Matthew Kressel

Review of “The Girl in the Basement”

2009-11-06T14:10:50Z

Though I’m strangely called “Michael,” Lois Tilton has good things to say about my story, “The Girl in the Basement,” at the IROSF.

“Child abuse. In a post-apocalyptic world, a girl is kept imprisoned in a basement room by parents who tell her she is allergic to sunlight. The parents prostitute her as a way of feeding themselves, while pretending their actions are all for her own good.

“I’m sorry,” Mother said later, stroking the girl’s hair as the girl lay in bed moaning. “But I’m the one who brought you into this world. I’m the one who gave you life, who keeps you alive.” She kicked the basement floor with her sandal. “Without me, you’re dust.”

While the cruelty in this one has a highly authentic touch, the SFnal element is minimal. It would be easy to imagine finding this story in the news reports today, minus the state of the world outside the basement.”

You can read my story, as well as excellent tales by (World Fantasy Award-winning editor) Ekaterina Sedia and Keffy R.M. Kehrli over at Apex Magazine.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Hal Duncan’s ESCAPE FROM HELL!

2009-11-04T13:45:46Z

I finished Hal Duncan’s Escape from Hell! last night. A homeless man, a murderer, a junkie whore, and a gay man wake up on a ferry boat after dying. But this boat is no dingy, nor a wooden raft with crooked Charon at the helm. No, they find themselves on a New York-style commuter ferry with other confused passengers, and the city of the dead they are shuffling towards looks an awful lot like a blasted-out Manhattan. Duncan’s hell is a police state, where cowardly cops inflict pain to escape their own weaknesses, where “Vox” news airs the city’s catastrophes 24/7 from ubiquitous televisions, where waterboarding and rape and electroshock and starvation are all part of daily life. If you haven’t figured it out already, Duncan’s hell looks a lot like the United States of the past decade.

The four characters, after suffering enormous torment in various ways, all come to the conclusion that they can’t take it anymore, and so stage a revolt against the forces of Hell, searching for the mythical “Key” which will unlock their freedom. And so they venture through levels of Hell, down into ossified caverns and creature-infested halls to a room where Lucifer’s soul has been kept inches from his body for four thousand years. It only takes one look for the adventurers to give Lucifer back his body. Then the fun begins. They blast themselves out of Hell using a flaming sword.

And the flaming sword is no coincidence. It’s right out of William Blake. Like Blake’s evil in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, evil in Duncan’s universe is self-inflicted pain, the self-flagellating confines of a belief system that, for instance, believes homosexuality to be a sin or that sends people to eternal damnation who have committed suicide. The hero here, as in Blake’s work, is Lucifer, the light-bringer, who did not trick or tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden, Duncan says, but offered her knowledge of the lunacy of God and the hope that thereafter humankind would be free. Instead of mankind rebelling against this absurdity (in this case, I believe Duncan is alluding to our blind-faith in the absurd tenants of modern faith), we clothed ourselves and hid in shame. Hell then, Duncan says, is a creation of man, something from our nightmares, and heaven, if such a place exists, is freedom from shame. God does exist in Duncan’s world, but he’s a crazy, sadistic bastard.

I really enjoyed this one. My only complaint is that the typesetting was terrible. I’m not sure if this was because I got my copy free at the World Fantasy Convention, and therefore it was an ARC with typos. But there were hash-marks between every section, and too many spacing issues to count. Regardless, it was a fun and quick read, and I highly recommend it.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

World Fantasy Photos and Video

2009-11-03T19:57:39Z

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of photos I took at World Fantasy. You can see them here.

Also, here’s a video of the World Fantasy Awards, where they announce Paper Cities as the winner for Best Anthology. That’s me accepting the award on behalf of Ekaterina Sedia.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Paper Cities Wins World Fantasy Award

2009-11-02T05:07:44Z

Just a few hours ago Paper Cities won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology. It would have been more than enough just to hear them mention the title in front of hundreds of spectacularly talented people, to be listed along with four other amazing anthologies. I was and still am completely beside myself because I never expected we’d win (though I wanted to, of course). I was a nervous wreck up on the podium, I don’t know if I made any sense, but I just wanted to thank Ekaterina Sedia for chancing her fantastic anthology with a newbie publisher, and to all the authors who made the anthology the amazing thing that it is. This is Ekaterina’s acceptance speech which I read for her:

“I am delighted and humbled to be receiving this award, but I feel that the honor belongs to the writers who contributed their amazing and unsettling visions of urban fantasy and what it can be, and to our publisher, Matt Kressel, who recognized that these stories deserved to be seen. Today, I thank you all for this honor, even though my role was secondary to your talent.

