Realms of Fantasy Folds: Is it Past Time to Save A ‘Zine?

January 29, 2009

Very ,very sad to announce that Realms of Fantasy is folding.

The news broke yesterday.

Realms of Fantasy has been with us for fifteen years and “was coming up on its 100th issue,” Cleveland said. “We were excited about the special Halloween issue we’d been planning, which would have been our first.” The staff is obviously harried by the news, and that it’s become public so quickly. Cleveland had been hoping to tell the authors and artists the news before it broke publicly.

Realms of Fantasy has been one of the anchors of the Fantasy short story publishing industry.  As a print magazine, Realms was billed as “the largest magazine in the world devoted to Fantasy”.  It was part of the big four anchor magazines of the industry (the others being Asimov’s, Fantasy and Science Fiction and Analog) partly built on the venue–a large glossy magazine (not a small pulp), its reputation for helping careers begin, the high distribution from subscription, and the amount it paid for stories. Editor Shawna McCarthy was recognized as one of the best editors in the business (and she will be here in the Yukon in April!–I hope!!).  Will all venues and markets go web-only?  Is that an answer to part of it–or is it about advertising, and since you’d have to have advertising either way, are closings inevitable?

With Fantasy and Science Fiction going bimonthly, Realms‘ closing narrows the market for writers of short FSF considerably.  If this is the beginning of the economic crisis, recession, depression, etc., then this isn’t a good sign.  Two out of four of the big anchor markets down or downsized?   I’m assuming Realms thought of all options–bimonthly, web-only zine, etc.— so I’m not gonna try to come up with suggestions for fixes…

However, now is the time to save a ‘zine.  If the economic crisis is just going to get worse, is there a way to help ‘zines as fans and writers?  Can we donate money? Tell us.  Can we help support in other ways?  Tell us.  Can we ask universities to adopt a Zine for a short period of time?  I was never one to subscribe much–mostly because I moved around every couple of years, and my subscriptions had a hard time finding me, and because I was often broke.  When I could I bought from the newsstand.  But if I can help by choosing three zines to subscribe to in order to save them from oblivion–let me know.  I should have been doing that all along.  However, if I thought it was balanced on my subscription, I would have done it earlier.  And I suspect many writers would feel the same way—that if people needed to borrow from us, they could.

Is there a way to stop the closing of Realms of Fantasy?  Is there a way to stop the decline in markets and venues and places to read great science fiction/fantasy?

4 Comments | fiction, magazine review, science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Using the Media 101: Blagojevich, Professor

January 26, 2009

Fascinating to watch the Illinois Governor use the Media as a tool to thwart any investigation of wrong doing.  He is appealing to the Court of Opinion.  The media, unfortunately, loves ratings over justice, and will continue to be used by Blagojevich until he is through with them.  His goals: get the people of the US to believe his story.  As long as he never admits anything, he believes he can keep this ball rolling.  But it is circumventing American Justice.  By blasting his testimony wide like this, he is of course tainting any future juries with his own twist of evidence.  Not that an impeachment trial needs a jury….

The man was caught on tape offering to sell a Senate seat.  How brazen is that?  And further, he just up and denies it.  And denying changes the facts?

This is a fascinating class in How To Use the Media.  As long as Blagojevich is newsworthy–he will be able to make the talk show rounds.  And today, dropping Oprah’s name as a possible Senate appointee, he jumps into Tabloid Reasoning.  Mentioning a high-profile positive person can gain you support.  Might as well say that he thought of  Ellen as a Senate pick….  it’s the thought that counts.  He’s ludicrous, but he’s playing the Media well.

Look at Roland Burris—there’s the example of how this works well.  Blagojevich throws off attention from the case of Bribery against him to making the case that Burris–an African-American and good candidate–should be appointed to the Senate–even if a dirty underhanded Governor appoints him.  The fight becomes Congress vs. Burris–who won’t back down.  Eventually, without a case against Burris (but with a great case against a corrupt Governor getting to appoint ANYONE), they are forced to seat Burris–pushed by the tide of Public Opinion.  Blagojevich’s appointment of a prominent African American also made the discussion about race.  Round two: the possibility of appointing Oprah to that Senate seat gets the discussion in his favor–he can throw conversation about his plans to do good in the world, rather than what he did bad.  He changes the conversation–masterful.

