Over at Fantasy Book Critic, Liviu C. Suciu reviewed the entire contents of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three, edited by George Mann.

Why do I care?

Because my short story, “Glitch,” earned 4 1/2 stars … which as far as I can tell, was on a scale of 1 through 5. (If I’m misinterpreting things, and it was instead on a scale of 1 through 100, please … keep that to yourself.)

Here’s what Suciu had to say:

Prim S-Tr resists the attempts of her bonded partner X-ta to have “animal-like” human intimacy. Then things go out of control… Interesting, funny and dark at the same time. The style was a bit flat but otherwise very good.

The anthology will officially go on sale tomorrow.

The February 2009 issue of The Believer features an article on the early novels of Thornton Wilder, books written before he wrote the plays for which he is now mostly remembered, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.

“A Partisan of Eternity,” by Christopher R. Beha, details how the contemporary critics of those first three novels slammed Wilder for ignoring what they considered to be the fundamental issues of his age. The following intriguing quote doesn’t specifically touch on that main thrust, but rather on Wilder’s thoughts when creating a story:

“It seems to me that my books are about: what is the worst thing that the world can do to you, and what are the last resources that one has to oppose it,” he wrote not long before the crash, in a letter included in the new and generous Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder. “In other words: when a human being is made to bear more than [a] human can bear—what then?”

This makes a good companion to the other question I’ve ben advised a writer should ask when deciding whether he or she has chosen the proper protagonist for a story—

Who hurts?

Yesterday was an extremely social day, beginning when Irene and I headed over to Maryland for dim sum at New Fortune Chinese Restaurant with Karen Newton, Charlie Newton, and Risa Stewart. Poor Sandy Stewart was stuck home sick—which meant that he ended up with leftovers. He also missed much electronics neepery, because Karen showed off her Kindle and I did the same with my new iPhone.

Since I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I could trust any of my lunch mates, I used my newly downloaded Battlestar Galactica Cylon Detector iPhone app on each of them. Luckily, I discovered that I was surrounded by nothing more than humans.

Then, after an afternoon spent with family, Irene and I took our palates to a different country when we joined a second set of friends for Greek food at the Mykonos Grill. While I enjoyed the meal, the acoustics were such that we could barely hear each other over the din of the other diners, so we headed over to the nearby Borders Books at the White Flint Mall to continue our conversation.

While browsing there, I discovered that a letter of mine had been printed in the latest issue of The Believer, a fun magazine from the good folks over at McSweeney’s. Think of it as a hip New Yorker.

My letter was in response to the article “The Henry Ford of Literature,” by Rolf Potts, which was about Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his 1920s’ publishing company which managed to put more than 300 million copies of inexpensive “Little Blue Books” into circulation. Serendipitously, I’d discovered from my reading of Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth at about the same time that the article hit newsstands that H.P. Lovecraft had been a fan of those pamphlets, and dropped the editors a note to pass on to the author, which they decided to publish.

It’s always feels good to be tapped into the zeitgeist …

After much prodding and even a little bit of dithering, I have finally opened a Facebook account, and just spent the evening friending Facebook friends.

Now riddle me this—

What should I be doing over there that’s any different from what I’ve been doing over here for the past year and a half?

>Over at The New York Times, Timothy Egan takes the occasion of the centennial of Wallace Stegner’s birth to write about the fury felt by writers such as Stegner and Norman Maclean for being labeled as regional and ultimately marginalized by the powers that be.

Egan reports that Maclean would not forgive those who passed on his first novel, A River Runs Through It:

After the success of his first book, Maclean was approached in 1981 by an editor at Knopf publishing, which had rejected the novel but was eager to take on his next project. Maclean wrote back in compacted fury.

“If the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I were the sole surviving author,” Maclean wrote, “that would mark the end of the world of books.”

Now that’s what I call holding a grudge!

Though it may be hard to believe, beneath my serene exterior, I do occasionally harbor resentments. But I would never give any of those resentments the power to harm a story, either mine or anyone else’s, by preventing it from reaching the public.

Stephen King has written, “It is the tale, not he who tells it,” but I would extend that to put forth the proposition that it is also the tale, not he or she who publishes it.

The story, and its eventual readers, are all that matter.

The Hunger of Empty Vessels, my stand-alone novella from Bad Moon Books, is now available for pre-order.

