Eugene Fischer

Category: Books

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

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.“

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.

Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” Available Online

Ted Chiang has a story, “Exhalation,” up for a Hugo award this year.  It was originally published in the anthology Eclipse 2, and now Night Shade Books has made it available for download.  I just read it, and loved it.  It is in structure and tone very similar to one of my very favorite short stories, “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges.  In fact, the similarities are such that I wonder if Borges was a direct inspiration.  Compare the first lines.

Borges: “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite, series of hexagonal galleries.”

Chiang: “It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life.”

Additionally, both stories end with the narrator drawing comfort from imagining a universe which extends beyond what is commonly conceived of as the boundaries of the one he inhabits.  Borges’s story uses combinatorial complexity as the basis of its thematic explorations, while Chiang’s uses the laws of thermodynamics.  Basically, Chiang has written the physics-y version of my favorite math-y story ever, and has thus made my inner scientist very happy.

The Order of Odd Fish

As I have suspended my ban on buying books for Love Your Indie Month, I went ahead and picked up a copy of James Kennedy’s The Order of Odd Fish, which first came to my attention after I read a highly entertaining short story on his blog.  Last night I read 130 pages of it–about a third of the book–and…I think I’m going to put it down and move on to something else.

It isn’t that the book is bad.  It isn’t.  In fact, I think that if this book had been handed to me when I was eight years old I would have read it and re-read it, laughing uproariously every time.  But while I have a great appreciation for absurdity, I think that to stay entertained these days I need some degree of subtlety or connection to reality.  The Order of Odd Fish is a fabulously mad, over the top cartoon.  The images are outrageous, but the story just isn’t capturing me.  I’ve been reading a lot of books marketed as YA lately.  Some, like M. T. Anderson’s books I don’t think I could have fully appreciated when I was young.  Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series I find light, entertaining reading that may have seemed more fraught with meaning to me when I was younger, but I suspect I would have related to about the same coming to it at any age.  The Order of Odd Fish I think I came to too late to appreciate the way it should be.  I will try to get my copy to someone it will have the chance to touch more significantly.

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!

Arnold’s Bodyshaping for Women

Digging around in my parents’ library I discovered a book that my mother denies ever having bought.  (My father denies having bought it as well, but does so much more stoically.)

arnoldbodyshaping01

The books was published in 1979 and features a great deal of black and white photography by Douglas Kent Hall.  Including, near the front of the book, the following:

Arnold On Shoulders

Arnold Schwarzenegger – bodybuilder, actor, politician, and occasional real-life Robert Crumb comic book.

James Kennedy, my new favorite YA author I’ve never read

Yesterday I had never heard of YA author James Kennedy, nor his book, The Order of Odd Fish.  Today I think he is one of the most awesome people in the world, and his book may be the next one I buy.  This is entirely due to a blog post he wrote for no other reason than to celebrate a teenage fan of his work who spoke at an ALA meeting wearing a fish hat.  A blog post that is, in fact, a 4000 word short story celebrating his young fan while revealing, among other mysteries, that all of Neil Gaiman’s books are written by bees and the head of the American Library Association goes about clothed in the skin of A. A. Milne.  America, Emulate This Man has completely won me over.

Two Exciting Forthcoming Books

Martin Millar blogs that he is under contract to deliver a sequel to his novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, provisionally entitled Queen Vex.  I just read Lonely Werewolf Girl last week and I thoroughly adored it, saying that it should be made into a television miniseries immediately.  I even spent some time after I finished it writing, with an eye toward emulation, about interesting things Millar does with tying character motivation to dialog.  My only complaint about it was that it didn’t end as neatly as the the other Martin Millar novel I’ve read, the also excellent Good Fairies of New York.  So I welcome news that the story is going to continue.

The other exciting news, which I comes via Nalo Hopkinson, is that Beacon Press, the publisher of Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is in the process of recruiting an illustrator to produce a graphic novel adaptation for the 30th anniversary of the book’s publication.  Graphic novels and Octavia Butler novels are two of my favorite things in the world; I can’t wait to see how these tastes go together.

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