Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s an odd thing; Amazon is no longer displaying reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the like. Have no idea what this means. Maybe they’re just behind. Well, no, the PW reviews have disappeared from pages that had them a couple weeks ago. How annoying. Those reviews are fully on display on counterpart pages of Barnes & Noble‘s site.

Meanwhile, Locus has had a falling-out of some sort with BookSense, and so data from their bestseller lists will no longer appear in the magazine or online. Perhaps I should remove their links altogether (from the New Books pages, etc.), since I’ve never gotten any kind of commission from them. (Amazon, meanwhile, provides 3-figure amounts every quarter year, which helps defray website expenses.)

I wonder how often we genre folk, who revel in the weird, in the counterfactual, in the hyperreal, forget how far we exceed the scruples and tastes of most other people, of the mundanes, of the ordinary people. Well, at least, *I* have realized this recently. (I also recall incidents from my childhood and young adulthood which reminded me of the same thing: my grandmother baffled by Twilight Zone episodes, however much I tried to explain; my high school best friend sniggering at the sci fi books I read, on those occasions I tried to share, or confide.)

But we all grow up, grow comfortable in our views, tend to hang out with others of our bent, privately, at clubs, or conventions. We avoid dissenters. Yet other people impact our lives, from other angles, on other dimensions. And they keep us in check.

Case in point, my domestic partner, who’s willing to follow me pretty much anywhere if it involves traveling, shopping, or watching movies. (Though he’s not a book person at all.) Yet there are times he rebels. Via Netflix I rented Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures — the movie he made before he made Lord of the Rings, a movie I’d not seen before, but had heard good things about.

Yeong, my partner, was offended, really offended, that the story resolved with — SPOILER WARNING! — a girl who kills her mother. Why would anyone make a movie about such a thing?? They must be really sick. Was his reaction.

I attemped to explain, as any of you might, about the film’s interest in exploring the fantasy world these girls made for themselves, about how this was a real case murder story, but he actually resented my trying to explain. These people must be sick, he said. How is this different than the murders in, say, Psycho?, I asked. You can’t convince me, he said.

It’s not actually a genre thing, I realize. He was as upset by seeing House of Sand and Fog, which involved the unfortunate killing of a teenaged boy. In that case, I didn’t approve of the film much more than he did, for different reasons than his. He was offended by the sacrifice of the boy; I saw it as a classic idiot plot, stupid people doing stupid things, for the sake of a tragic plot.

Yet his reaction applies to much of what we genre folk focus on. Unordinary things, bizarre things. We settle into our attitudes, our worldviews, chat with our friends at cons, and forget how many of our fellow citizens would be revolted by what we do. Is there a political analogy here? Ok, I won’t go there. Enough is enough; let’s move on.

I’ve been drafting a commentary about this week’s US election for a couple days, about what I think happened and how I try to be philosophical about it, and it’s gotten longer and longer, so in the interests of getting it done (as if anyone really cares what I think when there are far more informed and passionate commentators out there blogging madly away), I will ruthlessly prune to the most cogent points, and be done with it.

Yes, I was as dumbfounded and disappointed as anyone by the election results. For months, years, millions of us in the US have awaited the chance to pass judgment on the underachiever who got ‘elected’ four years ago. It’s been clear to many of us, and to many others around the world, what a disaster the administration has been. So why did he get re-elected? Why did the 59 million people who voted for him not perceive him as the incompetent, simple-minded, smug buffoon that his detractors saw?

My number one explanation — and this applies to any election, anytime — is that the very process of such an election, by reducing the alternatives to two opposing sides, means that the majority of voters vote for whoever is on their side. For millions of Bush voters, this involved issues of ‘morality’ and ‘terrorism’ and so on. It may seem astounding, but the simple explanation for the many apparently intelligent people who voted for Bush is that it matters more to them to have someone who is on their side in office — even if they wouldn’t trust that person to, say, manage their personal finances — than to have someone intelligent who’s perhaps *not* on their side. The checks and balances of the three branches of government buffer the dangerous effects of any particular individual. One hopes.

Beyond that, it is useful to keep in mind that elections such as this are determined by those few percentiles in the fuzzy middle who can’t make up their minds until the last minute because they don’t have any strong opinions about any of the issues that are supposedly in contention. The ones who swing the election are the ones mostly easily swayed by image, and PR. That’s why all the vast generalizations about the mood of the public, or the mandate of the electorate, are wishful thinking at best, logical errors at worst.