–Ekaterina Sedia”

I am delighted and humbled to be receiving this award, but I feel that the honor belongs to the writers who contributed their amazing and unsettling visions of urban fantasy and what it can be, and to our publisher, Matt Kressel, who recognized that these stories deserved to be seen. Today, I thank you all for this honor, even though my role was secondary to your talent.

Ekaterina Sedia

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

World Fantasy Day 1

2009-10-30T14:32:14Z

Arrived at the con in one piece and mostly sane. I haven’t seen much of San Jose yet, but the city is so environmentally friendly that they have free buses from the train station. Thankfully my package with Paper Cities and Sybil’s Garage successfully arrived, and Sean Wallace gratefully let me sell them at the Prime Books table.

Some of my personal highlights so far:

Discussing consciousness and Kurt Godel with Ted Chiang.
Meeting Terry Bisson for the first time in person. Terry is the co-founder of KGB along with Alice Turner. He also used to teach the New School class on science fiction & fantasy writing that introduced me in a roundabout way to my current writers group. I am also a huge fan of his fiction.
Seeing only one person cheer in a room of several hundred when the Yankees scored in the World Series Game being played on a giant screen. It has nothing to do with the fact that we are on the West Coast and 100% to do with the fact that we are at a con.

Up before dawn again. San Jose is slowly brightening behind me. Apparently, there are plans to swim today.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Stargate Universe

2009-10-25T15:12:28Z

I’ve watched all five episodes of Stargate Universe so far. The show has bad acting, bad characterizations, racist, sexist, & stereotypical characters, and bad writing. So why the hell am I watching? Because it has its moments. Like the scene where they aerobrake against a blue gas giant. The observation deck is one of the most beautiful science fictional renderings I have yet seen on TV. And Eli, the bumbling MIT dropout, though I’ve seen a thousand characters like him before, is redeemed by his on-screen schtick and charm.

The show also borrows heavily from Battlestar Galactica (some might say steal). Both have a British-accented genius of questionable moral character responsible for the fate of everyone on board. Both have a stoic captain forced to make the hard decisions. Both are, incidentally, trying to get back to Earth. And both shows are scored with ethereal and classical music. And this last fact has pushed me in the direction of liking the show, if only because the music combined with the visuals are striking, so that I care less about the characters and more about where they are going. Its like Farscape, but without Muppets (which, incidentally, I liked).

But its flaws are myriad. The pacing is god-awful, which may be a carryover from the other two series, which were so slow moving I never watched them. The characters all seem like cardboard cutouts to me. And how do we get to know them? Through a video-blog Eli is creating as a record of their journey. Maybe the writers thought this would bring in the high-school demographic, the kind that post their daily gripes to Youtube. But it’s a cheap way to build character, and mostly ineffective, as half of these characters we see are never shown again on camera in the first five episodes. How about using some drama to build characters?

And the sexism and racism. Consider that the only main black character we have seen so far, Ronald Greer, also happens to be a criminal who was first introduced to us from jail (he is also seen stealing food in a later episode). There are several black characters on the ship, so why does the only one we meet have to be a criminal? (At one point he says, in Eli’s video blog, that hurtling into the sun would be a great way to die. “Going out in a blaze of glory.” Christ almighty, can someone push the cliche button?) And the heart-throb, Chloe, cries hysterically when her father dies, then inexplicably sleeps with the callow soldier, Matthew Scott. (Wait, they were in a relationship? That must have been happening while Eli was filming his blog.) And then, moments later, when Matthew is sent hurtling away from the ship to another planet to die, she cuddles with Eli. Seriously, you could almost hear her saying, “Hold me, strong man, for I am fragile woman.” Ugh. Eli is the mathematical genius. Chloe is the…sex object? Christ, how hard would it be to give her character some strength, wit, or intelligence? She is the senator’s daughter after all. Instead, she’s the cute one.

Let’s not get started on the captain, who decides, when his crew is in mortal danger, to use a body-swapping device to travel back to Earth, get in a car, drive who knows how far from the military base, to his wife’s house in the suburbs, to tell her he probably won’t be coming home. It’s supposed to make him human, this moment of weakness, but it made me cringe thinking that this man who everyone is supposed to rely on took a personal day in the middle of a crisis. Captain Adama he is not.

But I suspect, that in spite of these flaws, I’ll keep watching, perhaps for the stellar vistas, or the music, or to see if they can inspsire another blog post or two.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Genreville

2009-10-22T14:53:24Z

Rose Fox and Josh Jasper have been hard at work on their website known as Genreville.com, a site under the Publishers Weekly banner about all things spec fic, told from two of the most well-read people in the field. They’ve also been hard at work interviewing the KGB guests and posting the videos online for all to see. They’ve uploaded two months of KGB guest interviews so far, and last night’s, I’m told, will be up on Monday. Do yourselves a favor and check out this really cool blog.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Michael Cisco & John Langan at KGB Tomorrow

2009-10-20T14:45:01Z

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

	Michael Cisco, author of International Horror Writers Guild award–winning The Divinity Student, as well as author of The San Veneficio Canon, The Traitor, and The Tyrant.
&
	John Langan, whose first novel, House of Windows, was recently published. His collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. His novella, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” appears in John Joseph Adams’s By Blood We Live.

