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Readercon 21 was, for me, exciting and stimulating, though this year in particular it felt like I only had a few minutes to talk with everybody I wanted to talk with.  I think part of this is a result of my now living in New Hampshire rather than New Jersey, so I just don't see a lot of folks from the writing, publishing, and reading worlds much anymore.

Before I get into some thoughts on some panels and discussions, some pictures: Ellen Datlow's and Tempest Bradford's.  Tempest asked everybody to make a sad face for her, not because Readercon was a sad con (just the opposite!), but because it's fun to have people make sad faces.  The iconic picture from the weekend for me, though, is Ellen's photo of Liz Hand's back.  I covet Liz's shirt.

And now for some only vaguely coherent thoughts on some of the panels...

I actually missed my own first panel, "Interstitial Then, Genre Now", with John Clute, Michael Dirda, Peter Dube, and Dora Goss, because the battery in my car died because of absent-mindedness on my part the night before.  Luckily, I have a car battery charger, but charging took just long enough to make it so there was no physical way I could get to Burlington, MA in time for the panel.  (Andrew Liptak wrote a recap for Tor.com.)


My Saturday panel, "The Secret History of The Secret History of Science Fiction", with Kathryn Cramer, Alexander Jablokov, John Kessel, Jacob Weisman, and Gary K. Wolfe went pretty well, I thought, though as so often happens, it felt like it was just getting going when it was time to end.  The panel allowed John to talk about the motivations for the book, some of what he thought it accomplished, etc. -- a lot of what he said parallels what he and Jim Kelly told me when I interviewed them about the anthology.  Gary Wolfe offered probably the best line of the panel: "An anthology is, inevitably, a collection of the wrong stories."  (This, of course, from the critic's point of view!)

I'm not very good at inserting myself into conversations, so I did a lot of observing during the panel, piping up only to offer a sort of counter viewpoint from Gary's -- where Gary was in some ways agreeing with Paul Witcover's assertion that writers like T.C. Boyle are just using science fiction as "a trip to the playground".  I was hoping we'd be able to discuss this idea a bit more, but time didn't allow it.  Had it, I suppose I would have tried to say that to me the resentment of writers not routinely identified with the marketing category of "science fiction" or the community of fans, writers, and publishers that congregates under the SF umbrella -- the resentment of these writers for using the props, tropes, and moves of SF is unappealing to me for a few reasons.  It's a clubhouse mentality, one that lets folks inside the clubhouse determine what the secret password is and if anybody standing outside has the right pronunciation of that password.  It is, in other words, a purity test: are the intentions in your soul the right ones, the approved ones?  Had we had time, I would have tried to make some sort of connection between this attitude toward non-SF writers with an attitude I've seen within the field from people toward writers of a younger generation who haven't read, for instance, e

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Rain Taxi has posted online an interview I conducted with James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, editors of The Secret History of Science Fiction.

Most of the discussion took place in a Masonic lodge in southern New Hampshire, although at one point I was blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed location that smelled of patchouli and motor oil.  Jim Kelly ducked out briefly to launder some money vacation in the Cayman Islands, and John Kessel made me repeat long passages of Latin that made my skin itch.  But I let nothing stop my relentless pursuit of the truth...

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Dear Nebula Voters,

I know what your real purpose is with the nominees for this year's award.  Don't think you can hide your secret, conspiratorial goals from me!  I know what you really want to do is cause me immense angst by putting some of my favorite people up against each other in your various (nefarious!) categories.  You know when it comes to awards I root for the people I know and like before I even consider anything else, because of course the people I know and like are all the greatest writer in the world, but what am I supposed to do when you, for instance, put VanderMeer up against Barzak in the novel category?!

