Friends

An interesting point the article made is that all mammals have this equipment, including humans.  In other words, we can smell each others’ fear.  I got to thinking, there’s a national surplus of fear pheromone in the air these days – a pointless war, foreclosures out the wazoo, skyrocketing grocery and gas prices, layoffs galore, global warming, and that’s just for starters.  If you’re like me you might feel a dizziness at the state of contemporary life in America.  There’s a certain confused malaise that’s at the heart of daily life.  I think the reason for this is because we’re smelling each others’ fear all the time.  You smell my fear, I smell yours, and the stink increases.  That carnival bell at the end of the high striker that leads from your Greueneberg ganglia to your brain just keeps dinging incessantly in the chain reaction of  eau de fear.   I thought it would be interesting to see what that smell of fear we’re all passing back and forth is comprised of.  In other words what are its constituent elements?  So I got out my chemistry set and broke down the pheromone of America’s Flop Sweat.  Here’s a list of the elements and their corresponding percentages of the composite perfume that is our terror: 

Bone Dry Ignorance – 20% (smells like the bad, spit-laced breath of the blindly patriotic, the bigoted and the fundamentalist )

Unbounded Avarice – 20% (smells like a kilo of rotted cotton candy and is responsible for that sinister rush and geometrically expansive appetite.

Pathological Self-Interest – 20% (smells like a cheap Sangria hangover shit; shredded coconut optional)

Clusterfuck of a Federal Government Run by Thieves and Liars – 40% (smells like Rome burning) 

It’s a wonder we get anything done with those toxins wafting around us.  I’d like to write more about this before I freeze up, but my neighbor, who recently got laid off and is losing his house, just pulled in his driveway across the street.  He hasn't even gotten out of the car yet and I can smell him from here.  Man, scary.  The hair on the back of my neck just went up and my eyes are beginning to roll back into my head.  Hope you're not downwind.
 

Back in Spades, "Detroit Slums (Here We Come)" (2007). Featuring guitar by Jackson Smith, son of Patti Smith and Fred "Sonic" Smith.

The August 25th issue of Publishers Weekly stunned me today with news of just how successful she truly is by including details of the deal her agent just closed for the team:

At Touchstone, Sulay Hernandez secured world rights to a new novel by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, Uptown, with a six-figure offer to [agent Victoria] Sanders. This saga will explore New York City’s black aristocracy through the story of an institutionally and politically entrenched Harlem family whose interests in valuable real estate holdings provoke resentment and in-fighting. DeBerry and Grant, who switched to Touchstone for Gotta Keep On Tryin’, published earlier this year, have another novel, What Doesn’t Kill You, coming from the publisher in January 2009.

Congratulations, ladies!

Here at the ditch we do more than our fair share of contemplating the creepiness of ventriloquist dummies.  It’s tough work, but somebody has to do it. Well, yesterday for me was a day of synchronicities, and one little event of portent was that the movie, much discussed here, Magic (that’s right, Shmucko), starring Anthony Hopkins as a tormented ventriloquist, was on the cable at lunch time.  Did I watch it?  Is McCain a zombie?  Then, later in the day, I was reading a news article about the invention of a new technique of animation, rendering, for the first time, completely life-like human characters.  The article  http://snurl.com/3jzwh  said this breakthrough would revolutionize the film industry because it had figured out a way to traverse the “uncanny valley.”  I’d never heard the phrase before, “uncanny valley.”  So I looked it up on the internet, and here’s what I found out.  It was first proposed by the Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori in 1970.  I’m just going to cut and paste here from Wikipedia for the sake of expedience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Mori's hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely-human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction

 So, you see, that creepy little dummy in Magic, with its Hopkins-like head, shifting eyes, moving mouth, voice, and even more frightening, perceived personality, that wooden son of a Poplar, stalks the Uncanny Valley.  In an interesting side note, Freud, in his essay on “The Uncanny (which the Wikipedia article mentions),” equates this phenomenon also with the threat felt from a doppelganger, another theme that is definitely at play in Magic. 

http://invislib.blogspot.com/

I've already added to their collection of imaginary books in books of my own, but maybe not all.

In 1971, Kaluta won the Shazam Award, given by the Academy of Comic Book Arts, for Outstanding New Talent, and the following year, at Phil Seuling's July 4th, 1972 weekend comic-book convention, he drew the image you see above right for an annoying kid named Scott Edelman who'd thrust his sketchpad at him. [Click to see a larger image.]

Six year further on, after I'd left my staff job at Marvel Comics and was freelancing for both Marvel and DC, he drew the cover below for an issue of Doorway to Nightmare I'd scripted. That was (gulp!) 30 years ago.

