The Mumpsimus

At my author website, I've published an essay titled "Asterisks for Dead Astronauts". It is an exploration of reading, grief, poetry, the end of the world. It began as an essay about Jeff VanderMeer's recent novel Dead Astronauts and then ... sprawled. The essay has a lot in common with my recent post here on Kate Zambreno's Drifts , and, indeed, the post was deliberately meant as a kind of companion piece. (It doesn't matter the order you read them in, but I do think they benefit from each other.) I'm slowly working toward a new book project called Asterisks . I don't know that the form, shared between the two pieces, will hold for a book-length work, but the general concerns are ones I'm continuing to explore, and the style feels right, and adaptable. I wrote "Asterisks for Dead Astronauts" last fall, and it has gathered rejections from publishers since December. I'm tired of sending it out, and can't think of another publisher...

In the earliest days of this blog, I declared David R. Bunch to be "unjustly neglected". This was true back then, but not nearly as true as it is today, when all his books are out of print and usually sell for high prices on the secondary market (if you can find them). After I wrote that post in 2004, Jeff VanderMeer and I started talking about ways to get Bunch back into print. I sought out every stray Bunch story I could find. I tracked down the rightsholder. I typed up a section of Bunch's novel-in-linked-stories  Moderan  before tendonitis forced me to stop typing much of anything for a few months, and made the thought of returning to typing up Moderan  painful. Various obstacles presented themselves. (I started a master's degree. I became series editor for the  Best American Fantasy  anthologies. I moved to New Jersey. My father died . I moved back to New Hampshire. Etc.) In amidst it all, I couldn't follow up on the idea of reprinting Bunch, thou...

I was remiss in not noting the book release of my friend and comrade Jeff VanderMeer's new novel, Annihilation , the first volume in the Southern Reach Trilogy , to be followed by Authority and Acceptance later this year. It's getting lots of good press , great reviews , and wonderful support from its publishers. (You can read the first chapter here , if you're curious.)

Other obligations have kept me away from blogging for a month, and though I fully intended to mark and celebrate the publication of Jeff VanderMeer's wondrous Wonderbook  last week, time was not on my side. I am biased toward Wonderbook  because Jeff is a close friend, I was a consultant on the text, and I wrote some stuff for it. But I don't think my biases warp my perception of the book in this case, because it is just undeniably beautiful. Simply as an object , it's magnificent. (And I had nothing to do with the design, layout, or production, so I think I can be at least partially objective about that.) After Jeff sent me an advance copy, I told him I just kept carrying it around with me wherever I went so I could leaf through it. I'd seen a lot of the book before, but there's a huge difference between looking at it as a series of draft PDFs and holding the whole thing in your hands. I think the text offers useful, new, and invigorating ideas about how to...

This is the tenth in a series of posts leading up to this blog's tenth anniversary today, August 18. In each post, I look back on one year, sometimes specifically and sometimes generally. All the posts can be found  here . Well, here we are. The beginning. I started the blog after reading something in an emailed newsletter from my internet provider about Blogger . It sounded interesting, and I was curious to learn about HTML, which you needed to know the basics of to be able to format anything, so I took some of the last few days of summer vacation and played around. I'd recently begun reading science fiction and fantasy again after a relatively long absence. The New Wave Fabulists  issue of Conjunctions  brought me back, showing that some interesting stuff had happened since I'd stopped reading SF with any regularity in the mid-'90s. I got interested in the writers associated with the New Weird , and, especially, the contentious discussions that surrounded it ...

Behold! The Weird Fiction Review  website has existed for a year now. During that time, it has published work from around the world, including such wondrous things as a new translation of Bruno Schulz's "The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hour Glass" , Olympe Bhêly-Quénum's "The Night Watchman" , and Finnish writer Leena Likitalo's first story in English, "Watcher" . And tons of other things, including my own "Stories in the Key of Strange: A Collage of Encounters" . The website has become a hugely valuable resource, and it just keeps getting better, more varied, more surprising, more impressive. If you haven't spent time with it, you're missing a treasure trove.

Google has done gone and broke Google Reader , removing the sharing function to encourage people to use Google Plus instead. This means the "Fresh Links" section over on the sidebar is no longer able to be refreshed, and I'll probably go back to occasionally doing linkdump posts. Here, for instance, are some links: My latest Strange Horizons column, "Reading Systems" , has been posted, as has my latest Sandman Meditations piece. (The Sandman pieces are going to be biweekly for the rest of the year rather than the regular weekly schedule because I'm just too busy to keep up with a weekly schedule right now, and I was getting really frazzled.) Team VanderMeer has launched The Weird Fiction Review , an online journal about kumquats. Famed kumquat collected Neil Gaiman is interviewed , and there's an interesting selection of nonfiction, art, and fiction about kumquats. Don't believe me? Well, go over there and see for yourself! In publishing new...

