The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Tellmenow Fablesforfree

2012-01-27T10:11:00.003Z

Did you buy my ebook The Tellmenow Isitsöornot? If you did (or are planning to) then it gives me pleasure to announce that you'll get Rhysop's Fables for free when it appears on Smashwords a week from now...

Sometime in the next few days I'm going to upload a second edition of The Tellmenow Isitsöornot and at the very end of it I'm going to include a code that you can use to download Rhysop's Fables for free. If you've already bought the first edition of The Tellmenow Isitsöornot it won't cost you anything to download the second edition. Thanks!

Political Cleanup

2012-01-25T09:51:00.007Z

A few days ago I had to "unfriend" a contact on Facebook after I learned that he had been an active member of the National Front (a far-right racist organisation) back in the 1980s. More than just an active member, in fact: he stood for election on at least one occasion. I'm not someone who makes a big show of being political; some might even call me 'apolitical'. True, I'm not particularly interested in party politics, but when it comes to questions of morality that's a different matter, and I just don't want a racist as a contact.

There had been mutterings about this individual for quite a while. I thought it best to directly email the person and ask him to confirm or deny the rumours. That seemed easier than trying to 'work out' his affiliations by tracking any comments he might have left on obscure websites (I just don't have time to do that). He replied that yes, he had been a member of the National Front in his youth but had resigned thirty years ago and had since changed his views. Now, as far as I'm concerned, we are all allowed to make mistakes and people who have "seen the light" and changed their views are often more rigorously ethical in subsequent life than people who always had the nice views from the beginning.

But... it seems that actually he hasn't changed his views at all; and various people have sent me various pieces of evidence that seem to indicate rather strongly that this individual still holds his old views. If this is indeed the case, and it's looking increasingly likely that it is, then he's a silly sod and really there's not much hope for him. But what do I do about it now?

Well, I guess I can clarify my own political views a little. I have done this before but maybe any statement of my politics needs regular refreshing. I don't like political extremism of any kind. I've travelled through enough countries that were formerly communist to see the damage that communism has done to populations and the environment. I'm anti-communist and frankly I can't stand Marx, Engels, Trotsky and all those other cream-whipping soulless bullies. I've said this many times previously. Has it been taken the wrong way, I wonder? Have some people assumed that if I despise the left-wing I must automatically be right-wing?

I'm not. Let's get that cleared up right away. I despise the right-wing with equal force. In fact, I find them even more sordid than the left-wing. The stated aims of traditional right-wing politics -- small government, low taxes, private sector control -- are valid political objectives. But these days, the right-wing is inextricably bound up with xenophobia and outright racism. These racist right-wingers like to portray themselves as tough but they are terrified of immigrants! That's not tough, that's sissy! They fail by their own proclaimed standards!

But the truth, of course, is that modern right-wingers aren't really right-wing. They are totalitarian supremacists. Like the Nazis did, they want maximum economic control and political control at the same time; they are a fusion of the worst from the left and right. In essence they are statists, advocates of a strong, ultimately controlling state. People often forget that Fascism and Naziism aren't just right-wing ideologies but contain many left-wing control elements too...

My own political ideals? I reject the strong state desired by the left-wing but I also reject the corporate, private-sector control desired by the right. I'm a Green Libertarian. I want minimal state interference and minimal corporate influence. I want maximum freedom for all individuals provided it doesn't infringe the freedoms of any other individual and doesn't harm the environment. Call me a misty-eyed transcendentalist if you like. Small private businesses, cottage industries, arts and crafts: that's the world I'd prefer. I don't want an utterly pastoral planet, though. I still believe deeply in robots and spaceships.

Free to Some of You...

2012-01-20T10:24:00.004Z

Thanks to everyone who has bought one of my self-issued ebooks over the past four months! A handful of stories appear in more than one ebook (for example 'Goblin Sunrise', 'The Porcelain Pig', 'Sir Cheapskate', etc) . This isn't an oversight but due to the fact that some stories work in different ways in different contexts.

However, because of these occasional overlaps, people who buy every one of my ebooks are going to end up paying for certain stories twice; so my next ebook will have no overlaps and I'll make sure it's free to readers who have bought at least one of my other ebooks. I'll set up a code for you to get it for free. It'll be out in February but I don't yet know what it'll be called, maybe The Lunar Tickle.

Facets of Faraway

2012-01-14T10:20:00.005Z

My latest ebook is now available from Smashwords. Tales of distant places, other times and strange beings, somewhere under the rainbow way down low... Incompetent explorers; knights, goddesses and viscounts that don't exist (but who are stuck in trees anyway); castles that give birth to baby fortresses; anti-matter monsters that meet and greet their twins; robots in lingerie; and a scientist who believes that all the energy in the universe is draining away through a hole in spacetime and who has a cunning plan to plug the leak!

For the price of $2.99 (that's £1.95 in British money) this cornucopia of delights can be yours, provided you have electronic reading apparatus. If you don't, you'll just have to imagine the stories instead! Here's the relevant link: Facets of Faraway. Includes the only two stories I've written in 2012 so far, and plenty of unpublished or hard to find stuff from previous years. If you buy this ebook, thanks! If you don't, no worries!

This is my fifth self-published ebook. I plan to release one every month until there are 12 in existence. The 12th will be a selection from the other 11. (Just in case you're curious about my intentions in this regard...)

Abnormal Service has been Resumed

2012-01-08T11:12:00.003Z

I have just resumed the writing of my novel The Young Dictator. I wrote the first chapter in the summer of 2010 and now I've started chapter two. The first chapter, 'Jenny Khan', tells the story of what happens when a 12 year old girl becomes the absolute ruler of Britain; the second chapter, 'Genghis Kan't', will chart her progress into outer space as she attempts to conquer the galaxy... The subsequent chapters will get wilder and more improbable as they go along. There will be six chapters in total. It's going to be a satire against power, but an irresponsible one.

Irresponsibility gets a bad press. An irresponsible action can be just as much a gesture of defiance against authority as any rational and controlled opposition. Furthermore, too many satires are moral and that's why I intend to make mine an amoral one. I also want to attempt the sort of thing Roald Dahl was a master at: entertaining fiction for young people that has not only a disturbing undercurrent but authentic ambiguity in its apparent 'messages'. There are too many wise people, sages and gurus with the 'answers' to life. There are no answers to life. Why the hell should there be?

Second Thornton Excelsior Medley

2012-01-03T10:41:00.006Z

As promised back in October, here's another medley of stories featuring my character Thornton Excelsior, who is a sort of galactic whirpool of absurdist whimsy, but the sort of whirpool that blows as well as sucks...

'The Dooms and Dimensions of Thornton Excelsior' is a fix-up novelette that includes the discovery of the lost arms of the Venus de Milo and the consequences thereof; the startling occasion when Thornton realised he was God; the unhappy time he turned himself into a windmill; his exploits as an official censor with control over the substance of Reality itself; his experiences as a multi-jointed citizen of the Duchy of Klipklop...

To download this novelette for free, please click on this link: Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #39. Hope you enjoy!

The Platinum Ass

2012-01-01T12:00:00.012Z

Happy New Year folks! And what better way to celebrate the start of 2012 than with the official launch of THE PLATINUM ASS, a blogsite that will eventually collect all my online stories into a single location? Well, I'm sure there are trillions of better ways, but hey...

I intend to post exactly 100 of my stories on this site: at the moment 10 are available. We live in an age where creative people are increasingly compelled to provide free samples of their work and few of us can afford to exempt ourselves from this trend. The stories to be found at THE PLATINUM ASS will range my entire career; most are uncollected and were previously published in obscure small-press magazines but occasionally I'll include something from one of my books. I hope you enjoy!

Incidentally, the name THE PLATINUM ASS was inspired by the brilliant novel, The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius, one of the greatest proto-absurdist fantasy writers of Classical times...

Personal Review of 2011 (with over-emphasis on writing activities)

2011-12-29T11:39:00.019Z

Hello! It's me! How are you? Did you have a nice Christmas?

Well, it seems that it's that time again: when I look back on my personal highlights of the year. I'll try to keep this review a bit shorter than some previous annual reviews. No I won't.

By the way, this photo was taken at the beginning of October: we had an Indian Summer in Wales. This occurrence was definitely one of the highlights!

I got fit in 2011; fitter than I already was, I mean. I've always been a hiker and mountain walker. But now I think I've earned to right to call myself a cyclist and runner too. Nothing spectacular, but regular 50K bike rides and 5K runs became a normal part of my life.

It was a great year for my writing career, one of the best in my life so far. I had three new books published. Here they are: The Brothel Creeper, Sangria in the Sangraal and Link Arms With Toads!

I'm especially pleased with The Brothel Creeper. In fact I regard it as my strongest collection to date. All three volumes are still available for purchase, but reviews are thin on the ground, I'm sorry to say: I don't get reviewed much. I don't get profiled or interviewed much either. Nor do I get invited to do many readings. Ah well! But I have a loyal set of readers: and that's what really counts. And to them I say THANKS!

So much for new books... Two of my books from previous years went into second editions in 2012. The first edition of my satirical novel Mister Gum was badly designed, with an unreadable font; the second edition was much better. And after a wait of 16 years, my first collection Worming the Harpy returned with all the missing passages reinserted. That was satisfying, I can tell you!

In 2011 I wrote exactly 52 stories, averaging one a week (though they weren't written like that), totalling 175,000 words of fiction, making 2011 my third most productive year. I completed two novels: Captains Outrageous (though I might have to change the title, as it seems some other author has already used this title) and The Pilgrim's Regress (which I have a particular fondness for).

I sold The Truth Spinner and The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange to reputable publishers and with luck both will be issued in 2012.

It was also the year when I discovered the power of ebooks. 40K issued three of my ebooks (in English and Italian); and Gloomy Seahorse Press (a fancy name for myself) issued four more.

Righto! That's enough about me! What about other writers? I read 36 works of fiction (novels and collections of short stories) in 2011. Every year I discover at least one excellent author previously unknown to me. This year it was William Saroyan. I read My Name is Aram, a collection of linked stories, and was hugely impressed. This work is realistic and tells of poor Armenian immigrants in California but Saroyan's style is upbeat and colourful, never depressing; and although his treatment of even the most sombre themes is unashamedly sentimental, it isn't maudlin. His language is pared down and simple but his rhythms are delightful and infused with a warm humour. The writer he most closely resembles to my mind is Ray Bradbury, but without the fantastical element.

My other favourite books of 2011 were Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau; A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov; The Adventures of Mr Thake by Beachcomber and City by Clifford D. Simak... But my 'book of the year' was undoubtedly Triton by Samuel R. Delany. Because of the appendix on metalogic, Triton looks like a 'difficult' novel, but that's an illusion. It's a beautifully written, complex but totally accessible and engaging work. The main character, Bron Helstrom, is simultaneously likeable and infuriating, perceptive and unaware, an authentic personality on the page. The background events of his life in an 'ambiguous heteropotia' include a devastating war between the inner worlds and the outer satellites that is presented slightly obliquely and very convincingly. And the society in which Bron has chosen to make his home is constructed with brilliant imagination and attention to detail. It's a sort of utopia-of-choice, not quite the perfect society but hugely preferrable to our own. Delany is a thought-provoking writer but there is a lot of positive emotional energy in his work too.

I ought to say something about the appalling political condition that Britain seems to be in at the moment; but that really deserves a blog post all to itself.

So that's it until 2012... Have a great New Year! Bye from me!

The Best Films I Saw in 2011

2011-12-21T10:29:00.019Z

I'm not much of a film buff; I don't know why. I'm a book reader instead. I prefer the cinema inside my head to an outer screen. But I do watch films on a fairly regular basis: averaging one a week (which for some people is doubtless an absurdly frugal amount). Two of my friends have a private cinema at home, but although I appreciate the excellence of such a set-up I'm not sure I would ever want or need one of those myself. Anyway, the point of this blog post is to select the six best films I saw this year. Bear in mind that this isn't my list of the six best films that were released in 2011; I'm far too behind the times for that. No, it's a list merely of the six best films I saw in 2011, and some of them are a few years old already.

So now: in reverse order, they are as follows:

(6) Moon... I watched this in the private cinema mentioned above. A deeply disturbing and yet ultimately uplifting film about the manipulative ethics (or unethics) of a major corporation that supplies power to Earth's teeming billions by harvesting moon rocks and converting them into energy via fusion reactions. The character played by Sam Rockwell (who provides a masterclass in acting technique, carrying the entire film on his multiple sets of shoulders) learns the hard way that his employers don't value human life very much for its own sake; they care only that he does his job as a cog in the machine efficiently. And when his time is up they are happy to destroy him and replace him with... himself. Saying more than this would spoil the plot. It's an amazing story, expressed with conviction, delicacy and strong vision.

(5) The Way... A collaboration between Martin Sheen and his real life son Emilio Estevez, both of whom were seminal cinema figures for me in the 1980s. It was good to see them back and working together. This film is the story of a man who embarks on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage on a sudden whim (but not a superficial whim; it's actually a profound decision). In a sense he is completing the journey that his son dies attempting to do. To say that the pilgrimage is a catharsis would be a little too glib; it's both more and less than that. The end message isn't maudlin, there is no attempt to display a 'cure for grief'; rather the climax demonstrates simply that our reserves of strength to face the ongoing tribulations of life can be recharged.

(4) The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec... A Luc Besson film. A French travel writer at the beginning of the 20th Century embarks on an expedition to Egypt to resurrect the mummy of an ancient doctor who might be able to cure her sister (who fell on a hatpin while playing tennis). But while she is away from Paris, the egg of a pterodactyl hatches in a museum thanks to the telepathic experiments of an eccentric professor and only Adèle has the resources to deal with it... These two farfetched plots are interwoven in a thoroughly contrived but clever and engaging manner. Louise Bourgoin, who plays Adèle, is exceptional and surely one of the best-looking actresses in the world. This film is flawed in many ways, but it's original, inventive, unpredictable and different, and that counts for a lot.

(3) Tears for Sale... A Serbian fantasy film that is rich, lush, frantic, clever, sinister and bizarre. In post war Serbia there is a shortage of men; some villages are populated entirely by women. Two sisters, one feisty, the other demure, (played by Sonja Kolačarić and Katarina Radivojević) set off on a quest to find some men. The tone and style of this film often reminds me of the novels of Milorad Pavić, one of my favourite writers, in the sense that the magical realist elements are pushed to an extreme, so far in fact that the absurd and bizarre becomes the normal background and the ordinary life elements become the intrusion. The film looks wonderful and the main conceit works beautifully. Some tedious critics accused it of being self-indulgent. It's not, but even if it is, so what? It's great cinema.

(2) Rise of the Planet of the Apes... We went to see this at the earliest showing on a normal weekday and had the cinema entirely to ourselves. Vastly superior to the 2001 remake of the 1968 classic, the excellence of the acting, credibility of the plot, importance of the concept (and the skill with which it is developed) have evolved to the point where the story even surpasses Pierre Boulle's original satire. The message of this film is a crucial one at this stage in the history of the human race: we must be more compassionate to animals; if we don't start respecting every lifeform properly, our doom will not only be assured but utterly justified. The film is emotionally engaging, intellectually stimulating and philosophically valid. An astounding piece of work.

(1)The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus... The dirctor Terry Gilliam is one of my heroes. In my more deluded moments I sometimes daydream that he might adapt one of my own books to the big screen. Parnassus is his best film yet; and considering that this is the director who gave us Brazil, Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen, I don't say that lightly! Christopher Plummer as Doctor Parnassus is perfectly cast (has there ever been a harder working actor than Plummer?) and the ingenious tactic by which Gilliam sidesteps the real-life death of Heath Ledger (by using three other actors, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to fill in for him) enhances the theme of transformation and growth. Tom Waits is also perfect as the Devil, so bored with his own power that he prefers to lose in wagers with mortals. There is a huge amount of ideas bouncing around in this film, colliding with each other, merging, breaking apart. It's a masterpiece; one of the great visual experiences of my film-watching life.

The World Idiot

2011-12-16T09:49:00.007Z

Courtesy of Gloomy Seahorse Press, I'm pleased to announce that my latest ebook is now available from Smashwords.

With a delightful cover by Kendal Obermeyer, The World Idiot and Other Absurdlings features 15 short-stories selected from the past two decades of my writing career, including the award-nominated 'Rediffusion'.

It costs $2.99 and can be purchased directly here.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that I'm self-publishing a lot of ebooks lately. This is my fourth so far (and the last of this year). I plan to release one Gloomy Seahorse Press ebook every month for a year; so there will be 12 in total. My hope is to use any profits I receive from these ebooks to pay for an airfare out of Britain; the more ebooks I sell, the higher the profits, and hence the further I'll be able to travel! At the moment I've only earned enough to take me to France or Spain.

I'm a Celery... Get Me Out of Here!

2011-12-13T09:57:00.006Z

Alternative title for this photo: All God's Vegetables Beware!

I don't believe any further explanation is required at this time...

Worming the Electronic Harpy

2011-12-07T10:24:00.007Z

Courtesy of Ray Russell, the guiding light of Tartarus Press, my very first book, Worming the Harpy, is now available as an ebook.

Suitable for the Kindle and other such gadgets, it can be purchased from a variety of places including the British Amazon; the American Amazon (which includes a 'Come Look Inside' feature because they are more advanced than we are); the German Amazon; the French Amazon; the Italian Amazon and the Spanish Amazon. About the only place it's not available is in the Brazilian Amazon, which is a forest, not a bookstore. However, just because it's available at all those different Amazons doesn't mean it's available in all those languages. Not yet anyway.

Now let's consider the matter of Ray Russell himself. What can we say about him? Well, for a start, Ray Russell is not only the guiding light of Tartarus Press. He is not only himself: a Ray Russell. He's also a Ray of Sunshine. In fact he's the Rey of Sunshine: the Sun-King himself! Here is pictorial evidence of my assertion! And yet, even as we fall to our knees, we should "...remember how much black there is in the sun." (Jean-Paul Sartre).

Ladies, Gentlemen and Sun-Worshippers! I give you: Worming the Electronic Harpy!

My Twenty-First Book

2011-12-01T10:37:00.009Z

A big parcel of books turned up at my house yesterday afternoon. It had come all the way from Romania. When I cut the parcel open (with a duelling dagger bought in Toledo seven years ago) I was overjoyed to find the box packed with copies of my latest book, Sangria in the Sangraal! All the books produced by Ex Occidente are exquisite, authentic collectors' items, and this one is no exception. In fact it's utterly gorgeous!

It seems a little uncouth for an author to praise certain of his books more than others; a good father regards all his children as special. But I can't resist declaring this volume to be extra special to me. I truly believe that it has magic about it, I can't quite define how or why. Anyway, I probably should leave such judgments to others. I'll just say that the fact it's now in print has helped make the cold wet Welsh winter a lot more bearable to me.

I ought to point out that this book was originally entitled Tucked Away in Aragon and it was inspired by a visit I made in 2007 to the little town of Albarracín. It features 10 linked stories and is a complete epic in miniature, covering 1000 years of Spanish history. Influences on this book include Potocki, Alarcón, Dunsany and (of course) Calvino. I would like to thank Dan Ghetu (who runs Ex Occidente) not only for the superb aesthetic values of the finished book but also for having the courage to issue something a little different to his usual productions.

Most of the authors published by Ex Occidente write books that are dark; books that are full of mysteries, subtleties of mood and atmosphere, and a love of the metaphysical and weird. But generally the subtleties and effects are dark. True, the darkness may be speckled with gleams like faint stars, but the backdrop is mostly dark. Sangria in the Sangraal isn't like that. It's mostly light and speckled with only a few negative stars, like black holes in heaven. There is comedy and acute absurdism and unashamed anthropomorphism. There are sentient clouds and anachronisms and postmodern ironies à la Barthelme.

Anyway, the book can be ordered directly from Ex Occidente here. or from Fantastic Literature Limited here. I think that copies will also be available soon from Realms of Fantasy Books and Ziesing Books.

Young Tales of the Old Cosmos

2011-11-30T11:21:00.010Z

My latest ebook is now available from Smashwords for the un-astronomical sum of $0.99. That's just ninety-nine terrestrial cents for a celestial novelette! Or if you happen to British like me, it's 66 pence in total! Click on this link for the opportunity to buy it, if that's what you'd like to do...

The idea for this novelette came to me two years ago after I read something Umberto Eco said in his essay 'How I Write' (from his collection On Literature). He remarked that when he was very young he began a series of stories called 'Ancient Stories of the Young Universe' in which the planets of our solar system were sentient beings. Venus falls in love with the sun, for example, and throws herself into his fiery arms with fatal consequences. It seems a shame to me that Eco never finished or published those stories and so I decided to take up the conceit and run with it (not that I'm comparing myself to Eco!!!). And so:

Planets, moons, stars and galaxies have feelings too! When Pluto is officially demoted from a true planet to a dwarf planet; when the poor moon is infested with clowns; when Betelgeux falls in love with other red giants; when the Milky Way wants to make friends... that's the time they most need our sympathy and support.

The superb cover was created by an artist named Gonzalo Canedo. Any publishers out there looking for new artists? Look no further...

Transmigrating the Bishop

2011-11-26T10:42:00.011Z

Several years ago the genius writer Michael Bishop postmodernly, jestingly and excellently wrote my 612th story for me, to save me the trouble. The result was a piece that formed the introduction to my novella The Crystal Cosmos and was entitled 'The Orchid Forest: a Metafactual Narrative Introduction to THE CRYSTAL COSMOS by Rhys Hughes, by Miguel Obispo'. The number 612 was plucked at random, of course. Back then it seemed that I would never actually reach that number myself, or anywhere near it...

But now I have. I've just finished my 612th story. I didn't really want to skip from 611 to 613, so I made sure that the 612th is about Michael Bishop, the same way his story is about me. In his tale explorers set off in search of me; so in my tale explorers set off in search of him. His story was 4467 words long; as a mark of respect I made my story 4466 words long, one less. Some people think that symmetries of this kind aren't important. Maybe not, but I enjoy them anyway. My story is called 'Transmigrating the Bishop' and now I just need to find a place to send it. Incidentally, I recommend every single one of Mr Bishop's books; No Enemy But Time is merely a very good place to start.

Until I find a proper print outlet for my story I thought it might be nice to put it online. Click on this link to read it...

Sangria Ready

2011-11-22T09:05:00.008Z

It seems that Sangria in the Sangraal now exists as a real book (rather than just a dream or hope) and is ready to ship! I haven't received my own copies yet, but I should have them soon. As this is still the season for special offers, the publisher is prepared to include one of the other 'Passport Levant' volumes for free with every copy of Sangria bought in the next two weeks, an offer that depends on the availability of the selected title, of course. You might want to take a look at the Ex Occidente catalogue to check what 'Passport Levant' books are still in print. If you have already ordered my book and think it's unfair that other people are getting a bonus volume, email me and we'll sort something out.

Other book news: I have just signed a contract which means that Castor Jenkins is coming back next year! The Truth Spinner: the complete adventures of Castor Jenkins will cover the rascal's entire career, 18 stories in total. After the relative failure of The Postmodern Mariner (where he first appeared) I'm glad this teller of very tall tales is going to be given a second and better chance... Oh yes, and I hopefully have some exciting news about The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange too. I'll report here when the details are finalised.

Sparkly Things!

2011-11-17T13:54:00.008Z

Adele has updated her shop. Take a look here if you like sparkly jewellery things and/or miniature paintings you can wear... As it seems to be the season for special offers, here's another one: if you buy two or more pendants you get a free copy of my book Link Arms With Toads! I only have three spare copies, so this is obviously a very limited offer.

I think that my newest book, Sangria in the Sangraal, has just rolled off the printing press (do books actually roll? Scrolls might roll, but books are rectangular parallelepipeds, surely?)... Not sure how long copies will take to appear in the hands of readers... Another week or more probably... I'll make a proper announcement here when I know for sure.

It's a Shoe-Fire Thing!

