Guest Blogger: Jeffrey Ford

Baby Hand
by Jeffrey Ford

When he was 21, Thomas Burger's right hand began to swell. He couldn't remember having injured it. He didn't know that it was pregnant. Over the course of the next six months, the world looked on in astonishment and Thomas in horror as his cuticles, knuckles and palm gradually grew into a baby. In one of its earliest stages it had gills and a tail. Its eyes were huge and black, and at night Thomas would see them gleaming in the moonlight. It was a nightmarish time for him, and there was great pain involved. Once it became evident to the doctors that the hand was becoming a child, instead of curing it, they threw their efforts into nurturing it. The child that was evolving from his hand became the focus of intense media scrutiny. There were endless photo shoots, and Thomas felt that he had become a useless appendage to the baby; the only thing anyone cared about.

Eventually, the child grew into herself, and Thomas was pressed into learning how to change her and dress her with his left hand. He was clumsy with the bottle, and kept forgetting to hold his arm up, sometimes swinging her around when walking or in conversation, trying to make a point. The doctors told him to name it. He didn't have the courage to tell the world he wanted it cut off. His silence prompted the doctors to tell him he would call it Baby Ingrid. He said nothing and struggled through the mid-night feedings and changings. The qualities of its excrement pointed more toward what he thought than what he'd eaten. At night, as he sat in a wicker rocker in a dark room, singing lullabies, if he happened to catch a glimpse of her face at the very moment she finally fell asleep, he would see a brief smile, sweet but tinged with an undeniable arrogance. The expression always made him laugh. "You're shrewd," he thought, and it delighted him.

Thomas became more deeply devoted to his charge with each passing month. It was right around the time Baby Ingrid said her first word, "Tobo," meaning "Thomas," that he realized people were willing to pay large amounts of money for, as they put it, Baby Hand, to appear in person. So Thomas bought a Studebaker with a big trunk for Ingrid's toys and wardrobe. After a few minor crashes, he learned how to drive left handed, and they went on the road. They performed for sell out crowds across the country. There wasn't much to their show. Basically people wanted to see precisely where Baby Ingrid's back joined Thomas's wrist. He'd call on select members of the audience, who would mount the stage, get a close look at the miraculous appendage, and then testify to its authenticity for the rest of the audience. They loved it. After only a few years, though, due to so much testimony to the fact at their shows, the public came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was, in fact, real and simply accepted it.

As interest began to wane in Baby Hand, Ingrid, not an actual child, though no large than she'd been as a baby, had proven herself to be verbally brilliant. She could converse with the ease and grace of someone four times her age. She and Thomas came up with a comedy act in which she was the smart one and he the fool. They changed the name of their act from Baby Hand to Tobo and Baby Ingrid. Their early work was undistinguished, mostly one liners. For instance, after some foolish harranguing from him, she might say, "Get off my back." It wasn't much of a joke, but the slight humor in conjunction with the always startling sight of a man with a baby right hand made for a lurid joculairty that tickled the spine. They became well known and even appeared on radio.

Thomas had never even considered the possibility, but when Ingrid went from being a child to a young woman, still, mind you, only the size of a baby, the moral outrage concerning the fact that she was attached to a man swelled to proportions nearly beyond the level of wonder her birth had produced. A Federal prosecutor was assigned to build a case for the separation of Baby Ingrid from the invidious Thomas Burger. For him, things unfolded like in a dream that went from ludicrous to insane. He was arrested and put on trial for endangering the life of a minor. By the time his day in court came, he could see the writing on the wall. When questioned, he said nothing. Ingrid spoke up for him, but, as it said in the major newspapers, "Her advocacy lacked vigor, her tribute damned for lack of detail."

When they separated Thomas and Ingrid, a hacksaw blade was used. There could be no anesthetic as it might adversely affect her. Radio commentators were smug when discussing the difference between Burger's courtroom silence and the screams that were reported to have come from him during the removal operation. They took him off as close to her spine as possible, so that all that was left of his wrist was a small bump in the middle of her back. Her skin healed over the incision as did his over the stub on his right arm. She was given a mansion-like doll house and a trust fund. He was fitted for a metal hook. Thomas Burger was not incarcerated after the trial and operation, but he was cast off by society. He eventually committed suicide by sticking the tip of his hook in a wall socket.

