On my story appearing in Sporty Spec: Games of the Fantastic:
An 800-year-old wizard wants to be a college football player in “The Football Phase” by Connor Moran. This fun, light tale follows the wizard’s long-suffering assistant as she attempts to keep his latest folly “under the radar” and evil, power-hungry wizards off his trail.
From The Fix.
I just got my contributor copy of “Sporty Spec: Games of the Fantastic.” As I mentioned back in June, they purchased a flash fiction piece of mine entitled “The Football Phase.” If you want to read what I write about other things than kitchen appliances, you should buy it here. In addition to my piece, there’s a bunch of other fun fiction and poetry based around the mashing up of SF/Fantasy concepts with sports and games. I haven’t read every piece yet, but I’ve already read a bunch that I’ve quite enjoyed. You should definitely check it out.
Since I wrote about the nominees for the short story category of the Hugo awards earlier, I thought I ought to mention that the winners have now been announced. My favorite of the short story nominees, “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt, pulled out the win. I guess my tastes aren’t as wonky as I sometimes think. I’ve read the winner for best novella, “A Billion Eves,” by Robert Reed. I quite liked it, but I can’t exactly comment on it’s choice, since I haven’t read any of the other nominees. I haven’t read the winner for best novelette, “The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald, so I certainly can’t complain about that choice, but I have to admit that I was pulling for another nominee, “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman. This was a pretty controversial story, but pushed my buttons nicely.
I found it interesting that all three of these short fiction winners were published originally in Asimov’s Science Fiction. In fact, “The Djinn’s Wife” and “Impossible Dreams” actually appeared in the same issue. When I looked at the nominees, I realized that this wasn’t as surprising as I’d originally thought, Asimov’s was the source of four out of the five novella nominees, three out of the five short story nominees, and two out of the five novelette nominees. No other publication was the source of more than one of the fifteen. This says a lot of good for Asimov’s editor, Sheila Williams, especially when you consider that 2006 was only her second year at the helm.
In fact, it makes it almost look a little odd that she lost to Gordon Van Gelder (editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine) for best editor. But, hell, I love F&SF and have been reading it for much of Van Gelder’s 10-year run. I’d have probably voted for him too.
Film award went to Pan’s Labyrinth, no shock there, although I think the category was stronger this year than a lot of years–at least judging from the previous winners. I certainly wouldn’t have argued if The Prestige won, although I know a lot of people didn’t like that as much as I did. From what I’ve heard, Children of Men was excellent as well, although I still haven’t had the chance to see it. Guillermo del Toro deserves a Hugo, although I’d probably have given it to him for The Devil’s Backbone ahead of Pan’s Labyrinth. Then again, I suppose the voters might have considered that too much of a horror film to fit into the SF/fantasy paradigm–it wasn’t even nominated, and even if it had been, there was pretty much no way it was going to beat out The Fellowship of the Ring. It also seems that it’s only the second film to win the award that wasn’t made in English–after only Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It does seem that a lot of the best SF film is being made outside of Hollywood these days, so it’s good to see that the Hugo voters acknowledging that.
At any rate, you can check out all of the winners here, and the nominees here. If you’re reading this sometime later, you’ll probably be able to get all the info at the second link; the winners were just announced in the past couple of days and Locus hasn’t gotten them up yet, but I’m sure they will.
I’ve mentioned earlier how much I love Escape Pod, the weekly podcast of short science fiction. This week was a story that I just had to link to because it strikes so close to the core idea of The Angriest Rice Cooker in the World. The host, Steve Eley, even mentions his own fuzzy logic rice cooker and the absurdity of a rice cooker that’s smarter than the family dog when he’s talking about his own love of gadgets. The story is called Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush. The titular Toothbrush has a very different response to his lot than our Rice Cooker friend, but they’re dealing with fundamentally the same problem: wanting more for themselves than their creators gave them. Plus it made me laugh out loud, so I think you’ll like it too.
I just watched Goro Miyazaki’s Tales of Earthsea/Gedo Senki again with some friends. Although this was a much better version with much better subtitles, it didn’t really change my thoughts about the film, which I discussed here. But afterwards I was doodling around a little on Ursula K. Le Guin’s web site afterward and came across a short essay entitled “What Makes A Story.” Now, I’ve read a very similarly titled essay, “What is a Short Story?” by Marion Zimmer Bradley, another writer I respect a lot. Bradley’s essay made me mad with the limiting definition it gave for the “commercial” short story. Someday I may write more about that, but suffice it to say that I was little bit hesitant when I clicked on this link on Le Guin’s page.