Wednesday October 21st, 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.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

JJA Edits New Science Fiction Magazine

2009-10-16T15:03:21Z

John Joseph Adams, editor of several highly acclaimed anthologies and long-time assistant editor for F&SF announces he will be editing a new online magazine. (And there was much rejoicing.) It’s called Lightspeed, and will be published online by Prime. Andrea Kail will be editing the non-fiction portion. Fantasy Magazine, Prime’s other online venue, has been doing wonderful things, so I’m looking forward to seeing what John and Andrea do with this.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Still Concerned? Well, Yes, Now I Am, Thank You

2009-10-13T14:40:51Z

Crack Cocaine?

Last night while watching TV I saw yet another advertisement for those 5-Hour Energy Drinks. At first they had touted them as all natural, an alternative to coffee. But we had caught on to them. The 5-hour energy drinks contain caffeine, and weren’t the all-natural, healthy product they were purported to be.

So they came up with a new commercial. This one listed the ingredients. “5-Hour Energy has about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, but it comes without the crash!” Whoopee!

We are then shown a heart-monitor-like line rising and falling (but not crashing!) wave like. (What exactly is this measuring?). And then the announcer states — very quickly, mind you — “Still concerned?”

Concerned? About what? Ok, now I am.

What exactly does this product contain (or are people assuming it contains) that I need to be concerned about? What type of consumer feedback has forced you to address the concerns that random people watching late-night television have about your product?

Seriously, if commercial is telling me I needn’t be concerned about a product, I think I need to be concerned.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Paper Cities now available for the Kindle

2009-10-09T15:20:04Z

I’m excited to announce that Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy is now available for the Kindle platform via Amazon. The 2009 World Fantasy Award nominated anthology is only $9.99 in digital format. Look for other formats coming soon, including Sony Reader and PDF.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

The Messiah Has A Website

2009-10-07T15:03:13Z

On my way last night to my writers group I was stopped by a group of young, orthodox Jews who asked me if I was Jewish. Knowing by the etrog and lulav they carried that if I’d answer in the affirmative I’d be asked to pray as part of the holiday of Sukkot. Well, I’m not presently in the business of denying who I am, even if I’m not quite comfortable with everything that mainstream Judaism proclaims, so I said, “Yes,” and soon after was given a kipa (a yarmulke) and a palm frond and a citron fruit and a little pocket prayer folio. The young men proceeded to prompt me in the prayer, but more than a half-decade of Hebrew School and many a Friday-night Shabbats with my family, and lots of High Holidays in between made me somewhat adept at the first 9/10ths of the prayer. The young Hasidim leaned back and smiled smugly at each other. “Have you done this before?”

“When I was a boy,” I responded.

Then came the Hebrew. I’m not sure what prompted them to think I was suddenly fluent. Maybe it was my mad praying skills. But soon I was drowning in Hebrew phrases. I shrugged and said “What?” way too many times. He held out a tin cup with a slot. “Tzedakah?” Oh, I knew that one. Charity/Righteousness. I had no idea what charity this was going to, but they were surrounding me. So I opened up my wallet and stuffed my last $2 inside the cup.

Then more Hebrew. Several more whats. “Moshiach Now,” he said. Moshiach = Messiah, I knew. Messiah Now? He handed me a card. On it was a picture of the late Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, a rabbi from Brooklyn who was so righteous, his followers believe, that he is the Messiah the Jews have been waiting for. (Never mind that he died eleven years ago.) Then, I was handed a card as the Hasidic boys chased down an Israeli tourist and his girlfriend and tried to get them to pray too.

I looked at the card. On the back it said, “Moshiach’s Address.” The Messiah’s address. There was a postal address and website. Messiahs have come a long way.

I found all this rather amusing, but my serious side kept poking my jocular side in the ribs. The Jews didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah because, well, the world was still pretty shitty after he came, and the Messiah’s supposed to herald a Messianic age of happiness and light and all that utopian crap the religions use as carrots to keep people under control. Then along comes this particular sect of Lubavitch Hasidim who proclaim that their dead hero is the Messiah.

Not that I believe in any of this crap. Mostly, I participate in religious experiences because I attempt to connect with a higher part of myself that I pretty much ignore in my mundane, day-to-day existence. Any decently intelligent kid realizes around puberty or so that if he was born into any other faith, he’d probably be a practicing Catholic, or Hindu, or Muslim, or Buddhist, and that to say any one faith is more correct than any other amounts to nothing more than rooting for a favorite sports team.

