Jakob Schmidt

K.J. Parker, Purple and Black - German translation

2012-01-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

My German translation of K.J. Parkers excellent novella "Purple & Black" has just been published as a beautiful paperback edition by Golkonda press, German publisher of authors like David Marusek, Ted Chiang and Joe Lansdale. I hope I was able to do justice to Parker's sense of humor, wit and complexity. I can honestly say that I never before had so much fun translating a book. Who knows, if the fun is reflected in sales, Golkonda might publish another book by Parker (maybe even one of the meatier novels - The Company, for example) - I would certainly be looking forward to it!

German authors: Markolf Hoffmann

2012-01-01T06:27:00.000-08:00

This is the first of (hopefully) many articles about some of my favourite authors writing in German; most of them haven't been translated into English (yet), so if you don't speak German an feel that you absolutely have to read one of the books im writing about, you'll just have to find a publisher who's willing to translate them!

Further entries will (probably) be about Walter Moers, Gero Reimann, Karla Schmidt, Marcus Hammerschmitt and Jasper Nicolaisen.

I would like to say that I am a longtime fan of Markolf Hoffmanns books, but I actually only discovered him two or three years ago. His first Quadrilogy of fantasy novels is Das Zeitalter der Wandlung (The Age of Transformation), which comes across as one of many pseudo-medieval fantasies about a Chosen One who has to save the world from an Invasion of fearsome lizard creatures, but quickly becomes a complex tale about politics (think Game of Thrones), about the authoritarian core of the myth of the chosen (think China Mieville), about the malleability of mythological truth and about the double-edged human capacity to dominate nature. Even though The Age of Transformation is flawed (it is a first novel, or a first four novels, after all), I would still rate it the best work of post-tolkienesque High Fantasy written in the German language. Due to a somewhat troubled publishing history, however, the later volumes went pretty much unnoticed. It probably didn't help these are "difficult" books with complex and not always smpathetic main characters.

A few years ago, I got to know Markolf Hoffmann and 2011, I had the opportunity to publish a collection of his fantasy short fiction, Das Flüstern zwischen den Zweigen (The Whispering Between the Twigs). Most of these stories are about the problematic relationship between man and nature, and at the same time quite romantic as they are critical of pastoral romanticism. They are post-Tolkien in the truest sense, respectfully picking up Tolkiens ecological argument and turning it from it's head to it's feet. Their protagonists tend to end up in pretty gruesome moral dilemmas. Most of the stories are set in pseudo-medieval fantasy worlds with subtle, but noticeable elements of magic, with something bizarre bubbling up here and there and a good helping of dark and occassionally grisly humor. The best comparision might be Witcher stories by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Hoffmann's new novel, Ines öffnet die Tür (Ines Opens the Door), is a YA book about a girl that inherits a secret room from her grandmother, the door of which, unseen by others, follows her everywhere. Once appropriated, the room grants certain types of wishes. However, not only is it situated within an impenetrable fog which is said to hide dangerous secrets, there's also an old magician who has been collecting rooms like this for centuries and who is now on Ines heels ...
Ines öffnet die Tür is an old-fashioned YA-book: There is an element of suspense, but it does not have the frantic pace or over-the-top violence and action elements of The Hunger Games or The Knife of Never Letting Go (the latter of which I consider one of the best YA books in recent years). There also is a teenage romance, but it has nothing in common with the hystericism of Twilight - it is firmly situated within the mundane world and has nothing to do with Ines' discovery of the magical room beyond the door, and when romance and magic finally intermingle, it means nothing but trouble and disappointment. The romance aspect is handled quite believable, because first love plays an important role in the life of 13-years old Ines, but certainly not the most important role. Her relationship to her parents, the sudden disappearance of her grandmother, her best friend Sonja - in the end, all of this means much more to Ines than one good-looking guy.
While all of this gives Hoffmann's characters a pleasant sense of authenticity and believability, it also makes the book feel a little tame. The story and the mystery of Ines öffnet die Tür are well thought-through, the characters easy to grasp and yet not flat, and there is a good dose of quirky humor, but in the end, it feels as if Hoffmann was holding back. Maybe there will be a sequel (the ending would allow for it) that delivers that little something that seems to be missing.

Nomination for German SF Award

2011-07-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

My story 'Auslese', published last year in the anthology Die Audienz, is among the 12 stories nominated for the DSFP (German Science Fiction Award). The DSFP is one of the two major SF awards in Germany, the other one being the KLP (Kurd Lasswitz Award). Also nominated are a number of stories from the excellent Anthology Hinterland edited by Karla Schmidt.
Auslese has previously been translated into Hungarian, so I guess I did something right with that story ...

The Alchemist, The Executioness and The Letdown

2011-03-05T00:12:00.001-08:00

I was stoked with anticipation for Paolo Bacigalupi's foray into fantasy, the novella The Alchemist. Not only did I love most of his short fiction (strangely enough with the exception of „The Calorie Man“) and his novel The Windup Girl. Also, The Alchemist was to be published by Subterranean Press, and therefore became associated in my mind with another fantasy novella from that publisher, the excellent Purple and Black by K.J. Parker. It didn't hurt that The Alchemist comes paired with The Executioness, a novella by Tobias S. Buckell, an author I'd been planning to check out for some time.

As it turned out, neither of the two novellas did anything for me – I found both of them pretty uninspired and conventional, even irritating. While, on the surface, they seem to be ambitious and eager to broaden the scope of the fantasy genre, if you scratch that surface, you'll find little but well-worn tropes beneath it. That's not to say that either of the two novellas is bad – the stories are both more or less well-told and well-constructed. They are just not very good, and certainly not what one would have expected by an author like Bacigalupi (I can't say anything about Buckell, because I haven't read anything else by him yet), and they are certainly not on par with fantasy works by authors like R. Scott Bakker, K.J. Parker or Jeff VanderMeer.

Here's the specifics on what bugged me about the novellas:

Paolo Bacigalupi - The Alchemist

In a world were each use of magic feeds the deadly bramble encroaching on the land, the executioner's axe awaits all unsanctioned sorcerers. But Jeoz, the title character of the novella, has found a non-magical way to kill the hardy bramble by using alchemy. However, when he presents his invention to the lords of the city of Khaim, they decide to put it to use in a perverse way …

The concept behind the world devised by Buckell and Bacigalupi actually has merit (although it is vaguely reminiscent of the Dungeons&Dragons RPG setting Dark Sun), especially insofar as neither of them is using it to shove any platitudes along the lines of „magic (i.e. Technology) is bald because it disturbs the balance of nature“ down the reader's throats. Instead we get the next-best platitude, namely that inventors may have the best intentions, but they can't control the use that powermongers will put their inventions to. There's nothing wrong about this concept, but it is pretty tiresome if it is presented as shocking twist about halfway into a story, when you actually can see it coming from page one.