If he can say, in the same breath as he says Oprah, that the Illinois impeachment trial is bogus, the merits of one will transfer over to the subject matter of the other. Oprah–only invoked–could recast the conversation about the impeachment.  Brilliant.

And by dropping Oprah–he gets onto the View, Good Morning America, etc.  This is a Spin Tour to improve–no, to control–his image in American minds.  In the same way he made Burris completely innocent, cast as villain by Congress, he hopes to cast himself as innocent, running from “big government”–already he has tried to make himself seem like James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington–but, see, he’s already used this movie—when Burris went to Washington.  It worked for Burris–so Blagojevich is trying to make the Capra reference work for him too.  He plays on our distrust of the government–

–but HE is the reason that we mistrust government…..

Bribes, selling Senate Seats, being uncatchable, outside of Justice.  If Blagojevich doesn’t go down, his class in Media Manipulation will be Core Curriculum.  You’ll see everyone fight for their opinion, fight to be heard.  Why isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?  Accused people aren’t allowed to run everywhere and chat to the public.  But you will see this again and again if the Media lets this work.

I call on the Media to boycott Blagojevich–not allow him to use your show to make his case, or else we’ll see more and more of this circus, this circumventing of Justice.  I wish Burris had stepped down out of honor and courtesy to allow Justice to pursue its course.  But Blagojevich picked Burris carefully, knowing that Burris wanted that seat more than he wanted Justice.

And the Media wants ratings more than Justice.  And the People want Entertainment more than Justice.

But I bet Justice would be plenty Entertaining–let’s find out.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

The City of Ember: Clever Assignments For Everyone

January 26, 2009

Doon and Lina looking worriedThe City of Ember is a great fun family film, full of clever, unlockable mysteries. It comes with a map, all torn up and faded; it comes with a “ticking clock”–the fear that the city will wind up in the dark; and plenty of menacing obstacles. The ending leaves you wishing to be back in the more colorful Ember, but the movie enjoys itself and the city while it is there.

City of Ember is strongest when it is working within its world. Jeanne DuPrau is an excellent world-builder, trying to make a city buried beneath the earth believable. What would you do to make a nuclear bunker livable and expandable? The city is quirky and interesting and what I’d expect from a city slowly running down. Ramshackle, apartmental narrow English-looking cobblestone streets. No bad fumes down there–one would assume, with no cars–but then no oxygen either. True, the whole idea that the air and water are replenished–and yet not infected by radiation–is hard to swallow. But I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.

Opening sequence: I was getting ready for an infodump–but this is brilliantly constructed. If you’re gonna have to have an infodump, make it interesting. Tolkien does it with the history of the Ring in Lord of the Rings, and here, DuPrau talks about the Countdown box with the papers on how to Exit Ember. The directing on this scene focuses in on the hands of each successive mayor as they pass the box to each other in a line. So we set up our story’s inner problem, as soon as that line of succession is interrupted. Ember, like every other constructed engine, will fall apart. The city will go dark. The food will run out. And without the instructions, no one will escape. It’s up to two plucky teens to figure out how to escape.  It was a great way to start the movie/story.

I found the world so interesting–that unfortunately, I was disappointed when they escaped.  So let’s talk about the world of Ember.

High school graduation is not about living your dreams, but about getting an assignment to start working on keeping Ember going.  What a great idea!  Who needs years to find themselves?  Or following pursuits where there is no market?  (Where is the art down there?)  Lina wants to be a messenger; Doon wants to fix the engine, but on Assignment Day, they draw their jobs out of a hat (no more School Counselors with their aptitude tests!).  We start this movie with two people wanting something so badly, and they don’t get what they want!  Fantastic.

We see the city falling apart and the parents tell the kids not to worry about it.  This is the part that you feel resonating in today’s society.  There are several things we can do to make society work better and we better encourage our kids to work on them…or maybe we can do them.  Anyway, the city is falling apart–the kids join in the maintenance of Ember, but also want to fix Ember.

I was delighted by the cleverness of the plotting and worldbuilding in Ember, all the nooks and crannies we get to uncover.  In the movie, yes, we don’t get to spend enough time with Lina nor Doon’s past and their characters….so this is a plot-driven movie, as movies are wont to become.  But I still enjoy Lina and Doon.