I'm safe, at least, with the short story category.  Jim Kelly is the only writer I know well there, so obviously he should win.  Novelette is worse -- Paolo Bacigalupi is the one person whose short stories have caused me to write a long essay, and he's a really nice guy (well, as long as you don't burn lots of hydrocarbons in front of him.  I tried digging an oil well at the World Fantasy Convention in 2005, and he threatened to punch me).  Rachel Swirsky I've communicated with regarding Best American Fantasy (we reprinted her story "How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth" in BAF 2, and all of the BAF contributors feel like family to me, even if I never talk to them, which is mostly what makes them feel like family...)  And then there's Mr. Bowes, who once attacked me with a stiletto-heeled shoe when I suggested that Cats is not the greatest musical of all time.  I've forgiven him, even though Starlight Express is obviously the greatest musical of all time, and in learning forgiveness, I have learned to appreciate the man himself, and so of course I want him to win as much as I want Paolo and Rachel to win.  Maybe they all can.  (Voters!  Coordinate your efforts to please me!)

Novella is actually easy, too, because the only person there I've met is John Scalzi, and he's alright, even if I remain dead to him.

But the novel category ... it's killing me.  I'm going to have to freebase my entire collection of pill-bottle cotton tonight just to calm my aching soul.  Not only are Messrs. Barzak and VanderMeer, two of my favorite people, present there, but Paolo Bacigalupi is hanging out in that category as well, and so is China Mieville with The City & The City, a book I adored.  And though I don't know Cherie Priest, I know her editor, who is also one of my favorite people, and thus is, by definition, the greatest editor in the world.

Okay, Nebula voters -- I give up!  Uncle!  Please please please start nominating more works by mean, nasty people I don't like!  Or at least people I don't know!  I'm working hard to be a recluse, so it shouldn't be all that difficult to locate more people I don't know.  It will save me agonized nights of writhing on the floor, my loyalties pulling me in all directions, my heart torn asunder.

What's that you say?  It's not all about me?  Yes, I've heard that before, many times.  Conspirators always deny their conspiracy.  I know the truth, though, and in the immortal words of Bob Dylan: "I don't believe you!"

Meanwhile, congratulations to all!

Sincerely,
Patient #45403892, New Hampshire State Home for the Criminally Bewildered

PS
Whoever has my tinfoil hat, you'd bett

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Though it is April, Asimov's Science Fiction magazine likes to stick to the future, and so the June 2009 issue is now available. This is a particularly special issue, as it includes James Patrick Kelly's 25th annual June story -- the first was the June 1984 "Saint Theresa of the Aliens".

Last summer, Jim was the guest of honor at Readercon, where he was interviewed by John Kessel, and where I had the privilege of being on a panel about his work -- and of writing a little bit about him in the program book.

In honor of Jim's June feats, here is what I wrote about him last year:


JPK AND ME: THE EARLY YEARS
by Matthew Cheney
originally published in the Readercon 19 souvenir book, 2008

I'm not alone in having a golden age, a time when science fiction was the brightest star shining in the galaxy of my life, but I may be alone in being able to tie that golden age to specific issues of a magazine and to a specific byline in those issues.

Yes, this is my golden age: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1985 to June 1990. And the hero of my golden age is James Patrick Kelly.

I was not quite ten years old in June of '85. I wouldn't even begin reading SF for a few months yet, but that doesn't matter (time travel has long been a fascination of mine). I didn't discover 1985 until the far end of 1986, when I got a copy of Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection. A year later, one of the teachers at my school told me a science fiction writer was coming to visit for six weeks, some guy named Jim Kelly. Nobody at the school had heard of him.

Rural New Hampshire in the mid-80s was not a haven of science fiction fans. I only knew a couple, and they were all associated with the local college where my mother worked. I didn't know anybody who'd published a book. Writers were gods to me -- all I wanted to do in the world was become one, and anybody who published in the places I read (primarily Asimov's and Dozois's anthologies) was more impressive to me than movie stars or presidents.

The school librarian, who had also been my third grade teacher and had fostered my love of writing, showed me some photocopied stories that had been sent along by the writer who would be coming to our school. They were copies of stories from Asimov's. "James Patrick Kelly!" I screamed.