After my own previous contribution to the burgeoning academic field of VanderMeer Studies, I am happy to christen yet another field: Schaller-VanderMeer Studies, a discipline inaugurated in ivy-covered halls with the Illustrating VanderMeer exhibit. True (Schaller-)VanderMeer Studies scholars do not limit themselves to the study of half a VanderMeer, however, and so I am happy to present here a monograph by Eric Schaller about the woman who was described by Xaver Daffed as "the better half of VanderMeer" (325). This monograph was originally published in the  Fogcon program book, March 2011. ANN VANDERMEER by Eric Schaller Something was happening back there at the tail end of the last millennium. And I’m not talking about The Gulf War, McDonald’s opening a franchise in Moscow, the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Spice Girls, or even Bill Clinton demonstrating new uses for a cigar. Although all these probably figure in there somewhere. What I am talking about a...

My previous post  about  The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that it is in beta-text mode and so quite obviously incomplete. Among the lacks are entries on either Jeff or Ann VanderMeer . I am not a contributor to the encyclopedia nor am I in any way affiliated with it, but I do have a great interest in all things VanderMeer. Earlier this year, I wrote a biography of Jeff for Fogcon , where he and Ann were honored guests. (Eric Schaller wrote the biography of Ann, which I hope he will allow me to reprint here, but he's not returning my calls or email at the moment, probably because I suggested that for Halloween he should dress his dog as a character from Twilight .) I hope the information provided below will prove useful to the encyclopedists and any future scholars. My only goal in life is to be helpful. Jeff VanderMeer will, I expect, deny the accuracy of some of it, but I believe such denials only confirm the truths I am here able to provide to the world... ...

Eric Schaller has been writing occasional SpecTech columns for the Clarion blog for a while now, and his most recent is about "mutations that involve homeotic genes and the monstrous results that can arise" . And the results are, indeed, monstrous! Meanwhile, occasional Schaller collaborator Jeff VanderMeer has released a new book called Monstrous Creatures , full of monstrosities you really don't want to live without. It's been getting monstrously great reviews  (including one from Charles Tan that, rather embarrassingly for me when linking to it, starts with my name). I have, through much effort, managed to secure an interview with VanderMeer about his new book. It was cut a little short, so I can't publish it anywhere other than here, but purely for archiving, here it is:

Jeff VanderMeer has a good post up about style. You should read it. I, being endlessly excited by the topic, responded with a comment as long as the post itself. I didn't really mean to do that, and was embarrassed upon posting it to see just how much I'd written, but I was in a hurry and didn't have a chance to write concisely. But I wanted to offer a comment/question about translation -- specifically the fact that some great writing survives some really bad translation -- and see what folks did with it, if they did anything other than just groan and ignore me. Which might be the best response. Nonetheless, the post itself is worth considering... Meanwhile, I was tempted to write a long post here about the blazing idiocy of John Mullan's "12 of the Best New Novelists" thing at The Guardian , but other people are on it . Really, though, I know what you most want from me: cute wombats !

Remember the Third Bear Carnival ? Of course you do. Well, after a lot of hard work from various folks, we now can offer all of the Carnival posts, plus some new content, as a free, downloadable e-book . Thanks to the contributors, to Matt Staggs for doing the initial compilation, and to Jill Roberts and Elizabeth Story at Tachyon for making it all look great. And thanks to Wired.com for hosting the file! And don't forget -- The Third Bear is always happy to go home with you ...

A couple quick notes... Weeks ago, Mary Rickert emailed me to let me know about a lovely YouTube video created as a trailer for her forthcoming book Holiday .  I completely forgot to post it.  I haven't seen the book yet, but I know many of the stories in it, and I know Mary , so I have no hesitation in recommending it. I just received my contributor's copy of Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded , and even though it doesn't have a picture of a steampunk reloading press , it's still a good book.  The interior design is particulary striking, especially in the section to which I contributed some lesser-known information about an ancestor of mine, the "Secret History of Steampunk".  (Also, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly deny all knowledge of the Mecha-Ostrich, despite the vicious rumors circulating about some sort of illicit scholarship I am said to have engaged in.)  I thought the first Steampunk anthology was good fun, and I especially enjoy...

Jeff VanderMeer has announced the second year of the Last Drink Bird Head Award nominations , and I was wondrous amazed to find myself listed there in the category of "Expanding Our Vocabulary: In recognition of writers whose nonfiction, through reviews, blogging, and/or essays, exposes readers to new words and, often, new ideas..." The other nominees in the category are the sagacious Anil Menon , the acroatic Abigail Nussbaum , and the argute Adam Roberts -- lambent flames of intellect, each! The nominees in the other categories are marvelous as well, and I do not envy the judges their judging, because I would never want to distinguish between such distinguished folks -- in all of the categories, the nominees are people I read with great pleasure and from whom I've learned a lot over the years. Now I must go back to poring over lexical tomes, preparing to vanquish my rivals in the grand mudwrestling-while-reciting-the-OED event that will, I'm told, determine ...

