With features on the new Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (pictured above) being posted later this week, it seemed like a good time to get in the old time machine and remember how this all started…with a Great Quail, Mad Quail Disease…and a fake disease guide titled The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases.

The article “How I Became Dr. Lambshead’s Medical Assistant”, published in 2005 at SF Site, goes into the origins of the fake disease disease guide and how what was meant to be a chapbook blossomed into a unique fiction anthology first published by Night Shade Books and then picked up by Bantam Books (Juliet Ulman, editor). Since the article came out, the anthology has been reprinted in the UK, Greece, and Portugal, with more editions in the works. The original edition was a finalist for the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award, among others. It’s a great example of when something quirky goes viral. Not to mention the ways in which Dr. Lambshead took on a life of his own—something carried over to the new book, as we shall see later in the week.

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Only thing I really didn’t get is Tyrion Lannister and most of his kin being flayed alive by the Iron Kings and their skins used to create an airship for the dragon queen to travel to Westeros in. Kinda weird.

(Wot? Are they trying to take our “The” away from us?)

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Fictions (Atlantic/Corvus, Oct) is now a huge set of loose-leaf pages in our house.

Well over a ream of paper, printed double-sided.

This (above) is what it looks like as a series of sedimentary layers. That’s the history of The Weird in pages, although the pages at the top contain the earliest stories.

We still have to add author notes, the introduction, and the extended copyright page, but it’s almost a reality. Kind of hard to believe…

For a variety of reasons—travel, project deadlines—I’m actually in the middle of reading several excellent, excellent books. Most I’m more than half-way through and I can recommend all of them on the basis that if each fell apart right now, on the next page I read, I still wouldn’t regret picking them up.

I am, however, afraid of them slipping through the cracks in terms of remembering to mention them, so I’m posting ordering links and info below right now, while I’m thinking about it. From top left to right, and then bottom left to right…

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This post by Tricia Sullivan, and comments by Liz Williams among others, is useful and necessary. Scorched-earth polemics can’t be the default reaction to stimuli, in part because they lead us no closer to solutions. Inflamed rhetoric, righteousness, and rigid ideologies of any type tend to corrode communication and thus obscure facts and analysis. We need more analysis. We need more facts. We also need to find ways to build community, and a sense of community, while we do it. Trust, and asking for trust, on the internet, may seem difficult at times, but it’s something we should strive for whenever possible.

I’d suggest posting over on Sullivan’s comment thread to add to that discussion. Here, I say simply: if there’s a great anthology or other project you think does a good job of representing writing by women, why not take some time to praise the editors/creators/contributors on your blog or livejournal? We need to recognize that praise goes a long way toward improving morale and energizing people and lifting them up. Public praise also helps signal boost what we love, and make it more likely that what we love will, to put it bluntly, sell well enough to enable more such projects.

PS Also note Cheryl Morgan’s comments.

Mord appears in Borne, the short novel I’m working on. In the novel, Mord is a huge floating bear-creature terrorizing a ruined post-apocalyptic city in which an anonymous dysfunctional Company still creates bioneered creatures for places far-distant that haven’t yet become failed states. The thing known as “Borne” is found by the viewpoint character, Rachel, who lives in a trap-strewn fortified underground stronghold called the Balcony Cliffs with Wick, a rogue bioneer who left the Company a few years ago.

I thought it might be interesting to interview Mord about the experience of appearing in the novel.

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I just wrote a short review of Rikki Ducornet’s new novel Netsuke for Omni. It’s a disturbing novel, in the best way, and pushes against what’s moral or decent. I don’t doubt it will be polarizing, and there’s something very compelling about the fact that even though Ducornet has had a long and distinguished career she’s not interested in being content or complacent in her fiction.

For those of you who must have this kind of information, the novel doesn’t have a speculative element but Ducornet is at heart a surrealist and any novel by her is fantastical at the level of metaphor—more so than a lot of “pure” fantasists. Simply put Ducornet sees the phantasmagorical in the mundane, in our reality. That’s one way you know you’re reading someone with a unique view of the world: it permeates all of their texts, regardless of the subject matter through the emissary that is their style.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ducornet—and she’s far from unknown in the “literary mainstream”—here’s a selectionof her novels and story collections to choose from. You can also read her Wiki, check her website, or read this interview She frequently does write fiction that includes some fantastical element. She has also illustrated books by Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges.

Evil Monkey: JRP?
Jeff: SOP

Recently, Stephen Colbert pointed out that our emperor…I mean, our governor here in Florida, Rick Scott—or as he’s known in our household, “Rick with a silent ‘p’”—has been encouraging his supporters to copy a form letter, intended for media outlets and created by the governor’s office, that praises his many accomplishment(s). Colbert has countered with his own letter for Floridians to send in:

Dear Editor,

It is my strong belief that Rick Scott is a(n) [adjective] governor. His letter praising himself makes me want to [verb] up. I [adverb] [verb] this great nation, and everyone should [verb] Rick Scott with a [noun] for a(n) [interjection ]full-body shave like a naked mole rat.

Sincerely,
[Name], [City]

I suggest we all do this—except you should also send it to Rick Scott, and post it on your blog while you’re at it.

Rick Scott has no accomplishments. On ideological grounds he rejected high-speed rail and the many jobs it represented, he has slashed state government to the bone as if those were not real jobs, and touted small gains of jobs coming to state as proof of his vision while the full tally is in the negative due to his efforts. Slashing education, slashing the safety net for those in our society who need it most. The cruelty is unbelievable. He seems set to put paid to what remains of our beautiful environment here, and in his remarks to African American legislators he proved himself to be an ass—at best. These are just a few of the ways in which he is probably the worst governor of Florida in the modern era. Unbelievably terrible. The capper is that he is one of those kind of people who cannot admit to mistakes, cannot apologize. Blech. This guy needs to be recalled.

My nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy through Essays, Articles and Reviewsis now available as a Kindle e-book for those who are interested. All royalties I receive go to fund the international translations component of our forthcoming Leviathan 5 anthology.

A new review of the collection, by Martin Lewis, just appeared on SF Site, under the ominous title of “Monstrous Creatures Jar Jar Binks Must Die” on my google feed. Thankfully, it just means Lewis is reviewing two books at once–indeed, he cheerfully chainsaws off a monstrous arm from my book so he can beat the other author over the head with it at one point. I can’t deny the arm he uses wasn’t intended in part for that purpose, though.

I think Lewis does a good job—not because he has significant praise for Monstrous Creatures but because he identifies both strengths and weaknesses. He also takes me to task over something related to New Weird, and I can’t really disagree with him.

My publisher, Guide Dog, will probably be happy to have this to quote: “VanderMeer’s love of the written word is obvious…This love and perspective translates into a fire; from the outset his views are unmistakably his own and no-one else’s…VanderMeer is one of the best writers currently working in the fantasy genre and what Monstrous Creatures makes clear is that being a critic is an integral part of this. We are lucky to have his words.”