This story was performed by Will Durst at Page on Stage's Twisted Christmas 2006 and appeared in the 2007 chapbook The Pugilist’s Holiday and Other Holiday Tales of the Twisted and Grotesque. It is presented here as my way of saying "Happy Holidays!"

The Pugilist’s Holiday
(with apologies to Two-Gun Bob)

Ross E. Lockhart

We were five rounds into the fight, and I was bleeding heavy from a cut above my right eye by the time Iron Mike McGurk and his manager started up their usual shenanigans. Not that the ref noticed. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not sayin’ the ref was crooked or blind or feeble, after all, his arithmetical skills can attest to his mental facilities as he managed to count to six for me in round three and seven for McGurk in round four. What I’m saying is that that jerk McGurk and his sneaky Swede manager are two of the nastiest so-and-sos I’ve ever had the dishonorable honor of crossing gloves with. No underhanded trick is too down or dirty for those shifty sharks.

You would think, being that it was Christmas Eve and all, that those two goons would be able to curtail their tomfoolery in the interest of peace on earth and goodwill towards men. No such luck. We’d traded a couple of body blows since the bell rang, I’d just managed to sink my left to the wrist in McGurk’s midriff, and was attempting to redirect my fist into his bulbous tomato nose when he coughed something into my face. My eyes started stinging, the house lights started wiggling, and I smelled something in the vicinity of grain alcohol, nutmeg, and toasted chestnuts.

My first thought was how much I’d rather be back home aboard the Roberta Erwin, standing ‘round the little Christmas tree we’d set up on the forecastle, singin’ “Good King Wenceslas” with the Old Man, Jon Torkilsen, Gypsy Pete and my bulldog Sailor Steve. I’d just started singing along when McGurk’s right collided with my jaw, rocketing my head back at an unnatural angle, knocking me to the canvas.

I lay there for a few moments, watching visions of sugarplums dance withershins around my head. I shook my head violently, attempting to dispel the singing gingerbread men. Next to me, the ref counted: one, two, three. I forced myself up, slowly to my knees, then to my feet. The ring swayed back and forth like the deck of the Roberta Erwin on a stormy night. Good thing I have my sea legs. I brought up my guard and looked over at McGurk and the Swede. They were both guffawing, their mouths contorted into wide, wicked grins. I blinked my eyes, then scanned the crowd, which had become a writhing sea of changing color.

I looked over at the ref, who had shrunk down to two feet tall and was yelling at me in a high-pitched squak, then turned my attention back to McGurk, who rushed at me, throwing his right at my countenance with maximum force. Somehow I managed to duck left, his blow screaming past my ear like a great freight train, then landed my right solidly into his chest. I followed this up by slamming my left into his kidneys, a blow which he reciprocated with a left to my right ear. I aimed my right at his big red nose, which had become bigger and redder and was starting to resemble a balloon, but missed as he ducked my fist, landing a left in my belly as the bell rang.

We staggered back to our respective corners, and I sat on my little wood bench as the Old Man mopped the blood and sweat from my face and Sailor Steve stood with his front paws on the corner canvas, wagging his stub of a tail.

“We’ve got to throw in the towel,” I said to the Old Man as I rubbed Steve’s head with my glove. “That such-and-such son of a so-and-so spit something in my eyes. I think I’ve been drugged.”

“Nonsense, Monaghan,” barked the Old Man. “You’re just punch drunk. You can’t quit now. No Second Mate of mine would ever throw a fight.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him. His twisted black beard had quadrupled in magnitude, and dragged the canvas as he paced. “I’d be First Mate if you’d just go ahead and promote me” says I. “It’s been six months since Truitt jumped off the side of the boat, hunting for mermaids. He ain’t coming back.” I waved my own hand in front of my face, noticing the pretty colors, the eddies and swirls, it left behind. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been drugged,” I replied.

The Old Man pulled a red-and-white candy cane from the pocket where he usually kept his pipe and pensively sucked on the end. He leaned forward, looking deep into my eyes. “Poppycock,” he shouted. “I’ll promote you when I’m good and gull-durn ready to. Besides, you can’t quit, I’ve wagered the boat on you winning tonight.”

