I Have Been Interviewed...

...about optimistic SF and the upcoming SHINE anthology by Jay Tomio of BookSpot Central for their BookSpot Beat feature.

Check it out!

Imaging President Barack Obama

First (and most important of all): many, many congratulations with President Barack Obama! To many of my American friends, and the many outside of it as well. Too many to mention, and you know who you are.

(I returned from World Fantasy on November 4, and was so jetlagged I couldn't sleep. Which was good, as I had planned to follow the US elections live anyway, but now I had no problems staying awake [I had those today]. At 05.30 am or so Dutch time McCain gave his concession speech. I feel so happy I nearly cried, and so many in the US must have felt -- probably still feel -- much, much happier than I do.)

Back in May 2005 I received a story from Ed Morris in the IZ slushpile called "Imagine" (Paul Di Filippo had urged him to try Interzone with it, and too good effect, and my belated thanks here). I forwarded the story to my (then) Interzone colleagues and Andy Cox published it in Interzone #200, on September 2005.


The last paragraph of the story is as follows:

"Well, we would have been denied our President Barack Obama, who just allowed me back into the States a week ago Tuesday. About him, at least, I have no room to bitch."

My question to the blogging masses is: does anybody know of fiction (not non-fiction) that imagined a President Barack Obama that was published before September 2005?

As a second query: what might be the first story (or novel) that imagined a black President of the USA?

A Batch of Near-Future Stories

In a previous post I declared this October to be the month of hope. Typically, I've seen a batch of near-future stories on the internet this early in October that made some interesting points:

• "The Right People" by Adam Rakunas on Futurismic;
  
• "A Short History of the Twenty-First Century" by Chuck Klosterman in Esquire;
  
• "1337 in 2012" by Jason Stoddard on his own Strange and Happy blog;

A few general remarks first: while it is increasingly difficult to write about the near future (as both Charlie Stross and I agree), the point is that when you do it, your predictions and extrapolations should err on the audacious side rather than being too cautious. Things move faster than you think and being wildly wrong -- while telling a good story -- mostly works better than a compelling narrative that was close but didn't quite go far enough. Simply because the former is often more thought-provoking than the latter.

All three of the above-mentioned stories are a case in point: Rakunas mixes (America's) obsession with sex with slacker culture and high school politics to both humourous and mind-bending effect; Klosterman fires off futuristic nuggets that vary from old hat (old entertainers/artists/trends making a comeback, well-worn conspiracy theories) to irrelevant (hole in the ozone layer) to interesting (first AI used for virtual sex), witty (near-death experiences inciting more instances of the actual event) and imaginative (expectation entertainment and news blows); and Stoddard boldly predicts a phase-change in politics, where all the internet tools already available now (and expanding fast) are used as not only as the lure, the promise of a hyper-direct democracy (albeit for those online mostly), but are implenented as the ultimate election campaign: find out what each and every voter truly wants, and then promise it to them (or promise something that is very close to that). Change can be both exhilirating and scary.

("1337 in 2012" easily has the boldest prediction of the three: it not only follows current trends -- an important part of Obama's lead so far is his use of the internet: not only for funding, but in organising communities, advertising, and much more -- but tries to extrapolate them to their extreme endpoint. While this has the risk of taking things too far, it does make for a highly thought-provoking story, and this is one of the things SF should be very good at. Thinking about it before I fell asleep last night I wondered if it might not even have gone far enough: in the end it teases with the possibility that future elections might be won by the best hacker, but I am even thinking that it might even evolve not only in a tight competition between hackers and internet entrepreneurs/savants, but also in a competition between *systems*, where the 6 kazillion dollar question is whether the system that is best for *winning the election* comes out on top, or the sytem that is best for *running the country*. Gut feeling might say the former, but I'm not so sure.)

An interesting parallel between the Klosterman and the Stoddard story is that both have an internet 2.0 (or 3.0, or higher up) entrepreneur winning the US election at some point. Make no mistake that while Klosterman's piece appeared in the most prestigious market, Stoddard's made the bolder prediction: it takes until 2020 in "A Brief History of the 21st Century" before 'blogucrat' Digger True wins the election (participating in two previous ones), while Susan Acker in "1337 in 2012" already 'steals' the election in 2012.

There is a lesson there somewhere:

1. Esquire running an SF story is not only another indication that SF is part of the mainstream, but also that there is a huge potential audience for it out there;
   
2. Mainstream writers (or artists/directors/bloggopundits or whatever) turning their hands on SF is a good thing, even if they don't get it (completely) right;
   
3. Because both competition from outside the ghetto, and exposure of the SF meme to an audience as wide as possible is not only beneficial, but essential for the genre's long-time health;
   
4. This should force SF writers to be both more relevant and more daring in their (fictional) ventures.

Does this mean that the more escapist-oriented parts of SF should go? No, of course not, as there is room for almost everything under the SF umbrella. However, in order to be more interesting to a younger and more varied audience I think SF needs more fiction that is urgent, near-future, and relevant, and needs to rely less on its old tropes and its well-worn bag of tricks.

Would more optimism help? I think it will, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Again, SF encompasses a broad palette of expressions, and it is my opinion that the red paint of pessimism has been overused in respect to the blue paint of positive progress (a double entendre and a mixed metaphor for the price of one...;-).

There are several problems with writing urgent, relevant near-future SF: by making bold predictions one can be easily proved wrong (for example, Klosterman predicts that McCain wins the US election by a very slim margin. Either way you predict the current election, you have a 50/50 chance of being wrong. However, I suspect both Klosterman and most Esquire readers aren't really worried about the piece's futuristic accuracy, but read it more for entertainment, even if it's idea-rich entertainment. A new type of infotainment: futuristic infotainment?), and by writing very close to tomorrow one can become obsolete very fast (hence Jason's decision to publish his story now, while it's very actual, rather than wait for the next election, and be dead wrong).

As with almost all risky, but forward-looking businesses: it's immensely difficult, the potential for failure is huge, but so are the potential rewards.

Anybody into boldly going...?

The Optimistic SF Debate Goes On...

...through Damien Walter's Guardian blog post, with Kathryn Cramer (comment 74) reacting on the Tor beta website.

If I understand Kathryn's argument correctly, her central argument is:

I don’t think SF can be held responsible for finding solutions to all the world’s problems, but I think it is SF’s task to help us understand them.

I have heared this argument before, and I think it's a bailout. It's the old chestnut that dystopias show us what's wrong with the world today, and what will happen if this goes on, so that we will not do it. That's one-sided: we tell people what they should not do, but not what they should do. Like saying what is bad without even trying to give a good alternative. While SF can't be held responsible for finding solutions to all the world's problems, it should at least try to look in the right direction. And pointing the other way saying that *that* is the wrong direction is not the way forward.

Now, I fully agree with Kathryn's impression -- namely that the majority of the stories she (and her husband David Hartwell) read for their Year's Best SF anthologies (and for their YBSF 13 particularly) are, indeed, very much 'reflect reality', and are thus downbeat.

While conventional wisdom dictates that readers tend to prefer more up-beat SF and that the Eeyores of the SF field just don’t sell, what I find as an anthologist picking stories during wartime and in the midst of the unfolding of various other dystopian scenarios is that a lot of the best SF and fantasy lately is really dark.

