More Red Ink

Michael Swanwick, author of the story "A Midwinter's Tale," doing his best PR routine for Alien Contact at Readercon, Burlington (Boston), Massachusetts, Friday, June 13, 2012. [Note the stack of ACs on the table next to Michael!]

And speaking of PR:

One

by George Alec Effinger

[Continued from Part 2]

"I have strange thoughts, Jessica," he admitted to her, one day during their ninth year of exploration. "They just come into my head now and then. At first I didn't pay any attention at all. Then, after a while, I noticed that I was paying attention, even though when I stopped to analyze them I could see the ideas were still foolish."

"What kind of thoughts?" she asked. They prepared the landing craft to take them down to a large, ruddy world.

Gillette checked both pressure suits and stowed them aboard the lander. "Sometimes I get the feeling that there aren't any other people anywhere, that they were all the invention of my imagination. As if we never came from Earth, that home and everything I recall are just delusions and false memories. As if we've always been on this ship, forever and ever, and we're absolutely alone in the whole universe." As he spoke, he gripped the heavy door of the lander's airlock until his knuckles turned white. He felt his heart speeding up, he felt his mouth going dry, and he knew that he was about to have another anxiety attack.

"It's all right, Leslie," said Jessica soothingly. "Think back to the time we had together at home. That couldn't be a lie."

Gillette's eyes opened wider. For a moment he had difficulty breathing. "Yes," he whispered, "it could be a lie. You could be a hallucination, too." He began to weep, seeing exactly where his ailing mind was leading him.

Jessica held him while the attack worsened and then passed away. In a few moments he had regained his usual sensible outlook. "This mission is much tougher than I thought it would be," he whispered.

Jessica kissed his cheek. "We have to expect some kind of problems after all these years," she said. "We never planned on it taking this long."

The system they were in consisted of another class-M star and twelve planets. "A lot of work, Jessica," he said, brightening a little at the prospect. "It ought to keep us busy for a couple of weeks. That's better than falling through null space."

"Yes, dear," she said. "Have you started thinking of names yet?" That was becoming the most tedious part of the mission—coming up with enough new names for all the stars and their satellites. After eight thousand systems, they had exhausted all the mythological and historical and geographical names they could remember. They now took turns, naming planets after baseball players and authors and film stars.

They were going down to examine a desert world they had named Rick, after the character in Casablanca. Even though it was unlikely that it would be suitable for life, they still needed to examine it firsthand, just on the off chance, just in case, just for ducks, as Gillette's mother used to say.

That made him pause, a quiet smile on his lips. He hadn't thought of that expression in years. That was a critical point in Gillette's voyage; never again, while Jessica was with him, did he come so close to losing his mental faculties. He clung to her and to his memories as a shield against the cold and destructive forces of the vast emptiness of space.

Once more the years slipped by. The past blurred into an indecipherable haze, and the future did not exist. Living in the present was at once the Gillettes' salvation and curse. They spent their time among routines and changeless duties that were no more tedious than what they had known on Earth, but no more exciting either.

As their shared venture neared its twentieth year, the great disaster befell Gillette: on an unnamed world hundreds of light-years from Earth, on a rocky hill overlooking a barren sandstone valley, Jessica Gillette died. She bent over to collect a sample of soil; a worn seam in her pressure suit parted; there was a sibilant warning of gases passing through the lining, into the suit. She fell to the stony ground, dead. Her husband watched her die, unable to give her any help, so quickly did the poison kill her. He sat beside her as the planet's day turned to night, and through the long, cold hours until dawn.

He buried her on that world, which he named Jessica, and left her there forever. He set out a transmission gate in orbit around the world, finished his survey of the rest of the system, and went on to the next star. He was consumed with grief, and for many days he did not leave his bed.

One morning Benny, the kitten, scrabbled up beside Gillette. The kitten had not been fed in almost a week. "Benny," murmured the lonely man, "I want you to realize something. We can't get home. If I turned this ship around right this very minute and powered home all the way through null space, it would take twenty years. I'd be in my seventies if I lived long enough to see Earth. I never expected to live that long." From then on, Gillette performed his duties in a mechanical way, with none of the enthusiasm he had shared with Jessica. There was nothing else to do but go on, and so he did, but the loneliness clung to him like a shadow of death.

He examined his results, and decided to try to make a tentative hypothesis. "It's unusual data, Benny," he said. "There has to be some simple explanation. Jessica always argued that there didn't have to be any explanation at all, but now I'm sure there must be. There has to be some meaning behind all of this, somewhere. Now tell me, why haven't we found Indication Number One of life on any of these twenty-odd thousand worlds we've visited?"

Benny didn't have much to suggest at this point. He followed Gillette with his big yellow eyes as the man walked around the room. "I've gone over this before," said Gillette, "and the only theories I come up with are extremely hard to live with. Jessica would have thought I was crazy for sure. My friends on Earth would have a really difficult time even listening to them, Benny, let alone seriously considering them. But in an investigation like this, there comes a point when you have to throw out all the predicted results and look deep and long at what has actually occurred. This isn't what I wanted, you know. It sure isn't what Jessica and I expected. But it is what happened."

Gillette sat down at his desk. He thought for a moment about Jessica, and he was brought to the verge of tears. But he thought about how he had dedicated the remainder of his life to her, and to her dream of finding an answer at one of the stellar systems yet to come.

He devoted himself to getting that answer for her. The one blessing in all the years of disappointment was that the statistical data were so easy to comprehend. He didn't need a computer to help in arranging the information: there was just one long, long string of zeros. "Science is built on theories," thought Gillette. "Some theories may be untestable in actual practice, but are accepted because of an overwhelming preponderance of empirical data. For instance, there may not actually exist any such thing as gravity; it may be that things have been falling down consistently because of some outrageous statistical quirk. Any moment now things may start to fall up and down at random, like pennies landing heads or tails. And then the Law of Gravity will have to be amended."

That was the first, and safest, part of his reasoning. Next came the feeling that there was one overriding possibility that would adequately account for the numbing succession of lifeless planets. "I don't really want to think about that yet," he murmured, speaking to Jessica's spirit. "Next week, maybe. I think we'll visit a couple more systems first."

And he did. There were seven planets around an M-class star, and then a G star with eleven, and a K star with fourteen; all the worlds were impact-cratered and pitted and smoothed with lava flow. Gillette held Benny in his lap after inspecting the three systems. "Thirty-two more planets," he said. "What's the grand total now?" Benny didn't know.

Gillette didn't have anyone with whom to debate the matter. He could not consult scientists on Earth; even Jessica was lost to him. All he had was his patient gray cat, who couldn't be looked to for many subtle contributions. "Have you noticed," asked the man, "that the farther we get from Earth, the more homogeneous the universe looks?" If Benny didn't understand the word homogeneous, he didn't show it. "The only really unnatural thing we've seen in all these years has been Earth itself. Life on Earth is the only truly anomalous factor we've witnessed in twenty years of exploration. What does that mean to you?"

At that point, it didn't mean anything to Benny, but it began to mean something to Gillette. He shrugged. "None of my friends were willing to consider even the possibility that Earth might be alone in the universe, that there might not be anything else alive anywhere in all the infinite reaches of space. Of course, we haven't looked at much of those infinite reaches, but going zero for twenty-three thousand means that something unusual is happening." When the Gillettes had left Earth two decades before, prevailing scientific opinion insisted that life had to be out there somewhere, even though there was no proof, either directly or indirectly. There had to be life; it was only a matter of stumbling on it. Gillette looked at the old formula, still hanging where it had been throughout the whole voyage. "If one of those factors is zero," he thought, "then the whole product is zero. Which factor could it be?" There was no hint of an answer, but that particular question was becoming less important to Gillette all the time.

* * *

And so it had come down to this: Year 30 and still outward bound. The end of Gillette's life was somewhere out there in the black stillness. Earth was a pale memory, less real now than last night's dreams. Benny was an old cat, and soon he would die as Jessica had died, and Gillette would be absolutely alone. He didn't like to think about that, but the notion intruded on his consciousness again and again.

Another thought arose just as often. It was an irrational thought, he knew, something he had scoffed at thirty years before. His scientific training led him to examine ideas by the steady, cold light of reason, but this new concept would not hold still for such a mechanical inspection.

He began to think that perhaps Earth was alone in the universe, the only planet among billions to be blessed with life. "I have to admit again that I haven't searched through a significant fraction of all the worlds in the galaxy," he said, as if he were defending his feelings to Jessica. "But I'd be a fool if I ignored thirty years of experience. What does it mean, if I say that Earth is the only planet with life? It isn't a scientific or mathematical notion. Statistics alone demand other worlds with some form of life. But what can overrule such a biological imperative?" He waited for a guess from Benny; none seemed to be forthcoming. "Only an act of faith," murmured Gillette. He paused, thinking that he might hear a trill of dubious laughter from Jessica's spirit, but there was only the humming, ticking silence of the spacecraft.

"A single act of creation, on Earth," said Gillette. "Can you imagine what any of the people at the university would have said to that? I wouldn't have been able to show my face around there again. They would have revoked every credential I had. My subscription to Science would have been canceled. The local PBS channel would have refused my membership.

"But what else can I think? If any of those people had spent the last thirty years the way we have, they'd have arrived at the same conclusion. I didn't come to this answer easily, Jessica, you know that. You know how I was. I never had any faith in anything I hadn't witnessed myself. I didn't even believe in the existence of George Washington, let alone first principles. But there comes a time when a scientist must accept the most unappealing explanation, if it is the only one left that fits the facts."

It made no difference to Gillette whether or not he was correct, whether he had investigated a significant number of worlds to substantiate his conclusion. He had had to abandon, one by one, all of his prejudices, and made at last a leap of faith. He knew what seemed to him to be the truth, not through laboratory experiments but by an impulse he had never felt before.

For a few days he felt comfortable with the idea. Life had been created on Earth for whatever reasons, and nowhere else. Each planet devoid of life that Gillette discovered became from then on a confirming instance of this hypothesis. But then, one night, it occurred to him how horribly he had cursed himself. If Earth were the only home of life, why was Gillette hurtling farther and farther from that place, farther from where he too had been made, farther from where he was supposed to be?

What had he done to himself—and to Jessica?

"My impartiality failed me, sweetheart," he said to her disconsolately. "If I could have stayed cold and objective, at least I would have had peace of mind. I would never have known how I damned both of us. But I couldn't; the impartiality was a lie, from the very beginning. As soon as we went to measure something, our humanity got in the way. We couldn't be passive observers of the universe, because we're alive and we're people and we think and feel. And so we were doomed to learn the truth eventually, and we were doomed to suffer because of it." He wished Jessica were still alive, to comfort him as she had so many other times. He had felt isolated before, but it had never been so bad. Now he understood the ultimate meaning of alienation—a separation from his world and the force that had created it. He wasn't supposed to be here, wherever it was. He belonged on Earth, in the midst of life. He stared out through the port, and the infinite blackness seemed to enter into him, merging with his mind and spirit. He felt the awful coldness in his soul.

