I am taking this my day of days off from the book mines. I awoke long before sun-up, crawled out from under all the cats, and decided the best way to begin celebrating my 61st birthday was to do a couple of loads of laundry. I waited out the spin cycle by watching the final chapter of an ancient creaking movie serial starring Rex, King of the Wild Horses, and Rin-Tin-Tin, Jr., "the dog with human intelligence," then moved on to one of the very few computer games I own, Sid Meier's Civil War Collection. This was cutting-edge stuff back when![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bastet kindly bestowed it upon me 'long about the turn of the century, and thanks to updates and patches it continues to serve me well, though I still get my ass handed to me by Bobby Lee about half the time. I don't know that my success rate would improve were I to play the secesh once in a while; I am constitutionally incapable of defending the Confederacy.
Yesterday I received a respectable royalty check that could not have come at a better time -- I so hate being broke on my birthday. Once rosy-fingered dawn has finished pushing back the night, I shall move beyond the intense excitement of folding clothes to having a prescription refilled, laying in a fresh supply of cat chow, and perhaps mailing out a few books.
I know, I know: some people have sex on their birthdays. But probably not in Smyrna, Tennessee.
Slightly later: Sloppy weather is going to keep the cats and me indoors. This is perfect weather for reading Dickens, but "unfortunately" I've already read all of Dickens, so I shall make do with Karl May, whose Ardistan and Djinnistan Mike Bishop recently sent me. I'm exactly halfway through it. According to the Britannica, May (1842-1912) was the "author of travel and adventure stories for young people, dealing with desert Arabs or with American Indians in the wild West, remarkable for the realistic detail that the author, who never traveled outside Germany, was able to achieve." His admirers included Hermann Hesse, Albert Schweitzer, and Albert Einstein, admirers enough to gratify any author.
jess_ka and planetalyx, mine 'n' Michael Bishop's Passing for Human anthology has at long last become a real actual book, courtesy of UK-based PS Publishing. (As for the next item on the Utley/PS agenda, Peter Crowther writes, "We'll get onto the Silurian tales in due course but, alas, not for some time." Probably not till the Devonian.)Also, Ticonderoga Publications has reissued my first collection, Ghost Seas, in handsome trade-paperback and hardcover editions, with blurbs and prefatory material by Howard Waldrop and Mike Bishop and a new afterword by myself, and featuring the original line-up of 14 stories from Asimov's Science Fiction, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, etc. (Round round git around I git around.) Because Ticonderoga is based in Australia, titles bearing its imprint are printed and bound by the UK branch of the very book manufactory I work for right here in Tennessee. This is taking the long way around, but par for the course with us internationally unknown authors.
Finally, my story "Sleepless Years," originally published in the October/November 2008 issue of F&SF, reappears in translation under the title "Une vie sans sommeil" in the automne edition (tome 10) of Fiction: Anthologie périodique de Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Hamlet, Revenge! -- Michael Innes
Stalky & Co. -- Rudyard Kipling
Whose Body? -- Dorothy L. Sayers
The Inimitable Jeeves -- P. G. Wodehouse
The Mother Hunt -- Rex Stout
The Door -- Mary Roberts Rinehart
Riders of the Silences -- Max Brand
Murder Must Advertise -- Dororthy L. Sayers
Miss Pym Disposes -- Josephine Tey
Appleby's End -- Michael Innes
Innes, Kipling, Sayers, Wodehouse, and Tey give it a decidedly English flavor, despite the presence of the Americans Stout, Rinehart (she of the Had I But Known school of mystery fiction), and Brand. Currently I'm deep into Deadline at Dawn, by another American, "William Irish" -- a Cornell Woolrich pen name -- but I still have plenty of Kipling, Sayers, Wodehouse, and Tey in reserve, and I'm sure they'll serve me well on those wintry evenings when nothing beats a cup of tea, a companionable cat (or two, or three), and a cracking good yarn.
By way of stocking up for this exhausting round of activity, this morning I went shopping for music, reading matter, and food. I came away from the bargain bins at Digital Planet in Murfreesboro with a fat clutch of recordings spanning decades and genres -- King Oliver, Artie Shaw, Pete Townshend, Suzanne Vega, Hank Williams, Lester Young. A swoop by the discard table at the Smyrna Public Library netted me volumes by Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Anne Malcolmson, and Gordon W. Prange, thence, to the grocery store for whole wheat bread, bran flakes, yogurt, and dried fruit, and finally home again, home again. Total outlay for the morning, under $35.00. I tell myself that, because I've always loved bargain bins and clearance sales, I could have been just as frugal, done as well for myself, even without being burdened (for the first time in about a quarter-century) with a car payment. Never mind that the car payment itself is fairly modest; the idea of a monthly car payment galls.