No argument there.

My problem is: must SF *only* reflect the current world? Or might it look beyond our current problems? Kathryn doesn't seem to think so:

I also don’t think that providing rays of sunshine through the storm clouds is really the solution particularly, nor necessarily the most workable aesthetic choice, unless you are in Hollywood.

Here is where I disagree with her. She even ends her post with:

So, to answer his question, Does SF have to be so gloomy? I guess my answer is that for now it does because it is in touch with the world we inhabit right now.

Make no mistake: I regard Kathryn, as an editor, very highly. I greatly disagree with her on this point: what happened to the SF that dared to make audacious predictions? The SF that, for better or worse, dared to go into the great unknown? That dared to lead, and make mistakes?

If I understand her post correctly, 'cultural forces much larger than the SF field' will more or less define SF's agenda. Say again? Since when did that stop Olaf Stapledon? Arthur C. Clarke? Ursula LeGuin? John Brunner? Greg Bear? Bruce Sterling? Greg Egan? Ian McDonald? And more writers I can remember right now who tried to transcend the zeitgeist (cue to Bruce Sterling's eponymous novel, OK, but contrast it with Islands in the Net, Holy Fire and Distraction) and write about what will change?

I disagree with the cliché that SF is the literature of ideas (they help, but they're not the core): to me, SF is the literature of change.

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of change: things change for the worse, or things change for the better (I realise life is much more complex than that: some things improve, other things worsen, and some things don't change very much. I'm looking, admittedly roughly, at the net result here). In SF -- as both Kathryn Cramer and Damien Walter seem to agree, even if not for the rationale, or the necessity behind it -- the utmost majority of stories depict the change for the worse.

My opinion (especially at this point in time, but also in general) is that SF stories where something changes for the better -- and I'm not talking mindless Polyannas here, but stories where progress, even a small amount of it, is achieved against the odds, is hardfought -- are not only in the minority, but in the minority both because convincingly optimistic stories are much more difficult to write (people tend to believe a story where everything goes down the drain much easier than one where things change for the better), and because the majority of the SF community (writers, readers, and editors) seem to be too mired in the current downbeat zeitgeist to rise above it.

Now shoot me, but I like to think SF that's really audacious, gutsy and forward-looking dares to make predictions against the flavour of the month. Dares to make totally unexpected predictions, and -- in the process -- dares to be wrong: but nevertheless inspires others to carry the torch of progress.

Depicting a world like today that's going down the drain is easy: people love to complain, and blame the world's problems on someone else. Depicting -- convincingly -- a world that changes -- even if marginally -- for the better, is much more difficult, for an SF writer.

One cliché has it that writers (and specifically SF writers) like a challenge. I'm not so sure: I think most SF writers like a small challenge, like trying to write an elf story for an editor who doesn't like elves. As readers of this blog know (all five of you...;-), I'm looking for SF writers that like the big challenge: write something that rises above the current problems.

Because if everybody -- like Kathryn Cramer says, remains in touch with the world we inhabit right now -- is gloomy, then *nobody* will invent higher efficiency solar cells, better alternative energy solutions, improved agricultural practices, innovative sustainable living methods, and so on.

Indeed: while we expect companies, inventors and innovators in real life to come up with solutions to the problems we are facing today, why should SF bail out of that discussion? Because it's not popular?

The most popular thing I ever did was post pictures of fake Yu Gi Oh! cards from my son’s collection. Despite being a novelist and all that, the most popular thing John Scalzi ever put out there in the world was a picture of his cat with bacon taped to it.

Please correct me, but I understand that in his time, Galileo's worldview was far from popular (it nearly got him hanged). But it didn't mean he was wrong. OK: this might be overstating the case, but I do remain that most innovators have had to overcome a lot of resistance of their contemporaries, because these contemporaries refused to believe that these unpopular visions could be correct (a boat made of steel could not float; a vessel made of metal could not fly, and there are multitudes of similar examples).

Now I do understand that Kathryn Cramer works for Tor, and that Tor needs to sell books, and presumably books that concur with the currently held consensus sell better than those that go against it. So the Year's Best SF follows the zeitgeist and is filled with downbeat stories (also because daringly upbeat stories are thin on the ground).

Now you can shoot this naive idealist, who prefers to invest his surplus income in sustainable banking, and believes in innovation and progress: but if there are so many -- yes, there have been lots of failures, as well: that hasn't stopped others from trying -- innovators succeeding (for example, on the day job there was a shipping company that were to first to try the sky sail: these people were willing to try this innovation, but were mildly skeptical at the result. What happened: the system performed above expectations) in real life, why is SF lagging behind?

Yes, I will admit to being ashamed: I love SF, and like to think it's forward-looking. But if the things I see at my day job are quite often more innovative, forward-thinking and imaginative than SF, then I feel really, really ashamed. I train young people, from all over the world, at my day job, and let me tell you that they are, almost without exception, upcoming young professionals that believe that they can change their future for the better. They're (mostly) not interested in contemporary SF, because it doesn't speak to them.

I am extremely tired of SF that shows how the world goes to hell: it's the most defining characteristic of modern SF. The real world is developing more initiative than the literature of the future, the literature of change, and this is one of the main reasons why SF is becoming so irrelevant.

SF is reactive, not proactive. SF is following where it should lead. SF is empasizing the gutter, not looking at the stars. No wonder it's becoming obsolete.

Written SF is losing its contact with the (potential) young readers (or whatever was left of that, the cynical part of me adds). While publishers are finally changing the medium (from paper to electronic) in order to reach new audiences, I strongly believe that even with a new medium nobody will be interested if the message doesn't hit home.

So do we win a new, young audience by telling them -- however eloquently -- that their world will go to hell, or by telling them that they can at least change some things for the better? It's even worse: most of the young people -- the professionals of the very near future -- I see aren't waiting for SF: they're already doing it themselves.

In my day job (where I work for a propulsion company), I train both our own technicians and customers to work with our installations. In my experience, most of these people (yes, both our own technicians and customers) are not only focused on troubleshooting -- which is very important -- but also try to find ways to prevent problems. Sharp people that often ask me difficult questions, some of which I can't immediately answer (I need to get more info from engineering). Quite often, these people not only learn things from me, but I learn a lot from them, as well. And always -- without exception -- when we acknowledge a problem, we are then fully focused on a solution.

We may not get that solution, but it's certainly not for lack of trying. Therefore, while SF indeed can't be held responsible for finding the solution to all the world's problems, that doesn't mean it should not try to attack at least a few of them.

Pointing to the problems is not enough (no matter how eloquently done): thinking about the solution is required. If -- at the day job -- I would only point to the problem, and do nothing else, I would get fired. I'm supposed to think about a solution, be helpful towards that.

Therefore, if SF isn't, at least, trying to pave the way towards solutions (and not be afraid to be wrong), then it will become...

irrelevant...

obsolete...

dead...

(if it isn't already)

Realistically optimistic SF is not a luxury, nor an impossibility. It is essential if SF wants to be relevant. Otherwise SF will become/remain(*) a nostalgic enterprise for baby boomers.