For a while Gillette was incapacitated by his emotions. When Jessica died, he had bottled up his grief; he had never really permitted himself the luxury of mourning her. Now, with the added weight of his new convictions, her loss struck him again, harder than ever before. He allowed the machines around him to take complete control of the mission in addition to his well-being. He watched the stars shine in the darkness as the ship fell on through real space. He stroked Benny's thick gray fur and remembered everything he had so foolishly abandoned.

In the end it was Benny that pulled Gillette through. Between strokes the man's hand stopped in midair; Gillette experienced a flash of insight, what the oriental philosophers call satori, a moment of diamond-like clarity. He knew intuitively that he had made a mistake that had led him into self-pity. If life had been created on Earth, then all living things were a part of that creation, wherever they might be. Benny, the gray-haired cat, was a part of it, even locked into this tin can between the stars. Gillette himself was a part, wherever he traveled. That creation was just as present in the spacecraft as on Earth itself: it had been foolish for Gillette to think that he ever could separate himself from it—which was just what Jessica had always told him.

"Benny!" said Gillette, a tear streaking his wrinkled cheek. The cat observed him benevolently. Gillette felt a pleasant warmth overwhelm him as he was released at last from his loneliness. "It was all just a fear of death," he whispered. "I was just afraid to die. I wouldn't have believed it! I thought I was beyond all that. It feels good to be free of it."

And when he looked out again at the wheeling stars, the galaxy no longer seemed empty and black, but vibrant and thrilling with a creative energy. He knew that what he felt could not be shaken, even if the next world he visited was a lush garden of life—that would not change a thing, because his belief was no longer based on numbers and facts, but on a stronger sense within him.

* * *

It made no difference at all where Gillette was headed, what stars he would visit: wherever he went, he understood at last, he was going home.

[End]

---------------

"One" is copyright © 1995 by the Estate of George Alec Effinger and is reprinted here by permission of Barbara Hambly and the GAE Estate. The story was originally published in New Legends, edited by Greg Bear (Legend Press UK, 1995), and is currently available in the short story collection George Alec Effinger Live! from Planet Earth (Golden Gryphon Press, 2005).

One

by George Alec Effinger

[Continued from Part 1]

He remembered how excited they had been about the mission, some thirty years before. He and Jessica had put in their application, and they had been chosen for reasons Gillette had not fully understood. "My father thinks that anyone who wants to go chasing across the galaxy for the rest of his life must be a little crazy," said Jessica.

Gillette smiled. "A little unbalanced, maybe, but not crazy."

They were lying in the grass behind their house, looking up into the night sky, wondering which of the bright diamond stars they would soon visit. The project seemed like a wonderful vacation from their grief, an opportunity to examine their lives and their relationship without the million remembrances that tied them to the past. "I told my father that it was a marvelous opportunity for us," she said. "I told him that from a scientific point of view, it was the most exciting possibility we could ever hope for."

"Did he believe you?"

"Look, Leslie, a shooting star. Make a wish. No, I don't think he believed me. He said the project's board of governors agreed with him and the only reason we've been selected is that we're crazy or unbalanced or whatever in just the right ways."

Gillette tickled his wife's ear with a long blade of grass. "Because we might spend the rest of our lives staring down at stars and worlds."

"I told him five years at the most, Leslie. Five years. I told him that as soon as we found anything we could definitely identify as living matter, we'd turn around and come home. And if we have any kind of luck, we might see it in one of our first stops. We may be gone only a few months or a year."

"I hope so," said Gillette. They looked into the sky, feeling it press down on them with a kind of awesome gravity, as if the infinite distances had been converted to mass and weight. Gillette closed his eyes. "I love you," he whispered.

"I love you, too, Leslie," murmured Jessica. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. "I might have been afraid to go with you if you weren't worried, too. But there's nothing to be afraid of. We'll have each other, and it'll be exciting. It will be more fun than spending the next couple of years here, doing the same thing, giving lectures to grad students and drinking sherry with the Nobel crowd."

Gillette laughed. "I just hope that when we get back, someone remembers who we are. I can just see us spending two years going out and coming back, and nobody even knows what the project was all about."

Their good-bye to her father was more difficult. Mr. Reid was still not sure why they wanted to leave Earth. "A lot of young people suffer a loss, the way you have," he said. "But they go on somehow. They don't just throw their lives away."

"We're not throwing anything away," said Jessica. "Dad, I guess you'd have to be a biologist to understand. There's more excitement in the chance of discovering life somewhere out there than in anything we might do if we stayed here. And we won't be gone long. It's field work, the most challenging kind. Both of us have always preferred that to careers at the chalkboards in some university."

Reid shrugged and kissed his daughter. "If you're sure," was all he had to say. He shook hands with Gillette.

Jessica looked up at the massive spacecraft. "I guess we are," she said. There was nothing more to do or say. They left Earth not many hours later, and they watched the planet dwindle in the ports and on the screens.

The experience of living on the craft was strange at first, but they quickly settled into routines. They learned that while the idea of interstellar flight was exciting, the reality was duller than either could have imagined. The two kittens had no trouble adjusting, and the Gillettes were glad for their company. When the craft was half a million miles from Earth, the computer slipped it into null space, and they were truly isolated for the first time.

It was terrifying. There was no way to communicate with Earth while in null space. The craft became a self-contained little world, and in dangerous moments when Gillette allowed his imagination too much freedom, the silent emptiness around him seemed like a new kind of insanity or death. Jessica's presence calmed him, but he was still grateful when the ship came back into normal space, at the first of their unexplored stellar systems.

Their first subject was a small, dim, class-M star, the most common type in the galaxy, with only two planetary bodies and a lot of asteroidal debris circling around it. "What are we going to name the star, dear?" asked Jessica. They both looked at it through the port, feeling a kind of parental affection.

Gillette shrugged. "I thought it would be easier if we stuck to the mythological system they've been using at home."

"That's a good idea, I guess. We've got one star with two little planets wobbling around it."

"Didn't Apollo have... No, I'm wrong. I thought—"

Jessica turned away from the port. "It reminds me of Odin and his two ravens."

"He had two ravens?"

"Sure," said Jessica, "Thought and Memory. Hugin and Munin."

"Fine. We'll name the star Odin, and the planets whatever you just said. I'm sure glad I have you. You're a lot better at this than I am."

Jessica laughed. She looked forward to exploring the planets. It would be the first break they had in the monotony of the journey. Neither Leslie nor Jessica anticipated finding life on the two desolate worlds, but they were glad to give them a thorough examination. They wandered awe-struck over the bleak, lonely landscapes of Hugin and Munin, completing their tests, and at last returned to their orbiting craft. They sent their findings back to Earth, set out the first of the transmission gates, and, not yet feeling very disappointed, left the Odin system. They both felt that they were in contact with their home, regardless of the fact that their message would take a long time to reach Earth, and they were moving away too quickly ever to receive any. But they both knew that if they wanted, they could still turn around and head back to Earth.

Their need to know drove them on. The loneliness had not yet become unbearable. The awful fear had not yet begun.

The gates were for the use of the people who followed the Gillettes into the unsettled reaches of the galaxy; they could be used in succession to travel outward, but the travelers couldn't return through them. They were like ostrich eggs filled with water and left by natives in the African desert; they were there to make the journey safer and more comfortable for others, to enable the others to travel even farther.

Each time the Gillettes left one star system for another, through null space, they put a greater gulf of space and time between themselves and the world of their birth. "Sometimes I feel very strange," admitted Gillette, after they had been outbound for more than two years. "I feel as if any contact we still have with Earth is an illusion, something we've invented just to maintain our sanity. I feel like we're donating a large part of our lives to something that might never benefit anyone."

Jessica listened somberly. She had had the same feelings, but she hadn't wanted to let her husband know. "Sometimes I think that the life in the university classroom is the most desirable thing in the world. Sometimes I damn myself for not seeing that before. But it doesn't last long. Every time we go down to a new world, I still feel the same hope. It's only the weeks in null space that get to me. The alienation is so intense."

Gillette looked at her mournfully. "What does it really matter if we do discover life?" he asked.

She looked at him in shocked silence for a moment. "You don't really mean that," she said at last.

Gillette's scientific curiosity rescued him, as it had more than once in the past. "No," he said softly, "I don't. It does matter." He picked up the three kittens from Ethyl's litter. "Just let me find something like these waiting on one of these endless planets, and it will all be worthwhile."

Months passed, and the Gillettes visited more stars and more planets, always with the same result. After three years they were still rocketing away from Earth. The fourth year passed, and the fifth. Their hope began to dwindle.

"It bothers me just a little," said Gillette as they sat beside a great gray ocean, on a world they had named Carraway. There was a broad beach of pure white sand backed by high dunes. Waves broke endlessly and came to a frothy end at their feet. "I mean, that we never see anybody behind us, or hear anything. I know it's impossible, but I used to have this crazy dream that somebody was following us through the gates and then jumped ahead of us through null space. Whoever it was waited for us at some star we hadn't got to yet."

Jessica made a flat mound of wet sand. "This is just like Earth, Leslie," she said. "If you don't notice the chartreuse sky. And if you don't think about how there isn't any grass in the dunes and no shells on the beach. Why would somebody follow us like that?"

Gillette lay back on the clean, white sand and listened to the pleasant sound of the surf. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe there had been some absurd kind of life on one of those planets we checked out years ago. Maybe we made a mistake and overlooked something, or misread a meter or something. Or maybe all the nations on Earth had wiped themselves out in a war and I was the only living human male and the lonely women of the world were throwing a party for me."

"You're crazy, honey," said Jessica. She flipped some damp sand onto the legs of his pressure suit.

"Maybe Christ had come back and felt the situation just wasn't complete without us, too. For a while there, every time we bounced back into normal space around a star, I kind of half-hoped to see another ship, waiting." Gillette sat up again. "It never happened, though."

"I wish I had a stick," said Jessica. She piled more wet sand on her mound, looked at it for a few seconds, and then looked up at her husband. "Could there be something happening at home?" she asked.

"Who knows what's happened in these five years? Think of all we've missed, sweetheart. Think of the books and the films, Jessie. Think of the scientific discoveries we haven't heard about. Maybe there's peace in the Mideast and a revolutionary new source of power and a black woman in the White House. Maybe the Cubs have won a pennant, Jessie. Who knows?"

