A bit of a glare on these, but returned home to find copies of:

—The advance reader copy of the Cabinet of Curiosities
—The Steampunk Bible (author copies—in stores now)
—Finch (Atlantic/Corvus UK paperback edition)
—Polish Shriek and Finch (well, okay, given to me in Poland)
—The Brazilian edition of my long story The Situation

Later, I’ll have photos of the books and other things acquired in our travels overseas, and then some posts on the actual visits.

Erm, not to mention Moomin stuff, pictured below, not including socks and deck of cards. (I should note some of it was gifted to us, and that although I went nuts in the Moomin store, it was thankfully offset by selling books at a con the last day in Finland. Whew.)

Much more later, but for now, the Finns have created a new hockey team for Tallahassee…

Thanks to everyone who contributed to our Leviathan 5 fund-drive! We did indeed reach $1,000 in the month of February–the final tally is $1,250, in fact. You can continue to contribute, of course, through paypal using the button on the sidebar (scroll down) or directly to vanderworld at hotmail.com.

All monies received will be held in a savings account until they’re needed, and all those who donated (or will donate) will be listed in the finished anthology.

More importantly, this means I have to fulfill my promise to dance on video—specifically, an interpretative dance based on my story “The Third Bear”. That should be done in the next week.

It’s been very busy around here, but there will be more posts this week, including my and Ann’s FOGCon schedule.

Thanks to Jeremy Zerfoss, who contributed this poster graphic based on the idea of “leviathans” (and cats!) to help generate donations. Thanks also to everyone who signal-boosted this effort!

So, lo!, Tessa Kum and I wrote a kick-ass novella for the Halo: Evolutions–Essential Tales of the Halo Universeanthology from Tor called “The Mona Lisa”. It features some very tough female marines, some evil scientists, lots of loud and obnoxious shooting at people, an alien named Henry, Unspeakable Horror, and much else as well. We were very proud of “The Mona Lisa,” and seeing the reaction to it in the anthology was great.

However, it wasn’t over yet! As it turns out, “The Mona Lisa” is now being turned into a motion comic, probably in about 11 episodes, to be released online over the summer. We got a sneak peek at the first two episodes recently, and as Tessa reports, “The peeps at 343 are clearly awesome. I didn’t think it was possible for them to get any more awesome. Surely they’ve broken some universal awesome limitation. Pyramid have also done a gorgeous job with the voice acting, effects and music. Seriously gorgeous voices happening in there (I luuuuv Mama Lopez’s growl!), and well matched by One’s gorgeous artwork.”

Tessa has a ton of screen shots over on her blog, along with more information.

As for me, I decided to go back over my old blog posts about the process of collaborating on the story, and I realized I’d already mocked out some visuals using puppets and a Romanian model spaceship.

How closely did my vision and that of the motion comics peeps match up?

Well, first off, here is my view of the marine’s ship, the Red Horse, and then their view.

As you can see, my ship was floating along a backdrop of interstellar carpet with no visible engine burn, while theirs is in space, where it ought to be. Also, I’ve neglected to put my marines on the inside of the ship, where they’d be able to breathe better.

Now, here’s a crucial moment: the crew is meeting and talking about the horrible, bloody find they’ve made, and what to do about it. Here’s my version, followed by theirs.

Once again, there was a fatal flaw in my reasoning, in that for some reason all of the main crew members have left the Red Horse for their paliver, and they’re standing on the carpet kind of nonchalantly, joined in this instance by a huge green alien baby and some kind of space cat. Whereas in their version not only is everyone inside, but the grunts are rightly separated out from the captain and the ship’s AI.

Finally, the vision of the characters is very different, as evidenced below.

We’ll both keep you posted on future sneak peeks of later episodes. So far, they’ve been very faithful to the structure of our original. Regardless, I’m fairly sure I’ve got this later scene wrong too:

Last year, I did a comprehensive overview of genre books for Locus Online. This time, in the context of writing a SF/Fantasy column for the NYTBR, reviewing for LAT, WaPo, and B&N Review, along with being the major contributor to the Amazon top 10, I didn’t particularly like the feeling of being semi-ubiquitous. So I suggested to the marvelous Mark Kelly that I just do a list of the best fantasy and that getting at least three other views with a bias, respectively, toward SF, YA, and, finally, heroic fantasy would be a good idea.