Sailor Steve growled at this. “Nuts to you, you weather-beaten old galoot,” I shouted at the Old Man. I thought I told you never to do that again.”

“Ah, no,” he replied, waggling the pointed tip of his candy cane at me. “Technically you told me never to bet the boat against you again.”

He had me there. I looked out across the ring, the other corner seemed to be miles away, but in the distance I thought I saw the Swede pouring concrete into McGurk’s gloves. “Oh, nuts,” says I. Then the bell rang.

I came out swinging, noting as I advanced towards McGurk that the ref had not only resumed his usual size, but had become a particularly fetching shade of green. This distracted me for just long enough for McGurk to knock a glancing left against my right shoulder, but by the time I turned to face him, McGurk had gone and disappeared. In his place, wearing bright red trunks and a long white beard, stood none other than the jolly old elf himself, Saint Nick. I cocked my head to one side, confused by this unforeseen circumnavigation. I tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was “Sainty Claus?”

Now I’m not the shiniest hammer in the box, but if I knows anything, it’s that you don’t pummel Sainty Claus on the night before Christmas. He’s a hardworking man, what with having to fly all over the world and slide down all those chimneys and leave all those presents for the good little boys and girls. But there was something about this Sainty Claus, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, that just wasn’t right. I started to say something to him along those lines when suddenly he preemptively answered my impending question with a piledriver right to my jaw. He followed this with a crushing left to my abdomen, knocking the wind out of me, and a cheap right elbow to the back of my head. I reeled back, hoping the ref had seen this, but by the time I managed to focus on him, I understood that he couldn’t have, as he had been transmogrified into a Christmas tree, tinsel, colored balls, and all. Sainty Claus growled, chasing after me like a man possessed, swinging the massive gloves crowning his mighty-thewed arms as he came.

I stepped back, shooting a glance at Sailor Steve and the Old Man as I backpedaled. Sailor Steve had covered his eyes with his front paws, afraid to witness my dooming fate. The Old Man waved his betting ticket in the air, mouthing “punch the so-and-so” over and over. I cocked my right arm, then brought it up, swinging it on a direct collision course with Sainty Claus’s head.

But the wily old elf ducked at the last minute, and my glove sailed through empty air. I attempted to recover, but only succeeded in smashing his left fist repeatedly with my right jaw, then dropped to my back on the canvas.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the lights. The Christmas tree bent over me, already counting: four, five, six. Over the roaring crowd I heard Sailor Steve whimpering ringside. I pushed myself up, slow, shaky, but somehow made it to my feet. Sainty Claus stood there, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his blood-flecked lips curling to reveal row after row of shark-like teeth. Behind him, an orange orang-utan, dressed like an elf, cavorted in the corner, pulling on the ringside ropes. I shook my head, blinked my eyes, and the bell rang.

Back in my corner, I complained to the Old Man as he mopped blood and sweat from my brow, “I can’t do it, I don’t know how those dirty rats pulled it off, but I can’t fight Sainty Claus. We’ve got to throw in the towel.”

“Nuts to you, you quitter,” said the Old Man. “I didn’t train you to be the fightingist squid on the seven seas in order to lose my boat to this bunch of so-and-sos.”

“But it’s Sainty Claus.”

“Nuts to your Sainty Claus, you goon. What did that such-and-such ever do for you? I’ll tell you what, nothing. Now get back in there and fight, Monaghan, or once he’s done knocking you around I’m going give you a thrashing you won’t soon forget.”

I rubbed the top of Sailor Steve’s head with my glove for luck, and then the bell rang. I headed back into the ring, thinking of what the Old Man had said. Sainty Claus advanced, swinging his fists wildly at my head. I was tired and my muscles ached, but the lights weren’t swimming around quite as violently as they had been. I thought of Christmases passed, of my childhood, realizing how often Sainty Claus had managed to miss my old neighborhood. We was tough kids, sure, but nothing too bad. Heck, he never even bothered to bring us so much as a lump of coal. Inside my gloves, my fists began to itch. I’d show that so-and-so.

