I received my contributor copies of the anthologies The Dead That Walk and Postscripts #19 this week, and since those contain the last two stories of mine slated to appear in 2009, I figure it’s time to update you on this year’s output.

I had seven short stories published in 2009, which marked my best year yet. I don’t think I’ve ever before published more than five in a single year.

Here they are, broken down by genre:

“Glitch”
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three

Fantasy Book Critic reviewed the anthology and gave my story, which is about robot sex in the future (did that get your attention?) 4 1/2 stars … which I hope was on a scale of 1 through 5. Reviewer Liviu C. Suciu also called my story “interesting, funny and dark at the same time.”

“The World Breaks”
Postscripts #19

I’ve read this tale of a small town’s struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic U.S. aloud many times, and it’s one of those that chokes me up, as you know if you’ve heard me try to get through it. I made the mistake of reading it at Nippon 2007, having somehow forgotten the various references to nuclear weapons being dropped, and felt odd coming upon them and suddenly remembering in the midst of reading the story to a Japanese audience. (more…)

Here’s the third and final Ethics column of mine which appeared in The Comics Journal in 1985. I’d go on to publish four more of them in 1986, and write two more after that which were never published. Now that the decades have passed, I’m not sure why those final two never saw print. I’m sure if I dug out my correspondence with the editors, I’d be able to dredge up the memories, but I’m not in the mood to do that right now.

Give it a read, if the first two installments haven’t scared you away, and then join me on the other side for some thoughts my 2009 self had about what my 1985 self thought of my ’70s self.

And now, a few random comments: (more…)

The December 2009 issue of Esquire includes an interview with Jason Reitman (director of Thank You for Smoking and Juno), the son of Ivan Reitman (director of Stripes and Ghostbusters).

It was a short interview, no more than a few hundred words, and in it, Reitman the younger attempted to explain how his father’s films and his own differ, as follows:

The difference between my father’s movies and mine is this: If you imagine my father and I each as musicians, my father wants to take your favorite song and play it better than you’ve ever heard it. I want to take a song that you hate and play it so well that you learn to like it.

At first I thought, oh, what an interesting metaphor. But then I thought, what’s with all this liking? I already complained to you about that type of thing earlier this week.

Tell me you want to move me to laugh, cry, dance, or sing along … but don’t just tell me you want me to like you.

Liking is overrated.

Oh, not where you and I as human beings are concerned. But when we’re talking about art in any form, “like” is far too neutral a word. Sort of the way the word “nice” is when applied to people. If I ask you about your friend, and all you can tell me is that he or she is nice, you’ve told me far more than you really meant to.

So a truce, universe, OK?

Don’t let me read any more this week about people who want their stories, movies, songs, or restaurants to be liked, and I’ll try to be … well … nicer.

Yesterday, I shared the first in a series of Ethics columns I wrote for The Comics Journal in which I attempted to make sense of the time I worked for Marvel Comics. Here’s the second installment, which appeared in that magazine’s September 1985 issue.

But first a few comments from the perspective of 24 years later—

1) One of the editors at TCJ—I can’t remember who it was, though I’m sure I have the correspondence around here somewhere—insisted on formalizing the names of all of the people I mentioned, changing Marv and Len and even my wife Irene to Wolfman and Wein and Vartanoff, not at all the way I thought of them or should have had to refer to them. They were adhering to a journalistic style I didn’t think fit a memoir or personal essay, and it still seems strange to me when I reread the pieces, as if I’m holding at arms length those whom I should be embracing. If I ever collect and republish these essays, I’ll give my friends (and my wife) back their first names.

As for my other two comments, I think I’ll leave them until after you read the following, if you do bother to read the following.

2) I have no memory whatsoever of the fear I described at the bottom of the first column of page two. I remember the CPL essay, but I have no memory that once it appeared, I was worried about the repercussions. I think that ties into something I said in response to a comment on my previous Ethics entry—that time does heal all wounds. Many of the negative memories I had of my Marvel experience are gone, and the bile you’ll see in some of these installments has vanished. Some of that cleansing, as you’ll see later if I continue posting these columns, came through the very act of writing, which had an extremely exorcising effect.

3) All of the highly emotional details I wrote about the circumstances of my departure from Captain Marvel are also gone. If asked today to tell you what happened then, I could sketch in the vague details of Archie Goodwin’s unhappiness, Jim Shooter’s betrayal, and my own ineptitude at stating my case, but they would be factual only, coming from the head and not the heart. I am truly a different person, and those ancient emotions no longer resonate. But I share them here because, well, they’re honest to who I was then, and those who’ll want to know what it once was like at Marvel will get a more honest answer out of the me of 1985 than the me of 2009.

Next up—”Opportunity Knocked.”

Sean Howe, writer/editor of the book Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!, has been in touch with me because he’s writing a book in which he’ll attempt to sort out the Marvel Comics of the 1970s, which means that I’m doing some sorting out of my own.

