"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."
---Kirkus
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.
Without getting into too much detail, and without debating the merits of Colson Whitehead’s new novel (which I haven’t read), I really thought this review by Glen Duncan of Whitehead’s new novel Zone One to be truly appalling. We can see the rhetorical gambit taken right in the first sentence, which he carries through through [...]
Sun, October 30 2011 » Fiction » 1 Comment
I’m making available one of my favorite previously unpublished stories, “Moonlight Is Bulletproof” available on e-book formats (and PDF form) for 99 cents at the excellent indie ebook store Weightless Books. Categorize this under “science fiction surreal mystery”. Download it here!
Wed, July 6 2011 » Fiction » No Comments
David Moles has the definitive word on swalegate as well as a passionate plea for sf’nal content in 2010 not to self-immolate in a cauldron of nostalgia and false-positive victimization and pseudo-religiosity. (I would add R.A. Lafferty to the list of spiritually minded sf writers of honesty, integrity and non-sloppiness.) All I could come up [...]
Wed, June 8 2011 » ?!?!?, Fiction » No Comments
Soooo much to cover of late–we were in the Czech Republic and Austria for 2 exhausting but glorious weeks and immediately afterwards I came down with the flu (and it looks like Kristin is going through the same opening salvos of the disease that I was a few days ago…grrr…). I also thought I should [...]
Sat, April 23 2011 » Fiction, Life Studies » No Comments
I very well might be biased, since Kristin is my wife, but A Brood of Foxes–a standalone novella that has just come out from Aqueduct Press–is a stunning work of fiction. But I will do my best to explain why I enjoy it so much, and why I believe it’s pushing the boundaries of fantasy [...]
Sun, March 6 2011 » Fiction » No Comments
In the spirit of the season–well, kind of–I’ve put up on my site the closest thing that I’ve ever written to a Christmas story. Well, sort of. “Taiga, Taiga, Burning Bright” originally appeared in the great anthology Bandersnatch. Enjoy.
Tue, December 7 2010 » Fiction » No Comments
I’ll be at Readercon this weekend–if you are as well, say hello. Here is the one panel I’ll be on…really looking forward to this one, noon on Friday. “In Search of Lost Time: History and Memory in Historical and Speculative Fiction. Alan DeNiro, David Anthony Durham (L), Lila Garrott, Andrea Hairston, Howard Waldrop. “[I]n places [...]
Tue, July 6 2010 » Fiction » No Comments
My computer has been in the shop for, like, about a month because of a virus. I haven’t really had a backup computer suitable for blogging. UNTIL NOW. OK, so it’s time to blog about the sorcery of social media. This essay by Jim Grote adroitly puts together a case for Simone Weil‘s theory of [...]
Mon, June 21 2010 » Fiction, Polis, Religion/Logos » No Comments
While gardening yesterday, I came across a vegetational oddity that was both grotesque and poignant. I was weeding the lower tier of our terraced garden, where our radiant tulips are in full apotheosis. However, near one of them, a suet feeder (i.e., a small rectangular cage) somehow had fallen into the garden thickets. Lost in [...]
Sun, April 18 2010 » Fiction, Life Studies, Poetry » 3 Comments
It’s important to remember that, in the modernist mode of being a writer, publishing is publishing and writing is writing. The “making public” of writing can happen at a later, compositional (and typographical) phase–type needs to be set in place. In this instance, writing is a direct conduit from thought, and publishing is one step [...]
Fri, April 2 2010 » Fiction » No Comments
OK, hopefully this will help. I found this snippet on a book panel re: SXSW that I thought was illuminating in regards to some of the attendant issues of authorship and culture that I’ve danced around in previous posts: # An author is no longer an individual working in a room alone, but the leader [...]
Mon, March 22 2010 » Fiction, Life Studies » 3 Comments
Charlie Jane Anders has a very thoughtful essay at io9 entitled “Is ‘Science Fiction Humanism’ A Contradiction In Terms?”: But is science fiction really humanist? Much of science fiction turns out to be about exploring our vast cosmos, and expanding our being. From this quest, one of two outcomes often arises: 1) We meet something [...]
Fri, March 12 2010 » Fiction, Polis » 2 Comments
None of this has changed. Actually I think it’s getting worse. Or I’m getting older, take your pick. RIP, DFW. N.B.: I actually do think in many recent instances, social media (though it’s a wonderful thing, I use it all the time) has made this crank-turning worse. I don’t care much about the good writers [...]
Fri, February 26 2010 » Fiction » 2 Comments
So, just wanted to ask a few questions: 1. In nominating works for awards, is it ethical to do so with friends? In what instances? 2. Is it ethical to do so consciously, deliberately, and in a block? 3. Is it ethical to do so with members of your writing group? 4. Where is the [...]
Mon, February 15 2010 » ?!?!?, Fiction » 1 Comment
It’s been a really busy month, so I thought I’d do some small-batch catch-up: Total Oblivion got a great review from the LA Times. I also partook in the Big Idea out in John Scalzi’s blogosphere, where I delved into some of the ideas of oblivion that informed the book. Very fun. The novel also [...]
Tue, February 2 2010 » Fiction, Total Oblivion » No Comments
Of late I’ve been exploring and trying to fetter out online what in 80s parlance would be called a gamebook: a novel with choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) plot branching but also with more of an RPG element as well–usually with a character with attributes and chanced to impact the story through combat and chance. Some of the [...]
Sun, December 20 2009 » Fiction, Games » 1 Comment
Oh…oh hi! Anyway, I’m in San Jose for World Fantasy and am guest blogging at BSCreview. So feel free to swing by there!
Fri, October 30 2009 » Fiction » No Comments
I think my goal for “awards season” in the genre is to make sure “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” by Leonard Richardson wins the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon, the Malkovich… OK, I made that last award up. But it really should win it all the same. I’ve been trying to write a woeful [...]
Sun, October 25 2009 » Fiction » 2 Comments
…or as good as any, to start any discussion about the political efficacy and/or value of any artistic project (something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and which I hope to blog about more in the near future): 1. We must think steadily, honestly, and realistically about what it is that our works [...]
Wed, October 21 2009 » Fiction » 1 Comment
Bruce Sterling’s essay on design, the potential of design, and the design of fiction, is something that anyone interested in those issues should read–moving away from the tired arguments of why science fiction is dying, why it’s not dying…anyway, I tend to get those two things confused. Of course the pulp era has left its [...]
Sat, September 26 2009 » Computers/Tech, Fiction » 3 Comments
