Eugene Fischer

Author: Eugene Fischer

The assigned classroom was filled with murderously aggressive boys and rigid girls with animal eyes who threw spitballs, punched each other, snarled, whispered, and stared one another down. And shadowing all these gestures and movements were declarations of dominance, of territory, the swift, blind play of power and weakness. Justine saw right away that she'd be at home. –Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Reviews for “The New Mother” Roll In

Reviews for my novella are starting to appear, so who’s ready for some aggregation?

I think the very first person whom I didn’t already know to talk about the story online was Joseph Tomaras, who quoted several lines on twitter and ended by saying:

Other Twitter commenters included Bill Tyrell:

and this from user @shigeruhiko, who responded to me directly:

An overwhelmingly positive reception was Amal El-Mohtar’s review for her column Rich and Strange, where she writes

I’m astounded by this story, by its elegant, thoughtful thoroughness: every character Tess encounters is fully formed, complex, no one of them limited to their narrative function. In a way reading this story is a master class in observing the manipulation of rhetoric: who, in this story, considers women with GDS to be human and who does not beautifully inflects their arguments to varying degrees—and seeing that rhetoric clash with arguments about fetus-personhood is completely fascinating.

But perhaps even more complimentary is the link from her personal site, where she says “I literally cannot think of a single way to improve this story.”

Jeanne Griggs, whom I met when we were seat neighbors at the ICFA banquet, later wrote about it at her site, saying “I never got the chance to embarrass myself in person with Eugene Fischer, although if I’d read his novella, The New Mother, I totally would have.”

Bob Blough, about whom I know nothing, had very nice things to say in his review at Tangent Online:

This is a particularly effective story with a SFnal idea embedded right in its beating heart. Each character is excellently rendered – some in but a few strokes – but all seem real and alive. I was – and still am – impressed.

Finally, I got a brief write up at sfrevu.com by Sam Tomaino–another stranger to me–which concludes that my novella is an “Interesting idea with possible implications well-handled.”

Thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read and talk about “The New Mother.” I really appreciate it.

Leaving the Party Early

One of the more freeing realizations I’ve come to in adulthood is that I’m allowed to go home when I’m not having fun anymore. I lean introverted, and while I enjoy being around people there comes a point where enjoyment gives way to effort. That’s the very point, now, where I start to make my goodbyes. After years of sticking around for fear of missing out, I’ve become a habitual party leaver. Rather than persist in the hope that external forces will turn my mood around, I take ownership of my experience and call it quits as soon as I run out of social energy. My life has been much improved by this practice.

This past week I decided it was time to leave the hair party.

When I was young my hair was my favorite physical feature. It was dense and soft and I had a lot of it. In those early High School years of awkward longing and crippling anxiety, conspiring to have peers touch and marvel over my excellent hair was an important step towards having actual human contact in my life. But in my early twenties my hairline began a gradual retreat up my scalp, and by my mid twenties the crown of my head began to thin, noticeable if you were looking for it. I dealt with this by getting shorter and more sculpted haircuts and by not thinking about it too much, which carried me a good few years. But as my hairline receded from the corners of my forehead, the erosion fronts curled in to meet each other, leaving a poodle-puff island of bang hair it was increasingly impossible to make look non-ridiculous. Then, a stark Facebook vision: a picture from the most recent International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in which I appear in the background, on the far side of a decorative lamp, facing away from the camera. Lit from above my bald spot glowed, alien as part of someone else’s body. I looked at that photograph and thought, “I’m not having fun anymore.”

I went in to my local Bird’s Babershop, sat in Susi’s chair, and told her she had free reign to experiment. She tried a few options, taking my hair off in layers, before finally deciding, “I think you’ll look best if we just go for a buzz cut.” Thus:

ShavedHead

Response from everyone else has been fairly positive so far. Everyone, that is, save for my parents. My mother hates it, though loves me enough that she is trying gamely to pretend she doesn’t. And for my part, I’m still shocking myself whenever I see a reflection and trying to reconcile myself to a differently shaped head on top of my shadow, but am overall excited. A whole new look means whole new vectors for self expression and presentation. I get to experiment with different beard lengths to go with my cropped top. I’m learning my wardrobe anew–what works now, what doesn’t. And, since head sunburn is now a thing I have to concern myself with, my newest wardrobe addition is my first grownup hat.

FlatCap

I think this new party’s going to work out okay.

Poster from Joe Duncan

To support our upcoming reading at Malvern Books, Janalyn’s friend Joe Duncan has made us this eye-catching poster. For more of Joe’s illustration work, check out his website. And if you’re in the Austin area, check out the reading this coming Saturday. It is guaranteed to put happy faces on all of your cells.

Janposter

Reading 2015: March

ReadingMarch2015

Sickness and travel and long books; March followed in the footsteps of February, pace-wise. I managed to hit my eighth book on the last day of the month, but only by sprinting through some graphic novels. And, since two of those GNs were authored by two men, I need to triple up on books by women to start April to get the gender parity back on track.