2011-11-13T10:48:00.002Z

The limited hardback copies of The Brothel Creeper sold quite well. The publisher reported himself pleased; but then sales ground to a halt just before the print run was completely sold out. So the cunning devil has proposed an offer to help shift them. Anyone who buys one of the few remaining hardbacks will get a paperback copy free. This offer is mainly directed at those bibliophiles who prefer to keep limited edition books pristine.

Alternatively you might be the kind of reader who does odd things with books. This photo is a demonstration of how a Brothel Creeper hardback might be utilised as a brothel creeper shoe. Just for the record, the book used in this demonstration is signed copy #30 and will be sold separately as a "royale with cheese". If you are interested in obtaining one of the other remaining copies, please buy from the publisher directly at this location and mention that you are claiming the special offer.

If you already bought the hardback and feel put out by this offer, I can compensate you by giving you two free ebooks (The Tellmenow Isitsöornot and Flash in the Pantheon). But if you already bought those ebooks or don't like ebooks I'll give you a free copy of my first print book next year. How about that?

Book Cover Needed

2011-11-08T12:54:00.008Z

Any artists out there who would like to try to create a cover for my next ebook? I can't offer much payment, I'm afraid, just a small percentage of the meagre profits. Best to think of it as a minor amusement rather than a major step forward in your artistic career. But who knows? It might get seen by the right people... The ebook in question is called Young Tales of the Old Cosmos and is a comedy featuring anthropomorphised celestial bodies, so the cover should feature either planets, moons, stars or galaxies (or a mixture) with faces and expressions. Email me if you are interested. Thanks!

Update (9th November): I've had a couple of positive responses, one from Tony Lovell who already did the cover for Flash in the Pantheon; but I want to give some other artist a chance, so I turned him down (despite his excellence). I am currently waiting to see what a fellow named Gonzalo Canedo can come up with...

New update (10th November): Somebody by the name of Kendal Obermeyer sent me a sketch of planets with whimsical expressions that is very promising. I'll wait to see if Gonzalo produces something equally suitable; if he does I may have to use both covers on two different ebooks, the second perhaps a sequel to the first!

Flash in the Pantheon

2011-11-01T10:38:00.002Z

Here's the second ebook from Gloomy Seahorse Press. It's a collection of exactly 101 flash fictions called Flash in the Pantheon and it's available for the Kindle or other ebook reading device for the grand sum of $1.99 (that's about £1.24 or just over 1 pence per story). If you're interested, you can buy it here.

What is a flash fiction? When I was younger flash fictions tended to be called 'short shorts' and the undisputed master of the form was Fredric Brown. The ideal flash fiction should certainly be less than 1000 words long; better if it's less than 500 words. Other masters of this miniature genre include Franz Kafka, Daniil Kharms and Jorge Luis Borges, of course! There are some free samples by various writers on the Gloomy Seahorse blog (I need to update this site more often!)

The fine cover was done by Tony Lovell, a newcomer in the field of book design, who I believe might go on to achieve great things.

No Tree is an Island

2011-10-27T10:22:00.012+01:00

Adele has just completed her best painting. At least it's her best painting in my opinion; obviously everybody has their own taste in art. This photo doesn't really do full justice to the finished product, but it does give some idea of the vibrancy of the colours. All her art is for sale and can be purchased (or merely viewed) at her blogsite here... Anyone who does decide to buy any of her work will be helping to keep alive the dream of self-employment.

The independence that comes with self-employment is certainly a dream worth holding onto tightly in this age of corporate tyranny. And every penny raised helps to stop that dream breaking into wisps that disperse like the smoke of a burning metaphor (or is it a burning simile? I can never recall).

Which reminds me: in an effort to generate more sales of my recent bumper ebook, The Tellmenow Isitsöornot, I have decided to put it on special offer for just a month. To receive 33% off the normal price simply use the following coupon code (SC39M) when purchasing it from Smashwords here. Instead of getting 100 stories for $4.99, you'll get them for $3.34. This offer will last until December 1st. Thanks for listening!

Eohippus Lives!

2011-10-24T09:58:00.010+01:00

Last week we wandered into a field of incredibly small ponies. Some of them were smaller than my bicycle. I am almost convinced that the prehistoric horse known as eohippus still exists in an isolated region of Wales and that we stumbled on our own 'Valley of Gwangi' (there was an eohippus in that film, wasn't there?) Anyway, you can accuse me of exaggeration if you like, but I'm a human being and that's what humans beings do; they exaggerate all the time. I exaggerate at least 245,365 times every day, and so do you, probably. This photo doesn't really give a sense of scale, so check out this alternative image as proof that despite my exaggeration I tell no fibs...

The Polo Match

2011-10-19T11:09:00.006+01:00

My latest ebook from 40K has just been released. It's another 'Sampietro Mischief' tale. This time the renowned absurdity investigator is up against an army of Marco Polo clones. With minimal help from Chives, his assistant and pet monster, can he prevail against the metafictional obstacles he is sure to encounter???

Without wishing to be curt, the answer is yes, he can; but in a most unexpected way. This story is my boldest tribute so far to my favourite writer, Italo Calvino, and consists of two parallel journeys: (a) that of Sampietro Mischief across the landscape of Litalia to the imperilled city of Calvino, (b) the journey of the reader through a cunning medley of Calvinoesque incidents and situations. Although it's a sequel to 'The Astral Disruptor' it is also a stand-alone adventure and can be purchased from Amazon here for the grand price of $1.34 (that's a massive 86p in British money).

No Sign and Best Lines

2011-10-11T10:29:00.009+01:00

Last night I did a public reading in the upstairs room of the No Sign Bar in Swansea, the nicest pub in the city centre. This reading was part of a BFS (British Fantasy Society) open night. Such events are probably intended to be recruitment drives for the society, but there wasn't a whiff of proselytising while I was there, for which I was grateful. My own views on literary societies and all the baggage that accompany them (such as awards) are well-known, i.e. don't join them, remain independent, stay out of politics if you can...

Anyway, I'm a bit rusty when it comes to reading aloud. This was only the second reading I've done all year. I prefer using a microphone, as my throat tends to go dry quickly when I'm trying to project my voice. Nonetheless it seemed to go well and the audience were appreciative. I gave them a choice of three parodies: Poe, Lovecraft or Hemingway. The popular choice was Poe. So I read 'Poe Pie'. In the middle of the first paragraph I became acutely aware of how different the words of a story are when they are spoken rather than read quietly to oneself. Prose that flows on the page isn't necessarily smooth on the tongue.

Recently I was asked to compile a brief list of my best story opening lines for possible use in a book about the teaching of creative writing. Bearing in mind that I have written 606 stories, it was never going to be easy to produce such a list; but I finally came up with the following:

The Catastrophe Trials
In the old days, of course, murderers were often locked away in dungeons while hurricanes and earthquakes went free. And let there be no doubt that they took full advantage of their freedom. They rushed and shook, shattered and toppled whenever it suited them. They had no conscience.

The Man Who Threw His Voice
There was a man called Amos who could throw his voice. He could make it appear from inside boxes and jugs and teapots. But one day, he threw it so far that he lost it. The window of his kitchen had been left open and the voice sailed out into the afternoon, landing with a gurgle in the river. Down to the river rushed Amos but it was too late; his voice was nowhere to be heard.

Velocity Oranges
When Thomas was a bicycle, he used to talk to me from the depths of a dusty garage. Sucking on my pipe, I would grunt with primeval delicacy and attempt to match my facial expressions to the alarming profundity of his words. It was a cluttered garage, full of rusty garden tools and abandoned matchstick models. And Thomas was a cluttered bicycle, bristling with bells, water flasks and unusable pumps. He could make me laugh with the ungainly honk of one of his decaying rubber horns. We were rather more than just good friends. Often I would try to mount him from behind.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife's Hat For the Mad Hatter's Wife
They live in a house shaped like a hat. Music is in their blood, but they have different groups. In the evenings, they play backgammon by the light of a single candle. It is difficult to determine, with any degree of accuracy, whether they are inspired romantics or simply trying to save money.

Trombonhomie
When my neighbour plays the amplified trombone it means another sleepless night. But I don't sleep anyway, so perhaps it doesn't matter. I don't sleep because my neighbour plays the amplified trombone.

Worming the Harpy
His legs are covered in flea-bites. But they are both locked away in a little cupboard, side by side like a pair of high boots, so he is not too concerned.

Flintlock Jaw
When Robin Darktree takes to the road, he carries two flintlock pistols, a blunderbuss, a rapier and a bag of ginger biscuits. It is best to present a formidable appearance on the road. He also carries a spare tricorne hat. It takes but a single seagull to ruin a formidable appearance.

Ten Grim Bottles
I want to tell a story about the cannibal who lives under our old stone bridge but first I need some characters and a pot — I mean a plot. Not much is known about him. It is almost certain that he has lived there since the beginning of time and answers to the name Toby. Aside from that, he is often feared for his bad breath. He never cleans his teeth between travellers.

The Blue Dwarf
“All I require” the blue dwarf cried, as he placed his hand on my knee, “are your trousers and your soul.”

The Furious Walnuts
For more than a week, Walter had been feeling a trifle Scottish. It didn't help that his house was the colour of salmon. Nor that his wife was named Heather. He'd wanted a magnolia house and a wife named Patsy, but you can't have everything. A primeval force was moving within him, an urge to plunge through moor, lake and glen.

Muscovado Lashes
Because parrots know how to tell happy stories, he wore an onion on his shoulder. On deck, while the other men joked with guitars, he preferred to weep.

Asparagus on the Tooth
When a big city declares war on a small town, the womenfolk of both must be shut away. Not for their own safety, but to stop them saying that size doesn't matter. In such a conflict, it does.

The Story With a Clever Title
Bang! This story starts with an explosion, to grab the attention of its readers. Once the dust settles around them, it can turn into a complex, profound, mature piece of writing, and they will probably stick with it longer than if there wasn't any action in the first sentence. That's my theory, and it clearly works, otherwise you wouldn't still be here.

The Rhondda Rendezvous
It was half past midnight when Jerry Cornelius returned to Tenby as a last desperate resort. There are many desperate resorts along the South Wales coast. Tenby's turn had finally come. Jerry drove a Gilbern and smoked a cheroot as he changed gear. It wasn't easy swapping jacket and trousers while driving. When the process was complete, he changed gear. He felt unfashionable.

Twenty Six Broken Hearts
Walking by the sea one evening Rhodri suddenly thought about his broken hearts. He imagined them sitting inside his chest with springs coming out of them like smashed clocks. He even paused to feel his breastbone and was surprised it wasn't lumpy.

In Moonville
In Moonville when the sun goes down, the people go out to moonbathe in the streets, to drink moonshine and moon around. They love the moon in that town.

The Kissable Climes
The French kiss with tongues; the inhabitants of Faskdhfgasdhia with noses; unfaithful wives with other men; but Diddly Derek will only smooch with syllogisms.

Venus and Stupid
The Goddess of Love was born from a shell. That’s why there’s something fishy about romance, at least according to Mr Wilfred Nobbs, who thought he was a beautiful woman but wasn’t.

The Juice of Days
Squeezing juice from oranges and grapes is easy enough, and with adequate pressure even apples and pears will release their sweet fluid, but only the mad inventor Karl Mondaugen ever managed to make a refreshing drink from the days of the week.

The Ghost Written Autobiography of a Disembodied Spirit
As I walked home along the beach in the sunset my shadow lengthened to such an extent I hoped it might reach my house before me, put the kettle on and brew coffee for my return.

Southbound Satin
The boat broke open like a nut. That is a lazy image, but Jason didn't yawn. He splashed in the water, comparing the blue of the sky with the blue of the ocean. The differences were considerable, but unimportant. Then he realised he was standing on his wife.

Arms Against a Sea
I found an arm washed up on the beach, not a real arm but a carved one, a marble block chiselled into the shape of a slender female limb. It emerged from the midnight waves like the final gesture of a drowned swimmer, its pale fingers digging into the sand, a loop of seaweed around its wrist for a bracelet, its elbow jabbing a moonbeam.

The Talkative Star
The setting sun eventually became paranoid. “Why does everyone keep staring at me? They never scrutinise me in the middle of the day – only when I'm going to bed! I think I'll draw the clouds tight from now on and get some privacy!”

Moonchaser
In most cultures throughout human history the moon has been regarded as a feminine body. So what is the Man in the Moon doing there? The obvious, I suppose…

The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams
This is the tale of a man who turned himself into a windmill. Lyndon Williams was his name and he lived in the town of Porthcawl. To earn his bread, he'd been told to use his loaf, but the advice confused him, because it sounded like a circular argument.

The Burning Ears
Walls have ears, everyone knows that, but Thornton Excelsior still gasped in astonishment when he entered his new home and saw the fleshy organs growing in clusters in every room. Like oysters they were. Some of them, presumably the females, even had pearls, but those were just earrings and hadn't actually formed inside the ear.

(For the record, the one I regard as my very best is the opening to 'Southbound Satin', which loops out of normal fiction into metafiction and back again.)

First Thornton Excelsior Medley

2011-10-04T09:31:00.010+01:00

Occasionally one of my characters asserts their individuality and proceeds to do more than I originally intended for them. In short, they exceed their mandate. Robin Darktree, for example, was only supposed to appear in a single short-story back in 1994; somehow he ended up playing the main role in two novellas, The Darktree Wheel and Eyelidiad, and has become the hero of my (long promised but still unfinished) big novel, The Clown of the New Eternities. How did he do that? I'm not entirely sure...

Thornton Excelsior is another character who has decided to declare independence from my strictures and go his own way, compelling me to follow him down paths I might never have explored on my own. He first appeared in 'An Inconvenient Fruit' late last year, fatally flooding the world by biting into the juiciest peach that could ever exist, and now he's everywhere in my fiction. Keeping a stern eye on his activities won't curtail his exploits; he exists in many dimensions and timeframes simultaneously. I might as well just give in and allow him to set the pace... Accordingly I have collected eight of his tales into a single novelette which is now available to be downloaded and read for free, courtesy of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #38.

This is just the first Thornton Excelsior medley of many.

Indian Summer

2011-09-30T14:18:00.013+01:00

We have been blessed at last with an Indian summer! I often complain about the Welsh weather. It's entirely proper to do this; and yet I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge those rare times when the weather in Wales is just fine. No one can fairly say that I ever exaggerate on this particular topic. The last Indian Summer in Wales was 254,576 years ago, approximately.

For most of my life I assumed that the 'Indian' part of the phrase Indian Summer referred to India, the country; but in fact it's an allusion to Native Americans. I don't know if that alters the phenomenon in any way. Almost certainly it doesn't. Whatever the etymology, we made the most of this opportunity to go on an expedition to the Gower and bivouac on the beach at Oxwich. It was a spring tide and the waves were enormous. Swimming at sunrise is a pleasure I recommend: a seal poked his head out of the water and looked at me in amazement as if to say, "Bit early for this lark, isn't it?"

At the end of this trip I retired my hiking boots after 15 years service, which included treks through Sardinia, Morocco, Greece, Poland, Spain, Portugal and Albania. I left them on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea and within five minutes a spider had started to spin a web inside one of them; so I'm confident they will have a happy retirement!

The Tellmenow Isitsöornot

2011-09-19T10:41:00.005+01:00

Well, for what it's worth, it's ready... As I said in my last blog entry, the Tellmenow Isitsöornot was originally a nonexistent book of tall stories that Edgar Allan Poe invented as a joke in one of his tales.

I find it very revealing that Poe could create a spoof title like that back in the 1840s, whereas the nonexistent books invented by weird writers a century later (Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard) had much grimmer titles such as Necronomicon, Book of Eibon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten... I have often toyed with the notion that in the literature of the imagination, the absurd predates the serious.

My own version of the Tellmenow Isitsöornot features exactly one hundred of my own stories, a selection that is not only tall but broad, featuring a large cast of odd characters in peculiar situations. Many of these stories have never been published before or were published in very obscure small-press magazines with tiny print runs back in the 1990s. Ghosts, werewolves, talking brass heads, captured moons, mechanical men, alchemy, magic and transformation, all these and more rub shoulders in a minor Decameron of devilish delight!

It's available right now for download from Smashwords here for $4.99 (just under 5 cents per story)... And the first 6 and a half stories are available as a free sample, if you'd like to check them out first... Thanks for listening!

Self-Publishing

2011-09-12T12:53:00.010+01:00

I'm in the middle of putting together my own ebook. It'll feature exactly 100 stories...

I'm a rubbish designer and don't know much about formatting ebooks, so I'm learning as I go along... Here's the first mock-cover. My design skills might be highly unprofessional but I hope it's a cheery and whimsical image nonetheless...

The reason I am creating my own ebook is to repair some of the damage done by Neil Jackson of Ghostwriter Publications. The easiest way for me to explain who this fellow is (and what he has done) is to link to this fable I wrote about him...

I'll add that he issued my first ebook, Better the Devil, a collection of 76 stories, more than a year ago, with the promise that I would receive more than half the profits generated. I was naive enough to believe him. Needless to say, I haven't received a single penny and he has pocketed all the cash... I'm not the only author he has treated in this manner. The word "conman" is perhaps not too strong...

I therefore have to take the unusual step of requesting my readers not to purchase one of my own books! Please boycott Better the Devil and consider buying instead The Tellmenow Isitsöornot, which 'cancels out' the earlier ebook by offering more stories at a lower cost...

Tellmenow Isitsöornot isn't such a tongue-twister as it might seem. In fact it's one of Edgar Allan Poe's jokes (he made a lot more jokes than he's usually credited with). “Tell me now, is it so or not?” is the way to say it. I imagine it should be spoken with an Irish accent if possible.

As soon as this ebook is ready, I'll post information about it here. Thanks!

Arch of the Penguins

2011-09-06T10:04:00.010+01:00

Well, it's not really an arch; it's a pillar, two pillars in fact, two collapsed pillars if you want to be pedantic; but 'Two Collapsed Pillars of the Penguins' has no pun value...

I have sometimes been criticised for not reading contemporary writers. Although this accusation is technically false (some of my favourite writers are still alive: Moorcock, Aldiss, Vance, Barth, Pynchon) it is true in essence. What my critics mean is that I don't read contemporary small press writers. And I don't, much. That's because they tend not to be very good. There's no malignity in that statement. It's just a fact. Back in the 1990s it was fashionable in certain circles to claim that the brightest and finest new writing could be found in the small press, that small press writing was a powerful antidote to the blandness of mainstream (i.e. published by proper publishing houses) fiction. But the simple truth is that every small press writer I ever met back then was itching to get out of the small press and into the big world of the proper publishing houses.

In my lifetime, only a very few made it. A handful. That's because the small press was not a ladder leading up to better things. There were no rungs upwards at all from that starting point. The handful who successfully progressed did so by jumping. Three who landed safely on much higher ledges thanks to the immense power of their leaps were Neal Asher, Tim Lebbon and Jeff VanderMeer.

The scene has changed since then. Electronic publishing, market forces, the currents of history... Whatever factors have come into play, the dividing line between the small press and the big boys, once an almost impassable border, has cracked and/or blurred in places; in some senses it can be said there is no longer a small press and a big press, there is only a medium press. The process hasn't reached that stage yet, but it does seem to be headed that way. And yet one fact hasn't altered at all: 99% of new writers aren't especially good. And that's why I don't read them. I don't have the time or energy. Maybe I am being overcautious sticking to established names (even though some of those 'names' seem to be obscure to British readers) but I'm essentially a lazy man.

It may now be pointed out to me that I began in the small press too, that my books are published by small press publishers and that it is somewhat hypocritical of me to disparage the small press in this manner. That's true. Mea culpa! But I speak now as a reader, not as a writer... And I am aware that many great writers have come out of the small press; Ronald Firbank paid for the publication of most of his wondrous novels, for instance, and Ray Bradbury's earliest work appeared in small press publications. But the key words here are "come out of". Both authors may have started in the small press but they didn't remain there forever... And how many small press publishers really want to remain small? Surely they hope to grow, to become bigger players in the game?

It is not so much the small press itself (as a springboard, real or illusory, for aspiring writers) that I am attacking, but the credo that the best writers can be found there, that it's the home of the finest cutting-edge writing. This credo reached its zenith in the editorial line of such 1990s magazines as The Third Alternative, edited by Andy Cox, in which there was an attempt to redefine the small press as a worthwhile destination in itself, indeed as the ultimate destination, rather than as a way station on a road to somewhere better (even if that road turned out to be blocked by a landslide further along). There was too much insistence that small press writers were the best any reader could ever hope to encounter and it was a view I just couldn't share in good faith. Even while writing for the small press, I only read writers published by the major houses.

But even this isn't quite accurate: I have read small press writers and some of them (D.F. Lewis, for instance) are good and deserve to be better known. Yet as a rule of thumb, the best writers who have ever lived are published by the majors... Penguin has been my favourite publishing company ever since I began reading books seriously. When I was a teenager I collected Penguin Classics by the dozen and arranged them in chronological order on my shelves. But I only managed to read a few of them. Since then I have carted them around with me, persuaded friends to look after them on my behalf for years, retrieved them, lost them, found them again.

I still have about half of what I originally owned and this photo shows half of those. But the point is that I've started reading them properly at long last! And they are brilliant. And in fact I am led by them to conclude, paradoxically, that most of the finest cutting-edge writing was done long long ago. And I urge any fledgling writer out there to read such classics rather than small press contemporaries. You really will learn much more.

Conflict Diamonds

2011-08-30T10:01:00.010+01:00

I am rather pleased with my performance in last weekend's custom-made triathlon: (a) 30 mile bicycle ride, (b) 10 mile hike and climb over a rough moor, (c) six salad sandwiches and two bottles of pear cider. The fitness regime I started back in April is really starting to pay off now. I can cycle up gradients without my legs falling off halfway up.

The outdoors world of moor, forest, mountain, marsh and dunes is a lot easier to negotiate than the peculiar geography of the writing world. Famous horror writer Ramsey Campbell reprimanded me last week over my overreaction to the reaction of others to my reaction against the reactionary view of a particular literary topic (empathy for fictional characters). Does that make sense? Others judged the debate. The consensus view is that I was in the wrong; but then I asked a sample of random pundits whether they agreed that consensus views are always right. They considered the question carefully and the consensus view is that consensus views aren't always right. I don't take delight from this answer because it vindicates me (it doesn't) but because it thankfully leads to a neat paradox.

I love paradoxes. I love them for their own sake. I love them in the same way that other men love cars or cricket. In fact I once toyed with the notion of changing my name to Paradoxolog Tucano, partly as a tribute to Melissus of Samos, who earned that nickname for his own obsession with paradoxes and logical riddles, and partly as a tribute to toucans. But it's a silly idea, so I didn't. However, I will have something to say about name changes in a future blog entry.

I also love coincidences, not quite as much as paradoxes but still to an immoderate degree. Back in 1997 I wrote a story called 'The Crystal Cosmos'. It wasn't published until 2007, a decade later, by PS Publishing, in an expanded novella form. The plot is concerned with the discovery of a solar system made of diamond. Last week a news story broke that confirmed the existence of a star made of diamond. It's not often that life imitates art in my case, so I'm always excited when it does. A very decent chap by the name of Jason Rolfe has actually lobbied the relevant authorities for this star to be named after me! He won't succeed but I'm touched by his thoughtfulness. There is an oblique precedent; much of the action of Samuel Delany's Empire Star takes place on Rhys, a moon.

I'm relieved that The Crystal Cosmos was published before the announcement of the diamond star's discovery; otherwise it would look as if I was merely using facts for inspiration rather than anticipating the truth. Establishing the primacy of my ideas is one of the main urges that power my efforts to get published. Maybe I'm a little oversensitive in this regard but I am always bothered by the possibility that in the lag between composition and publication real events will negate the visionary impact of a particular creative work; in other words, that reality will catch up with and overtake my fiction.