There's a more interesting conflict in The Alchemist, about taking part in some greater evil by committing small and necessary sins, and about the injustice of of punishing the small sinner when the great sinner is the one dealing out the punishment. However, Bacigalupi makes little of this concepts except trying to convince us that the people in power are evil and sadistic.

All this would be forgiveable, if The Alechemist was not an exceedingly melodramatic novella. Bacigalupi gives Jeoz a terminally ill but heart-warmingly couragous littel daughter, whose suffering is clearly a blunt device to choke the reader up, but provides no sense of the ugly reality of sickness and fear of death. Add the fact that Jeoz, while commiting a few small sins, is clearly a blameless man pushed around by evil powermongers, and the character of his loyal housekeeper who also happens to love him unconditionally, and you have to ask yourself how so much mawkishness can come from the author of The Windup Girl.

As a fantasy reader, I feel vaguely insulted by The Alchemist. It feels as if Bacugalupi is slumming, as if he thinks that in fantasy, he can get away with lazy characterisations, half-baked world-building and cheap melodramatics. I'm pretty sure that I'm overreacting and that that was not Bacigalupi's intention at all, but at the very least I have to say that The Alchemist is by far his weakest work yet.

Tobias S. Buckell - The Executioness

My reaction to the second novella set in the same world as The Alchemist wasn't that strong. The Executioness is an ironic take on classical fantasy notions of heroism, but it's notions about the nature of heroism as something imposed from the outside are pretty conventional. Tana, the protagonist, is a simple women who dons the axe and the cloak of her father, an executioner, and leaves her home to save her children who have been abducted by raiders. Reluctantly, she takes on the role of a symbol of courage in the fight against an enemy who kidnaps children to reeducate them, even though she accomplishes most of her heroic deeds by accident. Buckell goes through the standard motions of de- and reconstructing heroism - Tana is not a great warrior at all, but it is her reluctance to accept her role that marks her as a true hero of the people. In the end, she finds out that the enemy might not be that wicked after all and that being a symbol might put her in a position that keeps her from fulfilling her personal goals. It's all pretty much by the numbers and occasionally preachy. What's worse is that, while the foreword implies that Buckell was trying to write a vaguely feminist fantasy novella by choosing a middle-aged female protagonist, there's actually a pretty disturbing kind of sexism at work in it, implying that while men fight for money and glory, women fight for their families.

Finally, Buckell's prose style is serviceable but just not very interesting or engaging. In the end, The Executioness is only slightly more successful than The Alechemist because it aims a little lower.

By the way, Subterranean Press made up for these two novellas by publishing K.J. Parkers new novella Blue & Gold, which is thematically similar to The Alchemist, but much more complex, surprising, engaging, funny and well-written. Maybe part of the reason that I'm coming down so hard on Bacigalupi and Buckell is that I've read a lot of Parker's stuff in the last few weeks (The Folding Knife, The Hammer, Blue & Gold and "Amor Vincit Omnia"). It's hard to top Parker when it comes to writing about scientific genius, accidental heroism and good intentions paving the road to hell. Bacigalupi and Buckell are obviously not up to it, at least not when they're writing fantasy.

Links: Bakker

2011-02-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

An amazing little discussion about contemporary fantasy literature seems to be making its way through the internet. Here's a link to R. Scott Bakkers brilliant answer to this debate, which is the most relevant (and funny) I've yet read.

The Fourth Tribe

One of the commentors also provided a link regarding "The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy", a concept that, among other things, provides a very handy argument against all kinds of conspiracy theory crap:

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

Hungarian translation of "Auslese"

2011-01-27T02:12:00.001-08:00

The online magazine sfmag.hu has published a Hungarian translation of my short story "Auslese" ("Selection") from the science fiction anthology Die Audienz. There's also an interview with me. Of course, I can't read any of it, but you might get funny yet weirdly appropriate results by running it through the google translator.

The story.

The interview.

Spacesuits & Penny Dreadfuls

2010-12-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

For more than a year now, Jasper Nicolaisen, Simon Weinert and me have held a monthly reading of out short fiction in the pub tristeza in Berlin. Now, the first collection of short stories from these readings has been published: Raumanzüge & Räuberpistolen (Spacesuits & Penny Dreadfuls) features 9 stories by Jasper, Simon and me.

Jasper's stories are about a little princess who discovers that she has bear's ears and thereupon decides to join the robbers in the woods; about the question why the Jewel of Zaggoth hasn't been stolen after all and what the invention of radio waves, which are something like railroad, only without the rails, has to do with that; and about two boys in a magical boarding school who find out that they share a very interesting hobby, namely masturbation, and that their expertise in this hobby might be the only thing that can save them from certain death in the maws of a zombie ogre. The last one is especially touching, as genuine a teenage love story as they come. I keep comparing Jasper Nicolaisen to Kelly Link (also, his writing brings to mind some of the most brilliant stories by Joe Hill like "Pop Art"), and there's no hyperbole involved of that, but a lot of envy.

Simon has written about a lonely girl waiting for her last remaining friend who has to fight his way through her troll- and goblin-infested dungeon to fix her plumbing, about Death, who has lost his sting and caught a cold, and about a man trying to help the humiliated and offended peoples of this world by sending them expired pharmaceuticals. Simon Weinert is probably kind of notorious for being the least accesible writer among the three of us, but his stories carry a hefty punch once you get into them. Also, he does wonderfully weird things to language, making it cry out in exquisite pain.

My stories are about the commercial exploitation of a species of giant calamari in the 19th century, as chronicled in the letter of English Gentleman Robert Melvin to his dearly beloved. Melvin falls into the hands of pirates who aim to free the calamari from their brutal fate, but their goals may not be as humanistic as it might seem ... The second one is a science fiction love story about two space travellers of different species with inverted metabolical compatibility undertaking a journey in joined spacesuits which allow them to feed of each others excrements. The last one is a fairy tale about a woman living in a haunted mill, where she learns the secret of gunpowder from the devil.

If you happen to read German, you can order Raumanzüge & Räuberpistolen via the publisher Shayol.