(*) delete as appropriate.

It's Alive!

The three or four people that might still check in here once in a while have noted that it’s been awfully quiet in May and June. So a quick update near the end of July.

First of all: the training centre of the company where I work has moved house in June and July, while at the same time the already planned training sessions (and they're planned a year in advance) had to continue. Hence a very hectic period in which less urgent (read: not directly income generating) diversions like writing and blogging fell by the wayside. This is also the reason I decided not to run an email reading period (in May) for Interzone, as I had no time to read submissions, and response times would have gone through the roof.

I'm going on holiday by the end of the week (more about that in the next two posts), and then we have settled in our new working home. Now a quick update of things that happened in the past couple of months:

----Fiction:

• My story “The Third Scholar” has appeared in the “SF Waxes Philosophical” anthology edited by Ahmed A. Kahn, released by ZC Books. The anthology has been reviewed at Andromeda Spaceways (where the ‘cosmological virtuosity’ is admired, but the ‘occasional flippancy of tone’ and the ‘lack of descriptive detail’ diminish ‘the feeling of reality necessary to properly engage the reader’. I am now whipping my frivolous self with realistic descriptions), and mentioned on Ted Kosmatka’s blog.

• My story “City Beneath the Surface” has appeared in Postscripts #14. Postscripts #14 has been reviewed in The Fix (which states I avoid ‘going down the obvious routes’: for instance my humour is ‘something subtler’, although the reviewer ‘did groan at one joke’), and to my surprise I received a couple of emails where people were very complimentary about the story.




• My story “Cultural Clashes in Cádiz” (which originally appeared in Creative Guy Publishing’s Amityville House of Pancakes vol. 1, which is not available anymore) is slated to appear in “A Mosque Among the Stars”: an anthology featuring SF and fantasy stories that portray Islam and/or Muslims in a positive light.







• “Transcendence Express” (originally in Hub #2 -- the last print version -- reprinted online in Hub #44, and available as a podcast on Escape Pod #122) is longlisted on the British Fantasy Award for short story, together with 45 other stories (with some very good IZ stories among them). Nice, although it probably won't make the shortlist. Possibly more news on the story later (like 2009), which I can’t discuss yet.

• Apparently “Qubit Conflicts” received an honourable mention in the Dozois Year’s Best SF #25, and Dozois even mentioned me -- however shortly -- as a writer to watch in an SF Signal Mind Meld. Maybe Gardner needs to check his prescriptions?

----Non-fiction:

• My interview with Greg Egan -- flippantly titled ‘Beyond the Veil of Reality’ -- was published in Interzone #216 (indeed: a Greg Egan interview in the ‘mundane SF’ special. Life is full of frivolous ironies). Eamonn Murphy on SFCrowsnest called it ‘quite interesting’, while Blue Tyson called it ‘excellent’.

• My usual column about writing in the BSFA’s Focus (for Focus #52) was about ‘writing about what you don’t know’, and got mixed up with Dev Agarwal’s piece. Martin McGrath is mortified about this misattribution, while I am merely amused (only those who do nothing make no mistakes). Should be good for a beer and a laugh at a Con near you.

• (Quick update): I forgot to mention that I have written the introduction to Gareth Lyn Powell’s collection The Last Reef (after the same-titled story that originally appeared in Interzone #202 and is available online), which will be launched on August 9 in London. Unfortunately, I can’t attend as I will be at WorldCon in Denver. With its typical swiftness, The Fix has already reviewed The Last Reef (and even mentions my intro). Highly recommended (which reminds me that I should pre-order a copy of the limited hardcover myself).

Apart from that, my fiction writing has slowed to a trickle, and the very few (two) stories that I have doing the rounds consistently keep getting rejected.

Next week I’m travelling to Novosibirsk for the August 1 solar eclipse, and the week after that I’m going to Denver to attend Denvention. More about that in the next two posts.

Writers, Alzheimer, Death

In the past 24 hours, two great writers died.

Arthur C. Clarke: a giant in the SF field. Not much I can add to the countless obituaries and appreciations, only a few personal notes. Although I read much more of his novels later, the ones I read first -- at the impressionable age in my early teens -- were also the famous ones: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. I saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and while I didn't understand much of it at that time, it did make an enormous impression.

Even if he didn't invent it, Clarke was -- in his time -- the very best practitioner of 'sense of wonder': his best works imbued with an inherent pining for progress, and an overarching impression of awe, a transcendental quality if you like.

Hugo Claus (English Wiki): A Belgian, multi-talented artist (although he was mainly a writer) who wrote poems, short stories, novels, plays, screenplays. He directed movies and he painted. He was one of the Flamish writers I enjoyed very much when I read a lot of Dutch literature in my student days (along with Louis Paul Boon and Hugo Raes).

Hugo Claus suffered from Alzheimer's, and he had requested euthanesia -- according to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant "he didn't want to suffer a long and very painful end like his father had." So he chose his moment of death.

Which leads me to Terry Pratchett, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's. I am a big Pratchett fan, and while I'm an atheist and don't believe in fate, in this case it's almost as if the world tries to tell me something:

Match It For Pratchett.

I donated $50.

Optimism in SF: Is It Dead?

On the one hand, this might seem a somewhat belated reaction to Jason Stoddard's blog posts "Strange and Happy" and "More Strange and Happy". On the other hand, my column in the BSFA's magazine for writers, Focus, published on January 2007, was about exactly the same topic. It is a recurring one.

So, to show where I stand for those outside the BSFA, I'm reposting it here:

Let’s face the future with a smile

In my first column for Focus under Martin McGrath’s stewardship (and thanks to Simon Morden for the previous years), I’d like to start with a challenge.

In the last couple of years, SF short stories have been predominantly dark and pessimistic. Not all of them – there are obvious exceptions, like for instance Jason Stoddard’s “Winning Mars” (IZ #196) – but the majority most definitely is. I was discussing this with the afore-mentioned Jason Stoddard, and we agree that it’s almost as if it’s forbidden to write an uplifting story.

Problem is, that writing a convincing optimistic story is difficult, very difficult. Or, to quote Gardner Dozois: “As someone who has written post-apocalyptic stuff myself, I can tell you that it IS easier. It's easier to write about how the current world went wrong than it is to come up with believable ways how the current world is going to survive and prosper (to say nothing of changing in unexpected ways).”

For example, High Country News (HCN) magazine put out a call to submissions for the 2006 Summer Reading Issue, calling for a short story that showed how things developed for the better in the American Midwest. They already had a dystopian story (Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter”), and wanted to offset it with an optimistic one, and they were willing to pay well (30 cents a word). “We’re not looking for an idyllic utopia, but a realistic assessment of people and their place in the landscape.” Many stories were sent in, none were taken. Or, to quote their Special Summer Reading Issue’s editorial: “Some interesting glimmers, but no one had a plausible explanation for how we might get from here to there.”

At LACon IV, Paolo Bacigalupi told me that the readers of HCN were both extremely well-known and highly critical about all matters Midwest, so that trying to write a convincing optimistic story about the American Midwest was like trying to pass a fictional story about a Theory of Everything through an editorial board consisting of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Edward Witten. Well-nigh impossible.