Yet, why this result? Why now? I can only suggest that Bush got the fuzzy swing voters by appealing to the classic American traits of arrogant self-centeredness, and anti-intellectualism.

I admit to being cynical about politics ever since the 1988 Bush Sr. vs Dukakis campaign. Democratic elections sound nice in theory, but it’s really about PR. Democracy may be better than any alternative, but I’ve never had any great confidence in the combined wisdom of the electorate. People don’t pay attention; they’re irrational; they vote out of short-term self-interest despite long-term consequences. I’ve always wondered (maybe this experiment has been done) what the results would be if a general election were held about matters which were verifiable scientific, historical, or mathematical facts. What’s the value of pi? Let’s vote. How many amendments in the Bill of Rights? Let’s vote. Get it wrong, you’re disenfranchised.

Or should we live with the combined will of the majority? (I wonder what pi would be.) What does it say about peoples’ intelligence that so many ‘believe’ in Creationism, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary? (Never mind religious and spiritual matters for which there isn’t any evidence either way.) Actually, I’ve seen Jay Leno do person-on-the-street pop quizzes on various topics, and it’s astounding how uninformed or uneducated many people are.

My personal answer is to not place too much stock in anything decided by popular elections. It’s not a method of determining any kind of ‘truth’. (For political purposes, ‘truth’ is what we’ve agreed to enshrine in the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Yet, so many are hostile to the ACLU…) My values are elsewhere. I only hope, from election to election, that the result does not hit me where I live…

So, it does worry me worry me that so many US voters, especially the ones who cite ‘moral issues’ as their primary criterion for making a decision (as if only their own beliefs constitute what is ‘moral’), are eager to legislate their morality at the expense of depriving entire classes of fellow citizens their civil rights. Is that what America is about? Since when does “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” apply only to those who share your tastes, or prejudices? In spirit, if not in degree, the ‘conservatives’ who seek to deny ways of life they do not approve of are closer to the terrorists who would destroy what they disapprove of, than the founding fathers who sought to build a nation that embraced all ways of life. The terrorists who attack the US think they are defending morality too.

So now, the election is over; the time has changed and it is darker now; the World Fantasy Con, the last con of the year of any significance, is past; at work we’ve passed our CMMI assessment and everything is calm now; and I even finished ‘playing’ Myst IV last week. So many transitions. Time to move on. I’m going to read some books.

Fast but windy drive home this morning, with dust storms on the California side of the Colorado River, but no appreciable traffic congestion on I-10 or I-210 through the city, so the drive took only 5 hrs 40 min this way. Windy and a bit chilly here at home, with dried palm fronds littering the local streets, and the chimes chiming madly on the balcony. A couple nice review copies of books waiting for me at home. Tomorrow, back to work, and back to the website routine.

The convention was pleasant, though somewhat abbreviated for me since I didn’t arrive until Friday night, having missed the first day and a half of the con. Though I’m still not certain what the lure was of the Tempe location, the immediate area was pleasant enough, an off-campus area of shops and crowded restaurants, such as My Big Fat Greek Restaurant, where a group of us including Marina Fitch and Mark Budz and an ever-expanding group of friends and friends of friends, including Cecelia Holland and Isabel Glass, had dinner last night… And the weather was very nice, sunny and mild and almost warm. The hotel, the Mission Palms, was ideal, a four-storey rectangular building with a large central courtyard of paths and grassy areas, perfect for mingling and hanging out away from the lobby and bar. (On the other hand, it’s under the flight path of planes landing at Sky Harbor International Airport, and they start landing about 7:30 each morning.)

I saw a couple three panels, including one on books that influenced one as a child, with Stephen R. Donaldson, Kij Johnson, Graham Joyce, Jay Lake, and Ruth Nestvold, in which the most fascinating examples were the books that they discovered didn’t stand up upon adult rereading– E.R. Eddison for Joyce; Oz and Narnia books for Donaldson. The topic drifted to a discussion of current YA books, and Sharyn November migrated from the audience to the panelists’ table to cite favorites Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Philip Reeve, and Lloyd Alexander, and to express approval that the pendulum was beginning to swing away from the ‘problem novel’ trend of YA fiction the past few years.

Another panel on the spaces writers create for themselves in which to write, and the tricks they use to compel themselves to get their work done, only showed there are no rules; every writer discovers whatever works for them. Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jane Lindskold, Patricia McKillip, Irene Radford. One works in bursts of creativity; another puts in a diligent four hours a day; another (Jane) cited Roger Zelazny’s rule to write 3 or 4 sentences 3 or 4 times a day, as a minimum, every day.

