I've just learned that Thomas M. Disch, author, teacher, editor, and poet, has passed away. He is the second instructor I had at the Clarion Science-Fiction Writing Workshop to have died in the past few weeks, having been preceded by Algis Budrys. In addition to having both been teachers of mine, Tom and Ajay were bound together in another, far more intense way, as can be seen by the recent posting in which Tom wrote of Ajay, "I was certain I would beat him to the exit, but no I get to dance on his grave," an eerie sentiment to reread in light of this new context.

I can no longer remember when I read my first Disch, but I can very much remember when I read my favorite Disch. It was in the pages of Terry Carr's 1967 Ace Books anthology New Worlds of Fantasy, which reprinted "The Squirrel Cage." The story begins:

The terrifying thing—if that's what I mean—I'm not sure that "terrifying" is the right word—is that I'm free to write down anything I like but that no matter what I do write down it will make no difference—to me, to you, to whomever differences are made. But then what is meant by "a difference?" Is there ever really such a thing as change?

We learn that our narrator is locked in a small, windowless room. He has no memory of how he got there or why he is there. Perhaps he volunteered for an experiment. Perhaps he's the sole survivor of the human race, Perhaps he's being studied by aliens. All he knows is that time is passing while the only things he has with which to entertain himself are the copies of the New York Times which keep showing up in the room.

And a typewriter, with no platen. He cannot see the results of his typing, and so he imagines that his words appear outside his room, perhaps like a news ticker in lights scrolling across the side of a building as crowds watch. We experience his despair as one day blends into another, and he struggles to stay sane and survive. The story ends with:

"Terrifying?"

It's not terrifying. How can it be? It's only a story, after all. Maybe you don't think it's a story, because you're out there reading it on the billboard, but I know it's a story because I have to sit here on this stool making it up. Oh it might have been terrifying once upon a time, when I first got the idea, but I've been here now for years. Years. The story has gone on far too long. Nothing can be terrifying for years on end. I only say it's terrifying because, you know, I have to say something. Something or other. The only thing that could terrify me now is if someone were to come in. If they came in and said, "All right, Disch, you can go now." That, truly, would be terrifying.

I was only 12 when I read this story, and it made an immediate existential impact on me. It apparently had the same affect on many others. When I went to Clarion in 1979, primarily because I wanted to be taught by Tom, I started to tell him how much a certain story had moved me. He instantly knew which story I'd meant. People were always coming up to him to tell him how much that particular story had changed their lives, including one woman who had memorized the entire tale. I never went quite that far, but Tom did change my life.

While at Clarion, he told me things which had they been said by anyone else, I might not have heard. But getting critiqued by Tom was like getting hit by a 2"-by-4". He got my full attention. I left my one-on-one with Tom stunned, but as soon that critical concussion wore off, I put what he taught me into practice.

I loved his short stories such as "Descending" and "The Roaches, and his novels such as Camp Concentration and On Wings of Song, and ... well ... I wouldn't be who I am today without both them and him.

When I first read though The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, one of the entries I immediately paged to was Tom's. There I came across the following words written by John Clute:

Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distant mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Thomas M. Disch has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers.

And though that sort of description might put off those of you who dream of bestsellerdom, when I read those words, I immediately thought, if anyone could ever honestly describe my work in that way, I would be happy. It would be enough. I have no idea what Tom thought of that write-up, but I hope that he, too, was pleased.

And now he's suddenly gone, with a new novel just out, and having blogged as tomsdisch just a few days ago. I'm stunned, and saddened, and not sure what else to say, other than to repeat these words from "The Squirrel Cage":

"All right, Disch, you can go now."

Let me get his out of the way first:  Last night I got an e-mail from Rob Sawyer, and I don’t think he’ll mind if I quote it directly here:

“Oh, and think about STANLEY SCHMIDT when
 doing your Hugo voting. This is his
 THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY as editor of ANALOG.
 In every one of those years, ANALOG has been
 the world's number-one best-selling
 English-language SF magazine, and Stan has
 been nominated every year for the
 best-editor Hugo, but has never won.”

I ditto this.  The Hugo ballot is due tomorrow.   Stan is a terrific editor and we fans need to give him that Hugo!



Last night Geoff and I went to see The Happening.

I’m a big M. Night Shyamalan fan, and not just because I won a Nebula the same night he won for The Sixth Sense.  Shyamalan’s detractors ( if you Google his name or the titles of any of his movies you’ll find them, alas) can’t quite put their finger on what they don’t like, so I’ll put it in a single phrase:  he’s not slick.