Also, Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden had planned to edit an anthology called ‘Up’, filled with stories about how the future changed for the better. That was back in 2002, and as far as I know that project is still on ice.

Now, I’m not asking you to please the readers of HCN. However, I am getting fed up with all these dark and dystopian stories. I agree with Jason Stoddard when he said that Paolo (Bacigalupi) is a great writer, but that his stories sometimes make me scream in despair, because of their bleakness. And I sincerely wonder if writers *really* like a challenge.

So here it is: write an ambitious story about how the future changes for the better: one that is convincing, as well. As realistic and plausible as you can get it. Then send it my way when I re-open Interzone for email submissions (probably May 2007, but keep an eye on our website and Ralan.com), or to another market. Get it out there.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we should go back to unlimited, naïve optimism of the pulp era, or the 50s. It also means we shouldn’t aim at the romance genre’s HEA (happily ever after) as a prerequisite. No: we live in the 21^st Century, so give me a 21^st Century story. Let it be grounded in the real, but a real that is more than just nihilistic, cynic, diffident, or disinterested. The progress can be incredibly hardfought, the progress can be met with all possible resistance, have setbacks, and all. But in the end, let there be some kind of progress.

In short, give me a gritty pollyanna, and show me it’s not an oxymoron.

And, while we’re at it, let it be ambitious. Joe Sixpack getting a better job is trivial. Jane Doe winning an office argument is boring. Reach for the sky: try to find at least a partial solution, a partly positive development from the great problems of our time. You could do worse than reading through Edge’s article “What Are You Optimistic About? Why?”, where some of the greatest minds of our time answer exactly that question. Obviously, Jason Stoddard and I are not the only ones who are tired of this trend of depressive thinking.

Don’t be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution. Write that story: it’ll be a hard, enormously hard. But the reward is phenomenal. Be inspired, and then be an inspiration. Let’s face the future with a smile.

So, has this little 'call to arms' generated some upbeat fiction sent to Interzone? Well, judging from what I've seen so far the response is decidedly less than overwhelming. Not sure why, but here are three guesses:

1. Writers only like 'easy' challenges, not truly 'complex' ones. For example, if a well-known editor says he hates elves, then writers jump out of the woodwork with elf stories just to prove him he's wrong. However, ask them to do something that actually challenges their own assumptions -- a convincing upbeat story, or a convincing near-future story, let alone a combination of the two -- then the utmost majority logs off. Too hard.
   
2. The reasoning of 'How can you write an upbeat story in the current dark en depressing political and economic climate?'. Well, I like to think that good SF tries to be ahead of the curve, and that it tries to lead instead of follow, and that it might try to set a good example (and not *only* dystopias as dire warnings: if something's done to death...). Silly me for thinking that.
3. SF actually likes to wallow in self-despair, and loathes getting out of its self-imposed ghetto. Nothing worse than 'normal' -- or even young -- people being attracted to it, right?

Now, if there is a publisher out there interested in doing an SF anthology of upbeat stories, then I am hereby volunteering to edit it. Just goes to show I'm an optimist at heart.


(Side note: maybe we should become Hispanic.)

Brasyl: an appreciation

At TTACon 9 I had -- among many other discussions -- a talk with Paul Raven about Ian McDonald's novel Brasyl. I thought it was one of his best, Paul ranked it lower, and specifically lower than River of Gods. I then tried to make the point that -- for my money -- River of Gods was, metaphorically speaking, where McDonald's heart was (evidenced not only by its higher page count, but also by a slew of short stories set in the same world, released as a collection by Orion called Cyberabad Days), but that his mind was in Brasyl. And while there have been a veritable slew of raving reviews, there were also a couple that were not convinced of the novel's intellectual merit:

• Martin Wisse at rec.arts.sf.written thinks it didn't deliver:

The big revelation at the end of the novel is perhaps not a hoary old cliche yet, but neither is it as fresh or strange as I would've expected from McDonald.

• Tim Martin at The Independent was also ultimately disappointed:

The real problem with Brasyl lies in the strange lack of invention that it brings, late on, to a fascinatingly weird premise. [...] when it comes to the crux of the book, the reader is surprised to find all the dark narrative mutterings about quantum theory and the multi–verse boiling down, after some fairly obvious foreshadowing, to a a thriller dénouement that involves a bunch of dimension-hopping assassins equipped with diminutive lightsabres.

The considerable amount of beer consumed that day most probably didn't make my argument very cogent, so I'll reformulate it -- hopefully in clearer terms -- here. For the record, I think McDonald delivered for a good 99,5%, and could have for the full 100% if he had given it a final twist, which ties in with Tim Martin's remarks. I'll get to that.

The high concept behind the novel is the existence of a simulated multiverse, which is generated by a Universe-wide quantum computer in the original, 'real' Universe. McDonald acknowledges the modern-day godfather of the multiverse David Deutsch (and specifically his thought-provoking The Fabric of Reality), and the idea of multiple realities being simulated on a Universe-wide computer stems from Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality (whose concept of an 'Omega Point' is also treated in The Fabric of Reality).

McDonald, however, does give his own twist to these concepts. For one, Tipler's 'Omega Point' -- where exponential growth of intelligence eventually enables control over the Universe over the largest possible scale -- was (at the time, 1994) believed to be taking place during the Big Crunch (Paul McAuley's Confluence trilogy takes Tipler's 'Omega Point' seriously). In the meantime, though, astronomers have found that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating (hence the search for the 'dark energy' that powers that acceleration), making a Big Crunch unlikely. So McDonald projects this 'Omega Point' on a forever-expanding Universe, where the multiversal simulation still is crunched, albeit at an ever-slower rate (which the inhabitants of the simulation won't notice, at least for a while, as their 'time' is simulated, as well).

The main point is, though, that the multiverse of Brasyl is a simulation. In The Fabric of Reality David Deutsch posits that the multiverse is real, and one of the main points of his arguments for that is the double slit experiment. This is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics: the interference pattern also appears when the particles (photons or electrons) are sent through the double slit one by one, seemingly suggesting that one particle interferes with itself.

David Deutsch's solution to this mind-boggling phenomenon is that this single particle interferes with its ghost from another Universe, hence a reality that consists of more than one Universe. (Apart from the Copenhagen interpretation other scientists have tried to explain this like, for example, the late David Bohm (with his interpretation of the 'hidden variables' interpretation, called 'undivided whole' or 'ontological interpretation') and John Cramer -- with his 'transactional interpretation' where waves travel both forward and backward in time, which might be supported by Julian Barbour's view in The End of Time that [as far as I can understand] time is an emergent phenomenon, not a basic property, and thus time arises from the quantum background like temperature arising from the average kinetic energy of atoms: see also New Scientist issue 2639 of January 18, 2008; main article "The Time Illusion". But I digress...;-)

This ties in with the simulation argument: the notion that our reality might be nothing more than a very advanced simulation. This is an interesting thought experiment: *if* reality as we experience it is a simulation, then *how* would we know this?

