Eugene Fischer

Month: April 2009

“Husbandry” Genre Poll Results

My poll asking readers to tell me what genre they think my story “Husbandry” is has been up for a week now, and as of this writing the results are: 4 votes for “Fantasy,” 5 votes for “Science Fiction,” and 6 votes for “Something Else.”  So it’s pretty close.  The something-elses have, I think, some granularity, with Sarah, Damien, and Kat arguing that it’s interstitial fiction, and Elizabeth Twist opining that it’s subtle horror–an opinion shared by Karen Meisner (who was my editor on the story) in this comments thread.  (Thanks for the kind words, Shweta!)  EDIT: Oops! I mischaracterized Karen’s opinion–see the comments on this post.

I didn’t vote in the poll.  If I had voted when I set up the poll, I probably would have voted for fantasy, though I would have been thinking that it was fantasy written with a distinctly science fiction sensibility.  I have trouble thinking of it as really being science fiction because, well, zombies.  Everything around that core I tried to treat naturalistically, even rigorously, but there is no mechanism for how death works in the story, and without that I can’t really consider it science fiction.  All of the stories I’ve read with zombies have been ones I would characterize as fantasy, but I could be persuaded that this is because my familiarity of horror as a literary genre is almost nonexistant.  It occurs to me that most zombie movies are considered horror; perhaps that is the natural home of the trope.  I don’t really know where the edges of fantasy and horror meet, or how widely they overlap.  And is what I’m calling an overlap what the Interstitial Arts Foundation would call an interstice?  I’m not sure I understand what interstitial art is.  It seems more natural to me to think of these categories as overlapping Venn diagrams, of genres as things that bleed into each other rather than as things with gaps between them into which some stories slip.  But then I don’t have the task of marketing books to bookstores.  The interstitial metaphor begins to make more sense if there is a shelf of fantasy and a shelf of horror, and they don’t touch each other.  Suddenly, in the bookstore of my mind, my story is lying on the floor somewhere between them.  So, I’m still not sure I know what genre “Husbandry” is, but I’m starting to be persuaded that “something else” is a worthy winner.  Let’s hear it for the wisdom of crowds.  (I’m going to leave the poll open for a while longer, just to see what happens.)

Theodore Sturgeon!

My parents met and socialized with Theodore Sturgeon at the University of Kansas before they were married–they claim to have the only copy of Venus on the Half-Shell (written by Phil José Farmer pseudonymously) signed by the real Kilgore Trout.  EDIT: My father wrote to correct me: they got Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, signed by Sturgeon as Trout.  I grew up on Sturgeon stories.  Memory fades, but I think my first Sturgeon was “Microcosmic God,” which was either actually read to me as a bedtime story, or was put in my hands by my parents as something to read myself to sleep with.  In college I wrote a comparative literature paper on the treatment of the mentally disabled by Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick.

This week’s story in Strange Horizons is a Theodore Sturgeon reprint.  And I can tell you, because I just got off the phone with them, that my parents are totally geeking out about their son’s name appearing next to Theodore Sturgeon’s on a table of contents.  My mother insists she is going to print out the page and frame it.  I’m pretty happy with this turn of events also.  I told my dad, “This is the nicest thing that doesn’t really mean anything at all that’s happened to me in a while.”  So thanks for the unexpected gift, SH!  As a Sturgeon fan, this is a clipping for my archives:

sturgeonfischerjpg

Facebook Has A Plan For Me

Facebook, which always has my best interest at heart, communicates with me through the ads it chooses to place on my profile page.  I have just decoded its latest instructions:

facebookads

I am to set up a social networking website that lets me achieve wealth by acquiring free samples of Huggies and selling them to the vast market of nontraditional urination enthusiasts.  EugeneFischer.com will soon be relaunching with an exciting new design!  Suck it, recession; Facebook’s got my back!

Waiting To Be Fixed

I’m still getting over my respiratory infection, trying to take it easy and hasten being able to start on my Humira.  I’m on Levaquin now, which will hopefully help.  But content may be light here for a little while, as my energy levels are low and my activities not particularly varied.  For now, here’s a picture of sign I drive by fairly often that amuses me, in kind of a dark, symbol of the economic times sort of way:

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So many things are in the past tense now.

Sarah Miller in Everyday Weirdness

My Clarionmate Sarah Miller has had a lovely, elegant flash piece published at Everyday Weirdness.  Take a few moments and make your day a little stranger by experiencing “The Music at Bash Bish Falls.“

Fever Dreams

I spent much of yesterday insane.  I mean this quite literally.