Happy birthday, Mike! Even though it's your birthday, for some reason I'm feeling older!

It doesn't bother me that Ajay is dead in the real world. Actually, I'm not even aware of it in the dream, and so chat with them nonchalantly about what's available for breakfast, and the places we'll be touring that day. Places which, now that I'm awake, I can no longer remember.

I don't usually eat an elaborate breakfast, maybe only a bagel or croissant, but I have trouble finding one. The tables are filled with food completely inappropriate for breakfast—hot dogs in buns, marbled cakes with mounds of frosting, thing like that. Finally, after much searching, I do find a bagel, and return to the table to talk with Ajay and Edna.

As I sit, in comes Susan Casper. Gardner Dozois isn't awake yet, and so it's just the four of us for awhile. We get to talking about reviews of Ajay's books, and Susan mentions a particularly devastating one, and how she wanted to contact that critic, whom she knew personally, to see what was up with his undeserved slam.

Bells ring, telling us that the first boat is going ashore. I want to be on it, to see the sights in the early morning light, when fewer people are up and about. Then I slowly come awake, still with no idea what sort of place we'll be touring that day, but eager to see it anyway.

johnjosephadams

I'm researching one of the chapters in the third witches book, and John Adams was on a diplomatic mission to France at the same time that Proctor Brown is on his way there to meet with Benjamin Franklin. It feels like Adams needs to be included.

My conundrum: My impression is that, ever since David McCullough's bestseller and the mini-series about John Adams, it's been considered informed to look at Adams as the forgotten hero of the Revolution. Unfortunately, I have to roll my eyes. I mean, Adams is the man who vigorously opposed the Bill of Rights, who tried to invest the presidency with the pomp and titles of a monarchy, and who--if he had done nothing else--passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which violated every basic right we hold essential to democracy, in order to make his political opponents die in jail without trial, force them to flee the country by the shipload, or (like Jefferson and Madison) go into hiding to protect themselves from Adams' brownshirty mobs. Adams is the president that America survived despite of, not because.

Reading about Adams years ago, I always figured it would take a whitewash artist of Tom Sawyerish proportions to make the second president look good. McCullough is that man. There are some scholars out there trying to balance the record (this turned up on a simple google search --http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/030921.html), but that doesn't help me. The fact is, that what readers of fiction think is true about history can be more important than actual facts. If I write Adams the way I see him, and everybody has a different perception, then he's going to ring false.

I'm going to include Adams. And I'm going to write him with the personality indicated by the contemporary evidence. But how hard am I going to have to sell it? How wedded are you to John Adams as a hero?

nick_kaufmann

Your result for The Director Who Films Your Life Test...

Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Take The Director Who Films Your Life Test at HelloQuizzy

He wrote:

All of the progress I've made in my work, be it writing or art, was accomplished through getting it wrong the first time. My father always told me that the first brush stroke will never be perfect. There's only so much you can learn from reading books on writing or art theory. You have to create and get your hands dirty and see what works. You have to take risks and you have to fail.

It's been more than five years since I cracked open any pages, white or yellow, for a number. Could you please stop sending me multiple copies of these dead-tree bricks. What am I supposed to do -- pave the sidewalk to the trash can with them?

Thank you for your non-attention in this matter,

me

ETA: miketo linked to http://www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org -- a grassroots organization that is trying to reduce delivery of unwanted directories. I suspect that only advertisers refusing to pay for ads will reduce their delivery, but maybe this will help convince advertisers that their ad dollars are better spent elsewhere.

Speaking of not-yet-published books, here is a sentence out of the fairly lengthy acknowledgments page of the newest, Four Freedoms the one about WWII:

"Thanks to the many earned and curious correspondents, if that’s the word, who read and comment on my online journal, who went in search of answers to questions I posed there, like the source of the phrase “Git for home, Buster ” and the price of condoms in 1944 (about $1.50 for a tin of three; they found pictures, too). "

(I thought a reference to the Smartypants Brigade might have seemed undignified, but you know who you are, and the thanks are heartfelt.)

When my Assistant Editor position called for me to proof, I had to keep my eye open for many different types of problems, ones which don't turn up when dealing with straight text.

Accidental typographical errors made by a letterer. Costume mistakes drawn by an artist (perhaps the webbing in Spider-Man's armpits was penciled or inked incorrectly, or the wings on the Submariner's ankles were drawn too high on the leg). Inaccurate references by the writer in those editorial boxes at the bottom of panels which would point back to earlier issues. Or even something deliberate that one of these creators was trying to get by the editorial department and sneak into print as a joke that wouldn't make the company laugh.