The result is great, I think, because it means more and different books get additional attention. Here, then, are the full best-of lists posted on Locus. They’re also a useful counterpoint to and/or reinforcement of the Locus recommended list. To buy and the full-on articles, click the four header links, although I’ve provided buying links for my list just cause I’m an Amazon associate.

Fantasy in 2010, A Baker’s Dozen – Jeff VanderMeer
Best Novel of the Year (3-way tie):

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz(Dalkey Archive Press)
The Narrator by Michael Cisco
(Civil Coping Mechanisms)
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
(Small Beer Press)

Ten More of the Best:
The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman(Tor)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
and The Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin(Orbit)
Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey(Eos)
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich(Two Dollar Radio)
The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee(Orbit)
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen(Random House)
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor(DAW )
The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer(St. Martin’s)
Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo(Peter Owen)
A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter by Peter Straub(Pegasus)

Heroic Fantasy–Larry Nolen
1. Carlos Gardini, Tríptico de Trinidad (Bibliopolis, Spain)
2. N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Orbit)
3. George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (eds.), Warriors (Tor)
4. Paul Kearney, Corvus (Solaris)
5. Andrzej Sapkowski, La Dama del Lago, volumen 2 (Alamut, Spain)
6. Ian Cameron Esslemont, Stonewielder (Transworld, UK)
7. Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (eds.), Swords & Dark Magic (Harper Voyager)
8. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Salute the Dark (Pyr; Tor UK)
9. Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings (Tor)

Top 10–Gwenda Bond (with an emphasis on YA, although not exclusively)1. White Cat by Holly Black (Simon & Schuster/McElderry Books)
2. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown)
3. Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves (Simon Pulse)
4. Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare (Simon & Schuster/McElderry Books)
5. Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic)
6. Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown)
7. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
8. What I Didn’t See and Other Stories by Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer Press)
9. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook (Berkley)
10. Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)

Top 10 SF Novels – Adam Roberts (in alpha order)Lauren Beukes, Zoo City (Angry Robot)
Project Itoh, Harmony (Haikasoru)
Tom McCarthy, C (Jonathan Cape; Knopf)
Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House (Gollancz; Pyr)
Hannu Rajaniemi The Quantum Thief (Gollancz)
Francis Spufford Red Plenty (Faber)
Tricia Sullivan, Lightborn (Orbit)
Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe (Canongate; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Jean-Christophe Valtat, Aurorama (Melville)
Charles Yu, How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe (Corvus; Pantheon)

(Art and design Jeremy Zerfoss; slogan, Stepan Chapman; download a high res version here)

The long and the short of it: Raw Dog/Guide Dog is now offering not just the hardcover and trade paperback of my nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures (see TOC) but a signed limited edition that includes the following additional section and a different cover. All royalties I receive these editions of Monstrous Creatures will help fund, along with direct donations, the translations component of the anthology Leviathan 5.

Bonus Section for Limited: “Monstrous Jobs” (in which I am forthcoming about odd jobs I have held)

—I’m Not With the CIA” (in which I am chased by a vicious dog)
—”Ms. Bookwarehouse” (in which I must do unnatural things in a bookstore)
—”The Baron’s Son with Blackened Fishsticks” (in which I must write narsty things to Taco Bell)
—”Lord of the Flies with Middle Management” (in which many bad things happen)
—”How I Became Dr. Lambshead’s Assistant” (in which I am chased by an idea)
—”The Pellet Story” (in which I am arrested for a time)
—”Pitch Me Eden” (in which freelancing becomes Biblical)

Free PDF download of my prior nonfic collection Why Should I Cut Your Throat?

Cover by Jeremy Zerfoss (higher res on his site):

One story that didn’t make the cut because of space considerations below, along with a video of another story I only ever tell aloud and isn’t work-related…

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Five rather intriguing and unique books have entered the house the past few days, and I’d like to put some special emphasis on them. I haven’t read them yet, but have sampled all of them.

