Texas scrub land, the way I do, 25 miles from s.f.a. in three directions, and you walk your dog late at night, and actually listen to the night sounds...well, you're not surprised when people start saying that the dead are rising).

Home wasn't an option. I've buried too many pets in the acre out back for the trailer to be safe place to go to. (One zombie rat might not pose a problem. But I've put at least twenty of them in the ground over the years we've been here. And that's not even counting the zombie wasps we've killed).

But, honestly, I wasn't interested in that. We've got a prison here in town. Big prison. Large, thick walls. High security prison, too--it's where Texas executes its prisoners--so the guards are well-armed, and practiced with the guns. They've got enough food inside to last a couple of months, at least.

So I pulled aside a few friends at work, grabbed a few goodies, and drove right to the prison. The guards, well, they weren't necessarily happy about opening the gates, but a few more fingers on triggers are always welcome.

And now I'm inside, typing up a blog entry (probably my last). I'm sharing a cell (only bunks available here are in the cells) with my friends and the few other townies and folks from the library who made it here. We'll take our shift on the walls tonight, but before then...we're gonna have some fun. My coworkers knew some kids on campus with good weed, so we brought that. I put a keg in the back of the S.U.V. before we came. So we'll have a nice party tonight.

Of course, the guards have an even better idea. Turns out zombies are vicious (like the movies always said) but they're slow (Romero 1, Danny Boyle 0) and easy to catch. They threw a net over one, some scumbag the state shot up only a few years ago--he hasn't decomposed much--and tossed him in a cell. At the party, we'll start shoving people in there with him and see how long they last. I'm guessing it'll be more fun to watch than dogfighting. The guards and prisoners are using this to settle some scores. Me too. Me and a few of the professors brought a couple of Deans with us. They'll go in with the zombie, too.

And after that? Well, some of the guards grabbed a female zombie and have her in restraints down in the medical wing. I'm thinking we might have a little party with her later.

End of the world, my ass. This is the beginning of the best party ever.