Ingrid went off to live on her own, and for a while the papers followed her life. Stories about her diminutive shoes and hats, tours of her miniature mansion, gossip as to the eligible bachelors she was seen with, ran every day for six months in the papers. She was interviewed on the radio quite regularly, prompting many to imitate her small, high voice. Then, she suddenly went missing. Gone seemingly without a trace. Search parties were launched. The police and F.B.I suspected foul play and put some of their most astute investigators on the case. All leads pointed to a certain Carl Obenwat, a local plumber who had been called to the mansion to fix a pipe in the basement. Obenwat was arrested, questioned, and his home was searched more than once but the authorities could never get enough tangible evidence to make a conviction stick. Oberwat was released and threatened to sue both state and federal governments unless high officials publicly exonerated him of any crime. This they did, but the question remained, "What happened to Ingrid?"

Ten years ago, after Carl Oberwat's death, his old house was raised to make way for a new development. Workmen digging up the old concrete basement floor found a grave. In it were the bones of a male right hand the size of a baby.

A change in planned programming.

(image from Flickr user Houari B.)

Jeffrey Ford pulled an Aladdin lamp-trick. :> Instead of a blog post, he wrote a story. So with the joys of guest bloggery combined with July independence . . . comes this additional gift. :>

Which will be posted tomorrow to get you ready for the weekend.

PROMPT One.

(image from flickr user moonjazz)

This concept doesn't click for me... Guilty pleasure can apply to food, but not reading. Never reading.

When I was a kid, it took forever for my relatives to really believe that I wanted books. Girls were supposed to want purses and dolls and jewelry 40 years ago.

In elementary school, I don't remember anyone bothered by my reading -- except a librarian who didn't believe I read so fast. That was fourth grade, and I was systematically going through every Nancy Drew book they had. I brought back one book that morning, got another at library hour, brought THAT back, and wanted a new one. I'd already read all the Sherlock Holmes I could find.

No one ever made me feel guilty about reading anything. In most cases, they just couldn't grasp why I wanted to read so much. That was the problem.

Rather peculiar, because my parents are readers. Mom's Andre Norton and Heinlein books are still in a hall bookcase now. I got her anthologies like _Amazons!_, _Arabesques_, _Faery_, etc.

I briefly avoided romances simply because I'd read hundred-plus Harlequins -- when I was ten, I wanted to see if they were all the same. [They were.] After that, I was reading sf/f exclusively for a year or two. But I never felt guilty about reading romances, or any other genre. It took me a while to figure out what sort of horror I liked, because authors like Tanith Lee tend to mix genres, and I was used to that blurring.

So... guilt, no.

Guest Blogger: Chris Roberson

(Chris in Calgary)

What book/author is a guilty pleasure for you?

I don’t really feel guilty about any of my pleasures these days. When I was younger, particularly in college, I used to be self-conscious about reading things that I assumed my classmates and professors would judge to be “trash”--pulp novels, superhero comics, franchise tie-ins--and squirreled them away, only reading them in private. Better to be seen in public with a John Barth novel or a collection of Jorge Luis Borges stories than a Peter David Star Trek novel or the latest issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, I thought. But as I got older, I began to care less and less what other people thought about my reading choices. I finally reached a point probably best encapsulated by a line of dialogue spoken by Jean-Luc Picard in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint”--“If we are to be damned, let’s be damned for what we truly are.”

What book would people be surprised to learn that you enjoyed?

The book that’s farthest outside my wheelhouse that I really enjoyed was probably Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Or possibly Frederick Kohner’s Gidget, for many of the same reasons. I read a great deal of “chick lit” in the run-up to writing the first version of the time-travel novel eventually published as Here, There & Everywhere, trying to capture what seemed to me an authentic female voice for the main character, Roxanne Bonaventure. Of all the stuff that I read, Fielding’s and Kohner’s books were the two I enjoyed the most, to the extent that I would have read them happily even if it hadn’t been for “research.”

Chris Roberson writes novels, stories, and comics, but his real ambition is to become a superhero. He has successfully devised the perfect secret identity—no one will expect a thing—but the superpowers have, so far, proven more difficult to arrange.

My Declaration

(how I plan to spend July)

A few weeks ago I thought it might be nice for my family to declare July 4th weekend free from computers/internet/whatever. Then I thought, the original Declaration of Independence was a real sacrifice for everyone involved. Giving up a weekend was not a sacrifice; it happens from time to time when I'm busy doing house stuff.

So I decided to make a declaration for the entire month of July. But what to declare myself independent of?

Going without a computer/internet for a month was impracticable if not impossible. Even if I gave myself clearance to use a computer at work, there are still things I'd need to be doing at home (freelance work with deadlines, communication to family, etc.) that require a computer.

No, that was too broad sweeping.

However, there are a lot of things that I do on the computer that consume a lot of my time that I could give up for a month, have it be some sort of sacrifice (nowhere NEAR the level of the drafters and signers of the Declaration of Independence), and continue to do the things I needed to do.