Netsukeby Rikki Ducornet—One of our iconic surrealists, Ducornet has gone very dark this time, with a tale of a psychologist who “seduces both patients and strangers,” in a feat of very deep characterization. A strange and unusual book.

From the Land of the Moonby Milena Agus—Set in Sardinia, this is another treasure from Europa editions by the looks of it. A young woman reflecting on the life of her grandmother, telling a sweeping story that’s charming and painful. A short novel but a grand scope.

The Last Brother: A Novelby Nathana Appanah—Set during World War II on Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, this novel, from a sampling, is both devastating and beautifully written. The book follows the life of nine-year-old Raj who is put in a prison camp and meets a Jewish refugee named David. The novel focuses on Raj’s life in the camp and the two boys’ attempts to escape.

Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imaginationby Minsoo Kang—A wonderful short story writer, Kang has turned his hand to nothing less than a history of automata that looks absolutely fascinating. There are chapters on Alexandria, Masahiro Mori, Vaucanson, Borelli, Kempelen, Capek, Metropolis, and more. (I’m honored that my “Dradin, In Love” is mentioned on page 46.)

Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto: A Novelby Maile Chapman—I’ve read Chapman’s short stories and they’re brillliant, especially the one we reprinted in Best American Fantasy. This first novel made a Guardian list of best first novels while being criminally under-appreciated here. Junot Diaz says it best: “Maile Chapman is one of my favorite writers and in [her novel] she has given us an eerie gift…It is a superb hallucinatory piercing, an ominous dispatch from that Gothic frontier of the Female Body.” The novel’s set in a convalescent hospital in Finland and the writing, again from a sampling, is brilliant. Compared also to early McEwan and Highsmith.

Like what you’ve read here? Consider donating to Leviathan 5.

If you’ve followed this blog lately, you know that Larry Nolen, Paul Charles Smith, and I have formed a blogger book club. Every few weeks we read a book and then post our reviews of it, without sharing our opinions with each other ahead of time. I then also post the book info and snippets of the reviews to the Amazon book blog. So far, we’ve covered Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps, Matt Bell’s How They Were Found, and Michael Cisco’s The Narrator (with guest J.M. McDermott).

Since these reviews have seemed useful in spreading the word about under-appreciated weird books, we thought we’d continue—and not only continue but formalize a schedule for those who want to read along. If you do read along and post a review around the same time as ours, I’ll add the link to our coverage.

Here, then, is the tentative schedule for our posts, which we’ll update with each new round of book reviews.

Early February: Elmer by Gerry Alanguilan (graphic novel)—”Gorgeously drawn black-and-white artwork combines with outstanding storytelling in this modern-day fable of ethnic strife, identity, friendship, and family. The titular character has been a writer all his “human” life, keeping a secret diary that his son Jake discovers and reads after Elmer’s death. Along with his newly engaged sister and gay movie-star brother, Jake returns to his childhood home for Elmer’s last days, stays on for his funeral, and helps his newly widowed, delicate mother. Oh, and Jake and family are sentient, well-spoken chickens.”

Late March through May: The collected works of Eric Basso. This writer of what I would call avant garde gothic/weird literature is criminally under-appreciated and under-reviewed, and requires an extensive re-visiting. (His “Beak Doctor” is included in Ann and my The Weird antho from Corvus.) Therefore, we will be reading multiple texts, with others read as reference points for the main volumes under review. We’ll have writer Matthew Pridham joining the team as a special guest sharing his opinion as well. We will cover, in multiple blog posts:

The Beak Doctor and Other Stories: 1972 to 1976—”For years, Eric Basso’s novella, “The Beak Doctor,” has sustained a cult reputation among a hard core of avant-garde writers. This collection of short stories begins with a tale of death and hideous resurrection, moves on through a quest for the great horse who rules a subterranean polar kingdom, an atmospheric cycle of short prose pieces, a tragicomic roman noir set in Istanbul (in which the great horse appears in a new guise), and concludes with the harrowing odyssey of a masked man in a fogbound city turned upside down by a plague of sleeping sickness: “The Beak Doctor.”

