I just noticed that the following event is scheduled to take place on Friday at 9:00 p.m.

For me, this will take priority over everything else scheduled that weekend.

Bring your kleenex.

Tom Disch’s “Winter Journey”
(40 min.)
Almost exactly a year after the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor in September 2004, Tom Disch began writing a sequence of poems, which he shared on his blog. Eventually there were 31 of them. He titled the sequence “Winter Journey” after Schubert’s lieder cycle “Winterreise” (a work Naylor loved). Elizabeth Hand calls the sequence “an extraordinary efflorescence of grief … tragic, bitter, bleakly funny, romantic, heart-rending—and also accessible. I can imagine, by some divine fluke, the book becoming a surprise, posthumous bestseller—an irony Disch would have appreciated.” When the sequence was completed, Disch contacted friend and filmmaker Eric Solstein, and asked if a reading of the work might be videotaped to serve as a suicide note. At its conclusion, he said, he would kill himself, the attendant publicity hopefully contributing to the success of the recording. A deal was struck between Tom and Eric—the taping would proceed if the suicide were postponed for some indefinite period of time. This will be the first public showing of “Winter Journey.” The poems are to be published later this year, by Payseur and Schmidt, with a DVD of the reading included.

The Readercon committee has just posted the final program for the 19th iteration of what always turns out to be my favorite convention of the year. (I haven’t missed one yet.) I expect the sharply focused panel descriptions to spark lively discussions as usual.

You can find my photographs from last year here, and I look forward to seeing you there this year!

Here’s where you’ll be able to find me: (more…)

The ever-entertaining Paul Di Filippo has begun a new blog, which seems like the perfect time to share another of the artful collages his uses to befuddle the U.S. Postal Service. In the image at right, a band of thugs comes calling, which is exactly how my mail is usually delivered.

As for that new blog of his, it’s called Weird Universe, which, according to its mandate, “explores every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.” Paul’s co-conspirators in this new project are Chuck Shephard, who many of you already know as the brains behind News of the Weird, and Alex Boese, the curator of The Museum of Hoaxes.

If you head over there today, you’ll read about two-headed snakes, learn about the impending shortage of pink flamingo lawn ornaments, and sing along to an anti-LSD anthem.

In the mid-’80s, I collected science fiction, fantasy and horror quotes with the thought that I’d eventually assemble them into our field’s version of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Though I pitched that book to several publishers back then, I never succeeded in placing it, and abandoned the idea. (Besides, now that Gary Westfahl has published his wonderful Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits, there’s no need for my book anyway.)

As part of my mourning for Tom Disch, I paged through those old quotes to find the ones I’d culled from the works of his I’d read up until that time. Since you might be mourning, too, I thought I’d share some of them, so that we can collectively remember what we’ve lost. (more…)

Umberto Eco, scholar of medieval studies and bestselling author of such books as The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, was interviewed in the Summer 2008 issue of The Paris Review. (My wife gave me a lifetime subscription more than three decades ago, and it’s truly been the gift that’s kept on giving—something that George Plimpton wasn’t too happy about!)

He had fascinating things to say about memory, the creative process, communication, and more, but it was his thoughts on the future of reading which stood out for me the most.

As you’ll see, he’s full of hope for the future, even as others are running around in fear.

What do you make of those who proclaim the death of the novel, the death of books, the death of reading?

To believe in the end of something is a typical cultural posture. Since the Greeks and the Latins we have persisted in believing that our ancestors were better than us. I am always amused and interested by this kind of sport, which the mass media practice with increasing ferocity. Every season there is an article on the end of the novel, the end of literature, the end of literacy in America. People don’t read any longer! Teenagers only play video games! The fact of the matter is that all over the world there are thousands of stores full of books and full of young people. Never in the history of mankind have there been so many books, so many places selling books, so many young people visiting these places and buying books.

What would you say to the fearmongers?

Culture is continuously adapting to new situations. There will probably be different culture, but there will be a culture. After the fall of the Roman Empire, there were centuries of profound transformation—linguistic, political, religious, cultural. These types of changes happen ten times as quickly now. But thrilling new forms will continue to emerge and literature will survive.

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who feels that though the bottles into which we decant words may change, the wine of literature will always remain.