This morning was the usual panel covering recommendations of *this* year’s best fantasy books, with Charles Brown lording over the others with a draft of the Locus recommended reading list. He cited books by Straub, Pratchett, Stewart, Kay, and Hand in particular as among ’04′s best novels. Steven Saffel and Ginjer Buchanan offerred examples of books they were particularly proud to have published: Greg Keyes and John Birmingham; Jeffrey E. Barlough, James A. Hetley, and Caitlin Kiernan [Murder of Angels]. Miéville’s Iron Council and Wolfe’s The Wizard Knight (one novel in two volumes) got their share of discussion as well. Betty Ballantine was on the panel too, as decoration she claimed, though she did chime in to opine that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (with no period in “Mr” Brown emphasized) was unreadably self-indulgent.

I also heard most of the post-banquet judges’ panel, moderated by WFA admin John Douglas, with Michael Stackpole, Sherwood Smith, Alain Nevant, and Scott Wyatt discussing the processes by which they arrived at this year’s winners (and nominees). John Clute, the fifth judge, did not attend the convention. There were no great battles among the judges, according to what they said, unlike what’s been rumored in some years; the only difficulty resulted in the one tied category, for best artist. They discussed the difficulties in sorting out candidates for some categories — e.g. the difference between the professional and non-professional special award categories — and also expressed regret that some kinds of works do not really fit anywhere, such as YA novels or novels that are parts of series. Audience suggestions that additional categories might be added to the awards to cover such items, or even additional awards created for them that would be announced in conjunction with the WFAs, were met with grave doubts for the prospect of such changes by Douglas, who expressed the administrators’ reluctance to contribute to the proliferation of awards or categories within awards. As an aside, it was mentioned that Clute recused himself from voting in the category for best collection, but was delighted that the other judges settled on the book by his friend Elizabeth Hand.

Cheryl Morgan, and perhaps others, had their laptops in the banquet hall to post the winners as they were announced; I didn’t even consider the idea, the tables being cramped, though I did return to my room immediately after to post the results, and a photo, before returning downstairs for the judges’ panel.

The dealers’ room was not large, but had a good share of book dealers. Somehow I wasn’t in the mood to do much buying; in addition to Shepard’s Viator mentioned last time, I bought only one other book, the new James Tiptree Award anthology from Tachyon; both will duly be listed in the next Monitor-New Books page. Michael Walsh of Old Earth Books, in the lobby earlier this evening, reported that dealer sales were rather dismal this weekend, for reasons he could not explain; I hope it wasn’t all my fault.

The art show was moderately sized, and had an impressive array of work by Janny Wurts and Don Maitz, as well as good stuff by John Picacio and many others, but nothing that motivated me to bid or to buy.

Today wound down with a nice dinner with Diana Gill and Charles Brown (whom I’d barely seen all weekend, aside from the year’s best panel) and Liza Trombi (who since Jennifer Hall’s departure has been CNB’s right hand person at events like this) at Roy’s, an asian fusion restaurant miles and miles from the hotel. Phoenix and its suburbs sprawl across the desert; we learned that “just past”, as the hotel concierge described the restaurant’s location relative to a major cross street, means more than 2 miles, in local parlance. And speaking of Jennifer Hall, she showed up at the con last night, having flown in from the Bay Area in the late afternoon, just to greet old friends and hang out at parties and the bar for the night, until a return flight at 7 a.m. this morning — at least, that was her plan, and since I didn’t see her today, I assume that’s what she did.

Next year’s con is in Madison, Wisconsin; David Hartwell announced that the con in 2006 will be in Austin, Texas.

Tomorrow morning I drive home, to return to the challenges of domestic life.

Arrived in Tempe as planned, following a 400 mile, 6 1/2 hour drive from LA — the first half slogging through city freeway traffic, the second half cruise-controlling across the desert as the just-past-full moon rose ahead of me, listening to R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, and Elliott Smith — checking into the hotel just past 8 p.m., and just as the traditional Friday evening mass-autograph signing session got underway. Hastily packing earlier in the day, I’d scanned the convention’s participants list and chosen half a dozen authors to grab books by to get signed, and having arrived, foregoing dinner until a late-evening room service, I wandered the central courtyard of the hotel where the authors were situated, hauling in successive tote-bags of books, and did manage to get signed most of the books I brought, in the course of having nice chats with Gwyneth Jones and Jeffrey Ford and Joe Haldeman and Patrick O’Leary and, yes, even Lucius Shepard, whose new Viator I bought on the spot from a dealer sitting next to him. Then to my room, where the hotel’s wireless internet connection works just fine, and where a dinner from the reduced late-night menu was delivered by a nice boy from room service. And so to email, and checking the critical websites one last time for the day, and a blog post, and to bed.