I am declaring myself independent from social software for the month of July. This post should be the last post I write in July. However, I didn't want the blog to go stagnant for a month, so I'll be having a series of guest bloggers throughout the month. You'll see some posts from my assistant editor Anne followed by our first guest, Chris Roberson.

Here are the things I will not be doing during the month of July:

• I will not post on this blog
• I will not Tweet
• I will not update/reply/accept/ignore/like/etc. anything on Facebook
• I will not read any feeds in Google Reader
• I will not have any instant message client open
• I will not post any photos to Flickr
• I will not check my web stats
• I will not get lost in Wikipedia reading article after article
• I will not read any sports web pages, even to check scores
• I will not update my fantasy sports teams
• I will not go to imdb unless I need to do so to answer a reference question
  

Here are things I will be doing:

• Posts to this blog automatically update Twitter feed and people will just have to deal with that
• Reading and responding to e-mail
• Editing Electric Velocipede issues #19 and #20
• Doing layout work for PS Publishing
• Relaxing and getting ready to re-open to submissions come August 1
  

Things I'm not sure about:

• Posting on Tor.com. I get paid to post there, and while it's not much (and even less than not much when you average two posts a month like I am right now) it is a source of income and cutting off income is silly. That said, I don't know how I feel. I think I should stop for the month, but we'll see.
• Commenting on posts. Anne thinks I should post comments. I don't. I think she's probably right. Again, we'll see.

I'm curious what this will do to my productivity. Have a fun July! See you in August!

PROMPT: What book would people be surprised to know you enjoyed reading?

Bridget Jones Diary. Yep. I thought it was great, and I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that I even read this book, much less enjoyed it. I found all the play off Pride and Prejudice quite funny (as I enjoyed P&P a lot; I know! another surprise!) and I liked Bridget quite a bit (unlike Carrie from "Sex and the City") and found myself pulling for her to get her guy in the end.

I don't have a lot more to say about this book, other than I thought casting Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy for the movie version was brilliant, considering that Mr. Firth gave us a perfect Mr. Darcy in the BBC's version of Pride & Prejudice. If you don't know the book, Bridget is in love with Colin Firth, particularly because of the BBC performance. I also liked Hugh Grant playing quite the cad after a dearth of films where he played the banal patsy.

But all that has nothing to do with the book. I like Jane Austen quite a bit, which may surprise people. Even though I know where her books are going, I have fun getting there all the same. I also like the Restoration Period dramas (such as The Beaux' Strategem, The Country Wife, The Way of the World, or Marriage à la Mode), which is where we get the modern-day sitcom.

So, were you surprised?

PROMPT: Ever buy a book for its design?

(image from McSweeney's . . . I love them!)

This is a tough question to answer. Not because I have to work to think about one example, it's that I have to narrow down a huge list to just one example. I could list House of Leaves or The Town that Forgot How to Breathe (the trade paperback, not the hardcover) or City of Saints and Madmen or more and more and more.

But I think this is where I take the chance to talk about McSweeney's, whose design is consistently mind-blowing and envelope pushing. I can't sum it up any better than they do:

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern publishes on a roughly quarterly schedule, and we try to make each issue very different from the last. One issue came in a box, one was Icelandic, and one looks like a pile of mail. In all, we give you groundbreaking fiction and much more.

And it wouldn't work if it was just the design. Oh, the design is certainly what interested in the publication. And when there was a $5 for every back issue sale at the end of Summer last year, I jumped at the chance to pick up a bunch of copies. The first one I pulled out of the box was issue #24 (picture above) which is a tri-fold, hardcover magazine.

I know! It doesn't make any sense! Other issues have been packaged to look like a pile of mail, others included a comb, one had a story written on a series of playing cards that you could shuffle and re-tell the story, and yet another was eight small hardcover books that formed a larger cover when arranged correctly. The design is stunning.

Thankfully, the fiction inside is engaging and well done. They've even published their share of genre people (or people with a connection to genre) like Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Stephen King, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Brendan Connell, and Shelley Jackson among others. I look forward to new issues as much for the fiction as I do for the design.

Part of what makes McSweeney's (both the magazine and the press of the same name) work is that it was founded by Dave Eggers. Yes, pulitzer-prize-winning Dave Eggers. He might not be your cup of tea, but I think Eggers is brilliant. And his writing success has given him freedom to do all sorts of interesting editorial things like founding nonprofit writing workshops called 826 Valencia around the country.

I would be kidding myself if I didn't admit I was jealous of Mr. Eggers. But hey, I think he's doing what he does through a combination of talent and hard work. Still, if he wanted to open an 826 workshop in Madison, I know someone who would be thrilled to run it.

