The Marxist Internet

As a librarian I’m often surprised by how often people assume that the information they need is only a click away on the Internet. Perhaps I shouldn’t be, since this seems true enough when what we want to know is something like what were the two winningest college football teams in the 1980s (1). But basic economics suggests that if someone can charge you money for something they’re not likely to give it to you for free.

To this point I came across an apt quote yesterday, from Thomas Mann at the Library of Congress:

“The belief that ‘everything’ will be freely available to everyone on the Internet, from anywhere, at anytime, is based on unworkable Marxist assumptions about human nature.”

Mann makes a strong argument that as long as copyright exists information will be for sale (2). I’d add that as long as tools and processes are developed that add value to information, access to those technologies will also be for sale. But I do think Mann underestimates the ingenuity of market forces. Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, makes the case in his latest book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (3), that money can be made by giving things away. After all, Google has no trouble turning a profit without charging people to use its search engine.

Will this hold true to the point where ‘everything’ will become freely available on the Internet? Probably not. If there’s one thing that’s certain in business it’s that there will never be only one business model. As much as the phenomenon of “Free” has put unprecedented amounts of information at our fingertips, there’s even more that’s available for a price, and as Mann points out, short of a worldwide disavowal of intellectual property, there always will be.

Common wisdom has it that information wants to be free, but common sense dictates that people want to get paid.

Fantasy & Science Fiction: March 2009

March 2009: The last monthly issue for F&SF. Sniff, sniff. Maybe this will make it easier to get caught up in my reviews.

“The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights” by Daniel Abraham
I’ve mixed feelings about the actual stories that Abraham has nested together here, which have mostly faded from memory. But the frame, or story prime if you will, is fresh in my mind, perhaps proving once again I’m a sentimental sap as it centers on the protagonist having his eyes opened to his finacée – to his need to more deeply construct or realize what it is she and their relationship mean to him. Which inevitably makes me consider what my own wife means to me. Then I get all weepy and have to come up with some story about a dropped pass in yesterday’s football game to explain my emotional outburst.

Storytelling is what it means to be human, and by the stories we tell we determine what we mean. If, as the tall-tale telling Uncle Dab tells the protagonist of this story, “More times you tell something, the more it gets true,” then let’s all tell some good ones, especially about the people we love. Have I told you how I met my wife? It’s a humdinger of a story . . .

“The Unstrung Zither” by Yoon Ha Lee
I wish the intro to this story didn’t mention Orson Scott Card as an influence on Lee. I’m afraid I couldn’t get Ender’s Game out of my head as soon as I saw the words “Pheonix Command” in the second sentence of Lee’s story. But this is no Battle School knockoff. Lee has written a very original story set amidst a future inter-world war colored by Asian trappings and a magical, mystical, wondrous feel – though the taste Lee gives is frustratingly inadequate for those of us who prefer to glut on the finer things rather than savor them.

I’m fascinated by the disturbed, vulnerable, and highly dangerous young prisoners that protagonist Ling Yun is tasked with defeating, which she must do by translating their drawings of dragons into music. Ling Yun is also fascinated, and that’s what drives the story, which is certainly one of the better stories to grace F&SF’s pages so far this year.

“That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch
This issue’s classic reprint comes from the late 50s and carries that quirky, slightly moralistic mark of the Twilight Zone era. It concerns a drifter who pulls his life together in a quest for happiness that begins when he makes a deal with the devil. In exchange for his soul he wins a watch that can stop time, so he’s looking for a moment of perfect happiness. Wine, women, and worldly success – he achieves all of them, but the question is when exactly to hit the switch? The story has the era’s trademark “gotcha” feel to it, but it’s as fine a specimen as you might hope for, and really called to mind those late-night reruns that were the introduction to science fiction for many of my generation.

“Quickstone” by Marc Laidlaw
My first introduction to the bard Gorlen Vizenfirthe came in last year’s “Childrun,” a story that worked quite well but only hinted at the larger story behind Gorlen and his hand made of stone. Here in “Quickstone” Laidlaw puts Gorlen back on the track of the overall story arc and leaves me wishing for a Gorlen omnibus.

In the depths of a quarry Gorlen finds entrance to the stone bowels of the Earth where gargoyles congregate and contemplate the destruction of mankind. Not a safe place for a soft-fleshed human to wander, but Gorlen seeks the gargoyle who petrified his hand, hoping to somehow reverse the spell. But the stone hand proves more than a curse, it’s a link, and it’s made Gorlen part gargoyle himself. Anyone who feels that gargoyles are the most underappreciated of monsters will know that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Some nice imagery, nicely realized gargoyles, and a slightly overblown finale make this a memorable yarn, and I think it may be the prelude to an unforgettable buddy story.