The simple answer is: if the simulation is perfect, we would never know (and David Deutsch argues that a universal quantum computer can render an environment to any degree of accuracy. Well, maybe if that environment is limited. But not if that environment is a whole Universe, let alone a multiverse, I strongly suspect). There is no point, at any level, where this simulation would break apart, and for us -- the inhabitants of that simulation -- the difference between the perfect simulation and an *actual* reality cannot -- by definition -- be noticed (otherwise the simulation isn't perfect). For us it would literally make no difference (up until the point where the experimenters would stop the simulation).

Now, in my day job I'm a technical specialist. I've worked with a variety of high tech equipment, and in my experience a perfect machine does not exist. Extremely sturdy, immensely reliable machines: yes. But even these will never work perfect *all the time*. There's a name for perfect machines: perpetuum mobiles.

Therefore, I personally think that a perfect simulation is also impossible. If our reality is a simulation, there will be a point where the seams of this simulation will show. Reading Brasyl, the thought struck me that if indeed our reality is an extremely sophisticated simulation, maybe the simulation breaks apart at the quantum level, for instance with the crazy results of the double slit experiment?

Now, as far as I understand, this is not what McDonald is actually proposing in Brasyl: but he does posit that the three strands of his novel take place in parallel worlds of a simulated multiverse, and throughout the novel there are moments when the simulation shows through. Most clearly through the quantum knives(*), also through the golden frogs that, through observing a single photon, experience the whole multiverse, and I do remember a scene where Edson mentions that he sees a plane flying over Sao Paolo, very low, without hearing the engines (it's been two weeks since I read the book, and my memory certainly isn't perfect). As the novel progresses, these seams in the simulation become gradually more apparent (Marcelina's double, Fria's double, Father Luis's visions of the multiverse, etc.).

(*) = I strongly suspect that an *actual* knife that can cut through anything at the quantum level is impossible, because of the Uncertainty Principle. Cutting apart bonds between molecules or atoms: yes. Stripping all electrons from an atom, or severing nuclear components (protons & neutrons; or even quarks): I don't think so. However, the quantum knife in Brasyl operates in a simulated environment, so is the equivalent of a carefully aimed delete button, or a highly fine-tuned decompiling tool.

Ultimately, one might argue that setting the whole novel in an extremely sophisticated simulation is a copout: since it's all virtual, things can take place that are not possible in an *actual* reality. Like golden frogs seeing the multiverse through the observation of a single photon or a 'Q knife' that literally cuts through everything.

However, in my opinion McDonald played fair: he carefully foreshadowed this, very subtly at first, and increasingly as the novel progresses. Also, the liberties he takes are all necessary to bring the concept forward, and carefully measured out. He could have easily taken this freedom from physical laws to excess, but he didn't: restraint is, in this case, the mother of invention.

More importantly, the major players in Brasyl -- and the reader -- finally come to grips with the (simulated) world they live in. So what do they do with that knowledge? As mentioned above, Tim Martin was disappointed that it all only led to a thriller game of assassins fighting each other.

I remember someone commenting (not sure of this was from some review or blog post I read, or from an actual conversation: forgive my fleeting memory) that having a (French) inventor travel down the Amazon in 1732 with the equivalent of an analytical engine, some 60 years before Charles Babbage was born, thus enabling Dr Falcon to understand, way ahead of his time, the real implications of his situation, was too much of a sleight of hand.

Against this I would argue that somebody must find out the actual 'fabric of (un) reality' first, and that in an extremely sophisticated multiverse simulation this will be at the earliest possible point in history (the most unlikely, yet still possible early discovery of all the possible reality simulations).

And that is what the Father Luís/Dr Falcon/Diego Gonçalves thread is about: this is where the seams of the simulation came apart first. This where the larger implications of the situation were interpreted: and since they had 18th Century mindsets the larger picture they drew was predominantly religious: Diego Gonçalves believes that the simulation must not be disturbed as it is God's plan; while 'the Order': the Father Luís/Dr Falcon group eventually (not immediately in the very beginning, but increasingly as they explore their multiverse) realise that the Mother Universe on which their simulation is running is running out: the accelerated expansion is slowly ripping it apart, and this will ultimately disrupt all the simulated worlds. So 'the Order' wants to break out from the simulation into the *actual* world, and the Gonçalves group believes this is blasphemy of the highest degree, and sends out assassins to prevent this.

Admittedly, this does look very much like a thriller denouement: powerful cabals plotting each other's demise. However, they both think they are fighting for the highest stakes: to preserve the Universe. Even if they disagree on how it should be achieved.

The only thing that I found slightly -- minimally -- disappointing was that the '1732' thread did not make it unambiguously clear that *this* Father Luis/Dr Falcon world was the very, very first where the conflict between the Order and the Gonçalves group originated: it would have tied everything together, very neatly.

Possibly that's why McDonald didn't do it: this conflict would have started in more worlds than one, rendering this simulated multiverse a bit muddy, somewhat fuzzy. Almost like the real world...

Back in August 6, 2005 I sat next to David Pringle at the Hugo Award ceremonies. When the Hugo for best novel was presented, David told me that he was rooting for River of Gods, and I completely agreed with him. It lost to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell --whose promotion budget and sales were an order of magnitude greater than that of River of Gods -- but by a relatively small margin. This year I hope Brasyl not only gets nominated, but that it gets the nod in Denver on August 9.

Transcendence Express, Re-Redux

Sometimes, the strangest things happen.

Today, Hub editor Lee Harris informed me that my story "Transcendence Express" -- which originally appeared in Hub #2, the last print issue -- will now appear again in Hub #44: the February 5 online issue (it also appeared as an audio version read by Jack Mangan on Escape Pod).

This on top of his choosing the story as the best of Hub of 2007.

(Also, Vincent Chong's illustration for "Transcendence Express" was long-listed for the BSFA Award, but didn't make the shortlist. Oh well, you can't have them all...;-)

His reasoning:

Our print runs were significantly lower than the size of our current readership, so we have decided to cherry-pick some of our favourite stories from those two issues, and reproduce them here, every now and then, in order to allow our swollen membership (stop sniggering at the back) to enjoy some tales that might otherwise be missed.

Hub Magazine currently reaches nearly 6,000 readers every week (and growing)

More readers? I certainly won't complain, rather the contrary. If Escape Pod's statistics are correct, then well over 22,000 people downloaded the audio version. Together with Hub's claim of over 6,000 readers, this piece might have reached close to thirty thousand people...

Free IGMS stories

Apologies for the low blogging amount: be assured that my fiction writing amount is even lower the last couple of months.

Anyway, Edmund Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, pinged me to say that IGMS is putting up a number of stories for free here.

• Issue one’s free story will be “Trill and The Beanstalk” by Edmund R. Schubert;
• Issue two’s will be “Yazoo Queen” by Orson Scott Card (from his Alvin Maker series);
• Issue three’s “Xoco’s Fire” by Oliver Dale (up February 14);
• Issue four’s “Tabloid Reporter To The Stars” by Eric James Stone (also up February 14);

Each story is fully illustrated by artists who were commissioned to create artwork to accompany that tale -- as is every story published in IGMS.

So there you go: an online prozine with a subscription model (like Baen's Universe) that's trying to be financially self-supporting. Interesting times, and you can check some of their fiction out for free.