"Don't go overboard, dear," she said. They stood and brushed off the sand that clung to their suits. Then they started back toward the landing craft.

Onboard the orbiting ship an hour later, Gillette watched the cats. They didn't care anything about the Mideast; maybe they had the right idea. "I'll tell you one thing," he said to his wife. "I'll tell you who does know what's been happening. The people back home know. They know all about everything. The only thing they don't know is what's going on with us, right now. And somehow I have the feeling that they're living easier with their ignorance than I am with mine." The kitten that would grow up to be Benny's mother tucked herself up into a neat little bundle and fell asleep.

"You're feeling cut off," said Jessica.

"Of course I am," said Gillette. "Remember what you used to say to me? Before we were married, when I told you I only wanted to go on with my work, and you told me that one human being was no human being? Remember? You were always saying things like that, just so I'd have to ask you what the hell you were talking about. And then you'd smile and deliver some little story you had all planned out. I guess it made you happy. So you said, 'One human being is no human being,' and I said, 'What does that mean?' and you went on about how if I were going to live my life all alone, I might as well not live it at all. I can't remember exactly the way you put it. You have this crazy way of saying things that don't have the least little bit of logic to them but always make sense. You said I figured I could sit in my ivory tower and look at things under a microscope and jot down my findings and send out little announcements now and then about what I'm doing and how I'm feeling and I shouldn't be surprised if nobody gives a damn. You said that I had to live among people, that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get away from it. And that I couldn't climb a tree and decide I was going to start my own new species. But you were wrong, Jessica. You can get away from people. Look at us."

The sound of his voice was bitter and heavy in the air. "Look at me," he murmured. He looked at his reflection and it frightened him. He looked old; worse than that, he looked just a little demented. He turned away quickly, his eyes filling with tears.

"We're not truly cut off," she said softly. "Not as long as we're together."

"Yes," he said, but he still felt set apart, his humanity diminishing with the passing months. He performed no function that he considered notably human. He read meters and dials and punched buttons; machines could do that, animals could be trained to do the same. He felt discarded, like a bad spot on a potato, cut out and thrown away.

Jessica prevented his depression from deepening into madness. He was far more susceptible to the effects of isolation than she. Their work sustained Jessica, but it only underscored their futility for her husband.

* * *

[Continue to Part 3]

---------------

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, if there was one previously published story that I would have included in my original anthology Is Anybody Out There? (co-edited with Nick Gevers, Daw Books, 2010), that story would have been "One" by George Alec Effinger.

In a posting to Usenet group "rec.arts.sf.written" on December 13, 1998, George wrote: "...the most difficult short story sale I've ever had was a piece called 'One,' which I wrote almost twenty years ago.... It was rejected by editors who thought... it would be an unpopular idea among their readers. It was bounced at 'Isaac Asimov's' by three different editors over the years."

The "unpopular idea" to which George referred is that we are, in fact, alone in the universe. Readers want to read about aliens, and alien contact—not that the galaxy is completely void of other intelligent life, or any life, for that matter. What kind of story would that make, anyhow?

So GAE's "One" remained unpublished for nearly 20 years until it was finally purchased in 1995 by noted SF author Greg Bear for his New Legends anthology, published by Legend Press UK. And there the story remained until 2001, when Orson Scott Card selected it for his reprint anthology, Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century.1 And, lastly, I included "One" in George Alec Effinger Live! from Planet Earth, a collection (the second of three) of his work, which I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press in 2005.2 The story was introduced in the book by Barbara Hambly, George's ex-wife and executrix of the Effinger Estate. Here is Ms. Hambly's introduction to "One" from George Alec Effinger Live! from Planet Earth:

Like a meditation returned to over and over—or a recurring dream—George revisited the image of a lone man trying his best to perform an assigned task that is both impossible and meaningless, and getting no thanks or support for his efforts. Sometimes these stories are ironic, like "King of the Cyber Rifles," sometimes bleakly funny, like "Posterity." I suspect this was how George viewed himself and his work. But "One" rises far above that. I can think of no other science fiction writer who would tell a story so completely antithetical to the whole concept of science fiction. The genre is based, almost as a given, upon the fact that there is life, civilization, intelligence out there: sometimes benevolent, sometimes hostile, sometimes completely incomprehensible...but there. It is a literature of hope.

It is a literature of "What if...?"

But what if we are alone?

What does that do to hope? To sanity?

George had this story in his files for twenty years before Greg Bear bought it for his New Legends anthology, I think for precisely that reason: in the 1970s it was an almost unaskable question. George was absolutely delighted when it finally sold.

Science fiction is a genre of possibilities, of humanity meeting and dealing with unthinkable situations.

This one's about as unthinkable as they get.

—Barbara Hambly

And now, for only the fourth time in nearly 20 years—and with the most gracious and kind permission of Barbara Hambly and the George Alec Effinger Estate, I bring you, in three serialized parts...

One

by George Alec Effinger

(© 1995 by the Estate of George Alec Effinger.

Reprinted with permission.)

It was Year 30, Day 1, the anniversary of Dr. Leslie Gillette's leaving Earth. Standing alone at the port, he stared out at the empty expanse of null space. "At eight o'clock, the temperature in the interstellar void is a negative two hundred seventy-three degrees Celsius," he said. "Even without the wind chill factor, that's cold. That's pretty damn cold."

A readout board had told him that morning that the ship and its lonely passenger would be reaching the vicinity of a star system before bedtime. Gillette didn't recall the name of the star—it had only been a number in a catalogue. He had long since lost interest in them. In the beginning, in the first few years when Jessica had still been with him, he had eagerly asked the board to show them where in Earth's night sky each star was located. They had taken a certain amount of pleasure in examining at close hand stars which they recognized as features of major constellations. That had passed. After they had visited a few thousand stars, they grew less interested. After they had discovered yet more planetary bodies, they almost became weary of the search. Almost. The Gillettes still had enough scientific curiosity to keep them going, farther and farther from their starting point.

But now the initial inspiration was gone. Rather than wait by the port until the electronic navigator slipped the ship back into normal space, he turned and left the control room. He didn't feel like searching for habitable planets. It was getting late, and he could do it the next morning.

He fed his cat instead. He punched up the code and took the cat's dinner from the galley chute. "Here you go," said Gillette. "Eat it and be happy with it. I want to read a little before I go to sleep." As he walked toward his quarters he felt the mild thrumming of the corridor's floor and walls that meant the ship had passed into real space. The ship didn't need directions from Gillette; it had already plotted a safe and convenient orbit in which to park, based on the size and characteristics of the star. The planets, if any, would all be there in the morning, waiting for Dr. Gillette to examine them, classify them, name them, and abandon them.

Unless, of course, he found life anywhere.

* * *

Finding life was one of the main purposes of the journey. Soon it had become the Gillettes' purpose in life as well. They had set out as enthusiastic explorers: Dr. Leslie Gillette, thirty-five years old, already an influential writer and lecturer in theoretical exobiology, and his wife, Jessica Reid Gillette, who had been the chairperson of the biochemistry department at a large Midwest state university. They had been married for eleven years, and had made the decision to go into field exploration after the death of their only child.

Now they were traveling through space toward the distant limits of the galaxy. Long, long ago the Earth's sun had disappeared from view. The exobiology about which both Gillettes had thought and written and argued back home remained just what it had been then—mere theory. After visiting hundreds and hundreds of stellar systems, upon thousands of potential life-sustaining planets, they had yet to see or detect any form of life, no matter how primitive. The lab facilities on the landing craft returned the same frustrating answer with soul-deadening frequency: No life. Dead. Sterile. Year after year, the galaxy became to the Gillettes a vast and terrifying immensity of insensible rock and blazing gas.

"Do you remember," asked Jessica one day, "what old man Hayden used to tell us?"

Gillette smiled. "I used to love to get that guy into an argument," he said.

"He told me once that we might find life, but there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of finding intelligent life."

Gillette recalled that discussion with pleasure. "And you called him a Terran chauvinist. I loved it. You made up a whole new category of bigotry, right on the spot. We thought he was such a conservative old codger. Now it looks like even he was too optimistic."

Jessica stood behind her husband's chair, reading what he was writing. "What would Hayden say, do you think, if he knew we haven't found a goddamn thing?"

Gillette turned around and looked up at her. "I think even he would be disappointed," he said. "Surprised, too."

"This isn't what I anticipated," she said.

The complete absence of even the simplest of life forms was at first irritating, then puzzling, then ominous. Soon even Leslie Gillette, who always labored to keep separate his emotional thoughts and his logical ones, was compelled to realize that his empirical conclusions were shaping up in defiance of all the mathematical predictions man or machine had ever made. In the control room was a framed piece of vellum, on which was copied, in fine italic letters and numerals:

N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

This was a formula devised decades before to determine the approximate number of advanced technological civilizations humans might expect to find elsewhere in the galaxy. The variables in the formula are given realistic values, according to the scientific wisdom of the time. N is determined by seven factors:

R*   the mean rate of star formation in the galaxy (with an assigned value of ten per year) fp   the percentage of stars with planets (close to one hundred percent) ne   the average number of planets in each star system with environments suitable for life (with an assigned value of one) fl   the percentage of those planets on which life does, in fact, develop (close to one hundred percent) fi   the percentage of those planets on which intelligent life develops (ten percent) fc   the percentage of those planets on which advanced technical civilization develops (ten percent) L   the lifetime of the technical civilization (with an estimated value of ten million years).

These figures produced a predictive result stating that N—the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy—equals ten to the sixth power. A million. The Gillettes had cherished that formula through all the early years of disappointment. But they were not looking for an advanced civilization, they were looking for life. Any kind of life. Some six years after leaving Earth, Leslie and Jessica were wandering across the dry, sandy surface of a cool world circling a small, cool sun. "I don't see any advanced civilizations," said Jessica, stooping to stir the dust with the heavy gauntlet of her pressure suit.

"Nope," said her husband, "not a hamburger stand in sight." The sky was a kind of reddish purple, and he didn't like looking into it very often. He stared down at the ground, watching Jessica trail her fingers in the lifeless dirt.

"You know," she said, "that formula says that every system ought to have at least one planet suitable for life."

Gillette shrugged. "A lot of them do," he said. "But it also says that every planet that could sustain life, will sustain life, eventually. Maybe they were a little too enthusiastic when they picked the values for their variables."

Jessica laughed. "Maybe." She dug a shallow hole in the surface. "I keep hoping I'll run across some ants or a worm or something."

"Not here, honey," said Gillette. "Come on, let's go back." She sighed and stood. Together they returned to the landing craft.