Hinterland - 20 sf Stories, inspired by Bowie

2010-12-14T04:03:00.000-08:00

In October 2010, Hinterland was released, an anthology of 20 science fiction stories inspired by songs by David Bowie, edited by Karla Schmidt (who, as opposed to Michael Schmidt, actually is a relative of mine). It features short fiction by well-known German writers like Dietmar Dath, Dirk C. Fleck, Siegfried Langer, Markolf Hoffmann and Karsten Kruschel and also by lesser known, but no less impressive authors like Nadine Boos, Jasper Nicolaisen and the editor Karla Schmidt herself.
And, of course, by me. The featured story "The Aggrieved Ray Gun" has been inspired by Bowie's song "Running Gun Blues" from the early album "The Man Who Sold the World". It's a pulp story about Zarkova, a villainous (or possibly heroic) revolutionary, narrated from the perspective of an intelligent and rather squeamish ray gun that she has stolen from Eko Galaxy, Champion of Justice. It's also a story about forbidden love between an AI with a highly sophisticated conscience, a women who thinks that the ends justify the means and a man who believes in other ends, which justify different means.

Of course, the whole book is in German, but on the official website, the publishers will release excerpts in English translation. The first one, from Markolf Hoffmann's extraordinary art-crime-story "Tryptichon", is already online. Also, I'm told that all of the stories have been translated by now and the book might actually be published in English some time next year.

Short Update

2010-12-13T02:44:00.000-08:00

Reading: Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany. Hard work, but worthwile.
Also Reading: Wenn das der Führer wusste (translated into English as The Twilight Men), depressing and hilarious.

Published: Short Story "Die betrübte Strahlenkanone" ("The Aggrieved Ray Gun") in Hinterland, an anthology of 20 fantasy/sf stories inspired by David Bowie. More about that project soon - there's a German/English website with extracts in English.

Also published: Raumanzüge & Räuberpistolen (Spacesuits & Penny Dreadfuls), an anthology of nine fantasy/sf stories by me, Jasper Nicolaisen and Simon Weinert, all from our monthly reading at the lovely pub tristeza in Berlin, Neukölln. More soon.

Also published: "Im Himmel" ("In Heaven"), a Lovecraftian (or maybe Barronian, if there is such a word) short story, in Zwielicht 2, the second Horror anthology edited by Michael Schmidt. (despite having the same surname, we're not related.) More soon.

And soon to be published: A Hungarian translation of my short story "Auslese" ("Selection") at sfmag.hu. The first time one of my stories gets translated into another language! more (including a link) in January.

Yay - I wrote a blog post!

Stop the deportation of Kiana Firouz

2010-05-26T01:49:00.000-07:00

about Kiana Firouz

What Richard Morgan has to say about this.

What Hal Duncan has to say about this.

I have nothing to add except:

sign here!

Nomination for the "Vincent Preis"

2010-05-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

For the first time, one of my stories has been nominated for an award, and I feel like sharing - even though most readers of this blog will not be able to read either the story or anything about the award it has been nominated for, since it's all in German.

The Award (as far as I am aware) is the only German Award for Horror literature and artwork, and it's called the Vincent Preis - which means "Vincent Award" and is of course a pun, because it sounds like "Vincent Price". It's really kind of a groaner, but a charming one. The Vincent Preis has only been around since 2007, but it is an audience award with a relatively large number of voters contributing.

The title of the story ("Eine andere Wildnis") translates to "A Different Kind of Wilderness". It's a werewolf story which becomes a dog-were story, and its probably the most romantic thing I've ever written. I'm very proud of it and a little bit ashamed for a few moments of sentimentality that snuck in.

The story has been published in the Anthology Zwielicht, edited my Michael Schmidt (not related).

The winner will be determined sometime in September 2010.

Follow the link for the Vincent Preis blog, featuring an interview with me

K.J. Parker Nightmares

2010-05-16T04:56:00.000-07:00

I've just started reading "The Escapement", the last volume of K.J. Parkers brillantly wry and disturbing Engineer Trilogy. I'm planning to write an extemsive post on the trilogy, "The Company" and "Purple and Black" as soon as I finish reading "The Escapement". Until then, I just wanted to share that last night, I had a gruesome nightmare about the dangers of melting steel, which was a direct lift from "The Escapement". I had to make a steel rod with a machine that melted metal down to a clear, ultra-hot, water-like fluid which burned its way straight through the two-inch-piece of wood that I tried to catch it with. Obviously, I must have done something wrong, and I ended up all mutilated by hot, spattering metal for it ...
Just to give an impression of the strong effect these amazing books have on me!

Laird Barron, Occultation

2010-04-17T04:23:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Laird Barron was so extraordinarily kind to let me have an advance look at his second story collection, Occultation. I noticed his first collection, the Imago Sequence, when visiting Judith and John Clute at their beautiful home in London in 2007 (great eerie cover art by Eleni Tsami!), and I just knew I wanted it. When I finally got my hands on the TPB edition, it pretty much made me an instant fan and forced me to buy a bunch of Horror anthologies (most of them edited by Ellen Datlow) to get my hands on more Barron stuff, which lead to me reading the work of a bunch of other authors included in these anthologies, which lead to buying more of their stuff ... to put it shortly, Barron's stories forced me to re-discover modern horror, which has become quite an expensive undertaking. (Thanks a lot!)

If you've already read The Imago Sequence, you can probably skip right to my review of Occultation in the next paragraph. If not: Imago contains nine stories, most of them rather long and rather scary. Thematically, most of these are pretty straightforward horror stories in a Lovecraftian tradition, but without any Cthulhu-Myth trappings. Also, while the motives are similar to the Cosmic Horror of the later Lovecraft stories, Barron has a totally different style. His imagery is vivid, but often created by short, slightly psychedelic flashes - moments of sudden, intense escalation. These stories are shocking not because they are drastic (although a lot of them are drastic), but because of the way in which reality becomes unhinged for a moment, never quite recovering. One story in Imago, "The Procession of the Black Sloth", is a sublime series of these types of concussive shocks. After each one, the world has more trouble realigning, until the protagonists physically and psychically disintegrate along with their worlds.
The process of the desintegration of the protagonist is the process of the stories in Imago: Most of them are propelled by drugs, alcohol and psychological stress, held together only by their self-destructive momentum. They are falling apart (sometimes literally) from the first page. "Black Sloth" and "Hallucigenia" are the most relentless stories in this regard, and the latter is also a central piece in the horror mythology that spans some (though not all) of Barrons stories.