Even if this were not a gorgeous day in itself, lisatuttle has put a gloss on it with the news that she just received a real actual book called Passing for Human at her home in the wilds of western Scotland. This can only mean that even now copies of this oft-delayed anthology must be making their way from UK-based PS Publishing across the Atlantic to us here in the colonies! I'm sure I speak for my co-editor Michael Bishop and for jess_ka,planetalyx, and the other talented contributors when I say, "Thank goodness! And about time!"
October finds me reading murder mysteries (very loosely defined at the moment as taking in both Nero Wolfe and Judith Rossner's Looking for Mr. Goodbar) and resting up from my all-too-eventful August and September. I find myself thinking about writing, too -- an encouraging sign, especially after the past two years spent languishing in Recurring Major Depressive purgatory. Other reminders that I am supposed to be a writer come by snail- or e-mail: a sixteen-year-old Parisian takes pen in hand to tell me how much she enjoyed Ghost Seas and Where or When, and Mark Morris reports that his Cinema Future anthology is now full to bursting with people's essays about their favorite science-fiction or fantasy films, and will be unleashed by PS Publishing at next year's British Fantasy Convention. Here's the line-up of flicks and scriveners:
METROPOLIS (1927) - Stan Nicholls
FRAU IM MOND (1929) – Christopher Burns
THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (1951) – Brian Stableford
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951) – Paul Meloy
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953) – Joe R Lansdale
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) – James A Moore
QUATERMASS 2 (1957) – David Pirie
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958) – Steven Utley
THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) – John Connolly
THE WASP WOMAN (1959) – Paul Magrs
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) – Bill Hussey
DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1962) – Christopher Golden
LA JETEE (1962) – Christopher Priest
ALPHAVILLE (1965) – Lucius Shepard
DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965) – Simon Guerrier
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) – James Moran
PLANET OF THE APES (1968) – Gary McMahon
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971) – David J Schow
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) – Ian R MacLeod
SILENT RUNNING (1972) – Alastair Reynolds
SOLARIS (1972) – Trevor Hoyle
SLEEPER (1973) – Michael Bishop
WESTWORLD (1973) – Stephen Volk
LOGAN’S RUN (1976) – Sarah Pinborough
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976) – Tony Richards
STAR WARS (1977) – Nate Kenyon
QUINTET (1979) – Gary A Braunbeck
STALKER (1979) – Adam Roberts
MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981) – Brian Keene
TIME BANDITS (1981) – Joolz Denby
BLADERUNNER (1982) – Guy Adams
2010 (1984) – Paul Cornell
THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984) – Chris Roberson
REPO MAN (1984) – John Skipp
THE TERMINATOR (1984) – James Barclay
BRAZIL (1985) – Steve Rasnic Tem
THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985) – Robert Shearman
ALIENS (1986) – Peter F Hamilton
THE FLY (1986) – Stephen Gregory
ROBOCOP (1987) – Jeff Strand
MIRACLE MILE (1988) – Terry Bisson
DELICATESSEN (1991) – Philip Palmer
TWELVE MONKEYS (1995) – Michael Cobley
THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997) – Nicholas Briggs
GATTACA (1997) – Ken MacLeod
DARK CITY (1998) – Ian McDonald
PI (1998) – Pat Cadigan
THE WONDERFUL ICE-CREAM SUIT (1998) – Mike Resnick
THE MATRIX (1999) – Juliet E McKenna
DONNIE DARKO (2001) – Sarah Langan
THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA (2001) – Elizabeth Massie