"You've heard of him?"

"He's great! He's a real writer!"

(I had been made cynical by previous artists-in-the-schools visitors, because the writers always tended to be people who had published a couple of pieces of filler in mimeographed gardening newsletters.)

The moments of the first visit are deeply etched into my memory. My class was one of the last ones to arrive in the library, where Mr. Kelly was to give a presentation to a large group of us. I sat in the back, angling for a view. I think I expected him to glow.

He didn't glow. He looked like a relatively normal human being. (This was not disappointing so much as it was beguiling. Normal human beings publish in Asimov's? How is that possible?!) He talked about science fiction, about books, about writing. All I remember thinking is: When is he going to tell us the secrets? Writers, I thought, were people who had figured out secret ways to make perfect stories, and that's why they were published and the rest of us weren't.

The real fun began later, though, when I was part of a small group of students chosen to participate in a weekly series of workshops led by Mr. Kelly. In the first, we did some writing about school in the future, and then he asked if we had any questions about writing, science fiction, or anything, really. I was determined to ask some sort of question, but was so excited, so overwhelmed that coming up with one question threatened to fry my already addled mind. After somebody asked a question I considered idiotic, though, I couldn't resist -- I couldn't let this Great Man go home thinking we were all ignoramuses. I thrust my hand into the air. "This might be," I said, "a question nobody else really understands, because it is necessary to read Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in order to truly understand it, but if you will permit me, I will ask it anyway." If anyone in the room had previously doubted that I was the biggest nerd in the school, those doubts immediately disappeared.

"Go ahead," Mr. Kelly said, doing his best, I'm sure, to repress a giggle.

"Why," I said, "do you keep publishing stories in the June issue of the magazine?"

He explained that it had begun by chance, but then became a pattern, and now he was stuck with it.

Afterward, I brought him my treasured copy of Dozois's Third and asked if he would be willing to sign it. I told him it contained my favorite story of his, "Solstice". He smiled and wrote with a blue felt-tipped pen: To Matt -- My friend in Plymouth.

The workshops were the highlight of my life that year, and I wrote thousands of words of stories for them. On the last day, Mr. Kelly gave me his home address and told me to send him things when I wrote them. I don't think he quite knew what he was offering. Over the years, he received hundreds of pages of letters and stories printed by a dot-matrix printer on track-feed paper, all of it amounting to what is, I expect, a better blackmail file than the FBI could ever assemble for me. I treasured his letters to me more than any other object. He made suggestions about my stories, told me about books to read, and let me know what he was working on. He gave me various details about a story that eventually he told me he'd decided to call "Mr. Boy".

"Solstice" appeared in the June 1985 issue of Asimov's. "Mr. Boy" was the cover story of the June 1990 issue. They remain stories I return to with pure and utter joy.

My literary tastes broadened in high school, and my experience of life and the world became much different from what it had been when I first met Jim Kelly (yes, eventually I was able to bring myself to call him "Jim", as he told me to, but it was tough). We continued corresponding long after "Mr. Boy" was published, and I continued reading SF, though with occasional breaks for other things. Jim gave me my best high school graduation present, in fact: a copy of The Norton Book of Science Fiction signed by all the contributors who had been at the Sycamore Hill conference that year (Bruce Sterling included his email address, but I'd never seen one before and thought it was some sort of strange code for how to hack into a government mainframe).

Jim is one of the most generous and thoughtful people I've ever been lucky enough to have as a friend, and the story I have told here is, I know, not unique. He has been a mentor to entire generations of science fiction writers and fans. This was particularly valuable in the days before the Internet, when connectivity was difficult for those of us who lived away from major metropolitan centers. I was a kid besotted with Asimov's and science fiction in general, and having someone like Jim as a friend during those years deeply affected the adult I grew to be, and nothing I could say or do for him would be an adequate thank you.

