I love this book. I worked my tail off on this book.

Even so.

Querying felt like this:

I tried to be compelling: 

I waited a bunch.

My friends kept me going, sometimes by sending funny links, sometimes by threatening me with poetry. There’s no way to properly express how thankful I am for you all. Nicole, Kelly, Sara, Chris, Jim, Debra, Greg, Oz, Jon, Alex, Natalie, Ben, Amy, Amy, Beth, Raq, A.C., Eugene, Doug, Wayne, Lou, Cath, Sandra, Lauren, Siobhan, Sue and Chris, and especially Tom and the Urchin – you guys. I can’t even begin to list the ways you helped. Thank you so much.

Because you know what?

It was worth it.

Today, I went to New York to meet the people who have a lot of lovely things to say about this book I love so much. And they’re awesome.

It’s still sinking in. So I’m going to type it out and then it will sink in some more.

I’m truly excited and honored to be represented by Russell Galen and Rachel Kory of Scovil Galen Gosh Literary.

You can read a short story set in the Bone Arrow universe this summer, in the Impossible Futures anthology.

If you could hear the soundtrack to this post, it would sound like:

or possibly (this is for you, Liz):

Baxter, from Rethink Robots

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on disruptive technology given by the director of Singularity University, Salim Ismail, his colleague David Roberts, and Banning Garrett, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Heads up — this post is going to be higher-geek-octane than usual. Specifically: robots, 3D printers, gene-hacks, exponential technology growth, pristine-algorithm-theory, self-replication, and godmodding. If those words make you clutch your bleeding ears, Cooking the Books is over here, and there are fine fiction links here and here.

Still with me? Sweet.

What did we talk about? A lot of tech developments from the 2008-2012 era, and their current implications. Mr. Roberts gave a fine list of previous tech disruptors (refrigeration, fountain pens) that warmed the cockles of my pen-loving heart.

There were shiny powerpoints filled with robotic fish, Big Dog, 3-D printers, Google self-driving cars, and the latest from Tesla Motors (I’m pretty sure Elon Musk is a SU sponsor/board member – correct me if I’m wrong).

Mr. Ismail had some wonderful one-liners guaranteed to get the D.C. wonkerati’s heads to snap to attention. To wit (paraphrasing): I grew up hacking my computer, my 18 month-old will be able to hack the family pet; and (invoking Kurzweil): any tech-enabled discipline area goes into a doubling pattern that becomes self sustaining. (remember that one for me, will you?)

There were great questions from the floor: about morality-backstopping the developers and controllers of disruptive tech; about the disruptions caused by the development curve outpacing GDP growth.

And again and again there was an overwhelming sense of trust for the tech being developed, and the algorithms driving much of the development. Ismail cited biology that can write its own code, and Craig Venter’s self-replicating life form. He assured everyone that it wasn’t going to be like science fiction and Hollywood, though. I, for one, was relieved to hear it, sort of. Well, truthfully, I had questions.

To the presenters’ great credit, there was a ‘whoa nellie, we don’t advise this’ when it came to armed self-navigating, self-replicating drones. Phew! That took care of one question.

But I kept waiting to hear a little of that same woah nellie about algorithms or self-replicating 3D printers or some of the other tech mentioned, and I didn’t.  Instead, what I heard (and this could have just been me) was: Trust your algorithms! They love you and want you to be better!

And it’s this trust that has me writing this post.  Because what this trust is built on is a white-room, ‘these things will never talk to each other, much less have to rely on/modify outdated esoteric code to run except this one time as an experiment’, what-could-possibly-go-wrong mentality.  

It’s a lot of fun to think about from a science fiction perspective.

It’s a little jarring from a programmer’s perspective.

Is it because we have conveniently forgotten that it’s human nature to make mistakes and (often) to cover those up? Do none of us have a piece of software that’s laggy or buggy because outsourced programmer A forgot to comment their code properly and in-house programmer B decided line 4523 didn’t matter all that much? 

Have none of you enjoyed the benefits of the book-and-music recommendation algorithms and Bing searches of late?

Because that’s what we’re looking at. The pristine algorithms, when they get out of the lab and into the real world, meet … well, the real world. Which is messy, not pristine. It has mistakes in it.  And sometimes those get written into the self-replicating code.

And then (thank you Mr. Kurzweil), sometimes that becomes self-sustaining.  So here’s hoping that Craig Venter remembers that, and puts in a couple redundancies on the chemical kill switches (and you too Monsanto — oh, wait, that cat’s out of the bag.).

Here’s hoping the Big Dog developers do too. Because this? I don’t want a self-replicating swarm of this chasing me.

And you guys with the awesome technology that could make 3D printing in space possible? It was so great to meet you! Please stay away from the grey goo.

All our love,

Science Fiction

 

Novels :

- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny (reissued! Shiny cover!)

- The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson (So. Very. Good.)

- Excerpts: The Lives of Tao, Wes Chu & Sister Mine, Nalo Hopkinson (yep, I ordered both.)

