Back with a Vengeance

Yes! We have internet again!

Thanks to the storm, our internet both in the office and at home were knocked out. Of course we also didn't have electricity at home for a couple of days (the office was always fluctuating) but that goes without saying.

What was fun was the fact that the eye of the storm actually passed near my office, its path being through Manila Bay. Sheesh.

Good thing to know that over the weekend, everything had returned more or less back to normal-- including the weather, which has turned bloody hot and humid again. As you can see, the sky's a bright-blue with lovely white clouds, good for a dip at the beach. *sigh*

It's weird but it always get my blood running when events like these happen-- whether it's a back-breaking storm or a coup or two. Something about breaking the humdrum of everyday living methinks. It's bad of me to think that, I know, but there's something to be said about the exhiliration when the event breaks and I'm sitting in front of the keyboard at the office. Like being at the top of the watchtower with a view of miles before me.

And there's also being able to drive around the metro without having to contend with the traffic. While everyone scurries home or to shelter due to the storm, I was on my way to work. Hah! I spit on your hurricane-strong winds!

Anyway, hope all of you guys and girls are doing well. *winks*

(Expect visitors by the way as I'm a bit lazy to post at the moment. Well, that and I'm currently trying to finish a story.)

The Passage of Dragons

Some bad news...

I just heard last Monday that speculative fiction writer-poet John M. Ford has died mysteriously.

I first found a copy of his seminal work The Dragon Waiting (a story that had vampires, sorcerers, and a heroic Richard III warring to save England) during a time when the local bookstore scene was a virtual wasteland. So in essence, Ford not only made an impact on me with his BC-type story but also engendered in me my first "fix" in hunting for that rare book on dusty shelves.

Funny enough, he used to comment a bit in Making Light and all of his comments were quite funny and erudite.

Ford's passing also reminded me that horror writer-editor Charles L. Grant had passed on. Unfortunately, I love a number of the concepts in Grant's novels (one which involved an updated Riders of the Apocalypse another that had detectives of the weird) but could never really get into them, alas. At least his short stories seem to appeal to me more.

*sigh*

You know you're getting old when the authors you read start dying on you.

Update: Noted critic John Clute writes about the passing of John M. Ford.

We Will Not Stand Down

As the typhoon hits Metro Manila, there's something to be said about standing just outside my office and smoking a cigarette with a thermos of hot coffee in hand as strong winds reportedly blowing at 130 kilometers (81 miles) per hour rush by.

Yeah, I think, you and me baby. Right here, right now.

Now am off to make sure my car is tied down. Don't want the winds to blow my only ride home. I'm not that crazy.

(Will see if I can get good pictures outside.)

Update: No pictures but the storm was a whopper, alright.

Around 1 p.m. the winds were really whipping around as the storm hit in-country. By 2 p.m., the wind and the rain had abated but I started developing a headache. Something about the barometric pressure?

Thank goodness the nearby 24 hour Mini-stop shop nearby was still open and I managed to score a pack of cigarettes. Now if I can only find some food...

Dean's List, Part 1

This is for dean's litcritters but since I'm not part of his workshop, I thought I'd just post it here.

It's actually quite fortuitious that the same time I read a couple of stories that the litcritters are taking up, I was also reading gabe's exposition on critiques/reviews. Mind you, both sections are a bit long but that's gabe for you. (More thoughts on that later when I get to it.)

I had to mention the above because-- like most of the reviewers' replies to gabe's rant-- I also lack the critical skills needed to fully dissect the said stories. That being said, I still can do a small review with the appropriate commentary:

