Transmissions from Beyond has just posted Mercurio D. Rivera’s story, “The Scent of Their Arrival,” read by Mercurio and myself as the voice of the human.  You can listen to the podcast here.

At ReaderCon, I’ll be hosting a Kaffeeklatsch at 10 AM on Saturday for Sybil’s Garage, and then I’ll be participating in a panel about the future of spec fic magazines on Sunday at 11 am.  Here’s my official schedule:

Saturday 10:00 AM, Vineyard: Kaffeeklatsch [Sybil's Garage]

Sunday 11:00 AM, ME/ CT: Panel

The Future of Speculative Fiction Magazines, Part 2: Online Magazines / Conclusions. K. Tempest Bradford, Neil Clarke, Robert Killheffer, Mary Robinette Kowal (L), Matthew Kressel, Sean Wallace

“Are print magazines doomed? (Heck, if _newspapers_ can’t make it …) Or will they survive in their tiny niches? Are there ways to make them more viable? Is that even worth the bother? After all, online magazines are now easy and relatively inexpensive to start-are they the answer? Part two of our discussion concentrates on online magazines and then moves onto the Big Picture.”

I’m looking forward to seeing friends and meeting new folks there.

Darin Bradley reports that Farrago’s Wainscot, Issue 11 is now live, featuring fiction by Paul Abbamondi, Forrest Aguirre, Autumn Canter, Edward Morris, Mari Ness, and Angie Smibert. Issue 11 also features poetry by Lee Stern, Amy Riddle, William Doreski, and Mark DeCarteret—as well as an experimental wordform by Mike Keith.

I have always been a fan of Farrago’s, and not only because they have published my work twice, but because they continually push the limit in terms of content and style.  It is my belief that very soon now, Farrago’s Wainscot will start to win all sorts of awards for its fiction.

I am happy to announce that Sybil’s Garage is now available for sale at Word Brooklyn in Greenpoint, with a possibility of readings at some future date.  Thank you, Stephanie & Kelly!

I recently received my contributor copy of the Hatter Bones anthology, edited by Paul Jessup.  Chock full of creepy, cutting edge fiction, I devoured the book in two days.

Paul Jessup asked, in his guidelines, for “contemporary, strange, broken things” and “stories made from bird bones, broken bits, cobbled together out of things spoken in the rain.”  What resulted from that prompt was my short story, “The Girl in the Basement,” told in brief vignettes about a girl who spends her life locked in a basement by her parents.  It is one of my favorites, and I’m glad it has seen print in such a fine publication.

And what a great Table of Contents to be on too!  I’m alongside such talents as Matt Cheney, Darin C. Bradley, Ekaterina Sedia, Cat Rambo, Jason Sizemore, Lavie Tidhar, Forrest Aguirre, Becca De La Rosa, and lots more.  Many of the stories are dark, unforgettable things that punch you in the gut without remorse.  Some are science fiction, some are horror, some are fantasy, and many are in that interstitial place where a lot of excellent new fiction is taking place.

And I’d be remiss to not mention the artwork.  Artist Jesse Lindsay does a fabulous job illustrating each story.  (Click on Hatter Bones and then “The Girl in the Basement” to see the artwork for my story).

So check out Hatter Bones from ENE press and let me know what you think!

Not one, but two Sybil’s Garage reviews were posted yesterday.  The first was from Cat Rambo at Fantasy Magazine.  She says:

“Ever since first discovering the magazine Sybil’s Garage in 2005 after being shown it by Kris Dikeman, I’ve loved the small press magazine produced by Matt Kressel of Senses Five Press. The magazine’s steady climb in quality moves to upward from an already pretty high starting point, and this issue shows the trend continuing.”

You can read the full review here.