"What a waste," said Jessica, as they prepared to lift off. "I've given my imagination all this freedom. I'm prepared to see anything down there, the garden variety of life or something more bizarre. You know, dancing crystals or thinking clouds. But I never prepared myself for so much nothing."

The landing craft shot up through the thin atmosphere, toward the orbiting command ship. "A scientist has to be ready for this kind of thing," said Gillette wistfully. "But I agree with you. Experience seems to be defying the predictions in a kind of scary way."

Jessica loosened her safety belt and took a deep breath. "Mathematically unlikely, I'd call it. I'm going to look at the formula tonight and see which of those variables is the one screwing everything up."

Gillette shook his head. "I've done that time and time again," he said. "It won't get you very far. Whatever you decided, the result will still be a lot different from what we've found." On the myriad worlds they had visited, they never found anything as simple as algae or protozoa, let alone intelligent life. Their biochemical sensors had never detected anything that even pointed in that direction, like a complex protein. Only rock and dust and empty winds and lifeless pools.

* * *

In the morning, just as he had predicted, the planets were still there. There were five of them, circling a modest star, type G3, not very different from Earth's Sun. He spoke to the ship's computer: "I name the star Hannibal. Beginning with the nearest to Hannibal, I name the planets: Huck, Tom, Jim, Becky, and Aunt Polly. We will proceed with the examinations." The ship's instruments could take all the necessary readings, but Gillette wouldn't trust its word on the existence of life. That question was so important that he felt he had to make the final determination himself.

Huck was a Mars-sized ball of nickel and iron, a rusty brown color, pocked with craters, hot and dry and dead. Tom was larger and darker, cooler, but just as damaged by impacts and just as dead. Jim was Earthlike; it had a good-sized atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen, its range of temperatures stayed generally between -30°C and +50°C, and there was a great abundance of water on the planet's surface. But there was no life, none on the rocky, dusty land, none in the mineral-salted water, nothing, not so much as a single cyanobacterium. Jim was the best hope Gillette had in the Hannibal system, but he investigated Becky and Aunt Polly as well. They were the less-dense gas giants of the system, although neither was so large as Uranus or Neptune. There was no life in their soupy atmospheres or on the igneous surfaces of their satellites. Gillette didn't bother to name the twenty-three moons of the five planets; he thought he'd leave that to the people who came after him. If any ever did.

Next, Gillette had to take care of the second purpose of the mission. He set out an orbiting transmission gate around Jim, the most habitable of the five planets. Now a ship following in his path could cross the scores of light-years instantaneously from the gate Gillette had set out at his previous stop. He couldn't even remember what that system had been like or what he had named it. After all these years they were all confused in his mind, particularly because they were so identical in appearance, so completely empty of life.

He sat at a screen and looked down on Jim, at the tan, sandy continents, the blue seas, the white clouds and polar caps. Gillette's cat, a gray Maine coon, his only companion, climbed into his lap. The cat's name was Benny, great-grandson of Methyl and Ethyl, the two kittens Jessica had brought along. Gillette scratched behind the animal's ears and under his chin. "Why aren't there any cats down there?" he asked it. Benny had only a long purr for an answer. After a while Gillette tired of staring down at the silent world. He had made his survey, had put out the gate, and now there was nothing to do but send the information back toward Earth and move on. He gave the instructions to the ship's computer, and in half an hour the stars had disappeared, and Gillette was traveling again through the darkness of null space.

* * *

[Continue to Part 2]

---------------

Footnotes:

1. When the Orson Scott Card anthology was reprinted in 2004 in trade paperback, the book was renamed Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century.

Frank Drake, Seth Shostak, former SETI Institute director Jill Tarter, Astronaut Tom Jones, science fiction author Robert J Sawyer – these are just a few of the luminaries that were on hand for the SETI Institute's second SETIcon, held at the Santa Clara (California) Hyatt, from June 22 to 24, 2012.

I had made arrangements to sell copies of my two anthologies – Alien Contact (Night Shade Books, 2011) and Is Anybody Out There? (DAW Books, 2010) – through the SETI Institute store in the exhibitors room (actually, more like a ballroom!). So I was on hand all three days – and I mean all three days, from opening until closing – during which I chatted with attendees and, in the process, managed to sell a few copies of the books.

One of the exhibitors was the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, from whom I snagged a few back issues of their newsletter Astronomy Beat. The April 5, 2010, issue (Number 46) features a cover story entitled "The Origin of the Drake Equation."1

Having co-edited (with Nick Gevers) anthology Is Anybody Out There? – stories based on the Fermi Paradox2 – my interest in the Drake Equation is more than just a passing fancy. And to see Frank Drake up close and personal, as it were, well, it's like being in the same room with one's favorite actor, or musician.

According to Astronomy Beat, in the summer of 1961, J. Peter Pearman, a staff officer on the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Science, contacted Frank Drake about a meeting of the minds "to investigate the research potential" for "discovering life on other planets." Noteworthy scientists, researchers, and inventors were then invited to the meeting. Here's an excerpt from Frank Drake and "The Origin of the Drake Equation."

I took on the job of setting an agenda for the meeting. There was no one else to do it. So I sat down and thought, "What do we need to know about to discover life in space?" Then I began listing the relevant points as they occurred to me.

[...]

I looked at my list, thinking to arrange it somehow, perhaps in the order of relative importance of the topics. But each one seemed to carry just as much weight as another... Then it hit me: The topics were not only of equal importance, there were also utterly independent. Furthermore, multiplied together they constituted a formula for determining the number of advanced, communicative civilizations that existed in space.

The result of Frank Drake's list was, of course, the Drake Equation:

I'm not going to define each of the variables in the equation at this time, but you will see this equation again soon.

Benevolent (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) or deadly (Independence Day), contact with the alien "other" is one of the basic themes of science fiction. And we as readers and moviegoers thrive on this content. The basic premise of Is Anybody Out There? is that we are not alone, but that we haven't quite figured out ET's mode of communication. And/or we haven't yet learned what is important to ET to intrigue them enough to even want to make contact with us mere Earthlings. That is what the stories in IAOT? explore.

But the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation bring to mind another story by one very special author, George Alec Effinger who, alas, is no longer with us. The story is called "One." I would have loved to have included this story in Is Anybody Out There? as the antithesis of the anthology's theme, but all the included stories were written expressly for the book, and "One" was previously published in 1995.

I will leave you, for now, with this question:

What if we really are alone in the universe: How far would you go in search of that truth?

[Read the story "One" by George Alec Effinger]

--------------- Footnotes:

1. The excerpt entitled "The Origin of the Drake Equation" was adapted and updated for Astronomy Beat from Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Delacorte Press, 1992) by Frank Drake and Dava Sobel.

2. From author Paul McAuley's Introduction to Is Anybody Out There? co-edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern (Daw Books, 2010): "The galaxy contains between one hundred billion and four hundred billion stars: even if only a small fraction possess planets capable of supporting life, and technological civilisations arise on only a few of those life-bearing planets, there should still be a large number of civilisations capable of communicating with us. And although the distances between stars are very large, and even if exploration of the galaxy is limited to speeds below that of light, exponential multiplication of interstellar colonies would mean that a determined star-faring civilisation would be able to visit or colonise every star in the galaxy within 5 to 50 million years, a trivial span of time compared to the lifetime of the galaxy. From these basic assumptions and calculations, Fermi concluded that Earth should have been visited by aliens long ago, and many times since. But where was everybody?"

This is my monthly wrap-up of June's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. As with prior months, June was a busy month, so there is a lot of content here. Previous monthly recaps are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

Mediabistro's @galleycat recommends that writers try SmartEdit, a free software program. No, this program won't edit your manuscript, but it will find clichés, along with overused words and phrases. The link showcases a SmartEdit of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I've tested the program on a couple short story manuscripts, which revealed little of interest; but I'll be using it shortly on a novel I am editing.

Speaking of editing: Guest blogger @JaneFriedman shares an interesting piece [hint, hint] entitled "How to Influence Editors in a Way That 90% of Other Writers Don't." Jane writes: "One of the most important qualities of successful people I know (regardless of profession) is that they understand what motivates the people around them. Some authors—even though they are experts in understanding the hearts of their characters—forget to look into the hearts of editors and agents.... Well, how do you win anyone over? You start by listening and showing you understand." (via @RachelleGardner)

I found this next link via the Facebook page of Testy Copy Editors [And though it's not my page, I certainly would qualify!]: From CNN.com comes "Why 'Amercia' needs copy editors.": "But most important is that a copy editor stands in for the reader, gingerly reshaping, clarifying and correcting things before the reader can see them and post an excoriating comment. But more and more publications are laying off their copy editors, replacing them with Web designers or more reporters, or with nothing."

In past "Links & Things" I've included links to blog posts by both Kristine Kathryn Rusch (@KristineRusch) and @DeanWesleySmith, both of whom post regularly on the business of books and publishing. In a recent "Business Rusch" post, Kris tackles the difference between traditional publishing and indie publishing, or, as she words it: the difference between "hurry up and wait" and "wait and hurry up." This latest Business Rusch post has more than 75 comments, too.

After reading "The Business Rusch" above, you might want to read this post on duolit entitled "8 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Deciding to Self-Publish," by guest poster @AndrewGalasetti: 1) How will my readers benefit? 2) Do I mind the long wait for traditional publishing? 3) If so, is it because I'm impatient? 4) If so, will my impatience negatively impact the quality of my writing? 5) What skills do I possess? 6) What skills can I outsource? 7) How will I outsource these skills? and 8) How bad do I want it? You'll find the details at the link. (Via Hugh Howey's FB page; see my May Links & Things for more on Hugh Howey's self-publishing success.)

It's great when these blog posts don't always have 10 numbered points; here are two with 7 points each:

Joanna Penn (@thecreativepenn) has "7 Networking Tips for Authors": 1) Start slow and adjust your expectations; 2) Be exclusive; 3) Use social media (especially Twitter) to make connections; 4) Go to as many readings as you can; 5) What can you do for them? 6) Attend writers conferences, book fairs, and summer workshops; and 7) Assess where you’re at as a writer.

And from Big Spaceship comes "7 Strategy Tips From the World of Screenwriting," most of which is appropriate to all types of professional writing: 1) Get a Logline (ie. a 2-sentence pitch); 2) High Concept; 3) Plot vs. Story; 4) Hero: Want vs. Need; 5) Structure; 6) Signposts; and 7) Focus on Your Outline. The author, Victor Piñeiro, also includes a 64-page slideshow at the bottom of the post on "the screenwriting process and how it helps craft better stories." (via @ColleenLindsay; via @CanonFodder at @BigSpaceship)

On Amazon's Omnivoracious, Susan J. Morris discusses "The Tricks and Traps of First Person" in a world where everyone writes an online journal, be it a blog or on Facebook. "But, while writing a journal provides excellent writing practice, when it comes to your actual story, there are a few important differences. For one, your online journal has context: you! For another, the reader has no expectations of an entertaining, immersive, world-shaking story from an online journal."

