In Honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day

Thanks to the inestimable Jo Walton, I'd like to remind everyone that complete text of Electric Velocipede issue #9 is available online. Here is the table of contents of that issue:

FICTION
The Chiaroscurist by Hal Duncan
Another Day by Mark Rich
Hard Time by Mark W. Tiedemann
A Taste for Flowers by Jay Caselberg
Braids of Glass by Jonathan Laden
Strange Incidents in Foreign Parts by Anna Tambour
The Euonmyist by Neil Williamson
Solipsister by Jason Erik Lundberg

POETRY
The New City by Kristine Ong Muslim
Stalling Wonderland by Kristine Ong Muslim
Roommate by Jonathan Brandt

NONFICTION
ATTIC SPACE: The Sounds of Inevitability by Bill Braun

Additionally, two stories from issue six are online: Alan DeNiro's "The Keeper" and Mike Simanoff's "Morris, His Self".

Not bad, eh? This is the issue that sold out with in a month of publication due to the storm of interest in Mr. Hal Duncan and his debut novel: Ink. And the fact that I debuted it in Glasgow at World Con didn't hurt either.

The image above is from John Scalzi; blame him if you don't like it.

READING: Recommendations by Decade

So this is something I was thinking about. Let's say that someone has just found the world of genre writing (and by genre, I'm referring to mostly Fantasy and Science Fiction, but you could include mystery, romance, and horror if you wanted) and they come to you--as a genre expert--to help them decide what they should read. They want to get a historical sense of the genre, and not just necessarily read what's new and hot.

We have several ways of posing this question: what works shaped the genre from its earliest days to now? -or- what are your favorite books from the genre over the past century?

So I thought I would offer up this challenge:

Starting with 1890, list one book from each decade that you think represents the genre and the way it's moved from then to now. This gives us twelve decades, which I thought was a nice epic number. I'm being fairly liberal as to what books you can include: I would perfer people stick to Fantasy and Science Fiction where possible, but you can step outside those when you feel something was just too darn good to pass up. I'm also allowing novellas, since many things that today would never get published as a standalone book where published that way back in the day.

Here's my list:

DECADE	YEAR	TITLE	AUTHOR
1890	1895	The Time Machine	H. G. Wells
1900	1908	The House on the Borderland	William Hope Hodgson
1910	1912	The Lost World	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1920	1924	We	Yevgeny Zamyatin
1930	1936	At the Mountains of Madness	H. P. Lovecraft
1940	1949	1984	George Orwell
1950	1954	The Lord of the Rings	J. R. R. Tolkein
1960	1965	Dune	Frank Herbert
1970	1978	Night Shift	Stephen King
1980	1984	Neuromancer	William Gibson
1990	1992	A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge
2000	2001	City of Saints and Madmen	Jeff VanderMeer

What are your picks?

UPDATE: Just to give a little more background into my choices, there were two sets of decades that I had trouble with: 1900 - 1920 and 1950 - 1980. The first set I had difficulty choosing because I'm not very well read in those decades so I was essentially choosing the one book from the decade that I read. The second set was tough because I had so many books to chose among. I had conversations with myself about whether I should select The Phantom Tollbooth (my favorite book of all time) or Flowers for Algernon or A Clockwork Orange over Dune. Could I really not pick Stars My Destination or I, Robot (but what's had more impact than The Lord of the Rings?)? Should I go with Nine Princes in Amber or To Your Scattered Bodies Go instead of a horror-writer's story collection? And the 1980s: Neuromancer, Ender's Game, Hyperion, Mists of Avalon, etc.! And what about female writers? There are none in my list, and it's not like there weren't great books: The Left Hand of Darkness, Kindred, Doomsday Book, Her Smoke Rose up Forever, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, China Mountain Zhang, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and more.

But that's why I want to hear from you.

Issue #10 Review

The nice people at SciFi UK Review reviewed issue #10 (the one with the bike on the cover featuring Richard Bowes, Mark Rich, Jeffrey Ford, Robert Freeman Wexler, Andre Oosterman, and Alistair Rennie in it) a little while back, and I never properly noted it here. The review closes with this nice line: "[I]t is an excellent ‘zine of stories, most of them strong, all worth reading."

I know that they're working on a review of issue #11, so I'll post that here when I know that it's available.

Not Doing a Meme Out of Well-Mannered Spite

Andy Wheeler, in answering a current meme, makes the statement:

John Klima is the one most likely to pick up memes from me, I think. I'm not officially sending it to anybody.

And you know what? That's essentially true. There are many things that Andy has meme'd and then I've done them as well. Usually the blog post is titled something along the lines of 'Damn you Andy Wheeler' or some such nonsense. But...