On the very last page of the issue, I did indeed find something which needed changing. (It might help if you click on the image above once, then again, to see the original artwork at its largest size.) Looking at the excerpt from an unidentified issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (unidentified because, though I may I have kept a photocopy of the panel, I don't keep track of everything, so it will be up to someone in the blogosphere to track down the issue number), can you spot the faux pas that I needed to get changed?

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/2008/08/21/questions-about-publishing-short-fiction-online/

Go on and comment! Give 'em some datapoints. This is about the stories you like to read.

            Right outside my front door there's a little concrete porch, about four foot by six foot.  Upon exiting the house, on the right side of the door there's a wooden bench and on the left there is a piece of brass sculpture.  Lynn bought the sculpture some years ago from a local artist – it’s a five and a half foot arch of brass tubing on a stand and all along the length of it, inside the arch there hang flat, cut-out pieces of brass in the shapes of local animals – birds and fish and squirrels, etc.  When I first saw it, honestly, it jangled my aesthetic sensibility and I thought, “Wow, that’s a mess.”  Lynn asked me what I thought of it.  I said, “That’s really something,” with the appropriate measure of gusto.  Over time, though, I’ve come to really appreciate it.  It’s like some Bronze Age Antenna of the Gods.  I could be wrong about this, I’ve only seen the thing a million and a half times, but right now it seems to me that there might be fake jewels on it too.

            Anyway, earlier this summer I happened to be standing on the porch, unlocking the front door, when I caught a vague, very minute movement out of the corner of my right eye.  Turning, I noticed that it was a wasp, standing on a  brown wasp creation attached to the back of a brass bird cut-out near the top of the arch.  The first thing I thought was, “Uh-oh, wasp = bad.  Stinger.  Wasps in the house = bad.”  But I was wrapped in the deep languor of summer vacation and my fear flew off.  I think it was the sight of that thing it was making that allowed me to get past the usual wasp reactions.  It was like the bottom half of a wooden brain that might fit in a squirrel’s skull.  That was from the outside, inside there were little cells, their interiors coated with what looked like clear wax.  The most amazing thing to me was how it was attached to that smooth brass surface.  What chemical must a wasp produce to create a bond like that?  I thought that it had to either be a house or a nest.  “Cool,” I thought and went inside. 

            The beautiful blue weeks went by, and every time I’d return home, I’d study the wasp’s work.  It never failed that the insect would be there busily doing, on a microscopic scale, whatever it took to make what it was making.  When I would stop to look, it would invariably cease its work and turn to stare at me.  At first I thought it was threatened and might attack me, but after a while I interpreted its pose as saying, “That’s right, feast your eyes on my creation, Big Head.”  We’d have these  meetings usually a couple of times a day. 

            Then one day I saw that the wasp had called in some friends.  There were three wasps now working on it.  And when I’d stop, now all three turned and stared at me.  The brain was growing incrementally all summer, but with all the energy it was given and how slow the process it seemed an incredible task – like making a house out of your own spit.  I happened to tell Lynn about it one night when we were drinking coffee on the couch in the living room.  She got up, and went to get the flashlight.  I followed her.  We went out the front door and she shined the flashlight at where I pointed.  The beam showed only two wasps, perched, still, on the brain.  A moment went by and they turned their heads to look at us.  “It’s just Big Head and his wife,” they probably thought and then returned to sleep. 

            “We should get rid of it now,” said Lynn. 

            “Nah,” I said.  “They’ve worked so hard.” 

            “OK,” she said, “you should move the whole sculpture somewhere in the yard away from the house.”  “Sure,” I said.  It was a good idea. But I was afraid that there was something about that spot on the porch, on the back of that brass bird, that was the ideal condition for the building of wooden brains, and if I moved the sculpture the work might be ruined. 

            There’s four wasps working on it now as summer slides into home, and, man, the wooden brain has grown.  I finally looked up wasps on the internet recently.  What the ones on my porch are building is a nest.  Each one of those wax lined cells will hold another of their kind.  They’re beautiful creatures, made up of tiny vinyl beads of black, yellow and white, wings, hair-width antennae, and legs of robot design.  The day is approaching slowly but steadily, like the wasp’s incessant work, when that brain, long completed, will crack open with its first thought.  A swarm of wasps will be at my front door.  That’s going to be a whole new reality.  And if I’m not mistaken it will have something to do with regret.  Till then, there’s a lot of work left to be done on the nest, and I’m excited to see the final creation. 

(per the discussion on the F&SF forum about creating story ideas)