Sainty Claus’s left fist flew through the air towards the side of my head, but I ducked, then managed to slam my right solidly into his chest. I followed this with a left jab to the kidneys and a right hook to his jaw. He backed up, and for the first time that night, I saw fear in his eyes. I thought of a presentless tree, an empty stocking, a barren cupboard. I advanced.

I jabbed my right into his belly, shouting as I did so. “Merry Christmas,” I yelled, following with a left to his chest. “To all,” I shouted. “And to all,” says I, connecting with his shoulder. “A good,” smashing my left into his kidneys. I hauled back my right arm, then brought it forward with the force of a shotgun, connecting squarely with the tip of his white-bearded chin. “Night!” Sainty Clause flew back, arms flailing in the air, then impacted against the canvas with a thud. The Christmas tree ref leaned over him.

“One,” shouted the ref, his tinsel glimmering as he did so. “Two, three, four.” The crowd began to chant with him. “Five, six, seven.” My knees began to feel weak. I glanced down at Sainty Claus, but he wasn’t Sainty Claus no more, just Iron Mike McGurk, lying there in the middle of the ring with his eyes closed. “Eight, nine, ten.” The Christmas tree lifted my gloved right hand into the air with a strong, star-tipped limb. “The Winner,” it announced.

* * *

Later that night, once we’d made it back aboard the Roberta Erwin I sat around our little Christmas tree with the Old Man and the rest of the crew, holding an ice pack against my head with one hand, scratching Sailor Steve with the other. I still felt a little dopey, in spite of all the celebratory beer the Old Man had poured down my throat after the bout, so I mostly sat on the sidelines as the boys sang “Here We Go A-Wassailing” and knocked back swigs from bottles. Sailor Steve wagged his stub of a tail more-or-less in time to the music. Around midnight, the Old Man wandered up to me and Steve, and clasped me on the shoulder.

“You did good in the ring tonight,” he said.

“Aw, shucks,” I replied. “I just did what I always do.”

“Yep,” said the Old Man. We both stared off at the stars over the water.

“Promise me,” I ventured after a few moments, “that you won’t bet the boat ever again.”

“Nuts to that,” said the Old Man. He handed me a box, grinning. “Merry Christmas, you so-and-so. This is from me and the whole crew.”

Inside was a brand-new watch cap and pea coat for me and a thick leather collar for Sailor Steve, complete with an engraved brass tag which read “Sailor Steve. If found, return to Tom Monaghan, First Mate of the S.S. Roberta Erwin.”

“You crafty old galoot,” I shouted, grabbing the Old Man in a massive bear hug and lifting him off the deck to the shouts and cheers of the crew. Gypsy Pete began leading the boys in a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Sailor Steve jubilantly howled along.

When I set the Old Man back down on the deck and let go, he, still grinning, wiped a bit of moisture from the corner of his eye. “Gull-durned salt air,” he says. “Now come on, son,” continued the Old Man, regaining his composure. “We got ourselves a boat to run.”

End.

"The Pugilist's Holiday" © 2009 Ross E. Lockhart
Cover Photograph: George Grantham Bain Collection

Folks without an ear tuned towards the publishing industry might not know how drastically the current economic recession is affecting the New York publishers. In short, it seems that Harvey Keitel has been spotted roaming the hallways of the major publishing houses, can of gasoline in hand, making drastic personnel cuts (blame ljassen for that image). Needless to say, it ain't good.

So what can we do about it? Editor Jonathan Strahan suggests a meme:

1. Choose four books published during 2008 that you loved and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to others
2. Write a brief description (it doesn’t have to be much - a few words, a sentence)
3. Post the descriptions on your blog under the title Books for Christmas
4. Link to some suitable book retailer that you’d like to support

Since Jonathan Strahan also stipulates that the books be ones you have "no direct connection to... no books you’ve written, edited, or published" (otherwise, I'd be wholeheartedly recommending John Joseph Adams's The Living Dead, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's Fast Ships, Black Sails, Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories, and Strahan's own Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy), here's my list of four. Go buy some books; they make great Christmas presents!

Seeds of Change, edited by John Joseph Adams is an impressive collection of social SF dealing with rather weighty issues (peak oil, racism, politics), but never coming across as preachy or polemic. With stories by Jay Lake, Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLeod, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, K. D. Wentworth, Jeremiah Tolbert, Ted Kosmatka, Blake Charlton, and Mark Budz, there's something here for everyone.

