Publications and News

I have a few announcements I've been meaning to make, some of them for a damn sight longer than I should have. So making today's post a nice spewing of them seemed like a nice Christmas present to get my To Do list.

The first category is publications. Since I've last discussed the matter, I've had two stories accepted. The first is "Defiance and Darkness," a Horror piece that has been snapped up by Space and Time Magazine. "Defiance and Darkness" represents a curious dead end for me. It was the first story I ever wrote intending to submit once it was done, and I wrote it in a style unlike that which I used for anything before or after. I quite like how it turned out. One of my close friends, and the fellow who's read more of my work than anyone else, considered it his favorite for a long while.

In the last few days, "Defiance and Darkness" was joined on its perch by "Solo." "Solo" is a Science Fiction tale that lies somewhere between quirky and Lovecraftian. This one is to appear in Interstellar Fiction.

Of the other two that have been slotted for publication for quite a few months now (which is to say, "Painting Nothing" and "Hope Immortal"), I can confirm that movement is indeed being had on both fronts. The two should be out for you to read before all that much longer.

Then there's the matter of Fungi, an anthology that I have nothing in but that, in my role as an Editorial Assistant over at Innsmouth Free Press, I did do some promotion towards. The book's got stories by a list of contributors that boasts VanderMeer, Mamatas, Bairron, Strantzas, Tobler, Pugmire, Tidhar, and more. If your tastes match up even vaguely with mine, I'd say that's a list that simply cannot miss.

Finally, I would like to direct everyone's attention over to The Arkham Digest. Its author, Justin, contacted me before going live and, though I did fire off a response or two, he has no doubt realized how absolutely atrocious I can be with emails sometimes. I apologize once more for that, Justin. Hopefully you'll forgive me if I tell all those folks reading this that The Arkham Digest has been posting varied, enjoyable, and insightful commentary since it debuted. He even has a Fungi review!

Martin, Nightflyers, and The Speculative Scotsman

If you exit the Hat Rack, take a right, and cross the Atlantic Ocean, you might find yourself at the Speculative Scotsman's. But while we may be a tad geographically distant, we're a fair bit closer in terms of content. And so, when Niall asked if I'd be interested in doing a guest post on the SS while he tours these here states, I responded with a multi-paragraph version of "Hell yes!" The piece's up now, a review of George R.R. Martin's Nightflyers novella that hopefully does both the story and the blog it's hosted on justice. And above and below it is praise for this here Rack that just can't be good for my ego...

The Weaving Knight

So, some of you may have noticed this new addition to my Essential Reading list a few weeks back, but, for those of you who didn't, I figure it's about time for you all to head over to The Weaving Knight, a blog run by my close friend Travis Knight. Travis's currently over at Oswego University, wrapping up his majors in Creative Writing and Education. When he's not busy with the minor workload all that entails, he writes excellent fiction, including a short story soon to be appear in Revelations, a magazine of post apocalyptic fiction. Over at The Weaving Knight, meanwhile, Travis writes reviews of fantasy and all else, and they're filled with engaging writing, humor, and a damn nice chunk of insight. Oh, and windmills. Don't forget the windmills.

Historical Lovecraft Reviewed

It seems that the first review of Historical Lovecraft has come in here. The twist? It's in Italian. Thanks to google translate, however, I can pretend to know what's going on. What's even cooler than the idea of a book I'm in getting a review is if it's a good review - and this one is. David says:

The entire selection is a seriously good average - and is basically on what you assess the anthologies: the number of stories above the average level.

(The oddities in grammar are, obviously, the result of the translation, not David's prose.)

No stories besides William Meikle's get an individual shout out, but I can live with that because Meikle's tale was, indeed, fantastic, and because - without any contradictory evidence - I'll just go and assume that my story was in the group "above the average level." 'Cause why not, eh?

Bringing the Rack to New Lands

Over the past few days, I've been putting all of the reviews that I've done here up on amazon, inspired in part by Speculative Horizon's Amazonian Call to Arms and in part due to the thought that a wider audience can't be all that bad a thing. Of course, as anyone who's read this blog for more than five minutes can probably see, my reviews are not a good fit for amazon. My average review is between three and six times amazon's maximum review guidelines (three hundred words), uses quite a bit of quotation (which looks fucking awful without anything to distinguish it from my own words but "), and I find myself wandering far from Is It A Good Book? on quite a few instances. Don't worry that I'm going to simplify what I'm doing to fit amazon (assuming that, as someone reading this post, you read and enjoy my review style); I'll just be doing what I always do and shoehorning it into an ill fitting venue. Should be good fun.

And, of course, if anyone feels like devoting hours of their life to hunting down all of my reviews and creating several different amazon accounts in order to vote them into the most helpful positions, why, that'd be just dandy.

Get on it.

Inferior Fantasy: A Reply

[This was written as a response to The Speculative Scotsman's recent post on the worth of genre. I'm reposting it here in case anyone here is interested in reading it, not that I think any of my readers really believe that there's no worth in genre. I should point out that this is not a specific attack against Niall; his post was merely an excuse to let out some steam that has been building for a while.]

Genre is inherently inferior?

Bull. Shit.