You can guess from this entry's title that I am not doing the meme. This is not truly out of spite (and those who know me know that I thrive on stubbornness and spite [what does he mean I'm most likely? I'll show him most likely! I'll post about how I'm not going to do his meme!] like how some people thrive on meat and potatoes) but more out of the fact that I don't like the questions/things to provide answers to in this meme. To quote Andy: "What am I, a fourteen-year-old cheerleader?" That was in response to a question about sleeping with stuffed animals.

Well, ok, I'll answer a few of the things:

Roller coaster--scary or exciting? I find them terrifying. I feel like I'm going to fly off the tracks at any given moment. I've been on three in my life, and that's three too many. I'll sit on the bench with the purses, I'm secure enough in my sexuality that I'll sit on a bench with everyone's purse while they ride a roller coaster. (and yes, I did fix the dash in the question so it's a proper em dash)

Favorite alcoholic drink: Right now it's a rusty nail. Although a nice single malt (and MacCallan has been kind to me lately) is a drink I will never turn down.

Say one nice thing about the person who sent this to you: Andy ain't kidding when he says he enjoys food. (and that's not a crack about weight...c'mon, have you seen me?) I like people who enjoy food. Life is too short to waste time on bad food (and I don't mean bad food as in bad for you, I mean bad tasting). Plus when Andy's around, I'm no longer the beefiest guy in the room. We look like starting linemen for SF's pro football team.

Maybe at the next con we're at together we'll wrestle if people ply us with enough whiskey sours and rusty nails.

Wiscon redux

Since I've had a dirge of replies (one to be exact), I thought I would repost my search for a roommate at Wiscon. If you are going to Wiscon, and don't have any idea of where you're going to stay, and don't mind sharing a room with someone, I am looking for a roommate.

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments or e-mail me at:

editor [at] electricvelocipede [dot] com

Of course, you'll have to reconstruct that into a normal e-mail address. But I think you're up to it.

ACQUIRING: Happy Birthday to Me! (and more)

Well...this post was supposed to go up a few weeks aog when I went shopping with my birthday money. Not only has plenty of time passed since then that it seems strange to indicate happy bithday in the title of the post (but note that I leave it nonetheless) I've gotten more books to post about. So here they are:

This was the pile of books I got near my birthday (March 29): 2 ARCs of my spelling-bee anthology Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box which I've heard a ton about, Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword which I read pre-publication so I'm interested in seeing what's changed since Liz edited it, another Hard Case crime book, Gil Brewer's Vengeful Virgin, and Hal Duncan's Ink, the follow-up to his powerhouse debut, Vellum.

and:


These are: Ben Peek's short story collection Twenty Six Lies, One Truth, the final installment to Justine Larbalestier's magic trilogy Magic's Child, and Bruce Holland Rogers' World Fantasy Award-winning short story collection The Keyhole Opera.

Wiscon is hurtling towards me like a juggernaut way too full of jugger

Two things about the convention. First, I got my tentative programming items:

Making Good Books (Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing SF&F)
Saturday, 1:00-2:15 p.m. Saturday, 1:00-2:15 p.m. Saturday, 1:00-2:15 p.m.
How an independent publisher (or a commercial publisher, for that matter) can create well-made books: design, typography, illustration (if any), binding. And then how to promote it intelligently. There are far too many poorly made books published, especially (though by no means only) by small-press publishers in the science fiction and fantasy field. It's time to talk about how to do it right. This could be a panel, or I could easily give it as a talk, with illustrations. I would use my own work as examples, wherever possible, though other examples (good or bad) might be brought in where they fit best.
Sean A Wallace, Wendy Alison Walker, Heidi Lampietti, John Klima, M: Liz L. Gorinsky, John D. Berry

Unfair to Middle-Class White Guys! (Feminism, Sex, and Gender)
Saturday, 10:30-11:45 p.m. Saturday, 10:30-11:45 p.m. Saturday, 10:30-11:45 p.m.
Why do the SF short fiction market publication figures show more stories by men than women are printed? Is it that "women don't submit enough," or is it the selection process, or something else? When I make a conscious decision to publish roughly equal numbers of male/female authored stories, am I being unfair to the middle-class white guys?
Deb Taber, M: Nancy Jane Moore, John Klima, Eileen Gunn

I'm really excited about the second panel. I even wrote an annoying e-mail to the programming people asking that I be placed on it. I like that I'm the only guy. :) What people don't know--including my intrepid readers here--is that I'm a die-hard feminist. I have a tough time (an impossible time?) drumming up sympathy for white males. I suppose we should try to be productive and not just rag on men...but that would be fun, too...right?