Check out that cool Dominic Harman cover. He and I worked together back at Science Fiction Age, and after all those years commissioning his pieces for the magazine to accompany stories by others, it’s great to finally see him illustrating one of my stories.

In addition to my dark and disturbing tale, the volume also contains an introduction from old pal Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1979 (can it really be almost thirty years?), as well as additional illustrations from Dominic.

This edition, which will ship in April, is limited to 150 signed trade paperbacks, so act fast.

And at $15.00 apiece, they’re a steal! So buy two!

I dreamt this morning that I was the Toastmaster at a Nebula Awards banquet, a task which I already did once in real life, back in 2000, so I’m not sure why I was doing it again. I spent time greeting friends, though the only ones I can remember now that I’m awake are Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. But I didn’t spend too much time schmoozing, because I was mostly interested in finalizing my patter, focusing primarily on roasting Robert Silverberg, since I needed to introduce him for some reason. Not sure what award would bring him to the stage, though, as he was made a SFWA Grand Master years ago.

When we all moved into the banquet room, instead of many tables of eight or ten people each, as occurs in real life, there was instead a single table stretching from the podium across the room.

My research for my talking about Bob consisted mostly of tracking down the most embarrassing early writing of his I could find, so I could read awful quotes and comment on them, basically showing that if someone that bad could get so good, there was hope for all of us.

As for the rest of my duties that night, such as introducing award presenters, I was going to let my iPhone take care of them. To show how science fictional the world had become, I was going to use apps to do the introducing for me. I’d found one into which you could enter a person’s name, and it would search online and generate an introduction, including not only relevant information, but jokes about them as well. And from time to time, I planned on using an excuse generator, versions of which actually seem to exist in real life, to offer reasons for me not having bothered to draft anything in that particular case.

What can I say? In the dream, it somehow seemed as if it would be entertaining.

I woke as I took to the podium to begin.

And speaking of iPhones, this entry has been written on one, as my PowerBook crashed and burned Sunday, the geniuses at the Apple Store declared on Monday that all I now had was a very shiny paperweight, and I’ve been laptopless ever since!

I got an e-mail this weekend from someone asking about my Tales From the Darkside episode “Baker’s Dozen,” which originally aired on November 24, 1986. It’s the only one of my three episodes I haven’t already shared about here. There’s a reason for that. (You can find information about the other two, “Fear of Floating” and “My Ghost Writer the Vampire,” by clicking on the tag at the bottom of this entry.)

Prompted by that note, below is the video for “Baker’s Dozen,” since someone has already done the work of uploading the episode to YouTube in its entirety. But for anyone else who might be tempted to watch it, let me explain why I haven’t offered it here until now. Unfortunately, I found the final script spun from my treatment so offensive that I almost removed my name from the screen.

In my original treatment, I made no mention as to the races of any of the actors. But for some reason, in the final script, the baker’s assistant was transformed into a shiftless character along the lines of Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland, and I was appalled. I didn’t want anyone to think I had come up with such a stereotypical caricature, so I haven’t talked about this episode much in the years since.

Maybe I’ll post my original treatment someday, so you’ll all be able to see the story I’d originally wanted to tell. But in the interests of completeness, and to fulfill the wishes of my recent correspondent, here’s “Baker’s Dozen.”

If you’re offended, too, don’t blame me. (more…)

Though the official release date isn’t until February 24, I’ve already received contributor copies of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 3.

Here’s the cover.

My contribution, “Glitch,” which is set in a robot-filled far future at a time when humans are but a myth, is in good company there, surrounded by short stories from Jack Skillingstead, Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, John Meaney, Paul Di Filippo, Warren Hammond, Ian Whates, Paul Cornell, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Pelland, Daniel Abraham, Ian Watson, Tim Akers, and Ken MacLeod.

Go! Buy! Enjoy!

Rich Buckler, best known for having co-created the character Deathlok the Demolisher and for his art on Fantastic Four in the mid-70s, turns 60 today.

But years before he did either of those things, he drew a convention sketch for an annoying teenager with a sketchbook—me!

I have no idea what con I would have been attending in New York in late November of 1972. I think it might have been one of the first Creation cons. Anyone out there know for sure?

In any case—Happy Birthday, Rich!