I watched a biography of George Carlin a few months back. It seems his career had three stages.

 

First was his post DJ stand up work with Jack Burns in the early sixties, followed by a solo career. He was popular, toured a lot, and made some good money. The material was slick, often goofy, and occasionally sharp.

 

Then in the 1970s Carlin changed his appearance, attitude, and material. His comedy was bizarre, observational, and harsh, with a critical bent on freedom of speech and thought. And his career ascended as the counter culture took him in as one of their own, despite the fact that he was older than most boomers.

 

By the 1980s, Carlin was a seasoned pro whose keen mind was most critical against the collective stupidities of the human race. Popular targets for his venom were politics and religion.

 

To be a successful comic in any sense of the word is damn tough. So I find this kind of success story very inspiring. Carlin was told throughout his career that changing his approach was professional suicide. That it wouldn’t work to get new fans and he’d lose the old ones. But he knew in his guts that the best material in him could not afford to remain in the same package. For him, change was necessary for his artistic survival.  And he knew the price. It could fail. But the tough work of a comic had prepared him for the worst and he knew he was tough enough to take the failure if it happened, going back to earning dinner wages or gas money or less.

 

I’ve been thinking about my career lately and something about the Carlin route appeals to me. Granted, I’m no George Carlin, but I think there is much to be gained from studying mavericks as well as sure things. Every career choice comes with risks. But I’d like to hope that writing my stories my way can lead me to a strong career, one on my terms, even if it means jumping genres or whatever.

 

So, thanks, George, for the laughs and the inspiration. If there was a heaven, I’m sure you’d be making fun of it from hell and getting a standing ovation.

 

JSR

I love the Mayans. That ought to be obvious to anybody who’s even looked at my WordPress theme. And I guess that makes me biased. Look back through the film category of this blog and there’s a lot of needley criticism of a lot of movies with Mayan themes. For a movie that’s blatant about it the way 2012 is blatant about it, I go into the thing harboring at the same time a sense of dread and a set of unattainable expectations. Which is, of course, not anything like the state of mind that causes people to make movies with Mayan themes. They do it because human sacrifice and murky prophecies penned by ancient mystics from lost civilizations are freaky and cool, and there are a lot of other people out there like me who drool over them.

And I guess because of the mystery involved, people’s imaginations seem to be more inspired by the iteratively more far-fetched folkloric misinterpretations of these myths than the real thing. Crystal skulls, for example, sure do seem a hell of a lot cooler in the popular perception than, say, mossy ones. And I can get behind that. I can sit and enjoy the popcorny adventure elements while managing to mostly ignore my nagging annoyance with the associated historical inaccuracies, cultural insensitivities, even the occasional new-agey hyperbolic pseudo-prophetic ego trip. For the sake of the story, I can look past that stuff. I know what poetic license is. And to a certain extent, the organic, evolving, cyclical nature of Mesoamerican and precolombian mythology lends itself perfectly to that kind of speculation. These are stories that propagate and develop through oral tradition, improvisation. Changing old stories to tell new truths, and vice-versa. There’s room for sprawling, reverently researched historical epic like Gary Jennings’ Aztec, transportive surrealistic allegory like Asturias’ Hombres de Maiz, absurdist, hallucinatory postmodern ultraviolence like Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex and intimate, intense contemporary fairytale like Aliette de Bodard’s “Blighted Heart”.

I love all that stuff. I love it to death. Which maybe means I’m less critical of Mayan influence in fiction than in film…or maybe it means that fiction’s better! Ha! But anyway.

All that said, every time I see the 2012 trailer, it gets harder to sit through, and my inclination to see it gets tinier. The best thing about that trailer is over before the titles have even finished rolling, and it’s this:

An actual, beautiful piece of Mayan relief art, CGI’d to look like it’s carved into the side of the three-million-foot high movie title logo. That one tenth of a second gives me tingles. The rest of it can go throw an aircraft carrier at itself for all I care. Because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t have a story. It may have a character or two, but mostly it appears to be about some CGI death and destruction. It doesn’t even seem to be bothering to use the mythology at all, even for entertainment purposes—it’s just a convenient date they can assign some doomsday to. And that kind of thing really does have the potential to make me mad. Because not only is it playing to the lowest common denominator at the expense of practically any resemblance to the noble, ancient art of mythmaking, and frankly bears more resemblance to a fireworks display or a line of cars slowing down to look at a wreck than it does to storytelling, but it’s perpetuating the worst, most irresponsible part of the stupid pop culture folklorification of Mayan culture. And it’s making me afraid that what I’m about to say actually still does need to be said.

There won’t be any %&*@ 2012 apocalypse.

Now, if we’re lucky, maybe there just might be a singularity. Or at least a global reawakening. I sure hope so, because for crying out loud, we could use one.

More about all that, and what the Mayan mythology and “prophecy” actually predicts, next week.

But the main point of this week’s angry anti-2012 rant is simply this: go ahead and entertain me with alien-powered crystal skulls and doomsday scenarios if you must—but couldn’t you at least try to engage with the underlying ideas a little bit? The history, the art and culture and mythology of the Mayans has so many fascinating, pertinent, complex and thought-provoking lessons to convey. Can’t we talk about that just a little?

