David J. Williams

Two announcements in the wake of Capclave…first, huge congrats to Tom Doyle, whose short story “Wizard of Macatawa” won the Washington Science Fiction Association’s Small Press Award last night, beating out heavyweights such as Elizabeth Bear, among others. “Wizard” appeared last year in Paradox; Tom’s website has an audio of the story as well.

Second, Craig Gidney’s short story collection, Sea, Swallow Me, has been (very favorably) reviewed by Electric Velocipede’s John Klima on Tor.com’s sparkling new website; Klima writes of the stories’ “lyrical mysticism” and provides some links to some of the tales as well.  He’s right:  they’re well worth checking out.

I’ll be in Rockville this weekend at Capclave 2008; my schedule’s as follows:

Saturday, October 18th: Space Warfare (panel), 10 a.m.

Sunday, October 19th: Why Did We Give Up On Space? (panel), 10 a.m.; reading from THE MIRRORED HEAVENS at 11:30 a.m.

I’m not exactly a morning person, so expect to see me no further than a foot from a cup of coffee during all of this.  At any rate, it should be a nice break from revising the second novel while I obsessively check my election RSS feeds. : )

Paolo Bacigalupi fielded a question posed by a commenter on his blog recently that continues to make the rounds: whether or not SF writers “undercut their fiction by talking about the election” on their blogs. He gave a good answer that’s worth reading in its entirety, as is John Scalzi’s response. But it’s left me thinking that in some ways, the very fact that someone could even ASK this question is a measure of just how fucked up our political discourse has been getting—or maybe how isolated/out-of-touch certain portions of the SF community have become, and how deep our heads are buried in the sand.

Because as troublesome as I find the question, it gets at a very real problem.  I see lots of authors’ blogs out there; some of them are great, some of them less so; some of them post every day—many (like Making Light) make politics an ongoing focus . . . but there’s a lot of them out there that never, EVER post on the election or on politics.  Presumably some of them don’t care (in which case I can’t help but wonder how they came to write SF in the first place), but one can only assume that others care too much:  they’re worried that they’ll turn off the right, or the left, or whatever, and it’s safer to just talk about their latest book or some Youtube video or a bunch of fucking LOLCats.

And they ought to reconsider.  One of the things that happens in fascist societies (or in societies in which the rule of law is unraveling) is that people become afraid to talk about politics for fear it will impact their livelihood.  Our society feels on the brink to me in ways that it hasn’t previously, and this should concern us all.  We’ve got secret prisons; we’ve got enemies lists that no one can get off of; we’ve got unprecedented surveillance of the homeland; we’ve got an election about to take place amidst horrendous economic conditions and growing accusations of vote fraud . . . and we’ve got far too many people on the sidelines in silence or denial.  And way too many of them are writers.  People, wake up.  Speak up.  You may not have another chance.

And suddenly space elevators are back in the news, with a couple of articles getting circulation in anticipation of a conference to be held in Japan in November (someone’s PR dollars are getting results). Not much that’s new here, though I should note that Brian Turner of the Kansas City Space Pirates managed to get on Conan O’Brien, so not bad. The KC Space Pirates, in case you’re wondering, are one of the groups that’s competing for the equivalent of the Space Elevator X prize (actually a series of prizes), so we might here more from them soon.

What I’m still not seeing, though, is anything on LEO elevators. Quick refresher: the holy grail of space elevators is a mega-structure rooted to the equator and extending all the way out past geostationary orbit, whereas THE MIRRORED HEAVENS features a low-orbit elevator, a four thousand kilometer structure that orbits Earth.  What’s the advantage?  Well, a LEO elevator isn’t as tough to build as a GEO elevator, but it’s still pretty useful, since it allows attainment of orbit via suborbital speeds.  More specs are at this NASA paper here, btw (search under “leo space elevator”).  I ripped them off pretty much verbatim for the book, but keep that one to yourself.

And of course none of these great plans and prizes for elevators focus on blowing them up, but I’m sure we’ll get there in due time.  Stay tuned.