  1. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – Naturally, having resolved to increase my reading rate from February, the obvious thing to do was start March by rereading an 800 page novel. But oh, what a novel it is. I started thinking about it after having written in my previous reviews how resistant I am to fairies. It occurred to me that there was one (huge) book in which I found them delightful. I first read this back in 2007, and loved it, but hadn’t returned to it since. If anything I liked it even more this time. As it was an international bestseller and TIME Magazine Book of the Year and will soon be a BBC television series, there’s little new I can say about it. But it’s one of my favorite books, and I think maybe the most intellectually playful fantasy novel I know.
  2. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine – Genevieve’s third novel, Persona, was released this month, and while I’d owned her second novel since the day it came out, I hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet. I wanted to fix that before Persona hit stores. Now that I’ve read The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, I regret waiting so long. It’s a goddamned glorious book. I enjoyed Genevieve’s first novel, but this second one dazzles. I felt run through, and in the middle of the book had frequently to pause within chapters because the writing was too heartbreaking for me to continue. It’s a realist retelling of the folktale of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” set in Prohibition-era New York City. But it’s more than that too. It’s a story of love between sisters, networks of support between women. It’s about resourcefulness and compromise and the weight of expectation. I suspect I’ll be thinking about this book for years.
  3. We Are Become Pals by Joey Comeau and Jess Fink – I have long been a fan of Joey Comeau’s writing, and my favorite thing about it is the way he creates uniquely tattered interpersonal relationships, full of sweetness and violence and earnest impulsivity. An illustrated book about paldom from him was a treat. Jess Fink I was previously familiar with from Chester 5000 XYV (NSFW), and her illustrations expand the story and create an extra dimension for emotional engagement alongside the frequently understated text. This is the story of two girls who meet, get arrested, lie, succeed, make secret codes, grow up, separate, and maybe live forever. Recommended to anyone who likes friendship.
  4. Book of Da by Mike McCubbins and Matt Bryan – I picked this up at Staple!, the Austin indie comics convention. It’s a beautifully constructed book, and Bryan’s artwork is dark and evocative. I confess, though, that I think I like it more as an object than I do as a narative. The story is frequently opaque, and while each panel is excellent, the sequential composition is sometimes confusing.
  5. What Makes The Book So Great by Jo Walton – I quipped on twitter that Jo Walton writing about her comfort reading is my comfort reading, and it’s close to true. I’d read many of these essays before when they were originally published on Tor.com, but tearing through them all at once was a distinct pleasure. She has a very complete aesthetic of how she appreciates books, and it’s one I find fully seductive. When she articulates her appreciation for a book I also love, I nod along, thinking, “Yes! That’s it exactly!” When I come to an essay for a book I’ve bounced off of, I feel moved to give it another chance. And I finished this volume having dogeared ten pages to mark books I hadn’t heard of, but now must read as soon as possible.
  6. Babel-17 by Samuel Delany – Continuing my project of reading all the Delany I somehow missed as a child. With Nova and The Einstein Intersection I felt like it might have been just as well that I came to them as an adult, as much of what those books are doing I wouldn’t have appreciated when I was young. This book, though, would have blown my mind, and I regret that I didn’t read it back then. (I checked, there is a copy in my parents’ library, I just never pulled it down.) It’s a classic SF adventure story, only, in what I’m discovering to be typical Delany fashion, at least twice as smart as any of its obvious contemporary comparisons.
  7. Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan – I walked into the local comic shop asking for a recent, non-superhero graphic novel written by a woman. There weren’t many, but eventually I found this. Set in Israel, it’s about cab driver and a wealthy young woman who work together to figure out the identity of a body rendered unrecognizable after a suicide bombing.  A compelling and cleanly-drawn story of the different ways people process loss.
  8. Big Hard Sex Criminals, vol. 1 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky – Matt is the best and Chip is the best and Sex Criminals is the best squared. It’s about folks who stop time when they orgasm. I was reading it in issues, but missed one when I moved from Iowa to Texas and never managed to track down a copy, so I’d only read half of this before. I’m pleased to say that the second half of the book is perhaps even better than the first, retaining all of the humor but deepening the characters and world. The only question now is if I’ll be able to hold out until the second hardcover collection to see what happens next, or if I’m going to be buying this story in multiple formats.

Malvern Books Reading – Saturday, April 4th

MeJanalynJessIf you’ll be in Austin on the fourth of April, consider coming to A Speculative Evening at Malvern Books to hear me, Janalyn Guo, and Jessica Reisman read our fiction. Malvern is a lovely little bookstore that specializes in small press books, both fiction and poetry. I’ll be reading from “The New Mother,” and have copies of Asimov’s for sale. Reading starts at 7:00pm. Hope to see you there.