The second review came just minutes later from Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker.  Charles says:

“One of writer Damien G. Walter’s challenges is that “We need more beautiful magazines” and Sybil’s Garage No. 6 easily fits that bill. While not as experimental as McSweeney’s, editor Matthew Kressel does a lot of outstanding things with this issue. Aside from the well-designed layout, each story/poem is preceded by a recommended song and this presentation is consistent. There’s also what seems like random scribblings by an enigmatic writer at the end of various texts but it all culminates into one meta-narrative that this reviewer found tear-jerking, even if it’s just a simple plot and conceit.”

You can read his full review here.

And remember, you can always get a copy of Sybil’s Garage No. 6 here.

I had set three alarms.  Two on my clock radio which I’ve had since college, and one on my iPhone.  Of course, I was up at before all of them.  It was 2:45 am, and I was on my way to Jim Freund’s radio show, “Hour of the Wolf.”  Still Friday night/early Saturday morning, the noise from the evening (I happen to live close to several bars) had just faded only an hour or two before.  I showered and swallowed a cup of coffee when normally I’d be delta-deep in REM sleep.

As soon as I stepped downstairs the car service I had reserved pulled up, and next thing I knew I was off, speeding out of Greenpoint towards the BQE.  I told the cabbie to listen to WBAI, 99.5 FM and he immediately tuned in to a reggae/talk politic show.  “Do you like science fiction and fantasy?” I asked.  “No, not really,” he said.  But he seemed more than happy to tune into the station and listen, I suppose because most of the folks he picked up at this quiet hour were either drunk or business folk worried about catching their flight.  How many had asked him what he liked?  Or perhaps he just wanted a good tip.

The caffeine kicked in as we sped along the BQE.  I felt high, superb.  It had been a long time since I was up this early, long before my circadian rhythm would have me, and as we sped over the Brooklyn Bridge, I glanced over at Manhattan, half-asleep, city lights dimmed for the night.  It felt magical, surreal, wonderful.

When I pulled up to the WBAI station, out pops Jim Freund from his car service.  With bagels.

We went upstairs and noshed and chatted and soon the rest of Altered Fluid showed up.  This time it was Rajan Khanna’s time to read on the air.  We shuffled into the studio, introduced ourselves to the listeners, and then Raj began “School Bus,” a story of a bus driver whose mother is dying from cancer and enrolls in an experimental drug program to get money to support her treatments.  But the drug, it seems, has unintended side-effects.  It was interesting, I recall as I write this, that in the car on the way to the studio, the talk-show host was talking about how prescription drugs often have side-effects which cause the same symptoms they are trying to cure.  Sometimes the universe just synchronizes that way.

Rajan has an excellent radio voice and did a superb job with his story.  (He’s recorded podcasts for Jeffrey Ford, among others.)  Then it was time for our critiques.  Eugene Myers, who was traveling, could not attend.  But thanks to the magic of Google Voice, Jim was able to play Eugene’s critique live on the air while we read a mostly accurate speech-to-text conversion of his voice.  Had we not prompted him, the casual listener might have thought he was present.

Overall, the morning went extremely well.  We even got to take several calls.  (Though, sadly, no trolls.)  Before we knew it, it was 7am, the show had ended, and the sun had risen over New York, and the East River, dark before, was now flooded with light.  All too fast, I thought.  All too fast.  Not to worry, though, I told myself.  We’d be back before long to do it again.  It’s become a regular thing.

For those interested, you can listen to a recording of the show here.  And you can see some of my photos from the show here.

Altered Fluid will be appearing this Saturday on Jim Freund’s radio show “Hour of the Wolf.” We will be critiquing a story by Rajan Khanna live on the air. The program airs from 5-7am on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NY Metro area, or can be heard live and after the show anywhere in the world at http://stream.wbai.org. Here’s a link to the Facebook Event. You can read about our previous on-air hijinks here.

In the introduction to Mercurio D. Rivera’s “The Fifth Zhi” on Escape Pod, editor Stephen Eley says, “Sybil’s Garage [is] one of the best run and downright prettiest of the small press magazines…”  Coming from the editor of one of the most successfull SF podcast magazine (and arguably with the largest listenership), that’s high praise.