From Digital Book World (@digibookworld): "According to an upcoming study from the Book Industry Study Group...95% of publishers have had the experience of creating their e-books with one set of metadata and seeing an altered set of metadata at the point of sale..." (e.g. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple) "Metadata is a buzzword in digital publishing today. Publishers know they need to do it right, but there seems to be a poor industry-wide understanding of what exactly it is. Think of it as the digital version of everything you would find on a physical book's book jacket: author; title; ISBN number; blurbs from luminaries praising the book; the book cover; a summary of the content and description of the book; an author’s biography; and so on."

Here's a line from the 99¢ Nook edition of Tolstoy's War and Peace: "It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern..." The reader thus discovered that every instance of "kindle" was replaced by the word "Nook"! The article from The Guardian UK, entitled "War and Peace ebook readers find a surprise in its Nooks," contains a couple more examples and attempts to answer the question "Why?" (via Ari Marmell's FB page)

"It's no secret that discovery—how, when, and where readers 'discover' the books they choose to buy and read—remains a top priority for everyone in publishing. Goodreads is uniquely positioned to provide this information with our deep pool of 317 million books cataloged. In the past six months, we've done a lot of research into how readers find books, and we've presented our findings at several conferences, including Tools of Change and, most recently, the International Digital Publishing Forum." Goodreads presents "Anatomy of Book Discovery: A Case Study." (via @JaneFriedman’s FB page)

On a less pleasant subject: hate mail. Author @KameronHurley shares some recently received hate mail with us. One wonders what motivates an individual to contact an author—or any stranger for that matter—for the sole purpose of simply being nasty to that individual; and then to be stupid enough as to include one's email address: [email protected], are you out there? Readers, please feel free to contact the Google Gmail Police on behalf of all the intelligent, considerate, and pleasant people of the world.

Good morning. Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world, and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind.

Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today.

We can't be consumed by our petty differences any more. We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it's fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:

"We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on, we're going to survive."

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading Stross' 'Laundry' series for years now and seeing how Britain's brave secret agents fight creatures from extra-dimensional space whilst dealing with the latest round of meetings and Civil Service budget cuts. Having worked in government I find this really funny because it's true (the bureaucracy I mean, not the extra-dimensional creatures...)

—Graeme Flory, Graeme's Fantasy Book Review

Earlier this year, on January 27, I posted a blog update entitled "Doing Charles Stross's Laundry with Style," in which I wrote about working on the author's newest Laundry Files novel, The Apocalypse Codex, for Ace Books. And, specifically, that the publisher required that I provide a Style Sheet along with the edited manuscript.

The Apocalypse Codex will be published this month and the reviews are starting to appear. All very positive, so far....

I opened this blog post above with a quote from Graeme Flory's review on his Fantasy Book Review blog. Here is another snippet from his review:

...Stross appears to be of the mind that he is done explaining all the technical stuff that underpins this setting....We've had a few books for it all to sink in and now it's time for the plot itself to have some room to breathe. It's a great move on Stross' part; his plots are normally brimming over with cool stuff anyway but the extra room allows things to ramp up to another level.

And Graeme concludes his review with:

...there are still some nasty surprises in store to trap unwary characters and make The Apocalypse Codex a book that you simply have to finish. My only regret is that I finished the book too quickly and now I have to wait for ages until the next installment.

I suspect every author would like to read a review of their work end like that!

The second review is from Elias F. Combarro (@odo), whose name you may recognize on this blog. In a blog post on May 9, I linked to Odo's review of my Alien Contact anthology on his Spanish-language blog Sense of Wonder. If Spanish isn't your thing, Odo also now posts all his reviews in English as well. As a follow-up to his review, Odo also interviewed me about a week later. I've included a link to the interview in that previous blog post as well.

But back to The Apocalypse Codex -- Odo writes in his review on Sense of Wonder:

I found The Apocalypse Codex a bit closer to urban fantasy than the previous books in the series, and some parts even reminded me of The Magician King by Lev Grossman and Kraken by China Miéville. The plot is tighter, more interesting and easier to follow than some of the other novels of The Laundry Files.

And the last paragraph of his review ends with a dire warning:

All in all, The Apocalypse Codex is possibly the best novel of The Laundry Files (and my favorite book of 2012 so far, together with Existence by David Brin) and that is a lot to say. Buy it. Read it. You don't know when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN will happen and you'd better be prepared.

While attending SETIcon II this past weekend, one of the attendees, who was purchasing a copy of my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books, 2010), pointed out to me not only a difference in the books' covers but also that some of the books were a second printing. Learning that your book has sold well enough to necessitate a second printing is always great news. And to learn, too, of the cover variants was surprising as well.

In preparation for SETIcon, I had previously ordered a number of copies of Is Anybody Out There? direct from Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Aside from checking that the number of books in the box was accurate and that none were damaged, well, that was as far as my keen observations went.

I've tried to scan the covers to show the differences, but the glare and all prohibits such distinctions. So, I will do my best to explain.

For all you completists out there: What we discovered is that the first printings had a matte-finish cover, whereas the second printings had a glossy cover, with a press line on the left side of the cover about three-sixteenths of an inch from the edge. Another way of describing a press line (possibly "press line" is not the correct term, but that's how I know it) might be a manufactured/built-in reading crease near the left edge on the front cover.

Also, the first printings have the full number line 1 through 8, whereas the second printings begin with the number 2.

But wait, there's more! When I returned home that evening I pulled out my own first printing of IAOT? -- a copy that I had received in 2010 when the book was published -- and verified the full number line. This copy has a glossy cover but no press line.

So, we have two different covers on the first printing: glossy and matte finish; and a different cover than either of those on the second printing: glossy with a press line.

Is anybody out there? Does anyone really care?

Fair use allows me to use the cover art to this wonderful manga comic Reality Check!, however truth in advertising requires I state that this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with this comic. I just needed a catchy graphic that contained the words "Reality Check" -- and this Rikki Simons comic [full title: Super Information Hijinks: Reality Check!] serves that purpose.

My reality check, the one about which I am writing today, has to do with that point in a writer's life when s/he has to come to grips with the manuscript they've been working on for months, possibly even for years.

In mid-2007 when I was acquiring for Golden Gryphon Press, I received a submissions query from a writer who was a fan of "pulp sword & sorcery" fantasy fiction. He explained that since little fiction had been written recently [at the time of this query] in the style of Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter, among others, he had written his own pulp sword & sorcery novel and was seeking publication.

His email was well-written and quite intriguing; he had my attention, so I replied in kind. In his next response, he attached a copy of the full manuscript, but included a caveat:

...the opening couple of chapters are admittedly the weakest portions of my novel, and I am at a loss as to how to improve them, so if you wouldn't mind reading ahead to chapter three or so where the real action begins, I would greatly appreciate it.

Trust me, this is not something I want to hear as an acquiring editor, that the first two chapters of a submission are weak and the author is at a loss on how to fix it. [Maybe just begin the novel with chapter 3 and weave in the necessary back story from chapters 1 and 2 where appropriate?]

So I read the first three chapters; actually, the novel began with a lengthy prologue, too! The overlong, wordy, winding sentences, that seemed to ramble on and on, nearly drove me to drink (well, at least an excessive amount of coffee)... As a test, I rewrote one paragraph (only two sentences!) without all the unnecessary verbiage and reduced it from 84 words to 77 words. Doesn't seem like much but it made a huge difference in the flow of the paragraph. In another scene he introduced five major characters -- plus a demon -- all with names that weren't...well, they weren't as easy to pronounce as "Conan."

So I sent him a response that included quite a bit of feedback: the paragraph example from above, the overwhelming number of characters in the scene from above, a few examples of sentence structure issues (misplaced phrases), grammar errors, etc. I also suggested that he find himself a local writers group, through a bookstore, or library, or college, so that he could obtain feedback from fellow writers. His response to my email was quite cordial [I had also mentioned that I was leaving Golden Gryphon Press at the end of the year] but not what I had expected:

Thanks for taking the time to evaluate my submission, and best of luck to you, as well, in your future endeavors. As for your suggestion to allow my work to be critiqued by some manner of reader group, I will have to pass, as I generally find writers to be a rather pretentious lot, and I have no desire to associate with such. Just so you know, I wrote this novel for my own personal amusement, and only decided to shop it around to publishers at the behest of friends and family. Obviously, based upon your critique of my work, I should just stick to writing for pleasure as I obviously haven't the necessary skills to compete in the professional market nor do I have the drive to make myself more competitive. Lesson learned.

That, boys and girls, is a reality check. Which brings me to the present: Baycon 2012, held over the Labor Day weekend. I participated on a panel entitled "Self-Publishing: Where Does It Fit in the Literary Food Chain." This was one of those panels that was so well attended, so active a discussion, and so engrossing that I wish we had had at least another hour to continue the dialog; one and a half hours simply wasn't sufficient time. Every discussion and panel on self-publishing in which I have participated has inevitably covered the subject of editing -- specifically the need to have one's manuscript professionally edited. Too many self-published writers are hoping to be the next Amanda Hocking, and to accomplish this rare feat with little or no out-of-pocket expenses -- like professional editing, professional cover art and design, etc. So when this subject came up during the panel discussion, one of the audience members asked: "Where do we find professional editors?" -- and I blurted out: "You can hire me!"1 In addition to my blurt, the panel covered other ways in which a writer might connect with an appropriate editor. The convention was still in full swing, when on Sunday I received an email with the subject line: You said, "You can hire me!" One of the audience members at that panel discussion wanted to hire me to edit her manuscript, to which I eventually agreed. First, however, I wanted to make sure we were compatible, so to speak. I requested the first chapter of her novel, which she sent me; I then did a full developmental edit on it, and provided her feedback via email. There was quite a lot of red ink -- including a suggested title change -- and I wanted to make sure she was open to this degree of feedback. She was. This individual had been working on this novel for four years. Not full time, of course, as few writers have the luxury of being able to give up their day job. But nevertheless, she had put a lot of time into this manuscript; she had paid one professional author for an overall critique, she had workshopped parts of the novel at a past Worldcon and at a past Baycon, received feedback from writers met during NaNoWriMo, and she had also received feedback from beta readers. She had been doing everything right [write] so far, at least in my professional opinion, but did she really want to invest further in this manuscript, or was she simply too attached to it to let go, to move on to something else, something new. Few authors write and successfully publish their first novel, even second and third novels. Many writers have one, or two, or even more completed novels stashed away in desk drawers or boxed on shelves in the garage that they don't want to toss away, yet hope no one will ever read them. I felt the time was right for a reality check. I emailed the author and reiterated much of what she had communicated to me already regarding the novel's history. And then I asked her point blank if she was ready to rework this four-year-old novel yet again? Or, was she simply too attached to it due to personal familial reasons? Would it be more productive to set the novel in a drawer and move on to the next one? I realized that if she agreed with me, I had just talked myself out of a job -- and income. But I couldn't ignore this concern. She responded: "Your concerns are fair enough..." She explained that other writers had encouraged her to do something with the novel, specifically to publish it online. She went on to say:

I'd initially had very negative feelings about any kind of self-publishing, but I attended panels at BayCon planning to reconsider the idea within the current environment of online publishing.... However, I would still like anything I make publicly available to be my best effort and as close to professional quality as I can get it.