The news was good this morning at work. The company site received the highest possible rating against all four disciplines of the ‘Capability Maturity Model Integration’ (CMMI), which is a government sponsored method for assessing how well companies plan, manage, and optimize technical projects. The model is new enough (though there was an earlier software-specific model) that only a couple hundred companies worldwide have been assessed to it, and of those, only about 10 have gotten the highest, Level 5, rating in all areas of the model. (10 sites, to be more accurate, since the rating applies to only a specific site at best, and sometimes only to a specific program at a particular site. Our rating today was the second full-model Level 5 rating at a Boeing site, the first being the Boeing facility in Anaheim CA, the second, the site in Canoga Park CA where I work. A couple other Boeing sites have been rated Level 5, but only on a specific program, or to a limited version of the model. Even counting separate sites, there are still only 10, or so, full-model Level 5 ratings to date. Too much information, I know.)

That news being good, I’m taking Friday afternoon off (and probably Monday too) and will drive to Tempe for the World Fantasy Con. Since I’m driving I’ve packed a big box of books to get signed…

Whether I make it to World Fantasy this weekend depends largely on the outcome of a kind of audit procedure occurring at work this week, whose results will not be revealed until tomorrow morning. This is a CMMI appraisal, the preparation for which has been my primary reponsibility these past couple years. If the results are positive, I won’t feel guilty about slipping out by noon or so, to come home and pack and drive to Tempe; if the results are not as we’ve hoped, I’ll feel obliged to stay the day, and return to work promptly on Monday, to plan recovery actions.

Update Friday morning: Last night’s configuration management issue has been, er, managed.

On Tuesday we had a big rainstorm here in LA, pounding through the night and lingering with thunderstorms the next afternoon, rare circumstances for southern California where rain, when it does happen, is more typically described as extended drizzles. I discovered leaks in the house I’d not previously known.

Monday a film crew worked all day at my neighbor’s house. Film crews are a routine in SoCal; you can’t avoid seeing them from time to time while driving past boulevard shops or private residences. This time, my neighbor, whose house has a sleek contemporary design, hosted a cable movie crew for a day. Big white diesel trucks full of filming equipment started pulling up about 6 a.m., amidst early morning rain. Later, when I got home from work, the film crews were all inside the house, though I could see some action through the windows at the back. A cable movie involving stars I had never heard of, according to my neighbor. By 8 p.m. or so they entirely and efficiently vanished. Good timing, before the Tuesday deluge.

Interesting Economist article by one of the Booker judges about the experience of reading 132 books in 147 days, and his conclusions about what it takes for a novel to stand out. (Emphasis added)

A great deal is made of the transforming power of literature, but what does it take to become a transformer? Writing a novel as fine as “The Line of Beauty” or “The Master” requires skill, but more than that it takes courage and immense clarity of vision. In some books, such as Gail Jones’s “Sixty Lights”, those attributes show through most obviously in the strength of a single character who lingers with you long after you have put the book down. In others, like “A Blade of Grass” by Lewis DeSoto or Justin Haythe’s “The Honeymoon”, it is the single moment in which the whole tension of the book is shattered, or in “Becoming Strangers”, the only book to have been voted on to the longlist by all five judges, it is Louise Dean’s astringency of language that makes you wince — and then read on.

And then the author’s vision must stay clear until the very end. All too many of this year’s books began well, but then got lost. No book with a poor beginning ends up improving. By contrast, Nicholas Shakespeare’s “Snowleg” and Ronan Bennett’s “Havoc In Its Third Year” both started strongly and got better and better, and leaving them off the shortlist was particularly hard.

The third requirement, in addition to courage and vision, is about language. In order to capture a reader, an author must first duel with them and force them to submit to the writer’s vision. Nowhere is a writer’s guile and weaponry more finely honed than in their choice of words and metaphor. Here, more even than in the ability to draw a character, more even than in the skill needed to shape a plot, is where the difference between good and great can be seen. It sometimes took Gustave Flaubert a week to write a paragraph that pleased him, and with good reason. Mr Hollinghurst was one of the finest of wordsmiths this year, but there were others too whose work was lifted in particular by the quality of their writing, among them Shirley Hazzard and David Mitchell.