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

A Clarion West Special Event

With Samuel R. Delany, Jack Womack, Cat Rambo, Kris Dikeman and guest-hosted by Rajan Khanna, July 15, 2009

In honor of 25 consecutive years of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and Amazon.com’s challenge grant, the KGB Fantastic Fiction series will be featuring a special Clarion West reading on July 15, 2009.

Clarion West is a non-profit literary organization that administers the Clarion West Writers Workshop, an intensive six-week workshop for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy, held annually in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Amazon.com has pledged to donate one dollar to Clarion West for every dollar the workshop receives from individuals, corporations, government offices, charitable foundations, and special events.

	Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and critic who lives in New York City a teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia. His books include Nova, Dhalgren, Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories, Atlantis: Three Tales, and his most recent novel, Dark Reflections, won the 2008 Stonewall Book Award and was a runner-up for that years Lambda Literary Award. His forthcoming novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders will appear from Alyson Books in 2010.
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	Jack Womack is the author of Ambient, Terraplane, Heathern, Elvissey, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Let’s Put the Future Behind Us, and Going, Going, Gone. He was in 1994 a co-winner of the Philip K. Dick Award and has twice taught writing at Clarion West. He is Publicity Manager for Orbit Books US, and is presently working on his next novel, Ashland: A Kentucky Murder Ballad.
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	Cat Rambo attended Clarion West in 2005 and since then has published dozens of short stories in such markets as Weird Tales, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and Clarkesworld. Her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories, appeared in 2007 and her first solo collection, Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight, is forthcoming from Paper Golem Press. She is also the managing editor of Fantasy Magazine.
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Kris Dikeman is a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2005. Her work has appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and the forthcoming Year’s Best Fantasy #9. She was a finalist for this year’s Story South Million Writer’s Award.
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Rajan Khanna is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop.His work has appeared in Shimmer Magazine. He lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.

* Mobile Libris will be there selling books

Wednesday July 15th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.

I’ve uploaded my photos from KGB.  What a great night!

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

	Brian Francis Slattery, author of Spaceman Blues: A Love Song and Liberation. He has a story coming out in Interfictions 2, which is due out near the end of the year.
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Mary Robinette Kowal is the 2008 recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has sold short fiction to Strange Horizons, Cosmos, and Asimov’s. Her short story “Evil Robot Monkey” has been nominated for a Hugo. Shades of Milk and Honey, her first novel, will be out in the spring of 2010.

* Mobile Libris will be there selling books

Wednesday June 17th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)
http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.

After an E.C. Myers‘ recommendation, I went to see Moon last night with my girlfriend.  We were warned by the ticket seller to get to the theater early because the director, Duncan Jones (supposedly David Bowie’s son, according to one source) would be there to introduce the film and answer questions afterward.  We fattened up beforehand at Katz’s Delicatessen, where I had a pastrami sandwich that could have felled a buffalo.  Then we crept into the subterranean cinema of the Landmark Sunshine theater.

Moon begins with a commercial for “green” energy.  A compound called Helium-3 has solved all the world’s energy problems.  The only caveat, it’s on the dark side of the moon.  Enter Sam Bell, a lonesome astronaut who minds the Lunar Industries mining facility all by himself.  Well, not entirely.  He’s accompanied by the boxy robot, Guerty, whose prime directive is to make sure Sam is safe and sane at all costs.  The facility mostly runs itself.  In this future, robots pretty much tend to everything, so Sam is there merely to fix things when they break, and to send off an occasional sample of He3 back to Earth in a launch tube reminiscent of submarine torpedoes.  Sam’s three year stint is almost up, and he wants nothing more than to go home to see his wife and toddler girl.  But the direct satellite link is down, and so Sam must communicate with Earth via a series of intermediary links.  The sense of isolation is palpable, especially when Sam’s usual pastimes, building a model, tending to his plants, watching old televisions shows, fail to salve his loneliness.  Things begin to get creepy when he starts seeing things: things that most certainly shouldn’t be there.