Once their drive to exit Ember kicks in, though, they are consumed with that idea and we lose who they are.  They could be any two kids leaving the city.  It would have been nice to see more of heir characters shine through in their escapes–what they worry about, what they accidentally do.   But this is a MOVIE problem, not a story problem, likely.  The movie gadgets and Indiana-Jones style thrills take over to get the kids out of Ember.  And I liked the hidden “magic” inside the city–as if the city had been just a half-turn away from showing all its secrets.

Truly, I would have liked to have seen a whole movie about Ember BEFORE everything breaks down…but the plot moves them out of this nifty created world into, eventually, our own boring world with sunrises and prairies and mountains. Ahhh…landscapes.  They are nice.  But Lina and Doon, um, escaped the plot too, or forgot that they have no way of surviving on the surface.   The movie reminds me of a great carnival ride—a lot of action and joy and cleverness in the construction, and a sad sigh at the end when it’s over and the world has been “lost” and you have to exit the ride.  Not the sigh of characters you don’t want to leave–but the sigh that the cool part of the plot and story are gone.  For a discussion about movies that end with a “healed earth” as a trope, even when it’s looking more and more unlikely that the earth will just heal itself, click here.

I hear there are two sequels in books.  Both of them take place in a post-apocalyptic/new Earth in the US… but it is the idea of that buried, constructed city that sparks imagination.  If you’ve ever built a treehouse, ever put a sheet over tables and chairs as a fort in the living room, or marked up a cardboard moving box as a house–City of Ember appeals to you as the coolest underground fort can.  I hear that The Prophet of Yonwood is a prequel–and that will be cool to see how they built the city of Ember. I think DuPrau is hinting at some larger themes here and I like how she’s doing that.  We are all on Assignment Day–but we don’t have to draw ours out of a hat–but we need to pick them soon and get busy.

Rent the movie, enjoy the ride!  Or Read the Book, enjoy the characters!  Choose your assignment, fix the world!  That ought to cover it.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Repair-adise: The Myth of the Self-Cleaning Earth

January 25, 2009

3224040683_22edd9a60cOkay, I’ve seen the trope enough.  Yes, it is a hopeful image, but it perpetuates a myth.  End of movie: three or four people after post-apocalyptic disaster come out to “healed” Earth.  200 years in City of Ember.  700 years in Wall-E.

Gaia is a nice idea–that the Earth is bigger than us and will heal itself even from our damage.  However, it lessens any personal responsibility, and gives us some odd idea that humans, in the form that we know them, will be back one day after the Earth has gone through a cycle similar to a self-cleaning oven.

Oddly enough, the base idea is shared by those who don’t believe in Global Warming, or who don’t believe that Man is causing global warming–the idea that the Earth shifts in cold and hot and finds a balance and everything is returned to a state of Eden.

Here’s two things I know: The last Ice Age was a documented shift in the planet’s balance of hot and cold.  Those ice sheets lasted for more than 100,000 years, ending about 10,000 years ago.  The animal and plant life that we know from then have changed quite a bit over that span of time.  No more giant ground sloths, mammoths or neanderthals.  Even the steppe grasses are gone.  So,  it took the Earth 10,000 years to right itself–after some massive glaciation.  In other words, Global Warming may well indeed have been a natural shift, but Humanity will not survive a massive shift like that–certainly not in the way we are now. And likely, the Earth will come up with some radically new life forms–if it recovers at all.

The second idea here is that the Earth can take a beating from us.  No problem.  A) if it disposes of us, what have we learned?  and B)  We are capable of damaging an atmosphere irreparably.

Those Ice Ages, devastating as they were, still counted on an atmosphere.  If we hurt our atmosphere, isn’t it possible that we not just trigger an Ice Age, but stop it from fixing itself?  James Lovelock, the man who created the idea of Gaia–the earth that is an organism–was interviewed in New Scientist.

Do you think we will survive?

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.

It’s a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don’t think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen – a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?

We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn’t have to be a massive extinction. It’s already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK.

He has a lot of optimism that despite all the damage we can do as a species, that the Earth will recover–even that perhaps these amazingly smart humans, in his opinion, the apex of creation, will figure out how to live in harmony with the Earth–eventually.

But it also might allow both a fatalism and a hedonism to develop–as if we can do nothing to hurt the Earth at all.  Lovelock was instrumental in getting the global CFC ban that led to saving the Ozone layer.   Perhaps there are still more things to do to stop the warming that’s happening–as he suggests in the article.   Certainly, we have to think short term.  Lovelock’s vision–is that after thousands and thousands of years–humanity will survive and learn.  Movies shorten that to a few hundred years, a slap on the hand for our negligent behavior instead of the mass extinction probably waiting for us.  They believe in Man rebooting after the Earth has rebooted itself.  Repair-adise.