Matter, by Iain M. Banks is complex, intelligent, high-stakes SF, and the first Culture novel in seven years. I don't know that Banks could have written this without having first written (non-Culture novel) The Algebraist, and Matter is every bit as mind-blowing as it was.

House of Houses, by Kevin L Donihe was my introduction (along with Gina Ranalli's Suicide Girls in the Afterlife) to the literary subgenre known as "Bizarro fiction." And it's easily one of the strangest (and oddly satisfying) books I've every read. Not for the squeamish, but if you're one of those "weird kids" (though this one is definitely not for kids), you're going to love this book.

The New Weird, by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer invites criticism and discussion. Collecting an audacious mix of stories and essays, The New Weird seeks to pinpoint and define the SF subgenre many consider inheritor to the "New Wave." I'm still not convinced that it succeeds on all levels, but this book has grown on me since I first read it (like a fungus), and is well worth picking up.

As for retailers, Copperfield's Books is my local independent bookseller, and I highly recommend 'em, but if you're down in San Francisco, nobody (but nobody) beats Borderlands Books.

And now, speaking of books, it's time for Maddiepiece Theatre...


"Welcome to Maddiepiece Theatre. Tonight, we'll be reading this excellent book right here. It's thick, and made of paper, and full of words, as most books are. This one appears to be about a cat. In a hat. 'The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play...'"


"Yawn. This reading stuff is hard work."


"Zzzzzzzzzzzz..."

The trailer for this year's must-own zombie anthology, The Living Dead, just went, well, live. Watch it here, or on editor John Joseph Adams's blog, or over at the book's official website (where you can read several of the book's stories for free), and then go track a copy down for yourself. And remember: the undead make wonderful holiday gifts!

My replacement iPod arrived on Wednesday, so I've been catching up on all the podcasts I've missed. Good thing, too, or I might have missed my StarShipSofa debut. My flash fiction story, "Tech Support," is included in StarShipSofa's Aural Delights #49, which also features work by Samantha Henderson ("Hungry," a poem), Cory Doctorow (an essay called "SF Is The Only Literature On The Internet People Care To Steal"), and the incomparable Gene Wolfe (Lawrence Santoro's audio adaptation of Wolfe's "The Tree is my Hat"). Needless to say, I'm humbled to be in such talented company. So click on through, download a podcast (or three), and enjoy!

Or just click here to download Aural Delights #49.

My werewolf story, "Bitch", just went live over on Dante's Heart's wolves and werewolves special issue, Full Moon Night. Here's what the editor, Daniel Fusch, has to say about the story in his intro: "Once, we described raiders from over the sea as "wolves," or used that term for enemy troops that might plunder a city. In our own time, though, we call no enemies by that name. The terrorists which bring fear to many have not been labeled wolves--though Ross E. Lockhart's short story, "Bitch," imagines a world in which the werewolf becomes the weapon of choice for those desperate souls who are (depending on who you ask) guerrilla freedom fighters or terrorists."

Here's a direct link to "Bitch", but be sure to check all of Full Moon Night, since it's chock-full of fiction, poetry, art, and essays, including an analysis of Angela Carter's Wolf Fugue (Amazon) and a review of Cherie Priest's Dreadful Skin (Amazon). Good stuff, if I do say so myself, so if you're inclined to howl at the moon, head on over and check it out. And if you dig it, tell a friend.

Download wallpaper for your computer featuring David Palumbo's cover art for The Living Dead by right-clicking (and "save as") on the images below:


1024 by 768 (standard 4:3)


1440 by 900 (widescreen)

Not a bad day. A routine dentist appointment (reminder to self: floss more often) followed by a trip to a favorite, out-of-the-way-unless-I’m-at-the-dentist bookstore, then on to a quick stop at the Computer Recycling Center in Santa Rosa in order to unburden myself of an outdated laser printer, and a slight detour while on the way home through the Rohnert Park Library (and their bookstore) netted the following finds:

Fritz Leiber, The Best of Fritz Leiber
Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood
Robert Holdstock, Lavondyss
Jeff VanderMeer, Why Should I Cut Your Throat?
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two