Carmen Machado’s “O Adjunct! My Adjunct!”

I’ve often been asked lately whether I miss teaching. My standard answer is to say that I miss teaching very much, but I don’t miss all the things around teaching: the low pay, the lack of benefits, the constant feeling that I’m complicit in the adulteration of a once-great intellectual tradition. Which is all to say, I miss teaching, but not adjuncting. The work itself gave me profound satisfaction, but the working conditions were an affront to my pride. It was nothing like the vision of academia I received as an undergraduate; I went to a small liberal arts university which I’m not sure even had any adjunct professors. I certainly never had one. So while I now know the adjuncting experience from the faculty side, I have only my evaluations to suggest what it’s like for a student.

Carmen, though, has lived at both ends of the adjunct’s college classroom. She wrote about it for the New Yorker with exquisite clarity. Read about the pathology of placing students’ formative experiences in the hands of those with “great responsibility, precariously held.”

“O Adjunct! My Adjunct!” at the New Yorker.

Start Reading “The New Mother” Online

as_logo_blThe fine people at Asimov’s have just posted a long, free excerpt of my novella on their site. And when I say long, I mean 8,500 words long. Long enough to meet pensive Tess Mendoza and her confident partner Judy. Long enough to learn about the strange new infectious condition moving through the population. Long enough to hear from scientists and administrators and religious fanatics. Plenty long enough to know if you like the story. So if you’re the clever sort who wants to try before you buy, I encourage you to click through and check out my work. If you enjoy it, be sure to note the “e-Asimov’s” link at the bottom for all the download options a person could want.

“The New Mother” – Now Available

Asimov's Science Fiction – April-May 2015––UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: You can read the whole thing online here.––

It’s finally here! The April/May double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction with my cover story “The New Mother” is now available to be read and enjoyed. Subscribers to the magazine probably have it already. There’s a long, free excerpt online at the Asimov’s site. If you like what you see, you can buy an ebook edition for only about three bucks!

Magzter – Probably the easiest way to get a digital copy. Buy it here and you can read it in your browser, or on an iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 8+, or Kindle device. Making a Magzter account is totally free, you only pay to buy individual magazines–and way less than you would for a paper copy.

Android – Here’s the Google Play Store listing for the specific issue, which should work on most phones or tablets running Android.

Individual issues on other platforms are harder to link to directly. Here are links to the Asimov’s subscription sites for specific devices. You may be able to find the April/May 2015 issue (with the cover shown above) through these.

Kindle – Here’s the Amazon listing, which will let you read Asimov’s on any Kindle e-reader, or in the Kindle app on your phone or tablet.

iPhone or iPad – The iTunes store listing for Asimov’s. In iOS, you’ll get it via the Newsstand app. You can buy the individual back issue, or subscribe to the magazine. (You’ll be asked to sign up for a Magzter account. It’s fast and free. You’re basically doing the same thing as the first link, just through the Newsstand app instead of the Magzter app.)

Nook – The Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader listing. Coincidentally, Barnes and Noble is also an excellent place to get a paper copy of Asimov’s.

Kobo – Have a Kobo e-reader? Let me know if this link works. You are supposed to be able to buy individual issues here, but some of the info is contradictory. (I don’t have a Kobo, so I can’t test it myself.)

If you have any problems, tell me, and I’ll try to help you fix it or pass your information along to the folks in charge. And if you read the story and like it, do please let other people know.

Quotation from Jo Walton

The trouble with mimetic fiction isn’t that you can tell what’s going to happen (I defy anyone to guess what’s going to happen in Middlemarch, even from half way through) but that you can tell what’s not going to happen. There isn’t going to be an evil wizard. The world isn’t going to be destroyed in Cultural Fugue and leave the protagonist as the only survivor. There aren’t going to be any people who happen to have one mind shared between five bodies. There are unlikely to be shape-changers. In science fiction you can have any kind of story—a romance or a mystery or a reflection of human nature, or anything at all. But as well as that, you have infinite possibility. You can tell different stories about human nature when you can compare it to android nature, or alien nature. You can examine it in different ways when you can write about people living for two hundred years, or being relativistically separated, or under a curse. You have more colours for your palette, more lights to illuminate your scene.

Now the problem with genre fiction is often that writers take those extra lights and colours and splash them around as if the fact that the result is shiny is sufficient, which it unfortunately isn’t. So the most common failing of genre fiction is that you get shallow stories with feeble characters redeemed only by the machinations of evil wizards or the fascinating spaceship economy or whatever. What I want is stories as well written and characterised as Middlemarch, but with more options for what can happen. That’s what I always hope for, and that’s what I get from the best of SF.

–Jo Walton, “What a pity she couldn’t have single-handedly invented science fiction! George Eliot’s Middlemarch,” republished in What Makes This Book So Great

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