Second, I'm looking for a roommate. I don't think I can afford to go this convention alone. I have a room in the Governor's Club. This means access to the Governor's Lounge. It's worth it! I have the reservation starting on May 24 (Thursday) and running through to checkout on Sunday. I have alternate plans should there be no one willing to room with me (sniff) but I'd rather keep the Governor's Club room if I can.

READING: Charlie Huston

WARNING: Some rough language may follow.

Some time last year (2006), I read some reviews of Charlie Huston's novel Already Dead. I had never heard of the guy or his books. But, the reviews were very positive and made me curious about the book and about Mr. Huston.

I had just begun my library career, so I decided rather than buy the books, I would check them out of the library. Imagine my surprise when my library didn't have this book. Or any books by him. Since I was one of the fiction buyers (and more importantly, the science fiction & fantasy buyer) I went ahead and ordered Already Dead, as well as his Hank Thompson trilogy: Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and A Dangerous Man. Please note: I have not read the Hank Thompson books yet.

The books looked very much like dark, noirish, gritty suspense/crime novels to me. So I was curious why genre magazines were reviewing them. It didn't take long to figure out why. Already Dead and No Dominion feature Joe Pitt, a sometime private eye and all time tough guy. He's also a vampire.

Ok, ok, ok, hang on. It's not like that. This is not cheesy romance love stuff. It's not the vampire stuff you've read a hundred times before. It is dark, noirish, gritty, etc. Joe Pitt is one tough motherfucker. You take all your tough mystery PI types and then make them tougher. That's Joe Pitt. I mean, he's already dead (just like the first book, clever, eh?) so what does he have to worry about? Sure, he can be made permanently dead, but your average fisticuffs and gun shots won't hurt him too much. The thing that makes these books cool is the time and effort Huston put into creating the world that Pitt lives in. Huston has created a Manhattan that has been divided up among several vampire clans. The lower east side is controlled by former hippy Terry and his Society. From 14th street to about Harlem is run by the Coalition. Harlem is run by the Hood. Additionally, there's the Enclave (a sort of zen vampire place), and there are some semi-organized groups of rogues, but mostly it's the four bigger groups.

Joe fits somewhere within all of this. He works for whomever has work. As the books progress, it becomes clear that people do not like Joe Pitt being a free-agent. He's too dangerous to not know where he is or who he supports. Joe just wants to be left alone, but life never works out that way, does it? As Huston says on his website: "To survive, a Rogue must remain invisible to the Clans or prove useful to them in some manner." And Joe just can't help himself; he's a constant thorn in everyone's side.

These books just pop along. I think I read them both in practically one sitting. They read much like a good pulpy noir novel from the 1940s, but they have a modern edge to them that I like. There's a lot of violence, but there's a lot of intelligent intrigue in them, too. It's always nice to find a book that reads like a popcorn novel, but has some depth to it. Huston's plans are to have five books in all about Joe Pitt. I'm already looking forward to the next ones.

Issue #12 Cover Preview

From the gloriously talented (and much too modest) Thom Davidsohn:

Like Any Good Sheep, I Meme With the Best of Them

From Andy Wheeler by way of Poppy Z. Brite

Here are the rules:
Plug your answers into Google Image Search and post the first image that comes up.

Like Andy, I added captions to the ones that might be opaque.


1. Your age on your next birthday:



2. Your favorite color:



3. Your middle name:



4. The last meal you ate:



5. Your bad habit:

(chewing fingernails)


6. Your favorite fruit or vegetable:



7. Your favorite animal:

It's dog, just to alleviate any confusion

8. The town you live in:


although I thought this one was funnier; slightly NSFW


9. The name of your pet or last pet:



10. Your SO or best friend's nickname:

I'm a nicknamer (i.e., I rarely call people by their real name) so it was hard to choose one


12. Your crush's name:



13. Your occupation:



14. Your birth city:

That's Milwaukee for those of you who don't know.

15. Your favorite song:

Favorite song? this is the type of thing I find IMPOSSIBLE to answer as my tastes are always evolving...so I just picked a song I like right now: Augustana's "Boston"

Deb Layne needs your help

Deb Layne, of Wheatland Press fame, needs your help. If you don't order some books from her, she's going to come over to your house and steal your tv. Or make you watch Rutgers beatlose to Tennessee.

She's running a buy one get one free sale from Wheatland Press. Buy one book at $19.95 and get any other book for free. Wheatland publishes the phenomenal (and award-winning) Polyphony short-story anthology series. It also publishes some amazing (and award-winning) Bruce Holland Rogers story collections.

I order a copy of Rogers' The Keyhole Opera and am getting a copy of that jerk Ben Peek's Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth

You can't pass this deal up! Start with the Polyphony books if you haven't seen any of these yet. Each one is filled with amazing stuff.