Eugene Fischer

Author: Eugene Fischer

Posting Every Day

It was an accident at first, and then a week and a half of having this website had gone by and I noticed I had not missed a day yet.  So I started doing it on purpose.  And I even came up with a reason why blogging something every day was a good thing: just putting something out into the world helps me lower my perfectionism bar.  Perfectionism is just procrastination wearing a fancy coat, after all, so forcing myself to put something up here every day could have the knock-on effect of helping me relax my internal editor.  Help me work on my other writing projects in a more focused manner.

But today all of my ideas for things to put up here would actually take me too long to develop, and I want to use that time to…gasp…work on my short story.  So please enjoy this meta-post while I am off working on fiction.

Clarion Teachers Everywhere

Last night Neil Gaiman was on The Colbert Report discussing The Graveyard Book:


The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Neil Gaiman

And tonight on the BBC World Service, Geoff Ryman was brought on to discuss the propriety of the United Nations holding a panel discussion about Battlestar Galactica.  I haven’t been able to find a link to that segment, but my favorite part was the host asking, essentially, “might it not be considered irresponsible for the UN to look to a work of fiction for insight into real world events?” and Geoff answering, “Well, that depends on if you think of fiction as a lie or you think of fiction as a way of telling the truth.”

Paul M. Berger in INTERZONE

I urge you to find a way to get your hands on the current issue of Interzone, which contains the story “Home Again,” by Paul M. Berger.  Paul was my Clarion classmate and roomie, and I got to read the first draft of this story at the workshop.  I don’t actually know of anyplace in San Antonio that sells Interzone, but I’m going to have to track down a copy, because this story was a creepy little gem even at its earliest, and I must have it in a form that I can thrust in the faces of others.

Love Your Indie Month

So I’ve broken my rule about not buying any more books until I’ve read some (intentionally hazy) fraction of the unread books I already own.  But I have done so for a good reason.  Joe Hill, author of 20th Centurey Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box, has taken a look at the bookselling landscape and decided that this spring–always a slow time for book stores–has the potential to be disasterous for the small, independent shop.  So he has declared March to be “Love Your Indie Month,” and is running a contest to encourage people to support independent bookstores.  All you have to do for a chance to win one of 12 fabulous prizes is buy something from an independent bookstore and email a picture of the receipt to Joe.  (Address at the first link.)  I went down to the only indie bookstore I’m aware of in San Antonio, The Twig, and bought a hardback copy of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, vol. I by M. T. Anderson (my softback will become a gift for someone) and Pretties by Scott Westerfeld.  (They didn’t have any of my previously listed five books.)

March is Love Your Indie Month.  Find an independent bookstore in your community or online and show it some appreciation.  If you don’t have any particular bookstore that has earned your allegiance, I recommend Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, beloved of Clarionites.  All of the Clarion instructors do a reading at Mysterious Galaxy during their week; the store is a great friend of the workshop.  You can order from them online.  (Online purchases are being accepted by Joe for the contest.)  Spread the love!

The Duty of the Righteous Man

A personal journal entry from several months ago begins with a quotation by Primo Levi, which I encountered in an essay by Ursula LeGuin.  “It is the duty of the righteous man to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.”

I wrote several paragraphs of not-very-focused rumination about this idea when I first encountered it, and I have thought back to it many times since.  And now I find myself thinking of it once again as I read the thoughts of one of my Clarion teachers, Mary Anne Mohanraj, talking about issues of race and its treatment in SF/F on John Scalzi’s blog. (“Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up To Speed” Part 1, Part 2)  A fair amount of this discussion concerns genre fiction and the genre fiction community, but there is much here that is a reflection of our culture as a whole.  Specifically, it was through the early rounds of this discussion (which has kind of unfortunately come to be known as RaceFail ’09) that I encountered Peggy McIntosh’s essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” which helped focus for me some of the fuzzy edges of the concept of undeserved privilege and made me realize that while my thinking about privilege in terms of class was fairly developed, it was still very rudimentary on issues of race.

I’m still getting my thoughts in order on the subject of subverting undeserved privilege, and how doing so interfaces or fails to interface with rational self-interest.  It’s a sort of idealism vs. pragmatism in the face of preexisting conditions argument, and I am struggling to find my own clarity of thought about it.  But the RaceFail ’09 discussion has helped me learn to recognize kinds of privilege that were previously invisible to me, and even bereft of conclusions the improved perception is valuable.

Test: Posting From My Phone

I am in my hotel in Houston, where tonight I will see Jonathan Coulton in concert at the House of Blues. Surprisingly, my hotel does not seem to have wireless internet. But this affords me a good opportunity to test the iPhone WordPress client. If this works like it is supposed to, I should momentarily have a new blog post with a phonecam picture of my ticket to the show appended to it.

EDIT: Huzzah!

Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker

The movement, the shiny clothes, the weird planets in the background… I find this video hypnotic.

(Also: I wish I had invented the name Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker.  How great is that?)

Two Weeks In: Shoutout

It’s been a whole two weeks since I started this blog, and surprisingly many people have already found it and improved it with their comments.  I’m sure no one else is paying as close attention to the people contributing to the larger discussion here as I am, so I want take a moment and drag them into the spotlight of acknowledgment and thanks.

First: Michael Fischer is my father.  Alanna, Andrew, Ferrett, Jeff, Lauren, Megan, Nicole, Oisin, and Sarah are all personal friends, and to the extent they have online presences are on my Links page.  Check them out, they rock!

New faces:

Julie Andrews is another aspiring SF/F writer and Clarion grad, who attended the workshop the year before I did.

Jordan Lapp is going to be an attendee of Clarion West ’09, and a winner of the Writers of the Future contest.

Scott Baker is an an applicant for Clarion ’09 and Clarion West ’09.

Tracie W. is another.

Jeanne, NJM, and JC are also hoping to go to Clarion, though they didn’t leave any links for me to point you at.  (Good luck to all the applicants.)

Patrick Tomasso runs Enjoy The Show, a spiffy-looking movie news and reviews site.

Thank you all for your comments!  I hope you’ll stick around.

On Target

I’m currently revising one of the stories I workshopped at Clarion.  Kelly Link told me that she thought it was largely successful, but that I used too much summary, and that the way to revise it was to expand it by about 2000 words.  Well, as of yesterday I’m about 3/4 done with the revision, and I just passed the total wordcount of the previous draft.  Even better, I feel excited about the new material, and the streamlining of the various emotional entanglements.  Basically, after not doing any of this stuff since last summer, I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it again.  Good times.

Hedge Fund Fall Guy For Hire

From the Twitter stream of one of my favorite podcasts, Planet Money, comes this  Craigslist ad for a man who is willing to take some blame:

Is your hedge fund in dire financial straits? Are you totally screwed and now realizing that someone has to take the fall? Has your ponzi scheme enveloped numerous celebrity-endorsed charities benefiting Laotian children with AIDS and been discovered by the SEC?

I’m your man.

I will take the reins of your hedge fund for as long as necessary to establish credibility, then present a dramatic “mea culpa” to the press declaring that my poor decisions have saddled your company with mounds and mounds of “toxic assets” and “ponzi schemery.” I will personally apologize to anyone and everyone I [you] have wronged and swear I had only the best intentions for your clients and shareholders. Death threats do not phase me. If necessary, I will go to jail. I will look Bernie Madoff in the eye and say “Hey bro, I feel you” on national television. You and the rest of your company can shake your heads and say “for shame” and then continue on your merry way losing money and what have you.

Minimum compensation one million dollars. Serious offers only.

Awesome.  And a style of humor that reminds me of Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, which I love, and which I now notice has just been published as a book.

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