Frankly, the battered SF fiction magazine market could use a success story, or two.

Clarkesworld Magazine Poll

Clarkesworld Magazine is holding a poll where you can vote for your favourite Clarkesworld Magazine stories of 2007.

You can vote for up to three stories.

Obviously, my story "Qubit Conflicts" is one of them, and if you really liked it, you could even vote for it (a little egoboo here, where Blue Tyson selected it as one of his personal year's best).

Also, the more votes get in, the better the feedback for the Clarkesworld Magazine people.

Zencore! and Nowhere

The names have been connected to the stories.

And I won the competition by guessing 8 (out of 17) right.

Yay!

To summarise, dear Watson:

--The ones I had correct:

MMM -- Delicious by Reggie Oliver

England and Nowhere by Tim Nickels

(Typically, these two were, for me, the hardest to guess. But I'm quite happy that Tim Nickels indeed wrote "England and Nowhere", which I rate very high indeed.)

Undergrowth by Mark Valentine

Red Velvet Dust by Ursula Pflug

(I was pretty certain of these two. However, I was also pretty certain of others that I had quite wrong.)

Blue Raspberries by kek-W

Berian Winslow and the Stream of Consciousness Fortune Teller by Dominy Clements

(Quite happy that I got those two right, as well. After "MMM -- Delicious" and "England and Nowhere" these were the second hardest to guess. And I love "Blue Raspberries".)

The Secret Life of the Panda by Nick Jackson

Upset Stomach by M. P. Johnson

(I was fairly sure of "Upset Stomach", and in retrospect am a little bit proud of my sleuthing for "The Secret Life of the Panda": also a very tough one. But then, of the remaining 9 I thought I was pretty much on the money. Those seven are now laughing...;-)

The ones I had wrong:

Word Doctor by Daniel Ausema

I thought it was Scott Edelman! Scott must have been laughing all the way to the bank -- that is, the same bank on which he sits with the panda, discussing his secret life and the fugly truth about the circus, like a stream of consciousness word doctor, eating delicious blue raspberries (mmm) until his stomach was upset, releasing a coughin torsion that plunged into the undergrowth like red velvet dust -- a nightmare to this reader, I tell ya.

The Awful Truth About the Circus by Scott Edelman

I thought it was Patricia Russo! That'll teach me to a) automatically assume that stories with a female protagonist most probably have a female author; and b) to assume that Scott writes mostly metafictional stories.

Ze egg is on ze face.

I'll buy you a drink in Denver, Scott!

Fugly by Patricia Russo

I was doubting between her and Ekatarina Sedia, and gambled wrong. Part of the game (I gambled correctly in two similar situations, so can't really complain). Congrats to Patricia for writing such a fine story.

The Coughin Coffin by Charles Black

I so expected this to be Steven Pirie. I wasn't the only one: two others thought the same thing. Against stereotype, Steven Pirie wrote something quite different. Good on him!

Terminus by S.D. Tullis

Which I so cleverly thought would be by Charles Black.

The Plunge by Brian Rappatta

And I attributed that one to Scott Tullis. Quite bad, as it now appears that Scott has *two* stories in Zencore! (that evil mastermind of a DFL tossing in a false anonymous to throw my blood hound off scent. What will he think of next?)

The Nightmare Reader by S.D. Tullis

And I attributed it to Brian Rappatta. If I had only made a last second switch, but the truth is that I was just guessing very hard, here.

Marie's Gift, the Stars and Frank's Pisser by Steven Pirie

I had really not even the faintest notion of who could have written that one (even after considerable sleuthing), so I threw in the towel and called it 'anonymous'. But it's Steven Pirie, and I'll congratulate him on writing a fine tale.

Torsion by Ekatarina Sedia

I guessed Daniel Ausema, and was wide off the mark. Again, here I am punished for assuming that a story with a male protagonist is written by a male author (a tactic that did pay off with other stories, but you just can't assume it all the time, of course. Which is definitely a good thing). Still, I'm quite happy that authors keep surprising me with their versatility.

Which brings us to "Cone Zero". My first tactic is to send Des a story for that one (hope I'll have one ready, as I'm way too busy now. Hopefully in the new year), thereby trying very hard to have myself automatically disqualified for the next guessing game.

Otherwise, dear Watson, we must sharpen our wits.

More IZ November email stuff

Sorry about the extended silence on this blog (to the ones still checking it): it basically means I've been extremely busy and just couldn't wrangle the time off for some posts. Maybe I'll do a few quickies (which are not really my style).

Anyway: Interzone November email stats: 404 stories adding up to some 1931100 words.

I'm reading through some 150 of them, while having been under the weather this week, and hope to send out responses over the weekend. The plan until Christmas: work, read slush, send out responses, and build up lack of sleep.

Oh well.

But I've already read one story that (almost literally) twisted my guts -- in a good way -- and one that made me laugh out loud. Good signs!

Zencore!: a Review

In this post I'll give a very lengthy review of Zencore! edited by Des Lewis, in my next post I shall make a fool of myself by trying to analyse which writer wrote which story.

A few disclaimers:

1. Normally — as a fiction editor — I don't review short fiction, especially not of other magazines. Simply because it can (and subsequently will) always be interpreted wrong: if I review a magazine negatively, then I'm trashing the competition; if I review a magazine positively I'm part of the clique that always support each other. I'm making an exception for Zencore! because Des specifically asked me, and also asked me to be absolutely frank.
2. I have been published in Nemonymous 4. Actually, I sent Des four stories during the Nemo 4 reading period (not simultaneously, but a new one after the previous one was rejected as Des responded fast), of which he finally took one. I sent him four more during the Nemo 5 period, which all bounced. I sent him nothing for Zencore!
3. I have seen none of the stories in Zencore! in the Interzone email slushpile. If I had, that would make connecting a story to an author too easy (although I've read other stories in the IZ slush of a few of them).
4. I came up with the byline Scriptus Innominatus (I believe Gary McMahon — correction: it was Scott Kelly. Scott Kelly, if you read this, please contact Des [ dflewis48@hotmail.com ], because he wants to give you a free Zencore! issue — came up with Zencore, which also refers to — I found out when I was googling for Zencore reviews — a male enhancement product. Coincidence? ;-).

So, to Zencore! Scriptus Innominatus: the book itself has changed to a ‘normal’ book size, away from the landscape format of the first 5 (which, I think, added to its distinctness). Although I haven’t asked Andy (Cox), I think he wasn’t involved with the design and typesetting of this seventh issue of Nemonymous. Undoubtedly this has to do with finances: a print run of — I think — 500 on silk paper is quite a bit more expensive than — I suspect — a POD book on normal paper with a lower print run (of which more can be printed easily).

While I understand that, I still think the ‘landscape’ Nemos look much better. There’s also something slightly off with the typesetting or printing: sometimes (for example look at the first paragraph on page 9) two paragraphs are printed so close they almost clash into each other. I suppose almost nobody notices such things, but after working on Interzone with Andy Cox for over four years now such details just stand out to me.

That is not to say Zencore! is ugly (or even Fugly): it’s still a very nice book to behold, and looks fine. It’s just not the special artefact it was.