This does happen. The writer Quentin S. Crisp recently told me that in his unpublished novel Susuki, written in 2008, he anticipated a major earthquake in Japan and even correctly specified the year as 2011. The word that bit into my soul when he told me this was "unpublished". If his novel does finally appear in print, no one will believe that his vision was prescient; they will assume he is copying reality. The delays of the publishing world (and there are always delays for anyone but the biggest names) have sunk his claims to primacy. Something similar happened to me in a chapter of my Engelbrecht Again! novel; 'A Sandal Waiting to Happen' describes the systematic destruction of New York skyscrapers and the filling of the city's streets with dust as part of a terrorist game (though the missiles responsible are asteroids, not aeroplanes). That chapter was written in the summer of the year 2000 but the book didn't see print until the year 2008. Primacy thwarted…

The fact I should be worrying about such a minor, almost abstract, issue as primacy of ideas in such a context doesn't say anything positive about my sense of priorities. I should be so appalled by the loss of life on that fateful day that my ego doesn't enter the question. But I'm not perfect, far from it; at least I'm aware of my faults or think I am (what if my major faults are completely unknown to me? The consensus view is probably that they are, which means…)

Incidentally, there are no copies left of The Crystal Cosmos but a few dozen copies of Engelbrecht Again! remain in stock. It can be bought directly from the publisher and is currently on special offer. I really ought to compile a list of which of my books have gone out of print and which are still available. I promise to do that soon.

My 600th Story

2011-08-25T10:58:00.005+01:00

I've just completed my 600th story. If I had received a penny for every story I've written, I would now have 600 pennies. Yes six pounds in total! Enough to buy a bottle of wine and a small cake. So here I am, toasting myself for this small achievement. Actually what I'm drinking is fruit juice but that's just a minor quibble.

It seems only a few months ago that I was announcing the completion of my 500th story, but in fact that was almost two years ago.‎.. My 600th story is entitled 'The Garden Hoppers' and is wholly realistic, a sort of Saroyanesque nostalgia trip. I'm hoping to make it the title story of a new collection that will be rather different from my usual books. I sent a sample of such stories to a publisher yesterday and now I just need to wait for a response.

So only 400 more stories to create and I'll be done with writing forever! Let's work it out... 600 in 22 years equals an average of 27.272 stories per year, so another 14.7 years to go... That means I'll be finished in the year 2026. Yippee!

And after I've toasted that, I think I'll drink another toast. The Libyan rebels have entered Tripoli and the future is finally looking bright for that country. So I would like to propose a toast to rebels everywhere, to true rebels, those with a just cause, not to criminals and looters; to rebels and dreamers and those courageous enough to put their lives or reputations at risk for what is right; to the mavericks, the individualists and the challengers of stagnation; to the thought-experimenters, the lateral philosophers and eccentric geniuses who refuse to take the easy way; to all you heroes. Cheers!

The Empathy Problem

2011-08-17T10:14:00.015+01:00

How do we manage to feel empathy for fictional characters? How can the plight of beings that don't exist affect us emotionally? The question isn't whether or not we feel empathy for fictional characters: patently we do. The question is how? What is the mechanism that makes such empathy possible? This is a genuine philosophical problem that still hasn't really been solved.

Say hello to Sea Tiger and Ramphastos! Here you see them in a variety of situations. They are fictional characters. Do you already have empathy for them? Unlikely: you don't know enough about them yet. As it happens, I doubt you'll ever have empathy for this particular pair of non-existent beings, for the simple reason that the story they are scheduled to appear in won't have much emotional depth. I plan to create a narrative that consists entirely of (captioned) photographs similar to those featured here. 'The Adventures of Sea Tiger and Ramphastos' will be one of those fictions that don't require any empathic connection to be complete (for the best examples of such fictions consult any volume of Borges' or Barthelme's short stories).

But that's not the point. The point is that I could make Sea Tiger and Ramphastos into characters that a reader might have empathy for if I wanted to; or at least I could try to do so. And in such a case, and if the reader did indeed end up feeling empathy for them, what exactly would be going on? There is a mystery here that has intrigued me for a long time. Sea Tiger and Ramphastos don't exist. That's unarguable. And it's impossible to feel empathy for beings that don't exist.

When I made that statement on an internet forum recently, I was told that my basic premise was faulty. But I honestly don't see how. It's impossible to feel empathy for beings that don't exist. Where's the fault in that statement? Surely the proof is in the definition of the word 'empathy' itself? To have empathy means to identify with some other individual, to put yourself in their shoes, to see the world from their point of view. But fictional characters don't exist and something that doesn't exist is a void, a nullity. So when you empathise with a fictional character, you are logically identifying with a void. The same critic went on to state that we develop empathy with fictional characters as we read about their lives, but that's begging the question, presupposing the existence of the very thing that hasn't yet been proved to exist. Fictional characters don't have lives, for the simple reason that they don't exist.

To restate the problem again: fictional characters don't exist and it's impossible to empathise with beings that don't exist (can you have empathy with the number 0 or with a cubic metre of vacuum?). Stop for a moment and try to imagine what would happen if you did manage to successfully empathise with a being that doesn't exist! By empathising and therefore identifying with a void, you would become that void, and the only way back out would be to empathise with something else quickly, but this would be impossible because to empathise you need a brain and a void doesn't have one, so you would be stuck in that condition forever, an empty space where your body had once been, a black shapeless non-mass like one of the characters in Jack London's 'The Shadow and the Flash'. Briefly stated, turning into a void is a one-way trip.

And yet we do empathise with certain fictional characters. Secretly, I often identify with Jack Vance's protagonists: they are often individualists trying to surmount social obstacles and make their mark on the cultures they live in. I feel empathy for those imperfect heroes, but how? What is the mechanism by which I do so? What is the mechanism by which you identity with your own favourite fictional characters? Whenever I posit this question I never get a straight answer. I mostly get a grumpy reaction that seems to consist of variations of the response, "Well, I'm capable of empathising with fictional characters even if you aren't." And yet, at no point have I said that I don't empathise with fictional characters. What I'm asking is simply HOW do I empathise with them?

It was pointed out to me that Anne Frank doesn't exist and yet we can't fail to be moved by her diary; and that Bertie Wooster also doesn't exist but that we feel an emotional resonance with him too. But these examples don't belong in the same category. To put them together is a category mistake. Anne Frank doesn't exist now, true, but she did once exist, and we must bear in mind that although her internal ego has vanished, her external ego persists (the concept of the external ego is less well-known than it deserves to be; simply put, what we are is not just what we think we are, but also the effect we have had on our environment). Proof that Anne Frank's external ego exists is demonstrated in the fact that you know whom I'm talking about and know that she was a real person. Bertie Wooster, on the other hand, has neither an internal ego nor an authentic external ego. And yet it's true that we can empathise with both of them. But the mechanism must be different, at least if we accept that Bertie Wooster is a fictional character and Anne Frank isn't.

Suspension of disbelief may be cited as a mechanism to enable us to feel empathy for beings that don't exist. We simply stop believing that they don't exist. But this doesn't change the basic fact that they don't exist. I can believe in a wide variety of things, that the moon is made of glass, that unicorns work in pubs, that a dandrum's favourite hobby is to forestall a bugaboo, but that doesn't make any of those things true. Even if I convince myself that Bertie Wooster really lives, the fact of the matter is that he doesn't. It would seem that the most we can really feel for him is quasi-empathy. And quasi-empathy isn't empathy, in the same way that a quasar (a quasi-stellar object) isn't a star.

So is all empathy for fictional characters really just quasi-empathy? Is the whole process of feeling empathy for a fictional character some sort of mistake or unsolvable paradox? I don't think so. I have a feeling that the empathy we feel for fictional characters is real empathy; and yet if that is so, a viable mechanism is needed to explain it. I would like to suggest such a mechanism, namely the 'many worlds interpretation' first developed by Hugh Everett in 1957 as a solution to the quantum mechanics problem of what act of observation could collapse the wave function of the entire universe, a problem that Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation was unable to resolve satisfactorily.

In plain language, Everett's theory allows for the coexistence of a vast number of parallel alternative realities in which every possible outcome of every potential action is real. So in trillions upon trillions upon trillions of universes, Bertie Wooster doesn't exist, just as he doesn't exist in this universe; but somewhere, in at least one parallel reality, he does exist, he's real, a living person with an internal and external ego and therefore someone we can empathise with without violating logic.

This seems to me to be the most plausible and satisfying solution to the problem of how we manage to empathise with fictional characters. The answer is that, yes, they are fictional in our universe, but elsewhere they exist. So when we feel empathy for them and identify with them, we aren't identifying with a void (which could be dangerous) but with beings that have substance, life and purpose. It just happens that those beings exist in another dimension. The logical outcome of this happy reasoning is that Sea Tiger and Ramphastos are also real, somewhere, and so I hope I do the pair justice when I finally relate their fictional and absurd (but also true and sensible) adventures.

The Holy Book Trinity

2011-08-10T11:10:00.030+01:00

I've done it! I've finally chosen my three favourite books ever. There was no point postponing the decision any longer. I'm 44 years old and I have been a voracious reader of fiction since the age of 14. That's three decades of cramming my mind and soul with literature! If I don't know my three favourite books by now, I'll never know. So behold: my ultimate trio!

The Father
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges... I know that Andrew Hurley's one volume translation of nearly every story Borges ever wrote (The Collected Fictions) has its champions, but I actually prefer the slightly more formal tone of Yates and Irby in this translation of only a selection of the great Argentine's work (but what a judicious selection). For example, Hurley talks about a "bright labyrinth" whereas the older translation has "nitid labyrinth" and despite having to continually reach for a dictionary, I enjoy the latter approach. It's more crystalline for some reason.

The Son
Despite the differences in nationalities, culture and politics, Calvino is certainly the son of Borges; and he's not even illegitimate, just wayward. He has the intellect to match Borges and his abstract stories of space and time are no less original or rigorous than the ultimate Borges texts; but Calvino also has a deep humanity. The Complete Cosmicomics is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. I can state unequivocally that it's my favourite work of fiction. Peerless, funny, wise, incredible. Calvino may only be the son but he's the real saviour.

The Robo Ghost
Lem dazzles my brain with his genius. The Cyberiad is the perfect guidebook for the future. In these hallowed pages, paradox becomes religion, mythology becomes science, abstraction becomes energy. I love this book so much that I often can't refrain from dancing around it in sheer joy! Does that make me a Pole dancer? No, because the pun is awful: like my dancing. Trurl and Klapaucius, the constructor robots, are two of the finest characters in any fiction in history, both past history and future history! What more can I say? Squeeze my Lem 'til the sentient ocean runs down my leg!

Rhysop's Fables

2011-08-05T10:26:00.006+01:00

Today is the official launch day of Rhysop's Fables!!!

Toad in a trombone! Joy and coconuts!

We all know that Aesop wrote fables; but he wasn't the only one. Hesiod and Archilochus preceded him, and a great many authors came after him. For example, the Panchatantra is an Indian collection of animal fables that was written down in the 3rd Century BC, possibly by the writer Vishnu Sharma. For centuries afterwards, other authors also attempted the composition of fables. Phaedrus, the Roman fabulist, flourished in the 1st Century AD and was the first to write fables in Latin; Vardan Aygektsi was an Armenian priest who wrote fables in the 13th Century; Leonardo Da Vinci made his own contribution to the genre two hundred years later; and let us not forget Jean de La Fontaine, the most sophisticated fabulist of them all, who turned Aesop into delightful verse in the 17th Century!

Those are just a few authors who have accepted the challenge of writing fables. There were many others. Fables are for everyone. There's no reason why we can't all be fabulists! So please allow me to present a selection of my own fables. In keeping with tradition, each fable is followed by a brief moral. I will keep adding new fables as I write them. The plan is eventually to write maybe 200 new fables. I'll attempt to illustrate some of them myself; others will be illustrated by brilliant real artists, including Chris Harrendence, Anthony Lewis, Adele Whittle and anyone else who cares to have a go!

Click on this link and enter the world of Rhysop's Fables...

Old Tales From Spain: a real time review

2011-07-29T14:38:00.048+01:00

The writer D.F. Lewis is not only the creator of outstandingly bizarre short stories and an influential editor of groundbreaking anthologies but also a tireless reviewer of fiction. One of his specialities is the so-called 'real time' review: criticism written on the hoof. In other words, he doesn't wait until he has finished a book before reviewing it. He reviews it as he goes along.

There are plenty of arguments against this custom. One might insist that it's impossible to have a proper perspective of a book that one is still in the process of reading. I don't care about that. I enjoy his 'real time' reviews and want to attempt one of my own. So that's what I plan to do... I have settled on a book: Felipe Alfau's Old Tales From Spain. I intend to start reading this work on Saturday (30th July) and I'll add relevant passages to this blog entry until a complete review is achieved.

I first discovered the writings of Felipe Alfau (1902-1999) exactly twenty years ago. I was in Cardiff library and took a chance on a paperback called Locos: a comedy of gestures. It turned out to be exactly the sort of fiction I like best. Although written in 1928 it wasn't published until 1936. It received rave reviews but quickly fell into neglect. Fifty years later, the editor Steven Moore of the wondrous Dalkey Archive Press discovered an old battered copy in a junkshop, read it, loved and decided to republish it. Given a second chance, Locos: a comedy of gestures proved to be a success. Alfau, who was living at the time in a New York rest home, was approached and asked whether he had any other manuscripts to offer. Yes, he had: the novel Chromos, which had been stashed in a cupboard since 1948.

Since my first reading of Locos back in 1991 I have consistently placed Alfau among my top ten favourite writers. This might seem a little perverse, bearing in mind that he was one of the least prolific of authors. Indeed, he seemed to regard the act of writing fiction as something of minimal importance. His entire known output consists of two novels (Locos and Chromos), one collection of short stories (Old Tales From Spain) and a slim collection of poems Sentimental Songs... And yet there was something about Locos that filled me with enormous enthusiasm. Only a 'novel' in the loosest sense (the chapters are really more like linked short stories) it anticipates certain metafictional experiments by Calvino, Barth and Pavić. I think I read somewhere that Flann O'Brien was influenced by Alfau, though I'm not at all sure about this...

Although Spanish, Alfau wrote his three prose works in English and only recently have they been translated into Spanish. Locos remains his masterpiece: it is concise, luminous, funny, pure. In contrast, Chromos is a much more uneven book, sprawling and partly chaotic; and yet, for its wealth of invention and sheer originality, I am willing to state that it's my favourite Alfau book. Alfau himself, however, didn't much care for it. He wrote it secretly during work hours while he had a position in a bank. I'm not bothered about what an author thinks of their own work. I suspect that Chromos will be one of the small handful of books I will never give away.

The one Alfau book that has eluded me until now is his first, Old Tales From Spain, even though I once wrote a pastiche of the kind of story that might be found in that volume ('The Spanish Cyclops' in A New Universal History of Infamy). The truth is that I cheated: I wrote it 'blind', without really knowing what Old Tales From Spain was like; my story was influenced more by the style of Locos. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable about that trick. I rarely buy books these days (I want to unburden myself of possessions so I can go travelling again) but I decided it was finally time to make an exception for Old Tales From Spain. So I ordered it online from an American dealer called Basement Seller 101. Total cost of book and shipping? $24.47.

The book arrived within a week: much faster than I had anticipated. I tore open the packaging and was delighted to find a volume that radiated magic despite its battered and yellowing condition. The first thing I need to state is that it was published in 1929 by Doubleday as part of a series called 'Travel and Adventure for Young Folks'. Does this mean it's a book of children's stories? Yes, but after leafing through the volume it seems the tales are certainly sophisticated enough for adults too. The illustrations, of which there are many, are by Rhea Wells. I know nothing about this person; but whoever she was, she possessed superb drawing ability, not hugely dissimilar to that of the immortal Sidney Sime.

(Sunday, 31st July)
Before dealing with the individual stories, I ought to stress that Old Tales From Spain is really quite an obscure book. I don't think the 1929 print run was large and it has never been reprinted; to the best of my knowledge it has never even been reviewed until now. I read the first story last night.

The Rainbow
The opening story features a nameless main character, a wanderer who arrives one day in a remote village. He asks for the cheapest room in a hosteria and is given a cramped space in the attic. It turns out that this penniless wanderer is a roving artist: he spends his days painting but never sells any of his work. Soon the innkeeper is demanding the money owed to him. Unable to pay, the artist offers to give the innkeeper's son free painting lessons. This arrangement works well for a time but eventually the inhabitants of the village tire of the artist and he decides to leave. He hurls his palette away but "to his great astonishment it described a semicircle in the sky, leaving a trail with all its colours in it standing brightly under the light of the setting sun." And so a solid rainbow is created, one that can accumulate dust and be washed clean again by the rain. Circumstances move rapidly after that: the artist is incarcerated for madness and dies in his cell; a wealthy art critic arrives and recognises the worth of his paintings. The story concludes with a metafictional twist as the resurrected artist begins to tell a story called 'The Rainbow'...

(Tuesday, 2nd August)
Having just read this online article about Alfau, courtesy of the Barcelona Review, I learned what I should have been able to work out for myself, namely that Old Tales From Spain was penned after Locos, not before. I had always assumed it was the other way around. Does this fact change my attitude to Old Tales? Yes, to a certain degree; we make allowances for our favourite writers and we are especially gentle when judging their earliest works. But Locos is a technically advanced text and Old Tales is therefore not the callow work of a beginner but the second effort of a talented professional (though Alfau didn't regard himself in that way at all).

Twilight
The second story in the volume is far more fable-like in tone and subject than the first story. The Lady of Day and the Lord of Night are two spirits or demigods who control day and night, making sure that neither gets out of hand. They are fated to circle the Earth forever on opposite sides of the globe. But they fall in love with each other, leaving messages in the form of echoes in a particular garden. Finally, the Lord of Night decides to shrug off his destiny and stops in this garden, waiting for the sunrise. When it appears, the rays of the sun kill him, while the lingering shadows of his presence kill the Lady of Day. But their souls are joined together after death, which is the reason for the existence of 'twilight'. Rhea Wells' illustration of the Lord of Night has awakened an exceedingly dim memory in me. I'm sure I have seen this picture before, but I couldn't have: the book is far too obscure for that.

The Clover
This is quite an odd tale. It's absurd in every aspect and seems to mock itself. I have no idea if any of the pieces in Old Tales are genuine folk tales merely retold by Alfau or whether they are his originals. The reason for the fall of Granada, the last major Moorish stronghold in 15th Century Spain is explained as the culmination of a daring raid on the city by an inordinately lucky boy named Juanin and a talking goose called Juanon. A bag of four-leaf clover seeds helps this peculiar pair to outwit the mighty Musa-ben-Nessayr, who is presented not unsympathetically as a tyrant with a sentimental heart. Alfau deftly avoids a conventional fairytale ending by ensuring that Juanin refuses to marry the beautiful girl he has rescued. "...instead, he went back to his farm, taking all the clover with him, and they brought him so much good luck that he remained a bachelor and lived the happiest life to a very old age."

(Friday, 5th August)
I'm not an especially fast reader these days, or rather I tend to read more than one book at the same time (at the moment I'm reading no less than ten) and this means I usually proceed quite slowly through any particular volume. So after almost a week of reading Old Tales From Spain I am still only halfway through it. No matter: I am enjoying it and there's no rule that says a 'real time' review must be fast...

Sails
A very 'pure' story that has the flavour of a Greek myth. It relates the adventures of a foundling who grows into manhood in a "primitive republic" that dominates the eastern coast of Spain "from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of the Lion". There is a strange timelessness about this piece because of the deliberate confusion of historical eras. The reader is simultaneously reminded of the Phoenicians and the Explorers of the time of Columbus, but in fact 'Sails' takes place in a forgotten age before the invention of sails, when all navigation was done "purely by the force of the arm." The foundling, Salvador, embarks on a mission to unite all the people who live on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea into a single nation; and he carries a special flag to symbolise his quest. This flag turns out to have a more practical function during a crisis...

The Feud
The most enjoyable story in the collection so far. Alfau lightens up considerably here and even allows himself some deft wordplay. "During the feudal days, the owners of those castles naturally had a feud..." The castles in question occupy two hills and belong to a pair of eccentric and reckless lords, Don Nuño and Don Pero. A feud has developed between them that will continue down through the generations until their descendants decide to enlist the aid of a sorceress in order to prevail. Don Nuño acquires the power to turn into a pigeon; Don Pero acquires the power to turn into a parrot. What follows is a delightful farce. This story contains the brilliant idea of crossbreeding carrier pigeons and parrots to obtain a new kind of bird that "instead of carrying the message, could speak it."

(Sunday, 7th August)
I'm aware of how difficult it is to be a fan of Alfau; his entire output was tiny and he made no real effort to further himself in the world of literature. He just didn't seem to be particularly interested in fame. I set up a 'Fans of Felipe Alfau' group on Facebook a few years ago and it attracted 18 members. One of those members was Alfau's niece, which was a pleasant surprise.

The Legend of the Bees
Like 'Sails' this has the flavour of Greek mythology. The outcome of this tale hinges on a fine example of imperfect symmetry (we must remember that Jorge Luis Borges claimed that imperfect symmetry is more pleasing to the human mind than perfect symmetry). Two races unknown to history invade Spain in the distant past. They have diametrically opposed cultures and neither is sustainable. Before disaster can destroy them, they learn from a foreign prophet how to merge their best qualities into a single organism that will endure. But not all the people choose this solution. Exactly half the members of each race decide to remain as they are: industrious and productive in the north, indolent and hedonistic in the south. Lazy generalisations are rarely welcome, but in this story they are an essential part of the dynamic.

The Witch of Amboto
This story is almost a conventional fairytale but Alfau has a twist up his sleeve. The action takes place near Guernica, where Alfau himself grew up, in the Basque lands: a beautiful and melancholy witch is in the habit of flying over cornfields and dropping her petticoats one by one onto the crops, which then wither and die, before flying home naked. The symbolism of this is intriguing! Urruchu is "the most stupid boy in town. He was proud of this title and had successfully defended it, testing his lack of wits against other boys from neighbouring villages in the last championship for all-round stupidity." This unlikely hero, who is refreshingly proud of his disability, manages to prevail over the witch after all the best archers in the Basque regions fail to bring her down. Like the villain in 'The Clover', the witch is depicted not unsympathetically, and this is refreshing.

(Saturday, 13th August)
I have now been reading this book for two weeks. As an ordinary reviewer I really am rather slow; and as a 'real time' reviewer I must be rated as fairly hopeless. Yet I still regard this attempt as worthwhile... Having finally read two more stories in the collection, I am struck with how strongly Alfau is drawn to the theme of 'transformation'.

The Swan Song
A fairytale worthy of Hans Christian Andersen that relates how the Prince of Castile is too conceited and vain to find any woman beautiful or talented enough to be worthy of marrying him. From the four corners of the world come potential brides and he manages to insult them all, going so far as to tell the Princess of the South, who has arrived from a kingdom "just below the equator", that she is "ugly" (and unhappily we must speculate on who is responsible for this touch of racism: the fictional character or the xenophobic Alfau himself). In the end, after all the human princesses have been exhausted, a magical one turns up from an unknown fifth direction who is perfect in every way; but she rejects the prince's advances and punishes him. And yet, transformed into a swan, he is given one last chance to redeem himself...

The Weeping Willow and the Cypress Tree
I still don't know if the stories in Old Tales From Spain are retold folktales or Alfau's own inventions, but this one does feel genuinely ancient. It's one of the best pieces in the volume so far, partly for its symmetry and partly because its sentimental theme avoids becoming maudlin. Two trees in a garden have never noticed each other until they strike up a conversation one autumn day. The cypress tells the weeping willow that he was once a poor man who loved a rich girl; he went off to war to earn glory and they planned to marry when he returned. But the match was opposed by her father who used guile to trick her into marrying a wealthy lord instead. When the soldier returned and learned what had happened, he prayed in a sudden fit of misanthropy to be turned into a tree; and so he was. But the girl was so unhappy with her unwanted husband that she escaped and eventually ended up in the same garden, where she was also turned into a tree. And so finally they are reunited and the fact they are rooted in the ground proves to be no hindrance to a renewal of their relationship: "...and the wind blew his last leaves off and carried them to the shadowy waters, where the drooping branches held them in an embrace."