• Anne Harris' Still Life with Boobs is a hilarious story of a young woman who discovers her breasts have started gallivanting on their own on nights on the town. I thought it somewhat predictable in that it's very Freudian (i.e. repressed = problems). However, Harris got me going with its engaging story and sympathetic protagonist. Moreover, the writer avoids being raunchy due to bizaare scenes wherein male and female body parts get it on in the darkness of secret parties. Likewise, despite the possible erotic assumptions of such a story, she actually tones it down on the masturbation and actual consumation scenes and relieving most of the sexual overtones.
• On the other hand, Kij Johnson's Fox Magic is a lyrical tale of a female fox who falls in love with a human being and the resultant tragedy that brings when the illusory nature of fox magic is called into play. I'm actually familiar with Johnson as her story forms the basis of her novel, The Fox Woman. Fortunately, this is one of stories that I also find predictable-- i.e. you know the story's going to end badly-- but the writing's so good you can't stop reading. The last time I felt like that was while reading Patricia McKillip's classic The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.
• Unfortunately, I've never got into Margo Lanagan's Singing My Sister Down despite the fact that a lot of people love this story (including dean). The long and short of it is, this touching story of a family who have to witness an execution of one of their own has-- given my weakness for lyrical prose-- writing that's somewhat off-putting. This is sad because the prose is actually excellent for its setting (post-apocalyptic? dawn age?) but rough on my mind's ear. This also explains my reluctance to read similar works like Russel Hoban's classic Ridley Walker.
• Last but not least, Rudyard Kipling's The Recrudescence of Imray is a perfect example of stylized prose that still rings true despite its eccentric flow. Sentence forms are convoluted and topsy-turvey; and yet despite its almost purple prose, Kipling's story of the disappearance of a minor Indian bureacrat and the role of two Englishmen in solving this mystery turns almost into a song. At least it reminded me of the tempo of Kipling's poems.

On a last note, Lanagan's prose reminded me of certain books wherein a hidden typo would reveal itself and expel me from the flow of reading a story. Unfortunately, Lanagan's prose-- though perfectly stylized-- did the same for me to the point that I couldn't empathize with the emotions supposedly generated by the story. Alas and alack.

My Non-Existent Writing Schedule

Hmmm, if I really want to bite off more than I can chew, I could start rev up the engines and try to submit a few more stories as we come to the final stretch of 2006.

For example, I just found out that Philippine Genre Stories is looking for a few stories-- obviously-- hewing close to the genre of "fantasy, science-fiction, speculative, crime, mystery, detective, horror, and suspense". However, to my shock, what I thought was a December deadline was actually a late October mark:

With a lot of luck and hope, we want the first issue out by late Nov or early Dec. So that means the deadline is sometime last week of Oct, to a few days into Nov. By that time, we'll start with pre-press work using the best of whatever we've got.

Hooboy. I do have a couple of idea-stories I'm willing to develop but that would mean I have reserve the whole of October to write at least one.

Meanwhile, another local press Quatre Gats is setting out to publish "innovative thematic anthologies, both fiction and non-fiction" and have an anthology of fiction centering on national hero Jose Rizal's works coming up. This deadline is also around the same time as the above, specifically by November 1. Unfortunately, I have no stories nor ideas applicable to the theme so I might give this one a pass-- unless something comes up. Damn it, I hate working under pressure.

Ironically, one story I'm raring to finish doesn't seem to have a home I can target it so am thinking of giving Strange Horizons a shot again.

Or I could just sleep until the Christmas season...

Seen in the Wild: Finally got a chance to check out the 2nd-hand shops again though these were enticing, I didn't feel like picking these books up. But maybe someone out there might be interested?

• Glen Cook's The Swordbearer, one of Cook's early fantasy books before he started on the excellent Black Company series. I've actually read another of his early works, The Tower of Fear, which was also good. However, a kid with a sword? Will think about it.
• Tim Powers' Dinner at Deviant's Palace, also one of his earlier works and I presume really hard to find in comparison to his other works. Unfortunately, despite this being a Powers' title, I'm not much into post-apocalyptic works so am giving this one a pass.

And does anyone have an opinion on a so-called classic, The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea? Looks very Jack Kerouac-ish.

(Help! I'm Being Held Hostage by the Story!)

Sorry for the delay, folks. Am back in the saddle again.

After e-mailing my story for dean's collection last Friday, I immediately escaped hot and humid Metro Manila to hie off for the cooler climes of Baguio City with [identity-protected] and two other friends for a much-needed break.

Ironically, though I was enjoying the rest, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I should have been writing. Of course it didn't help that I was reading a short story collection by the late great fantasist Avram Davidson. Something about reading good short stories makes me want to go pound the keyboards 'til my fingers bleed.