“Shadow-Below” by Robert Reed
As with Laidlaw’s story, the fact that Reed’s piece is part of a series feels very evident, giving that precious sense of more fully-realized setting, story, and characters beneath the surface, but also leaving a bit of the third-wheel feeling you get when you’re the newcomer at a reunion of old friends.

This kept me from ever fully connecting with the story, though it offers intriguing glimpses of a future and some strong characters. Reed’s writing is always sharp without being showy, as when a girl asks the protagonist a key question and Reed simply says “Very carefully, Shadow-Below said nothing.” Reed similarly slips some nice thoughts in, such as the idea that over-romanticizing the pre-Colombian American Indians is just another way to dehumanize them.

A good end for a remarkably strong issue.

Fantasy & Science Fiction: February 2009

February 2009 is the best issue of F&SF in months.

“Shadow of the Valley” by Fred Chappell
If you’ve been paying attention you know I’m a fan of Chappell’s shadow trader stories (1,2). This time Falco’s master sends him out of the city to a legendary shadow-devouring valley to harvest certain plants. He first falls prey to highwaymen, then enlists them in his task, leading them straight into a Lovecraftian nightmare.

Chappell’s characters, if not exactly admirable, are great fun to read about, and here there’s some wonderfully clever interplay between Falco and the highwaymen’s leader, and a great tit-for-tat with Mutano, Falco’s rival in Master Astolfo’s employ. There’s a distinctive flavor to the prose in these stories, a peculiar stiltedness that I savor in these small doses.

“The Texas Bake Sale” by Charles Coleman Finlay
The highwayman theme continues, but this time it’s the remnants of a Marine battalion in the barren Texas panhandle, shaking down convoys for diesel and pesos. Are they simply pirates or the last vestige of a crumbled United States of America? I guess it depends on how you feel about overpaying for brownies at gunpoint.

F&SF’s CCF glut goes on, and this simple story is a gem, postulating what might come of the military if the country fell apart. Featuring some weary wiseacres, some noble thieves, and a hot firefight, it’s good fun with a scoop of contemplation – brownies a la mode.

“The Night We Buried Road Dog” by Jack Cady
The classic reprint for this issue is a whopping big novella, hogging a third of the page count. This is always a gamble, but here it’s worth it. The story unwinds slowly, evoking the era of two-lane highways and fat mid-century coupes with snarling V8s. The characters race up and down Montana and the Dakotas, talking cars and trying to find the elusive Road Dog who’s signature graces every bathroom wall. One starts a cemetery where good and faithful automobiles can be retired, and this elegiac mood permeates the tale. The nostalgic reverence for the old road and the cars that chased it is well-matched to the story’s ultimate revelations and ruminations on the ghosts of the past.

“Winding Broomcorn” by Mario Milosevic
Less depressing but more poignant, Milosevic (a fellow librarian) gives us a former pastor with a hobby of making brooms by hand. With him it feels like more than a traditional craft, like he’s holding on to something from the past, winding it around himself as tight as he winds his brooms. Those cobwebs will get swept away, but not before some sorrow and some great lines, like “husbands have to have something to do their wives don’t understand.” Of course, the reverse is equally true.

Time to get honest about the BCS

Can you tell I’m impatient for college football to start?

Orrin Hatch has dragged the BCS onto the Senate floor for another seemingly pointless whine session. Doesn’t the government have anything better to do than argue about football?

Isn’t it just a game? Why should the government worry itself over whether or not hundreds of millions of dollars are being monopolized by a handful of elitists? What possible reason could anyone have to complain?

How about the facts that:

1. Even though Utah met all the additional expectations necessary in order for a team from a non-automatically qualifying conference to play in a BCS game,
2. Even though they pasted mighty Alabama,
3. Even though they finished the season ranked second in the nation,

Their conference, the Mountain West, only receives about half as much of the BCS proceeds as did the PAC-10, the Big East, or the ACC? That’s right folks, the conferences that furnished you with last year’s thrilling Cincinnati – Virginia Tech Orange Bowl each took home almost twice as much money as Utah’s Mountain West Conference. For no other reason than that they were already guaranteed a spot in a BCS game.