The publication of "Mr. Boy", though, brought my golden age to its end. I'd known about that story from the time of its inception, and Jim had told me of his various struggles with it, his excitement when he sold it, his further excitement when he learned it would be the cover story. Getting to peek behind the curtains of the workshop like that, thrilling as it was, destroyed a certain innocence. I have no regrets about that -- golden ages should be shed, because they open us to other sorts of wonder, a plethora of more complex pleasures, and once we have moved beyond them, we can look back on our golden age as something perfect, something complete and pure, in a way we can look at nothing else in the world.

It's a risk to go back to things you loved when young, but I recently reread a lot of Jim's fiction from the first part of his career, before he started winning Hugos and Nebulas, before he became the King of Podcasting, before he edited marvelous anthologies with his partner-in-crime John Kessel.

His early fiction is far more varied in quality than his more recent work -- he has become a reliable master craftsman of the short story -- but it possesses a different energy, and when the stories are good they are good in different ways from what the more mature, and perhaps wiser, JPK writes now. (Even his first-published story, "Dea Ex Machina" [Galaxy, April 1975], at least has an intriguing first sentence: "An educated man among philistines is like a nymphomaniac among impotents; both are victims of inadequacy.") Stories such as "Still Time", "Saint Theresa of the Aliens", "Crow", "Solstice", "Rat", "The Prisoner of Chillon", "Glass Cloud", "Heroics", and "Home Front" mix solid and emotionally affecting character development with cultural and technological speculation that seldom feels particularly dated even twenty years after the stories' first publications. The stories benefit from a classical sense of balance and form that brings to mind Maupassant, O. Henry, and Shirley Jackson.

Rereading them, I realized that there are stories I wish were better known, stories I wish had gained the attention and respect that Jim's more recent work has. "Home Front" is a particular favorite of mine, a perfect example of an entire world being fit into a short story -- in this case, a world of war as televised entertainment. What is remarkable about the story is its mix of the global and the personal, a scope plenty of writers aim for but few are able to achieve in as satisfactory a manner. It is a story suffused with suppressed terror, and it manages an emotionally complex ending where the surface is one of sentimental patriotism and triumph, and yet an astute reader will pick up on the nightmare at the story's heart, the nightmare of children being pushed to revel in violence and war. The future in "Home Front" is bleak and desperate, but the tone and structure of the story urges us toward empathy, not scorn. We can understand what the kids feel, and we can be appalled by the forces that have legitimized those feelings.

I could go on and on about these stories -- I could rattle off vast theories about why "Solstice", "The Prisoner of Chillon", and "Mr. Boy" are more impressive as separate entities than as parts of the novel Wildlife (although I could also defend that novel against anyone who dared defame it!); I could tell you that "Heroics" and a letter from an Asimov's reader complaining that it didn't belong in a science fiction magazine are the twin items that launched me on a career of defending fiction against labels and definitions; I could exhort you to seek out the very different metafictional stories "The F&SF Diet" and "Daemon"; I could speculate about why "Death Therapy" is the only one of Jim's first seven or eight stories to possess the craftsmanship and imagination that would soon appear in every story; I could tell you how fond I am of the stories that make up the book he wrote with John Kessel, Freedom Beach; I could go on and on about the covers of Planet of Whispers (gasp! ack!) and Look Into the Sun (not bad!). But I won't. Because I've already said what I want to say, and what matters most, and I said it in the seventh grade, when even as the biggest nerd in my school, I knew one of the truths of the world:

James Patrick Kelly is great. He's a real writer.

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A grand time was had by all at Readercon this year, and it was a great thrill for me to get to see one of my oldest friends in the writing world, James Patrick Kelly, as guest of honor -- honored so well and appropriately.