The highest that I actually measured my temperature was 102.6, but I suspect that there was some selection bias there, in that to measure my temperature I had to be competent to operate a thermometer.  An easier to fact-check set of statistics is items I managed to saturate with sweat: six shirts, five towels (including one beach towel), and all my pillowcases were strewn about in still-damp bundles when it came time to fill the washing machine today.  My fever finally broke sometime around 2:00 am, after which it dawned on me just how strange my cognition had been for most of the previous 24 hours.

I didn’t have an experiential referent for “fever dream” before, but yesterday I spent well over an hour in intense mental negotiation with a bottle of tylenol.  The balance of the situation had to be carefully, maintained, you see.  All of the relevant energies–both political and ethereal–taken into account, else disaster.   It was crucial that the bottle of tylenol not be allowed, under any circumstances, to notice the tension in my jaw, or all would be irretrievably lost.  This interaction between myself and the bottle was, in my mind, as furious as it was protracted.  And yet if you were to have walked into my bedroom and watched it take place, what you would have seen was me lying completely motionless for a very long time with my bloodshot eyes locked on a small white bottle sitting ten inches from my face, hair plastered to a head full to bursting with primo crazy.

Curiously, there was no visual component to this experience.  I was not hallucinating, merely beset by flagrantly nonrational concerns and obsessions.  Fever dreams.  Anyone else have experience with this phenomenon?

“Husbandry” Goes Live at Strange Horizons

My short story “Husbandry” has just gone up at Strange Horizons!  I encourage you to read it, and hope you enjoy it.

I have never been able to characterize this story to my satisfaction in terms of genre.  I can’t decide if I think it is fantasy or science fiction.  To that end, a poll:

What genre is "Husbandry?"

View Results

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Green Porno 2

Those of you who enjoyed Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno videos which I linked to a while back might be interested in knowing that Green Porno 2 is now being shown.  The focus of this second season is the sexual behavior of sea creatures.

The “I Love You” meme

The thing to do today on the internet seems to be to post about love.  Well, specifically, to post the sentence “I love you” to your social networking sites.  Now, naturally, I love no one.  (Well, that’s a lie.  I mean, it goes without saying that I love you.  But since I love only you, that seems insensitive to speak of too loudly.)  Perhaps that is why, when I think of the most recent rumination on love to deeply effect me, my mind falls on this, from The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle.

When I was a young man, and very well thought of,
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.

But I said to myself, "Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save.
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave."

The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.

But I said to myself, "Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late, but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave."

At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, "You're not at all what they take you to be."
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped into the sea.

And I say to myself, when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
"Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved."

This concept, “love may be strong, but a habit is stronger,” makes me wonder what really does go without saying.  What can dissolve in a caustic silence, which one might mistake for stasis?  Perhaps it is not empty sentimentality about sentimentality, but a recognition of the need for communicative renewal that makes internet I Love You day attractive.

Scene From an IHOP

INT. IHOP — NIGHT

EUGENE is sitting in a booth.  He has a sore throat, and so is trying not to speak.  There is a laptop computer open on the table in front of him, into which are plugged the headphones he is wearing. In the booth adjacent to Eugene’s, a MAN and a WOMAN are having animated conversation.  A WAITER enters, carrying a glass of water with no ice.  The Waiter places the glass of water in front of the Woman.

WAITER

So you’re whining to Bob for your water now?

WOMAN

What?

WAITER

Bob tells me I need to bring out a water with no ice.  When did you get so picky?

WOMAN

(Points at glass.)  That’s not mine.

WAITER

You didn’t order this?

MAN

Dude, this girl is all about ice.

WOMAN

Yeah, I’ll take a water with ice, if you want to do any actual work tonight.  But that’s not mine.

WAITER

Huh.

EUGENE

(Begins to wave at the Waiter.)

WAITER

I wonder what Bob was thinking.

MAN

(Sees Eugene waving and points at him) I think it’s that guy’s.

WAITER

(Not looking at where the Man points) No, you’re my only table.

MAN

He’s waving at you.

WAITER

(Finally looks.) Oh!

The Waiter approaches Eugene with the glass of water, which he places on Eugene’s table.

WAITER

Sorry about that.

EUGENE

(Nods and smiles.)

WAITER

I just assumed it was hers, because water with no ice is something girls order.

(Beat.)

Um, not to call you a girl.  It’s not an insult.

(Beat.)

Well, obviously, it is an insult!

(Long beat.)

No, I didn’t mean that.  I mean, it’s true.  But I can’t help that it’s only girls order water with no ice.

(Beat.)

Well, sorry anyway.  You aren’t actually my table.  They are.

Exit Waiter.  The Man and the Woman begin to talk again, but Eugene raises the volume on his laptop so that he can no longer hear.

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