But that’s ok.  It’s not about the money. We promise. There are plenty of good justifications for this system. Like the argument from Harvey Perlman, University of Nebraska Chancellor and Chair of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, that little teams like Utah just haven’t proved themselves by playing tough enough schedules.

Perhaps he’s right. According to Sagarin’s data, Utah’s strength of schedule in 2008 was only 56th. That’s not even in the same universe as Nebraska’s 38th. Right? Now understand that Nebraska is actually my number two team. But how can Perlman make this argument when Cincinnati, guaranteed a spot in a BCS game, had the 60th ranked schedule? And of course, there’s the response to Perlman from Utah President Michael Young: “I do appreciate the tremendous football team that Nebraska fields. And I wish that they would play us.”

Still, Perlman points out that more of these “outsider” teams have played in big bowls since the start of the BCS than before it. Shouldn’t they be happy with the bones the BCS tosses them? Why demand equal access? Besides, it’s not technically written in the rules that they can’t earn a spot in the National Championship game. Right?

So here’s a hypothetical for Perlman and anyone else who’s ready to get honest about the BCS:

On September 5th BYU will play Oklahoma in the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. Say BYU wins and is the only team to go undefeated. And that after that loss Oklahoma also runs the table and wins the Big 12. Which team is more likely to play for the national championship?

If it took you longer than 0.5 seconds to say Oklahoma you haven’t been paying attention.

Fantasy & Science Fiction: January 2009

The January 2009 issue of F&SF sports a whimsical cover and several good stories, both whimsical and sweetly poignant.

“The Minutemen’s Witch” by Charles Coleman Finlay
Winner of last year’s Wormie for Best Novella, Charlie Finlay returns with a novelet that gives a taste of his recently released Traitor to the Crown trilogy. It’s a curious blend of revolutionary America and witchery, with a well realized protagonist.

Proctor wakes to a horseman’s shout that the Redcoats are coming. He grabs his father’s gun and heads for the door but his mother insists he wait until she can scry his fate. It’s a secret talent passed down from their Salem ancestors, but he and his mother disagree about the vision: will there be blood, or will the Redcoats turn away when the colonists stand up to them?

Of course we know the answer to that. The action drives this story, colored by the nervousness and confusion of the combatants. There’s a hint at magic operating on the British side, suggesting the larger story Finlay intends to tell with his novels, but he never loses sight of his protagonist and the things that matter to him, like the girl he’ll never get to marry because her family are loyalists. The milieu feels fresh and it’s a well told story, even if it’s an obvious prelude.

“The Perfect Infestation” by Carol Emshwiller
Aliens infest dog bodies as a way to infiltrate and conquer Earth. Hmmm, reminds me of Orson Scott Card’s 1978 story “In the Doghouse.” There are significant differences but really, is there room for more than one story with a premise like this? Still, there’s a sweetness to the matchmaking that Emshwiller’s dog ends up doing.

“Seafarer’s Blood” by Albert E. Cowdrey
Eric’s marriage is tumbling into a messy and inimical divorce. With little to look forward to in the daytime Eric finds refuge in the visions that come to him at night, when he inhabits his Viking ancestor’s body and repels a Hunish siege. But he soon discovers that such doors open both ways.

Cowdrey gives an unsparing portrait of Eric and his wife that, tinted with humor, gradually becomes more sympathetic. This modern, cynical, self-loathing humor makes for a nice combination with the classic feel of the story’s speculative premise – a kind of science fictional rendering of the old “I’m My Own Grandpa” song. Heinlein did that with “All You Zombies,” but that nasty, crooked piece of work isn’t half as fun as Cowdrey’s.

“Changeling” by Dean Whitlock
My favorite story of the issue, and a strong early contestant for the 2009 Wormie for Best Novelet, is this piece from Dean Whitlock. Grad student Gavin is house sitting for a professor in Portsmouth where he meets a strikingly ugly young woman named Amanita. After he recovers gracelessly from his initial shock, the two engage in some friendly banter. She claims to be a changeling and predicts he’ll meet a small, gray stranger. Sure enough, that very evening he ends up adopting, or being adopted by, a gray parrot. Following the directions the parrot gives from his shoulder he continues his friendship with Amanita, even when it leads to a bizarre journey to the island Amanita believes she came from.

I was pleasantly surprised by Whitlock’s prose. He has plenty of warmth for Gavin and Amanita and the wit in their banter is sharp but never steals the spotlight from the characters themselves. Amanita is a wonderful character, burdened by her past and her face, but strong and self-reliant. She’s the rare character that we can feel sorry for while still respecting and admiring her. At the same time, Whitlock is embarrassingly honest about Gavin’s mixed feelings. It’s the best portrayal of a person fated to unattractiveness that I’ve read, and any reader who has known someone with a similar fate or who has wondered if this was their own fate should be able to identify with both characters.