While several stories in Occulation are pretty much in the same vein as the ones in Imago Sequence, he also shakes some stuff up with his second collection. And while occassionally, I feel that this diminishes the disturbing effect, it must be said that Occultation is a more diverse and even more impressive collection overall.
The two most haunting pieces are "The Lagerstätte" and "Strappado". In both cases, Barron concentrates on the psychological desintegration of his protagonists but strips away most or even all of the supernatural elements he employed in The Imago Sequence. Both are relatively short and highly intense and deal with survivor's guilt.
In "Strappado" the protagonist is on a business trip in India when he runs into a an ex-lover, and both take the opportunity to renew their acquaintance. The affair grants both of them temporary asylum from the emotionally draining environment that consists of European and American money people, who are conducting business by day and looking for short-lived kicks by night. Both of them join a bunch of these people on a small trip to an obscure and probably illegal performance art event, which turns out very ugly ... The most haunting thing about "Strappado" how it shows people that allow themselves to be victimized simply because they cannot acknowledge the reality of the situation they got in. It's all so unbelievable that the impending catastrophe seems like an illusion (and hence, there's no need to panic and make a scene), and at the same time, it all makes so much sense that the catastrophe seems inevitable (and hence, there's no point in resisting) - a true dialectic of terror ... The story doesn't put it that way (it works in far more subtle and striking ways), but it's all about the failure to deal with a situation that is impossible to deal with, and about how it irrevocably breaks the people involved.
It's been a while since I've read "The Lagerstätte", so I'll let it suffice to say that it felt very much like "Strappado", but that I remember it as a little less shaking.

Another truly great story that is more in the vein of the previous collection is "--30--", which is about two scientists and ex-lovers watching strange animal behaviour out in the wilderness. Nature is becoming abject in small ways and infecting humans. There's a highly disturbing, vaguely pornographic scene about tufts of wasps that I would really prefer not to dwell on ... The whole thing is not as psychologically complex as "Strappado", but it's shaking on a physical level, driving home the notion that man is a part of nature in one of the most disturbing ways imaginable. While it is unlike anything Lovecraft would have ever written, thematically it is pretty close to stories like The Shadow over Innsmouth.

Talking about Lovecraft, we have the very Whisperer-in-Darkness-like "The Broadsword", which picks up the quasi-Lovecraftian mythology of alien terrors developed in some of the stories from Imago Sequence. In essence, it's a well-told, moody ghost-story, and it's grumply-old-man-protagonist is a nice change of pace and injects some humor. However, it suffered a little bit from re-using too many motives already known from Barron's previous stories.

The story in the collection that is most clearly steeped in Lovecraft and in Barron's own mythology is "Mysterium Tremendum". It starts with something that is nearly, but not quite a Lovecraft reference (a mysterious, occult book hinting at secrets that might shatter the sanity of anyone who dares to delve deeper), then peaks with a disturbing scene of intense, but totally mundane violence, before it finally returns to the motive of cosmic horror. While it is the longest story in the collection (about 50 pages), I think it might have benefited from being longer. The characters could have used some more fleshing-out, and in terms of mythology, the story pretty much ends where several other's have ended before, hinting at terrors that feel al little to familiar by now without adding some new, more disturbing dimension to them. It's a good story, but I feel that it could have been pushed further, maybe even to novel-lenght.

Finally, to my surprise I found that there a three stories which are quite funny in this collection. The title story "Occultation" is mostly a dialogue piece about a couple lying awake at night in a dingy hotel room, smoking and drinking and specualting about a black blotch on the wall that can't quite be made out in the dark and that might be moving. In essence, it's another horror-of-nature piece like "--30--", but told in a totally different voice. "Catch Hell" is a story about the devil playing with the vanity and pettiness of human beings and pretty much giving them what they deserve. It has nothing to do with the impersonal horror most of Barron's stories are about. Evil has a face here, and even a somewhat likeable personality. "Six Six Six", the last story in the collection, is a mean little piece about satanism that's strangely funny, although I can't quite put my finger on it ...

I left out the first story in the collection, "The Forest" - I've read it nearly two years ago in an anthology, and I vaguely remember that it was pretty moody, that it somehow tied into the mythology and that I liked it.

On the whole, I'd say that while The Imago Sequence had a greater number of stories that truly unsettled me, Occultation is the more interesting and diverse collection - and "Strappado", "The Lagerstätte" and at least the first two thirds of "Mysterium Tremendum" are as unsettling as anything in the previous collection. Another interesting thing about Occultation is that Barron tries out new types of protagonists - while most characters in The Imago Sequence are emotionally broken, usually addict and often violent men, here we have anything from happy couples to old, largely content geezers. It feels like he is consciously broadening his scope, and quite succesfully. I can't wait for his novel - and I'm pretty confident it will deliver what I felt was missing about "Myterium Tremendum", and then some.

Greg Stolze at Kickstarter

2010-03-30T01:17:00.000-07:00

Greg Stolze is pretty much my favourite Author of RPGs. He's also a pretty good short fiction writer - you can find his short story collection "Scary Face" at lulu.com, which contains a good mix of sf, weird fiction, dark fairytales and postmodern fantasy fun.

At the moment, a new short story by Greg is up as a project on Kickstarter. For those of you who don't know how it works: Kickstarter is a platform that allows individuals to collect pledges for their projects. If the pledges amount to a certain threshold, then the money is collected, the project is carried out and the product is sent out to the pledgers. If the threshold isn't reached within a given timeframe, no pledges are collected, no one pays or gets anything and the project is called off.

As far is I can tell, it's a pretty good system for semi-professional creative work. It grants the author full control and it's pretty much riskless for all involved. The only thing I don't like about it is that it goes through amazon payments and that therefore, amazon get's a little share of the profits. While I don't think that amazon is the devil incarnate (as some booksellers seem to do), I'd still rather see my money go somewhere else ...

Resolution, Biologism and "The Devil's Alphabet" by Daryl Gregory

2010-03-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

I took a long time getting into this novel by Daryl Gregory (who wrote the astonishing novella "Second Person, Present Tense"), but when I finished it yesterday, I really would have liked it to go on for another 200 pages. That's something that happens to me very rarely - normally, I'm kind of relieved about having finished a book, because another dozen promising books is waiting for me. I'd say that "The Devil's Alphabet" is a great novel, but also one that left me with a desire not only for more, but for a more satisfying resolution. However, the latter is probably the reason why I don't feel at odds with the book and why I'm able to embrace what I'm reading into it as its "message" despite the fact that Gregory is obviously so fascinated with biological determinism.