I won’t spoil the film by giving too much more away.  Let’s just say that the film is entirely science fictional.  There’s no supernaturalism here.  Moon takes a lot from earlier films, notably Outland, Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and yes Blade Runner.  But it uses their themes in a unique way.  Several times I was pleasantly surprised by the subversion of standard science fictional tropes.  Our expectations are played with.  The end result is a positive riff on humanity.

As director Duncan Jones said afterward in a short Q&A, science fiction makes the humanity stand out in stark contrast with its surroundings.  This is a film, first and foremost, about characters, which in my humble opinion, is what makes the best science fiction.  Duncan said, closing the Q&A, “This may be somewhat cheeky of me, but if you all can tell your friends about this film.  We had near-zero advertizing budget and this thing will succeed or fail because of you.”  I for one would like to see more science fiction films like these.  Do yourself a favor and go out and see Moon at your earliest opportunity.

It sounds like SF, but it’s not.  Researchers at Nokia have figured out a way to harness ambient electromagnetic radiation to draw power.  One day, they hope to use it to charge your cellphone while idle.  The technology is not new.  RFID chips, the kind embedded in those security tags at the store, generate electricity from a specific radio frequency in order to power their circuit.  I think this technology is incredibly fascinating.  One more step on the way to 100% renewable energy usage.

For Sybil’s Garage No. 6, Devin Poore interviews Paul Tremblay, author of the novel The Little Sleep.  Devin and Paul talk about genre (and writing outside of), Mafia, and throwing chairs.

Here’s an excerpt:

“It sounds as if you do not consciously sit down with a mantra of “today I write horror”. Your story in Sybil’s Garage No. 3, “Holes” is also decidedly ambiguous in regards to its genre. Was that a conscious decision?

I think ambiguity is an undercurrent in almost all of my more recent work. As a reader, I enjoy stories that do not spoon feed and that can give even the most mundane scenes/occurrences multiple meanings or possibilities. Maybe it’s better put this way; I gravitate to stories with something to say, but that something to say always leads to more questions. To me, ambiguity is interesting, scary, and, well, real.

“Holes” was a very personal, auto-biographical story, one in which I wanted to have a heavy atmosphere of dread, even if the protagonist, or the reader (or the writer, for that matter) wasn’t exactly sure of the source or nature of the dread.

I think most of the best horror fiction takes advantage of ambiguity. Was Poe’s narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” just crazy or could he actually hear the heart, or neither; was the killer manipulating you, only trying to make you think he was crazy? Horror fails, most spectacularly, when our inherent state of ambiguity is ignored, when the lines of good and evil aren’t blurred or muddied.”

You can read the full interview here.

Are you a writer seeking a website? Email me! Here are some I’ve designed:

http://mercuriorivera.com/ - Mercurio D. Rivera

http://www.saladinahmed.com/ - Saladin Ahmed

http://www.matthewkressel.net/ - My writer page

http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/ - Fantasy Magazine

I’m fast, reliable, and inexpensive. Email me at mkressel [at] sunraycomputer [dot] com and we’ll talk.

Blade Runner is about to get a prequel.  Ridley Scott will partner with his commercials company, RSA Films, to make Purefold.  A series of webisodes set in the Blade Runner universe.  Those who know me know I’m an obsessive fan of the original film and have seen it too many times to count.  On New Year’s Eve, my friends get a kick out of watching me turn off the volume of the film and recite the lines by heart.  I moderated a Blade Runner panel at last year’s Readercon alongside Geoff Ryman and have read Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, Retrofitting Blade Runner, and More Than Human, Rutger Hauer’s biography, along with dozens of other texts.  You’d think I’d be be psyched, right?

Wrong.

