For those of you who’ve missed it, Nisi Shawl has been guest blogging along with Cynthia Ward on Booklifenow. Today, I’ve posted Nisi’s last entry—very thoughtful and useful to writers, or anyone, really.

I have lots more to blog about this week, but am finishing off, for Steampunk Reloaded, “A Secret History of Steampunk,” a 16,000-word monstrosity that includes contributions from several writers and artists. More on that, new anthologies, a new book project, and a book release later on, along with book reviews, etc.

Whew. Am I going to survive this week?

I might as well give up and admit it–chances are there are going to be a lot of posts on weird fiction here while Ann and I work on this big book of, erm, weird fiction. It’s a good outlet for what’s an intense, satisfying, at times frustrating, and epiphanal project. The book will cover roughly a century, from about 1910 to the present-day. I see it as primarily post-WWI to 2009, but there may be some slight slippage. It’s not a best-of, per se, in that a true best-of for a century seems to me a ludicrous idea, but it’s also not just a history of the weird through fiction, in that we’re uninterested in including something solely because it has been dubbed “influential,” or as loose a group of stories as a “treasury”, which is often another way of saying “these are just my favorite favorites.”

In past posts, I’ve mostly described the grinding process of trying to read everything, in part to blow off steam from some tight deadlines. But there’s a lot of process here, too, which I haven’t mentioned. We’re more or less testing the weird, and setting up some limits and parameters to give the anthology focus while not being so intent on focus that it means excluding some things that our gut tells us should be in the anthology. (Two definite areas outside of our mission: straightforward fairy tales, no matter how grim, and horror fiction, predominantly from late 1980s/early 1990s, that has not even a whiff of the inexplicable.)

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Sigh. That there could be a story called “The Bloat-Toad” and I have not read it. But must order a story collection to read it. What if it turns out to be bloat and toad in name only? What if it is feh?

I don’t believe I’ve ever met Joe Gordon, the chief mastermind behind the Forbidden planet blog. We correspond via email, though, and I know when I do finally meet him it’ll be like meeting an old friend. And now that old friend’s blog has turned five! Joe’s written over 5,000 posts in the last five years for the blog. It’s one of my favorites–I visit it a few times a week. Highly recommended. And congrats for turning five!

There’s nothing like a bagel from friendly people who have the normal number of heads. I also am very fond of the temperature in the store. The fact that there are lights makes the place cheery and also not dark. I like to be able to see my hands when I enter a place and not have to light a candle to see the menu. There were chairs with all of the tables, and tables with all of the chairs. I also appreciated that there were no flying creatures in the store, like in some Long John Silver’s. I am afraid I did not find my long-lost brother in the store, but then I didn’t expect to.

While Ann and I work on this insanely huge book of weird fiction, covering a century, I thought it might be fun to ask a targeted question:

What are the top five short stories you love but that you don’t think get nearly enough respect? Why should they be reconsidered?

It doesn’t have to be fantastical fiction–anything you like. If you can only think of two or three, that’s just fine.

Selected excerpts from readings…

“Hmmm, yes,” he muttered, “sponges did occupy my thoughts for several hours. But so what, damn it?” he suddenly yelled out. “This still doesn’t make sense!”

***

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Godziemba.
“Hi, hi, hi!” seconded the woman.
“He, he, he!” responded the engineer.

And, from other reading…

“Bassett Morgan is known to Weird Tales aficionados as the writer obsessed with brain transplants, the theme of nearly half of her thirteen contributions to the magazine…”

There are about 300 more weird apartments pets beaches bars castles ruins highways houses outdoor theaters cars dirt roads nights professors writers painters musicians lovers enemies creatures farms dungeons catacombs books janitors fisherfolk faces eyeballs spinal cords things in bottles clocks knives mental hospitals etc in mah brains now than 48 hours ago.

My left eye has gone blind from reading steampunk stories.

My right eye has gone blind from reading weird fiction.

Thankfully, Ann’s not gone blind yet–and my third eye decided to open up right as the other two were going blind, and now I’m reading something composed on its thorax and cinderhausenblickblick by a multi-dimensional thing out of Alpha Centauri. But, the tale’s not quite right, and now I’m going to have to reject the story…and this thing has got tentacles in twelve dimensions, and shark’s teeth in twenty and claws in six.

I’ll be lucky if I’m not ripped from gultch to zillip.

So, some people are having a tea party in Washington D.C. this weekend. It’s very much like the tea party in Alice in Wonderland. There are many participants who seem to share genes with the Mad Hatter. Unlike with Alice’s tea party, though, the surreal absurdity on display isn’t harmless. In tough economic times, the potential rise of a far-right political movement—especially one based on lies and on simplifications—is cause for concern. It shifts the consensus reality just a little farther toward the conditions whereby a free state (albeit one beset by corporate lobbyists and other constraints against being a true democracy) becomes a truly totalitarian state.

So, I’m having a little tea party of my own here today. Here are a few of the planks in its platform.

—The sky is generally blue except when it’s cloudy.

—Global warming is real, and a threat to national security (and everything else).

—Electricity is real, not magic, and so is science.

—The federal government isn’t bad; stupid or greedy people in any system are bad.

—Gravity also exists, except when it comes to national politics.

—Religious freedom includes everybody, even (gasp!) atheists.

—Immigrants are people just like me and you (in fact, exactly like me and you).

—Evolution exists and functions even without your belief in it. In fact, it could care less about your belief or lack of belief.

—Our own quality of life is inextricably tied to the quality of our environment.

—Barack Obama is indeed a citizen of the United States of America.

—People who don’t believe in facts have quite literally gone insane and should not be trusted.

Well, those are just a few of the things we’re talking about at our little tea party today here in Reality Land. It would be nice to be able to talk about more complex issues, but for the moment, as Reality Land becomes so eroded that it’s almost an island now, almost falling into the sea now, it’s enough to shore up the sand bags a little by shoving them into place over the windbags.