"The Devil's Alphabet" is about Paxton Martin coming home to his Smalltown of Switchcreek after fifteen years (or maybe it was ten - something along the lines). Shortly before he left, Switchcreek was afflicted by a weird illness that killed nearly a third of its pupoluation, turned most of the others into three different subspecies (or parallel-species) of humankind and then just stopped. Paxton is among the few who haven't been turned. i won't go into details on the story itself; let it suffice to say that Gregory has written a great, small cast of very flawed and relatable characters and a very quiet, unagitatet and moving story.
Among the central concepts if the novel is the question of how the changed people of Switchcreek, as well as the unchanged Paxton, are governed by their bodies. The "Betas", for example, procreate by parthogenesis and are therefore slightly a-social and totally focussed on their offsprings - most of the consider abortion a sin worthy of death. The giant, predatory "Argos" seem to develop a dangerous temper. And the montrously obese "Charlies" seem to have a complex biological strategy of mate bonding negotiated by the elders which is facilitated by means of some kind of psychotic drug that Charlies of a certain age sweat out (yeah, it's a little icky). It's made very clear that the transformed people of Switchcreak have been transformed in all regards, that their psychology is fundamentally altered by the biological changes.
It seems kind of deterministic. But before I'm getting to the question if this is really the case, let me outline what my problem with biological determinism is: While I wouldn't consider myself the hardcore deconstructivist I once was anymore (the one who read Foucault, Freud and Lacan only filtered through the perspective of Judith Butler), I still think that the insistence that certain kinds of behaviour are in some way biologically ingrained is more often than not a thinly veiled form of moralism that tries to prescribe to people how they should behave because it is supposed to be natural for them. Even in its less prescriptive forms, determinism seems to me mostly as a way to avoid a more complex evaluation of one's own behaviour ("Hey, it's not my fault I'm a rapist. It's my genes trying to force me to procreate.")
On the other hand, I'm absolutely in favour of acknowledging that we are our bodies, and that all of our behaviour, all of our options are in principle rooted in our bodies. I just insist that this relation should neither be charged with some form of determinism ("We have no choice but to behave in a certain way because we are automatons programmed by nature") or moralism ("we ought to behave like nature intended us to"). I also believe that Richard Dawkins is fundamentally wrong when, at the end of his "The Selfish Gene", he inverts this moralism and suggests that we should emancipate from our selfish nature (thereby reintroducing the idealist body/mind-duality he wants to leave behind). I think we should consider ourselves bodily creatures with a mind which is rooted in an evolutionary history as well as in the social interaction with other bodily creatures (who are the product of evolution themselves). I think evolution knows no goal and therefore, it's products (our social, bodily selves) can't be used "right" or "wrong" in any meaningful way. "Right" or "wrong" are ethical categories, and they are highly important because humans are social and self-aware creatures capable of empathy. However, nature knows no right and wrong, and trying to project these categories into nature are usually a conscious or unconscious attempt to close the debate about these categories and tell other people how to behave.
These beliefs admittedly put me in a difficult situation. I consider it important to acknowledge the importance of our physicality, but I get wary as soon as someone makes an argument based upon what we know about our physicality. So I'm not only on the fence, I have also already decided that I don't want to get down on any side of the fence.

And the wonderful thing about Gregory's book is that - for me - it articulates about how it feels to sit on this fence. Because the protagonists of the book constantly struggle with their bodies, and not in simplistic mind-over-matter sense. They struggle to understand and to position themselves within the fears and desires generated by their bodily situation and within their social desires and their sense of continuity as an individual. There are clues to what is what in this entaglement, but no certainty. And their struggle is never about finding meaning in biology or in rejecting biology, but about finding a way to negotiate the different aspects of their situation. It's not about finding the final answer about who these characters are, but about emphatically taking part in their ongoing process of self-definition in the face of new bodily and social realities. I even think Gregory explicitly comments on the futility of finding meaning in a biologically deterministic model of one's own self towards the end of the novel (you'll certainly know what I mean when your read it). I could be totally wrong and Gregory might not be sitting on the same fence as I am after all - but the beauty of it is that wherever he stands, his examination is so thorough and thoughtful and veritable that it is approachable from all kinds of positions.

Surprised ...

2010-02-21T01:28:00.000-08:00

... how good Torchwood is. I watched the first seven episodes and was slightly put off by the alien-of-the-week formula (althoug it happened to be the fairy of the week or the hillbilly of the week in some cases), but episodes 8 and 9 were totally different, challenging, occasionally brutal (both in terms of visuals and psychologically) and fun.

Ep. 8, "They keep killing Suzie" - Dark stuff. A grim story about ressurection and being absolutely terrified of death. I think most people will be able to connect to the notion experiencing a crippling, totally rational fear of death, but it's not often spelled with such force. The black humor of the whole thing is nearly overwhelmed by the sense of existencial dread.
However, I think they took the easy way out with their depiciton of Suzie. The final actions of Jack Harkness would have been much more disturbing if she hadn't been such a villain.

Ep. 9, "Random Shoes" - Beautiful. Also about death, but in the funny, humane, wistful way. Narrated from the perspective of a "failure", an unsuccesful geek who tries to sell an alien artifact on ebay. More accurately, from the perspective of his ghost, after his death. We never quite find out if this is only a narrative device or if his ghost is "really there". It's interesting because it follows the same basic notion about life and death as the previous episode ("life is all there is") but gives it a serene spin. Some parts of this episode are a little to sentimental, but overall, it succeeds wonderfully in telling the story of the loser-as-hero without doing anything to aggrandize the protagonist. Okay, it does so in the end - but that only shows how delightfully unafraid Torchwood is of breaking its own rules. You can't really take the last few minutes as the episode as something happening in the same universe as the rest of the series. Instead, it's a touching little comment on how stories are allowed to give us what we want (as opposed to the Whedon-ish "giving us what we need", which seems to be the more dominant mission statement in Torchwood).

It's a wonderful series, and although people tend to say that this is the wrong comparision, it still reminds me of Buffy-Spinoff Angel. It has another rhythm and approaches its characters differently, but the conflicts these series are about (living with a job that threatens the core of your humanity - but hey, is there a job that doesn't?, and trying to meaningfully connect to people within this job situation) are pretty similar.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

2009-02-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

I'm starting this blog up again. Well, in a manner of speaking - I plan to use it to link to my most recent reviews on sfsite.com, including and beginning with:

Anathem

Infinityplus - the last update

2007-08-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

The website infinityplus has recently posted its last update (including my review of Hal Duncan's INK). Actually, its the last update ever - according to Keith Brooke, who kept this wonderful science fiction site with its mix of reviews, essays, interviews and fiction up and running for ten years. I've only had the opportunity to contribute to infinityplus for a short time, but I'm really proud that I have been part of this project. If you don't know IP yet, count yourself lucky: there's still tons of faboulous content for you to check out!

New Review: Bone Song

2007-08-17T02:20:00.000-07:00

I didn't really like Bone Song by John Meaney. Nevertheless, I reviewed it for SFsite.

SFSite: Richard K. Morgan

2007-08-01T05:29:00.000-07:00

I reviewed Richard K. Morgan's Thirteen for sf-site. Interesting novel. Not absolutely sure if I like it all the way, but read yourself ...

Review of Fast Forward 1

2007-06-03T01:46:00.000-07:00

Another review on sfsite.

Review of Jeffrey Thomas' Deadstock

2007-05-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

My review of Jeffrey Thomas' new novel Deadstock is now online at sfsite.com.