And I’ve actually got room on the shelves for these, since Jennifer and I managed to pick up another IKEA Billy bookshelf over the weekend. So, on the shelves they go, along with other recent arrivals, including:

Ambrose Bierce, The Best of Ambrose Bierce
William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
Stephen R. Donaldson, Daughter of Regals and Other Tales
Hal Duncan, Ink
Hal Duncan, Vellum
Fritz Leiber, The Knight and Knave of Swords
Michael Moorcock, Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn
Cordwainer Smith, The Best of Cordwainer Smith
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales: Part One

Sure, some hardcore collectors might scoff at my unmatched mix of Book Club editions, Trade Paperbacks, and bargain bin finds, but I like my books. Now if I could just manage to find the time to read ‘em.

One book that I have read recently is the John Joseph Adams-edited anthology Seeds of Change, in fact, this was my in-flight reading on the long, long flight back from Worldcon (and may have been one of the only things keeping me sane on said flight). Seeds of Change is a short collection (240 pages) of nine original science fiction stories by the likes of Jay Lake, Tobias S. Buckell, Ted Kosmatka, and K.D. Wentworth, each of which marks the turning point, the paradigm shift, between now and “the future.” The collection’s agenda is quite progressive, with stories tackling racism, peak oil, scarcity, and electoral politics, among other themes, but never coming across as preachy or polemic. Perhaps my favorite story of the collection is Blake Charlton’s “Endosymbont,” which deals smartly with the question of artificial intelligence and what it is that makes one human. You can read an excerpt from “Endosymbont,” as well as complete stories by Jay Lake, Tobias S. Buckell, and Jeremiah Tolbert, at the Seeds of Change website. And while you’re there, check out the very cool trailer. Trust me on this one.

There are times when I haven’t a clue. Times when I try and try to create, but end up staring blankly at the screen, glancing at my watch (and I don’t even wear a watch), getting up to pace and flip over records. Times that I should be working on other things, editing, reading, studying. Instead, I waste time, these times. And time’s a waste of time.

The thinking trick is as follows: think it, then do it. Once it’s done, do it again. Create.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But still, here I am, muddle-headed, sore-shouldered, feeling the heat that wafts up between the keys of my laptop’s keyboard, thinking of a walk, a snack, a beer. Ah, but it’s only noon. So maybe I’ll just take more Ibuprofen.

I guess I should feel some sense of accomplishment, after all, after months off the horse, I sent out a handful of stories this morning. Thing is, I don’t feel elation, but depression, stemming from this act of courage. I’ve already accepted that these stories will be rejected, and that it’s only a matter of time until they come back to me, accompanied by the nonsense drunken opinions of editors and/or slush readers. “There’s some good writing here,” the e-mails will inevitably read, “but we aren’t taking stories about gay wizards this month.”

And I’ll stomp my feet and yell, “What gay wizards? There are no gay wizards in this story! That’s another story, sent to another magazine entirely. You people are just messing with my head, aren’t you?”

I should develop a thicker skin. I should laugh it off, just keep the stories circulating, moving from hand to hand to hand until they find a permanent, if ephemeral home within the pages (or Webpages) of a magazine. But it’s easier to give that advice than it is to take it. Easier to say, “everybody gets rejected,” than it is to read the fatal form letter.

But I ramble. I mumble. I stutter. I struggle along and mutter.

Too much staring at the sun makes one blind. Too much staring at the blinds…

I lose my train of thought. I miss the train. I miss the training…

Perhaps that’s what it is; uncoupled from the strains and deadlines of school, I’ve fallen out of practice, fallen away from the habits that birthed fiction through my fingertips and onto the pixilated page. What’s it been, six months since I saw a story through from start to finish? And that, a short-short, rejected once and never sent out in public again.

And who, he asks, wears short-shorts?

Trust me, you don’t want to know (he hasn’t got the legs for ’em).

...provokes an emotional response. A blush, a nod, a lurch in the throat, something like that.

A great story, on the other hand, means I'm driving to work sobbing, tears streaming down my face.

File Cat Rambo's Magnificent Pigs under Great Stories.