All these movies have people waiting out the storm, walking into paradise, virtually unchanged.  Free of humanity for a mere 200 years, the planet heaves a rainbow sigh of relief, bushy gardens of plenty.  But with our weapons we can inflict planetary damage; Wall-E can never clean up all the trash and one plant can’t feed the multitudes–and there will be a long wait for the storm to be over.  And humans may not survive as humans.  There may be no humans to come back out after 55 million years….and if there are, will they remember what they did wrong?  We have to affect change.

Sure, we may not die, but we will all be changed.

3 Comments | Movie Reviews, fiction, science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Inaugural Poem: Take Out Your Pencils. Begin.

January 20, 2009

I just finished watching the Inaugural Events on TV. Many things to talk about, but I want to use the words of the Inaugural Poet, Elizabeth Alexander, as a call to writers, and a call to Americans, to face the challenges we face in the world today.

Her poem, Praise Song for the Day, was Whitmanesque in its description of everyday people doing their jobs, but when she came to the Teacher telling the students to take out their pencils and begin, it stirred me. It reflected Obama’s call to action, and I heard it as a writer.

In Canada, I feel a bit outside of history as an American. As if America has gone on without me. It was my choice to leave America and work and live in the Yukon. I don’t regret that choice as much as I seek to know what my role is now. If anything, the Inauguration of Barack Obama called out the American part of me to work hard for freedom and justice. But here I am, in another country, and not so skilled at building bridges or repairing roads or even close enough to move towards changing policies. But I am a writer, an American writer. And there is much you can do with a pencil.

Alexander’s poem reminded me that we are all at the beginning of a test. A fiscal test, an international test, a test of our ideals and the strength of our nation. Wherever we are, we have that test before us–and now is the time to bring out our pencils and begin writing.

On this Inauguration Day, let us all take out our pencils and write the future. Write new policies, new ideas, to “meld imagination with a common purpose” as Pres. Obama said, and change what needs to be changed with a pencil and an eraser. Because with pencils, erasers are standard issue–we make mistakes, but we can correct them. Still, we have to write. Write to inspire. Write to correct. Write to change. To remind. To call out. Envision. Direct. Encourage. Explain. Record. Unite. Obama said to the nations that would oppose America–”We will outlast you.” And writing can outlast a thousand nations, even as it forges them.

Yes, I can build a bridge, repair a road, strengthen infrastructure–even from outside the United States. Writing has no borders.

Writers, go forge. “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

Leave a Comment » | fiction, science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Bishop Robinson’s Prayer to Open the Inaugural Events

January 20, 2009

Pardon my side trip from Science Fiction and Fantasy. But this is important. It’s unfortunate that HBO blacked out the opening prayer of Bishop Robinson, especially after so much controversy over Rick Warren’s selection to pray on Tuesday. Here’s the video. This was shot by Sarah Pulliam of Christianity Today. Christianity Today, in a really nice gesture, allowed it to be posted on their blog and here on Youtube. Sarah, you may have saved a moment in history, important to a whole community.

HBO also decided not to identify the Gay Men’s Chorus when they sang with Josh Groban. It looks like coincidence, but it hurts a whole community to be nearly erased from this historic moment. What you can’t erase, though, are all the gays and lesbians who are watching, and all their friends who are watching, and requiring something different and something better from this new administration. For your enjoyment, here is the well-written, and surprising, prayer of Bishop Gene Robinson. I love the irony of the Blessings section. Full text appears afterwards.

Full text of the prayer, courtesy of the Advocate. I hope they don’t mind that I’m posting it here–I think it should be spread as far as we can spread it.

Good afternoon,

Before this celebration begins, please join me in pausing for a moment to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

Oh God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears, tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die a day from malnutrition, malaria and AIDS.