New review on sfsite

2007-05-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

My review of the eleventh issue of the strangely brilliant magazine Electric Velocipede is now online at sfsite.

Short story: "Mustard"

2007-04-05T03:42:00.000-07:00

My short story "Senf" ("Mustard") is featured in the printed 2003 annual of the German online magazine Alien Contact. The complete story can be read here. It's about mutated, city-dwelling doves plotting for world domination by means of a biochemical technology which is based on eating selected types of junk ... actually, it's more about one of these doves who doesn't care for all this political stuff. He's much more interested in revenge ...

Short story: "Legacy of the Great Eater"

2007-04-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

My short story "Das Vermächtnis des Großen Essers" ("Legacy of the Great Eater") has been published in the printed 2005 annual of the German online magazine Alien Contact. You can read the complete story online here. It's about a vaguely cyberpunkish near future Berlin where the public transportation system has taken over and the remaining humans try to get by on what they can steal from the self-refilling vending machines. It's mainly about how the technologies of our present and near future might furnish the mythology of future generations. There's also some gender-bending, because it's always fun.

Short story: "Byproducts"

2007-04-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

My short story "Abfallprodukte" (which roughly translates to "Byproducts") has been published in the Octobre 2006 issue of the German print magazine phantastisch. I intend to write an English version one day - it's a horror story with sf overtones about a man who awakes one day to find that his inner organs have started abandoning him ... More on the German version on my other blog.

New reviews on infinityplus

2007-04-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

Two new reviews by me have been published on infinityplus:Tricia Sullivan's Double Vision and Justina Robson's Keeping it Real. Thanks again to Keith Brooke for running IP!

Two new reviews on sfsite

2007-03-17T02:26:00.000-07:00

Issue 244 features 2 new reviews by me: Jeff VanderMeers short fiction collection Secret Life: The Select Fire Remix and (for the Buffy fan in me) The Existential Joss Whedon by Richardson/Rabb.

I'm a quoted critic!

2007-03-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I had a look in the Paperback edition of Hal Duncan's INK at my book dealer, and what did I find among the two pages of praise for Hal's previous novel VELLUM?

“a work of remarkable unity … Vellum is a raw mixture that will crystallise into an unique gem in the mind of the attentive reader." - SF Site

My very own words! Feels a little strange ... To my knowledge, this is the first time that one of my reviews has been quoted to advertise a book. Really cool!

Short story published in nova

2007-02-28T15:46:00.000-08:00

My short story "Nadeln und Fäden" ( if there'll ever be an English translation, it should probably be called "Needlework") has just been published in the 11th issue of the German science fiction magazine nova. You can have a look at the contents here.
It's my fifth short fiction publication and the first one in nova - so if you happen to read German you might just think about ordering it so I can tell the editors that lots and lots of people bought this issue because of my story!

Actually, it's not even necessary for you to read German to order the magazine ... Just buy it to look at the beautiful cover in full size!

feels like coming home

2007-02-24T03:34:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, I started catching up on all the outstanding TV series from around 2000 - my latest project is Six Feet Under, which I'm loving (strangely enough, I adore practically anything that is about corpses and vaguely funny as well as deeply tragic - for example, Romeros zombie-classics).

Nevertheless, yesterday I decided to start watching the final season of Buffy (which, btw, also has a lot of funniness, tragedy and corpses). I took a long break (about 6 weeks) after finishing season 6 because frankly, I felt emotionally exhausted. It was all just to much. I cried in front of the TV, which occasionally might be OK, but it shouldn't happen every single night.

The beginning of season 7, in contrast, seems quite sober to me ... I've got a theory ("...it could be witches") that season 7 will be a kind of necessary letdown. It seems to return to the big three (Buffy, Willow, Xander) after all the the turmoil in their lives and frankly, there's little that could happen to them in season 7 to top what happened in season 6 ("Apocalypse? We've all been there"). If it turns out that way, I'll actually be OK with it. I'd like to remember Evil Willow as Buffy's peak performance. I just houp Spike's soul-searching (or, actually, soul-having) won't turn him into an annoying one.

The Art of Life and the Life of Art

2007-02-21T02:17:00.000-08:00

Hal Duncan presents some interesting thoughts on aesthetics and consciousness.

Notes From The Geek Show: The Art of Life

However, I'm not sure about his notion if the unconscious. I like my unconscious as part of a person, here it seems more like - well, like the part that is basically involved in not being a person. Too much thinking now. Need some coffee.

2007-02-19T03:09:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to share the beautiful cover artwort for the first issue of our new sf/fantasy magazine pandora. If you happen to read German, check out the web site.

Old Stuff on Great Old Ones

2007-02-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

Below, I've added some old stuff from another blog. Both are strongly related to last years Eastercon in Glasgow, where I had the pleasure to meet Hal Duncan!

Lovecraft, Horkheimer, Duncan, Adorno - Kristeva?

2007-02-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

Proofreading the Hal Duncan Interview (online at sfsite.com), I got thinking about some of the things Hal said about H.P. Lovecraft, more specifically: That the 'Elder Gods' in Lovecrafts mythology are basically extra-dimensional entities and therefore not metaphysical in the classical sense.

Im not exactly a Lovecraftian - I've read and enjoyed most of his stories, but the only reason to re-read them would be some kind of 'scientific' interest. Nevertheless, I have enough grasp of his stuff to comment on Hals position: I don't completely agree. To be sure, the 'Great Old Ones' are basically aliens, and even the 'Elder Gods' and the 'Outer Gods', slightly different classes of beings, who are respectively more human-like and even less human-like than the Great Old Ones, are more rooted in some weird scientific ideas than in religious and magical traditions: For example, Azatoth, the most powerful of the 'Outer Gods', is described as 'mindless nuclear chaos' - he's basically a living sun, the impersonal principle of the Universe itself.

On the other hand these beings are called 'gods', some of them are worshipped by cults, and Lovecraft seems to love to use the term 'blasphemous' to describe their very nature. There's clearly a strong link between science and religion - think how 'Mountains of Madness' replaces a religious origin story of humankind with a scientific one (to the horror of it's discoverers), think how 'God', Azatoth, is described in terms more related to the Atom bomb (Clearly, we can see Lovecraft as a dark scientific visionary today). And think also that there are Mythos-figures who are more anthropomorphic and clearly rooted in monotheist religions - for example Nyarlathotep, the messenger of the Outer Gods and the tempter of mankind. In Lovecrafts cold, scientific, soulless universe, theres still a lot of 'religion' going on. That makes Lovecrafts mythology, above all else, quite self-contradictory.

Now that's a great thing. Being self-contradictory means developing a consciousness of the fact that we live in a self-contradictory world.