I had asked the author to rethink this project -- which she did -- and I was satisfied with her response. She is considering publishing the novel for free, online [she could possibly ask for donations were she to release the novel, say, one chapter at a time]. This action, if properly promoted, could develop a reader base, which in turn would be essential to any future self-publishing endeavor. But, bottom line, she insisted on professional editing even though she may be offering the novel to readers for free. That impressed me. My question to you: Do you need a reality check on your work in progress?

---------------

Footnote:

In my month end Links & Things post for April 2009, I included the following entry on Ray Bradbury:

Ray Bradbury, during his regular appearance at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, remarked that this may be his final appearance unless the LA Times resurrects its "Book" section, which, like most of the paper, has seen staff and page counts cut over the years. Bradbury worked for the LA Times "Book" section more than forty years ago! He shares some anecdotes in this article, including how he typed the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 using a "pay" typewriter in a basement room under the Powell Library on the UCLA campus. The typewriter required 10 cents for 30 minutes. Bradbury came each day with a bag of dimes. When the manuscript was complete, he had spent $9.80. (via @GalleyCat) [Good luck, Ray, on getting the "Book" section reinstated!]

The link above is to a brief article in the Los Angeles Times and well worth your time (no pun intended) -- and includes a photo of ole Ray signing books at the LA Festival of Books. His appearance there will be sorely missed.

Speaking of Ray's love of the printed word, and the joy he took in signing copies of his books and stories, I thought I would include one such book in my library that I personally had Ray Bradbury sign many years ago:

You'll have to pardon the inclusion of my thumb in the photo, but the book is too fragile (the binding glue is completely dried out) to lay flat. The signatures, from top to bottom: Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Isaac Asimov, Alan E. Nourse, and Chad Oliver -- all past masters, all of them now gone.

There are far more knowledgeable and eloquent tributes to Mr. Bradbury across the web today -- particularly this one from the LA Times, which includes twenty-one photos of Bradbury from throughout his life, beginning at age 3. But I just wanted to acknowledge his passing with this very brief post.

This is my monthly wrap-up of May's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. May was another busy month, so there is a lot of content here. Previous monthly recaps are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column. 

What would the publishing world be without another "authors beware" entry.... In this case I'm referring to Open Casket Press, Living Dead Press, and Undead Press. Don't be fooled: these three presses are all run by the same individual: Anthony Giangregorio -- and when "Tony" mentions his "editor" (Vincenzo Bilof) he's also talking about himself, though he wants you to believe that he is referring to some other nebulous individual. New author Mandy DeGeit was excited to have her first published story accepted for an Undead Press anthology -- that is, until she discovered after the story was published how the "editor" had rewritten her work, going so far as to include a paragraph of a dog beating (and sexual arousal) that was never in the original story. Mandy's sad tale went viral shortly thereafter, and when Richard Salter read it, he decided to go public as to why he pulled his novel, World's Collider, from Open Casket Press. You can read Richard's blog post, which also contains a link to Mandy's blog post. Bottom line: Stay away from Open Casket/Living Dead/Undead Press and Anthony "Tony" Giangregorio/Vincenzo Bilof. You have been duly warned.

But I'm not quite finished with Tony Giangregorio. Author Adam-Troy Castro posted a lengthy Facebook piece concerning this individual; since only FB users could read said post, I asked Adam to repost it elsewhere, and he graciously complied. So now non-FB users can read his "Secret Sequels" post. Here's a quote: "What Giangregorio has done is specifically, and deliberately, hijack the name of a better work and superior work to his sequel; he is specifically saying, 'This is a sequel to Dawn of the Dead.' Which he has no right to do."

I spent Memorial Day weekend at the annual BayCon convention here in Santa Clara County. One of the many panels in which I participated was entitled "Editors, Agents and Other Endangered Species"; the moderator, Dario Ciriello, posted a recap of the panel, with particular emphasis on the "editors" part.

Hugh Howey. Recognize that name? If not, neither had I, until May 14 when I read in Publishers Weekly online that film rights to his science fiction series Wool had sold to 20th Century Fox -- and partnering with Fox on the film deal is Scott Free, none other than Ridley and Tony Scott's production company. So I purchased a copy of Wool myself, and in the process learned that Hugh Howey had originally self-published Wool as a series of five novellas. The book will be published in hardcover in the UK, and the author is currently at work on a prequel series. If you search out Wool you will read nothing but rave reviews of this book. It represents one of the true self-publishing success stories, the result of a great story and great writing, and hard work. Howey's guest blog on IndieReader provides some personal history on Wool and how the movie rights came about. And he even writes on his own blog about receiving payment from a reader who originally obtained a copy of his book for free from a pirate site. As Howey writes: "How cool an exchange is that?"

Self-publishing is, of course, what everyone is talking about, especially when you read success stories like Hugh Howey's above. Rudy Rucker (@rudytheelder) has posted a four-part series on his step-by-step road to creating an ebook, which includes working with HTML code and apps like Calibre and Sigil. Begin at part one: "Getting Started," and you'll find links at the top of each page to get you to parts 2, 3, and 4. In part 4, you can even purchase the ebook edition of Rudy's How to Make an Ebook for only $1.95 from his own Transreal Books press.

Catherine Ryan Howard (@cathryanhoward) has a bit of a reality check for authors before they dive into self-publishing, with a blog post entitled "How To Sell Self-Published Books: Read This First." Catherine delves into five points: 1) By Default, No One Cares About Your Book; 2) Your Book is a Product—and It Had Better Work; 3) Social Media is About Connection; 4) You Can’t Sell New Concepts with Old Ways; and [my favorite] 5) You Are Not The Next Amanda Hocking. And be sure to check out the more than 240 Comments, too. (via Jane Friedman’s FB page)

But once you have that self-published book, how do you sell it beyond your immediate family and close friends? Mediabistro.com's GalleyCat (@galleycat) -- a website that every author should subscribe to! -- links to an article from the American Booksellers Association (ABA) on how self-published authors can sell their books at a few independent bookstores. And then GalleyCat takes it one step further by listing a few additional bookstores that will sell self-published titles.

Traditional publishers have their name as their brand; but what about self-published/independent authors? The UK's Guardian online, on its Book Blog, has an article on author collectives, entitled "Author collectives signal a new chapter for self-publishing." The opening paragraph reads: "With online groups working to sift out the hidden gems, and a New York co-operative instituting a 'seal of quality,' is the world of independent publishing finally getting organised?" (via @thecreativepenn via @dirtywhitecandy)

We all have experienced the "time suck" that social media presents; I mean, just look at these Links & Things blog posts I do each month! On The Creative Penn blog, guest blogger J. Steve Miller explains why he has given up trying to attract social media followers, and concentrates on other ways of promoting his book. He divides his post into two parts: 1) Problems with Building a Social Media Following; and 2) How I Use Social Media. And, there are more than 50 Comments, too. (via @thecreativepenn)

This is another site that every author -- especially bloggers -- should be subscribed to: Copyblogger -- and the post I wish to bring your attention to is Sonia Simone's "The 7 Bad Habits of Insanely Productive People": Bad Habit #1) Being thin-skinned; #2) Flakiness; #3) Selfishness; #4) Greed; #5) Distractibility; #6) Self-doubt; and #7) Arrogance. With more than 130 Comments as well. (via @RachelleGardner)

For the past three years at BayCon, I have participated in the Iron Editors panel. Attendees turn in one or two pages of writing, and the panel of authors and editors gets to critique them -- up close and personal in front of the entire audience. In this year's panel, the subject of "names" came up. My response was that if I have to spend time trying to figure out how to pronounce the names in a story, I will simply find another story to read. I never have a shortage of backlogged stories/novels. However, the information conveyed in the selection of a name must also be considered. Juliette Wade (@JulietteWade) has a blog post entitled "Manipulating the Feeling Conveyed by Character Names." Juliette writes: "Fantasy and science fiction often involves making up names. This can be fun and challenging in its own way - and also full of potential pitfalls. Each time you make up a name, it's important to consider not only the onomatopoetic feel of 'bright' or 'dark' consonants and vowels, for example, but also the different similar words that will be evoked by the name."

Getting into more profound thinking is Charles Stross's (@cstross) essay, which appears on Charlie's Diary, entitled "SF, big ideas, ideology: what is to be done?" Here's an excerpt: "In fact, those people who are doing the 'big visionary ideas about the future' SF are mostly doing so in a vacuum of critical appreciation.... And there, over in a corner, is Bruce Sterling, blazing a lonely pioneering trail into the future. Chairman Bruce played out cyberpunk before most of us ever heard of it, invented the New Space Opera in Schismatrix (which looked as if nobody appreciated it for a couple of decades), co-wrote the most interesting hard-SF steampunk novel of all, and got into global climate change in the early '90s. He's currently about ten years ahead of the curve. If SF was about big innovative visions, he'd need to build an extension to house all his Hugo awards... So what's at the root of this problem? Why are the innovative and rigorously extrapolated visions of the future so thin on the ground and so comprehensively ignored?" And prepare yourself for the more than 600 Comments! (via @catvalente)

Speaking of big ideas, culture -- and inventions, The Atlantic's technology section contains a piece by Suzanne Fischer entitled "Do Our Values Shape Our Inventions, or Do Our Inventions Shape Us?": "Imagining a futuristic world can help us tease out the relationship between culture and technology." Unfortunately, the article refers to "sf" as "speculative fiction" even though hard science fiction writer Karl Schroeder is specifically mentioned. You'll never read the words "science fiction" in The Atlantic! (via Dario Cariello's Facebook page)

Pamela Sargent, in a post on her FB page, pointed me to a three-part series in The New York Times online on Philip K. Dick, entitled "The Sci-Fi Philosopher." From the article: "On Feb. 20, 1974, Dick was hit with the force of an extraordinary revelation after a visit to the dentist for an impacted wisdom tooth for which he had received a dose of sodium pentothal. A young woman delivered a bottle of Darvon tablets to his apartment in Fullerton, Calif. She was wearing a necklace with the pendant of a golden fish, an ancient Christian symbol that had been adopted by the Jesus counterculture movement of the late 1960s. The fish pendant, on Dick's [written] account, began to emit a golden ray of light, and Dick suddenly experienced what he called, with a nod to Plato, anamnesis: the recollection or total recall of the entire sum of knowledge."