The two panels I was on seemed to go well, though I arrived at the con only half an hour before I was on the "Triumphing Over Competence" panel and hadn't quite adjusted yet, so my contributions were few. Adam Golaski did a fine job of moderating, but it was a tough topic to focus in on in a way that would lead to real insights. Saturday's "The Career of James Patrick Kelly" panel felt much more successful to me, and one of its strengths was the diversity in the backgrounds of the panelists -- we had all discovered Jim's writings (and Jim himself) at different times and in different ways. Of course, afterward I thought of many things I should have said instead of what I did, in fact say, but I probably talked too much anyway, so it's good I didn't think of them. Mostly, they would have been elaborations on my (nascent) ideas about Jim as a regional writer, particularly with relationship to Burn, a story that nicely meshes two of the primary types of stories Jim writes: tales rooted in a sense of place (with that place often redolent of northern New England) and tales that are set way out in the universe. In some ways, the earlier novel Look Into the Sun brought the universe to New Hampshire, while Burn brings New Hampshire out into the universe.

I didn't attend too many panels, because after seeing a few, I began to get immensely frustrated with people who didn't know when to shut up. Panels are almost always unbalanced, since it's difficult for everybody to speak for equal amounts of time, but it wasn't unbalance that bothered me -- it was hijacking. In one case, it involved an insufferable moderator who thought the entire point of being moderator was to pose questions to himself.

The conversation between Jonathan Lethem and Gordon van Gelder, though, was well worth attending. The goal of the discussion was to explore the similarities and differences between the worlds of (for lack of better terms) genre fiction and literary fiction by using the two men's careers and experiences as lenses, since, as van Gelder pointed out, they began at similar spots and ended up at very different places, with Gordon starting out as a book editor and then becoming editor of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lethem beginning with stories in Aboriginal SF and Asimov's and F&SF, then becoming, well, Jonathan Lethem. I didn't have a notebook with me, so didn't take notes (Scott Edelman did take a few), but what stuck with me were such moments as Gordon wondering if there are ways to talk about the differences between types of writing without feeling the need to valorize one type over the other and Lethem saying that what has changed in his writing as it has developed is not his interest in questioning and subverting core genre values, which has been there from the beginning, but rather his ability to let his fiction absorb a genre exoskeleton rather than wear it. The genre-as-exoskeleton image was one he played with for a bit, saying that his earlier work wore the exoskeleton and let the body underneath it be something else, while now he feels like he doesn't need to wear it anymore, that there is a more organic or internalized sense of the fantastic (or mysterious) in his work. He said people sometimes see him as moving away from genre fiction and Michael Chabon as moving toward it, while he doesn't feel that way at all -- he still feels like the influences on his work are the same, and the genre writers who interest him remain the ones who complexify and question the traditions they inherit -- he could not, he said, write a sword-and-sorcery novel, as Chabon recently did, and he noted that Chabon has long been a much bigger fanboy than he, Lethem, ever was -- Chabon wrote (unpublished) science fiction novels before he wrote Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Lethem noted. What I liked about these distinctions was that they countered the simple narrative of moving toward or away from the SF field, and instead suggested that a writer's relationship to the texts and social environment of SF can be a complex one, and the results in the writer's work (and life) can be unpredictable.

One of the ideas that could have used a bit more time for exploration and explanation was the idea of the difference between the worlds of genre fiction and literary fiction being substantially one of class, with class anxiety explaining some of the tendency toward belittling different types of writing that Gordon brought up. Lethem also pointed out that people deeply committed to one type or writing rather than another often have tremendous misconceptions about the world of the other type of writing, and this idea, too, deserves a lot more exploration. I sometimes wish we could have the writing equivalent of a take-your-child-to-work day -- we could initiate Take a Litfic Writer to a Science Fiction Convention Day and Take a Science Fiction Writer to Bread Loaf Day (heck, Asimov went to Bread Loaf a couple times).

I refrained from buying too many books in the bookroom, though I did pick up JPK's new collection, The Wreck of the Godspeed and David Schwartz's novella The Sun Inside.