I was silly to worry. Not only are her meditations on what a story is beautiful and expansive enough to include all the stories I love, she wonderfully encapsulated what I think is so wrong about traditional attempts to define the story by writing:
“A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end:” This comes from Aristotle, and it splendidly describes a great many stories from the European narrative tradition, but it doesn’t describe all stories. It’s a recipe for steak, it’s not a recipe for tamales.
I think the best antidote for restrictive definitions of stories is just to read a lot of different stories from different cultures and see for yourself how false they really are. Le Guin captures that idea marvelously.
If you’re interested in reading one of the stories I’ve been writing, you’ll get your chance sometime around October when Story Number Five, a flash peice entitled “The Football Phase” appears in the anthology Sporty Spec: Tales of the Fantastic from Raven Electrick Ink. Watch this space: I’ll definitely let you guys know when the anthology becomes available.
Now that I’ve gotten my unexpected positive reinforcement, time to go back to the story mine and grind out some more fiction.
So, as I mentioned on Monday (in a post written last Friday, confusingly enough) I was in Idaho for the past week in order to take the LSAT. As for how that went, well, ask me on July 2nd when I get my score. The trip involved a lot of long drives, and so it was the perfect chance for me to check out a podcast I had been meaning to for a while, Escape Pod. This is a weekly podcast of SF short stories. They pay the writers and accept previously published stuff, so the fiction is quite good. And over the month of April, they did a bunch of this year’s Hugo nominees. In fact, they did four of the five stories nominated in the short fiction category. I had actually read the fifth one, Neil Gaiman’s “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” in an issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction earlier this year, so I’ve now read or heard all of them. So I thought I’d share my thoughts. You definitely shouldn’t take my word for it on any of these, though. Download the podcasts yourself at Escape Pod, or in the case of the Gaiman story, you can read it or listen to it from his web site here.
Here’s the list, with my thoughts on each:
I was pretty surprised to hear that this was one of the nominees. Not that I necessarily should have been–Gaiman’s American Gods won the Hugo in 2002. But I was found this story pretty forgettable, frankly. Not bad, certainly, but far from the greatest the genre has to offer. I remember the characterization being very solid and believable, but I just didn’t care about the story that much. I guess I’m generally not as into Gaiman as a lot of people. By the time I got into comics, Sandman was, while still good, nowhere near as singular as it had been when it came out. Once you’ve read Berlin and From Hell and Phoenix and Y the Last Man and Fables and all the rest, it’s hard to see Sandman as all that special. I feel the same way about Gaiman’s prose work that I’ve read, only more so. Good but not great.
In a futuristic world where aliens visit regularly and the continent is vastly overpopulated, a poor kid scrapes together 200 bucks to hire an alien assassin to kill a man who threatens his sister’s life. There’s more to both the boy and the hired killer than would appear at first glance. Like the Gaiman story, this one stands out more because of its interesting characters than because of the story. But where Gaiman’s story excels in its characterization of normal, recognizable people, this one works because of the uniqueness of the characters. But also like the Gaiman story, this one didn’t give me enough that I could really apply any superlatives to it. Another “good, not great.”
Here we see some of the vast imaginative scope that SF is capable of, where “universe” is only a small unit of measure. Large parts of the action take place in what are explicitly metaphors for highly advanced algorithms and such. This worked well for me, a kind of beautiful merging of concrete and abstract. There is a definite lyrical sense to this piece. It’s not surprising that it was published in Strange Horizons, a professional SF webzine that does a lot of more lyrical SF and fantasy stories. Sometimes they even go a little too far in the direction of poetry for me and I have trouble sussing out the story underneath, but this one definitely worked for me–the story is clear. But the appeal of this one is the vastness of imaginespace it takes up.