Today at Our Best Friends.


"Once upon a time," said Maddie, sitting behind a line of stuffed rabbits. "There was a bunch of bunnies..."

"A bury of bunnies," I interrupted.

"A what?"

"A bury. That's the collective noun for rabbits. Like 'a murder of crows' or 'a herd of cows'. Rabbits get a few. You could say 'a colony', 'a drove', 'a husk', 'a warren', or even 'a wrack' of rabbits."

"Who's telling this story," asked Maddie, closing one eye and looking at me. "You or me?"

"Sorry," I said. "Go on."


"All was well and good in Bunnyland," continued Maddie. "Until..." Maddie paused, taking a deep breath.


"Disaster struck." Maddie announced, sweeping her paw through the conga line of bunnies, sending cottontails cascading from the couch.

"That's horrible, Maddie," I said.

"Sheesh," replied Maddie. "It's just a story. Dramatic tension. Can I go on?"

"Okay, Maddie. Continue."

( Maddie's story continues behind the cut... )

I commute, so I listen to a lot of podcasts. These are the best of the last week or so...

I've mentioned before that I dig StarShipSofa, particularly now that they have added a short story feature to their podcast feed. Recent high points include Elizabeth Bear's stunning And the Deep Blue Sea, Joe Haldeman's chilling Graves (Want to know how to write a damn good short story? Read and learn from this.), and Ted Chiang's fantastic The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate. Funnily enough, all three are available from Night Shade Books, Bear in The Chains that You Refuse and Wastelands, Haldeman in War Stories, and Chiang in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Two.

Also worth a listen is PodCastle's initial offering, Peter S. Beagle's fabulous (as in "of the nature of a fable or myth") Come Lady Death (Beagle's "The Last and Only, or Mr. Moskowitz Becomes French", also well worth reading, is included in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Two and Eclipse One) and Pseudopod's presentation of Amanda Spikol's Welsh zombie tale, The Sons of Carbon County. Good stuff, all of it.

Those ought to keep you busy for a little while...

Yes, fiction fans... more free stuff from Night Shade Books...



The John Joseph Adams-edited apocalyptic anthology Wastelands has been one of our biggest hits to date. Currently in its second printing (a third is threatening on the horizon), Wastelands features stories by Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Octavia E. Butler, Gene Wolfe, and many more. Currently, six stories from the collection are available -for free- on the Wastelands website. Yes, that's right, you can read stories from the likes of Elizabeth Bear, M. Rickert, Cory Doctorow, James Van Pelt, Richard Kadrey, and Tobias S. Buckell for nothing, nada, zilch!

Go check it out! (And if you dig what you read, by all means, buy the book!)

And that rockin' trailer? Tobias Buckell put it together.

And yeah, I wrote the jacket copy.

As posted over at Night Shade Books:

Paolo Bacigalupi reads "The People of Sand and Slag" at The Agony Column

We've told you how you can read Pump Six author Paolo Bacigalupi's "The People of Sand and Slag" for free, but would you be interested in listening to Paolo read it himself? Well, now you can, thanks to Rick Kleffel from The Agony Column, who recorded Paolo reading the story at SF in SF and has made a convenient MP3 file available for download. As Rick writes, "I trust that all readers will hear the echo of a very famous SF story from my youth, a story that turned the genre in a direction it had never faced." (Gee, Blood. I wonder what famous story Rick's talking about.) Visit The Agony Column and download "The People of Sand and Slag" today.

Over at the Night Shade Books homepage, we recently (okay, Tuesday, but I've been busy since then) posted a couple of award-nominated stories from Eclipse One, Andy Duncan’s Nebula-nominated story “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” and Garth Nix’s Ditmar-nominated story “Bad Luck, Trouble, Death, and Vampire Sex” in the Downloads section. These are available in a wide variety of formats, so click on over, check ‘em out, and (if you’re eligible) VOTE!

...and you too, Steve Eley.

I knew this was going to happen. After all, I know I can't get through the Ken Scholes story Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk dry-eyed. That's the whole reason I've been putting off listening to this week's Escape Pod podcast.

But I listened to the podcast anyway, while Maddie and I were driving to work this morning.

