Here are three further first day covers from my mother-in-law’s collection, grouped together not merely because each one intrigues me, but rather because, warped soul that I am, each reminds me of a tragedy of some kind.

The first celebrates the marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Ranier on April 19, 1956. But when I first came across it in the lock box, I thought not of that wedding, but of Kelly’s fatal 1982 automobile accident.

Hey, I never said I wasn’t morbid.

Next up is a May 31, 1936 envelope which is marked as having been flown “via FIRST FLIGHT of ZEPPELIN HINDENBURG.” (more…)

I’ve been depressed on behalf of novelist Richard Yates all week, ever since I read a recent article by Anne Thompson in the December 8-14 issue of weekly Variety.

“Why?” you might ask.

Go ahead. Ask.

All right, I’ll tell you.

It’s not merely because he’s dead. I never met him, and never felt the connection with him the way I did with Raymond Carver, who I truly mourned at the time of his passing, and who from time to time I find myself mourning anew.

Rather, I’m saddened due to the big-budget movie just made of his 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. You might think any writer, living or dead, would love to have that level of talent applied to adapting his or her work. (more…)

In 2010, Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester will be publishing the 517-page French novel Zone, written by Mathias Enard. According to the linked piece, the entire novel, save for a flashback, is made up of a single 150,000-word sentence.

As for how many words that sentence will have when translated into English, the article doesn’t say. “It has a lot of commas,” according to translator Chad Post.

In any case, here’s the novel as compared to its closest competitors:

1. 150,000 words in Zone, by Mathias Enard (published in French in 2008)

2. 40,000 words in Gates of Paradise, by Jerzy Andrzejewski (Polish, 1960)

3. 30,000 words in Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, by Bohumil Hrabal (Czech, 1964)

4. 13,995 words in The Rotters’ Club, by Jonathan Coe (English, 2001)

I have no idea who wrote the longest sentence in science fiction, fantasy, or horror, but for the moment, I’m placing my bet on Barry Malzberg.

I dreamt this morning that I was at a summit meeting of sorts. Only this wasn’t the high-end kind taking place in an oak-paneled boardroom with plush carpeting. Instead, it was rather low rent, being held under the bright lights of a gymnasium. There were ten of us there, five on either side of a long, narrow formica table. On one side, the elder statesmen of science fiction. On the other, some young punks. Well, call them not-so-young punks, since one of them was me.

This was a dream which immediately began to evaporate upon waking, so I can only remember that Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl were among the giants on the opposite side of the table. It didn’t strike me at all odd that Jack was there, even though he died two years ago. Unfortunately, the only writer I can remember from my side of the table was … me. I’m sad that this particular dream happened to evanesce; I’d love to know which writers my subconscious thought should be joining us!

Anyway, as this meeting of the minds took place, Fred kept hogging the conversation, and Jack, who was shuffling through papers while this was going on, finally had to tell him to keep quiet. “I want to hear what the kids think,” said Jack. Only to someone Jack’s age—he died at 98½—could I possibly seem like a kid!

With Fred quiet, the writers on my side started to share their thoughts about science fiction, but then, with the limberness of a teenager, Fred vanished under the table. He began to pull some sort of prank having to do with my feet, but as to whether he tied my shoelaces together or stuck matches in my shoes to set them on fire the way you only see in old movies and comic books, well, that’s another detail that’s been lost to me, and I vaguely remember both.

I woke as the writers on my side of the table were speaking, and immediately began to scribble down the dream, but these details were gone, all gone.

In an essay currently online over at The New York Times (but which won’t appear on dead trees until this Sunday’s issue of NYT Book Review), Paul Greenberg has a suggestion for turning around the economy.

His thesis is in his title—”Bail Out the Writers!”

The piece begins:

A little while back my daughter told me the following depressing joke:

Woman: What do you do?

Man: Me? Oh, I write books.

Woman: How interesting! Have you sold anything recently?

Man: Why, yes. My couch, my car and my flat-screen television.

Greenberg apparently knows the world of the writer far too well.

In my final dream this morning, a dream which has since become rather fuzzy, Doctor Octopus was engaged in one of his nefarious schemes, only it seemed something larger than what Doc Ock would normally do, almost on a grand Doctor Doom scale of criminal plot.

I vaguely recall that it had something to do with scooping up Manhattan and shrinking the island down so that he could make a souvenir for himself, much like Braniac did with the bottled city of Kandor. The details are fading away, but in the dream I was a witness to this actually happening.