It just seems really hypocritical to me to reject Jesus and proclaim the Rebbe a divine messenger, when really all you are doing is re-enacting the same story from your own point of view. I think they thought that if I held a palm frond and citrus fruit in my hands and said a prayer I don’t think I understood that somehow their dead hero would make the world into paradise. All in all it seems kind of crazy to me.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Dust is Dead Skin

2009-10-06T13:56:33Z

My girlfriend keeps reminding me that dust is dead skin. It seems to be piling up everywhere around me lately, so I figured I’d dust off the old blog and do an update. It’s only been a few days since I last posted, but that’s an eon in internet time.

Work, family, and other obligations have kept me supremely busy as of late, but I thought I’d give you an update on what’s going on with Senses Five Press. As I (might have) mentioned on this blog, I’ve been working to get Paper Cities out as an e-book. I’ve just submitted the complete e-manuscript to Amazon and am awaiting their approval. So the first platform it will be available for is the Kindle (obviously). I expect to make the anthology available for other platforms as well in the coming weeks. If you haven’t had a chance to read this 2009 World Fantasy Award Nominated anthology yet, now’s your chance.

As for Sybil’s Garage, I’ve been so busy lately with work that I can’t conceive of trying to fit reading slush in with all the other things I have to do. This is not to say that Sybil’s Garage is going anywhere. I still plan to publish the magazine for a long time to come. But the next issue may be delayed some. I do not have a firm date for when I plan to open for submissions, and right now, to be perfectly honest, I am enjoying the downtime from reading & producing to work on my own fiction. Oh, you didn’t know? I also write too.

My most recent stuff is in Electric Velocipede and Apex Magazine, both of which you can read online by clicking the links at left. That’s about all I have for today. Merry blogging.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press. You can comment here or there.

Today Is Support Our Zines Day

2009-10-01T13:19:50Z

Support your favorite zines (including Sybil’s Garage!) today. Today is Support Our Zines Day:

(Cut from Damien G. Walter’s Facebook event page)

SUPPORT OUR ‘ZINES DAY – OCTOBER 1st 2009

What are ‘zines?

The short answer is that ‘zines are where we go to find good, new short fiction. Magazines like Asimov’s or Weird Tales. Fanzines like Electric Velocipede or Shimmer. Webzines like Clarkesworld or Strange Horizons. Podcasts like Escape Pod and The Drabblecast. There are hundreds and maybe even thousands of ‘zines publishing speculative fiction stories, and from the largest to the smallest they all contribute to building the SF community.

But our ‘zines need support. Professional ‘zines rely on subscriptions to pay their staff and the writers who make the stories. Smaller ‘zines often rely on donations just to cover their costs. But with the speed of life in the 21st Century it can be difficult to remember to renew subsciptions or make donations to the ‘zines who’s work we enjoy.

So. We need to do something to remind ourselves how much we love our ‘zines of all kinds and want to support them. We need a ‘Support our ‘Zines Day’. (SOZD) A day when everyone who has enjoyed reading and listening all year subscribes / donates to their favourite publications. We need to promote it as far and wide as we can and let all readers of ‘zines join in.

SUPPORT OUR ‘ZINES DAY. 1st OCTOBER 2009

What to do on Support Our ‘Zines Day.

It really could not be easier. On 1st October list the ‘zines you have enjoyed that year, then subscribe / donate to as many as feel you can afford. You can be modest and keep your donations a secret, or you can show off and list your donations on your blog or elsewhere top help encourage others to show their support.

3 ways to help Support Our ‘Zines Day

Promote SOZD on your blogs and social networks. Display the SOZD logo and link to the SOZD page.

Invite people to join our official SOZD event on Facebook.

If you are willing to donate any time to help develop more SOZD resources then email me or leave a comment.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by [author]. You can comment here or there.

Tomorrow at KGB

2009-09-15T12:42:14Z

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

	Andrew Fox’s most recently published novel is The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, published in April, 2009. Upcoming novels include a Hurricane Katrina-inspired fantasy, The Bad Luck Spirits’ Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and a Civil War steampunk dark fantasy, Fire on Iron.
&
	Chris Genoa is the author of Foop! and the forthcoming novel Lick Your Neighbor, which will appear in 2010. He recently finished his third novel, The Monkey & the Barrel: A Novel of Kung Fu and Twisted Love, and is at work on a children’s book, Tony Spumoni…Has Lost His Evil Hamster.

Wednesday September 16th, 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.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

My Post 9/11 Thoughts

2009-09-12T15:14:14Z

Jonathan Safran Foer said in an interview (paraphrased), “I’m not trying to rewrite history. I just want to tell the events of 9/11 the way I see it, not the way others framed it for me.”