Between the story itself, which is a masterful take on the sacrifice motif, encompassing everything I aspire to in writing, and Steve Eley's excellent and nuanced reading, I was sobbing by the time we reached the Waldo Tunnel. Sobbing. Good thing Maddie with me so I could reach over and scratch her head for comfort, or I might not have made it in today.

Silly old bear.

I’ve been reading The New Weird lately, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s recent Tachyon collection of the sort of bizarre, visceral, urban fantasy that’s had the placard card reading “New Weird” hung about its neck for the past few years.

If anything, this collection seems a younger sibling to the 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press anthology New Worlds. New Weird certainly owes a debt to the New Wave (the inclusion of M. John Harrison’s “The Luck in the Head” makes this undeniably clear), and it is M. John Harrison himself, in the included Web discourse “New Weird Discussions: The Creation of a Term” who suggests “New Weird” as “a better slogan than The Next Wave.” But whereas the New Wave SF that appeared in New Worlds was unified by publication in a single magazine, The New Weird draws from the wide world of SF publications, including stories that appeared in Flytrap, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Interzone, among others.

The stories included in The New Weird comprise a grand, audacious mix, as is its arrangement. The book strives wildly to create a definition for the subgenre. From the first section, “Stimuli,” which includes the aforementioned M. John Harrison story, Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities,” Simon D. Ings’ “The Braining of Mother Lampry,” and Thomas Ligotti’s “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing,” the bar is set high, though Kathe Koja’s “The Neglected Garden” seems more lit-fic “weird” than “New Weird” and Michael Moorcock’s “Crossing into Cambodia” seems an odd choice considering its Cold War-era post-apocalyptic setting. In my opinion, Moocock’s “London Bone” would have been a far better choice to represent the postpagan sensibilities of the New Weird.

Beyond that, the next three sections, “Evidence,” “Symposium,” and “Laboratory” offer mixed results. China Méiville’s “Jack” is every bit as good as it was in Looking for Jake. Jeffrey Thomas’ “Immolation” seamlessly joins the standard SF tropes of clones and offworld colonies to the urban grotesqueries of the New Weird. And K. J. Bishop’s “The Art of Dying” connects elegantly to the fin de siècle grace of her 2004 novel, The Etched City. Any of these stories alone would be worth the price of admission. Jay Lake’s “The Lizard of Ooze,” like many of his Dark Towns stories, seems a punny and punishing one-joke punch (though that joke is a reversal of Swiftian proportions) in search of a purpose. Perhaps a tale set in his City Imperishable would have better suited the collection.

The gathering of criticism comprising the “Symposium” is perhaps the most valuable element of the The New Weird, inviting repeated readings and critical analysis for years to come. The “Laboratory,” on the other hand, is best described as forty pages of filler. Reminiscent of “The Challenge from Beyond,” a round-robin Weird tale by H. P. Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long, “Festival Lights” is a rambling mess with plenty of star power, but little cohesion. Missing from the collection is anything from Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergis, an editorial decision which makes me wonder if perhaps another editor could have assembled a more comprehensive collection.

For many, perhaps even most, Science Fiction is robots, rockets, and rayguns; movies and television programs with the word “Star” in the title (Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica); or conventions where comic-book caricatures of comic-book geeks run rampant in Dr. Who and Klingon costumes. But for those who dare to look a little bit deeper, Science Fiction is a literature of ideas, in fact, a continuum of ideas, blending philosophy and a sense of wonder. It is the intersection of the fantastic and the human. As Damon Knight once asserted, “Science Fiction is what we point to when we say it.” As a SF subgenre, New Weird bears the same characteristic DNA. What is New Weird? Why, it’s what we point to when we say “New Weird.”

In short, The New Weird is an attractive volume examining a burgeoning SF subset. Though it attempts to be a definitive word on the subject, it falls a bit shy of such lofty ideals by declaring the movement over, though its best may still be yet to come. “New Weird is dead,” writes Jeff VanderMeer in the introduction. “Long live the Next Weird.” Bollocks. Long live the New Weird.

Jennifer and I just got back home from a party down at Night Shade Books.