There are so many things that can go wrong with Purefold. All one has to do is say George Lucas, and the problem becomes apparent.  Blade Runner is a near-perfect film, from my point of view, that explores archetypal themes in ways that had never been done before.  It’s a Pinocchio story:  “I want more life, fucker!” But it was also strongly dystopian in ways that, unlike, say, Logan’s Run, were familiar.  We recognized the neon-lit streets and the crowds and the dark skies as one possible future we were rapidly heading towards.  Original reviewers said the film was slow, hard to follow, and shallow.  Careful reviewing, over the next few years had even Gene Siskel reversing his original harsh critique.  Subtleties of dialog, expression, and setting were revealed.  The film was a masterpiece, misunderstood because it was billed as a sci-fi action thriller, when we all know it’s a dystopian film noir detective story that ruminates on the meaning of life.  Those early viewers must have felt like someone going in to watch Star Wars and getting Gattaca instead.  Or, if you will, Platoon instead of Rambo.

I’m afraid Purefold will fail because I don’t believe you can capture the essence of a soul yearning for life, for existence in ten minutes.  Not without cheapening it.  But this is the time of Facebook and Twitter and Youtube (which, Conan O’Brien tells us, will merge into one time-wasting entity in the year 3000 called YouTwitFace.)  Case in point:  “Purefold will use [an] interactive format, as it unfolds in five to ten minute shorts driven by reader input culled from the social aggregator site FriendFeed.”  People don’t have time for actual setup, pacing, and plot.  Even Battlestar Galactica, which ran a series of successful webisodes, did so against the background of the series, and so could focus on plot instead of character development.  I’m afraid this will be Blade Runner in 140 characters.

The other thing that has me worried is the conspicuous product placement: “Purefold definitely will have…product placement, as RSA Films is bringing in a number of advertising and marketing agencies to help secure funding for the project.”  But, wait! you say.  Blade Runner was chock full of products!  Yes, it was.  But the Atari and Pan Am and RCA logos weren’t put in the film to sell products.  This was Ridley Scott’s interpretation of a highly technologized future.  Now imagine Rutger Hauer putting on his Nike’s (big swish in focus) and then picking up his iPhone to video-call Pris (Apple logo large on screen).  Yes, it will be as god-awful as the Nokia console in the latest Star Trek.  Blade Runner was commenting on technological commercialism.  But I fear that the webisodes will lose this message and simply become commercial, losing the irony completly.

But who knows?  Ridley could pull off something amazing.  I must admit a little excitement.  After all, this is in the universe of my favorite film.  But wisdom has me doubting the outcome.  Nevertheless, I had low expectations for Star Trek, and was pleasantly surprised.  I’m going to give the new series a chance, though I will be watching with a skeptical eye.

Addendum: I found this article which just speaks of Purefold as a vehicle for advertisers.  It makes me ill to think of it.

I just sent this letter off to the USPS people via their website:

“Hello,

I hope you are well.  I am a frequent user of your APC (Automated Postage Center) and I am wondering why, when I buy custom postage, there is a five stamp limit?  For example, I frequently mail items which cost $2.24 each.  I come to the post office with approximately twenty items to mail.  The APC machine will only let me buy $2.24 value stamps in batches of five at a time.  Why can’t I buy more, say twenty or even fifty at a time?  Because of this limitation, I must spend an extra ten minutes purchasing stamps, going through the process another three or four times to get everything I need.  This seems remarkably inefficient, especially considering the long lines so often seen at the post office.  People who use the APC often know exactly what they want and how they need to mail their items.  Why limit what they can do and create more lines and more frustration?  I sincerely hope you consider forwarding this email to the makers of your APC software and that they might consider my suggestions for change.