And that’s just what I like about him.

Shyamalan decided early on to emulate older, pre-special-effects story telling values, and it shows in his films.  It’s well known that he loves Hitchcock.  Like Hitchcock, his movies are each based on a disquieting premise that has nothing to do with the number of different ways you can film deafening car crashes or trace the path of a bullet or morph somebody’s head into a tiger’s.   They have to do with messing with our heads.

Somebody (tell me who?) said writing is a form of telepathy.  The writer creates an image, and with a relatively small number of words, plants that image in the reader's head.  The image may be twisted or altered, but those alterations fit the experiences and psychology of the reader.  Telepathy.

And when Shyamalan does the telepathy trick, when he messes with our heads, the result is naive, fresh, authentic.  It’s about the story.  It’s about the effect the premise has on the characters.   It’s not about how you can twist events to show a giant tree eating people or a field of monstrous corn with fangs.

Frankly, my favorite of his films is not The Sixth Sense, as powerful as I found that one.  It’s The Village.  At one point, the monster is glimpsed out of the corner of the camera’s eye, and you say, “But that looks so fake.”  The point is, it is fake.  The Village is about technology and about a refusal to participate in the madness of the modern world, and about the sacrifices people are willing, or not willing, to make to escape.

I know he got panned for Lady in the Water, but I think detractors were missing the point.  The contrast between the tawdry apartment building with its cheesy landscaping and unglamorous tenants  (he loves middle American settings and faces, particularly Pennsylvania and people who look like they live in Pennsylvania) on the one hand and the inner fantasy of the story on the other is striking.  It’s true, the special effects are outwardly not convincing.  The shabbiness of the setting is a foil. The inner reality, created through the illusion of storytelling, is what matters.

I was also quite fond of Signs, and in fact it inspired me to write a crop-circle story (Ewaipanoma, though my crop circles are only peripheral).   Again, Shyamalan uses the magician’s trick of what is not seen.  He doesn’t bother with pretty talking robotic animatronic aliens, because that’s not the point.  We can summon better aliens up from our dreams.

But I also am mulling over The Happening and thinking it may be my new favorite.  Special effects here?  A bit of stage gore here and there, nothing you couldn’t do with a prosthetic makeup kit like those my students used  back at Kent Trumbull theater.   A car crash.  A couple crash dummies filmed from a distance.  Trees and high grass waving in the wind.  The real special effects are all inside.  What drives a normal man to suddenly take a commonplace piece of power equipment and end his life in a hideously painful and wryly ironic way?  It’s in your head.

Yes, yes, his dialog sometimes seems a bit too expository.  But if the point of a movie is what happens between your ears instead of what happens in the CGI lab, maybe you need a bit more exposition.

So, I love Shyamalan as a creative genius, just like I love the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson and David Lynch and Sergio Sanchez.  They aren’t slaves to the mainstream.  They’re trying to do something else. 

And that something else is: get us to think scary thoughts.

Happy birthday, eleanor

Put on Trigun. Western-inspired anime about guns, desert planets, redemption, human resiliency, donuts and portable confessionals are my panacea.

Now if only I could hunt down all 2 billion volumes of the manga.

The Sunday Washington Post magazine has a nice one-page feature called "First Person Singular" where each week a DC-area person talks about some aspect of his or her life. This week it's Virginia Democratic Senator Jim Webb, who starts out by saying, "The most disciplined thing I've ever done in my life is probably the act of writing a book — and novels are harder than nonfiction."

For a guy who wrested a Senate seat back from Republicans in a state so red it's practically blushing, that's quite a nice compliment to writers. There's some stuff on the how-I-finally-got-published logistics in the middle, along with some nice metaphors on politics ("dancing with a bear") and then he closes with, ". . . nothing gives me greater pleasure than to write something that I believe is really good. Writing is what I will always do, no matter what. My mind always writes. You never stop writing if you're a writer."

Here, here!

Well, at least someone who has never seen Book 1 of the fantasy novella for middle-graders.  I've written the second book because the kids who loved the first one demanded more.  Hey, I'm easy.

The problem with a sequel is how much do you have to say about the prior book.  If one refers to the prior book, how much explanation is required?

So, I just want somebody who knows nothing about Book 1 (which pretty much covers the entire world) to read the first 3-4 chapters (they're short) of Book 2 and tell me how confused they are.

I want the second book to be readable without any more than a back cover description of what happened in the first.