Sunday night, we headed back down to Manila and unfortunately, back to the real world. As one friend said, "All the stress of the past six months gone in two days-- and all of it back on Monday."

So true.

Some good news at least: I managed to procure what seems to be the last copy of Theodora Goss' collection at Powerbooks. Whew. (Heh. I managed to convince my mum to buy some books for my nephew and surreptiously inserted Goss' book in the pile.) Given that Prime Books has gone into second printing of Goss' book in the U.S., I figure I was just in time.

Likewise, I received welcome news from Booktopia that my copy of Jeffrey Ford's second short-story collection The Empire of Ice Cream had finally arrived. (I was expecting them to come in by October.) Imagine my surprise to find my other orders had also come in: Nick Mamatas' Move Underground and the lit-fabulist story collection Paraspheres. Now I'm just wondering where my order of the slipstream story collection Feeling Very Strange is...

Unfortunately, I only had money to pick up my copy of Graham Joyce's Requiem so the three books must wait a while before I can get my greedy paws on them. Ah well.

So how's everyone while I was away?

P.S. And before I forget, skinny shoots the breeze with noted fantastical author Jeff Vandermeer over here. Geez, my mind reels. How the hell does he do that?

Shhh, It's Wabbit Season...

Seriously, I gotta get cracking for dean's Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 2, what with Friday's deadline coming up.

Thanks to charles though, at least I've confirmed that the word-limit is 5K and not 7K as erroneously assumed, dammit.

In the meantime, you kids behave while the banzai cat's gone.

What People Are Saying

Also known as: An Argument in Five Parts. Rather than talk about it, I thought I'd let other people speak. Yes, I'm lazy.

skinny posted something about the problem of speculative fiction veering towards the literary rather than to the pulp side. He sez:

see, i'm beginning to think that our problem, unlike with other markets, isn't that we're saturated with 'substandard' commercial mass marketable fics, that we don't have 'literary-grade' SF (whatever that means); in fact, (ok, here it comes) it seems to me that what we actually have is a terminally acute insistence on literary writing standards that might actually be detrimental to the natural evolution of SF.

Or, as one reviewer stated in a negative review of Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen which had been deemed by critics as the best of 'literary speculative fiction' lot:

If I have to choose between skiffy with literary pretensions and skiffy with bug-eyed monsters, I will gladly choose the latter, any day of the week.

Science-fiction/ fantasy writer John C. Wright replied in the comment section to a similar proposition and explained why the two sides of this debate will never get along:

The reason why we cannot all get along, is that even those of us whose taste range from high to low... even if we do not look down our noses at other fanboys, the mere fact that we make any distinction at all between high and low offends those who make no such distinction.

And, again, those who cannot or will not make the distinction between high and low, between books we enjoy because they are touched with divine greatness, and books we enjoy because they are Way Cool action-splattered pulp, offend those of us who think it admirable and necessary to maintain standards in art, even in popular art like SF.

However, Wright offered assurance that the reading world is bigger than that:

I do think great books are better than potboilers, but I would not call this snobbery, bcause it is no crime to like something light and shallow if you are in the mood for light and shallow. Not all swimming needs to be deep sea diving. Sometimes you are not in the mood for profound. Sometimes you are in the mood for a luxurious feast, and sometimes you want a McBurger meat-flavored patty.

Finally, noted local writer Gilda Cordero-Fernando wrote a piece on being boxed in and the importance of the artist (that Ian has kindly posted):

Now the prestigious Palanca has been cut up into so many little categories -- 15 at last count, with first, second and third prizes for each category in English and Tagalog and some vernaculars. I always try to remember who the young winners are. But with 40 or so names to keep up with each year, I just gave up. Dare one suggest that the awards be cut down and the prizes raised to dazzling amounts? Surely complaints will arise. Bakit elitista? (It's elitist!) Why stop the multiplication of the loaves? Because an award is a distinction. It recognizes a major achievement and should be as elitist and exclusive as it can be!

(Emphasis mine.)

What does it all mean? I'm not sure. It's like a literary piece: all meandering, a lot of emphasis, no point. Take of it what you will.