Best,
Matthew Kressel”

On Saturday, I decided to visit BEA here at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan.  While the smell of a shrinking economy wafted through the air, the convention still managed to fill the entire main floor of the center (what, no con BO?).  And there was an awful lot of enthusiasm, at least that I could see.  I didn’t see so much a dying of an industry, but a restructuring/repositioning.  E-books were the hot topic of the day, and I saw one called the Cooler which promised to be open source and hack friendly.*

I also got a chance to speak with China Miéville, who as always was very friendly and approachable, and he signed a copy of his new THE CITY & THE CITY for me.  Tempest Bradford also happened to slip him a copy of Sybil’s Garage No. 6, which he seemed eager to read.  Tempest and Alaya Dawn Johnson both spoke as if they had smoked a pack of cigarettes, their laryngitis due, they said, to this year’s WisCon crud.  The symptoms were so specific that I could tell who went to the con simply by how hoarse they were.  I visited Ellen Datlow over at the HWA table, where I saw promo cards for her new Lovecraft Unbound anthology — it looks fab.  Yes, the HWA table was in the “ghetto,” but this was simply because they are relative newbies to BEA.  In a few years, they’ll have a much better position on the floor.  And what else?  I saw Kelly Link & Gavin Grant and made sure to speak with them because I suspect, with their new child, I probably won’t be seeing much of them in the next two years.  Otherwise, I just wandered aimlessly looking for free stuff.  (For those who don’t know, this is the best reason to attend BEA, for the free books.)  Only the very largest publishers were giving out free copies, and most of them had run out by 10 a.m.

After the conference I attended a small party downstairs held by Baen Publishing.  Cheese quiche (with bacon!) and meaty egg rolls and strange cheddar breadsticks.  That and lots of familiar faces.  Oh, and manga.  Alaya and I found some manga in the corner.  One was called Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit which looked pretty cool and is about a society that randomly kills people to prove to an indolent populace that life is worth living.

Then we retired to a Thai restaurant, with lots of folks in attendance.  There were parties, but since I had been food poisoned the day before and a single glass of wind had me reeling, I decided against crowds and inebriation (I know, a new one for me, right?).  Paul Berger and I instead went to see The Brothers Bloom, an indie flick about two professional con artists on their last swindle.  The movie had me hooked until the last act (it seemed like it had four acts instead of the typical three, which might have been the problem: it was too long).  It lost its momentum, and so the ending lost its emotional poignancy.  But I did like the film’s awareness of its own cliches: in a con movie, everyone expects to be duped, even the audience, and I thought the writers handled this well.  The protagonist questioned whether he was being conned, and the audience didn’t know if he was or not.  The sense of questioning the authenticity of events I felt was the film’s most powerful message, though it was handled a little less adeptly than I would have liked.  Overall, it was a good weekend, and it was a nice little warmup for ReaderCon this July.

* The idea of e-books are very appealing to me, however, not one of them on the market today makes sense.  Number one, they are very limited in the types of fonts you can use, and the sizes of those fonts.  Two, you cannot write on the screen with a stylus.  I’d like to read manuscripts on an e-book and be able to comment in the margins.  Three, I’d like to be able to browse the internet with my e-reader.  I’m not paying $350 for a device that does ONE THING ONLY when my $150 netbook can do a thousand things more.  Four, I want my e-reader to be open source, and to support all formats.  The idea of emailing Amazon to get them to convert a Word Doc so I can read it on my Kindle is patently absurd.  So, yeah, I’m eager for e-books in the long term, but the technology needs to mature a bit before I jump on that bandwagon.

Under every poem and story in Sybil’s Garage is a song or album, a tradition going back to issue one.  This song is chosen by the author, a tune that inspired or accompanies their work in an intimate, emptional way. It adds depth to the reader’s experience. For a long while now, I’ve wanted to create a playlist that people could download for each issue. With iMix, a feature of iTunes, I’ve finally done it. The playlist for Sybil’s Garage No. 6 is below.

The list is not 100% perfect. In certain cases, iTunes didn’t have the exact song available, so I chose one by the same artist. In some cases, the artist itself (or the suggested sound) wasn’t on iTunes, so I improvised. But, as a whole, the list is a close approximation to what appears in Sybil’s. The songs below link to the iTunes store in the US, but I hope that if you are out of the US you can at least glimpse the contents of the list here. If you’d like to see the actual list, in its entirety and read some great fiction and poetry then please support and buy Sybil’s Garage.