Anthologies

- The Other Half of the Sky, Athena Andreadis editor (Have begun reading a story a week. Already delighted.)

Selected Short Fiction

- “The Clockwork Trollop“, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (racy bots!)

- “No Portraits on the Sky“, Kali Wallace, Clarkesworld

- “Rag and Bone Man“, Priya Sharma, Tor (with gorgeous illustration by John Jude Palencar)

- “Just a Second“, Lou J. Berger, Galaxy’s Edge

- “Wormwood Is Also a Star”, Andy Stewart, F&SF

- “Hurt Me” (reprint), Daniel Abraham, Apex

- “The Crows Her Dragons Gate“, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and “Blood Remembers“, Alec Austin, both Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Nonfiction / Ominum Gatherum

- The Military, Magic, and the Misery Ethic: A Conversation with Myke Cole

- Liz Bourke’s Sleeps With Monsters column

- Radish Reviews – especially their linkspam and the really important opinion articles that have appeared of late. (time, I thought, to link them back!)

Upcoming:

What I’m already excited about in the coming months, and don’t already have in hand: Karen Joy Fowler’s short story collection, What I Didn’t See, coming out in paperback from Small Beer Press. Cory Doctorow’s Homeland (it’s out, but I haven’t had time to read it yet), Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane (William Morrow), the gorgeous Glitter & Mayhem anthology coming in August, the also-gorgeous, also-coming-out-in-August Impossible Futures anthology, and Jon McGoran’s Drift, an eco-thriller from Tor/Forge. Plus Lauren Beuke’s The Shining Girls, Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City, and Madeline Ashby’s iD . And the newest Charlie Stross, Neptune’s Brood. Because I am predictable.

So that’s the state of my book pile right now – what are you excited about?

“At The Mountains of Madness” Astounding Stories (serialization), 1936.

Say you want to put a little Lovecraftian horror into your life. Let’s take a moment to consider the shoggoth, and how it has evolved in cultural perception.

The shoggoth, in all its glory, is described in Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”:

… a plastic column of fetid black iridescence… a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light.

Readers, shall we see whether 82 years has domesticated the shoggoth? I think we shall… (My latest post is up at Apex Publications for their month of The Weird – check it out!)

So, despite all of my best attempts at becoming a stodgy stuffed shirt, someone thinks I’m funny. Or at least they think one of my stories is. I’m delighted because this story is completely inappropriate, highly pear-shaped, and was a lot of fun to write.

UFO2 is, like its predecessor, Unidentified Funny Objects, a collection of humorous science fiction and fantasy stories. UFO2 will feature Robert Silverberg, Esther Freisner, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Tim Pratt, Jody Lynn Nye, Jim Hines, me, and many more*.

Hey, do you write funny? *Because you could be in this anthology too. The open reading period is May 1 – 31 and submission guidelines are here.

UFO2 is a kickstarter-funded anthology. I’m not going to tell you that you should help back it, because I’m obviously biased. But if you like backing highly entertaining and suspiciously funny anthologies, I’d say this is a good place to start. Plus, then you’ll get to read about the care and feeding of pyrokinetic toddlers. You know, in case that should ever become a thing.

I’m ridiculously excited to be a part of this anthology – the TOC is amazing. The anthology includes stories by Rev DiCerto, Paul Di Filippo, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Duncan Eagleson, Jeff Hecht, Edward M. Lerner, Shariann Lewitt, Jack McDevitt, James Morrow, Mike Resnick, Sarah Smith & Justus Perry, Allen M. Steele, and yours truly.

And this cover? I want it as a poster / t-shirt / wallpaper, you name it. It’s glorious. Well? It is.

Impossible Futures (Fall 2013, Pink Narcissus Press). Edited by Tom Easton and Judith Dial.

Eeeeeee. So. Shiny!

Lathe: n. A machine in which work is rotated about a horizontal axis and shaped by a fixed tool.

Reblogged from my monthly column at Apex Publishing.

If you are not the sort who enjoys poetry, you might think April (being National Poetry Month) is the season for eye-rolling over enforced rhyme schemes and cringing at public displays of meter.

But even if you skip town for the month, poetic voice still shapes your experience in sneaky ways. The results will catch you unawares.

Take some of your favorite titles, as one example.

Don’t look at the stories (or poems), yet. Just the titles. The ones that carve meaning and sound into the smallest of spaces. Swirsky’s “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” (Apex Magazine), and Valentine’s “A Bead of Jasper, Four Small Stones” (Clarkesworld). Go back further: Ellison’s ”I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream.”

Now look deeper. Look at structure. Poetic forms are reshaping fiction, from the brevity of flash to the use of sectioned prose.

Poetry broke from its restraints a long time ago. (Continue reading…)

In the worlds of Steven Brust’s My Little Jhereg and Scott Lynch’s Lunch of Locke Lamora, it’s always five o’clock somewhere. To help you keep your own cabinet stocked, Lynch and Brust, along with able assistant Jennifer Melchert, have teamed with Cooking the Books to unearth a very rare copy of: The My Little Jhereg and Lunch of Locke Lamora Bartender’s Guide.