As to the most important thing, that is, the stories themselves:

Torsion: this, I think, is the obligatory Nemonymous transformation c.q. mixed identity story (think “The Rest of Larry” by Monica O’Rourke in Nemonymous 3, “Nocturne for Doghands” by Joe Murphy [and another one that shall not be named…;-)] in Nemonymous 4, “The Robot and the Octopus” in Nemonymous 5). It’s an OK story, nicely executed, and at only 3 (full) pages — say, 1100 words — it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Horror with a nemo sensibility, but ultimately forgettable, as the story doesn’t reveal any deeper layers on a second reading (at least, not to me).

MMM – Delicious: the nemonymous element in this one is the blank personality, actor Tony White whose presence in TV commercials makes the sales of the advertised product go through the roof. Cue to other ‘blank/white’ themes in previous nemos like “White Dream” (Neil Bristow, Nemonymous 2) and “Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds” (Anonymous, ibid), “The Painter” (Dominy Clements, Nemonymous 4).

Unfortunately, while competently written, this story was full of clichés, such as the advertsiment agency (and the TV/film world) being both utterly superficial, and ruthless; and the way that Tony White not quite being what he is (with a ‘shocking’ revealing at the end of the story). It’s also rather too long: at 26 pages it’s the longest piece in Zencore!, and I felt it could have been cut considerably.

Undergrowth: this is an intriguing piece where an obsessed book collector searches second hand bookshops in the quest for his holy grail (in this case Francis Brett Young’s novel Undergrowth, which is indeed not on ABE Books). It puts the idea of a ‘literal’ undergrowth of books forward quite nicely, with a touch of Machen. Very enjoyable.

Fugly: a strong, slightly shocking/provocative and thought-provoking story that one expects to show up in Nemonymous, like its predecessors: “Insanity of Creamer’s Field” (Joe Murphy, Nemonymous 3), “Sexy Beast” (Tony Milman, Nemonymous 4), “Huntin’ Season” (Monica O’Rourke, Nemonymous 5). Pete and Lenore, a couple in a dead end relationship experience a break-in in their appartment in the middle of the night. The creature Lenore finds in the bathroom is not exactly a sight for sore eyes, but seems to need help, and she tries to take care of it, through the night. Her partner Pete isn't amused at all, but kicks the creature out of Lenore's embrace and shatters it to pieces — which attack him before they reconfigure.
There's more, but you'll have to find out by getting a copy of the antho. Suffice it to say that this is a very effective use of a metaphor-come-to-flesh in a speculative manner. The first gem of Nemo 7.

The Nightmare Reader: some people are obsessed by insects. Here the obsession is not with spiders, ants, or locusts but with boll weevils. A slow descent into madness — slow, but not compelling — strange things happen, and, totally unexpected, they are true!
This one didn't work for me. There might be smart things in it — I remember a writer at FantasyCon complaining that nobody saw the smart things he did with his prose — but my take is that if the story doesn't work for the reader, she/he is not going to look for them.

The Secret Life of the Panda: melancholic hypochondria and the futility of life. Pandas need to be nudged into procreation, and so does modern man. Because even when one thinks impregnation is achieved, it might be a false alarm. It can only happen when the species is mentally ready for it. Oh well.
I'm not really one for stories full of angst: I already read the existentialists back in high school, and don't need a rehash. Still, such stories are a nemonymous mainstay (from Nike O'Driscoll's "Double Zero for Emptiness" in Nemonymous 1 through to Gary McMahon's "New Science" in Nemonymous 5, with plenty in between), so one has to suffer through them, or wallow in them. Take your pick.

Upset Stomach: hypochondria becomes flesh and the futility of life. A guy works in a dreadful office and during a toilet break his hate for his job literally comes alive through his bowels. Of course, it's not done so he has to discard of it.
At least, that's what I made of it, and I didn't feel in the least compelled to try harder. See above.

The Awful Truth About the Circus: superficially this reminded me somewhat of Paul Meloy’s “Running Away to Join the Town” (Nemonymous 5), although this one focussed more on American small-town emptiness. Carly wants to escape the dull, smothering life in her home town, but no matter how hard she laments living there she just isn’t capable of leaving. Until she sees a flyer of ‘Professor Musto’s Amazing Three/Ring Circus’, and decides to check it out.

Initially, the circus itself seems a disappointment: a small van packed with small, freakish paraphernalia, and professor Musto a small, middle-aged man trying to live a dream, without much success. But gradually Carly sees that there can be magic in small things, and that great dreams may need small miracles to power them. Although suffused with a Bradburian flavour, I thought it missed the master’s concisseness. I suspect that at half its length it would be more than twice as powerful. Now it’s just OK.

Red Velvet Dust: after twenty years Chelsea still hasn't come to grips with the death of her mother, and as she stages another play she uses her mother's ghost as one of the actors. This is the start of Chelsea reviving her childhood with her mum, a gradual healing towards a final acceptance. There's plenty of symbolism throughout the story (purple asters, red velvet dust), and while the story tries hard, I felt it didn't fully succeed, although this is mostly a matter of taste.

The Coughing Coffin: this is a joke within a joke, and certainly Nemonymous is not without humour, think, for example "Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds" in Nemonymous 2, "Digging for Adults (D. Harlan Wilson, Nemonymous 3), "Determining the Extent" (Adrian Fry, Nemonymous 4) and "The Robot and the Octopus" (Tony Ballantyne, Nemonymous 5). Humour is a highly subjective matter, and I found the 'curious business' told by a Major Guthrie in a gentleman's club more one of the shaggy dog kind.

Terminus: the setting here is certainly intriguing: a city that constantly changes, so one gets from A to B more by chance and feel than by using something so mundane (and in this case quite useless) as a map. Then the nameless protagonist gets a letter from somebody who may know more about it, someone who might even have a map that works.
Typically, the cause of all this strangeness is from almost the same source as that of the 'curious business' of the previous story: namely some black magic from the dark continent. As far as I understand, at the end of the story the curse is still there, and understanding is available for someone willing to pay the price, which is a pact with a demon. It reads like a story right out of the old Weird Tales, with its mix of myth, philosophy and the supernatural. While not really to my taste, I was still fascinated.

Mary's Gift, the Stars, and Frank's Pisser: Mary, Frank, Ruth and Alf are homeless street people, literally living in the gutter. The harshness of their life and ailments is described like the way they live: in your face. But between the filth, madness and despair Mary has a gift, one she is both reluctant to use, and when she uses it, people mostly do not believe her.
As such, it is more a curse, and one she passes on to her — let's put this euphemistically — less-than-considerate partner. There were quotes in Nemonymous 1 (no less than eleven), and Nemonymous 2 (six), none in Nemonymous 3, two in Nemonymous 4 (one at the beginning, and one incorporated in the story by some pretentious writer...;-), and two in Nemonymous 5. Zencore! has no quotes, but I suspect that "We are all of us lying in the gutter, but some of us are staring at the stars" from Oscar Wilde would have been perfect for this story. And well deserved.

