When I was a teen, and plowing my way through every F&SF book I could lay my hands on, I found that I loved some writers more than others: Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, C.J. Cherryh…and a slew of others. Many of them I can still find on the shelves nowadays, but one fairly prolific fantasy writer whose work I actively looked now seems to have vanished into the abyss: Thomas Burnett Swann.

Swann drew heavily on mythology, but scattered it with his own creations, and produced slim little books, usually illustrated by George Barr, that always struck me as an interesting universe in which to place a fantasy role-playing game, with its melange of intelligent races. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m realizing they influenced the fantasy world of Tabat, where I’ve placed one novel and about a dozen short stories, several decades later.

One of the things I liked about them was that they showed homosexual relationships without the heavy overlay of Guilt, Sin, and Brimstone that other books of the time possessed (if they acknowleged it existed at all) and moved away from the relentless (and at times freakish, at least to my teenage perception) heterosexuality of some of the others of their time (for example, John Norman’s Gor series). They were NICE books, enjoyable fantasy, about characters that one cared about, and the villains sometimes were people who had just made the wrong choice along the way.

Did I miss the reason why Swann has vanished into the Land of Out of Print Authors? Was he just a little too ahead of his time? Why haven’t any of these been reprinted? Was I the only person charmed by them?

George R. R. Martin, who’s participating, posted about this over on his blog: support Obama AND get some books.

As mentioned before, I’m the co-editor of Fantasy Magazine. One of the things that we’re trying in the next few months are some reprints of older works by authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Jules Verne, accompanied by notes that try to place the work in the overall fantasy tradition.

Why? Well, I proposed the idea for a number of reasons. One is admittedly commercial — it frees us up a little to do things like the occasional bonus story. The first of these will be a Halloween story by Deb Taber, “The Summoning of Spirits Too Far From Home,” which I harassed Deb for after hearing her read it at WisCon this spring. In December, we’ll have a lovely, funny piece from Carole Lanham, “Keepity Keep”.

But above and beyond the ability to do that, I think it’s interesting to look back at some of the roots of today’s stories, and while I don’t want to phrase this effort as one to “educate” readers, it’s one that I hope will inform them in a way that enhances reading fantasy overall.

(more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try Stephanie Meyer’s NYT-bestselling young adult series, TWILIGHT. I ran through the first two books fast enough that I went to get the other two in order to find out what happened. In many ways, they are well-constructed books of their type. (Lest anyone think that my compulsion is a mark of high quality though, I must admit that at one point in my life I read every single Remo the Destroyer book. Like Prospero’s mirror, I would happily wallow in the trash of future centuries.)

That said, I hate the message that these books give young women with every fiber of my being. I particularly hate the idea that the books’ popularity is due to their having some resonance in young women’s psyches. Because the underlying message — or so it seems to me — is that women can only achieve identity through their relationship with men.

Be aware, if you haven’t read the books, that I am about to spoil the holy bejeezus out of them. Quit reading now if you want to be surprised and whatever you do, don’t read the next paragraph.

(more…)

At the time I’m writing this — which is not the same time I’ll be typing it out or posting it — I’m that cliche, a writer in a coffeeshop. There’s others here doing the same thing, I think, but they’re all on laptops. I’m using something a bit more retro. Pen. Paper.

(more…)

An embroidered vest reading “Destroy Aristocracy”…sold at Macy’s for a mere $119.

Increasingly I feel I’m living in a Phillip K. Dick novel.

Have you called your senators and state representative to express your opinion of the proposed Wall Street bail-out yet? I sure have.

*taptap*

Is this thing on?

Right, then, here we go.

Hi folks! I’m Cat Rambo, and I’ll be guest-blogging for a couple of weeks. I’ve got posts planned on “literary” fiction, superheroes, games, podcasting, a smattering of politics, and a variety of other things, but I thought it would be polite to give you some sense of who it is behind the keyboard.

I came to speculative fiction through a circuituous path that included stops at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, a PhD program, the land of network security, and Microsoft. In 2005 I quit my job as a programmer-writer at the last of those, and went off to Clarion West, which was held right across the lake, in Seattle. My teachers that year were Octavia Butler, L. Timmel DuChamp, Andy Duncan, Connie Willis, Gordon van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick, and they crammed my head with wisdom and a lot of pithy sayings.

Since then, I’ve been writing short stories, some of which have appeared in places like Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales. In all of this, I’ve been lucky enough to have a spouse who supports me, lets me bounce ideas off him, stays quiet when I’m intently staring off into space, and who read just about every draft of the novel I just finished. You know you are loved when someone is willing to read your book not once, but five times. Accordingly, many shout-outs to Wayne, who is the best in just about every way I can think of.

I’m the co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, which puts out an online fantasy story each week as well as interviews, reviews, news, etc. This week’s story, “In This City,” is by Brian Dolton and we’ve included an audio version, which we’ve been trying to do more of lately. We’ve teamed up with PodCastle, which podcast fans may be familiar with, as part of that effort.

More to come soon…

I’m thrilled to have Cat Rambo, my co-conspirator on “The Surgeon’s Tale,” a finalist for the Million Writers Award, guest blogging for a couple of weeks here at Ecstatic Days. Rambo’s stories have been appearing for the last few years in Subterranean Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons, with work forthcoming in Weird Tales and Asimov’s SF Magazine. She also recently became co-editor of the highly-praised Fantasy magazine. I’m sure she has lots to talk about…

Thus ends my guest-blogging at Ecstatic Days, an experience for which I’m profoundly grateful to the generous Jeff Vandermeer.  I’ll be around over at my blog; I’ll also have a collection of stories out in about a month and a half, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, and a novel out next April, House of Windows.  Drop by when you can; keep an eye out for the books.  Thanks for reading; I appreciate it.

Here’s a link to one of my favorite contemporary poems, Robert Hass’s “Meditations at Lagunitas.”