Which brings me to Horkheimer and Adorno - Two German philosophers and sociologist, who, in 1944, wrote The Dialectics of Enlightenment (I hope that is how the title has been translated into English ...), a book deeply marked by the experience of national-socialism. Horkheimer and Adorno, both of Jewish descent, both Marxists, lived in exile in the US at that time. Dialectics of Enlightenment was their attempt to somehow get to terms with the fact that bourgeois civilization had not, as some other Marxists had predicted, evolved into communism. Instead, the German proletariat, which was supposed to be part of the emancipatory force of history, had turned to the barbarism of fashism. This historical catastrophe led Horkheimer and Adorno to the idea that the philosophy of Enlightenment, as much as it had been a prerequisite for humankinds emancipation, had always also had a tendency to fall back into 'myth' (no, that's not the Cthulhu-Mythos, at least not yet ...).

Of course, there's no chance that I'll be able to explain what I understand of this approach, entitled 'Critical Theory', here. Let's oversimplify: Back then, in the times of Gods and Monsters, humankind feared nature as an uncontrollable force of fate. To get to terms with this fear, it gave human names, faces and souls to nature: we get animism and polytheism. The gods are still capricious, but there's a chance to make some kind of deal with them, using magic and rituals.

But magic of rituals were also always instruments of power that allowed humans to rule over other humans. Now, the people being ruled over don't always take such stuff. So, very early in history, there starts a process that somehow leads to the philosophy of Enlightenment: People start saying 'Hey - there are no gods and spirits. The stuff happening in nature follows some kind of causality, and we can figure that out and learn to control it. We don't need you scheming priest-bastards for that. we certainly don't need you to spill our blood and the altar of your gods.' So, instead of multiple spirits and gods, we get the one principle of reason - which kind of works acceptably with monotheism. Still, there's a process of emancipation going on in this.

With the arrival of capitalism, rational thinking becomes more and more the fashion of the era. In capitalism, the human subject has to consider itself to a certain extent rational and free in it's choices - that's a prerequisite of this subject being able to enter into a contract, which is a central function of capitalism.

And there the real problem begins: Capitalism establishes a structure that seems to the individual living under it's rule as some kind of 'Second Nature': The rules of society ('If you want to eat, you have to work', for example) appear as laws of nature. The thing is that each individual in capitalist society experiences these rules of society as some kind of nature, and that this prevents the individual from truly realizing that this structure is made and reproduced by humans - not only by some evil, scheming capitalists, but by society as a whole. So the subject, that appears to be free, in fact isn't free. But hey, at least Enlightenment and Capitalism gave us a pretty wortwhile idea of freedom!

But the ongoing quest of controlling nature, eliminating everything unknown, has in fact a tendency to empty out the human subject itself: The idea of nature becomes blind and soulless, and so becomes the idea of humanity. In national socialism, this process resulted in the 'Verdinglichung' (no idea how to translate this ...), in the ideological organzisation of the self-contradictory aspects of society into two main principles that were identified with different kinds of 'nature': The 'Arian race' and the 'Semitic race'. National-socialist society saw itself as identical with the process of their nature, carrying out their 'natural mission' of exterminating - murdering - all Jews. The subject, that was still the central character in classical bourgeois society, didn't play much of a role in this any more - the 'Volksgemeinschaft' was everything. Even though I certainly don't want to ´compare contemporary theoretical neurologists to the Nazis, you can't help but notice that some of their thesises on freedom of choice also tend to 'cancel out' the subject - if it's really all just firing neurons, we do nothing more than to blindly carry out 'natural mission'. And that's, basically, Horkheimer's and Adorno's thesis of Enlightenment falling back into myth: Humankind, who tried to emancipate itself from the forces of nature by Enlightenment, in the end has only managed to fall under it's spell in an even more profound way. I would argue that, probably on a very abstract level, Horkheimer and Adorno have made a very valid point.

Now back to Lovecraft. Remember him being self-contradictory? Yep - exactly. His 'Elder Gods' are emblemetic of the dialectic relation mentioned above - they are gods and blind processes, describable only in the terminology of reason AND religion at once. They are Myth and Reason at once. Lovecrafts work truly embodies humankind's fear of falling back into the process of nature, under it's cold, meaningless spell. Think 'The Shadow over Innsmouth': Here the protagonist, led to the coast town of Innsmouth by biological imperative, mutates into a sea-dweller - in evelotionary terms surely a step backward. But this transformation is at the same time described as some kind of 'Enlightenment' about the true, unspeakable nature (!) of the world. Progress is regress. The fear of 'degeneration' was a prominent theme of the times - there's Well's Island of Dr. Moreau, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. You'll even find it in Kiplings (so deeply, deeply reactionary ...) Jungle Book. This fear was nearly always articulated in racist terms, it was 'verdinglicht', turned into some kind of 'nature' itself - the problem was projected onto a group that was defined by some crude biological or anthropological theory, and the fantasy was that by eliminating this group, humankind could somehow get 'whole' again, lose it's fear of nature. In Lovecraft, it's a little different: He has a tendency to revel in degeneration, to invest it with sublime qualities, and this, while still being deeply linked to racist terms, comes much closer to provoking some critical thinking on the dialectics of Enlightenment.

There's also something very speaking in Lovecrafts 'talkiness' in describing his creatures, a talkiness that always kind of misses the point. The fact that scientific AND religious terminology both don't succeed to truly grasp their object, and the fact that the narrators keep on trying until their last breath, is extremely significant, for it shows that it's impossible to integrate these beings into a 'logical' system, not even in the empty form of the 'variable' which they take on in so many classic Gothics. There's another contradiction at work here, one that I haven't quite figured out yet. Since I'll be reading some stuff by French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva in the next few weeks, I hope I'll be able to get back to this from another perspective. Mark my words: Lovecrafts creatures are semiotic. It's just that I'm not yet sure what exactly that means ...

Easterweekend 2006: Concussion in Glasgow

2007-02-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I’ve been to the eastercon in Glasgow, and since speaking English felt so international and important, I decided to start my blog with an English-language-section. This will probably contain lots of misguided metaphors, misinformed slang and bad English in general, but nevertheless …

So, Glagow. I’m still stunned by how great this has been. To those who don’t know: the eastercon is an annual gathering of Science Fiction writers, artists and of course: fans! While I try to go by the first category in Germany, in Glasgow I happily belonged to the fans. And there were more than enough people to be fan of: Among the guests of honour were Justina Robson, M. John Harrison and Liz Hand (just to mention my personal demigods), as well as Brian Froud (who, as I found out, did much artwork for the film The Dark Crystal, that provided for the scariest, most wonderful 90 minutes of my childhood).