First of all, this all depends on your definition of genre. Are we limiting ourselves to epic fantasy, second world fiction, or what? Hell, I've read quite a few things from the Literature section of my Barnes and Noble that were most certainly genre in all but public perception. How, exactly, was the talking cat with a gun in Master and Margarita a realistic concept? Or, for that matter, Satan's literal appearance in that very book? Why is one book about a psychic team in world war two considered the highest of Literature (Gravity's Rainbow), while you've got so many others clogging up that same tired vein that it's considered cliche when anyone else does it? Why, again, is it not fantasy when Gulliver meets an entire kingdom of miniature people?

Now, the answer to all of the above is obvious: quality. If a book meets a certain standard (especially if it has time on its side) it is not viewed as fantasy. To paraphrase Steven Erikson, fantasy books are never viewed as good by the mainstream, they are merely made "extraordinary" and removed from the genre entirely. So, if you are seeking to say that fantasy itself is inferior, I'd like to see a cadre of writers who can put Gravity's Rainbow to shame. While you're at it, please also discount The Road, Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrel, 1984, Brave New World, etc.

But we don't even need to leave the boundaries of traditionally accepted fantasy to find great works. No, I would not hold your average fantasy novel up as an excellent artistic work - but neither would I hold up your average nongenre work as such, either. You are, perhaps, right in saying that there are numerically more superlative literary works, but that's merely time at work, and to deny the existence of genre greats is ludicrous. You give me Crime and Punishment (a book whose brilliance I will most certainly not deny), and I will give you City of Saints and Madmen, The City and The City, and American Gods. Hyperion, Watchmen, and Titus Groan. The Book of the New Sun, A Shadow Out of Time, and The Masque of the Red Death. Dune, The Lord of the Rings, and The Dying Earth. Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Malazan, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Etc.

And no, that last title was not a mistake. I'm not saying that GRRM's work was as successful as, say, Tolstoy in the understanding of what drives man on both an individual and a societal scale. However, Martin, and countless other authors (genre and non genre) show individual lives with such finesse that I think we do learn something from seeing them, even if it's not a tangible something that we can ever put into words or properly sum up in a theme. Reading about real characters, reading the absolute masters of characterization, provides, I believe, its own lessons and insights, regardless of whether you are discussing a popularly acclaimed author or Robin Hobb. Just because a work is entertainment does not also mean that it is worthless.

[I cleaned up my language in a few places from the comments, but left the ideas unchanged.]

The Turned Brain and Fixing Tags

While you wait for my Graphic Novels post, or perhaps the first of the Urban Fantasy reviews, some normal reviews, or whatever else you happen to be here for, I advice you to head on over to The Turned Brain and get ready to add another blog to your list. Megan's reviews are concise and insightful, a combination that's only helped by the absurd rate at which she's reviewing. Ten books in July? Ten? I'm being put to shame, damn it!

And, in other news, I've decided to change my post tags to something that makes some degree of sense. I can no longer remember why I thought having Richard K. Morgan be three separate tags was a good idea (maybe so people can search by middle initial?), but I think it's time to fix that into something a bit less...cluttered.

An Addendum to my The City and The City Review

Over on his blog, Graeme posted the reading group questions from the back of The City and The City. Seeing as I'd done a review the day before, I felt that I had no choice at all but to spew out yet more wordage on the subject. My response can be found in the comments to his post, but I'll repost the main part of it here:

China Mieville says that he considers ‘The City & The City’ “a crime novel above all.” Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not?

Not at all, really. I think that the crime is important in that it's a breach of the social boundaries/rules that govern the novel, but I don't think that it is the defining event by any stretch of the imagination.

Try to think of the novel primarily in science fictional or fantasy terms instead of as a crime novel. Is there any evidence that the novel falls into either of these categories? How would looking at the novel from these perspectives change your perception of the story?

Well...that's exactly how I looked at it, so not much. I simply don't see how The City and The City could be expected to function without at least the guise of its speculative elements. As a crime novel, it's about someone who breaks a tradition that's too ridiculous to ever really believe in. As a fantasy, it's about someone who breaks a rule of nature that we gradually realize is merely arbitrary and man made. You end up at the same place, but only one allows (me) suspension of belief to any degree. Not to mention that, as a pure crime novel, the lackluster resolution to the mystery is even more of a blow.*

Mieville calls the crime novel “a kind of dream fiction masquerading as a logic puzzle.” What do you think he meant by that, and how does ‘The City & The City’ measure up to that definition?

It's an interesting definition, as, no matter how seemingly messy the mystery, there is always an underlying order to the bizarre events around it. I'd say that it could apply to The City and The City quite well, but only if one mangles Mieville's meaning a bit. This is, after all, a novel about what is almost a collective delusion (the unchangeable nature of our own perceptions), which has strict rationalizations underneath it. It is, in a way, showing us the flaws in our overly-neat perceptions of the world (IE, the standard mystery plot that, by nature, has a solution).*

Why do you think that Mieville… calls this novel an ‘anti-fantasy’? What does this term suggest to you? Do you agree that it describes ‘The City & The City’?

As is no doubt obvious by now, I agree completely. The City and The City undermines just about every expectation most go into genre novels armed with, but it does so in a way that relies on them precisely as much as it subverts them.

* Places where I cleaned up my wording or expressed my point better than I did in the comments.