Pump Six and Other Stories author Paolo Bacigalupi is in San Francisco (he'll be "reading, discussing, and signing" at tomorrow night's SF in SF), so the evening was essentially a book-release party. Terry Bisson even stopped by.

Not only was a good time had by all, with plenty of food, drink, and good conversation, but I even took a few pictures...


Terry Bisson, Paolo Bacigalupi, and J.Q. in the library.


Evan, Jeremy Lassen, Terry Bisson, Paolo Bacigalupi.

( More pics behind the cut... )

This morning's reading included Sarah Layden’s ”The You You've Wanted to Become”, which appears in the first Online Edition of Diet Soap, a literary ’zine edited by Doug Lain and M.K. Hobson. Ms. Layden’s tale of a doleful, workaday loser finding solace, perhaps even redemption, within the red leather embrace of a Japanese restaurant/Karaoke bar is expertly crafted, with a protagonist that engenders a reader’s sympathies, even as he drunkenly blunders along, pining for the woman who abandoned him along the way. Even as he watches the bar’s patrons performing, this sad-sack yearns for more: “Even if he could sing, standing on a stage in front of strangers seemed show-offy, a mark of desperation, foolish. A small part of him wished he had the guts to perform, but the feeling was like a painful splinter under a thumbnail: in need of removal.” While Layden’s story remains firmly grounded in a First World, non-fantastic setting, there is a hint of something larger, something perhaps even magical at play as it reaches towards its climax, intimating that true change, real transformation is about to occur.

In an attached interview, Layden states, “There’s something so heartbreakingly real and true about karaoke, which is basically the art of faking. The performers, by and large, are a bunch of amateurs, and they’re so vulnerable.” While I would agree with Layden’s assertion that karaoke singers are exposing their vulnerabilities (but what artist isn’t?), I can’t help but feel that she is off the mark in calling karaoke “the art of faking.” In fact, I would suggest that karaoke, at least as a fictional device, is a perfect metaphor for the magical, the fantastic, and the transformative, in a culture that has, for the most part, abandoned belief in the supernatural.

Karaoke, its name a portmanteau of the Japanese words for “empty” and “orchestra,” has, over the last thirty or so years, moved from hotel lounges and backwater bars to the forefront of Western attention. Several nights a week, you can turn on a television and watch note-perfect mimics warbling renditions of popular songs spanning the past forty years. Many fall short, but some are transformed, becoming kings and queens of popular culture at the whim and delight of an always-fickle public. Is this faking it, or a reward of self-transformation? And is the idiom of the popular song, through the influence of these amateur endeavors, evolving into something more? There are very few rituals in 21st Century Western culture, few transformative rites. Pop music is the only common book we have.

An early draft of Mark Anthony Carpenter’s (sadly unpublished) “Fall of the Karaoke King” puts it this way: “For anywhere between two and five minutes, you’re a star. For two to five minutes, you’ve got them eating out of your hand. Under the spotlight, sweat beading on your brow, your hand shaky on the microphone, you still exude a certain confidence. You might forget some of the words, but to the drunks, you’re Elvis. Presley or Costello, that’s your choice. […] The KJ calls your name, puts on your song, and you’re transformed. For the next two to five minutes, you’re Springsteen or Sinatra, David Bowie or Toni Basil.” For a society that dreams of, yearns for stardom, karaoke is transformation in action.

Jonathan Strahan is currently laying the groundwork for Eclipse Two, coming soon from Night Shade Books. Quoth Jonathan: "I am accepting story submissions between Friday 1 February 2008 and Friday 29 February 2008. I will be reading stories during March, with an intention of responding to all submissions by the end of March... I will be accepting submissions via email. Please email your submission in Rich Text Format (.rtf) to jstrahan(at)iinet(dot)au."

Click on over for more details! And if you haven't yet read Eclipse One, what's keeping you?

I've been a fan of the Starship Sofa podcast for a while now. For nuanced (if occasionally ADHD-level distracted) discussions of SF authors, books, and history, there's nothing else quite like it (especially on this side of the pond). Well, they've just started a new Wednesday feature: short stories. Kicking off the batch is (legendary Elric author) Michael Moorcock's London Bone. Trust me, this one's worth the download and an hour or so of your time.