Palin came out swinging last night, and won the first part of the debate hands down. Some of her language about a “whole team of mavericks” was pretty laughable, but it was effective, and Biden had his work cut out for him to avoid losing the debate altogether. Ultimately he beat her in the post-debate polling, largely because the more the debate wore on, the more obvious it became just how scripted Palin was. Still, the debate was definitely a strategic win for her, in the sense that she avoided meltdown and ended any chances of her being removed from the ticket.  (Indeed, the rumor that keeps on circulating is that Biden will the one who steps down; this is almost certainly disinformation, but then again, the VP candidate has yet to release his medical records, so it can’t be ruled out.)

Meanwhile the bailout bill has passed both Senate and House and is headed for the pen of the Decider even as I write this.  After that, Paulson can start spending like there’s no tomorrow.  And there may not be, since at least one school of thought says that the bailout could be the very thing that delivers the coup de grace to the economy, undermining the only thing propping up what’s left of the world financial order:  the once mighty dollar.  In which case, we officially become the butt of the joke of the gods, and Paulson and Bernanke will both spend the rest of their lives in prison, along with anyone else various torchlit mobs can round up.

But as to how likely a Shock Medicine Kills the Patient Scenario is . . we’ll just have to see.  My instinct says that when you’re in a giant bubble, the last thing you do is inflate it still further.  But the real problem is that economics is fraught with all the uncertainty of any open system, particularly when you get down to the system’s axioms (e.g., is a Keynesian approach even valid anymore?).  Were the next great depression to begin tomorrow, everyone would have lots of reasons why, but no one could have predicted it with 100% surety.  And if things turn around and cruise back to normal, same thing:  lots of reasons will be handed out, but there’s no way anyone could have known for sure in advance.  Some say that capitalism is an awesome thing; I prefer the word “precarious.”  And getting ever more so.

Today we keep the silence.

Well, okay . . . the bestseller list at Borderlands Bookstore in San Francisco. But still: the book was first (!) on the July trade paperback list, and then came in fourth for the month of August, tying with Warren Ellis’ CROOKED LITTLE VEIN! (A tie with Warren #$# Ellis! Can life get any stranger than this? Hopefully the answer’s yes, and I’ll *steamroller* him next time around.)

At any rate, here’s a link, but I’m posting the entire July list as well, as it’s pretty interesting. Very cool to see that Richard Morgan’s ALTERED CARBON just keeps on selling. And I’ve heard a lot of good things about WJW’s IMPLIED SPACES. Can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

(And thanks to Alan and Jude and all at Borderlands for being such incredible advocates for what I’ve written.)

Top Sellers At Borderlands

Hardcover:
1. Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson
2. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
3. Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik
4. Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
5. Implied Spaces by Walter John Williams
6. Escapement by Jay Lake
7. Jhegaala by Steven Brust
8. The Man With the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove
9. The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
10. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

Mass Market:
1. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
2. The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
3. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
4. Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
5. Snake Agent by Liz Williams
6. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
7. Mainspring by Jay Lake
8. Shadows Return by Lynn Flewelling
9. Valiant: The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell
10. Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder tie with
The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper

Trade Paperback:
1. Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams
2. Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan
3. Spook Country by William Gibson
4. Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
5. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie tie with
The Word of God by Thomas Disch

I’m late to the party: the graphic novel Elric: The Making of a Sorceror came out in 2007, but I’m only just now getting around to reading it. Which is a shame, because it’s quite well-done. The art is gorgeous (apart from Yyrkoon being #$@# BALD), and the storyline is an interesting prequel to the events that start off the first Elric novel, centering around a ritual dream-battle between Elric and Yyrkoon over who is more worthy of being the next emperor of Melnibone. Best of all is that Moorcock himself wrote the damn thing; it’s nice to see that he’s not yet in the business of farming off pieces of the core franchise to hack writers.