I could possibly have guessed without knowing where the previous story came from (although I could also have seen it being published in Fantasy and Science Fiction). But this one surprised me. It was published in Analog’s Science Fiction Magazine, known generally for having stories where strong characters are emphasized. This story, perhaps the most formally inventive of this years nominees, doesn’t really have characters at all. At least not in the traditional sense. The story is a description of the short-lived science fiction television series “Invasion,” aired by a doomed fledgling network sometime in the mid-2010s. Slow-moving and running contrary to most television conventions, it is canceled after only 8 episodes. But the series holds some secrets that guarantee it a place as one of the greatest cult classics in history. Anyone who can make what is essentially an encyclopedia entry from the future this compelling deserves a serious pat on the back. I highly recommend this one.
Man, if you have even a little sliver of movie love, this one is for you. Actually, if you’re a geek at all–or even an appreciator of any art, I think you’ll recognize something here. Ok, I basically recommend this one to everyone. Pete is a serious film buff–it’s basically his reason for getting out of bed. So when he finds a video store a few blocks from his house that he’d never seen before, he knew right away that something was off. He stepped in and began browsing. Then he saw it: “The Magnificient Ambersons: The Directors Cut….”
Seriously. Go read it or listen to it. It’s just delightful. That it coincidentally shares a name with one of my favorite Iron Maiden songs just makes it perfect
There’s a lot of ways that I can enjoy a story, and a lot of different levels. But especially when I’m doing a lot of writing, I tend to look at things through that particular lens. And every once in a while I come across a story that hits me in just the right spot. And today, I think I first really became aware of what that spot is. It’s me saying “this is what I want to do”. It’s a weird beautiful bittersweet feeling. I get this feeling off Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez, Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder and The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock, and Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. And today, as I was reading The Year’s Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection, I got it off this story, which is apparently free online for a limited time. I’ve been reading a lot of SF lately, mostly to get a feel for different markets. I’ve probably read two dozen different SF, fantasy, and horror stories in the past couple of weeks. This was the first one to get me that way.
So, um, go read it. I think you’ll like it too.
So, on Tuesday of this week, I had my absolutely last class as an undergraduate. That means that I have a little bit more free time now. I’m taking it somewhat easy this summer. Easy meaning that I’m working less than full time and only undertaking two major volunteer projects.
Now, I’m always doing some kind of writing project. If I don’t, something in me will make me start one. That’s what happened when The Angriest Rice Cooker started. And when I took on another big writing project as the main part of my school work this year, The Angriest Rice Cooker got pushed aside. But now that big writing project is over unless/until I can con a publisher into being interested. So at the end of April I started a new kind of project: writing a lot of short stories.
I’ve been doing that for about five weeks now. What I shoot for, based on the recommendation of an old writing teacher, is one story per week, or if I ever get bitten by the novel bug one chapter per week. That’s in advanced draft mode, but before soliciting feedback. Then in future weeks I keep working on old stories while hacking out the new ones. I’ve done OK. I’ve got four stories to the point where I am ready to get them critiqued, and two of those I’ve even already submitted. I’ve submitted three queries for my book project. So last night I started thinking about what my long term goals are for writing.
Next September through July I’m going to be doing a full time AmeriCorps position while I apply to graduate schools. Assuming all goes well, I’ll enter graduate school in the fall of 2008. At that point, I don’t think I’ll have time to put significant effort into writing. So I think I’m going to make it my goal to write at least 52 short stories in that period, starting five weeks ago. This will give me time to take some weeks to do more revisions, while still giving me a sizable enough reserve of stories that I can keep up efforts to get them published even once I don’t have time to generate as much new material. Which leads me to me second goal, which isn’t limited by the same time. My goal is to make at least 150 separate submissions of short fiction work to markets. That means that each story will get submitted to about three places on average. There will almost surely be some stories I don’t try to submit at all, and others that I keep hacking away at. Obviously, this math falls apart if the stories start getting accepted at the first or second places that see them. But I think that’s a problem that I can live with.
I’m posting this here because I’m a lot more likely to meet goals that I’ve publicly declared. I also plan on adding a little meter to the sidebar of the Angriest Rice Cooker in the World site to keep track of my efforts towards this goal.
Ok, off to finish story number five.
Want a new comic? Here’s the next best thing: A new punchline. This was the first one that, looking at it now, I just don’t feel like had the kind of punch that I wanted. But don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Lucas on you: both the new one and the old one live beyond the cut, along with an explanation about why I made the change, and some musings on poetics. I’m interested to hear what people think about the difference: is the new one funnier, or should I have left well enough alone?
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