Whitlock has a couple YA novels out and I plan to give them a try. If the honest insight and sensitivity he shows here is any indication, they’ll be well worth my time.

Workshopping with the Hickmans

Back in action after a long vacation, but you’ll see I haven’t been a total slacker.

I’m a regular at BYU’s Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop, and this year I was able to participate in the group led by Laura and Tracy Hickman. Yes, the two people who are directly responsible for all the dates I should have gone on as a teenager. You see, my first introduction to Dungeons and Dragons came at their hands, through the Pharaoh module, and I lost the next six years of my life to funny-shaped dice. To say nothing of Tracy’s Dragonlance novels, and my favorites, the Rose of the Prophet trilogy and the Death Gate Cycle.

So I was bound by duty to my younger self to sign up for the Hickmans, and while the woman who sat between me and Tracy at dinner might argue otherwise, I believe I refrained from geeking out too annoyingly.

It was wonderful working with the Hickmans, and I was impressed by the quality of work some of the group members brought to the table. I really warmed to Tracy and Laura as people and appreciate the friendly and casual atmosphere they created. Tracy was very encouraging of my work, which never hurts either.

I was also able to attend a session with Martine Leavitt, whose Keturah and Lord Death I quite admire. All in all, it was a week well spent and my batteries have received a much needed recharging.

Converging on Everest with Le Guin and Russo

The March 2008 issue of F&SF carried a story by Richard Paul Russo called “The Second Descent.” Its characters are descending from a summit, and their reality and perceptions and memories lose coherency as the story progresses. Generally I prefer clarity in narrative, and quickly forget stories that lack it. But Russo’s story ended with a mood that resonated for me. And last night I was forcibly reminded of it.

I’m reading The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin’s anthology of essays, and in Susan Wood’s introduction to the fourth section she reproduces a poem Le Guin originally published in the April/May 1977 issue of Encore Magazine of the Arts. The poem, “Everest,” evokes similar feelings of loss. The escalating dissolution of perception or purpose or even reality is first foreshadowed by the line “Footholds don’t last in ice,” and then realized in the last major stanza with lines like “hard to be sure / just what it is you’re seeing,” “From here on down no track,/ no goal, no way, no ways,” and “The language of the rocks has changed.” (You may be able to read the whole poem using Google Book Search.)

I don’t know if Russo has read Le Guin’s poem. And if he has, whether he held it in mind at all when writing his story. But the use of the same metaphor, a descent, to reflect such a melancholy madness, is a remarkable coincidence–and I do believe in coincidence or even convergence when it comes to the deep currents of fiction. I often wonder what my own writing is converging on, though I rarely see it from the beginning, and I suspect that anyone who tries too hard to see it as they write would end up with a cipher–something that is not a story at all but a code, or something that dissolves with the same forlorn impotence as does perception in Russo’s story and Le Guin’s poem.

National Library Workers Day

Today, April 14th, is National Library Workers Day, part of the annual festivities for National Library Week. To celebrate, my library is using the photo on this party invitation to remind me how excited I should be that I’m a librarian. If only my office was that stylish and my triceps that chiseled. And if only I had stolen my hair from a LEGO man.

R.I.P. RoF – Whither the short story?

R.I.P. RoF
It’s been a month since SFScope broke the news that the April 2009 issue of Realms of Fantasy (RoF) will be the last.  It was a bit messy, what with editor Shawna McCarthy and assistant editor Douglas Cohen hearing about it the same way as the rest of us, and I still have a hard time believing it.  The latest doesn’t help: Mark Hintz of Sovereign/Homestead (which publishes RoF) tells SFScope that RoF has always been profitable during its 15 year run.

So if the magazine is making money, why cancel it?  Apparently all the recession doom and gloom has them convinced the sky is falling.  Let me get this straight: The economy is in a downturn, so we better kill a profit center?  Nice reasoning.

But if you look at the first SFScope article you get a hint that Sovereign has a habit of this.  They canceled SFAge and replaced it with a wrestling magazine, which they thought would make more money.  It seems they no longer publish the wrestling magazine either.

Shaun Farrell gives his opinion of this malarkey in his latest Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast, suggesting we’ll see RoF reemerge soon under new ownership.  SFScope seems to agree.  We can only hope, but this can’t be the smartest way to sell off an asset.  Or is it?  “Save RoF” fan groups sprang up almost immediately.  What better way to demonstrate to potential buyers the magazine’s viability?