The Golem Triptych: A Dramatic Trilogy—”According to Jewish legend, the golem is an automaton in human form created through magic, a spirit that could be called upon to perform tasks for its master. The central character in this dramatic trilogy, Joseph Golem, is an old man who dies in a prison camp and is brought back to life by a young woman. Moving through time and various identities, Joseph finds himself in 16th-century Prague, where he assumes the identity of Rabbi Judah Loew, creator of the golem.”

Bartholomew Fair (novel)—”Set in London during a killing heat wave, the novel unfolds as a terrible cataclysm is about to devastate the city. Begun in the Middle Ages as a religious festival in commemoration of St. Bartholomew the Great, over the centuries Bartholomew Fair passed through several metamorphoses. Now it has gone underground. Its lone survivor recounts the story of the Fair’s final, sordid incarnation, and the bizarre odyssey which brings him face-to-face with the unspeakable.”

The Sabattier Effect (novel)—”An investigation into the death of an old man takes place in a French village, but nothing about this investigation is as it first appears. Its prime witness, a photographer, is interrogated by a police inspector about the dead man, his connection with two mysterious younger women, and the enigmatic painting the man had hired him to photograph. His account of events triggers a series of flashbacks in which the immediate past comes dangerously alive. The investigation becomes a desperate quest to rescue a present threatened with extinction by the unpredictable past that is about to engulf it.”

We will also be reading and referring to the following by Basso:

Decompositions: Essays, Art, Literature 1973-1989—”Decompositions collects all of Basso’s essays on art and literature in one volume. Basso approaches his subjects not as a critic but as an artist reflecting on the works, lives, deeds and frailties of other artists. These studies cut to the quick of what it means to create, and be created or destroyed by, a great poem, story, novel or painting.”

Revagations: A Book of Dreams, Vol. 1: 1966-1974—”In these pages, we discover an unconscious life laid bare in a myriad of bizarre adventures and intrigues.”

Accidental Monsters: Poems and Texts 1976—”Completed in six months, on the eve of the poet’s twenty-ninth birthday, Accidental Monsters was Eric Basso’s first collection of poems. The author carries us through a world where landscapes and interiors merge, a terrain vague of fleeting visions, gnomic adventures, enigmas, grotesque creatures and bizarre mechanisms. We eventually journey to an unnamed planet, and are witness to several sinister tableaux.”

Catafalques: Poems 1987-1989—”A dark magic works here, sustained by poetry that is often complex, ironic, disquieting, impassioned, and sometimes even wildly comic. In these pages we are confronted with the poet in midair, the Walrus Voluptuary, a tree that becomes a woman, a man with the head of a black swan.”

June-July: Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias. Writer Kai Ashante Wilson, who suggested Marias’ work, will join us as a special guest blogger. This is a three-volume novel, and will probably require three separate posts. Here’s a description from PW of volume one: “In his leisurely, incisive latest, these preoccupations fuel a plot with a spy-novel gloss. Jaime Deza, separated from his wife in Madrid, is at loose ends in London when his old friend Sir Peter Wheeler, a retired Oxford don, introduces him to the head of a secret government bureau of elite analysts with the ability to see past people’s facades and predict their future behavior. A cocktail party test proves Deza to be one of the elect, and he goes to work clandestinely observing all sorts of people, from South American generals to pop stars.”

August: Helen Oyeyemi, novel(s) to be determined.

[facebook status message reclamation program initiated...]

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For those of you who might have missed it, our bountiful state of Florida has in its infinite wisdom seen the ascension to power of Emperor Rick Scott. Scott is Florida’s first emperor and has already issued such decrees of intent as “regulations? what regulations” and “agencies? what agencies?” as well as “fired? you’re not fired—I need you for two more months, and then you may leave my Presence.”

Most of these pronouncements have taken the form of Bulls***s rather than Holy Bulls as the Emperor has been sanctified and ordained by another source entirely, one south of even Florida, if you look at the depth charts.

It’s hot down here, but it’s about to get even hotter.

All Hail Emperor Rick Scott!

Sincerely,
Evil Monkey

P.S. Please remember when saying the name of His Excellency: His first name begins with a not-so-silent “P”.