A Handful of Books

Saturday Patricia and I went browsing through antique shops in Gladewater (best known in spec fic circles as the birthplace of Joe Lansdale).

Gladewater has a used book store, and I left with a small armful of books for a little less than $20. My haul included:

"Golem 100" by Alfred Bester
"Absolute Magnitude" reprint anthology
"Aliens from Analog" anthology
"Two Crowns for America" by Katherine Kurtz
"The Star-Spangled Future" by Norman Spinrad
Asimov's Science Fiction No. 13, March 1979

But the prize in the bunch is the 1986 edition of Howard Waldrop's first collection, "Howard Who", published by Doubleday. It now joins the reprint published 20 years later by Small Beer Press on my bookshelf.

My entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

I just discovered I have an entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, written by John Clute. It's very accurate; it appears Clute is actually familiar with my work:

---

US journalist, editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Double Crossing the Styx" in Continuum Science Fiction for Fall 2004, and who has released a large number of stories since, though no novels.

A large number of these are tall tales set in a fantasticated Texas, many of them being assembled as Fantastic Texas (coll 2009; Texas & Other Planets (2010), with more Texas tales included in The Clock Struck None: a Collection of Alternate and Secret History Short Stories (coll 2014).

In a spare, swift, convincing narrative style, conveying in a deadpan voice a wide array of sometimes paranoid suppositions about the world, Antonelli juxtaposes realities with very considerable skill, creating a variety of alternate worlds, some of them somewhat resembling the constructions of Howard Waldrop, and making some sharp points about American history, race relations, dreams, and occasional nightmares in which the twentieth century goes wrong.

---

It's dated Jan. 15. I'm honored to be included. I omitted footnotes and stuff in what I cut and pasted above. If you want to read the original entry, here's a link:

"Kindermarchen"

It's nice to see Howard Waldrop's latest collection, "A Horse of a Different Color", getting great reviews. It was just released last month by Small Beer Press. One of the stories Howard included was "Kindermarchen", which I published in Sentinel Science Fiction - the website I ran in 2007. Howard made note of that in his afterword for the story:

"I wrote this the morning of Friday, July 15, 2005, at Conestoga, a late-lamented convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I read it on Sunday afternoon and revised it the next week.

"It was bounced a couple of places (Ellen Datlow; F&ST) before Lou Antonelli who'd always wanted to publish something of mine, bought it for his website and paid me $25.

"It was ignored by the rest of the whole world."

Well, maybe it won't be ignored so much any more. I always was impressed with it, and it's also been cited in the positive reviews the collection has received so far.

Paul DiFilippo, writing in Locus last month: "A fairy tale dark and poignant is the brief 'Kindermarchen'".

Howard also got a great review by Dana Jennings in the New York Times on Tuesday. Jennings commented

"'Kindermarchen' takes the tale of Hansel and Gretel and transforms it into a haunting fable of the Holocaust."

"Kindermarchen" is a relatively short story, only 1,600 words. When I published it, I ran a photocopy of Howard's typed manuscript through some OCR software to convert it to a text file before I cleaned it up. I'm glad I took the effort and helped the story get some attention.

"The Stinky Men" published

The British mag Fevered Dreams has just come out with its Issue No. 3, which features my story "The Stinky Men". This is the story I wrote on a Smith Corona Classic 12 portable typewriter in the Dealers Room at ArmadilloCon in 2011.

This story is a blatant homage to Howard Waldrop's "The Ugly Chickens" and in fact an alternate universe version of Howard appears as "Professor Waldrup" from the anthropology department of the University of Texas.

You can download a free PDF of this issue, all 99 pages, here.

This is my sixth story published this year, my 81st since 2003.

A talent passes

Like a lot of speculative fiction readers and writers, I'm saddened by the death this past weekend of Steve Utley. He was diagnosed with fairly advanced cancer approximately a month ago, and then slipped into a coma late last week. I was checking my email and Facebook Sunday morning before going to church when Gardner Dozois posted that Steve has passed away the previous evening.

My first thought was to call and tell Howard Waldrop, since I knew he and Steve go back a very long ways, and if you know Howard, he doesn't do internet. He knew Steve had been in the coma, but as I suspected, my timing was such that I was the one to let him know Steve had passed on.

Howard said he knew Steve back when they both lived in Dallas, and Steve was at the last local science fiction club meeting he attended before he enlisted in the Army in 1970! Howard's first story acceptance happened while he was in the Army, so that goes back a long, long way.

Howard said that Steve had once been a heavy smoker, but had quit a long time ago; still, it couldn't have done much for his health in the long run. Utley was about 64, and had moved to Tennessee a number of years ago to be close to his elderly mother; as Howard noted, now his mother survives him, and since he had a sister die, his mother has survived both her children.

I met Steve a couple of times at past Armadilocons. We probably shared a panel or two, I really don't recall. He was friendly when we actually met face-to-face.

One nice thing about Steve was that he published with anyone, from Asimovs to Bewildering Stories. Back in 2007 I bought two reprints from him of stories that had originally been published in a small magazine called Sheol that he and Howard had written for in the 1970s. I used them in my short-lived ezine, Sentinel Science Fiction. Howard made the original suggestion that I ask about the stories, and he was right, they were good, and I was happy to give the some exposure again.

Utley was a very talented writer, and his passing is a milestone in the Baby Boom generation of s-f writers.

"Kindermarchen"

Howard and I at ArmadilloCon in 2010.

With the World Science Fiction Convention being held in San Antonio next year - LoneStarCon 3 -  there will also be an anthology issued in conjunction with it, called "Rayguns Over Texas". The deadline for submissions was Dec. 1st. I sent in a story, but I doubt I'll be included; my s-f is too old-fashioned for current tastes - i.e. I don't always make the white male hetero Christian the villain, the future dystopian and America the Evil Empire. I know a lot of s-f writers don't like me because I am so non-PC; I really don't care, I got a day job. anyway. For me, it's just meant to be fun.

One of the few authors who's always been nice to me is Howard Waldrop - Howard is a nice guy in general. After I wrote the story I sent to the anthology, I called Howard last week to get caught up. Howard had a big and arduous move to a new apartment as of Nov. 1st. and I was unhappy to hear that didn't send anything in for the anthology- he said he was too busy with the move.

Afterwards I had an idea. I felt bad that Howard might not be included in an anthology that highlights Texas authors - he's the real deal.

Back in 2007, when I published original fiction on my Sentinel Science Fiction blog, I bought and published a story Howard wrote called "Kindermarchen", which was done for Conestoga in Tulsa in 2006. I remember his reading it, and in 2007 when I was doing Sentinel S-F, I asked Howard it if had ever been published.

It hadn't, and so I did. I called Howard back last Sunday and asked if it had ever been published anywhere else. He said it hadn't.

Sentinel S-F went away in the fall of 2007; I fell behind in my hosting payments because of the expenses related to my move when I took my current job. So it hasn't been available on-line for over five years. Therefore it has a very minor publication history.

I went digging through a pile of manuscripts and at the very bottom I found "Kindermarchen". I scanned it through OCR software, made it into a Word file, and asked Howard if I could submit it. He said sure, and I also asked the anthology editor, and he said to send it along.

So that's my good deed for the week. I think any overview of Texas S-F should include something from Howard. I hope he gets in. Anyway, it was the best shot I had for him. I called him this afternoon and told him I had sent the story off, and he was thankful.