(Tuesday, 16th August)
I have finally finished the book. I am left feeling slightly melancholic as a result, partly because of the stories themselves, many of which had a nostalgic flavour, and partly because of the obscurity of the book itself. I'm fairly sure this is the only review Old Tales From Spain has ever had (if it isn't, I'd love to hear from someone who knows better.) I was left with a similar feeling after reading Lord Dunsany's Chronicles of Rodriguez, also set in 'old' Spain, but that's a much better known book, so maybe the comparison isn't so valid.

The Golden Worm
The last story in Old Tales From Spain is one of the strongest in the volume. Six year old Lolita (and I always slightly wince when I hear that name) has never seen fireflies before. Her father tells her a story to account for their existence. In a variation of the famous Aesop story, it turns out that the insects who dwell in the grounds of a distant palace want a king of their own; they pray for one to appear and their wishes are granted. But in an Alfau story things are rarely straightforward. "Indeed, this was a real king. He did not move or speak or stir. He just lay there in his golden glory, oblivious of everything that was going on about him." There is a perfectly logical but unexpected reason for his extreme regal attitude. When he disappears one night, the insects search everywhere for him. In desperation, they even form "a special body of flies equipped with lights to search over the world at night. As a matter of fact they are still searching." And those are the fireflies. When Lolita asks, "Do you think, Father, they will ever find their golden king?" he answers in the negative. She asks why and he responds, "Because the story I have told you is not true."

A perfect ending to an enjoyable book.

But can I really recommend Old Tales From Spain to readers? Is it worth the effort of seeking out and reading? I'll just say that I'm an Alfau completist (not too difficult a task, as he only wrote four books) and I am delighted to have experienced his first published volume. But candidly I would say that the reader who is new to Alfau should obtain Locos: a comedy of gestures first. Indeed I regard that book as an essential for the shelves of all lovers of imaginative fiction. If the reader is impressed, then he or she should next seek out Chromos. That is probably sufficient.

As for the process of real time reviewing... I don't think I'm especially well suited to this style of reviewing. Speed is important in keeping the updates flowing and I'm too slow a reader. But I might give it another go some time in the future. Possible candidates for such reviews might be: The Novels of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll and The Complete Firbank. But don't hold your breath...

That's Not My Name

2011-07-26T10:32:00.017+01:00

I was amused recently to discover that my name had been spelled wrongly yet again in an anthology. The story 'All in a Flap' was apparently written by someone called Reece Hughes. When I read it, I was astonished to discover that it coincided word for word with one of my own stories!

Over the years my name has been spelled in a variety of ways. This photo demonstrates some of the variants that have appeared in print. Only one of them is correct. Can you guess which one?

Personally I don't regard my name as especially difficult to spell. After all, it's only four letters long. R-H-Y-S. It's a traditional Welsh name. I have been told that the lack of vowels might be confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the Welsh language but in fact the letter 'y' is a vowel in Welsh. As for pronunciation: my name rhymes with "fleece", but if you can roll the 'r' a little, that's even better.

The anthology in question is called Wacth -- sorry I mean Watch -- and it has been edited by Ian Faunkler -- sorry I mean Ian Faulkner -- and it's based on the theme of 'observation'. This photo shows it on the beach in front of Swansea Observatory, the most suitable location in the city I could find for the book... The daftest place in the world to site an astronomical telescope is Wales. Thanks to the perennial clouds, we have never seen the stars. We've only heard rumours. Points of light in the sky, apparently. I don't believe it.

A tribute to Михаи́л Булга́ков

2011-07-21T10:15:00.008+01:00

Russia has produced more amazing writers than any other country in the world. Russia oozes talented authors in the same way that a man who is being chased by a bear oozes sweat and fear. It is unnecessary to mention the names of Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Sologub, Akhmatova, etc. The Russian writer who has had the greatest personal impact on me is Vladimir Nabokov (to those who have only read Lolita I recommend some of his early works such as Glory and Despair). I am also a devotee of Yevgeny Zamyatin, Daniil Kharms and the Strugatsky Brothers. And even now I am discovering names of prodigous Russian talents previously unknown to me: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky and Victor Pelevin, for example.

Why continue to drop names in this manner? The point is that one of the greatest of all Russian writers (perhaps the greatest of the 20th Century) was Mikhail Bulgakov; and Ex Occidente, the Romanian publishing house, has brought out a tribute anthology to that marvellous genius. I won't recommend specific works by Bulgakov here: they are all good. He was an expert at compressing a huge amount of action, thought and atmosphere into every page he wrote. One of his trademark techniques was to show scenes at slightly oblique angles, so that you don't quite "get" them immediately; there's always a delay before things click, but it's a very small delay, just like in real life. That's why he's ultimately a realist even though he writes (sometimes wild) satiric philosophical fantasy.

The Master in Café Morphine is a limited-edition deluxe volume featuring contributions from a score of writers. My own copy arrived yesterday and I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet apart from the Mark Valentine story (Valentine is always good). But I'm delighted to announce that this anthology contains one of my own stories, a 12,000 word novelette entitled 'The Darkest White' that seeks not only to engage with an imaginary Bulgakov but also with another writer from that era: the mysterious Lev Nussimbaum. It's an adventure story, both mystical and visceral, and is the most directly politcal tale I have ever attempted.

Thirty Years Later

2011-07-16T10:39:00.006+01:00

It occurred to me recently that I wrote my first proper short-story approximately 30 years ago. I can't remember the exact month, but I'm sure it was sometime in 1981. That story no longer exists but I do remember a few things about it. I recall, for example, that it was entitled 'The Journey of Mountain Hawk' and that it was based on a true historical incident: the ill-fated expedition of the conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1542. The main character of my story was based on 'The Turk', an Indian who offered to guide Coronado to the mythical city of Quivira where the people supposedly drank from golden cups hanging on the trees. Almost certainly 'The Turk' was attempting to trick Coronado and his men into the desert, in the hope they would get lost and die of thirst. Clearly he was willing to sacrifice himself in order to foil the plans of the invaders of his country and I was sufficiently impressed by the nobility and courage of this act to attempt my own fictional tribute... As can be seen above, Frederic Remington created a superb painting illustrating Coronado's expedition.

I have absolutely no idea what my second short story was about, nor my third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Everything I wrote before 1989 has been lost. I do know, however, that the themes I chose were generally beyond my abilities. Having said that, I still occasionally milk those early ideas; and occasionally I rewrite (from memory) tales that I originally produced in my mid teens, the most recent example being 'The Gargantuan Legion', a sort of absurdist spaghetti western featuring living skeletons and a lasso made from a halo. Other stories in my offical canon that are rewrites of juvenile efforts include: 'Death of an English Teacher', 'The Forest Chapel Bell', 'The Falling Star', 'Zumbooruk', 'The Chimney', 'Learning to Fall', 'The Evil Side of Reginald Burke', 'The Desiccated Sage', 'Castle Cesare', 'Nightmare Alley', 'The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams' and several others. The original versions were all written before the age of 16. I can only hope that the rewrites are superior, but who knows?

Cabinet of Curiosities

2011-07-10T10:57:00.007+01:00

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities is another of the VanderMeers' hare (and aardvark) brained projects... Thank the gods of whimsy that some editors with true proper imaginations still exist on the surface of the Earth... When Jeff and Ann are behind a project, you can almost guarantee that it's going to be interesting, unusual and broader in inventive scope than most other (conventional) fiction anthologies...

This one is an independent follow-up to the cult classic The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, a Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award finalist… Notable contributors include Ted Chiang, John Coulthart, Rikki Ducornet, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Lev Grossman, N.K. Jemisin, Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, James A. Owen, Helen Oyeyemi, J.K. Potter, Cherie Priest, Ekaterina Sedia, Jan Svankmajer, Rachel Swirsky, Carrie Vaughn, Jake von Slatt, Tad Williams, Charles Yu, and many more... Oh yes, and I've got a very short piece in there too. This book is available from Amazon and elsewhere.

A Brothel Creeper Tower

2011-07-05T10:48:00.017+01:00

There are exactly 28 copies remaining of the signed limited-edition hardback version of The Brothel Creeper. Here they are, arranged into a tower! It's not a very high tower, but as Primo Levi reminds us, "How much taller than a high tower is a very high tower?" Among these 28 is numero uno, number one! I was instructed by the publisher to keep it in reserve for a customer, but the customer has dawdled an awful long time about purchasing it, so I reckon it's up for grabs... 28 is an interesting number. In fact it's one of my lucky numbers, partly because it's a perfect number (a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper positive divisors) and partly because it's the atomic number of nickel, a cheeky little metal. Twenty-eight also has associations with the moon and ladies.

To purchase one of the books on this tower, please visit the relevant Gray Friar Press webpage here. If you want that number one, please specify that you do. If number one is at the bottom, the tower will fall down. Oops... What else? Oh yes, there's a chap called Steven Lockley. To increase traffic to his blog via the old economic principle of "trickle down" he is running guest blogs by various writers. Tim Lebbon has done one, so has Stephen Volk, Paul Finch, Gary McMahon, etc. My own guest blog has just appeared and it's about metafiction. Enjoy!

The Ha of Ha

2011-06-29T10:59:00.006+01:00

The legendary Des Lewis has put together another original anthology, this one boldly entitled The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies. The conceit behind the book is that all the stories are concerned with (fictional or real) horror anthologies. When the project was announced I didn't think I would have anything suitable for it, as I rarely write horror stories these days. But it occurred to me that I could rewrite one of my unpublished stories and turn it into something resembling a horror story. I did so and to my delight the story was accepted!

'Tears of the Mutant Jesters' is about a horror anthology that suffers from appendicitis (an appendix is the vestigial organ found in some volumes that is a reminder of a time when books ate grass). This story is one of a growing number of adventures featuring a character named Thornton Excelsior that I have written in the past twelve months. I don't know from what psychological hinterland Mr Excelsior came from, but he seems to be muscling his way into all my weirdest tales. Maybe he's trying to take over the extreme surreal end of my oeuvre spectrum? Everyone needs to have at least one end of their oeuvre spectrum taken over from time to time...

My complimentary copy of The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies popped through my letterbox this very morning. It is available direct from the editor here and presumably will also be available on Amazon soon.

Weighing the Harpy

2011-06-21T10:12:00.014+01:00

Originally I toyed with giving this blog post the title 'I'm Sorry I haven't a Clute' as a punning reference to the BBC Radio 4 comedy program, but it would be highly inaccurate, for the simple reason that I do have a Clute. The latest Clute in fact, Pardon This Intrusion, a collection of 47 essays, just published by Beccon Publications.

John Clute (1940-2086?) is perhaps the most significant British critic of science fiction and fantasy. His reviews appeared in the legendary New Worlds magazine among many other places, and he is a multiple Hugo award winner for his outstanding encyclopedias, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. I think I might be included as an entry in the revised edition of the latter. If so, I'm chuffed, as I'm extremely fond of being an entry in encyclopedias!

Pardon This Intrusion features two essays Clute has written about my books. I'm delighted to report that he has given me permission to replicate one of these essays, which concentrates on my Worming the Harpy book. I am flattered and honoured to do so here. Ready?

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[John Clute's essay on Worming the Harpy]

Welcome to the first big room in the house of many mansions of Rhys Hughes, at last. It's about time. An earlier version of Worming the Harpy has of course already appeared – Tartarus Press's handsome but highly limited edition from 1995 – but for most of us that edition can have been little more than a rumour. A few copies were available on the net, it's true; but the cheapest of them – complete with torn dustwrapper — was listed at almost £170, or $300 plus. Undamaged copies were a lot more. Rhys Hughes may have benefited from the intense industriousness of presses like Tartarus, but their niche focus has clearly kept him from most of us.

This cannot have entirely pleased Hughes; and for anyone interested in the literature of the fantastic at the cusp of century change, it has been extremely frustrating not to be able to start at the beginning of an enterprise – a career – so far iterated in what seem to be hundreds of stories, though it is hard to count. Partly this is a practical consequence of their fragmentary publication history over the fifteen or so years of Hughes's active career; more importantly, his avowed goal to write a thousand stories – each one of them somehow linked to all the others, a kind of rat-king whose roots adhere Eden to Jerusalem – turns out to be a good deal more than flamboyance. The echolalia one feels in the heart of a typical Hughes story is generated by at least two motors of referenciality. The first is the hyperlinking of story to story, so that each story reads, in part, like an eddy in the gnarly ocean of the whole.

But there is also the outside world. As with some other creators of works at home surfing the fractal chassis of the exceedingly strange era we are now passing into, Hughes seems to inhabit – to breathe the air of – almost any earlier writer one might think to recognize signalling up through the banyan of the thousand stories as they hit the open air out of their single root; in an introduction to his New Universal History of Infamy (2004), I mentioned echoes and transfigurations I thought I noticed from J B Morton to Italo Calvino, from Franz Kafka to John Sladek, from William Hope Hodgson to Michael Moorcock, from Franz Kafka to Ray Bradbury. I didn't mention E T A Hoffmann then, but would now – the title story, 'Worming the Harpy', plays his slow tunes hurdy-gurdy, hilariously – and I did mention Spike Milligan, and would again, because (I think) in these early stories Hughes exposes himself, rather more than in later work, to our recognition that his similarity to Milligan runs deeper than the occasional shared lurch of phrase, that he writes as though he'd been bloodied in the same wars Milligan fought for eight decades: the same up-yours melancholia about the malice of the absurd – about the absurdness of the world defined not only as an inherent lack of species-friendly grammar in the convulsion of the real, but also a sense that anyone who acts as though he believes what he is told by our Masters will almost necessarily inflict pain on others – that made Puckoon (1963) a very nearly great novel, and that made the five volume War Biography beginning with Adolf Hitler: my Part in his Downfall (1971) one of the funniest demolitions yet published of our cultural narratives. I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of Spike Milligan as a kind of gonzo Beckett; I would also suggest that Rhys Hughes also has what one might call a relationship of noise with Beckett: his response to the irrefutable Beckett mantra – I can't go on I must go on – being precisely that of going on. "You're going the wrong way" says Vladimir in Waiting for Godot (1952). "I need a running start" says Pozzo. "Stand back!"

Even at the beginning of his career, every story Hughes writes is cast into a cruel world; but, as with any writer one really cares about, each story is loved, and its betrayal into an awful world likely to destroy it is modestly similar to the Kabbalistic notion that, in order to get the stories of the universe going, God commits tsimtsum, a kind of harakiri withdrawal from the pleroma that gives the Real room enough to bang. God so loves the story of the world, in other words, that he tears himself into stories: which get devoured in Time. So it is with every writer worth reading, though some of them do continue to think the human world as having been told off from a divine principle. I think Rhys Hughes does not. I think every echo in every story that he tells is a kind of weapon thrown into the fray of a world that has come a long way from God's beginning Word: that Hughes's stories are about the noise of continuing to go on I can't go on I must go on, in a world that offers the pilgrim – the writer – the raw stinko stump of a protagonist whom we find again and again mouthing at us in one of the stories published here – nothing but broken grammars and apparatchik savageries.

This new edition of Worming the Harpy adds ‘The Forest Chapel Bell’, an excellent dies irae fantasy which fits better here. There are 17 tales altogether. Some of the shorter ones I find a bit garish and pun-driven: ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife's Hat for the Mad Hatter's Wife’, a series of spoof turns on wordplays, derogates from Oliver Sacks's brilliant The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), about an intensely moving case of visual agnosia, and from Michael Nyman's good opera of the same name. But the longer tales included here (I think Hughes's ideal length is the novella) are as good as some of his best later work: ‘A Carpet Seldom Found’ is an Answered Prayer story which cunningly and inexorably unpacks the fate it has in store for its greedy protagonist (Hughes's heroes are both oral and miserly: always male, usually solitary: collectors); and ‘The Good News Grimoire’ occupies pulp Europe with a jangly surety of touch, and it is also pretty funny. Hughes is in fact funny almost all the time, though it is sometimes easy to miss the sly joke in the rataplan. Here, from the hilarious exercise in taking things literally, ‘Cello I Love You’:

I have never been attractive to women, which is possibly why I mostly form relationships with inanimate objects. I have a single arm and a single leg and my stale green eyes are so close together that I am able to peep through a keyhole with both of them at once. Nor does my beauty lie beneath my skin; I have no skin.

So. Here is the first instalment, back with us at last and available, a first batch of tales tossed into the world machine. I have no idea if Rhys Hughes will ever finish telling his thousand, and to be honest I almost hope he stops counting. What I think I want is that the hurl of tales that begins here does not – short of that which stops us all – ever stop.

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Needless to say, I'm overjoyed with this interpretation. The comparison to Milligan is especially pleasing to me... The paperback reprint of Worming the Harpy is available directly from Tartarus Press or from Amazon and many other places... This very morning I decided to weigh the book as an experiment. Back in 1907 the maverick doctor Duncan MacDougall tried to weigh the human soul by placing the beds of dying patients on large weighing scales. He claimed a value of 21 grams for the human soul. Worming the Harpy weighs 360 grams, the equivalent of 17.14286 human souls; almost exactly the number of stories contained in the book! Coincidence? I think not! Bullcrap? Yes, probably.

Anyway, John Clute is appearing tonight (June 21st) at the British Library, London, from 18:30 to 20:00, together with Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss and Norman Spinrad. Tickets for this event have probably sold out, but here's the relevant link anyway.

Shadow Play

2011-06-14T09:53:00.013+01:00

I'm finally taking a break from writing fiction. I have been writing fiction non-stop since December 1991, so it's high time I had a rest. Indeed, I have been planning to have a rest for ages, but there always seemed to be one more project to complete. When you are me, there's always one more project to complete... Instead of concentrating on fiction, I'm going to do other things, such as messing about with music and getting much more fit. Last Saturday, Adele and I took part in our own customised pentathlon. We cycled, hiked, climbed, rock hopped (a noble sport from my youth) and enjoyed a dip in the sea. It was tough but invigorating exercise! After the pentathlon, we were shadows of our former selves. The proof of this can be found in these photos...

However, when I say I'm taking a 'break' from writing fiction, I don't mean a complete halt: it's more akin to an application of a 'brake' than a true 'break'; and like a bicycle moving at high speed, it'll take time for me to stop moving forward even when the wheels aren't spinning. So I'm still writing, but very slowly and without pressure: only when I feel like it (not every day). This means I will have more free time to sell my written but unpublished works (there are a lot of those) and also to promote more effectively those that have been published. For example: for anyone who speaks Italian, my latest ebook has now appeared in that language. Lo Sfarzoso Spettacolo Del Disordine is available from 40K . And I'll still be writing non-fiction, of course, as that's now my main source of income; and I need to save money to go travelling somewhere at the end of this year!

The Enigma of Naipaul

2011-06-07T10:20:00.003+01:00

That controversial Trinidadian, V.S. Naipaul, has been at it again, making comments that have aroused fury in certain corners of the writing world (does the writing world really have corners? I thought it was spherical). This time he has had the temerity to claim that no female writer is his equal... As might be expected, female writers have reacted angrily and sarcastically; and some male writers, keen to display their maturity (and eligibility?) in front of those female writers were even quicker off the mark, denouncing Mr Naipaul with all sort of curses and imprecations.

I find all this strange for one rather small but rigorously logical reason. Imagine that a hypothetical reader cites Naipaul as his favourite writer (I am sure there are real readers out there who regard Naipaul as their favourite writer). Hasn't that hypothetical reader made exactly the same claim on Naipaul's behalf that Naipaul himself made? When that reader says, "My favourite writer is V.S. Naipaul", he is simultaneously saying that no female writer can match him. Isn't that claim therefore inherently misogynistic?

And yet readers are happy to announce their favourite writers in public. Nobody expects any repercussions from doing so. My favourite writer is Italo Calvino. The moment I say that Calvino (a man) is my favourite writer I am automatically implying that no female writer is his match. Such exclusion is a logical consequence of having a favourite writer. It works the other way round. If (for example) Angela Carter was my favourite writer and I was prepared to say so aloud, I would be denigrating all male writers by making that claim.

Clearly absurdity lies this way. In Britain we still (just about) live in a society free enough to permit various forms of verbal and written dissent. We aren't forced to say 'socially acceptable' things all the time. It's not yet illegal to have forceful opinions. Naipaul's 'crime' (or 'sin') in this instance seems merely to be equivalent to listing himself as his own favourite writer. And yet, secretly, all writers regard themselves as their own favourite writer. How could they not? Does this mean that all male writers should be condemned for misogyny (and all female writers for misandry)?

I read a Naipaul novel many years ago, A House for Mr Biswas. It is vastly better than anything Jane Austen wrote. That's my opinion. If you don't like it, sue me in the Court of Fictional but Very Serious Crimes.

Don Cosquillas

2011-06-01T12:26:00.009+01:00

The Pilgrim's Regress is finally finished! I started writing it in November 2007 when I was living in Spain; I completed the epilogue yesterday. At one point I thought this novel would never be done, but my fears on that score have proved groundless. Whether I can get it published is a different question entirely... What can I say about this particular novel? The twenty-four chapters follow the picaresque exploits of Arturo Risas, the self-styled Duque de Costillas y Cosquillas (better known simply as 'Don Cosquillas') and it's my most metafictional book so far; in fact it's not only a fiction about fiction but a metafiction about metafiction. Readers who don't like metafiction ought to stand clear!

Don Cosquillas is a daft hero partly based on Don Quixote. The Don Quixote archetype is one of my favourites in literature. Together with the Odyssey archeytpe and the Robinson Crusoe archetype, it's the finest basic setup devised by any fictioneer. A great many of my stories utilise the Don Quixote archetype. I am therefore hugely indebted to Miguel de Cervantes! Another author I must credit for massive inspiration is James Branch Cabell, whom I discovered when I was a callow student a long time ago. I can't seem to escape Cabell; something to do with elective affinities perhaps? Other authors in a similar mode also hold a magnetic appeal for me: Ernest Bramah, Jack Vance, Manuel Mujica Láinez...

The Pilgrim's Regress is a standalone novel but it overlaps with some of my other story-cycles, especially my forthcoming Sangria in the Sangraal volume. In the epilogue the characters who have appeared in the novel put me on trial for the crime of using unnecessary wordplay in my prose and excessive contrivance in my plots. So I am forced to defend myself in the Court of Fictional but Very Serious Crimes! I don't have a photo of me standing in the dock. You'll have to make do with a photo of me standing in a fire instead... Don Cosquillas has to learn firewalking when he visits India, so maybe this picture illustrates that incident? I'll make a cardboard suit of armour soon and take some photos of me wearing that, for the sake of verisimilitude; but not this week!

My Twentieth Book

2011-05-24T10:55:00.012+01:00

I'm delighted to announce the official publication of Link Arms With Toads! This showcase of Romanti-Cynical stories features tales from the past 16 years of my writing career. It's available from various bookstores and here is the publisher's webpage devoted to the book. Chômu Press are also holding a prize draw: if you win you'll get a signed copy of Toads! plus a poem or story or drawing in which you are the main character: I'll do that by hand somewhere at the back. Details of the prize draw are here. Good luck! (Wishing "Good luck" to everybody is a bit silly really, as you can't all win, but it seems more courteous than not wishing it; I guess it becomes truly absurd when the person who spins the National Lottery wheel says it).

Already Toads! has received some great reviews. Some books catch the attention of reviewers; some don't. There doesn't seem to be a formula for this, or if there is one it's beyond my understanding. I was asked recently (by Ramsey Campbell) to explain the meaning of 'Romanti-Cynicism'. Well, it was originally designed for other people like me, who are naive and sceptical at the same time: it's a product of my earlier hope that it might be feasible to experiment rigorously with the chemistry of genres, blending them like elements in certain ways to create precise new story-molecules that have never been seen before. Pretentious? No, not really. Just ambitious and a bit daft. But that's the best way to be, in my view.

Sangria in the Sangraal

2011-05-17T09:34:00.005+01:00

My book of whimsical fantasy stories set in Old Spain is now available for pre-order from Ex Occidente Press here. It's a deluxe limited edition designed for book connoisseurs. Some books have a certain magic about them. I guess it's not good manners to claim such a quality for one's own creations; and yet I genuinely believe there's something bewitching about these stories. They form a sequence that spans 1000 years of the history of an obscure (but real) little city in the remotest part of Aragon. I came upon this little city purely by chance back in 2007. I have written about that encounter elsewhere on this blog and if you're interested to read more, the relevant link is here and that blog post contains another link to another blog post about the book I read when I was there...

