I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to Florida where, highly unusual for me, I remembered no dreams. But now that I’m home, it’s time to gather up the February dreams I shared on Twitter and see what meaning can be found when they’re together.

Last month, my dreams included Taylor Swift, Jesse Ventura, Hugh Laurie, Ian McKellen, Andy Kaufman, and … who knows … maybe you!

February 2015

Here’s a dream I lost because my middle-of-the-night note now makes no sense: BIG FAT BOOK PEN NAME MARGE – ? SEPARATED FROM BKLYN FRIENDS. Feb 28

I dreamt Harlan Ellison for some dream reason I don’t understand autographed one of @Cadigan‘s books to me, and scribbled a note to my wife. Feb 28

I dreamt I was with Dennis Etchison laughing about the time I shaved my head in the middle of a previous con (which BTW never happened IRL). Feb 28

I dreamt I was at the end of dinner at @VOLT_RANGE, and couldn’t wait to see what desserts @bttrlovehardwrk had waiting. I must be hungry! Feb 27

I dreamt I wandered a hotel that supposedly hosted the World Horror Con, but all I could find were cult members in brightly colored robes. Feb 27

I dreamt I was visiting with my parents, whose house was now immediately next to Disneyland. Meaning — right across the street! What fun! Feb 27

I dreamt @mrbelm and @rosefox visited, and while they were in my basement, I ran up and down bringing them snacks. But — Vegan cheese? Feb 27

I dreamt that while at Worldcon, I bumped into Rudy Giuliani. Weirdly, he was dressed like a hippie — paisley, long hair, love beads, etc.! Feb 27

I dreamt I visited my doctor, portrayed Portlandia-style by Fred Armisen, then I couldn’t go! He kept blocking me from leaving his office. Feb 26

I dreamt I got a call a neighbor was in trouble, looked outside, and spotted her crawling through the snow. I helped her in, phoned 911. Feb 26 (more…)

Last July, I sold a story to Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place, an anthology edited by Jaym Gates. Now it’s time to make that anthology a reality.

And making it a reality is up to you.

A couple of hours ago, Jaym launched a Kickstarter campaign for the project, which includes more than thirty stories by Seanan McGuire, Ken Liu, Andy Duncan, Alethea Kontis and others. But there are also all sorts of neat rewards in addition to the book itself.

When I started writing this post, I thought I’d be able to tell you that one of those rewards was the handwritten first draft of my contribution, “And the Trees Were Happy”—but I now see that those pages have already been snapped up! Don’t worry—there are still plenty of other bonuses that can be yours if you choose to help fund Genius Loci, such as Wendy Wagner’s grandmother’s WWII cookie recipe or an hour-long writing class over Skype with Sunil Patel.

I hope you’ll check out the Kickstarter campaign and help bring into print a poignant story of mine which has gotten me verklempt all three times I’ve read it aloud in public. Because there are a whole lot more people out there who need to be made weepy.

More than 30 years ago, I conducted a lengthy interview with Tom Disch. How lengthy? Once transcribed, it came to nearly 18,500 words, and took up 48 pages of the Winter 1986 of Last Wave. I’ve been thinking of that interview ever since my recent share of an equally intensive interview with Chip Delany, and decided the conversation was worth reviving here. Tom, who was one of my instructors at Clarion in 1979, deserves to be remembered.

John Clute wrote this about Tom in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia:

Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distanced mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Disch was perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern sf writers of the first rank.

I’ve always been in awe of that description. Read on to see whether you agree it was deserved.

But before you begin, I feel a couple of trigger warnings are in order:

First—as part of a discussion of how Tom’s homosexuality might have affected his writing, I raised the issue of sex change operations in the context of how certain editors were biased against life choices choices they couldn’t understand. I cringed just now reading how I framed that question, because in the intervening three decades since I asked it, I’ve come to believe that’s a lousy term to describe what’s actually happening under those circumstances, which is the bringing about an alignment of one’s inner and outer selves. I’d never ask that question in the same way today—because I now think of the process as being not a change but a gender confirmation—and I’m sorry I raised the topic that way then. But in the interests of historical accuracy and not ducking responsibility, I’m leaving in the question as it was asked in 1984.

As for second trigger warning—Tom makes a joking reference to John Norman novels and rape which I worry could be triggering for some. If you want to skip that completely, jump over the answer he gives to the question I raise about his review of a Ron Goulart novel.

Now that I’ve taken care of that—hoping that my attempts haven’t made things worse—here’s the entirely of the interview, as it appeared in the final issue of Last Wave.

Thomas M. Disch is one of the more talented and controversial figures in the science fiction field. His body of work encompasses short stories, novels, poems, opera libretti, essays, book reviews, and now even an interactive novel. In every instance he has chosen to work at a level of ambition of which only a handful of other genre writers share in the attempt. He has created works of a remarkably high quality, and at the same time enraged many for his failure to fall into the lockstep of genre requirements. The following interview took place on August 11, 1984 in Tom Disch’s Manhattan apartment.