Ultimately, and as always, the best thing about the con was getting to see folks I seldom see, or, in some cases, have only met via email before -- it was great finally to get to meet Christopher Rowe (whose reading from a novel-in-progress is among the best readings I've ever been to), John Kessel, and Brian Slattery, and to at least wave to all sorts of people who I wish lived within easy walking distance of my house. But if they did, I would not need to go to Readercon, and the joy of renewed acquaintances would be lost.

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Barring a catastrophe, I'm going to be at Readercon this summer, partly because I haven't been to a science fiction convention in a while, and especially because James Patrick Kelly and Jonathan Lethem are the guests of honor. (I'm going to book a hotel room soon ... if anybody's looking for a roommate, let me know.)

An essay I wrote about Jim Kelly will be appearing in the souvenir book, since Jim and I go way, way back. I'm able to write with authority about his years as a miner in New Hampshire's granite quarries, his conversion to a strange form of neo-paganism predicated on the worship of lawn ornaments, his ill-fated campaign for the governorship (he lost to his more liberal opponent, Mel Thomson), and his years as a writer for the Union Leader's editorial page. I also share my memories of acting in one of Jim's least successful plays, On Godot Pond, which was a somewhat uneven mix of Beckett and down-home Yankee humor.

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OK! First things first!

The October Issue of The Edge of the Forest is up. There are a TON of YA reviews and some great articles.

I personally review The Hollywood Sisters: Caught on Tape by Mary Wilcox and Keeping Corner by Kashmira Sheth.

Also, nominations are still open for the Cybils. I always like to wait until the end, because I can't figure out what to nominate (really? only one?!) so I wait and hope that most of my list is nominated by the time I get around to it. BUT! Time is running out. I've already nominated in some categories. You should too!

But, now onto some very old books for book reviews. Both of these titles are ones I read when I was a child and remembered fondly, so picked them up. Both of them were books that haunted me, as I remembered only the scantest of details and nothing as useful as, say, a title. But I tracked them both down...

The song of the day is Charlotte Sometimes by The Cure, because it's about the first book I'm talking about,

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

On that bleak track
(See the sun is gone again)
The tears were pouring down her face
She was crying and crying for a girl
Who died so many years before...

It's always dangerous to reread a childhood favorite. I've been burned in the past, but... I'm so glad I reread this one.

Charlotte goes to boarding school in mid-century England. The second day there, she wakes up to find she's gone back in time 50 years and changed places with a girl called Clare. Charlotte and Clare spend one day in their own time, one day in each other's, and then one day back in their own time and on and on until...

Charlotte is moved off campus, stuck in Clare's time. Trapped at the end of WWI, with a growing flu epidemic, she grows conflicted. Charlotte wonders where she ends and where Clare begins, and as memories of her real life fade, she wonders if she ever will go back, or even if she wants to.

This book was even better than I remembered it. Farmer really delves into some deep issues and she treats them well, but, at the same time, so light-handed that they're just left as a little niggling thought in the back of your head.

Now, the book I've pictured and linked to is a re-release, and I've heard they CHANGED THE ENDING. The book I just reread and reviewed is the original. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of the new version. I'll let you know what I find out.

I am less glad I reread Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett.

I remembered this book as a mischievous little witch who invites her friends over to make cool potions.

Sigh. I know this is the book I was thinking of, I remember the cover exactly and when I re-read it, I was like, oh yeah, ok. Still, I think maybe I'll just write the story I remember as it's so much cooler.

Instead, we have a little girl who's mother is a witch and very mean. The little girl sneaks out to go to school and finally makes some friends. All she wants to do is a see a fairy, and, while her evil mother is off being evil, she and her friends sneak into the potion cupboard to try and make a fairy potion or something.

This book was originally written in the early 50s and smacks of the same overly cloying sentimentality of Dick and Jane readers. Puke.

That said, I don't know how many times I read this book in elementary school. I remember going to the library, picking all my books, and, while waiting for the rest of the family to finish up, pulling this book off the shelf and just randomly opening it up and re-reading until everyone else was ready. So... kids might still like it, but I'm not so sure about adults... Read the rest of this post

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