That book (Jan Potocki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa) partly inspired the tales in my own book. While wandering through Albarracín and the mountains around it, I realised that one day I would write a set of stories set right here. Two years later I began the project. When it was completed I gave it the overall title Tucked Away in Aragon but Dan Ghetu, the owner of Ex Occidente Press, suggested changing it to something more mystical. So I called it Sangria in the Sangraal instead; and it's a better title. Obviously when writing a sequence that spans so many centuries there needs to be an overarching theme or conceit to help preserve the wholeness and intergrity of the scheme. In the case of this book that conceit is... sentient clouds! You'll understand how and why if you read the stories.

Scamps of Disorder

2011-05-10T11:49:00.010+01:00

In regard to my writing, I usually find that good news comes in clusters, like grapes. The old adage, "you wait ages for a bus, then three come along at once", definitely seems to hold true for me when it comes to publishing events. Sometimes it almost feels there's too much to blog about. The same holds true for bad news, of course; and in fact it's perfectly natural that everything in the universe should cluster. In fact, if the law of probability dictates an equal spread of everything over space and time, what is the chance of that law being always right? If the law is right, then it must be subject to itself, so its own force will be also be spread out over space and time and perhaps it will be too thin to have much influence on the real world. Thus: clustering.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Talking about stories, I could mention that I've just completed and submitted 'The Polo Match' (my second 'Sampietro Mischief' tale); or that I'm now free to return to finishing the final chapters of The Pilgrim's Regress; or that my book of whimsical fantasy stories set in Old Spain is now available for pre-order (that volume is called Sangria in the Sangraal and I'll blog about it soon); or that my story collection, the romanti-cynical showcase Link Arms With Toads! is due out in a matter of days... But in fact I'll content myself with announcing the release of my latest ebook. Scamps of Disorder explores two sides of a very strange coin: the antics of a secret society dedicated to causing as much trouble in the world as possible in order to pre-empt unjust accusations (you can't be wrongly accused if you're guilty of everything). But the members haven't analysed the implications of multiplying negatives... This ebook is available for the grand sum of £0.71 or the equivalent fraction in euros and dollars.

Brothel Creeper Hardback

2011-05-03T15:19:00.010+01:00

The limited hardback edition of The Brothel Creeper arrived at my house today. Five large boxes stuffed with books. This edition looks extremely nice! Now I just need to sign and number the individual copies and then I can begin mailing them out. Although it's unusual for an author to distribute his own books, there was some sort of difficulty with the printers, who declined to include signed sheets with the other pages; so it has to be done the hard way instead. It's not much skin off my nose, to be honest. I'm very pleased with the production values of this volume, the effective design, clear font and dark print.

I've stuck my neck out already and declared The Brothel Creeper to be my best collection to date. I intend keeping my neck stuck out on this issue. I'm especially proud of the double theme that runs through the book, an equal mix of spiritual and sexual tales with a certain amount of overlap: some of the stories form cycles that interact with other cycles... The hardback edition includes a bonus tale, 'Cracking Nuts With Jan Hammer', making a total of 21 stories. The earliest piece in the collection dates from 1994 and the most recent from 2010. The book is available from Amazon and many other bookstores or direct from the publisher, Gray Friar Press.

A full listing of the contents of this book (and all my other books) can be found on my Aardvark Caesar website.

Sampietro Mischief

2011-04-27T09:48:00.006+01:00

I have just started writing the second 'Sampietro Mischief' story. The completed cycle will be a series of tales concerning a renowned "Absurdity Investigator" who lives in an imaginary land called Litalia (or Literary Italy or Lit-It) where all the cities are not just named after great Italian authors but also take on certain aspects of those authors' works. Here's a map of Litalia I drew earlier this morning.

Sampietro Mischief, together with his pet monster, Chives, is based in Buzzati and that's where his first adventure ('The Astral Disruptor') took place. Now I'm taking him to Calvino, where he must face an army of Marco Polo robots who are intent on stripping away the city layer by layer, changing its character by sequentially exposing a single aspect and thus altering the lives of its citizens until Sampietro Mischief stops them. If he does stop them. I reckon there will be eight stories in the entire cycle and if I write one every year the project should be finished by 2017. And then I'll make a little book out of them, probably called The Mischief Maker or something similar.

Progress on Regress

2011-04-19T10:34:00.023+01:00

In 2007 I started writing stories about a character called Arturo Risas, the self-styled Duque de Costillas y Cosquillas. I was working on a farm in the Sierra de Guadarrama at the time and winter was drawing on. It was bitterly cold in the wooden cabin where I lived; and I huddled over a tiny heater while penning the tales, taking frequent breaks to do a typical comedy shiver: hugging my own arms and rubbing them with a vocal, "Brrrrr!!!" I wasn't planning to do much with these little tales. They were just a divertissement to pass the dull evenings. But somehow they became the opening chapters of a novel called The Pilgrim's Regress. I added more chapters: the thing became intricate and extremely metafictional. I knew I had a monster of unsaleable humour on my hands. But then, midway through 2008, I ran out of steam and abandoned the project...

That's not an uncommon habit with me. But I always console myself with the knowledge that I'm able to return to any half-finished work at any time and take up again exactly where I left off. I always planned to return to The Pilgrim's Regress after only a brief pause, but as that "brief pause" grew longer and longer, I began to fear that all the little complexities of the numerous subplots, the intricacies of the connections between events, ideas and conceits would be lost to my memory. I knew I had piles of notes in boxes, but my notes are often just mnemonics that quickly become baffling if not acted on rapidly.

So it was with some trepidation that I recently launched myself back into this novel. And to my relief, it all came back; or rather, much of it came back, and what didn't can be easily replaced with new (and perhaps better) things. I don't intend abandoning poor Don Cosquillas again; this time I plan to follow the pilgrim all the way to his ultimate regression!

Note: The photos that accompany this blog post are: (a) the moonbeam that Don Cosquillas accidentally wandered up, mistaking it for a road, (b) the hero of the novel in pilgrim garb badly impersonated by the author.

New Novel Finished

2011-04-13T11:00:00.007+01:00

I have just finished writing my latest novel, Captains Outrageous. I typed the final word this morning. Naturally I am overjoyed with the result (if I wasn't, I'd work on it until I was; for better or worse) and it's always a sweet relief to successfully complete such a 'big' project. Not that short stories aren't also a delight to write; but the investment of time, energy and soul involved in composing a novel is so much greater that the difference is qualitative as well as quantitative. Now begins the even harder task of finding a publisher for it!

Captains Outrageous is a fantasy that begins in a sober manner and progressively gets wilder and stranger. The novel is told in three interlinked parts of equal length, respectively devoted to the exploits of Scipio, Distanto and Neary Faraway, the 'Fantastical Faraway Triplets'. There are many assorted villains in the book; but the one who simply refused to be removed from the plot is a fellow by the name of Jason Rolfe, based on a real person. I threw all sorts of perils at him; he survived everything. Some characters really do take on a life of their own. Mr Rolfe is an assassin mounted on a pulsejet-powered bicycle that is moving so fast he can never dismount. Condemned to live permanently in the saddle, he still manages to prosecute his dastardly schemes. Which reminds me: cycling weather has returned to Wales! Here I am, thumbing my nose at everyday worries such as tax and national insurance.

Back from Crawley

2011-04-07T10:39:00.012+01:00

I'm back from the Crawley WordFest now; thoroughly enjoyable it was too. First of all, let me publicly thank the organisers for their hospitality. They were just so very nice. The exact opposite of the inept and pompous organisers of the Odyssey 2010 convention I attended this time last year... Special thanks to Jo Harrison and Alex Harrison for putting me up; and also to Jamie Harrison and Sarah Maple. Based on that representative sample, 75% of people in Crawley seem to have "Harrison" as a surname. Weird, huh? I wonder if the excellent writer M. John Harrison comes from Crawley? Let me check. No, he doesn't. I tell you who was from here, though: Simon Jeffes, founder of the illustrious Penguin Cafe Orchestra. This fact adjusts the quoted percentage above, reducing it to 60%. That's still a heck of a lot of Harrisons for a town with a population of 101,300... I asked a random pedestrian if he knew exactly where in the town Simon Jeffes was born, so I could go there on a minor musical pilgrimage, and he replied, "Out of a woman."

Anyway, I arrived on Sunday morning. First I sat on a panel devoted to the subject "satire" and then I read from a Hemingway parody I wrote a couple of years ago, 'The Sun Trap', which hasn't been properly published yet but does form part of my Just Not So Stories book that is currently being considered by a publisher down under (I least I think they are based down under; by which I mean Australia, not Hell)... It was great to meet Adam Lowe at last, the fellow who runs Dog Horn Press and who republished my Mister Gum novel recently. Also sitting on the panel was the writer Robert Dickinson, who did a reading from his latest novel, The Noise of Strangers, a dystopian SF story set in a futuristic Brighton. This photo shows us blabbing to a small but attentive audience.

Talking about Brighton, on Monday I treated myself to a trip there, the first time I have ever visited it, or so I thought... When I arrived, the place looked familiar; I don't mean the famous sights, the beach and two piers, etc, but some of the less obvious features, an old stone aqueduct, an oddly designed house, even the angles at which certain alleyways intersect bigger streets. I now believe that I probably went there when I was small... One of the reasons I travelled to Brighton this time is because Adele lived there for many years and I wanted to see this place that she keeps raving about. I was inevitably impressed by the Royal Pavilion, an architectural confection that is surely the product of an eastern hashish dream. I wish all buildings in Britain looked like this. I wish that all prose looked like this, if you see what I mean... I got back to Crawley just in time to attend an event that was marketed as a "book swap" but was in fact far more interesting than that, involving not only the swapping of books but a question and answer session with a panel of writers (including MD Lachlan, with whom I disagree on most things, but who is always erudite and entertaining) and lots and lots and lots of free cake.

Tuesday was the day I was scheduled to sit in the window of Waterstone's and write a story based around a keyword. So that's what I did. The keyword had already been leaked to me two days earlier but that didn't help much. I just went with the flow and ended up writing a very loose and open (i.e. disjointed) story that could probably benefit from some tidying up; and yet I'm pleased with some of the prose that went into it. And certainly it is representative of my style. 'The Paradoxical Pachyderms' is the title of the piece and I think it will be available as a PDF download soon, and maybe also it will form a segment of a chapbook that will include the stories produced by the other window writers (see top photo for a list of names). When I finished, I took this photo of my working space. One random member of the public poked his head inside and said, "You've been here for hours. I want a turn now!" and then he ranted a strange freeform poem at me before turning on his heel and stalking away. Only one weirdo in an entire day is pretty good going, I think.

After my session I had planned to catch Wilbur Smith giving a reading in the local library, but I would have missed my bus back to Wales had I gone to see him. Apparently his event was a great success. To sum up, the organisers deserve a massive pat on their collective backs for pioneering a new festival (no easy task at the best of times) that will hopefully go from strength to strength in the future!

Creepy Crawley

2011-03-31T10:17:00.012+01:00

The Crawley WordFest begins on Saturday 2nd April; and I have been invited to attend. So I'm going. According to the blurb on the festival website... "WORDfest is Crawley’s first ever festival dedicated to celebrating words and writing in its many forms. Spearheaded by Waterstone’s County Mall Booksellers and Crawley Library. It is a pilot grassroots week-long programme of events..." The list of writers, publishers, etc, who are attending is too long to give here, but it can be found on the festival website on the "Writers & Artists" page.

The most famous name there (to me at least) is Wilbur Smith. I remember seeing copies of his novels everywhere when I was a youngster, generally on the shelves of obscure B&Bs in places like Bournemouth. He was one of those authors of well-crafted adventure stories who seemed to thrive in the 1970s. In my mind he is associated with Alistair MacLean and others of that ilk, but in fact Smith is superior. His novels set in Africa form a uniform sequence; and his concern for the welfare of the people, animals and environment of that continent is wholly authentic. You could do a lot worse than to seek out his works. I especially recommend the omnibus volume depicted here...

Anyway... I don't have much time left to prepare for this event; to my surprise I'm doing an event this coming Sunday; and on the following Tuesday I am required to sit in the window of Waterstone's bookstore (I think that's the right shop) and write a story in public on a laptop... I will be given a keyword and the story must flow from that. I'm looking forward to this! The great Harlan Ellison was fond of writing in shop windows; so there's a noble precedent for this kind of activity... By the way, Crawley isn't especially creepy, but I couldn't resist the pun: hence the title of this blog post!

What a Toady!

2011-03-25T11:24:00.009Z

Here's the cover of my forthcoming book, Link Arms With Toads! I'm delighted with it! With luck the book will be published in May. Chômu Press are currently taking a very distinctive (and to my mind extremely effective) approach to cover design. They have just released their latest title, a collection of stories entitled The Life of Polycrates by Brendan Connell, one of the best contemporary writers of dark literary weirdness. Although a new press, Chômu already have a superb lineup of writers. Another personal favourite of mine with a book due out soon is Michael Cisco.

As for my own book: have I already mentioned that it's a 'sampler' of my entire body of work; in other words, it features stories in the genres of fantasy, magic realism, science fiction, postmodern whimsy, gothic pastiche, etc, etc. It'll be the first book of mine to showcase the totality of what I do... The above cover design of Toads! is based on an idea I had a few months ago, but the Chômu artist has vastly improved on my original (which you can see here) by turning an incompetent doodle into a visual statement that captures the flavour of my writing.

The Pizza Demon

2011-03-18T09:39:00.005Z

Say hello to the Pizza Demon! He may end up as a character in a future story; I don't know yet. He doesn't know either. The Pizza Demon is a purist when it comes to pizza. Some might even say he's a fanatic! Let's listen to what he has to say on this vital issue... "Don't you dare ask for a deep crust; or for sweetcorn and pineapple topping! There are only three authentic varieties of pizza: Marinara, Margherita and Margherita Extra (with more mozzarella). Nothing else is real pizza. I'm watching what you do in your own kitchens. So behave!"

Some authorities believe that the Pizza Demon is just a myth. They attribute all paranormal pizza activity to the pizzageist instead, a sort of invisible entity that throws the pizza dough around in mid air until it becomes sufficiently thin.

If the Pizza Demon does appear as a character in a story, it's unlikely it will be in the novel I am currently writing. Captains Outrageous is the story of the Faraway Brothers, triplets who travel separately around the world in the early decades of the 20th Century. This novel consists of three interlinked parts, each one devoted to a different brother. I have finished the parts dealing with Scipio Faraway and Distanto Faraway. The final part -- 'The Apedog Incident' -- is mostly set in Africa and features Neary Faraway, the strangest and unluckiest of the siblings...

I was inspired to write Captains Outrageous after finishing work on The Coandă Effect a few months ago. Writing that novella filled me with a strong desire to keep working in the 'enigmatic adventure' tradition... I note, incidentally, that a few copies of The Coandă Effect are still available for sale on the Ex Occidente website... This reminds me: Ex Occidente will probably issue my suite of Albarracín stories in May, but the title of that book will no longer be Tucked Away in Aragon. It's more likely to be Sangria in the Sangraal or maybe something else. I'll post further details as soon as I have them...

Last week I was asked to write a guest blog for the author Sam Stone. I accepted the invitation and produced a piece on The Ultimate Existentialist Horror. You probably won't agree with my candidate for that supreme title, but that's not just my fault: it's your fault as well!

My Nineteenth Book

2011-03-11T10:59:00.011Z

It's shoe-time, I mean showtime!

Yes, The Brothel Creeper is out already! I received my copies two days ago. I think it's my best collection to date. But what would I know? Authors are generally not the smartest judges of their own work. Nonetheless, that's what I truly believe.

20 Tales of Sexual & Spiritual Tension (21 tales if you buy the hardback)... Includes some of my finest stories (in my opinion), such as 'The Quims of Itapetinga', 'The Sickness of Satan', 'The Indigo Casbah', 'The Docking of Spaceship Earth', etc.

It also includes 'Southbound Satin', the story I submitted to Exotic Gothic a couple of years ago: editor Danel Olsen claimed it was "one of the best stories he'd ever read"; the publisher, Christopher Roden, said it was "poorly written and silly"... Clearly there's a huge difference of opinion on the merits of my work. Why not make up your own mind by buying the book and reading it, etc...

It's available from Gray Friar Press even as we speak...

The Phantom Festival

2011-03-04T11:25:00.009Z

I was recently interviewed by the Italian ebook publisher 40K. It wasn't a proper interview as such: I was given five 'keywords' to respond to. My answers can be found here... The moment the interview appeared online, someone pointed out that I had misspelled the word 'indispensable', and so I had. I sometimes get my vowels in a twost -- I mean twist -- I don't know why. Is it because I'm Welsh? No, it's because I sometimes can't be bothered to consult a dictionary. Mind you, I'm not the only one guilty of misspellings. Editors have sometimes got the titles of my stories wrong. Believe it or not, even my name has been given wrongly by publishers, who have variously announced me as Ryhs Hughes, Rhys Hugues and even Rhys Davies!

Anyway, all this a premable to the declaration that 40K have just released my new ebook. The Phantom Festival is a story about a music festival for ghosts, a sort of spooky WOMAD, where all the great dead musicians of former times are free to play on a variety of different levels deep under the ground. The deeper the level, the further back in time the performance. So if you want to listen to the troubadours of the 12th century (Guilhèm de Peitieus, for example) you have to go rather deep; in the story, the narrator decides to go right to the bottom to attend the very first musical performance ever. That's the main conceit of the tale. Obviously things don't go quite to plan; the operative word here being things.

The Phantom Festival is available in Italian as well as in English (Il Festival dei Fantasmi) at the grand price of $0.99 (or £0.71). Yes, that's right. Seventy one pence. More details can be found by clicking here.

Opportunity Mocks!

2011-02-25T11:26:00.011Z

I still can't draw. No matter! Here's an example of something previously unknown to all botanists, a rendering of the extremely rare Giant Daft-odil. To deter nibblers and grazers, this plant grows one flower in the shape of a man with a club, as a deterent...

I enjoy inventing imaginary fauna and flora. Don't know why. My well-thumbed copy of Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings is one of the very few volumes in my possession I'll probably never give away. Apropos of this, I'm pleased to announce that I'm going to be a contributor to a forthcoming modern bestiary edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. The bestiary entries will be arranged in alphabetical order and my own monster begins with the letter 'X'...

Following last week's post, someone asked me if I'm really as competitive as I seem to be. I am a competitive person, but not excessively so. Ditties such as "Harpy Talk" are more an example of larking about than anything else. Larking about as an artform seems to be in decline. Where I grew up it was a highly prized ability. We larked about constantly, inventively, remorselessly...

I have been accused of various things over the years: arrogance, narcissism, whimsicality, vanity, capriciousness. I was once even accused of being "too mature". Even more oddly, I was recently condemned as an opportunist. Frankly, I find that charge peculiar. Over the past 15 years I've gone out of my way to make things more difficult for myself, not less. I don't network; I hardly ever attend conventions; I don't make friends with other writers if I can avoid it; I don't flatter editors (quite the opposite, in fact). I have chosen the narrow difficult path, not the wide easy one.

Mind you, I suppose I do my fair share of self-promotion... When I started writing, I refused to self-promote, and I mocked others for pushing their egos too hard. As it happened, the whirlpools of necessity sucked me in. I became a blatant self-promoter. It's difficult to resist when publishers, editors, agents, urge you to plug yourself for their sakes as well as your own. I do make an effort to be entertaining when I self-promote, to treat such occasions as another chance to lark about...

My next major piece of self-promotion will possibly take place at the First Crawley Festival of Words in April. I think I've been invited to do an event there. If all goes ahead as planned, I have to sit in the window of a bookshop writing a short story on a laptop which will be projected onto a public screen and also be available as a live internet link... I'll provide more details if all this turns out to be true!

In the meantime, here are two example of the old Surrealist game, cadavre exquis. The rules are simple. Take a piece of paper and fold it three times. One person draws the head of an imaginary being and passes the paper to another person, who draws the body; then a third person (or else the first person again) draws the legs and feet. No person sees what any other has drawn until the picture is finished and unfolded. Hey presto, a composite monster!

The game can be played with more than two people, of course, and the paper can be folded as many times as you please... The only limit is your imagination! Here we see a Weird Witch and an Octopus General Monster! (With thanks to Adele, my collaborator in both instances).

Harpy Talk

2011-02-19T10:36:00.014Z

Harpy talk, keep talkin' Harpy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to Worm.
You got to have a scheme,
If you don't have a scheme,
How you gonna make other writers squirm?

Talk about the pterodactyl glidin' in the sky
Lookin' at a werewolf in a cage;
Talk about a vampire learnin' how to fly.
Scarin' all the reviewers off the page.

Harpy talk, keep talkin' Harpy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to Worm.
You got to have a scheme,
If you don't have a scheme,
How you gonna make your critics squirm?

If you don't Worm the Harpy,
And you never have a scheme,
Then you'll never blow your rivals off the stage!

http://www.tartaruspress.com/wormingtheharpy.htm

The Brothel Creeper

2011-02-11T10:12:00.006Z

I am delighted to announce that my brand new collection, The Brothel Creeper, is now available for pre-ordering. The book will hopefully be published in March. It is being published by the wonderful Gray Friar Press.

I don't mind saying that I consider The Brothel Creeper to be my strongest, most serious and darkest collection to date. If you don't like postmodern irony very much, then you'll prefer this book to most of my others: the tone is much darker and more sober. The twenty stories in The Brothel Creeper are themed around sexual and spiritual tension. 100,000 words of my finest fiction!

Anyone who bought a previous Gray Friar Press anthology, Where the Heart is, and read my contribution to that volume ('The Cuckoos of Bliss') will have a fair idea what to expect with The Brothel Creeper, and in fact that story appears here too. Other contents include 'The Quims of Itapetinga' and 'Southbound Satin', both of which I recently listed in my own top 10 personal favourites among all the stories I have written.

Up a Gumtree

2011-02-04T15:05:00.010Z

The second edition of Mister Gum is out! It's superior to the first edition in several ways, the most obvious being the production values. The original resembled a samizdat publication, the sort of thing smuggled across heavily patrolled borders at night. The winegum-man cover came in for particularly harsh criticism. It is the only cover I have ever personally designed and has proved to be my least popular cover ever.

The book clearly deserved better production values and now it has got them! This second edition contains extra material, including 'The Sticky White Hands', a new chapter written especially for the expanded version; 'I am a Slimy Man', the poem that won me the First Swansea Poetry Slam competition back in 2006; a new Afterword that strenuously denies that the character Mr Gum is anything like me; and a Foreword by the inestimable Joel Lane, a fine fellow and a great writer...

Mister Gum is a mosaic novel made up of four interlocking story cycles that outline the adventures of the depraved tutor Mr Gum and his sidekick, Fellatio Nelson. Basically it's a wild and filthy satire on the 'teaching' of Creative Writing. It is also partly a Roman à clef. Can you guess who the obnoxious Samuel Tweed is, I wonder? The truth is that I regard this as my funniest book, but don't let that put you off! The first edition had plenty of great reviews. But be warned: this book really is excessively rude! If you are easily offended by scenes of a sexual nature, then it'll be safer for you to avoid it...

Mister Gum is available right now direct from Dog Horn Publishing for the princely and lipsmacking sum of £9.99.

A Harpy is Hatching

2011-01-28T10:48:00.006Z

More than fifteen years after it appeared in hardback, my very first book, Worming the Harpy, is finally about to be reissued! Unlike the limited edition original, this second edition is a mass-market paperback. More details are available from the Tartarus Press website. Needless to say, I am delighted by this development. The book has been out of print far too long! This second edition is the definite version of Worming the Harpy. It contains an extra story from the same era ('The Forest Chapel Bell') and the 'lost' subchapter from the title story has been restored, plus a few typographical errors that slipped through the net have been rectified. Also, it features an afterword by the late great E.F. Bleiler.