During the mid-’80s, after I was no longer working in comics, I tried to process some of what went in in the mid- to late ’70s by writing a series of Ethics columns for The Comics Journal. And since I’m scanning copies of them for him, I figure why should the two of us be the only ones who suffer?

So here’s the first installment, which appeared in the magazine’s June 1985 issue, and started to explain how my love affair with comics turned into a love/hate relationship. You’ll see, if you hang in through all the installments—including the final one, which has never before been published—how my ambivalent feelings were eventually exorcised.

Somewhere I have copies I’ve proofed to correct typos and editing errors, but since I can’t find those right now, I’ll let these stand as originally printed.

I’ll be interested to learn how these read to you, because sitting down today and reading my 1985 opinions of my 1974 sure seems odd to me!

I dreamt this morning about my father, who passed away in January. Perhaps he was in my mind because I’ll be heading to Florida next month for the unveiling of his grave marker. I’m not sure of the reason, because the dream wasn’t about his death. Actually, the dream didn’t seem to be about much of anything.

Irene and my son and I were visiting my parents in Florida. We were driving to some local tourist trap, but I wasn’t yet aware what it was. At the door, I showed my tickets, but 1) my Mom wasn’t there, at least momentarily, visiting the rest room or something, 2) I had many more tickets than were actually necessary for us to enter, which had to be sorted out, and 3) a young boy whom I did not know was with us, who couldn’t have been a stand-in for my son, since my son was there at his current age. Not sure what significance any of that had. After I handed in the correct number of tickets and the boy wandered off, we went inside.

It turned out that we were visiting a farm, and as the crowd of tourists gathered in the farmhouse living room, the farmer explained the basics of how they harvest, make bread, etc., which I found irritating, since I’m surrounded by farmers in real-life. I have been both here and in our previous home in Maryland, so for at least 20 years, I’ve found nothing touristy about visiting a farm. Those are simply our neighbors, doing their daily work. If I wanted to visit a farm, I could just walk down the street. So I kept thinking, why would anyone think Irene and I would find this experience new and different? (more…)

Back in September, I shared a few covers from my 1970s’ fanzine Call It … Fate, and last month I posted a convention report on Phil Seuling’s first Second Sunday.

Here’s another page from that hectographed zine, one likely to cause drooling—an ad placed by my friend Brian Frazer for comic-book back issues.

Check out those prices!

Silver Surfer #1 and Conan #1 only 35 cents apiece? Captain Marvel #1 and Iron Man #1 only a quarter? Spider-Man #50 only 15 cents?

Hey, Brian—if you’ve still got the comics, I still have the spare change!

I’m way behind in reading Publishers Weekly, which will explain why I’ve only just now come across something intriguing from the September 28th issue. In a profile of Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Books, Goldin quotes from the book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, by restaurateur Danny Meyer.

Goldin shares how Meyer responded when asked what principle guided him as a new small business owner. He supposedly said, “I don’t want to be the best restaurant. I want to be the customer’s favorite restaurant.”

When I first read that passage, I liked it. But once it started to sink it, I didn’t like at all.

Why?

Because I think an important clause is missing.

I might have accepted the quote if it had been instead written as, “I don’t want to be the best restaurant. I want to be the customer’s favorite restaurant as long as I can do so while staying true to myself.” Perhaps I’m supposed to take that as implied, but without reading the book from which the quote was plucked, I can’t be sure.

I’ve often said that I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I am not. And that’s as true for my fiction as it is for any other other aspect of my personality. Sure, I’d love to be your favorite writer—but I need to be my own favorite writer first. If I have to like me any less in order to make you like me any more … well … it’s not going to happen.

It isn’t that I want my words to be disliked by anyone. It’s just that the most important thing is to be (to disagree with the first sentence from the Meyer quote) the best me I can be. If you end up liking my stories, too, that’s gravy for which I’m sincerely grateful. But as far as I’m concerned, Meyer’s second sentence will never trump his first.

I do want to be the best restaurant.

A sentence I wrote was just cited in The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: Volume II. Or to put it more accurately, I just learned that I’d been cited, since the book seems to have come out in 2005.

It’s a thrill, of course, to make your mark like that, but I was surprised by what, out of all my writing, has now worked its way into a reference book.

Was it a sentence from one of my short stories? Or a passage from a poem? Or a pithy quote from one of my essays or editorials? (more…)

As I told you last month, I’m hoping to fund our trip to next year’s Melbourne Worldcon through the sale of artwork from my collection so I can avoid going into debt. Don’t worry—I’m only getting rid of those pieces for which I feel no sentimental attachment. (Those I’ll won’t be selling until my poverty-stricken old age, I guess.)

The auction for my Bob Stanley oil painting has already closed, and started us on our way. The auctions for two other pieces have only just begun, though. Both, as it turns out, are of artwork I purchased 34 (gulp!) years ago in the art gallery of the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention.

The first is a large ink and watercolor scene of Howard the Duck, bought directly from artist Val Mayerik. A scan of the drawing is below, and you can check out the auction here. Keep in mind how early this piece was in Howard’s career—the misanthropic duck wasn’t to get his own title for another year. (more…)