On Saturday, July 1, 1989, I drove nearly 400 miles -- with my wife and young daughter in tow -- in order to meet Leo and Diane Dillon. They were appearing that weekend at Westercon 42, at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel.

The Dillons weren't the artist guests of honor, but somehow I had learned they would be in attendance at the convention. (Remember, there was no online "social media" then like there is now.) According to Tom Whitmore [more on Tom in a bit], the Dillons tended to turn down GOH invites, but they were in the middle of a book tour, and managed to squeeze in some convention time into their hectic schedule. Regardless of how I heard the Dillons were planning to be at the convention, I was planning to be there, too.

Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novel

Upon arriving in Anaheim on Saturday, July 1, we stayed at my parents' house [the house, alas, that I finally sold in April] as they lived only a mile or so from the hotel. And while my wife and daughter spent time that weekend with my family, I made my way to the Marriott and Westercon 42.

In addition to my family and a couple pieces of luggage, I had also brought with me two fairly large boxes (printer paper boxes) of books that I had hoped to have Leo and Diane Dillon sign. Among the approximately 50 or so books were all 36 original Ace Science Fiction Specials, edited by the late Terry Carr, in which the Dillons had done the cover art.1 Obviously this was back in the days of my book collecting mania. I still have these books -- and probably about three thousand more -- I just don't worry about getting them signed any longer. (That is, unless the book is one that I edited and/or the author is a personal friend.)

To successfully get all of my books signed, I needed some dedicated time with the Dillons. So, I approached Tom Whitmore, who was on the Westercon 42 staff, and asked for his assistance. Tom was one of the three founding partners of the Other Change of Hobbit bookstore in Berkeley; I knew Tom from spending far too much time (and undoubtedly far too much money) at that particular bookstore during the mid-to-late '80s and '90s.

Leo and Diane Dillon were presenting a slide show of their work in the afternoon, I believe it was on Sunday, July 2; following the slide show presentation, Tom graciously escorted the Dillons and me to a smaller room where we could have some private time -- and, in fact, Tom even remained by the door to ensure we were not interrupted.

But before all the signing was the Dillons' slide show presentation. I have this vague (after 23 years!) memory of the event, and truly wish that a recording of the Dillons' commentary was available. They showed slide after slide, discussing the particular technique used with each one: wood block prints, batik (or some similar process), various mixed media; and the occasional hassles they had with art directors, deadlines, and such. How Leo fell asleep while painting late one night and Diane picked up right where he had left off... How each piece they did was a collaboration of ideas and skills: what they themselves referred to as the "Third Artist." They touched on -- but didn't dwell upon -- some of the difficulties they encountered in the late '50s and '60s as an interracial couple.

Tom Whitmore also reminded me that it was this slide show that the Dillons presented an unfinished cover for The Last Unicorn. I don't recall the full story (i.e. how the cover came to be, and then remained unfinished), but Tom informed Connor Freff Cochran -- Peter S. Beagle's agent, co-producer, publisher, etc. -- about the unfinished piece; Connor then contacted the Dillons and had them finish the piece for a reprint edition of the book.

Sadly, I don't have Marilu Henner's memory, so I can't recall the specific details, but I can recall the feeling I experienced as Leo and Diane Dillon brought each of those pieces of art to life with their words.

For the signing afterward, we were all seated in a meeting room with a central table. I would open each book to the title page and then slide it across to Diane; she would sign her name, followed by a slash, and then pass the book along to Leo; he, in turn, would sign his name on the other side of the slash, thusly:

Even with 50 books, this whole process shouldn't have taken longer than, say, fifteen minutes at most. But as I would hand Diane one of the Ace SF Specials, she would say something like, I haven't seen this cover in 15 years! -- and then proceed to show it to Leo, and then they would chat about some unique aspect of that particular cover. I was experiencing Leo and Diane Dillon art history first hand, and I still didn't have a tape recorder. Somewhere around 45 minutes later, we said our goodbyes and parted company.

This, of course, all came back to me this week when I read of the passing of Leo Dillon on May 26.

So I would like to take this opportunity to thank Leo and Diane Dillon for sharing a piece of their life with me that day, and especially for their graciousness and patience. I met them again, albeit briefly, ten years later when they were, in fact, guests of honor at the 25th World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island. This time I traveled approximately 3,000 miles -- but only had them sign one book: To Every Thing There Is a Season (pictured above).

Lastly, I want to thank Tom Whitmore for his friendship back in the day, and for helping to refresh my memory this day.

---------------

Footnote:

1. There were 38 original Ace Science Fiction Specials plus 1 reprint of an earlier title (Alexi Panshin's Rite of Passage): 36 with cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, and 3 with cover art by Davis Meltzer. I also had documentation on 4 additional Ace paperbacks that had been selected by Terry Carr as Ace SF Specials, but the series was cancelled before these 4 books were released. One of these, Brian Aldiss's Barefoot in the Head, also had cover art by the Dillons. (Meltzer did the cover art for the other 3 titles.) The 36 titles I had the Dillons sign included the Aldiss extra, but did not include the 1 reprint title. I had the book, but didn't have it with me at the time of the signing. For those into books and lists and such, here are the 36 Ace SF Specials that I had the Dillons sign:

James H. Schmitz - The Witches of Karres (1968, A-13)

Alexei Panshin - Rite of Passage (1968, A-16)

Piers Anthony and Robert E. Margroff - The Ring (1968, A-19)

James Blish and Norman L. Knight - A Torrent of Faces (1968, A-29)

Clifford D. Simak - Why Call Them Back from Heaven? (1968, H-42)

R. A. Lafferty - Past Master (1968, H-54)

Gertrude Friedberg - The Revolving Boy (1968, H-58)

Wilson Tucker - The Lincoln Hunters (1968, H-62)

Joanna Russ - Picnic on Paradise (1968, H-72)

Bob Shaw - The Two-Timers (1968, H-79)

D. G. Compton - Synthajoy (1968, H-86)

James H. Schmitz - The Demon Breed (1968, H-105)

Michael Moorcock - The Black Corridor (1969, 06530)

R. A. Lafferty - Fourth Mansions (1969, 24590)

Avram Davidson - The Island Under the Earth (1969, 37425)

Roger Zelazny - Isle of the Dead (1969, 37465)

John Brunner - The Jagged Orbit (1969, 38120)

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (1969, 47800)

Bob Shaw - The Palace of Eternity (1969, 65050)

Keith Roberts - Pavane (1969, 65430)

Philip K. Dick - The Preserving Machine (1969, 67800)

John T. Sladek - Mechasm (1969, 71435)

D. G. Compton - The Silent Multitude (1969, 76385)

Ron Goulart - After Things Fell Apart (1970, 00950)

Joanna Russ - And Chaos Died (1970, 02268)

D. G. Compton - Chronocules (1970, 10480)

R. A. Lafferty - Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970, 58050)

Bob Shaw - One Million Tomorrows (1970, 62938)

Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror (1970, 66100)

D. G. Compton - The Steel Crocodile (1970, 78575)

Ursula K. Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea (1970, 90075)

Wilson Tucker - The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970, 94200)

Gordon Eklund - The Eclipse of Dawn (1971, 18630)

Suzette Haden Elgin - Furthest (1971, 25950)

John Brunner - The Traveler in Black (1971, 82210)

According to Wikipedia:

A tachyon is a hypothetical particle that always moves faster than light. Most physicists think that such particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics....Today, "tachyon" often refers instead to imaginary mass fields, which cannot exceed the speed of light and have come to play an important role in modern physics.

This past week I visited the newly remodeled and greatly enlarged office of Tachyon Publications in San Francisco. Of course, the remodeled office was only new to me as I haven't visited in the past year due to familial issues, now resolved, which I previously blogged about. But my lateness doesn't detract from the beauty of the new office: the bay windows, the wood flooring, the unique cinder block walls toward the back half of the office space, the openness -- and the fact that the rear two-thirds of the office is tunneled into the side of a hill (thus the cinder blocks)!

I detest driving in the city of San Francisco, so I have to rely on public transportation. This means I take the CalTrain commuter from the San Jose station to the San Francisco 22nd Street station, whereupon I am then chauffeured to the office in the Tachyonmobile. Unlike tachyons, though, CalTrain does not move at superluminal speed. In fact, the trip each way takes approximately one and a half hours, with a myriad of mind-numbing stops in between. But before one can even consider boarding a train at the San Jose station, one must first find a parking space! I circled all three parking lots, and then re-circled the last parking lot to its very edges and found what I still believe to be the very last available slot in all of stationdom. Then, once a parking spot is found, one must pay tribute to the god of parking.

I was graciously met at the 22nd Street station by Jacob Weisman, editor and publisher, and Jill Roberts, managing editor. I communicate with Jill regularly via email, and Jacob and I chat occasionally on the telephone, so an opportunity to get together -- and also share a lunchtime meal -- is always welcome.

The day prior to my visit, cases of Tachyon's newest book, The Sword & Sorcery Anthology, edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman, had arrived at the office; following our lunch, Jacob dutifully packed up review copies and comp copies, later to be shipped out. In fact, since I had worked on this book as well, I was able to take a couple comp copies home with me, thus saving Jacob a wee bit of packing time and postage.

I took this first photograph with the front of the office (street side) to my back. Jill is pictured here, diligently working at her desk (or, at least, attempting to look busy) amidst all my chatter and picture-taking. You'll note the step along the floor in the far right portion of the photo. This marks the start of the back two-thirds of the office space -- the darker portion -- wherein the room is tunnelled into the hillside. If you follow along the wall past Jill's desk, you will see where the gray cinder blocks begin as well.

This second, and final, photograph was taken from atop that step and aiming ye olde camera toward the front of the office. That incredibly bright glare at the back of the photo is actually the front bay windows, as they appear on a typical sunny San Francisco day. Pictured to the left in the photograph is Elizabeth Story, associate editor responsible for layout and covers; Jill is to the far right; and editor and publisher Jacob Weisman is to the far left. The white door immediately behind Jacob leads to the entrance way, and the front door. Not pictured here, unfortunately, is Rachel Fagundes, Tachyon intern, who was seated at her desk to my immediate left and thus didn't appear in the photo. [Sorry, Rachel!]