Last Wave: I think of you as being a joyful writer, as opposed to being the depressing writer which many other people seem to paint you. In your early novel The Genocides, for instance, which is one often given as an example of a depressing work because the benign, indifferent aliens win, I find triumphal joy, for the protagonists in it do triumph with dignity against great odds over the human evil around them. In your recent On Wings of Song, which I’ve read one reviewer claim to be a cynical book, I see a happy ending: David Weinreb does get free and fly. For some reason many people prefer to see him as dying. In rereading these two works and all else inbetween, I just don’t see the cynicism which the overwhelming majority of readers chooses to focus on. Why do you think there is this myth of your work being such a downer? (more…)

I published my first short story collection, These Words Are Haunted, back in 2001. It was a hardcover aimed primarily at the collector market, and cost $37.95. I’ve long wished the book could be available as an inexpensive paperback, so those unfamiliar with my writing and therefore unwilling to drop that big a chunk of change on an unknown might be more likely to give me a try.

Come April, that will finally happen, thanks to Ian Randal Strock, who runs Fantastic Books, which also published my science fiction short story collection What We Still Talk About.

Also requiring thanks—Memo Angeles, who created a Zombie Alphabet that won my heart (and brains!), plus Chris Kalb, who used that alphabet to design this awesome cover.

Here’s the press release announcing the book’s upcoming publication.

The paperback of These Words Are Haunted will be 224 pages, cost $13.99, and come out on April 7, 2015. It can’t be ordered yet—I’ll let you know when links go live—but I couldn’t resist teasing you now with that beauty of a cover.

Finishing the February 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly, I glanced at the ad on the back cover, and was immediately puzzled. Wasn’t that a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910?

Cadillac wouldn’t just go ahead and use the quote without attribution, would it?

Cadillac would. (more…)

One reason Golden Age comics are so valuable is that many of them were pulped due to recycling efforts during World War II. And one reason so many of them were pulped in the first place might just be due to pleas in the comics themselves that readers salvage paper because “every scrap of paper you can collect goes into immediate war production!”

As you can see from a wartime run of Captain Marvel, Jr., each issue from June 1944 through March 1946 included a shout-out on page 3 from “the world’s mightiest boy” for readers to do their part to help win the war.

(Apologies for the culturally insensitive nature of that first such example, which unfortunately was not out of line with the standards of the ’40s.) (more…)

I always wince at those old-style comedians who joke about how much they hate their spouses and would rather be anywhere than with them. That “take my wife … please” kind of comedy has always rubbed me the wrong way, in part because I believe that if you really do have problems with your partner, it should stay between the two of you until it’s either solved or not. Mend it or end it, just don’t joke about it to me.

But it also bothers me because I think the reason some guys talk about their relationships that way—and this is sadder—is they’re afraid to make themselves seem vulnerable and weak by admitting, yes, they do love another person, and so instead joke about “the old ball and chain.”

Which is why I didn’t find the product advertised on the inside front cover of Top Love Stories #14 (1953) to be either funny or romantic. And yet the manufacturer thought it was both!

Jail-Jamas—with “genuine prison stripes” and a card that says “lose all hope ye who enter here”—are advertised as “romantic” and “sure to make a hit with love birds who have gone down the road to matrimony.”

For those who are slightly embarrassed that they’re in love, and so feel a need to mock that genuine emotion … perhaps. But for the rest of us, including the young women who probably made up most of the readers of that romance comic book … I don’t think so.

Not romantic. Not romantic at all.

Over on News From Me the other day, Mark Evanier posted an episode of The Abbott & Costello Show which is well worth watching, and not just for the classic bits. There’s also a scene during which Lou Costello is shown reading a comic book, one seen so briefly and so incompletely that we’ll likely never learn which comic book.

And you know how I get when I can’t identify a comic being used as a prop!

As you can see from the screen grab above, we never get a glimpse of the cover, just some blurry panels that would probably only be recognizable to someone who had completely memorized the interiors of every comic from that period.

That person isn’t me, and probably isn’t you either. But in the hope this might reach someone who does have such an eidetic memory, I’m putting the info out there.

Because if I don’t find out what comic book that was, how will I ever know peace?

The romance comic Top Love Stories #16 (February 1954) wants you to know that whatever your size, it’s the wrong size!

The first thing you see upon opening the issue is an ad on the inside front cover for Wate-On homogenized liquid, designed to make readers worry that they’re “skinny” and “scrawny” when instead they should have “firm, good-looking healthy flesh” and “extra pounds.”

Meanwhile, the last thing you see after reading the stories within is a back cover ad for Kelpidine chewing gum—with Hexitol—certain to make readers insecure that they have “ugly fatty bulges” rather than “that dreamed about silhouette.” (more…)

The Washington Post covered a controversy today concerning a long-dead fantasy icon whose legacy is being reconsidered due to racist opinions extreme even for his day—and no, this time I’m not talking about H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s views, as you’ve already heard if you’ve visited here before, have been the cause of uncomfortable but very necessary conversations within the fantasy community. And now another community is being forced to have similar uncomfortable conversations.

Because it seems the Oneida Indian Nation is about to open a $20 million casino which will pay homage to a fantasy writer who, in addition to entertaining millions, also called for genocide.

L. Frank Baum.

That’s right. The author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. (more…)