I feel very much the same way. Politicians, anchormen, journalists, bloggers — they all try to tell me what 9/11 was. And I always call bullshit because it’s obvious that most of them were not there, that they watched it unfold on TV and constructed a story, oftentimes bordering on mythical, to fit their interpretation of the events. Here’s how I experienced it:

My office was in the process of a move from Reade street & Broadway right across from City Hall to just above Houston Street, also on Broadway. I went directly to the Houston street office to meet the Verizon phone guy who was there to set up DSL. I had my guitar with me, as I had a lesson that evening right after work. But I never got to the office. When I got out of the subway I looked down a side street at downtown and noticed white smoke. I thought perhaps a local building was on fire, just a few blocks away. But by the time I got to Broadway, I saw several people huddling on the street and watching the burning building. Then, with the open avenues, I saw. It was the Twin Towers.

“A small plane hit the World Trade Center,” someone told me.

“An accident?” I said.

“Yeah, an accident.”

But my thoughts were otherwise, especially since in ‘93 terrorists tried to blow up the towers.

Then someone else said, “No, it was a cargo plane. 727. My friend just told me.”

There were a lot of rumors flying. But an accident or not, no one said.

I tried to use my cell phone, but it kept saying, “All circuits are busy.” That made me nervous more than the smoke or the crowds of people. What did cell phones have to do with a burning building? I walked into a hardware store where they were playing the news on the TV. “Jetliner crashed into the World Trade Center” read the headline. The proprietors didn’t know anything more than what was being said on the streets. Neither did the anchormen.

By this point, people started to pause on the street. There was this strange sense that something was wrong. You could see it in people’s eyes. The fear. I decided to go back to the office downtown. I’m not sure why. Maybe I should have just gone home, waited for the news to tell me what happened. I don’t know what led me to the downtown office, but I had a sense that I had to be there.

The number six subway line was pretty empty. I sat next to a black woman named Angela, in her late forties. She looked scared, and we spoke as the train slowly rumbled underground. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Not much,” I said. “A plane hit the World Trade Center.”

“Do you think it was…intentional?”

I could sense the hesitancy in her voice. “It’s very possible,” I said.

“We don’t want to prejudge,” she said. “But it might be, you know…”

She didn’t want to voice it. Didn’t want to be the first to cast a stone. “Terrorism?” I said.

She nodded.

“Could be,” I said. “Lots of people want to kill us.”

“Arabs, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“But not all of them want to harm us. And anyway, we don’t want to prejudge, do we?” I had no idea then how right she was, how our entire nation prejudged another Arab nation and led to a war which we are still fighting, where more than a million people have died. Think about that: one million people.

“No, you’re right,” I said.

My stop approached. “I’ll pray for you, Matthew.”

“I’ll pray for you too,” I said.

I may have been on the last train to run that day. The subways had been closed. When I got out of the subway, there were hundreds of people crowding Chambers Street. I got a close look at the World Trade Center. I had walked down Chambers Street a thousand times on my way to work, and I had remarked only weeks before that the World Trade Center was like our generation’s Great Pyramids, colossal structures that would survive the ages. I looked up and saw it burning, metal shards hanging like a fist that had punched through metal. I might have seen people, but I looked away. I could not bear to see them burn.

“Goddamn Arab mother fuckers!” some tall guy shouts in front of me. “Fucking sand-nigger faggot mother fuckers!”

And with his words I realized what Angela and I were trying to avoid, the blind hatred and rage and fear. Little did I know how the president would use that emotion to manipulate the entire country into a frenzy of war and suspicion.

When I got to work, a small office, my boss said, “Don’t worry. It’s only World War Three.” I thought his humor was disgusting. By now the second plane had hit. It was obvious it was no accident. I tried calling my sister, who also worked in the city. No one could get a call through. Finally, after twenty long minutes of dithering, my ineffectual boss says, “You can all go home.” Thanks, boss.

I walked with the young receptionist girl, Jessica. I told her we should take Church Street, in case they tried to bomb City Hall and the Federal buildings. Fear was running high, and so anything seemed like a target now. I had my guitar on my back, and we were walking down Church Street with a thousand other people because the subways were closed. I passed pockets of language. Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese. Little groups huddled together over radios or portable TVs or just talking with each other to see what the fuck was going on. And everyone had this slow creep north. Then the screams.

“Oh my God!”

We turned to see the one hundred and thirteen storey tower begin crumbling to the ground. We were five, maybe six blocks away. This thing is falling, people start screaming, running. It so goddamn close. Jessica turns to me and says, “What do we do?”

I paused for an instant. Was she relying on me? “We run!”