Also, the website has been updated to indicate issue 17/18 as the current issue. There are links to my Twitter feed and Facebook account. There are also a few new pages like 'art' and 'awards.'

PROMPT: What Book/Author is Your Reading Guilty Pleasure?

I enjoy reading fashion and lifestyle blogs. And yes, most of the ones I read are written for a primarily female audience. Not the typical sort of thing for such a short fiction geek as myself, but man, I just can't help myself.

I love reading snipy fashion blogs. My favorite is Go Fug Yourself (shown above). You ever see a celebrity at an event and think "What were they thinking?" when you see what they're wearing? So did Heather and Jessica. But they started asking that question online. With an accompanying photo. And they weren't nice about it. (if you don't know what fugly means . . . google it, somewhere safe) They make me laugh every day, and that's not easy. They even do a March Madness event now of bad fashion. It's awesome! As they said in their first post: "In honor of the fact that, these days, fugly seems to be the new pretty, we've created a blog to honor all the visual atrocities of the world."

If you live in NY, you're probably sick of Julia Allison, but I can't get enough of her. And now that she's gone red-head, wow (even if she can't wear pink any more). You can read about her here, but essentially she provides dating advice in the big city. The blog is very personal, almost minutial in detail about her life. It wouldn't be tough to get overwhelmed or bored with it. But I like reading it. I think there's as much enjoyment of her writing style as my nostalgia for New York. She's also one of the hosts of TMI Weekly, where she and two friends talk about dating, fashion, tech, and anything that comes to mind (i.e., too much information, get it?).

Which brings me to Tasty Blog Snack/iJustine, the hottest iphone fan out there. But, fan isn't the right word. She is obsessed with the iphone. And it's not just because she's cute/pretty/hot/gorgeous. She is funny and engaging, and smart about what she talks about, which tends to be the iphone and related tech. Not being an iphone person, a lot of her videocasts have limited appeal to me. But, they're interesting enough to keep me watching.

Recently, I've started reading . . . love Maegan. Maegan works in an art gallery in Los Angeles. She does posts fairly often about DIY fashion (which is how I found the blog, if I have to admit it). But the most interesting, in my opinion, thing she does is her completely gratuitous outfit posts, where she photographs herself and talks about what she's wearing and why. I think it's very important for a person to know her to dress themselves. Too many people wear clothes that are wrong for them, and in L.A., that's truer than lots of other places. It's very cool that a pretty woman can talk about how she picks what she wears, and discuss how she can't just wear anything because not everything looks good on her.

From . . . love Maegan I found her co-worker Drollgirl. Less fashion-oriented than some, she posts a fair amount about art and artists, but also often does series of photographs that she'll find on Google using the same search term. A small word of warning, she also posts borderline SFW photos of men, so be careful.

The thing that all of these blogs have in commin is that they are put together by someone who has a lot of dedication and drive to constantly post and to post continually consistent material. Most blogs would benefit from putting more effort into updating more frequently, but making sure those updates have a consistent style and quality. There's no question that each of these blogs has their own voice. It's what makes them engaging to read.

Here's a few more I've been following for a little while, and I'm still learning about them to see whether I want to make them permanent entries into my feed reader:

Shop Diary
Karla's Closet
Jezebel
Natasha's Soirèe

And that's a fair sampling, I think. At least for a guy who edits science fiction.

Guest Blogging for Independence

(image from Flickr user A Million to One)

Recently, I posted about how I'm going to take a break from online software etc. for the month of July. I've got a great selection of guest bloggers lined up to take you through the month. We're going to be answering some prompts about books and reading; mine will go online shortly (before the end of month!). Anne's going to be writing some, too.

In case you're curious, here are the prompts:

1. What book/author is a guilty pleasure for you?
2. Was there ever a book that you bought merely for its design?
3. What book would people be surprised to learn that you enjoyed?

So what about you guys? What are your answers to these questions?

Seeking slush readers.

EV is re-opening to submissions on 1-August... after going through the backlog and filling up issues for over a year. :D

Right now John would like another two readers. That way no one is overburdened.(*)

All submissions will be electronic; EV no longer accepts paper submissions.

Please mention "slush reader" in the subject line. The email links at the top of the blog go straight to John. :>

To carbon me please use anne -at- electricvelocipede -dot- com.

Many thanks. My thanks also to those folks who do me the great kindness to spread this news far and wide.

Anne*---
Assistant editor

(*) I suddenly have images of the STACKS of slush Tor gets... the image is from Slushkiller, and John says that used to be his office at Tor.