When I came up with the idea for the Third Bear Carnival , I quickly knew one post I wanted: something by Ann VanderMeer, Jeff's wife, who first knew him as a very young and mostly-unpublished short story writer, and who was one of the first editors to publish him with any frequency.  She was Ann Kennedy back then, and it's partly the stories that put her on the path to becoming Ann VanderMeer, because in Ann Jeff found his perfect reader and his perfect love. It took a bit of convincing for me to get Ann to write about her relationship not only to her husband, but to his stories.  Ann thinks of herself as an editor and not a writer, but she sent me a contribution back in July, and I've held onto it until now.   Much as I love what everybody else has contributed to the Carnival over these past weeks, and grateful as I am to each them ... well, this one's special... Ann & Jeff VanderMeer VanderMeer Stories: A Personal Reminiscence by Ann VanderMeer The ear...

I've got one very special post saved for tomorrow, but this post will end my own contributions to the Third Bear Carnival . To bring things to a close, I recorded a reading of a very short story hidden in the Afterword to the book, called "The Magician"... (It may take a few seconds to load and buffer.) [Direct link]

The Third Bear Carnival will come to an end later this week, and in honor of that, here's a contest.  I have a copy of Jeff VanderMeer's Third Bear collection that includes a unique cartoon by Eric Schaller, drawn on 24 July 2010.  This is the only copy of this cartoon that exists, at least as far as I know (most of Eric's cartoons are reproduced in bulk by the many small, innocent children he has imprisoned in a sweatshop deep beneath Dartmouth College).  It is drawn on the title page of the book, which in all other editions is unillustrated. Here's how you can win this unique copy of The Third Bear : In the comments to this post, write a description/explanation of 100 words or less about The Fourth Bear.   (Yes, we know all about the Third Bear now, but what is the Fourth Bear?)  The deadline is this Friday, August 27, at 12pm Eastern Standard Time.  Eric and I will then consult, and the entry that we agree is most interesting will be the winne...

When deciding on whom to invite for the Third Bear Carnival , one person I knew I really hoped to convince to join us was Micaela Morrissette, because Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, and I had become aware of her short fiction at the same time -- when we read her story "Ave Maria" in Conjunctions 49 and immediately decided to reprint it for Best American Fantasy 2 .  (We weren't alone in loving the story -- it won a Pushcart Prize , too!)  She has since gone on to all sorts of wonderful things, including publishing an acclaimed story in Weird Tales , "Wendigo" .  My first encounter with Micaela, though, had been way back in 2005 when my story " The Art of Comedy" appeared on Web Conjunctions and Micaela helped with the layout and formatting. And now, with Micaela writing about two of Jeff's stories, it feels like we've all come full circle!  But more importantly, here are some wonderful, and wonderfully-written, insights on Jeff's work...

David A. Beronä is Dean of Library and Academic Support Services at Plymouth State University, and author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels . He was instrumental in helping to organize last year's "Illustrating VanderMeer" exhibit, and so I thought he might enjoy joining our carnival . David posted this piece as a downloadable document on his website , and I asked him if he wouldn't mind my posting it here as well... Two Stories from Jeff VanderMeer’s The Third Bear by David A. Beronä As part of a reviewing process that my friend Matt Cheney developed, I was part of a group each reading two stories from The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer. I chose the time when I had time travelling on a plane to read these stories. I found that a different setting (I usually read on my porch looking out over the hills in New Hampshire with the sound of birds in the background) physically took me out of my ordinary world, bound by gravity, into a unaccustomed ...

The ever-marvelous Rachel Swirsky has posted her contribution to the Third Bear Carnival , "A Meta-Fictional Diptych Relating to the Stories 'Appogiatura' and 'Fixing Hanover'" (cross-posted to Alas, a Blog ) , which could be considered, as she notes, fan fiction. Now if only all fan fiction were like this... Rebecca Salt, age fourteen, daughter of divorced middle class Jews from Long Island, was tired of being a Speller. She could still remember how things had felt before she got competitive, when Spelling was still a pleasure, when she had a sort of palpable sense of the l-u-x-u-r-i-a-n-c-e** of words and letters. She'd heard the symmetry between alphabet and language as a kind of ringing d-u-l-c-i-m-e-r, intricate and melodious. Sometimes the joy she took in words felt a-u-t-o-c-h-t-h-o-n-o-u-s, seeming to rise up in her from some ineffable, otherworldly source. Six years into the rote of shuffling flash cards in every free moment, gasping out word...