The stories in Worming the Harpy are rather more Gothic in flavour and intention than the fiction I write now: they were composed in the early '90s, when I was more under the spell of writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe and Isidore Ducasse than I am now (though I still hold those authors in high regard). They also display a strong 'Yellow Book' influence; and indeed, Max Beerbohm, is still one of my main literary heroes from that long gone era.

Worming the Harpy is at the printer's right now. It's available for pre-ordering immediately and is expected to be published in early March or sooner.

Minding My Own Anubis

2011-01-23T10:49:00.003Z

I've just finished one month's 'proper' work as a gallery attendant in a museum of Egyptian antiquities. Here I am in a quiet moment wearing the head of the god of Anubis. This photo had to be taken quickly, before I was caught in the act! What can I say about my brief experience as a conventional employee? Only the same thing that I always say: no human should ever have to call another human "boss". As for museums as a work environment, I can only offer the heretical opinion that the living are more important than the dead, and taking away from the limited time of the living to look after the artefacts of the dead seems somewhat perverse. I sure as heck don't want some poor sap 3000 years in the future to give up their precious living time to stand guard over one of my broken old possessions. When I'm dead, I'm dead: I no longer matter and neither do my things. Only the living truly count. The dead have disqualified themselves from the world through the act of dying.

Like I said, my view on the issue is heretical. And there are always exceptions. For instance, Anubis in this picture is reading a collection of Italo Calvino stories. Calvino is dead but still matters enormously to me. He's my favourite writer by far. On my last working day at the museum I was delighted to discover that one of my colleagues (who happened to be Italian) was a huge Calvino fan. We were able to enthuse together! Shame I didn't learn this before. Ah well! Speaking of Italy, here's an interview with me that the Italian publisher 40K did a few days back. But if you don't speak Italian, have no fear, it's also available in English here. Caspita! Splendido!

Before the Golden Age -- a review

2011-01-16T19:57:00.000Z

This thousand-page monster is one of the longest books I have read for a very long time. I didn't rush through it: I picked it up in a second-hand bookshop in 2003 and began reading it soon after; I finished the final story on the last day of December 2010. Seven years from beginning to end -- exactly as long as the time-frame (1931-1938) covered by the anthology itself, for this is a chronological showcase of Nineteen Thirties pulp SF edited by Isaac Asimov.

The guiding principle behind BTGA is an interesting one, namely the magazine stories (but not the novels or longer novellas) that most impressed the youthful Asimov when he was an avid reader of SF but not yet published himself. Hence the volume's title. The "Golden Age" of SF is generally said to date from August 1938 (with the publication of John Campbell's 'Who Goes There?' in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction) to the beginning of the "New Wave" in the early 1960s. Asimov was a crucial part of that Golden Age, as were Heinlein, Van Vogt and L. Sprague de Camp. None of those authors will be found in this anthology. In fact, very few pre-Golden Age writers survived into the Golden Age and many of the names in BTGA were unfamiliar to me.

Some of the authors in BTGA are represented by more than one story. Edmond Hamilton has three, all of them founded on intriguing concepts and every one solidly written. The piece that kicks off the volume is one of his, 'The Man Who Evolved', a nicely wrought tale with an inevitable but genuinely satisfying ending. Later in the volume, another Hamilton story, 'Devolution', serves as its reciprocal and answer; but the best Hamilton contribution on display here is 'The Accursed Galaxy', which is based on the fabulous conceit that the human race is a dreadful virus, a disease so terrible that our galaxy can be regarded as 'infected', causing all the other galaxies to flee in panic, which explains why the universe is expanding.

Although 'The man Who Evolved' is a powerful opener, the story that immediately follows it, 'The Jameson Satellite' by Neil R. Jones, is far more creaky; Asimov regards it as the weakest piece in the book, but in fact the core dilemma at the heart of the plot is very good: a scientist held in suspended animation in a sealed space capsule is awakened in the far future by a race of alien cyborgs. Humanity has ceased to exist: the refugee from the past is offered a choice between living out his natural span as the last relic of his race, dying a natural death and condemning the human race to oblivion, or being converted into a cyborg, losing his humanity but gaining immortality and the opportunity to acquire vast knowledge.

The conceit of a man who is put into suspension only to awake thousands or millions of years later was a popular pulp SF device. Nat Schachner contrives a situation whereby an Ancient Greek and an American from the 1930s both end up in a far future dystopia resembling the social hierarchy of Brave New World. Schachner betrays a greater grasp of social issues than most of his contemporaries and 'Past, Present and Future' is enriched by a political awareness generally lacking in the other BTGA stories. It's a worthy read, but the most startling deployment of the "sleeper awakes" theme occurs in the story 'The Man Who Awoke' by Laurence Manning, the first in a linked series that follows the adventures of one Norman Winters through vast eras of future history. This first instalment has made me curious to seek out the entire set, and they do all exist in book form: I consider this to be an essential purchase for 2011. 'The Man Who Awoke' demonstrates an acute ecological sensitivity that is startling for a story written in 1933.

Another popular theme, possibly even more overused by early pulp SF writers, is the "shrinking man" who has adventures on the surfaces of atoms. Ray Cummings specialised in this kind of story in the 1920s. Another specialist was Captain S.P. Meek, represented in BTGA by two linked novellas, 'Submicroscopic' and 'Awlo of Ulm'. Colourful, vibrant and bigoted, these display all the worst qualities of pulp SF and yet they are not without their redeeming features. Certainly they possess incredible momentum, far more than (for instance) P. Schuyler Miller's 'Tetrahedra of Space', which is reminiscent of the very first Jack Williamson story, 'The Metal Man'. Lush and overwritten, 'Tetrahedra of Space' is followed by the crisp and bitterly ironic 'The World of the Red Sun' by Clifford D. Simak, a time machine exploit with an exceptionally bleak ending.

Time travel also plays a significant role in Jack Williamson's 'The Moon Era', which rather unusually takes place on a much younger version of our Earth's satellite, a miniature world with its own atmosphere and strange flora and fauna. It's an enjoyable romp but completely overshadowed by Williamson's second contribution to BTGA, 'Born of the Sun', an astonishing example of the "thought-variant" subgenre, in which it emerges that the planets and satellites of our solar system are in fact the ready-to-hatch eggs of immense star-birds. Williamson was one of the few truly successful pre-Golden Age writers to survive intact into the Golden Age: he had a vibrant and lengthy career. Many years ago I read The Early Williamson, a showcase of the stories that first established him as a "name" in the SF field, and I was impressed: his ideas were always original and interesting and his grasp of plot relatively sophisticated.

Returning to the "shrinking man" theme, two offbeat treatments can be found in BTGA: Henry Hasse's 'He Who Shrank', which takes the concept to an extreme, its unfortunate narrator descending through uncountable submicroscopic universes nested inside each other, with the implication that the loop will eventually be closed; and Donald Wandrei's 'Colossus', which reverses the idea, the main protagonist expanding in size until he grows bigger than our universe, which turns out to be a single atom in a much larger cosmos. Hasse's prose style is dense and overwrought and reminiscent of the Weird Tales standard; Wandrei's is extremely clumsy and awkward and doesn't do justice to his concepts.

Charles R. Tanner is a forgotten name now, but Asimov cites him as a major early influence, and on the strength of 'Tumithak of the Corridors' and its sequel, 'Tumithak of Shawm', one can understand why. Both novellas are well-written and unusual, almost the sort of thing a youthful Jack Vance might have written, and indeed they are among the highlights of BTGA. Apparently Tanner wrote four 'Tumithak' novellas which combine to make a novel: it's out there somewhere, issued by a small press, and is undoubtedly worth making the effort to seek out.

I was less enthralled by Raymond Z. Gallun's 'Old Faithful', which is a sympathetic portrait of an alien being along the lines established by Stanley Weinbaum's justly famous 'A Martian Odyssey' (in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories). That particular Weinbaum story doesn't appear in BTGA, as Asimov states that he was unaware of it at the time, but 'The Parasite Planet' does, and it's almost as good, with a traditional "hostile world" scenario rendered more special by a superior writing technique and skilfully timed dynamic. Weinbaum would surely have become a major Golden Age author had he lived long enough, but he died of cancer only eighteen months into his career at the age of 33.

Murray Leinster, as an extreme contrast to Weinbaum, enjoyed a career of immense duration. His first SF story, 'The Runaway Skyscraper', was published in 1919 in the pages of Argosy, predating Williamson by one decade and Asimov by two. 'Sideways in Time' is the first properly developed "lateral dimensions" story. Various alternate presents appear on Earth at the same moment, turning our world into a patchwork of bizarre lateral civilisations. The concept is vast and difficult to handle, but Leinster does a good job, though his prose is a little stiff. By the time of his second contribution to BTGA, 'Proxima Centauri', he has become a much more fluid and controlled writer, and in fact this tale of an alien race that has evolved from carnivorous plants and travels in wooden spaceships is one of the finest in the anthology.

A quirky story that rises above its numerous defects and becomes almost an example of unintentional surrealism is 'The Human Pets of Mars' by Leslie F. Stone, the only female writer represented in this volume and one of the few women active in the field in the 1930s (of whom the greatest was probably C.L. Moore). Asimov claims that 'The Human Pets of Mars' no longer stands up, and yet I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Owing as much to Swiftian satire as contemporary pulp SF, Stone's parable of a group of humans who are abducted by octopus-like aliens and turned into domestic pets, fed on overich food, pampered and punished, subjected to mystifying training sessions, is amusing. It reads almost like a parody of pulp SF, though almost certainly that wasn't Stone's intention. I found it even more entertaining than the story that immediately follows it, 'The Brain Stealers of Mars' by John W. Campbell.

Campbell is represented in BTGA by two stories, one of which is a sort of speculative essay in a series designed to educate the casual reader about the conditions on the various planets of the solar system. 'Other Eyes Watching' is a mildly interesting piece but nothing special. 'The Brain Stealers of Mars', on the other hand, is actually a very good story, a puzzle tale about two maverick adventurers stuck in a very nasty tight spot who must use wits rather than brawn to escape a dreadful fate.

The authentic puzzle tale is an abstruse subgenre of its own, known in German as a "gedanken". One of the finest examples of this specialised genre rounds of BTGA in fine style, Ross Rocklynne's 'The Men and the Mirror'. Rocklynne should have been as big as Asimov and Heinlein but for some reason it never quite worked for him, although he was an important part of the Golden Age and a major influence on Asimov. 'The Men and the Mirror' drops its two protagonists into a situation where only a good understanding of the laws of physics, coupled with an accurate mathematical ability, will be able to get them out. It's an ingenious tale. It also happens to be well-written and is undoubtedly the highlight of BTGA.

I have neglected to mention that Asimov includes one of his own stories in the anthology, 'Big Game', an early piece he thought had been lost. It's a slight throwaway affair, scarcely worthy of the mighty author who penned Foundation. Of vastly greater significance are the autobiographical linking pieces between each of the stories in which Asimov talks about his youthful discovery of SF, his own attempts to write it and the rocky road of his home life and education.

BTGA was worth reading, but I feel obliged to stress that it's not really an anthology that can be digested all in one go without extensive pauses between the stories. The quality of the writing is mostly competent but rarely brilliant and although there's a tendency to forgive such clumsy prose by saying "It was only the 1930s" it must be remembered that writers such as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Karel Čapek, Frigyes Karinthy and Olaf Stapledon had already produced immensely more sophisticated SF before this time. Pulp magazine SF was enjoyable and often responsible for some genuinely intriguing and original concepts, but it was still pulp fiction, not highbrow literature.

The full contents list of BTGA can be viewed here.

Toad Be or Not Toad Be

2011-01-14T17:46:00.010Z

I can't draw and my lack of ability in this respect is a definite hindrance when I have a very clear image in my mind that I'd love to be able to put down on paper. Ah well! I was recently asked by the (extremely efficient) publisher who hopefully is going to issue Link Arms With Toads! if I had any ideas for a possible cover. Yes, I did. I have been seeing this picture in my mind's eye for months. It's a sort of travesty of The Wizard of Oz, I suppose, but it does fundamentally state in visual terms the concerns of my book: the symbols of three separate genres (robot for SF, ghost for horror, apeman for fantasy) skipping arm in arm together along a road, linked by toads...

The toads are metaphoric chemical bonds, similar to the bonds that link oxygen and hydrogen atoms to make water; the road is time, maybe. I have no interest in writing stories that pillage elemental genres: my aspiration is to combine those elements into a new molecule, a never-seen-before genre, my own private category of literature. This is the Molecular Approach to Fiction: writing as a type of chemistry. To take the old and the already known and perfectly synthesise them into the new! Without toads the process wouldn't be possible. Thank Heaven for little toads! The fact that these toads look more like mad aliens is unfortunate, but the gist remains intact. It's always wise to preserve one's gist, to guard it from accidental breakage. And in fact, rendered as negative images such toads don't look so bad...

Forthcoming in 2011

2011-01-07T17:33:00.010Z

I forgot to mention that 'The Astral Disruptor' has been included in an omnibus eBook with works by Bruce Sterling, Mike Resnick and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, available in Italian as well as English. The publisher 40K has created several loosely-themed anthologies from the separate texts it has already released. The omnibus I'm in is called Different Kinds of Magic and is available at Smashwords, Amazon and several other places. 40K are due to release more of my work in eBook format in the near future. When electronic publishing first reared its cyber-head I was full of doubts but it really has taken off. I'm even toying with the idea of obtaining a Kindle...

The first week of January is a good time to reflect on hopes and dreams for the future and how they can be realised. It's also the right time for authors to list what works are scheduled to appear in the year ahead. The following is my own list. Bear in mind that although the following books are scheduled to be published in 2011 this doesn't necessarily mean they will appear. In the publishing world, the appearance of a book is never certain: publishers fold, change their minds, are subject to the same vagaries of circumstance as everyone else. And in fact it's normal for books to be delayed. The keyword is "hope".

Books due out in 2011:

* 2nd edition of Mister Gum (with extra material)
* 2nd edition of Worming the Harpy (with extra material)
* Tucked Away in Aragon
* Link Arms With Toads!
* Tallest Stories
* The Impossible Inferno
* La Déconfiture d'Hypnos (probable title for French collection)
* 2nd edition of The Less Lonely Planet

eBooks:

* The Phantom Festival
* The Scamps of Disorder
* Moondipper
* The Knight of Whatever

Still under consideration:

* The Brothel Creeper
* The Truth Spinner
* The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange
* The Just Not So Stories

As for new writing, my priority is to produce two novels this year, Captains Outrageous and The Young Dictator. Anything else I write will be a bonus, though I do have a dozen short stories and a novelette or two planned.

Chin Chin!

2010-12-31T10:03:00.014Z

Happy New Year from The Chin Monsters! Let's face it, 2010 wasn't the greatest year in the history of the world, but isn't that true of every year? I know that observation doesn't actually make much sense... but neither does drawing eyes on chins and photographing them upside down! Here's to a superb 2011 for everyone who deserves it!

The year began with freezing weather and it ended the same way. Brrr! I just don't cope with the cold very well. This time, however, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to enjoy the snow. It may be truthfully said that old-fashioned winters are back! Unfortunately the same isn't true of the summers. The summer of 2010 was a disappointment, though we did manage to enjoy some hiking and wild camping on the handful of nice days. Highlight of the year in this regard were the camping trips to the dunes near the town of my upbringing, Porthcawl. It was fascinating to go back again after so many years!

Lowlight of the year was being stranded in Heathrow for a weekend... No, this has nothing to do with the recent airport disruption because of bad weather, but refers to the Odyssey convention back in April. A waste of time and money in a grim environment (no offence to the nice people I did meet there!). But at least the experience has helped me to make a firm resolution: no more conventions -- unless I have been specifically invited to do a panel or a reading or whatever...

Talking about reading, I did a heck of a lot of that in 2010! I read plenty of Calvino, as always; and I was delighted to reacquaint myself with Samuel Beckett after a couple of decades: a writer of immense power and wit and never as nihilistic as his reputation would suggest. The finest novel I read all year was undoubtedly Hothouse by Brian Aldiss. And my two finest discoveries were Primo Levi and Cordwainer Smith, both of whom staggered me with their excellence. Indeed, my 'book of the year' is Smith's The Rediscovery of Man, a truly incredible sequence of linked stories with the galactic span of a Stapledon, the humanity of an Aldiss and the weirdness of a Zelazny all rolled into one. Every year I find at least one writer new to me who is impressive to a degree most humbling!

Writing. 2010 was my most productive year ever! I never thought I would manage to exceed 2009 in terms of productivity, but I did! My brain kept overflowing with ideas! I wrote 54 stories, averaging more than one a week! Total wordage of fiction produced was more than 240,000 words! It seems that in the past two years I have written exactly 99 stories. Not bad! I put together a great many books and sold quite a few of them. I'll create a list soon of what might be reasonably expected to come out in 2011 (for example Tallest Stories, Link Arms With Toads!, Tucked Away in Aragon, etc). As for published works in 2010: many short stories in anthologies, and two books (a novel and a novella). So now, all that remains for me to say is: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Xmas Cheer

2010-12-26T13:45:00.004Z

Christmas is here again. In fact the Day itself has come and gone and I successfully managed to ignore it. Yes, I'm a perfect unreformed Scrooge, a hearty opponent of both Christianity and Consumerism who hasn't celebrated Christmas for a couple of decades. I hate spending money on overpriced gifts and I can't stand enforced jollity. Even the act of sending greetings cards is a chore beyond me. I despise the entire idiotic charade. Merry Christmas anyway!

But I did receive a present that cheered me up. The acceptance of Tucked Away in Aragon, my cycle of fantastical Albarracín stories, by the same fine publisher who very recently issued The Coandă Effect. I am delighted with this news, as this particular story wheel is an absolute favourite of mine, a linked series of ten lighthearted but philosophical tales that span the past 1000 years of the history of that remarkable little city.

This photograph shows Albarracín as it was in September 2007, when I first stumbled upon it while looking for the source of the River Tajo. Quite a contrast to the present Welsh landscape of snow, ice and grey cloud!

Libertarianism & My Day Off

2010-12-19T10:37:00.009Z

I have started a new 'proper' job, just for one month, and although I don't enjoy working for anyone other than myself, I recognise and accept that sometimes it's necessary to do so. My own ideal society would be one in which everyone was self-employed or part of a small syndicate with full control over their own business affairs, taking orders from no one but themselves, dancing to no tune played by another. Working for large or even medium-sized corporations is demoralising and unmotivating. Everyone deserves the chance to be an entrepreneur, in control of their own fate, as much as such control is possible.

I call myself a 'libertarian' and I have done so for many years, but there seems to be a general assumption that libertarians only care about the freedom to get rich. I'm not that kind of libertarian. I try to follow the creed that liberty is the highest ideal and that everyone should be free to act as they please provided those actions don't interfere with the liberty of others. The final part of that mantra is crucial but often overlooked. When a small-time entrepreneur becomes too successful and turns into a corporation, the liberties of other people are certain to be constrained. For libertarianism to remain true to its own ethics, it must remain small.

In fact I regard Free Market Capitalism as Anti-Libertarian. It restricts the freedom of those it oppresses, in particular the small entrepreneur. I hate right wing worship of Big Business, even more than I hate left wing worship of State Control. Libertarianism should entail supporting (or trying to support) cultural, political, religious, philosophical and geographical liberty, while preserving the integrity of the environment. Social provision might be a duty, yes, but it shouldn't take priority over liberty. And neither should employment take precedence over the environment. I don't want the world polluted by industry, even if it does mean jobs for workers...

Anyway... Thanks to the gods of weather, my second day at work was snowed off. So instead of working I went out to play in the snow. Adele took these photos. She also took some amazing photos of crows and rooks in the snow: she may post some of them on her blog at some point. We made a selection (syndicate?) of miniature (self-employed?) snowmen, rolled a massive snowball along the beach until it became truly monstrous and broke into pieces, used the pieces to build a snow pagoda, and enjoyed a spectacular sunset before going home to a fire and wine. Much more satisfying than work!

My Eighteenth Book

2010-12-14T20:05:00.006Z

I find it hard to believe in the existence of a book until I see it with my own eyes and hold it with my own hands, so even though The Coandă Effect was published two weeks ago I didn't really allow myself to celebrate the fact. However, a large box stuffed with copies arrived from Romania a few days ago, and so now I'm able to fully appreciate the satisfaction of adding another title to my growing bibliography. This particular volume went from concept to finished product faster than any of my other books. The story was commissioned in August; I wrote it during September; it was accepted and proofread in October; and it rolled off the printers in November. If only all projects were so smooth and untroubled! Regards therefore to Dan Ghetu of Ex Occidente Press for turning this highly unusual 'Corto Maltese' pipedream into a reality.

Weird Wales Event

2010-12-09T14:00:00.015Z

The belated booklaunch of The Postmodern Mariner is due to take place on December 11th, this coming Saturday! Although the book was published in 2008, circumstances have conspired to make this one of the most postponed launches in booklaunching history!

From the beginning I knew I wanted more than just a booklaunch. So with the aid of steampunk druid, Gwilym Games, I drew up a brief schedule of events to follow the launch. The launch will last only for the first hour and in that time I'll do some readings, talk about my work in general and The Postmodern Mariner in particular, answer any questions that anyone has, and probably also answer some that no one has. That's part one.

The second hour will be devoted to the work of Arthur Machen, still the finest prose author Wales has ever produced, and this part will include the Welsh première of a short film inspired by Machen's 'The White People'. Machen has a loyal cult following but he deserves to be more widely known.

The third and final part will be concerned with authentic Welsh fortean phenomena: sea serpents, ghosts, bipedal talking horses, will o' the wisps, were-leeks, etc.

The event is free (of course) and should be an edifying experience! The venue is the Discovery Room on the first floor of Swansea Central Library and the event will begin at 12:00 noon and last until 3:30 PM. The official name of the event is WEIRD WALES.

So now. What else has been happening? After a short break from writing to recharge my batteries, I have resumed the writing of a novella I began maybe seven or eight years ago, 'Bone Idle in the Charnel House', and I'm enjoying this task very much...

Also, I've just had a half-page story published in an anthology of microfiction called Exposure. It's a nice-looking anthology issued by Cinnamon Press. But why do I always have difficulties spelling the word 'cimmanon'? Other spices don't give me any comparable sort of typographical trouble. True, I'm always unsure of whether to write 'chilli', 'chili' or 'chillie' but I'm currently unaware of a Chilli Press. If such an outfit existed, no doubt they would specialise in works by Chilean writers?

Discommoded by a Komodo

2010-12-01T10:30:00.008Z

One doesn't expect to be discommoded by a Komodo Dragon in one's own home, especially when dressed in a Cappadocian hat, so I am fortunate indeed that nothing of the kind occured and that this photo is a cunning fake! No vast lizard has attempted to lick me in the recent past. But it does feel as if I have been licked by a different sort of giant tongue: the forked tongue of multiple attainment.

That's meant to sound grateful rather than smug, so if it comes across as smug then I apologise, but many good things have lately happened in my writing career. I have just proofread the second edition of my first book, Worming the Harpy, for paperback release early next year; and I am currently proofreading the second edition of Mister Gum. Both new editions will contain extra material, a bonus story in each case. I am very proud of both books!

Two days ago I was asked to put together a new collection for a French publisher: I intend to create something unique in response to that request, rather than simply sending a collection that already exists in English for translation. Foreign readers have always treated me well and they deserve to have a customised edition in return. To be published in French has long been one of my major ambitions.

Also, I have just placed my romanti-cynical showcase Link Arms With Toads! with a publisher. I'm very proud of this one; with luck it should be out next year. To illustrate my joy at this news, here's a painting with a theme not utterly unconnected to the work: René Magritte's 'The Sea of Flames'. Magritte, together with Roerich, Escher, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, is one of my favourite artists (Carrington also happens to be an excellent fiction writer; I have just bought her surreal novel, The Hearing Trumpet).

My Corto Maltese novella, The Coandă Effect, has just been published. I'm very proud of this one too. The photograph of the book you see here wasn't taken by me: I stole it from a fellow by the name of Tom Alaerts, who happens to be a pirate in the story itself. Tom, like Magritte, is a Belgian.