We take off, my guitar bouncing off my back. Jessica beside me. And then everyone is screaming and running as this great big cloud of dust is coming down behind us, and you hear the thing pancaking, boom!-boom!-boom!, as each floor gives. I can see how the conspiracy theorists thought it was a controlled demolition. It sounded like explosions. But let me tell you this thing was not under any sort of control. On the curb there’s this obese, middle-aged woman who falls and can’t get up. “Help me!” she screams. “Help me up!” Four men try and lift her from the ground to no avail. Her ankle might be broken. I feel terrible and scared, but I keep moving with the crowd. Fear is pushing us forward.

You know all those movies you see where people are running for your lives. It’s easy to eat popcorn and candy and feel your heart pump with fear, but that’s not — cannot ever be the same as experiencing it first hand; it can not ever be conveyed in words. For those who think you “experienced” 9/11 because you watched it on TV, think again.

The screams chill me to the bone and I look back at the falling building and think two things: 1) people are dying right now, and 2) I am going to die any second now when that stuff falls on me. And then my mind went away. When you think you are going to die, instinct takes over. I’m not sure what happened, but I have little memory of the next several minutes. I’m pretty sure I was so afraid that to remember would mean recalling the fear. So my mind protects me by blacking those minutes out. I’ve had a few cases of extreme anxiety since then, and I can only attribute it to the memories of those minutes trying to resurface.

My next memory is reaching Canal street, my mouth utterly dry and sour with fear. By then people have slowed their run to a brisk walk. Behind us is this growing cloud. I realized that, at least for now, I would live. But that many people just died behind me. I looked at Jessica. She stared back at me terrified, and I wondered if I looked the same to her. Pale, frightened, helpless.

Then we walked. We walked north. Everyone walked north. More than a million people swimming upstream. I saw jet fighters fly overhead. At first I was excited. I cheered them on. But then I thought, What the fuck can they do now? The damage has been done.

We were walking to Jessica’s friend’s office when the second tower fell. We were between streets and didn’t see it collapse, but some assholes ran to witness it like it was a fucking fireworks show. “C’mon!” one guy shouted to his buddy, laughing. “We’re going to miss it!”

We got to her friend’s office. My mouth was dry, and they gave me water. My body shook from all the adrenaline. The coworkers seemed unusually calm. I guess they didn’t just run for their lives. I borrowed their phone. After dialing at least twenty times I got through to my father’s office. “He’s in a meeting,” his receptionist said. “Can I take a message?”

“Get him the fuck out of the meeting!” I guess had hadn’t heard yet.

Then I spoke to my dad. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I was hoping he’d make it all better. But there was nothing he, nor anyone could do. Not even jet fighters. The events had happened. There was no erasing them now.

I walked home up Park Avenue South. I saw a tall black man in an army uniform walking determinedly up the street with a US flag draped over his shoulders. He was photographed and became, briefly, one of the famous images of that day.

By the time I got home several hours later, I had several messages from relatives asking me if I was okay. I tried to donate blood, but there wasn’t much need, the hospitals said.

I slept over my sister’s house in the Village that night. We both didn’t want to be alone. We watched the same footage of the tower collapsing a hundred times, flicking to different channels to see if they had any news. We started to get sick of it — the same terrible collapse, over and over, like Clockwork Orange. I had seen it with my own eyes. Watching it on TV made it seem like it was just a movie. I felt like I was being brainwashed, watching the horror repeated, so we turned off the news and watched a comedy. It might seem silly, or even grotesque to you that we watched a comedy that night, but both of us were so shook up by the events of the day that it was the only way we knew how to cool off. Later that night I got a call from a college girlfriend who I hadn’t spoken to in ages. She had tracked down where I was to see if I was all right. She told me the price of gas in Texas jumped to $20 a gallon.

It just seemed so absurd to me then (and now) that all those thousands of miles away, they would be just as terrified as me. More afraid, it seemed, than people were here. And it seemed that, in the days and weeks that followed, people from all over the country tried to tell me how I should feel about that day. Bush getting on top of the debris with his bullhorn. His “big moment.” (I disliked him even then.) Right away, I saw and felt the manipulation, actually feared the sudden appearance of US flags everywhere, from every building, storefront, automobile, even subway cars. Flags, that seemed to me, to represent a new kind of militarism. And I couldn’t help but think of the rise of Nazi power in Germany. A flag ostensibly based on national pride but with a subtext of superiority, of rage, and of vengeance. Not the flag that I knew.