So, one thing after another: On arrival, I was introduced into the Glasgowian way of hospitality by Louisa (please forgive me for spelling mistakes!) and Stephen (friends of a friend), meaning: They invited me to a couple of drinks in a pub and we had a very nice chat. Thanks again to both of you, hope to hear from you soon!

After that, I moved on to the next pub to visit a reading by the SF writers clubs of Glasgow and Manchester, among them Paul F. Cockburn and Hal Duncan. To those of you who have never heard of Hal Duncan: shame on you. He’s probably the most hyped new author in the fantastic field of this year, and more than rightfully so. Your should read his first novel, Vellum. In fact, everyone should read it. In fact, everyone should read it and live according to at least some of the ideas embodied in it. In fact, everyone should read it simply because I think that spreading joy and terror and intelligent, critical thinking is among the most noble causes possible and that reading Vellum will provide for both to a quite significant degree.

But enough of the Vellum-gushing – you can have more of that in my review, if necessary ...

However, Hal invited me to another drink – of course, at that time I was still to awe-stricken to talk very much. So I listened to the reading for most of the evening. I wasn't really tuned in to Scottish English by then, so the only thing I can really remember were some quite disturbing things I learned about poly-bags that evening …

The next day, I arrived at fancy Crowne Plaza Hotel were the convention was held, right next to the Glasgow Science Centre, which looks like a giant, lazy robot armadillo and is – not surprisingly – called “the Armadillo”. After receiving my badge and a few tons of convention material, I started looking for CELEBRITIES. And found them pretty soon: At first opportunity, I ran up to John Clute and Liz Hand (which I had seen last year when they were in Berlin) and used the magic formula (for those of you who don’t know, it’s: ‘Hannes sends his regards!’) to start a conversation.
Liz Hand did a wonderful reading of her current book (Generation Loss), a mainstream novel – seems to be a kind of a thriller about punk and the eighties. If I read only one non-SF novel this year, it’s definitely going to be this one! Furthermore, finally a book that I can give to all of my friends who do not read SF.
And John Clute – John Clute was simply there, and when he said something, you could really feel not only his deep knowledge of fantastic literature, but also his immense respect for the work of all the authors he’s written about.

I also met Geoff Ryman – an author by which I had read only one novella, which I really liked. My flatmate Uwe has read his novel The Child Garden and really loved it, and I always wanted to read it as well – but with all the interesting new books being published, one never takes the time to read an ancient novel from 1989 … stupid me, because now I finally started reading it and it’s among the most intelligent, topical stuff I’ve read in the last few years (edit: review now added to this blog).

Geoff himself really left an impression by saying all the right stuff in a very, very precise way. There was a panel on ‘Foreign Cultures in SF’, and he managed to get the whole problem of SF (and not only SF) using the ‘alien’ as an externalisation of the Other into a few clear, quite understandable sentences. He’s also a very tall person who has a way of looking at people very attentive, showing you that he really listens … so the two times I had an opportunity to talk to him I was quite nervous and didn’t get out anything intelligent. Anyway, he received the British SF Award for his new novel Air, and I’m definitely going to read that one as well!

Justina Robson has already been mentioned among my demigods. I truly love all of her novels. They really seem to address all the ontological questions you have to deal with in real life, and all that in a laconically funny, believable and quite suspenseful. Justina herself is quite funny – she moderated the panel on the question if we should just trash fookin SF and start something really new. Big entertainment! I asked her for an interview – in the end, it didn’t work out, but for compensation, she invited me along for lunch with all the guests of honour. Wow! So I was sitting there between her, M. John Harrison, John Clute, Liz Hand, Brian Froud, Farah Mendlesohn … I nearly fainted from so much exposure!

The interview that did work out was the one with Hal Duncan, and that turned out to be really interesting, not only regarding Vellum, the sequel Ink an the ethics of dissidence embodied in them, but also his next, stand-alone novel. I just wish I could get my hands on all of these books right now! I also had a great time hanging out with Hal at the hotel bar, talking zombie movies (among them the unjustly neglected Ninjas vs. Zombies: The Quickening!) and being invited to more drinks.

There’s so much more to write … at the Awards Ceremony, Pat Cadigan received the Richard Evans Award for authors who have contributed in a significant way to SF (congratulations!). And I watched the Call of Cthulhu silent movie. Get it, if you can get your hands on it – this is Fritz Lang meeting Lovecraft meeting proto-Ray-Harryhausen!

One anecdote that must be told (can’t stop the signal!): On Monday, I thought I had lost my mobile phone. I rummaged through my bags several times, finally got convinced it had been stolen, suspected all other seven people in my room and then tried to call my provider to block my number. First I needed an international phone card, that would provide about 2 minutes of calling time for 3lb. Nice. Of course, I ended up in an audio menu: ‘Welcome to O2! If you already are an O2-customer, please enter your mobile number …’ (‘I don’t know my mobile number, you damn dirty robot! My fookin mobile knows my mobile number!’). Beep. 'If you’re interested in our flat rate offers, please press …’ Arrgh! Slamming the receiver down (no – do not destroy the property of your hostel …). Several tries, several phone cards, nothing helps – time runs out again and again. I finally call Louisa to ask her if I can call from her phone. After that, I open my bag to put my notebook back in … you’ve probably already guessed what I found in there: ‘Where have you been? I should end your puny electronic existence right now …’

So much about my weekend. So now I’m a convention junkie …

New reviews

2007-02-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

I've added links to my reviews of two very recommendable anthologies (James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 and Tesseracts Ten).

I'm not quite sure ...

2007-01-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

... if I'm happy yet with blogspot. However, I've decided that it's time for me to get an English blog, since a lot of my publishing takes place in English these days (despite the strange fact that I seem unable to master some of the most basic concepts of the English language, as opposed to its delicacies ... or, to put it in the words of Gabi Dietze: I have "funny gaps" in my knowledge.)

If you happen to read German, you should have a look at my other blog.

If you want to contact me (I haven't figured out yet how this works at blogsport), you can do so via my other blog as well - right here.

Apart from that, you might want to know what this blog is about - for the time being, mainly sf and fantasy book reviews - which you will find in the links I plan to plant in the sidebar pretty soon. Maybe you'd like me to review your book for sfsite or infinityplus.

Furthermore, it's about Pandora - a German sf/fantasy magazine featuring stories and essays, most of them translated from the English language. So maybe you're an author who'd like some international coverage. Even though being a non-profit project (yet), all of our translaters are professionals, and among our featured authors are Hal Duncan, Tad Williams, Ursula LeGuin, Kelly Link ...

I'll stop the advertisement. I'm not good at it. Just take a look at the website.

There'll also be short ficition, since I've got it into my head that I should at least try to translate some of my stuff into English ... well, we'll see about that.