Bless this nation with anger – anger at discrimination at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants; women, people of color; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort at the easy simplistic answers we prefer to hear from our politicians instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed any time soon and the understanding that our next president is a human being, not a messiah. Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the ways we care for the most vulnerable. And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office fo the president of the United States. Give him wisdom beyond his years, inspire him with President Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for all people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady calm captain. Give him stirring words, we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color blind reminding him of his own words that under his leadership there will be neither red nor blue states but a United States. Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him strength to find family time and privacy and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods. And please God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents and we’re asking far too much of this one, we implore you oh good and great God to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand that he might do the work that we have called him to do. That he might find joy in this impossible calling and that, in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

Amen.

__________________

Many in the GLBT community, knowing that Robinson was only going to pray on this first day–a Sunday morning when most other Christians would be in church–still they were looking forward to this representation by both Robinson and the Gay Men’s Chorus. Noticeably, they are hurt.

Though it didn’t get played on TV, on HBO, and will only be heard in snippets tomorrow morning in a collage playback before the swearing in, I hope this video gets round the world tonight to make up for it. Networks and Cable television have no idea the power of Youtube to completely make them obsolete in regards to news and events. You can’t erase a people from history. Not anymore.

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Yukon Fantasy/Science Fiction Writer Profiles: Marcelle Dubé

January 19, 2009

Marcelle DubéThe Yukon is home to more than just one science fiction/fantasy writer. In fact, there’s quite a few, so I’d like to profile them. These will be based on my experiences with them, not just interviews, though I’ve linked and excerpted sections of an interview Marcelle did with Joanna Lilley in What’s Up Yukon.

I first met Marcelle during the first Yukon Writer’s Conference in 2002. She was instrumental in bringing up Canadian sci-fi guru, Robert Sawyer, and for co-organizing a writer’s conference here that would do any university proud. We had six major writers, across genres, editors and agents, each giving multiple seminars. It was a three day event, complete with contests, one-on-one sessions with editors and agents, and food. I remember how shocked I was that this major operation was run by two people. Marcelle was stuffing bags full of free On Spec magazines, pens and pads of paper, in the Westmark when I ran into her for the first time. She didn’t seem like she was running amok–so I had no idea that she didn’t have a staff of twenty with her somewhere in the hotel.

We became friends, writing colleagues. She was part of the growing science fiction/fantasy community here in Whitehorse. And she wanted to provide writers here with the same advantages that writers down south would have. Not to mention, i think, that she wanted to bring up some people that she wanted to meet too!

Marcelle describes her work in this interview with Joanna Lilley:

I always like a plucky heroine who finds herself in a situation and needs her brains and her courage to get herself out.

Her stories often have well-conceived, elaborate cultures. I remember one of my favorite stories of hers, “Jhyoti“, that concerned how women prepared the dead for burial. Vividly detailed, well written, the story ended up in Challenging Destiny. Richard Horton, of Locus, recalls her story and two others (out of 14) in his end of the year review of Challenging Destiny:

From #25 I really enjoyed a rather traditional story — but very well done — by Marcelle Dubé: “Jhyoti”. The heroine is a low-caste woman trying to make it in the Academy. Doing some research, she finds evidence of terrible abuse and murder of a low-caste woman by a higher-caste person — can she risk her career, and disappoint her patrons, by investigating this? There are no surprises here, but it was quite satisfying.

Marcelle also got her work published in Julie Czerneda’s anthology of Polar Science called Polaris. She is just starting to sell, like me, and she has an excellent critical eye for story. I value her critique on my work. She attended World Fantasy with me and Claire Eamer (another writer you will get to meet on this blog soon) and made several more contacts. I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more from Marcelle in short stories to come. She has attended a Master Class workshop in the short story from Dean Wesley Smith on the Oregon Coast, and will be attending another this year.

But Marcelle is not satisfied with just growing her own career. She wants to help all of us. This generosity of spirit has made her invaluable to the writing community. Since 2002, she has helped host two other conferences, that I can think of, and one coming up in 2009. She and Barb Dunlop invite writers, editors and agents that span every genre–romance, literary, mystery, science fiction–so that everyone gets helped up here. Because of these conferences I have met more science fiction writers than I ever did in Texas (cause none of them came to Lubbock, Texas ) and all the writer’s conferences were done by AWP or MLA or SWPCA and had hundreds or thousands of attendees, which meant that authors, agents and editors were swarmed by people, who had much higher clearance than some refugee from Texas Tech. (I met Ray Bradbury in Lubbock–which is another story.)