More of that next week too.

Jason Sanford, writer and editor of storySouth, has a comprehensive blog post on online F/SF magazines.  He gives an insightful overview, then lists the top pro- and semi-pro ‘zines.

He gives fine praise to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, saying that we deserve to be designated as a SFWA pro market.  Thanks very much!  We do meet all the qualifications, now that we’ve been publishing for a full year,  and recently I began the application process to have SFWA designate us thus.

Capclave went very well. I gave away lots of business cards and flyers for Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  Great panels on (trying to) save the magazines and on new media, such as Facebook and podcasts (which I think is one of the ways to save the magazines).  Great chats with Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine.  Great to see many of the young writers and editors who I know, including the editors of Lightspeed, and great to see GOH Sheila Williams, who I met at Odyssey.

Next year’s Capclave GOH is Connie Willis, who I met at a workshop two years ago.  I’ll be back next year, and it should be just as cool.

My story of heavy metal skids and eeeeeeeevil rock bands is up at Big Pulp. If you remember the 1980s as a time when Judas Priest records could kill you, and Dungeons and Dragons was a threat to National Security, please enjoy this tale. 

http://bigpulp.com/m_ridler_handbook.html

I originally wrote it for the Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Short Story Contest, but it found its home in a more supernaturally friend venue for horror and crime fiction. Thanks to Bill at Big Pulp for buying it.

And now, Iron Maiden, with Number of the Beast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrSiIqCpxB8

JSR

I just saw the press release for a new online SF magazine called Lightspeed.

It looks top-notch–the editors will be John Joseph Adams and Andrea Kail, the publisher is Prime Books (who publishes Fantasy Magazine), and the artwork on the site looks very cool.

I’m all for online fiction, of course.  And I think that, in this age of declining short fiction readership, ‘zines with a more niche focus may be a stronger lure to readers than ‘zines with a more generalist approach.  I think the focus of my mag Beneath Ceaseless Skies attracts readers interested in traditional or epic fantasy, and I bet Lightspeed’s focus on SF will attract SF fans.

Best of luck to them!

It sounds like a great opportunity for those of us aspiring writers who can’t carve out the huge block of time necessary to attend a full six week workshop. Here’s the official press release:

ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOP

ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF ONLINE CLASSES

The Odyssey Writing Workshop, one of the most respected programs for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, is now offering writing classes online. Classes are designed for adult writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Each class is focused on a particular element of fiction writing and is designed for writers at a particular skill level, from beginners to professional writers. The application period for the first class, Showing versus Telling, runs from October 10-December 10, 2009. The class itself will be held from January 6-February 10, 2010.

Continue Reading »

Capclave has slick links to personal schedules for each program participant. Here’s mine.

At my reading Friday at 9:30, I will read from “Ebb,” my story that was in Space and Time last spring. At the panels on magazines and new media, I will have some interesting takes on those ideas based on my online mag Beneath Ceaseless Skies and how we use podcasts of short stories.

The Sunday panel, on paranormal romance and urban fantasy, I’m not sure I will have a whole lot to contribute. :) So I may be mostly moderating what the other panelists have to say.

If you see me at the con, by all means introduce yourself and say hello.

Despite our trip not being for another two weeks, I have decided to already start packing. People keep asking me if I am a nervous flyer and I keep saying “No, it’s only those thirty minutes of vividly imagining my gruesome death in various ways during take-off and landing that get me down.”

Talk Like a Pirate Day brought a number of reviews of FAST SHIPS, BLACK SAILS and my pirate cook story, “Skillet & Saber”. The Greenman Review called it “A rousing cook-off competition story, by extremes mouth-watering and vomit-inducing…” and the Horror and Dark Fantasy webzine Flames Rising said, “Howe dances across the line between disgusting and delicious…". Both of these reviews made me happy, and if I die in the coming weeks, say in a fiery plane crash, please have this second one (edited into the past tense, of course) inscribed on my tombstone, urn, or commemorative plate.

I’ve been rereading Jack Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD collections. (There’s an omnibus edition out now that might be worth buying.) Jeez--Kirby sure took purple prose and kicked it up to ultra-violet levels, didn't he? Has anyone ever proposed a Talk Like Jack Kirby Day? It’d be fun, except for all the yahoos who’d stop at “It’s clobberin’ time” and “’Nuff said.” Maybe those are Stan Lee’s fault.

I will be at Capclave 2009, the D.C. area’s F/SF convention, the weekend of Oct. 16-18.  It’s a lot like ReaderCon in its focus on the literary side of F/SF, but it’s smaller.

The editor GOH this year is Sheila Williams, Editor of Asimov’s, who I know from her guest lecture during my year at Odyssey.  She read and critted my literary story “A Brief Swell of Twilight” and enjoyed it even though it was not spec-fic.

I will be giving a reading and appearing on a couple panels, mostly about short fiction and the future of magazines.  I’ll post later with the details on those.