Any volunteers?  I'll give you something free.  Let's make a deal. 

 

Facebook fears that insufficient self-identification by gender might be confusing.

Thanx to firecat

Living doll.

Thanx to rmjwell.

Copied from ecmyers:

As reported elsewhere on the internet (such as here and here), someone broke into the Clarion West house and stole four laptops and some personal belongings. This being a writing workshop, and an expensive one at that, this is a pretty significant problem.

I believe that temporary computers have been secured for the victims, but they still need to replace their computers after the workshop. I don't know their specific situations, but in addition to the tuition and housing expenses, these four students are also losing six weeks of income from their jobs, have to pay rent and bills back home for the duration, and in some cases have even quit their jobs in order to attend CW. Throwing on the cost of a new computer is an even bigger hardship.

As a writer, my computer is one of the essentials in my life, so I know how horrible this must be for everyone involved. If you have a computer in good working condition to donate to one of these unlucky students, please contact info@clarionwest.org to see if they can use it. Otherwise, I think cash donations are more helpful at this point, whatever you can spare. You can donate directly via PayPal at this page, but please mark it for "Computer Replacement" or such. Your donations are tax deductible. Clarion West is classified as a non-profit educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (Federal EIN 91-1352168).

If this had happened to me during my time at Clarion West, it would have been emotionally and financially devastating. I'm shocked and angry that the workshop experience has been marred for this year's class, when all they should have had to worry about was writing the best work possible and learning as much as they can. I hope they can still have an enjoyable and educational time; it would be a lot easier if they could recover from this with minimal loss. Money's tight for everyone always, but I'm going to contribute what I can, and I hope you'll consider doing so too. Please also pass on this news and request for help as you see fit.

I'm so furious this happened. I hope the thieves have an attack of conscience and end up giving them back. Or getting caught. Fucking BASTARDS. Besides the machines themselves, I can't imagine all the work that must already have been on there potentially unbacked up (gods know I hardly ever back up outside my hardrive ... Now, the paranoia will see that it's otherwise), the music, the photos, the videos... We condense so much of our lives into laptops nowadays, and the idea of it being taken is so much worse than the idea of it just being lost.

Brian and I packed up some cheese and crackers and a blanket and walked to the Shaker Heights fireworks.

Last year we drove, and were in agonized knots of traffic and so this year Brian said he just wasn't interested in seeing fireworks - you always end up stuck in miserable traffic jams afterward. So I suggested walking.

Dudes. It's 2 miles. I feel so foolish that we EVER drove. If the folks on our streets pulling in to their driveways were out seeing the same fireworks, we beat 'em home.

Also we got an excellent seat, on a little slope by the road, and we saw some other municipality's fireworks (Warrensville Heights maybe?) so well-framed by the trees we could have been there just for them. Those fireworks started only a minute or two after we settled down with our mini-picnic and ended shortly after the Shaker fireworks began.

Two grand finales! WOO! And the Shaker fireworks were close enough that we got that little tinge of fear and smell of the gunpowder.

Over all, a five-star firework experience this year. WOOO!

albionidaho reports laptops and other items stolen yesterday from students in one of the Clarion West houses. Not a happy Fourth for them. I can only imagine how that would affect the Clarion experience for the theft victims, especially if there was work-in-progress on the machines. What can you do to help? See her post for more info.

Back in the 70s Richard Nixon was forced out of office because his posse got caught treating the Democratic Party like a black group or a peace group. The Bush gang hasn't waterboarded any Democrats, but they're getting there.

Thanx to Hullabaloo

Yesterday, sarah_ovenall said she wouldn't speak ill of the dead on the day he died. Me neither. Today I channel Lord Byron:

In all our nation's storied realms
No nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Jesse Helms.
Stop, traveler, and piss.

Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills Radical Right

Funny mentalists go for the lesser of two evils. Needless to say, I think they should nominate their very own Nader instead.

Thanx to Pandagon.

"A criminal is someone who arrogates to himself the privileges of the government"--Fritz Perls

Thanx to The Sideshow.

Happy birthday, adammaker and laurel.

Several weeks ago, after Bill Shunn posted photos from his Clarion class of 1985 in the wake of Algis Budrys' death, I bemoaned the fact that—as far as I know—no photos exist from my own Clarion year.

Then I remembered that I do have one image that reflects how I looked as a member of the Clarion class of 1979, but it isn't a photograph—it's a portrait done of me by my classmate Barb Rausch. [Click on the image at right to view it at a larger size.]