Tom Disch visited me in my sleep this morning. There was no sense of surprise in the dream, by which I mean there was no awareness that in real life he was dead, and that such an encounter would from now on be impossible.

We were sitting at a picnic table, much as we were during my moving one-on-one conference back at Clarion in 1979, which I shared about earlier here. We were in the backyard, not of my current house, but of the one I lived in from 1989 through 2004.

We were having a pleasant conversation, about which I’m sorry to say I remember none of the details. (That’s unfortunately often the way with dreams; the stuff I most want to remember fades upon waking.) But I do remember the twinkle in his eye, which was there during our whole chat, a twinkle which so many of you have mentioned in your posts in the days since his death.

In the midst of all this, it suddenly occurred to me that I was being a poor host. He had traveled so far, and I hadn’t offered him anything to eat or drink. So I apologized, and asked what I could get him. He said that he only wanted juice, so I went inside to get him some, filling a glass with cold orange juice from the fridge.

By the time I came back outside, glass in hand, he was gone.

And then I woke up, missing him.

John Joseph Adams has just posted the final cover to his zombie-themed anthology The Living Dead, which will reprint my Stoker-nominated novella “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man.”

As you’ll note, this is yet another cover on which I appear under my famous pseudonym “many others.” This time, I am share that pen name with such writers as Dan Simmons, Michael Swanwick, Jeffrey Ford, Douglas E. Winter, Joe Lansdale, Adam-Troy Castro, Andy Duncan, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. Not too shabby!

According to this Associated Press article, Andre Norton’s literary legacy may be tied up in the courts for awhile. As far as I can tell, the dispute is over the meaning of the phrase in her will which refers to “royalties from all posthumous publication of any of my works.”

Apparently, one of her heirs believes that this should only apply to any posthumous works not previously published during Norton’s lifetime, while another believes that it refers to all posthumous publication of any Norton work, whether previously published or not.

I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea what this all really means, or how long this will take to play out, or whether it will interfere with keeping Norton in print. But if nothing else, it should remind all writers to pay careful attention to their estates and to seek professional legal advice regarding the wording of their wills.

I dreamt this morning that I had wandered into a huge auditorium in which all the chairs were arranged in a circle, planetarium style. In the center of the room, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were sitting in a circular pit, which, at the proper time, would be covered by a dome, onto which at the right time they’d project one of their favorite films.

They said they were going to screen Lassiter, a title which in the dream meant nothing to me, but which upon waking I see is a 1984 movie starring Tom Selleck. I’ve never seen it, but based on reading about it, I can’t imagine it being anyone’s favorite film. In the dream, however, that’s exactly what Spielberg and Lucas were going to show us, only they never explained why, and I never questioned their choice.

A handsome man was sitting on the lip of the pit, dangling his feet. As I looked at him, I somehow knew he was an actor, but I couldn’t quite recognize him, perhaps because his features kept morphing. (more…)

I’ve just learned that Thomas M. Disch, author, teacher, editor, and poet, has passed away. He is the second instructor I had at the Clarion Science-Fiction Writing Workshop to have died in the past few weeks, having been preceded by Algis Budrys. In addition to having both been teachers of mine, Tom and Ajay were bound together in another, far more intense way, as can be seen by the recent posting in which Tom wrote of Ajay, “I was certain I would beat him to the exit, but now I get to dance on his grave,” an eerie sentiment to reread in light of this new context.

I can no longer remember when I read my first Disch, but I can very much remember when I read my favorite Disch. It was in the pages of Terry Carr’s 1967 Ace Books anthology New Worlds of Fantasy, which reprinted “The Squirrel Cage.” The story begins:

The terrifying thing—if that’s what I mean—I’m not sure that “terrifying” is the right word—is that I’m free to write down anything I like but that no matter what I do write down it will make no difference—to me, to you, to whomever differences are made. But then what is meant by “a difference?” Is there ever really such a thing as change?

We learn that our narrator is locked in a small, windowless room. He has no memory of how he got there or why he is there. Perhaps he volunteered for an experiment. Perhaps he’s the sole survivor of the human race, Perhaps he’s being studied by aliens. All he knows is that time is passing while the only things he has with which to entertain himself are the copies of the New York Times which keep showing up in the room. (more…)