2010 has been a gloriously productive year for me. In 2009 I broke the 200,000 word barrier for the first time. I didn't think I would ever repeat the feat, but in fact I've already broken that record and my current total for 2010 stands at almost 230,000 words of fiction. As for the number of individual stories written, that total is now 52, one for every week of the entire year and I still have the best part of a month left. I never imagined I would achieve these totals! I have more than doubled my average yearly output.

The ultra-belated launch of The Postmodern Mariner now has a definite date and venue: The Discovery Room, Swansea Central Library, on December 11th. This booklaunch is two years late and in fact is so belated that only a dozen copies of the first edition remain to be sold on the day! The launch is only one segment of an event that will feature talks on Arthur Machen, sea monsters, ghosts and similar things. More details next week!

Robots in Disguise

2010-11-25T12:35:00.005Z

I have been reliably informed that a transformer is a "robot in disguise". This news startles me, for I previously assumed that a transformer was merely an electric circuit for stepping voltages up or down. The concept of a robot in disguise is astonishing enough on its own: how does one make Velcro sideburns stick reliably to a surface of steel or crystal?

In recent months I have finally set up my own website. It's still under construction but already it features lists, pictures and blather. Click on this link to view it. Utilising the same sort of deception habitual to transformers, it is actually a blog disguised as a website! Nonetheless it's a useful hub for transport to my other blogs as well as containing more information about my work than you'll ever need to know.

Talking about robots reminds me that the latest issue of Postscripts 22/23 (The Company He Keeps) is now available and that it contains my robot story 'The Forever Forest'. I enjoy writing robot stories. I get a buzz out of robots in general. This latest issue of Postscripts is easily the finest so far, so beautifully produced that it came in its own velvet-lined box and so enormous that it can be used for the torso of an authentic man-sized robot. Mind you, some of the best robots in fiction are bigger or smaller than the biggest or smallest men, and a few even have shapes that are incomprehensible.

My favourite robot fiction of all is probably Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, which is a sort of compendium of robot myths from the future. Myths from the future are a relatively recent invention. Lem is a master of the the artform. Moorcock's Legends from the End of Time are also among the best of this extremely unusual subgenre. I've written a short piece praising Lem's magnificent book here.

Astral Disruption

2010-11-19T15:39:00.004Z

40K (Fortykey) are a publishing house based in Italy. They specialise in ebooks in a variety of languages, Italian, English, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Each of their ebooks is a short story or essay with an average length of 40,000 characters, in other words about 8000 words, hence the company name. So far they have published works by Bruce Sterling, Dario Tonani, Jacob Appel, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Thierry Crouzet, Paul Di Filippo, Mike Resnick and many others. The list of great authors is growing all the time and prices are low, just €2.90 per ebook.

I am pleased that some of my own efforts are going to be issued by 40K. First up is a story I wrote called 'The Astral Disruptor', the inaugural exploit in a projected series of tales set in the imaginary land of Litalia, where every city is named after an Italian writer and has some inherent quality reminiscent of the style of that writer. 'The Astral Disruptor' ('Il Disgregatore Astrale' in Italian) is set in the city of Buzzati and features the renowned absurdity investigator, Sampietro Mischief. I hope to write many more adventures involving this fine gentleman and his monstrous servant, Chives, probably set in other Litalian cities, such as Eco, Levi, Gadda, Dante, Ariosto and Svevo, etc.

To be published in Italian is, for me, a deeply satisfying experience, as it's no secret that my favourite writer of all time is Italo Calvino. One of the things I love so much about Calvino is that he says everything I want to say, and says it better than I could manage, thus saving me the trouble of making the attempt (which is what a kind editor recently said about my own work). Almost everything I write is inspired by Calvino in some way or other... For 40K I have also started a series of interviews with important modern writers. Bruce Sterling was first on my list. At the moment I am interviewing another enormously clever and innovative writer, Paul Di Filippo. That interview will be in two parts. Part one is already available here.

African Charity Anthology

2010-11-16T13:43:00.005Z

I have just received a copy of the anthology recently published by the charity READ International. It's a nice looking paperback that features the winning entries of the Read for READ Short Story Competition and it was launched at the British Library in London just over two weeks ago. The winners are Kate Baggott, Kristen Bailey, Charlotte Mary Ingram and Eleanor O'Rorke and the general standard of the final shortlist was clearly high, for the winning stories are all extremely well written. The anthology also includes stories by three guest writers, and I'm pleased to say that I am one of those.

Two of my stories were chosen; one, 'The Defining Moment', was written especially for this book and is about books; the other, 'The Mice Will Play', dates from 2001 and is one of my many cat stories. Yes, I have written plenty of cat stories in my time, but I don't dabble with that subgenre now. If one writes too many cat stories, people start to gossip... I have absolutely no idea if this anthology is commercially available or not. There doesn't seem any way of getting hold of it from the Read International website, nor is there a price anywhere on the book itself. But I don't think it's a freebie.

Never Again

2010-11-09T13:36:00.011Z

A month or so ago, a charity anthology was published with the theme of ‘anti-Fascism’. It’s a big theme, almost certainly too ambitious for any anthology to deal with properly or even in part. Also there’s bound to be a certain lack of clarity as to what fascism constitutes; and how can a worthwhile opposition be mounted against something that lacks strict definition? And yet... The theme of Never Again is still one of the most important of any anthology that has come to my attention in recent years. I believe that one of its editors, Joel Lane, has stated that genre fiction is among the most reactionary of all kinds of fiction, and I'm sure he's right in that assessment. But why is genre fiction so reactionary?

The ultimate problem, I fear, is that a form of 'fascism' (with a lowercase ‘f’) is a basic part of human nature. I suspect that a form of 'socialism' is also a basic part of human nature but I conclude that the fascist part is stronger and more elemental than the socialist part. So the first step in opposing fascism requires an effort of conscious will against our own dark emotional drives; and this fight must take place before the greater outer struggle can commence. I am in constant struggle with my own emotions and urges. True morality consists in using your reason to overrule your emotions when your emotions are inappropriate -- an extremely difficult task that causes angst. Without angst any moral decision isn't really moral. The struggle is internal first, external later. For me it means overcoming my own hotheadedness and impetuosity.

We need to ask: what good will such an anthology as Never Again do? What effect will it have? Will it convert any readers with fascist tendencies to a more tolerant outlook? Very unlikely. So what is the point of it? And what is the point of writers saying they they "support" the cause of this book? My own view is that the main good that will come of this anthology is that the editors, contributors and readers will have “nailed their colours to the mast” -- in other words made a clear unambiguous statement of intent (their opposition to fascism). That's not much of an achievement really, but it is something; and every such statement in the world of genre writing is important.

While this anthology was in the process of being compiled, a rather unpleasant incident occurred which has soured me towards certain corners of the writing world. A brace of small-time writers attempted, rather clumsily, to sabotage the book. Ask yourself why anyone would want to sabotage a project devoted to combating fascism? The obvious conclusion is that the writers in question must be fascists. That makes sense: it’s something I can understand. But no, it turned out that those writers wanted to sabotage the project because they hadn’t been invited to contribute to it. Imagine that! Unable to contribute to a cause they claimed to believe in, they tried to derail the cause, simply because of egotism and narcissism. That’s a rather absurd irony and needless to say I have decided to have nothing more to do with those responsible for such behaviour.

The above photograph of Never Again was sent to me by Allyson Bird, the other joint editor of the anthology. I have an eccentric rule that I like to use unique photographs of the books that I try to promote, rather than the publisher’s own images. I don’t know why I invented that rule for myself but I intend to stick to it. Never Again is published by Gray Friar Press and features 23 stories by such authors as Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Landsdale, Stephen Volk, Nina Allan and Gary McMahon. My own story ‘Rediffusion’ is also a part of the mix. All profits from sales go to The Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

I talk about some of my favourite anti-fascist stories in more detail here.

Gallic Jam Sea

2010-11-03T10:57:00.005Z

My story 'La Déconfiture d'Hypnos' has just been published in Le Visage Vert #17, a French anthology that includes fiction by John Buchan and E.F. Benson. The Buchan text is from his linked story collection, The Runagates Club, one of his best books in my view, and one of the finest examples of the 'Clubhouse Tale' subgenre. I am overjoyed to be published in French again! I'm especially pleased that I was given the opportunity to illustrate my own story after the commissioned artist failed to produce anything. I created a montage photo, something I have been doing a lot lately. And here's the result.

The picture shows the main character Florian on a raft of toast. The English title of 'La Déconfiture d'Hypnos' is 'The Jam of Hypnos'. I wrote this story back in 2003 and it's one of my favourites. In my last entry I mentioned that I was working on a story called 'The Quims of Itapetinga', also one of my favourites. That story is finished now and has been added to my Brothel Creeper collection. So which of my own stories do I consider to be my very best? I have selected my own personal top ten, a list that can be found here.

My Ear is South America!

2010-10-28T11:42:00.008+01:00

Last night I attended the launch of Bob Lock's second novel, The Empathy Effect. It's available from Screaming Dreams at this very moment. Bob is an extremely engaging fellow, and it was also nice to catch up with Steve Upham and Brian Willis again. I was flattered to be asked to make a contribution to the evening, so I read three examples of 'flash fiction' from a collection I have recently put together, Flash in the Pantheon. This photo shows me in the middle of declaiming. My thanks to Bob for the opportunity!

The location was the 'Discovery Room' in Swansea Central Library, where my own extremely belated launch of The Postmodern Mariner will take place on December 11th. The launch of that book is actually only one part of a larger event that will be called WEIRD WALES: an entire afternoon of readings and lectures, featuring a talk on Arthur Machen, and a serious examination of the kinds of genuine spooky phenomena that Wales abounds in, for example ghosts, sea serpents and UFOs. It seemed to me a good idea to broaden the appeal of the event. More details coming soon, when I've worked them out!

A few days ago I completed my 558th story. It was the last 'chapter' in my Tucked Away in Aragon sequence of interlinked fantasy tales set in Albarracín, perhaps my favourite Spanish town, certainly the most picturesque I saw on my travels! Yesterday I submitted this short book to a publisher, and now I'm waiting to see what he thinks of it. Although these Calvinoesque tales are exactly the kind of thing I most enjoy writing, I suspect they may be too whimsical for his taste. We'll see!

So now I'm free to return to completing the final story of my proposed collection The Brothel Creeper. The story in question, 'The Quims of Itapetinga', is one I have been planning for a very long time, but the concepts that drive it are so strange and warped that I find them difficult to work with -- they demand not only heightened mental concentration but a sort of spiritual energy too. It's a very intense story to say the least! I think it might turn out to be among my very best, if nothing goes wrong. Things can go wrong at any time; I'm acutely aware of this fact. Here's a photograph of something that went wrong yesterday... My left ear turned into South America!

Corto Maltese, the lighter way to enjoy piracy!

2010-10-21T12:14:00.014+01:00

My novella, The Coandă Effect, is now available for pre-order from the Passport Levant imprint of Ex Occidente Press here.

It's a deluxe collector's edition, limited to only 100 copies.

There seems to be a lot of interest in Corto Maltese. I asked random contacts on Facebook for taglines for my new book. Bruce Sterling in his interview told me that this technique is called 'crowdsourcing'. Here are some of the (mostly bizarre) suggestions I've received in response...

* "With a Gibraltarian witch for a mother and a Welsh father with ties to sorcery, Corto Maltese was destined to be one thing, a pirate." -- Bob Lock
* "‎Not the first in a 10 book series!" -- Tony Lee
* "Corto Maltese...the lighter way to enjoy chocolate." -- Gary McMahon
* "Corto Maltese - he'll make you cross! Ooh." -- Rosie Scribbler
* "The Light Fantastic." -- Huw Rees
* "The wind in his hair, the salt on his lips, danger around every corner, and intrigue straight ahead." -- George Ibarra
* "Every moment in time has a story and every story a time..." -- Robert N. Stephenson
* "Balls out, who's publishing it?" -- Rod Heather
* "A full cast of wacky characters, including a Belgian pirate!" -- Tom Alaerts
* "Melts in your hand and not in your mouth." -- Steve Lockley
* "Do not open this book if you are in the least bit prone to incontinence, as the laundry bill will ruin your finances." -- Ian Alexander Martin

Other news: I've just finished writing my 555th story. I'm sure this number is significant, but I can't really say why! The story that falls under that number is called 'Sangria in the Sangraal' and is part of my Tucked Away in Aragon story-cycle, which is now 70% completed. When that brace of tales is ready I plan to send them to the same publisher who is issuing The Coandă Effect, even though they take place in Spain rather than Eastern Europe (the preferred location for the fiction published under the Passport Levant imprint). My justification for this is that they are mostly set in Moorish Spain, when the west was the east (long before the east became the west).

Tiny Stars, Big Sun

2010-10-15T14:00:00.008+01:00

I have been busy putting together yet another collection. All this story gathering is starting to become excessive; I have put together far too many books already this year. I don't expect them all to appear in the near future; some of them may have to wait for years or they may never appear at all. Who knows?

But this collection is something I have been working on for a long time. It's a set of microfictions, exactly one hundred of them, called Flash in the Pantheon. These ultra-short stories span almost my entire writing career; the earliest dates from 1989 and the most recent was completed a few days ago. First I put them in strict chronological order, then I decided that random order was better. Now it's time to stop tinkering and leave them alone.

There are many kinds of microfiction: the 50 word 'mini-saga', the suggestive '69er', the 100 word 'drabble'. All have one thing in common: they impose a creative fetter on the author. Poets who work with strict metre and rhyming schemes are no strangers to creative fetters, but prose writers rarely use them; and yet, by limiting the chaos of almost infinite choice, they can be highly beneficial as aids to invention and originality. Paradoxically, words in cages can be more free. The above photo shows a less symbolic cage, with me inside. I don't know if the metaphor is fully transferrable, however...

My favourite microfiction of all time was written by John Barth. It can be found on my Gloomy Seahorse site here. Something this ingenious is extremely difficult to match. My own approach to the microfiction question is often to link many together; each one should work alone but the sum should also be a complete epic in miniature. The recent anthology Blind Swimmer features one of my efforts in this vein, a story entitled 'The Talkative Star'. It's the kind of fiction I most enjoy writing, namely Calvinoesque whimsy; but in Britain this seems to be a minority taste and it takes a special editor to appreciate that what seems lighthearted may also be profound.

Fortunately, David Rix of Eibonvale Press is exactly that sort of editor, a gloriously eccentric individual who runs a gloriously eccentric independent publishing house that creates books that don't look like any other books from any other press. The theme of Blind Swimmer is 'creativity in isolation', one of the best themes I have been offered by any editor. I chose to write about our sun, because the sun itself is one of the most creative forces in one of the deepest isolations imaginable, but I made him sentient.

Monsters, Toads, Books

2010-10-08T18:16:00.004+01:00

The Victorian monster that appears in my previous blog entry is the last in the series. All six together comprise my first self-illustrated story. I have an abiding affection for tales that utilise images as an essential complement to the text, in the manner of certain Donald Barthelme stories, and I have written and published a few examples of this form in recent years; but never before have I done the drawings myself. I hope that ‘Monsters of the Victorian Age’ will appear in a future book; but in the meantime the finished piece is available online here.

Speaking of the great Donald Barthelme reminds me that I have cited him as one of the spiritual godfathers of ‘Romanti-Cynicism’ in the Afterword of a new collection I’ve just put together: a showcase of romanti-cynical stories from the past seventeen or so years. But what is romanti-cynicism? It’s a literary movement I founded when I was younger. Romanti-Cynical fictions simultaneously take themselves very seriously and mock themselves; they have one foot in sober existentialism, one in ironic satire, one in progressive science fiction, one in nostalgic utopian fancies, one in magic, one in naivety, one in cunning, one in fable, one in rationality... with the crucial point being that the total number of these feet is always startlingly greater than feasible. Even a millipede couldn’t manage so many!

My showcase volume is entitled Link Arms with Toads! and I submitted it to a publisher two days ago; so I can’t yet be sure it will ever see the light of day. “Link Arms with Toads!” is the motto of the Romanti-Cynical Movement. What does it mean exactly? I’d like to say that I’ve forgotten or that I never really knew, but the truth is simple enough: whether you are a ghost, a robot or just an apeman, you can always link arms with toads!

Bruce Sterling isn’t a romanti-cynical author; but he’s a tremendous writer all the same. A genius, in fact! My interview with him for La Stampa is now available in English. Here it is. This version is actually longer than the one in Italian.

What else? I think I ought to mention that there's a book-launch and reading at the British Library, London, on October 28th in aid of the "Read for READ" charity anthology. READ International is a charity devoted to increasing literacy by shipping free books to Africa. So far they have shipped nearly 1,000,000 books. They are publishing an anthology to raise money for the charity. This anthology contains the winners of a short-story competition held earlier this year, and also a few guest stories by a handful of invited writers. It's a cause I believe in, and I'm in the book with two stories, one written specially for the charity; so I may be going to the reading if I can drum up the cash for a visit to ultra-expensive London. The British Library is one of the finest venues for a book-launch in the world; and if you happen to be in the area at the time, I definitely recommend going to this event! Click here for more details.

Monsters of the Victorian Age #6

2010-10-05T11:12:00.003+01:00

Chimney Monsters

Chimney monsters keep the Empire happy. Chimney monsters keep the Empire warm. They dine on chopped wood and black stones and never complain. Without chimney monsters where would we be? Not here, not here! Chimney monsters keep stuck sweeps for pets. Chimney monsters call a spade a shovel. Black, blistered and riveted they cough all day; roaring and hissing they glow all night. Chimney monsters share our air. They jut their horns but not their chins. If chimney monsters went away, the Queen would fall and break. The Empire too. Even the smallest chimney monster is grate. Remember that!

A Sterling Effort

2010-09-29T19:26:00.008+01:00

I have finished The Coandă Effect at last! One month it took me from beginning to end. It's a Corto Maltese adventure featuring physics, ghosts, pirates, bandits, submarines, bicycles, hats, icebergs, vermouth, the Second Balkans War of 1913, duels, cobwebs and a Finnish villain so dastardly that even I am shocked by his antics! This novella turned out to be slightly longer than I originally anticipated, 24,000 words in total. I'll correct it tomorrow (there are always mistakes) and send it to my publisher on Friday.

Here's a short film Adele made of her artworks with background music by underrated prog-rockers, Camel.

Last Friday it was my birthday. I climbed to Mumbles lighthouse for the first time in my life. Also I was unexpectedly asked to interview the great SF author Bruce Sterling for the Italian national newspaper, La Stampa. The deadline was very tight but I did it in time! The interview has just gone online here. The English version should hopefully be available soon. I was delighted with Bruce Sterling's answers: he's an enormously clever but utterly unpretentious man and the messages embedded in his brilliant writing are genuinely important.

A Fossilised Stone

2010-09-22T21:09:00.009+01:00

Today I found a fossilised stone! I'm fairly sure it dates from the Silurian Period (between 440 and 395 million years ago). I have used inductive reasoning to reconstruct its final moments. It appears that a prehistoric scissors became snagged in the finger branches of a hand tree; its cries attracted the stone, which then got stuck in the sand; the struggles of the stone attracted a predatory piece of paper, which trapped itself under the stone. All three perished together. The scissors and paper in this photograph are models (the originals decayed before petrification was possible) but the stone is genuine. Fossilised stones are incredibly rare! Note that the paper is covered with practice attempts at perfecting my new signature: this only deepens the mystery!

It's a well-known fact that scissors, stones and pieces of paper form a self-contained food chain. But a system of this nature with only three elements is inherently unstable. So here's an improved set-up, also entirely self-contained, that features five elements. Biodiversity is of vital importance! This schematic, incidentally, was drawn by a fellow named Anthony Lewis: he acts in this film as a bald jazz-singer. The two extra elements are: Dynamite and Raincloud. As can be seen, the Rock blunts the Scissors but it also smashes the Raincloud; the Scissors cuts Paper but it also severs the fuse of the stick of Dynamite; the Dynamite blows the Rock to pieces but it also disperses the Raincloud with shockwaves; the Raincloud rusts the Scissors but it also makes the Paper soggy; and the Paper still smothers the Rock but now it also becomes a letter of complaint to the authorities about the owner of the Dynamite, who is subsequently arrested.

For more silliness about stones check out my Postmodern Mariner blog...

A Defence of Puns

2010-09-15T11:56:00.006+01:00

Wordplay. For a long time I have been amused by the British distrust of it. But even though I say 'British' it would be more accurate to specify 'English', as the Celtic Nations don't share the same attitude. English readers and critics... Ah! They seem to regard wordplay with a soul-wrenching horror. The use of homonyms, mondegreens, pataphors, lipograms, palindromes and even alliteration can reduce them to quivering lumps of unhappy protoplasm. And as for puns... perish the thought!

However, the English are experts at putting on a brave face. They certainly aren't softies and they know how to convincingly disguise fear as exasperation. When they encounter a pun in a text, they don't hide behind the sofa but grit their teeth, roll their eyes and utter one of three following words, almost as a protective formula: "Groan!", "Ouch!", "Argh!" Once the final echoes of the chosen utterance have faded, they enter a period of refusing to take the remainder of the text seriously. No matter how profound the themes, how original the style, the text has become a bitter thing in their eyes, an ordeal, a slough of despond. For the English reader, the pun is an unforgivable solecism.

I am an author who enjoys wordplay and therefore I frequently encounter this attitude among English reviewers and critics. My own view is that wordgames are a bonus to the major elements of a work of fiction, the sidedish or pickle to the main feast, so to speak, and should not be confused with the main course. Surely it is generous of a writer to provide this bonus rather than simply presenting a plain ungarnished meal? It's rarely perceived that way. The English critic will seize instantly on the sidedish and examine it almost exclusively, insisting that it somehow stands for the true feast. This is bizarre.

I once ended a story with the sentence, "It was a killer peruke from Wigan." A silly, throwaway line. The story in question was one in which I had reversed all the conventions of orthodox ghost tales: the main point was to experiment and subvert the form with a playful application of logic. I added that final line as an afterthought, as a wink or gherkin. One reviewer insisted on using it as conclusive proof that jokes were the entire point of my story. I had made it easier for him to ignore the fact that the piece was actually about ontology. Perhaps he didn't know what ontology was and thus was grateful I had provided him with an escape route.

Readers and critics in other countries don't suffer from the wordplay-phobia of their English counterparts. I used to believe that one of the reasons I am more highly regarded as an 'ideas writer' outside England is because in translation my works are shorn of the distractions of my wordplay; but in fact many of my translators make great efforts to replace my untranslatable puns with puns of equal value in their own language. In one Russian anthology every single example of wordplay in my contribution had its own explanatory footnote. I was deeply touched by that dedication.

One of the reasons that wordgames (especially puns) are disparaged by English critics is because there's an assumption that the most respected English-language writers of the past avoided them entirely and only employed sober language. But in fact it was the mid-level authors (Henry James, John Galsworthy, Jane Austen, etc) who adopted that approach; the truly great masters relished the use of wordplay. I need only casually mention Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare. As for the modern masters: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Flann O'Brien, Gilbert Sorrentino, Vladimir Nabokov and Donald Barthelme, among many others, have all proved themselves adepts at convoluted wordplay.

So what books would I recommend as the finest repositories of wordplay that I've encountered? What are my top five volumes in this category? Well, to make such a selection I first must ensure that the works are entertaining not only for their wordplay. The wordplay mustn't be the main point, but a bonus; yet it must be a bonus good enough to carry the other essential qualities without interfering with them. So then. What do we have? In reverse order, I suggest:

(5) Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss,
(4) Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel by Julián Ríos,
(3) Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau,
(2) Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian,
(1) Infante's Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante.

And the Winner is...

2010-09-10T20:28:00.009+01:00

(1) Jukka-Petteri Halme

And the two runners-up are:

(2) Luísa Ferreira
(3) Mads Pedersen

Jukka will be the main villain. Luísa and Mads will also be villains but slightly less dastardly. Either they will be in the employ of Jukka, or else they will be rivals to him. Another fellow by the name of Tom Alaerts has already secured a place in the novella by prior arrangement: he will be a pirate. Thanks to everyone who entered! Further details of the selection procedure including a full list of entrants can be found on one of my other blogs, here.