Only one copy exists, and it is of no use trying to bribe any of us for access. None whatsoever.

To whet your appetite, enjoy these ten complementary beverages, on the house.

THE FAT FANTASY SERIES

1 part vodka

1 part rum

1 dash pomegranate liqueur

1 part fresh pineapple juice

1 part cranberry juice

Garnish with two cherries and an orange slice. MUST BE on a little plastic sword.

*

TO SERVE

1. Mix all ingredients except pineapple juice. Serve.

2. Inform customer that the pineapple juice doesn’t actually show up until the second drink.

3. Take order for second drink. Mix, then strain into equal portions in two glasses.

4. Serve first half of second drink. Inform customer the second drink has been split up, and the next half will be available in twenty minutes.

5. Serve second half of second drink. Take order for third drink.

6. To third drink, add Tabasco sauce, celery stalk, milk, and 1 part Coca-Cola. Serve.

7. Commiserate with customer. Agree wholeheartedly that third drink is a low point in the sequence and something of a failed experiment.

8. Take order for fourth drink. Agree wholeheartedly with customer that they don’t have a problem and can quit whenever they like.

CASTLE BLACK AND TAN:

Can of Guinness

Caramel piece

Paring knife

*

TO SERVE:

1. Pare caramel into miniature castle.

2. Pour Guinness into glass.

3. Float castle on top.

THE ANTICIPATED BASTARD

2 parts bourbon

1 part ginger beer

Dash of fresh ginger muddled with brown sugar

Dash of Dr. Pepper OR orange bitters, to taste.

*

TO SERVE

1. Hand standard highball glass to customer.

2. Customer holds the empty glass for five and a half years.

3. If customer is still there after five and a half years, retrieve glass, mix drink, serve over ice.

GODSLAYER

Equal Parts Bourbon and Everclear

*

TO SERVE

Serve neat.

THE BARSAVI BARREL

1 part banana liqueur

1 part Bailey’s Irish cream

1 part colorless rum

2 parts pineapple juice

Dash of orange juice

 *

TO SERVE:

1. Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a wooden mug, or anything appropriately tubby and cylindrical.

2. Garnish with an action figure completely submerged in the midst of the drink.

3. For added cloudiness, try a dash of sweet cream. For purists, eschew ice and serve lukewarm.

ELDER SORCERY:

Elderflower liqueur

Tonic

Red grapes

*

TO SERVE:

1. Pour liqueur and tonic

2. Drop red grapes into bottom of glass.

THE FATE OF BELOVED CHARACTERS

1 highball glass

1 bottle of bitters

 *

TO SERVE:

1. Pour all the bitters into the glass.

2. Serve. Customer will garnish drink with own tears to taste.

ADRON’S DISASTER

Ginger schnapps

Tobasco Sauce

Ginger Beer

Dry Ice*

*

TO SERVE:

1. Mix Ginger Schnapps with Tobasco Sauce

2. Fill glass with ginger beer to 1/8 inch from top of glass.

3. Drop in dry ice.

SEX AND DEATH ON THE BEACH

1 part vodka

1 part cranberry juice

1 part orange juice or pineapple juice to taste

1/2 part peach Schnapps

Dash of Amaretto

Dash of grenadine

*

TO SERVE

1. Shake all ingredients except grenadine together with ice. Serve in a highball glass.

2. Drizzle the dash of grenadine to create a darker swirling red effect within the drink.

3. Garnish with a small plastic shark with a maraschino cherry in its jaws.

SEA OF AMORPHIA:

Neopolitan ice cream

Two shots absinthe

Two shots blue curaçao

*

TO SERVE:

1. Put Ice cream in bowl.

2. Add absinthe and curacao, stir until half melted.

*Wait until the dry ice has evaporated if you’re desperate to sample the wonders of Schnapps with Tobasco Sauce. Drinking dry ice is a bad idea. No joke.

Author Steven Brust is extremely happy that his upcoming novel, The Incrementalists, co-written with Skyler White, will appear in September 2013.

Author Scott Lynch’s much anticipated new novel, The Republic of Thieves will appear in October 2013.

More (serious) Cooking the Books interviews are available here.

The mobile of my childhood is 34 feet long and weighs 225 lbs. It spins irreverent between medieval tapestries and Saint-Gauden’s sculpture of Diana, itself originally conceived as a weathervane.

Wind. Movement. Change. Even indoors, Alexander Calder’s Ghost rings the changes each second.

To see it properly, you have to stand beneath it, then run up the stairs, then catch it from the balcony. Ghost requires you to change perspective, even as it changes. The Philadelphia Art Museum guards will not take kindly to your running, but do it anyway.

On its own, Ghost is engineering, and balance. It is wing and wind.

In its current context, Ghost is whimsy and defiance. It interacts, where other art is still.

I am grateful to know it. And grateful to see it from many perspectives – as a child, as an adult, and somewhere on the steps in between.