Which doesn’t mean that this graphic novel doesn’t fall into some of the same traps the novels did. Every time Elric gets into some impossible situation, that ol’ chaos lord Arioch’s bailing him out, and carting off all the blood and souls in sight by way of recompense. But whatever. The Elric novels broke so much new ground—they were so alive and wonderful and WEIRD—that a little bit of deus ex machina never really bothered me.  Especially because it was part of Elric’s larger fate and ultimate damnation.

And of course now I’m back and rereading the rest of the series. Some of the prose from the Elric books feels a little stilted/dated now, but I can’t decide if that’s because I first read them in junior high or because Moorcock was the one who was inventing so many of the cliches that have since passed into modern fantasy. And I challenge anyone to come up with a better action/drama sequence than the sacking of the Dreaming City that opens Book Three.  (Though why the fuck the Melnibonean fleet waited till AFTER the reavers had sacked Immyr before burning them to the waterline is beyond me; it made for great drama but shit logic. But maybe I just answered my own question.)

And most intriguing of all, the rumors of an Elric movie continue to persist.  As, regrettably, do the rumors that the same team that brought us the Nutty Professor 2 and American Pie is involved. Meaning that (like Elric) we just can’t win:  either (a) there’ll be no movie or (b) we’ll have to watch Cymoril tell us all about band practice and that damn flute of hers. You have been warned.

During my WorldCon roundup yesterday, I mentioned that my agent Jenny Rappaport first embarked upon her literary career during junior high. And now, in a stunning move, she has published on her blog the long-lost story “The Tragic Demise of the Quack-Quacks.” Written by Jenny when she was in the seventh grade, this legendary tale is packed full of surprise twists and teaches us a valuable lesson on the capriciousness of life. I particularly like the fact that we first meet two of the lovable duck characters when they’re dead.

Moments after they’ve killed each other.

By drowning.

And now you know you have no choice but to read on.

In no particular order:

The NORAD tour. What could be more fun than hanging out in the chambers from which World War Three would have been fought? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Having dinner with the folks from io9: I met editor Annalee Newitz on the NORAD tour; later in the con, I had the chance to hang out more with her and news editor Charlie Jane Anders. It was awesome to find that the io9 overlords are just as witty in-person as they are online.  Plus the Mongolian stir-fry BBQ that they suggested rocked.

Clarion 07 classmate Derek Zumsteg one-upping Tor editor David Hartwell during the Clarion panel: following Hartwell’s comment about Seattle being a “swamp filled with half-formed egos”, Zumsteg shot back without missing a beat about New York City and all its “fully formed egos.”  Incidentally, Zumsteg has a story in Asimov’s this month, so check it out.

Hanging out with Gail Carriger:  Never heard of her?  You will.  Two years ago she and I were prowling the LA WorldCon as members of the wannabee novelist crew.  And now we’ve both made the Big Leap:  Gail just signed a two book deal with Orbit; her first novel, SOULLESS, will be out next year, and looks cool as hell.  So does Gail, for that matter.  This is a writer with some serious style.  I predict great things.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s Campbell win:  Her stories rock, and (taking nothing away from the other contenders) it’s nice to see that the Campbell doesn’t automatically go to the person with the biggest novel deal.  Plus, I’ve never seen anyone more radiant than Kowal subsequent to the award.  John Scalzi posted earlier today about the moment when the Hugo winners came past the Hyatt bar; it was pretty surreal to watch from the sidelines.

Elizabeth Bear’s Hugo win:   Bear officially makes the transition from rising star to full-on star, and it’s about time.  #$ awesome.  As is winning story Tidelines.

Drinks with superagent Jenny Rappaport:  who I met at the WorldCon two years ago, and is the reason why MIRRORED HEAVENS is published.  But that’s nothing compared to hearing about her own writings, in particular being treated to a synopsis of her very first short story, written when she was in the fourth grade:  The Tragic Demise of the Quack-Quacks.  She promised me she’d post it on her blog some day; I hope that day is soon.

Getting back home to D.C.:  it’s been a while.  ‘Nuff said for now.