Into the Hat

2010-09-07T13:25:00.007+01:00

I should have chosen a villain out of the hat by now, but I have decided to postpone that procedure until next Friday, so you still have a few days left to forward your name if you want to be the chief villain of The Coandă Effect. So far twenty-two individuals have offered themselves for this dubious privilege! Here are the names waiting to go into the hat. Do you want to join them? Email me at rhysaurus@yahoo.co.uk. You may ask yourself "What good is there in being a villain?" and to that question I will naturally reply "Precisely!" with a sinister chuckle!

Of course, there's no point just showing the names without revealing the hat. So here's the hat! It came from a Brazilian "Festa Junina" I went to a few years ago. These São João celebrations involve dressing up like farmboys and country girls and dancing the "quadrilha", a sort of wilder version of square dancing. Good fun after drinking rum. Talking about fun, Adele and I spent an excellent weekend wild camping on Oxwich again. We went there partly to indulge in some "weirdlight" spotting (I hesitate to use the term "UFO"). For some reason the skies above Oxwich are full of odd lights and the dunes and marshes behind the beach aren't short of will-o'-the-wisps and other peculiar glows. Anyway...

I have just done a piece about the book I would like to be buried with. Click here to read it. This is an ongoing series and some of the other authors who have taken part have come up with a few interesting choices. The truth is that I don't really want to be buried with any book; I would prefer to be cremated on a beach. But any opportunity to plug the particular author I have chosen must be taken!

This Author Wants You!

2010-08-31T22:21:00.011+01:00

I have finished one of the five projects mentioned in my last blog entry. The Truth Spinner is done at last and will be on its way to my agent later this week. The final part, 'The Thousand and One Pints', puts paid to Castor Jenkins: he now has eighteen linked exploits. I believe that this book is one of my best, but who am I to make that judgement? I ought to say nothing more along those lines. Nonetheless I am deeply satisfied.

So now I can devote myself to The Coandă Effect. I was amazed that so few people worked out the clue of the box of chocolates and the Toledo blade. 'Cut' in Spanish = Corto. And 'Maltesers' with the last two letters obliterated? Yes, I am writing a CORTO MALTESE adventure! There will be magic, science, mystery and mayhem, as the enigmatic "sailor without a ship" plumbs the delirious depths of a fiendish plot to convert the souls of the dead into pure energy!

Corto Maltese is less well-known in the English-speaking world than he ought to be. I was a typical latecomer to the character. Back in 2004 my Lebanese friend and translator into Portuguese, Safaa Dib, compared me to Corto: I had to seek him out to learn the true meaning of this far-fetched compliment! In fact he reminds me more of some other great fictional characters: Oswald Bastable in Moorcock's Nomad of Time trilogy, for instance, or Maqroll el Gaviero, eponymous hero of Alvaro Mutis' novella sequence, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. I highly recommend both those works too!

Already I know much of what will happen in my tale. It will be set in Romania in the year 1913; Jack London and Franz Kafka may put in brief appearances. But... I am lacking a villain! Do you want to be the main villain of The Coandă Effect? Have you ever thought of yourself as a dastardly rogue living in a time when magic and adventure were more commonplace than now? If so, email me and I'll drop your name into a hat. Already twelve people have offered themselves as candidates. At the end of this week I'll let destiny decide and select a name at random. That's what destiny is for, isn't it? Kismet!

Five Books at the Same Time

2010-08-23T00:24:00.015+01:00

Yes, I seem to have got myself into a position where I'm working on five books simultaneously! How did that happen? Dashed if I know! It just did. The main danger presented by this situation is imagination overload, a circumstance where I feel so overwhelmed by parallel and overlapping streams of possibilities that I become incapable of choosing any of them, leading to a sessile condition where I resemble a piece of sculpture in terms of my ability to move at all, physically, mentally or morally. "Reflexes of a statue!" was one of my favourite rebukes when I was younger; delivered for best effect to someone who had just failed to catch something or move out of the way in time. Here we see a statue of a lion failing to catch my drift.

Clearly I must be overproducing. Personally I don't believe I am, but there's no other logical explanation for it. Occasionally people "in the know" have told me to slow down, ease off, slacken my pace, in order not to flood the small corner of the market where I dwell; but I don't know how to do that. And anyway I can only write while I'm alive and no human lifespan is very long on the cosmic scale. I write a lot now, true, but I didn't write a single word before I was born, and approximately 13.75 billion years passed between the creation of the universe and my birth. That's a lot of years without writing anything! In a similar manner, I won't write a single word after my death; and between my death and the end of the universe there will be trillions more years...

So why shouldn't I churn out stories and books in the brief time while I exist? I need to do this for health reasons anyway, to keep pace with the ideas that keep effervescing out of my brain lobes. I never need to struggle for story ideas: on the contrary, they keep coming at an accelerated rate! If I don't express them in time my entire mind will effervesce to the point of total bubbulation. That's a word I invented just now, so don't look it up...

What are these five books I'm writing? Let's examine them one by one.

(a) The Brothel Creeper... A selection of my more serious dark tales from the past 20 years, all themed around 'sexual or spiritual tension'. No wordplay, no lightheartedness, no nonsense. Just pure existential crises of souls, minds and bodies. I have only one more story to write for it before this book is wrapped up, but the missing piece is going to be a major.

(b) The Truth Spinner... The complete stories of Castor Jenkins. An insatiable reviewer by the name of Stephen Theaker reviewed The Postmodern Mariner and said something to the effect that Castor, who has the first third of that book to himself, ought to have an entire volume of his exploits; I recently decided to take his advice to heart. So I have been writing new Castor Jenkins tales: there will be eighteen in total and I have only two more to write.

(c) The Young Dictator... A novel I began writing a few months ago: about a young girl who takes over the universe with the aid of her gran. There will be six chapters and I have only written the first one; but the other five have been worked out sufficiently well for me to know exactly where the novel goes and how it ends.

(d) Tucked Away in Aragon... The Albarracín tales. As soon as I arrived in the remote town of Albarracín back in September 2007, I knew I would probably write a series of stories about the place. This is going to be a short book of ten linked tales covering the past thousand years of Albarracín's history. So far I have written four of those tales.

And now for the new addition:

(e) The Coandă Effect... A novella of 22,222 words (I picked that number at random because I like the look of it) that is going to be an exploit set in Romania, partly dealing with the real Coandă effect (and thus with the pioneering aviator Henri Coandă) and partly with a spiritual version of the same effect. The hero of this work is a fictional adventurer already famous thanks to a series of fine comic books. I won't state his name; you'll have to guess. But I am willing to give you a visual clue; and in fact that clue is in the photograph below...

Have you worked it out yet? The blade in the picture was bought in Toledo but not long afterwards I took it with me to Córdoba. That's another clue... Anyway... I have absolutely no intention of taking on any new projects until at least three of the above five are done and dusted. Bubbulation is an unpleasant experience! This means that works in progress such as The Pilgrim's Regress, Ditto & Likewise, The Clown of the New Eternities and various novellas I have been planning ('Bedsteads Across Iberia', 'The Once and Future Peasant', '500 Eyes') are going to have to wait until next year. I have given myself a directive that I must write a minimum of 1000 words every day for the next two months at least. Spare a thought for me; I am coping with effervescence!

Vibrant Art

2010-08-16T10:48:00.011+01:00

Here's a painting by Adele Whittle. I bought it a few days ago: I had an overriding urge to obtain it for myself, so I did. I rarely buy art, or anything at all. I suppose I am a collector by nature, but certainly not by circumstance. I have neither the money nor the space to accumulate objects in large quantities, be they books, ornaments or artworks. Yet sometimes one needs to act against circumstances and treat oneself. Why not?

Although I can't paint or draw with anything remotely resembling aptitude, I do enjoy good art; but I ought to say a few words about my particular taste. When it comes to literature I am enthralled by technical virtuosity, the complex experiments with form of the OuLiPo writers for instance; but my appreciation in this respect doesn't translate into the sphere of the visual arts. Excessive detail and intricacy in paintings tend to leave me cold: it's true that I adore Escher, but it's his ideas rather than his perfect draughtsmanship that moves me. What I truly like in a painting is colour, energy and luminance -- in a single word, VIBRANCY!

So what instantly riveted my attention about this painting is the way it almost seethes with force and colour under particular lighting conditions. It almost feels alive. Photographs don't do it justice: within the purity and simplicity of the design and the cyclic symmetry of the colour schema there is an astounding play of light reflections. If I wanted to sound pretentious I might say that this quality is entirely in phase with my own aesthetic frequency!

Apparently this style of painting is called impasto and is achieved by thickly laying on the paint with a knife. I guess there's a point when the paint can be layered so densely that the work becomes almost a sculpture rather than an orthodox painting. I have just learned that the root noun of the word "impasto" is pasta. I wonder if it would be possible to create a painting with spaghetti? Certainly a Jackson Pollock abstract would be achievable simply by flinging a dish of spaghetti at a canvas (though I have heard it said that Pollock's work is significantly fractal and not as random as it seems).

Anyway... More of Adele's art can be viewed here. She has paintings in various exhibitions and galleries and cafes around Swansea, and jewellery and objets d'art (including paintings on driftwood and on shells) in selected shops.

Monsters of the Victorian Age #5

2010-08-12T11:55:00.006+01:00

Entangled Monsters

The difficulty of disentangling certain monsters after they had embraced each other led to the passing of a law in 1868 that treated knotted conglomerations of imaginary beings as single units for the purposes of moral and scientific research. Monsters can be sticky and massively elongated, making entanglements almost inevitable and natural; and yet the general public tended to regard monster knots as examples of tragedy. On the lighter side, an Italian chef was inspired to create a new dish called "spaghetti" by the sight of an especially intricate knot of monsters off the coast of Margate. Some people dispute this and claim that the first spaghetto was created in the 12th century, but such arguments are now all in the pasta. It is not entirely unknown for Lecturing Monsters to be included in the set of Entangled Monsters.

Pandora's Bluff & The Irresponsibiliad

2010-08-04T09:10:00.017+01:00

I have finally decided on a title for the 1000 story cycle I have been working on for the past twenty years. PANDORA'S BLUFF. I like the allusion to Classical mythology, to the box full of troubles and the tiny but indomitable figure of 'Hope' at the very bottom. But in my scheme it is reversed -- lots of little 'hopes' and one Big Trouble. It's a pleasing title, cynical without being bitter, and it should help me feel that all the stories I have ever written really are part of just one work, however bloated or asymmetric it might eventually turn out to be. So then: I'm now confidently able to declare that I am 54.1% of the way through Pandora's Bluff...

I have also decided on an overarching title for the series of historical novels I plan to begin writing when I turn 50 -- if I live that long, of course! That title is THE IRRESPONSIBILIAD. I say a 'series of historical novels' but in fact the idea is to write just one vast novel -- the longest novel ever written. I first conceived the notion of doing this when I was 16. I envisaged a family saga starting in the year 5000 BC and following a single line of descent through 270 generations to the present day. Really it's just a grandiose excuse to explore every ancient civilisation that has ever fascinated me: the representative of each generation will travel geographically as well as through time, just like our real ancestors did, taking part in some of the key moments of history. Naturally, without having the grounding of the same characters throughout the work there needs to be something else to act as a structural glue, to ensure that The Irresponsibiliad truly can be defined as a proper novel rather than a sequence of separate incidents. I believe I have found the perfect backbone for the immense arc of this project: genetic workshyness. Each new descendant will attempt to live a life of minimal toil within their particular milieu, with varying degrees of success from none at all to plenty. This single chronic quirk should lead the cast of the book into conflict with society and authority: into revolution, evolution and maybe even transcendence.

That all remains to be seen... The project is almost certainly beyond my abilities anyway. The amount of research necessary even for its commencement is prodigious. So far I know only that the first volume will be called The Sky Saw and will be set in Ancient Sumer. I have long been intrigued by the Sumerians, the inventors of writing, the wheel, beer and boardgames; and the benefactors to mankind of the oldest book of fiction, The Epic of Gilgamesh. It was The Hamlyn Children's History of the World, one of the favourite volumes of my boyhood, that first revealed the existence of the Sumerians to me. Recently I spotted a copy in a charity shop and bought it for reasons of nostalgia...

I don't know if The Irresponsibiliad will be contained within Pandora's Bluff or not; I always assumed it would, but now I'm not so sure. I can imagine writing 1000 linked stories but I can't imagine finishing the longest novel ever written. No matter: it is always better to be magniloquent than modest in one's schemes! And yet I tend to keep my biggest projects locked inside my head. This one has been mostly locked up for 27 years and it feels good to set it free at last!

Moby K. Dick

2010-07-27T13:33:00.013+01:00

This photo shows the paranoia whale, Moby K. Dick, after he was released from his mug prison. He is sprawling across the main road between Porthcawl and Ogmore-by-Sea, blocking the path of a truck carrying a cargo of sea glass. Only joking -- there's no such road! Moby K. Dick is pink, but that's not his natural skin tone. On the contrary, nobody knows his true colour. The fact of the matter is that he emits pink light through his blowhole and some of the rays collapse back down on top of him.

Moby K. Dick first featured in a story called 'Return to Zenda' which was about Elvis impersonators in Ruritania. That story was published in my Sereia de Curitiba book in Portuguese, but still hasn't appeared in English. Moby has also played a role in 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival', 'The Private Pirate's Club', 'Whaling Well' and 'Eight Blathering Buccaneers'. In the near future he will probably appear in many more tails -- I mean tales. Michael Bishop also incorporated Moby K. Dick into the playful Story/Introduction he wrote for my Crystal Cosmos book, leading one reviewer (Evelyn C. Leeper) to attribute the invention of the paranoia whale to Mr. Bishop. Inaccurate reviewing is the bane of my writing life!

And yet, at this particular moment in time, the main unanswered question remains: who released Moby K. Dick by upsetting his mug prison (observant fellows will note it's an Odyssey 2010 mug)? Which scoundrel would dare such a thing? We don't really have far to look to discover the villain of this cetacean japery! Yes, it's the pirate China Melville himself! China Melville's ear was bitten off by Moby, so he replaced it with a giant barbiturate. China has never forgiven Moby for the disfiguration and has vowed to eternally hunt his tormentor, which explains why he has released the paranoia whale just now. You can't hunt what's already captive!

For more monstrous nonsense along roughly similar lines, here's a guest blog I have written for Gestalt Mash. It's about Mike Mignola and Hellboy and how they both inspired me.

Books in Their Natural Setting

2010-07-19T12:49:00.016+01:00

Authors are required by custom to promote themselves in sundry ways. This photo shows outsize copies of my Twisthorn Bellow novel in the park next to Adele. Being so large, these books are difficult to shelve domestically. But some ordinary-sized copies are still available from the publisher or elsewhere. He wrote to me recently to say that only a dozen of the first print-run remain; so best to hurry if you want an inaugural edition!

While on the subject of book promotion, I might as well take this opportunity to plug The Postmodern Mariner yet again. Copies are still available and if you want a discount, simply order one direct from the publisher here while mentioning the keyword "discount". Do this, and not only will you please the publisher and me, you'll also delight the characters in the book, especially Castor Jenkins.

A few days ago I wrote a new Castor Jenkins tale, and it seems inevitable I will write more; probably I'll collect them all in a single volume when I have enough, but not before The Postmodern Mariner sells out. I never planned on returning to Castor: it happened spontaneously. Into my head popped a title for a story, 'The Monkey's Pawpaw', about a haunted papaya that can grant wishes, and it just flowed out from there.

I am also returning to Mr Gum, my obnoxious Creative Writing tutor. As my Mister Gum novel is due to go into a second edition, the publisher suggested I expand the book with a new story. So that's what I'm working on right now. You can still buy the first edition here. I'm also preparing to write the fourth installment in my Albarracín sequence and the second chapter of my new novel, The Young Dictator. It's all go!

Oh yes, and I've just signed a contract with an Italian publisher. I'm going to be translated into Italian! So I'll have my pizza with a topping of ragazza, if you please. Grazie tanto!

Philip José Farmer Tribute Book

2010-07-12T21:38:00.003+01:00

The long awaited tribute volume to the great Philip José Farmer is now available. The Worlds of Philip José Farmer: Protean Dimensions can be ordered from the Official Philip José Farmer Website here. This is a limited edition volume that contains unpublished work by Farmer, as well as a host of stories and articles by other writers. Only 500 copies exist; and approx 400 of those were pre-orders. Which means that there's only about 100 left in TODO MUNDO... So place your orders fast! As I've said before, this book contains one of my own stories, a tribute to Farmer entitled 'The Pollinators', which explains why I am wearing a flowery hat in an effort to promote the volume. Actually it's not really a hat but a pair of Adele's shorts. Yes, you heard right. Shorts. Well, I'd look silly wearing full-length trousers on my head, wouldn't I?

The 10 Best Novels Ever Written

2010-07-07T17:13:00.006+01:00

On my one of my other blogs (The Rime of the Postmodern Mariner) I recently posted a short entry listing the “10 Best Short-Story Collections Ever”. I shouldn’t need to stress that the books on that list are my own personal favourites; and that I make no pretence to any sort of illusory or impractical ‘objectivity’. To my astonishment, that particular blog post turned out to be my most viewed entry ever, simply for the reason that the website HTMLGIANT posted a link to it.

I had never heard of that website before, but it clearly has a lot of devoted readers. After the link was posted, my statcounter went through the roof. I regret that I didn’t post the list on my main blog, which is this one. In a somewhat belated tactical attempt to increase the hits on this blog, I have therefore decided to create another list along similar lines, namely the “10 Best Novels Ever Written”. And so here it is, with a group photo of five of them.

My other motive for creating this new list was to see if it avoided one of the criticisms levelled at my short-story list. That criticism was that my list demonstrated “...a pretty narrow palate... No ladies, no one from Africa, Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, and all lodged in the 20th Century.” It’s a perfectly valid point to make, and I have no real answer to it, other than to say that as a white male European it seems that the products of my own basic culture appeal more strongly to me than all the many alternatives.

That’s nothing to be proud of, but it is the way things are for me, and there’s no point pretending that I am more in tune with (for instance) Chinua Achebe, Lu Xun or Arundhati Roy than I am with Italo Calvino, Donald Barthelme or Stanislaw Lem. And yet there was one Asian writer who nearly made it onto my short-story list: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

I wanted to see if my novels list would turn out to be more culturally balanced than my short-story one; but in fact it’s only a little more balanced in the sense that it includes one writer from India. There are still no ladies, Africans or Asians. My favourite African novelist is probably Mia Couto; and my favourite Asian novelist is probably Kōbō Abe, though Wu Cheng'en is not far behind. As for ladies: Ursula K. Le Guin never fails to amaze and enthrall me. And yet none of them made my top 10 list.

So here is my new list. Once again, the novels on it are in order, with best first.

* Froth on the Daydream -- Boris Vian
* Our Ancestors -- Italo Calvino
* The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll -- Alvaro Mutis
* Life: a User's Manual -- George Perec
* The Sot-Weed Factor -- John Barth
* All About H. Hatterr -- G.V. Desani
* Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry -- B.S. Johnson
* At Swim-Two-Birds -- Flann O'Brien
* Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon
* Dictionary of the Khazars -- Milorad Pavić

It could be argued that some of the above novels are actually omnibus volumes containing several novels or novellas. Yes, that's true; but it's equally true that my character is an omnibus package of various emotions and beliefs. So what? Once again I regret leaving certain authors off this list, especially Nabokov, Zamyatin, Aldiss, Moorcock, Queneau, Marquez, Maalouf, Cabrera Infante, Eco, Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, etc.

On yet another of my blogs, The Man Toucan, I discuss Tuckerization. Just because I feel like it...

Monsters of the Victorian Age #4

2010-07-04T17:34:00.005+01:00

Petrified Monsters

The common assumption that monsters are frightening, and that they frighten human beings, and that the reverse situation never occurs, was conclusively disproved by the opening of the Imperial Monster Museum in 1866, a public facility where unique cryptozoological exhibits could be viewed for a nominal sum. The rooms were filled with monsters that had literally petrified from fright after catching sight of a human face. These stone behemoths, sciapods, harpies, colossi, minotaurs, gorgons, cynocephali, onocentaurs and other mythical beasties were arranged randomly after the directors of the museum disagreed on how best to categorise them. The Imperial Monster Museum was closed in 1899 and the exhibits sold at private auction to statue enthusiasts.

Better the Devil

2010-07-01T10:40:00.028+01:00

Shall we have a sing-along? Ready? All together now! Seventy-six tale-bones played the big afraid, with one hundred and ten corny lines close behind... Yes, that little ditty is relevant to the following eBook. Available for the Kindle or other newfangled reading machine, Better the Devil, is my first purely digital collection and contains exactly 76 stories from the entire span of my writing career, including my two earliest surviving stories, plus my first published story, etc. All are very short -- that was the criteria for inclusion. Only a few stories are longer than 3000 words and many are below 1000 words.

In point of fact, Better the Devil, is an omnibus of my seven fiction chapbooks. So the contents are as follows:

* Romance With Capsicum (14 stories)
* The Skeleton of Contention (9 stories)
* Madonna Park (6 stories)
* Plutonian Parodies (3 stories)
* The Fanny Fables (8 stories)
* To Err is Divine (6 stories)
* The Devil You Don't (29 stories)

The final chapbook in that list was put together especially for this eBook and doesn't actually exist in a paper format, though you are perfectly entitled to print one off yourself, if that's what you want. It's a selection of 'flash' fiction. If you are of an arithmetical bent you have probably noticed that the above figures add up to 75. No mistake. I concealed the 76th story in the Introduction... Every author should conceal a story there, in my opinion.

Better the Devil is available from Amazon at the princely sum of $3.51 or free sample viewing here...
Or if you prefer to save a few coins, it's also available at Smashwords here...

Discrepancy

2010-06-25T20:06:00.009+01:00

My complimentary copy of the new Gray Friar Press anthology, Where the Heart is, arrived today. In fact it arrived several days ago but I didn't get the chance to pick it up until now because my mailing address isn't the same as my home address. To plug this anthology I took two photos that treat the anthology title as if it's a question that needs answering rather than a statement that doesn't. I tend to do things like that, I don't know why. An anthology of stories set in the home towns of British writers is a fine book to purchase and own; I would like to see its guiding concept extended to include the countries and cities of the European Union.

My contribution to that anthology is 8 years old, but I have been writing lots of short stories recently. Ideas keep coming and just won't stop. Indeed I feel that my brain is on the verge of overload. Unintentionally I have also started writing a new novel called The Young Dictator. Exactly when I'll find the time to return to The Pilgrim's Regress and Ditto & Likewise, my two abandoned books from 2008, is anyone's guess. Not this summer, that's for sure!

One of the stories I am currently working on is called 'Discrepancy' and it seeks to justify and rectify all the mistakes in all my other stories. This is a simpler and more creative solution than revising those earlier stories. 'Discrepancy' will also nip in the bud any mistakes that might crop up in future stories. By 'mistakes' I actually mean one specific problem: the fact that I have invented a large cast of recurring characters operating over large spans of time and space and that some of those characters have ended up being in more than one place at the same moment or even dying more than once in different circumstances. Clearly there is a consistency issue...

My solution is to arrange for all my characters to possess at least one puppet double, so that any discrepancies can be explained away by saying, "There are incidents in different stories that contradict each other? Ah no, one incident happened to the real character, the other incident to the puppet double." I have already utilised this escape clause openly in some tales but now I plan to extend it clandestinely to all my characters in all my tales. Certainly I will be no more aware than the reader which characters are puppets at any given time, but that's fine, I can live with that lack of knowledge. Let's just say: as a default setting they will always be the real characters until someone raises an objection by pointing out a discrepancy: only at that stage will they retroactively and conveniently become puppets.

It might be argued that my "solution" is contrived in the extreme. Indeed it is! But my attitude to the oft-invoked 'suspension of disbelief' mantra isn't the same as that of most other writers. It is closer in spirit to the attitude expressed by the great B.S. Johnson in the final part of his Albert Angelo novel. All fiction is fibs. Long live pure and unadulterated contrivance!