Blue Raspberries: this is a subtle one. What I suspect most reviewers didn’t get was that this is an alternate history: the story is set in a different world (Stockholm is called both a ‘non-existent’ and a ‘mythical’ city) where the nazis won (subtle hints like his wife switching TV channels to one about yodelling, the protagonist calling his internet the ‘infobahn’). It tells about supposedly untrue stories from Fascisti paperbacks (note the ironic reversal: if the nazis won, the others are fascists), one of such called ‘Blue Raspberries’. Echoes of ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ from PKD’s “The Man in the High Castle”: another imagined book that tells about a supposed imaginary world where the nazis didn’t win.

In an almost Chris Priestian ‘trap-within-a-trap-within-a-trap’ the narrator tells that the story of ‘Blue Raspeberries’ is about nudists being infiltrated by a red-haired, German-named man who infiltrates them, becomes their leader, and then turns them into uniform-toting authoritarians who, in the book’s final scene, parade in the garden at night. Slight echoes of Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden, strong echoes of the Kristallnacht. The conceit within a conceit here is that the (unreliable?) narrator thinks it’s a fantasy, while the story itself — especially near the end — hints that this is a metaphor for what actually happened.

Hence, unlike ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ in “The Man in the High Castle” — which tells of a world different (although not necessarily ours) from that of the alternate world of the novel — ‘Blue Raspberries’ (the imaginary paperback) in “Blue Raspberries” (the Zencore short story) tells of a world that is basically the same (as the similar titles already suggest).

Furthermore, I strongly suspect that Stockholm wasn’t chosen as the ‘non-existent’, ‘mythical’ city from which the viral stories from ‘Blue Raspberries’ were published for nothing: like the Stockholm syndrome where the hostage is brainwashed into following the hostage-taker’s logic, ‘Blue Raspberries’ tells of how “unwilling participants are locked in a water tank until their will is broken”. “Blue Raspberries” suggests that this has taken place on a country-wide scale since the nazis have won, as the (reliable?) narrator doesn’t seem to see that he has been brainwashed. More subtle hints of his brainwashing appear near the end: he gets a hard-on just thinking about a hard-boiled egg, while the original nudists of ‘Blue Raspberries’ were forced to eat raw eggs; the advert in ‘True Nude’ magazine is from a red-headed man: the red-haired infiltrator in ‘Blue Raspberries’, who likes singing – the nudists were forced to sing humiliating songs in falsetto voices – and linguistics – nudists who refused to speak the ‘forgotten’ language were beaten.

So the circle is round, and the protagonist, who almost begins to realise he was one of the free nudists himself, replies to the advert. It’s unclear whether this will get him back to his fellow nudists (who are now possibly the underground), or straight into a trap set up by the nazi spies.

There is more very clever stuff in there that I didn’t get, like the spiel with his father’s pipes (did Philip K. Dick smoke pipes?), the lop-sided infinity sign of the nudist cult, and more. Multi-layered, extremely clever (some would call it too clever by half), it also reminds me very strongly of Lavie Tidhar’s “304, Adolph Hitler Strasse” (from the first Clarkesworld Magazine issue). While the Tidhar is more direct and heartfelt, both are highly recommended.

Berian Winslow & the Stream of Consciousness Storyteller: the story of a storytelling program — disguised as a Santa Claus — that interacts with its audience, and so learns to both improve its storytelling, and adapt the story to its audience's needs. It becomes so good at it — too good — and totally entrances groups of children with its stories, and worried parents form a mob against it. They're literally chasing a ghost — one that disappears without even a whiff when no-one looks — but the ghost in this machine has come alive, that is, self-conscious.
An interesting take on how a self-improving storytelling program might become self-aware, although I suspect cause and effect might be jumbled up here. Nevertheless, quite interesting.

The Plunge: a bizarro piece of horror reminiscent of “Digging for Adults” (D. Harlan Wilson, Nemonymous 3), or “Creek Man” (Jamie Rosen, Nemonymous 4). In a non-descript factory Frank snaps children’s necks before he pushes them into a pit, where they burn. His routine is disturbed by a kid who talks, and tries to escape before he kills her. Near the end, the children in line take their fate (or at least the very last part of it) in their own hands and jump into the execution pit without having their necks ('humanely') snapped.

As such, the story evokes bio-industry slaughterhouses, concentration camps, and a sly hint of anti-abortion (especially through the parting note of Frank's partner Esperanza). It reminded me most of the routine on a slaughterhouse’s kill floor, where employees think about mundane things while they bring cows (or pigs, or chicken) to their deaths.

England and Nowhere: this is a truly superb story, with some very fine writing. Superficially it seems a slice-of-life piece about a middle-aged alcoholic watching the people — especially the young couple in the appartment below — around him on a beach resort somewhere along the English coast. But every appearance in this fantastic story is deceiving, and things are not quite what they seem. There is a very subtle, yet palpable sense of menace growing throughout, and there is a reason for every thing (both little and big) that happens.

Now, unlike my analysis of "Blue Raspberries", I'm not going to tell you: you'll have to find out by yourselves, and buy Zencore! "England and Nowhere" is easily worth the price of the book alone: read it, reread it to see what you all missed the first time around (and wonder at the intricacy and masterful attention to detail), and then reread it again. I've only read it twice, and still haven't picked up all the subtle hints and layers of meaning, although a greater picture is starting to form. Classy, evocative, powerful: I think this is in the same class as “The Assistant to Dr. Jacob” (Eric Schaller, Nemonymous 2).

Word Doctor: this might be the obligatory Nemonymous metafictional story (think "The Place Where Lost Things Go" by Jorge Candeias in Nemonymous 3 or “The Scariest Story I Know” — which mixes and/or reverses dream and reality — by Scott Edelman in Nemonymous 5). Arkimp is the word doctor of the title, and he fixes broken words. It's a reminiscence of how we change words, and how words change us, and as such it's a nice coda to Nemonymous 7. Of course, "England and Nowhere" is an extremely tough act to follow, and while "Word Doctor" is not in the same class, it feels right as the ending to Zencore!

Finally, how would I rate Zencore! in the Nemonymous pantheon? Honestly, I don't really have a favourite, just a weakness for Nemonymous 4 because I was published in it, and a fondness for Nemonymous 5. To me, they're quite consistent in their quality and sensibility. Because my personal preferences only partly overlap with Nemo's sensibility, there are always stories I dislike, but those are more than made up for the ones that I do like.

Zencore! is not different from that (a couple of stories that just didn't work for me, more than compensated by the superb ones), and in that respect is a worthy addition to the nemonymic oeuvre.

The only difference is that Des opened Nemo 7 up to longer stories: until Nemo 5 the maximum length was 5000 words, now 8000 words. Assuming approx. 350 words per page, then a 5K+ story would take up some 15 pages or more. Thus the longer stories in Zencore! are "MMM — delicious" (25 pages), "The Awful Truth About the Circus" (19 pages), "Red Velvet Dust" (17 pages), "Berian Winslow & the Stream of Consciousness Storyteller" (18 pages), and "England and Nowhere" (18 pages). While I did think the first three were too long for what they were trying to say, I enjoyed the fourth, but most importantly: if allowing stories of up to 8K brings in a diamond like "England and Nowhere", then it was well worth it.