Because of Marcelle and Barb–and the moneys granted to them by the Advanced Artist Awards and other Yukon agencies for the growth of the Arts–I was able to meet, dine with, and learn from Robert Sawyer, Matt Hughes, Candas Jane Dorsey, Terrence Green, and editor, Diane Walton of On Spec–as well as authors, agents and editors in othe genres. Yes, in the Yukon. Taking classes from Terrence Green moved my story “Lemmings in the Third Year” to publishable quality and his suggestions on places to send it helped it get published quickly in Tesseracts Nine.

See, we are never alone as writers. We are always beholden on the community around us to lift us up, connect us, encourage us, critique us, kick our asses. I’m glad Marcelle is up here; she’s a great colleague and friend and I hope to see more of her unique vision in all the fantasy and science fiction magazines. I also hope, for the Yukon’s sake, she and Barb continue to organize these conferences which bring the world of Publishing to the Yukon.

See you all in April for the 2009 Yukon Writer’s Conference!

Leave a Comment » | Yukon, fiction, science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Romance Novels You’d Love to See

January 15, 2009

I was laughing my head off at these. If you like them, you can click on the covers to go to links that have more covers just like these.

quickyspaceshiptube_sox

birds

Provided by Colleen Anderson on SFCanada’s listserv. Thanks Colleen!

Leave a Comment » | fiction, science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

36F, or Summer in Whitehorse

January 15, 2009

Beach, by Scarleth WhiteAh, is this great or what?  January 14, 2009: Even one day of 5C in the midst of -30C  is a beautiful thing.  Yes, the roads are slick from the melting snow–but look at those words again, “melting snow”—Can May be far off?  Can grass and green and summer’s sheen be right around the corner?  I just wanted to walk around town today.  I may still go walking somewhere.   I don’t hope the snow disappears–we need the cold for the Yukon Quest, and what would we call Frostbite if it stayed at 5C?  –Sunburn?  Rendezvous would have to give up ice sculptures and put an inflatable pool out by Elijah Smith.  Nope, we need the winter to be what it has been in the past–not -30C for three more months!— but definitely -10 to -20 for a few months longer.  However, it makes you love these moments.  These balmy 5 above moments. Just look at all the happy hat-free people outside, how they bring their dogs for walks downtown, how people are stopping and talking on Main Street, outside; those smiles are growing with every degree.  Tiny Tim is throwing his crutch in the air and shouting, “God bless us, every one!!”  Okay, maybe Tim isn’t–but this is the Christmas Cheer nonetheless, frozen in place on the streets during the holidays, thawing out and drifting around in the air.  The warm, summer air.

And, Mom in Texas, I never thought I’d say how warm 36F feels, but ohhhh, it’s toasty out there.  And, no, I’m not wearin’ a hat.

______________

Photo is by Scarleth White from her trip to Florida, but this is how we feel on a day like today!

Leave a Comment » | Yukon | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Ceases, Hope in the Comments

January 14, 2009

Year's Best Fantasy and HorrorLCRW announced the end of an era. The Anthology that praised the best in Horror and Fantasy published every year has ceased after 21 volumes. Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collected two genres together, ones that complemented each other. It was good to have the cross-pollination. There’s much sadness in the Fantasy and Horror worlds, yes, but there seems to be glimmers of hope in the Comments section which has turned into a Who’s Who of Fantasy and Horror. In these comments, Ellen Datlow reveals that she has a new publisher for the Horror side of the anthology and Kathryn Cramer, publisher of Year’s Best Fantasy, reveals they have switched publishers. It’s the “narrowly dodged the bullet” reference that Cramer makes that causes me to think that the YBF&H closing might have been a publisher decision to cut costs in the rapidly diminishing American economy* (Ellen Datlow comments below that it was a combination of things, but most importantly it was an agreed-upon decision between the editors and publisher, not a sole publisher decision. My apologies for jumping to conclusions.).

Editors and authors alike send condolences in the nearly 100 comments that follow the announcement. The anthology was a huge part of the community–a way to celebrate and honor stories that represented what was happening in that community. Award shows can be fleeting celebrations–anthologies preserve and mark the year. I felt like a family gathering in the comments for a funeral or a wake. I look forward to seeing what new incarnations will arise from these decisions. And if there is a wake for the Anthology, I hope it is a big, raucous one for all the good they have done for the community!

To purchase a copy of the last volume of work, celebrating the best of 2007, follow the links above.

4 Comments | science fiction and fantasy writing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jstueart

« Previous Entries