Note: I didn't take any close-ups of the staff. I'm personally not fond of having my picture taken, so I simply assume everyone else feels the same way and I act accordingly.

As I said, I joined Jacob and Jill for lunch, and we had a pleasant chat, mostly biz-related, over sandwiches and pasta -- during which time I learned the secret to having one's book accepted by Tachyon Publications. But even were you to prove that a tachyon does not violate causality, thus rendering the Grandfather Paradox null and void, I still would never utter this secret revealed to me during this otherwise uneventful lunch.

At about 2:45pm, Rina Weisman (also not pictured) left the house with Clyde the cat (at least I assume that was Clyde pitifully meowing in his carrier), on their way to the vet -- with me in tow, on my way back to the train station. Rina, by the way, runs the popular SF in SF reading series and movie nights, which I have had the occasional opportunity to partake in.

Elias F. Combarro has recently posted his Alien Contact (publisher Night Shade Books) review and interview (conmigo) on his Spanish-language blog Sense of Wonder.

First, the review.

[Note: If Spanish is not your preferred language, Elias has graciously translated his review into English as well, which is the content from which I will be quoting. However, each page, English or Spanish, links at the bottom to the other version.]

On themed anthologies, Elias writes: "...I don't want to read the same story twenty times. I want to explore many different approaches to the same topic. I want to be surprised and amazed. I want to be shown something new, something that I didn't even imagine that could be done." He goes on to state:

I've recently had the pleasure of reading Alien Contact, an anthology edited by Marty Halpern. It is the perfect illustration of how to assemble a wonderful set of stories devoted to a fascinating theme. All the stories selected by the editor are excellent examples of human contact with alien races (not necessarily a first contact) but no two of them are alike.

[...]

This amazing variety of takes on a single theme is one of the strongest points of the anthology. Throughout all the stories included in the book, we explore, from different points of view, a fascinating topic: ourselves as seen by a stranger.

[...]

The stories of the book are complemented with an invaluable source of information: before Alien Contact was published Marty Halpern blogged about each and every individual tale, providing extremely interesting details and, in some cases, even the full text of some of the stories. While reading the book, I frequently revisited Halpern's notes and that certainly added a lot to the experience.

In the interview to follow, Elias referred to Alien Contact as "one of the best anthologies" he has recently read, but he did have "two minor concerns" with the book. First, he felt the cover design and art to be "quite appalling," which surprised him because "Night Shade usually produces books with stunning covers." [Note: Personally, I'm okay with the cover art and design....] And his second concern was that, at least in the ebook version, the authors' biographical information appeared at the end of the book, after all the stories and the acknowledgments. Elias added: "...after finishing the book, I did not read these bios and I'd have much preferred to have them together with each story (a more natural location, if you ask me)."

For the record, the decision to place the authors' biographical notes at the very end of the book was mine alone, as editor. I created a thematic and tonal flow from story to story -- an overall ambiance, I had hoped -- that I felt would have been interrupted by placing mini biographical notes at the beginning (or even at the end) of each individual story. I've had one other person comment similarly on the placement of the authors' bios, so I may reconsider this for any future anthologies.

Now, on to the Alien Contact interview.

[Note: since this interview was conducted in English, Elias then had to translate his questions and my responses into Spanish for his blog readers. Again, regardless of the version, the bottom of each page links to the other version.]

I've done a couple other interviews on my Alien Contact anthology, but Elias (aka "Odo") managed to pose some questions that hadn't been previously asked. Here's one example:

You worked on Alien Contact for about three years and considered more than 150 stories. Is there any particular story that you would have liked to include in the anthology but had to leave out for some reason?

To which I responded:

I wanted to include a Philip K. Dick story, "Rautavaara's Case" (OMNI, October 1980), but permission to use the story arrived too late. However, a larger issue for me was having to choose between two (or more) stories by the same author. In a couple instances I had to read stories multiple times in order to make a decision as to which story to select, because all of them were excellent and of the same relative length. I included stories in the anthology by Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Jeffrey Ford, Nancy Kress, and Michael Swanwick, for example—but I could easily have selected a different story by each of them and still maintained the same overall quality of the book. Though I will admit that the stories I did select were often my own personal favorites....

In memory of Maurice Sendak

This is my monthly wrap-up of April's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern; or Friending me on Facebook (FB). Note, however, that not all of my tweeted/FB links make it into these month-end posts. April was a very busy month, so there is a lot of content here; please return to this blog if necessary to take full advantage of all the links. Previous month-end posts are accessible via the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

Philip K. Dick passed away shortly before the release of the Blade Runner movie. But, PKD did catch "his first glimpse of Blade Runner in a television segment," after which he wrote this wondrous letter to the Ladd Company, one of the film's production companies. The PKD Estate believes this is the first time the letter has been made public: "...I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people -- and, I believe, on science fiction as a field." [all emphasis is PKD's] (@WordandFilm via @PantheonBooks)

Grim_Noir on the PopTards blog revisits George Alec Effinger's Maríd Audran series of books 30 years later: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss, and Budayeen Nights (which I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press; here is my lengthy blog post on the making of Budayeen Nights, part one of three on my edited GAE books). Grim_Noir writes: "THIS is what Blade Runner wants to be when it grows up. (And I say that with the upmost respect for Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford AND Blade Runner.)...Thirty years after it was originally published, George Alec Effinger's Audran Sequence is STILL ahead of its time. The writing is sharp and goes straight at the gut, like a turbo-charged razorblade." (via Gordon Van Gelder's Facebook page)

After twenty-one years of teaching English Literature at Oakdale Community College in New Jersey, author Jeffrey Ford has retired from the teaching profession to write full time in upstate New York. One of Jeff's former students, Matthew Sorrento, pays tribute to his mentor, in this very personal post on Matthew's Identity Theory (@IdentityTheory) blog. For an instructor, it doesn't get any better than this.

On Amazon's Omnivoracious blog, Susan J. Morris (@susanjmorris) writes about "Engaging Readers on Page One" with a blog post entitled "Brilliant Beginnings." Susan covers the three most common "False Starts": Waking Up, Fight Scenes, and Origin Stories...of the Universe.

Speaking of first pages and opening lines: Glamour in Glass, the new novel by Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette), is missing its opening line. The sentence was there during the review of the page proofs, but then, shazam! -- it disappeared in the published edition. But not one to miss an opportunity, Mary has turned the missing line into a game, a t-shirt, and more.

This next entry was actually posted in March, but it didn't come to my attention until April: Adam Ruben's Experimental Error column in Science magazine's careers section tells us "How to Write Like a Scientist." "Why can't we write like other people write? Why can't we tell our science in interesting, dynamic stories? Why must we write dryly? (Or, to rephrase that last sentence in the passive voice, as seems to be the scientific fashion, why must dryness be written by us?)" (via @GrammarGirl and @literalminded)

How many ways do you know to piss off an editor? James L. Sutter, in a guest post on Inkpunks, provides us with all 9 ways: 1) Overconfidence; 2) Underconfidence; 3) Being a Pretty Princess; 4) Failure to Thrive; 5) No Website; 6) Going Dark; 7) Stalking; 8) Carelessness; and 9) Missing Deadlines. Check the link for a lot of detail behind each point. (via ChiZine Publications' FB page)

The Creative Penn blog (@thecreativepenn), which I reference quite often in these monthly wrap-ups, has another fine guest post, this one by author Matt Garland entitled "Professional Editors: The Smart Writer’s #1 Competitive Advantage." Matt writes: "Indie authors need a serious competitive advantage to earn respect and win readers’ hearts and minds. Without one, the odds of tilting the indie author playing field in their favor to attract eyeballs, establish credibility and gain loyal readers are impossibly stacked against them. So what's a smart indie author to do?" Matt recommends teaming up with a professional editor. He then details 5 points on how valuable an editor can be to an indie author.

Author Bradley P. Beaulieu guest blogs on The Mad Hatter's Book Review (@madhatterreview) with "Growing Pains: Lessons in Writing the Sequel." Author of The Winds of Khalakovo, and its sequel The Straits of Galahesh, Bradley writes: "While writing STRAITS I started to grow more aware of just how hard it is to write metaphysical stuff...."

Glimmer Train is a literary print magazine that has been known to include stories of the fantastic (don't tell them that I said this!); one of their authors, Brad Beauregard, shares some thoughts on "Where Can I Find Some Style": "...style isn't an outfit we don and toss in the laundry at night's end. Style is a body roadmapped with scars and tattoos, the sediment of time spent struggling, failing, and starting over. Style is the house you accidentally build while you're tearing walls down and throwing them in the burn pile. But most important, style is the thing writers struggle against, not toward." (via Jane Friedman's FB page)

Have you ever struggled with the title of a short story? A novel? Or even a blog post? That may be a good sign! In yet another guest blog post, on Ebon Shores, author and editor Cat Sparks shares some straight talk "On the importance of titles and why you should put some effort into ensuring yours don't suck." (via @editormum75)

The Center for Fiction hosts a series of blog posts by writers on writing, and in this post Dani Shapiro (@danijshapiro) talks about her never-ending fight against procrastination. "But then, finally, there comes a turning point. Finally, it is more difficult and painful not to write than to write. The not-writing feels untenable, unbearable. The feeling, for me, is a kind of exquisite despair. Here goes nothing, I think to myself. What do I have to lose? Pen poised over paper, the world recedes. And I remember again...that this is what it's all about. One word connecting, leading, to another, then another...." (via @Sirenland)

Andrew Zimmerman Jones, science writer for PBS's NOVA, poses the question: "Can science fiction influence the course of real science?" in a blog post entitled "Writing a Bold Future, Together."

Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford), in an article for CNET News, explains "Why e-books cost so much." This article is in response, so to speak, to the current Justice Department case against ebook publishers for "allegedly colluding to raise e-book prices." Whether you agree or disagree, Nathan rolls out the numbers for an example of the "Wholesale model e-book" and the "Agency model e-book." And be sure to check out the 285 comments!

Author and editor Dario Ciriello writes about "Acting As If" -- "act as if, to pretend that we have the chops we actually don't yet; or, as Pat Cadigan once put it, 'show me what you wish you had.'"...it will "free you up, give you the space to play again, allow you to act spontaneously. It changes your line of attack from timid to confident, from negative expectations to no expectations, from fear to fun."

Stephen King has been in the news of late for both his newest Dark Tower book, The Wind Through the Keyhole, as well as his (political? economic? apocalyptic?) rant in The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast): "Tax Me, for F@%&'s Sake!" The header on the article reads: "The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America."