But then the dream took on a meta-level, and I found myself sitting next to Len Wein while the two of us calmly debated whether or not this was something Doc Ock would actually do. Len felt that this action was not characteristic of this particular super-villain, and was way beyond him, while I was taking the position that Doc Ock could have pulled it off. I was quoting scenes from early issues of Spider-Man to defend my position (which in the light of day does not seem defensible).

What was the weirdest thing to me about the dream what that it was as if the villainy was both happening and not happening. I don’t think that if Manhattan was really being stolen that two guys would be calmly discussing the event as if they were Siskel and Ebert reviewing a movie.

I woke in the midst of this bantering with Len, but because I didn’t immediately scribble down the dream, much of it has evaporated.

The February 2009 issue of SCI FI, the SCI FI Channel’s official magazine (which I happen to edit), goes on sale today. The issue will remain on sale at newsstands and in bookstores through February 16.

In addition to a 12-page section devoted to the return of Battlestar Galactica as it comes back to SCI FI for its final episodes, there’s also a story on the end of Stargate Atlantis, as well as additional features on the films The Spirit, Push, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inkheart, Coraline, Friday the 13th, The Unborn, and The Uninvited.

The issue also contains the usual departments reviewing books, games, DVDs, and more.

I’m working with my writers right now on the following issue, which will feature a little indie movie called Watchmen on the cover. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Time magazine has just announced its choices for the Top 10 Magazine Covers of 2008.

Here’s the cover that its editors ranked as #1, from the issue of New Yorker which ran following the presidential election.

While I liked the concept, it comes off a little too dark for me. Perhaps it was more legible on glossy paper than when seen made entirely out of pixels.

My personal favorite from the finalists is this one from Los Angeles magazine, which the editors of Time ranked as #8. (more…)

I completed the second draft of a new short story last night.

Those of you who come here regularly know that I tend not to give out the details of stories either when I’m writing them or attempting to sell them, preferring to only share about my writing when a story is sold, published, or nominated for an award. I guess I’m superstitious in a way, in that I’m afraid spilling the beans will jinx a story’s fate.

I’ve only made a few exceptions before. So why am I opening to the door to the vault today?

Well, as I wrote above, I just finished a second draft, which once again followed my tradition of doubling the word count of the first draft. According to Word, the first draft was 3,762 words, while the second draft came out to 7,023 words.

Between the two, I tore the story apart and rebuilt it. I sometimes think of myself more as a rewriter than a writer, because it’s in the rewriting that my stories discover what they’re truly about. I do many drafts before I’m satisfied enough to start submitting a piece to editors, but the first three are usually the most extensive.

Something popped into my mind as I was wrapping up this particular rewrite that crystallized my feelings about these earliest drafts, about all of my early drafts, and that was—

I write the first draft so that I understand what happens.

I write the second draft so that the characters understand what happens.

I write the third draft so that the reader will understand what happens.

All the drafts that follow are polishing drafts, though there are sometimes larger rewrites closer to the end if a major plotting or thematic flaw suddenly comes to light.

I don’t know how any of this compares with how those of you out there do what you do, but I find it fascinating that though my own process hasn’t changed much over the decades, this is the first time I’ve been able to identify exactly what it is that I’ve been doing all along.

I woke this morning from a dream in which Irene and I were hosting a huge party at our house. All the usual suspects were there, including people who’ve been to either the barbecues or daffodils parties we’ve hosted in real life, such as Karen Newton, Charlie Newton, Steven desJardins, Sandy Stewart, Risa Stewart, and others, plus many people who’ve never been at our home and whom I’ve only seen at conventions. That latter group was made up of BNFs, con runners, and the like, as opposed to professional writers and editors. The purpose of the party was to hold a book exchange, and each person brought a suitcase full of books, the contents of which were emptied out and piled together in the middle of the room.

At some point, I decided to give a tour of the wilderness outside our door, so we all piled in my Jeep—and yes, that’s all, as if I was driving some sort of impossibly full clown car—and went down the road to explore a nearby park. But it wasn’t the real-life 23,000 acre Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area we were trying to enter, but some other imaginary dream forest, and though my jeep did fine climbing over boulders and crossing streams, we eventually got to a part of the path where saplings had grown up to block our way.

This seemed strange, because by their size they had been growing for years, and I hadn’t remembered them being there before. In the back of my mind, I wondered whether deer-hunting season was yet over—after all, I didn’t want any of my guests shot! But then I realized that it had ended the day before. (In real life, the last day of the season was Saturday.) I thought of returning home to get a saw so we could clear the path and proceed, but I realized that we didn’t have time for that. We were going to have to find a different way to get in if we wanted to explore. (more…)