After Clarion, Barb went on to become a well-known comic-book artist, drawing Katy Keene for Archie and Barbie for Marvel. Unfortunately, Barb passed away in 2001. She's the only member of my class to have died ... I think.

Not only did she draw me at Clarion, Barb also drew on me, as she painted the fake tattoos I sported when I dressed as a Hell's Angel for our '60s party.

So—the class of 1985 has photographs, while the class of 1979 has pencil drawings. I guess this means that if we query the class of 1968, we'll discover that all they have to remember their year are carvings on stone tablets!

I was a little scared to see Hancock - I'd heard rumors of sick humor, I feared racial stereotype jokes and tastelessness.

It got, like, a 30 on the Tomatometer (out of 100), and I trust the Tomatometer. Usually.

It was excellent. It was a thoughtful, touching and unpretentious look at the superhero through a non-affected modern eye. Touches of meta-fiction and all. There's a great plot twist halfway through that caught me completely by surprise, too, and the ending is redemptive.

Don't know why people aren't reviewing it well. I heard some felt it raised issues and didn't follow through or say anything about them - I disagree. I think it left the audience to draw its own conclusions and avoided being preachy. I think it had one of the most effective (and simultaneously quiet) illustrations of the old power-is-responsibility thing. If the secondary characters can feel a little flat at times, they are at least treated with dignity and a knowledge that each character has their own story.

So, yeah. Nice to be taken by surprise like that. Also it opens with J. Giles which is like, woah.

What is it with movies having surprising opening credits music this summer? We got Hello, Dolly! In Wall-e, AC/DC in Ironman, and now J. Giles wamma-jammin' the opening sequence in Hancock. I'm not complaining. It's nice, like I said, to be surprised. :)

I bought this album a little over a week ago to help tide me over until the concert on July 11th. It looks gorgeous; it features a white-clad, wry and unimpressed-looking Fortuna with a stylised cornucopia spilling coin out against a theatre-curtain-red background. I was deeply excited, and my sister and I giggled and bounced while I unwrapped it, popped it into the CD player in the car, and listened while we drove home.

We were both very disappointed. We didn't skip any songs, but we did often find ourselves drifting off and talking through a couple of them, frowning in puzzlement and wondering why this didn't sound like Great Big Sea.

"Sean sounds ... Tired," I said. My sister nodded, and suggested that they were, after all, about ten years older now than they are in what we're used to listening to. We play Turn, Play and Up almost all the time; it's our drive-in-to-work-happy music. The notion that folk as riotously fun as Great Big Sea could age made me very sad.

"This isn't a kitchen party," I said to her. "It sounds like they're cleaning up after the party, just them, singing kind of hoarsely and quietly while they do the dishes."

We listened on. A couple of songs perked us up, seemed to be what we were used to: "England," "The Banks of Newfoundland," "The Rocks of Merasheen." I was still perplexed, though; sure, I love the sea shanties, but that's not all I love about the band. Their own songs, their simple, so often heart-breaking lyrics, are what I think of when I think of them. I wanted their "NA na-na Na na nana na NA," their bounce, their joy. It seemed lacking. I learned that Hawksley Workman was involved with this, and felt resentful. Maybe outside influences were mucking up my beloved band.

But the cover kept drawing me back. I decided that something called Fortune's Favour deserved a second, third and fourth chance. And there were, after all, those songs I already liked. So I listened more, and the more I listened the more I realised that this was a really brilliantly put-together album, and while it wasn't what I was used to, it's still actually awesome. I'm really glad I gave it that fourth listen, because I adore this album now and can't get it out of my head.

( Song-by-song review here. )

So all in all, I really recommend this album. If I seemed hesitant to any of you while talking about it before, forget that. It's great, it does stuff that's different and sometimes questionable, but it's still Great Big Sea, and they're still made of love and joy and fun and growls that resolve into kisses and nips on the neck. I can't WAIT to see some of this material done live.

Back to work!

ETA: Clicking on the "info/lyrics" buttons on the site's track list helps me appreciate some of the songs I liked less; also, the album comes with a making-of DVD that I've yet to watch, but now that I've found the love, certainly will.

I've long had two LJ accounts, one I never really used and this one. (well, plus a couple of spares in case I need them. shhh.) For a long time I just friended people on both of them, but I'm phasing that one into mostly syndicated reading (and the odd person who has me friended there and not here.)

so if you saw me unfriend you over there today, that's why. Or you can just assume I hate you.