LILO AND STITCH (2002) – Tony Ballantyne
CODE 46 (2003) – Garry Kilworth
SERENITY (2005) – Anne Gay
V FOR VENDETTA (2005) – Ian Irvine
CHILDREN OF MEN (2006) – James Miller
THE FOUNTAIN (2006) – Steven Hall
THE MIST (2007) – Steven Erickson
DISTRICT 9 (2009) – Andy Nyman
STAR TREK (2009) – Toby Litt
1. Banks are not your friends.
2. Used-car dealers are just scaled-down politicians, that is to say, lying assholes.
With that taken care of, and once having discharged a promise to vacuum my mother's house for her, I happily pissed away the weekend cuddling with cats, doing light housekeeping, shopping for groceries and CDs, watching videos, reading an anthology called English Country House Murders ("Classic Crime Fiction of Britain's Upper Crust"), and listening to music by The Lovin' Spoonful, The Who, The Doors, The Byrds -- despite which, no, in fact, I'm not stuck in the 1960s, unlike all those seething neoconservatives who never got over having to stay in the house and read Ayn Rand while the rest of us wallowed in sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
Oh, and I signed on at Facebook, chiefly to shut up everybody who had been pestering me to sign on at Facebook. Explaining that I can barely sustain a Live Journal had availed me nothing.
Me sainted gray-haired mum is home from the hospital, stiff and weak but also more alert and with better color than had been the case for way too long a while. Between the new pacemaker and the replacement hip joint inserted a couple of years back -- an apparatus that looked like nothing so much as a piece of Terminator left over after Linda Hamilton smashed Ah-nolt in that hydraulic press -- she has edged definitely into Bionic Woman territory; by this time next week, she should be knocking bad guys around à la Lindsay Wagner.
I want to thank everybody for the commiseration, positive thoughts, and other manifestations of moral support.
Today I bought a silver 2002 Honda Accord, a make of vehicle that comes highly recommended by the people best qualified to recommend it: Honda Accord owners. I understand that the type is also highly rated by auto thieves. And Michael Bishop writes, "I hope you're happy with your new Honda Accord, the vehicle that Jesus and the twelve used to traverse Galilee, if one can believe the scriptural assertion that 'they were all in one Accord.'"
The Japanese have a saying, analogous to our "It never rains but that it pours": stung on the face by a bee while crying.
"Baby, I Love You" (recorded by The Ronettes)
"Be My Baby" (The Ronettes)
"Chapel of Love" (The Dixie Cups)
"Da Doo Ron Ron" (The Crystals)
"Do Wah Diddy Diddy" (Manfred Mann)
"Hanky Panky" (Tommy James and The Shondells)
"I Can Hear Music" (The Ronettes, The Beach Boys)
"Leader of the Pack" (The Shangri-Las)
"Maybe I Know" (Lesley Gore)
"River Deep, Mountain High" (Ike and Tina Turner)
"Then He Kissed Me" (The Crystals)
Thank you for all the groovy tunes, Ms. Greenwich. Without them, adolescence would have been less bearable. Especially the unbridled-teen-romance parts.
I have started shopping for a new car, or, anyway, a "new" one. This afternoon I drove into Murfreesboro to check out a vehicle that had attracted my attention online.
"I have come," I told the salesman, "to look at the 2004 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS."
"Somebody," said the crestfallen salesman, "stole it off the lot."
I have just now returned from Nashville, where I viewed the remains of my Cavalier at the MNPD Vehicle Impoundment Section. The thief or thieves completely trashed it.
This scotches my original plan to become a creature of the night, black, terrible, and strike fear in the hearts of superstitious, cowardly criminals, all the while driving a rental Batmobile. Instead, I have been driving, first, a rental Lincoln luxury car -- significantly larger than anything I'm used to; it was like being behind the wheel of, say, Rhode Island -- and then a Chevrolet lumpmobile that looks like an under-inflated SUV. It's just about as ugly as any automobile I can think of, and, worse, it's painted bright fire-engine red, so that I'm the most conspicuous driver on the road, and people, even small children, laugh and point as I go by.
***
In other news, my cousin remains in a coma, all because some asshole decided to run a red light.
My cousin Glenn was injured in an automobile accident this week and is not expected to live much longer.
Still, a fellow in Memphis named Aaron Cooper, whom I met elsewhere in cyberspace, has put this episode into proper perspective for me. "My wife has been freaking out and for good reason," he writes, "... we've had a serial rapist in town, and he struck in the apartment complex we live in. It's had us on edge." Grand theft auto is a serious crime, of course, but it's a crime against property, and you can always get another car. Rape is a crime against personhood; you can't ever get your old self back.
When we got to Smyrna, we discovered that my car had been stolen from my driveway.
I duly reported the theft to the Smyrna Police Department, did a snout-count of the cats (all present, if a bit weirded out), and am now ready to call it a day. I am so glad I decided, almost at the last possible moment, to take tomorrow off from work to decompress. Something tells me it's going to be a real ass-biter.