F&SF going Bimonthly
Meanwhile, the bad economy and rising postal costs have forced Gordon van Gelder to move the venerable Fantasy & Science Fiction to a bimonthly schedule.  Happy 60th anniversary!

My instant reaction to this news was the hatching of a leaden Chicken Little feeling in my gut.  Even if the world wasn’t coming to an end, how could I go on without a new issue to pull me through each month?  But as I’ve resigned myself to this change, I’ve realized that less frequent and thicker issues may be better suited to my personal reading habits.  This will mean a reduction of just over 10% in the yearly page count, which will primarily come out of columns and other extras.  The total number of stories per year won’t be heavily impacted.  Still, it’s not like my humble little stories needed anything more tipping the scales against them and the rest of the slush.

IGMS going Bimonthly
In contrast to the move by F&SF, Edmund R. Schubert has announced that Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show is also moving to a bimonthly schedule, but IGMS is coming from the other direction–moving from quarterly to bimonthly.  Although there will be fewer stories in each issue, the total number of stories per year will increase slightly.

Whither the Short Story?
All this adds fuel to the question that never seems to go away these days:  Are we witnessing the death throes of the print market for short speculative fiction?  Is the death of RoF and the rise of Fantasy Magazine and Beneath Ceaseless Skies just the spoor of progress’s heavy boot heels?  Circulation numbers for print mags have been dwindling slowly but steadily, but even more indicative is the fact that new mags are born digital these days, never having a print component.  And many of these offer their content for free.

My luddite lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to reading online much.  So it’s worth it to me to pay for print.  But increasingly I’m feeling obsolete in the world of short speculative fiction.  And not just because so many of the stories are beginning to be just as indulgently abstruse as the tenure fodder (as opposed to “commercial fiction”) that young English professors force feed their students.

This also raises red flags for longer forms, the novellas I have a love-hate relationship with.  Most online mags won’t publish anything longer than a mid-length novelette.  So even if the short story successfully makes the digital transition, there’s less of a middle ground, widening the gap between the genre’s novel and short form cultures.  Which means the longish dark fantasy novelette I have written in my blog’s namesake world is collecting dust.  Other than F&SF there’s nowhere else to send it.

The Wormies: Best of F&SF 2008

In the spirit of last night’s Academy Awards I thought I’d hand out some Wormies for the best stories to appear in Fantasy & Science Fiction during 2008.  Click the titles to read my reviews.

SHORT STORY
I’m surprised in reviewing the year’s stories that while there were many that I enjoyed, only one stuck out as truly great.  The Wormie for Best Short Story in F&SF for 2008 goes to:

“Balancing Accounts” by James L. Cambias (February)
A blisteringly good story featuring a sympathetic sentient ship caught in a moral dilemma.

NOVELET
Less susceptible to bloat than novellas, and less likely to suffer from literary experimentation than short stories, more novelets impressed me in 2008 than any other story length.  The Wormie for best Novelet in F&SF goes to:

“The Art of Alchemy” by Ted Kosmatka (June)
Beautiful, spare prose.  Intense characters.  And a story that cuts.  Simply gobsmacking.

Runners-up:

“Mystery Hill” by Alex Irvine (January)
While it didn’t sear itself into my heart as an all-time favorite the way his novelet “Wizard’s Six” did six months earlier, “Mystery Hill” was fun, sharp, and thoroughly entertaining.

“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi (September)
Bacigalupi sticks his hand down into a clogged toilet and fishes out some nasty things.

“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (January)
A mash-up of Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein.  Need I say more?

NOVELLA
Novellas tend to be hit or miss.  I often end up resenting them for taking up half of that month’s issue.  This year there were three that I wished could go on forever.  But only one can win the Wormie, and it goes to:

“The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay (August)
The protagonist’s character is laid bare in a science fictional gulag.  It’s heavy, unpleasant, and eminently worthwhile.

Runners-up:

“Arkfall” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (September)
Leisurely, literary (in a good way), and poignant.  Character development and world building in balance.  Gilman puts me in mind of Le Guin.

“Immortal Snake” by Rachel Pollack (May)
Problematic but lush, evocative, and moody.  I love the ancient, mythical feel.

There you go folks.  I wish I had a little golden statue of a worm to send you, but you’ll have to be content with the warm fuzzies you get from knowing of one fanboy’s adoration.