This was exactly what Angela, the woman on the subway, had warned me about. Not to prejudge, not to fall into that easy place of hatred and rage. But it was too late. The US populace was not intelligent or introspective enough to see how their fear and anger was being manipulated by the media and politicians, and so we were whipped into a fearful frenzy, passing Orwellian laws that reduced and curtailed civil rights, going to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq under false pretenses, starting a “War on Terror” with no clear enemy and no objective end, and basically, as a corollary, fucking up the economy for generations to come. So, yeah, I’m angry when I see someone try to co-opt the events of that day, as if they were present, as if they experienced the towers falling first hand and therefore can comment on it as if it affected them personally. But they weren’t, and couldn’t be, and unless they were there and saw it with their own eyes I think they should just shut the fuck up and listen. Because I’m not the only one with a story.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

The Creep of Fall

2009-09-10T13:23:37Z

I feel it every year and from what I understand most other people feel it too. The strange change of body and mind the comes over you when the seasons change, when the leaves start to drop from the trees. I believe it comes from sixteen or more years of school, the mad rush to the department stores and school supply stores, and the hope that this year, with new friends, new teachers, will be much better than the last. That routine created a pattern on my mind. But I think there also is a genetic component. My cat, for example, has been nothing but a sleepy lump this entire summer, but now she is active and eating voraciously. I wonder if she is preparing herself for the winter, fattening herself up for the cold months when mice are hard to come by. Of course, she is eating cat food, not mice, but her body warns her regardless. Is this same mechanism happening in me? Is my body trying to prepare myself for winter? Am I coerced into working hard now and feeling excited about it based on some ancient genetic script written into my genes? All I know is that whenever I smell the cool air with the hints of fall, a feeling comes over me that seems, well, old.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

“The Girl in the Basement” up at Apex Magazine

2009-09-09T11:57:19Z

My story “The Girl in the Basement” is now up at Apex Magazine.

It’s alongside stories by the talented Ekaterina Sedia and Keffy R.M. Kehrli (both of whom appear in past issues of Sybil’s Garage).

Here’s an intro:

“The girl lived in the basement where the air was cool and damp and quiet. Company was coming over tonight, her mother had said, so the girl had better make sure her room was spotless. She gave the girl a dull knife to scrape the gobs of candle wax from the dresser and night stand, and she took it back after. She brought down the vacuum so the girl could suck the dust and dead bugs from the lampshades and corners. And she gave the girl a bucket of soapy water to scrub the dirt from the walls and floor. No matter how often the girl cleaned, there always seemed to be more dust. And the bed had to be made too, the corners creased like ironed shirts, and the four pillows propped in alternating colors against the headboard. The girl didn’t need to be reminded. Mother was always this fastidious when they were having company.”

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

The ‘Zine Link-up Meme

2009-09-07T22:01:03Z

From Damien G. Walter’s blog for Support Our ‘Zines Day*:

So. No idea if this will work. But, to give people a handy guide to ‘zines they can donate to on Support Our ‘Zines Day (1st October 2009), I’m going to try and put together a complete list of speculative fiction ‘zines! However, I don’t want to do all the work myself, so am stealing the recent SF Reviewers Link-up Meme to make the…’ZINE LINK-UP MEME! I’ve added a few of the big ‘zines, just to get it started.

The ‘Zine Link-up Meme

Copy and paste the list (including links) of speculative fiction ‘zines below to your blog or website (include this informative introduction as well). Add your ‘zine (and link). Any ‘zine of any size and format that publishes speculative fiction of any kind can take part. Let other people, especially people publishing ‘zines, know about the meme. And help publicise Support Our ‘Zines Day by linking back to: http://damiengwalter.wordpress.com/sozd/

Asmiov’s science fiction

Analog science fiction and fact

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Sybil’s Garage

Electric Velocipede

Shimmer Magazine

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

Interzone

Black Static

* I know technically some of these are not “zines” in the strictest sense. But they are an important part of the field and we should support them equally. Also, this list is nowhere near inclusive. If you see something missing, copy this entire post to your blog and add it!

Sybil’s Garage subscription information can be found here.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

Inglourious Basterds Take Deux

2009-09-02T14:35:14Z

I have been discussing the film Inglourious Basterds on Facebook again following a post from Claude Laliumere and then I was referred to a review by Daniel Mendelsohn in Newsweek. Mendelsohn pans the film because he believes it tells the following message:

Do you really want audiences cheering for a revenge that turns Jews into carboncopies of Nazis, that makes Jews into “sickening” perpetrators? I’m not so sure. An alternative, and morally superior, form of “revenge” for Jews would be to do precisely what Jews have been doing since World War II ended: that is, to preserve and perpetuate the memory of the destruction that was visited upon them, precisely in order to help prevent the recurrence of such mass horrors in the future. Never again, the refrain goes. The emotions that Tarantino’s new film evokes are precisely what lurk beneath the possibility that “again” will happen.

There are two things wrong with that statement. The first, I think, is so obvious I’m embarrassed for Mr. Mendelsohn. Does he really expect the victims in a Tarantino film not to fight back? And do what instead, “preserve and perpetuate the memory of the destruction that was visited upon them?” I.e. create a museum? This is a war film. And this is a Tarantino film. One should expect there will be no quietly brooding intellectual discussion on the horrors perpetrated by an entire generation of people. No, there will be blood.*

The second thing that’s wrong with his statement is that it denies the core of the film itself. Repeatedly the characters state the theme: “now the shoe is on the other foot.” Often, I loathe when authors state their own theme, but here it comes together magnificently. The Jews become the killers, the Nazis the victims. Those who saw the film, did you note how people laughed and cheered when the Nazis were killed, but how silent and spooky and downright repulsed you felt when the Nazis were cheering the deaths of the Americans on their film? Tarantino was trying to wake you up, to tell you that you’re not so different from those Nazi fucks, that you should get off your high horse and stop pretending there was something evil or intrinsically wrong with that generation of people and understand that we all have the capacity to do evil within us. Tarantino turned the tables precisely to make us uncomfortable with our own enjoyment of violence, which he is capitalizing on. He is saying: “Look, you’re no different from them, when you strip away the pretense.” If you want a deep exploration of this particular subject, I suggest you read The Moment of Freedom by Jens Bjørneboe, one of the best novels I have ever read.

* I in no way mean to demean or deride the creation of such memorials as the Holocaust Museum, which serve a valuable and important purpose of reminding humanity what horrors we are capable of. But this is a film, and no one wants to watch a film about Jews getting murdered and the survivors creating a museum. Or maybe they do — but it wouldn’t be a Tarantino film.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

2009-09-01T12:31:30Z

Okay, admittedly there are few photos of wicked plants in these shots, but I did go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Sunday and came home with a rash on my neck presumably from brushing against something mildly poisonous. Marked with plaques all over the large gardens were so called “wicked plants,” plants that are poisonous, hallucinogenic, or highly addictive. In the greenhouse they had a very large jimson weed plant, which is also known as datura, which, for some strange reason, has been used as a recreational drug. However, the Erowid vault warns, “the overwhelming majority of those who describe to us their use of Datura (and to a lesser extent, Belladonna, Brugmansia and Brunfelsia) find their experiences extremely mentally and physically unpleasant and not infrequently physically dangerous.” What better reason to try smoking something?

Here are some photos I took of the day.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

(Re)Sale to Apex Magazine

2009-08-31T14:48:56Z

I forgot to mention that a few weeks back I sold a reprint of my story “The Girl in the Basement” to Apex Magazine. The story first appeared in Hatter Bones. It should be out in September, which is, holy cow, tomorrow. Where did the summer go?

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-29T15:46:45Z

Went and saw Inglourious Basterds yesterday. Thought I’d be put off by the “Let’s go kill some Nazis, yee ha!” attitude that the commercial promised. Not that I have anything against killing Nazis, but the trope is kind of tiresome. Plus I was afraid Tarantino would make light of the whole situation. You know, turn the slaughter of 10 million or so people into Kill Bill Vaudeville. But the film won me over in the end.

It wasn’t the silly 70s-esque voice-over intro of Nazi killer Stiglitz or the Brooklyn baseball kid whom the Nazis call the Bear Jew. It was the tension. Every single fucking scene in this movie is loaded with tension, a Sword of Damocles hanging over every word. And yet, nearly every scene is just two people talking. Each smile, gesture, off-hand phrase is loaded with multiple subtexts. You know it’s Tarantino, so you know it could get bloody at any moment. But which moment, that is the mystery, and the suspense, and what kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. I think I need to watch this film again to learn a lesson on the art of tension building.

I didn’t think it was flawless, of course. In particular, Pitt’s character was just a bit too affected for my tastes. And there are some silly things that happen in the denouement. (Seriously, the Führer in your theater and you have no one guarding the lobby?) Yeah, the end was dark, and it left me feeling like I needed to bathe several times to get the gore out of my brain. But I think this movie is worth watching again.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

Paper Cities, the Rock Band

2009-08-28T13:06:29Z

I’ve got this Google alert that emails me any time something with “Paper Cities” comes up. About fifty percent of the time it comes up with Paper Cities, the rock band. That’s no joke. They’re a real band out of Kansas City. I don’t know why, but I’ve only just listened to them now. They sound pretty damn good. Here’s there Myspace page.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.

Clownsville

2009-08-27T14:12:56Z

Went to see a children’s play called Clownsville last night in Tribeca. About an office drone who falls asleep and wakes up in an Oz-like realm called, yep, Clownsville. Ostensibly about pencil-pusher Thomas who’s forgotten his childhood dreams, it also taught the Law of Attraction in Sesame Street-like edu-musicals, i.e. what you send out is what you get back, as you sow, so shall you reap, etc., illustrated by singing call and response with the audience. I first thought I had walked in on Romper Room, but the music got to me, and the kids, damn they could sing, and they could act too, and well I walked in there with a frown and, yeah, it turned upside down.

Originally posted at Senses Five Press by Matthew Kressel. You can comment here or there.