The Floor of the Sky by Pamela Carter Joern “Playwright Joern’s characters are as stern as the land, and the world of her debut novel is sturdy and memorable.”—Publishers Weekly “[An] emotionally rich first novel about an unwed pregnant teen spending the summer with her grandmother in the hardscrabble Nebraska Sandhills. . . . [H]er visit stirs up long-simmering tensions for Toby, Toby’s bitter sister Gertie and George, who has worked on the farm for more than 50 years. Seventy-two and long widowed, Toby is no fawning grandma. Tough but loving, she still rides her horse regularly and can work … Continue reading The Floor of the Sky

Baseball before We Knew It  by David Block “This is without question the book for anyone at all interested in the history of the world’s greatest game or, for that matter, in the manufacture of history.”—Boston Globe Continue reading

he fanciful works of Edgar Rice Burroughs do indeed blend multiple genres. They also draw in discussions of ethics, war, cannibalism, power, and more.

In The Moon Maid: Complete and Restored, one of the points of pride for those who brought together this edition was to have gathered up the corrupted or excised portions of the text and bring together what the title promises. Compared to many of the other Bison editions, the font is small because no one, original copy could be used. That just means the pages bear all the more adventure and leave plenty of space for the full-page illustrations.

As the Editor in Chief, now Director, Gary Dunham explains, this volume is to take the place of the abridged 1926 edition: “This edition contains the text of the original serialization of The Moon Maid, and thus it encompasses and reflects the scope and depth of the original vision of its creator. But there’s more.” And our Director is too dedicated to restoring and reprinting classic science fiction to lie about that.

For those who fear the story would be cluttered or overwhelmed, the editors have also added a list of the alterations of the original, serialized text so you can keep track of where memory fails and where the changes really are.

 

For mild spoilers and my take on the "Maid," read on.

Continue reading “The Moon Maid: Complete and Restored”

une 19th has come and gone this year, and I forgot about it.  On that day, in 1865, enslaved black folks in Galveston, Texas found out they were free.  Major General Cordon Granger of the Union Army went to Galveston to tell the people that the war was over and the slaves were free.

Ahem.  But the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September of 1862 and was scheduled to be enforced on January 1, 1863.  And, General Lee surrendered in April of 1865.  Why was there over a two year gap between the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation?  Was it because it was so difficult to get news to Galveston? 

Continue reading “Juneteenth Day”

here has been a bit of a blow up on the blogosphere.  Starting with Charles Coleman Finlay writing about a gender bias in science fiction writing, and especially in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  And this led to his suggesting a submission bomb, where a lot (hoping for 100) of women writers send in work on a specific day (August 18th) and we see what happens.  And there has been some responses.  Some positive, some negative. F&SF itself seems to be more happy at the idea of getting more submissions by women.  So is there a bias?

Of course this is my opinion, but maybe.  But I don’t think it is a planned one.  For example, if 100 people, 50 male and 50 female, sent me stories and I had to pick out 10 to publish (and this is no where close to the slush pile they get) it would have to be a rare and wonderful action/adventure war story to get into that top 10.  It’s just not what I do.  So if a bunch of the men sent in that kind of story…

Continue reading “Gender biases in sf”

just perused Writing Brave and Free, jointly authored by Steve Cox and Ted Kooser.  When I opened
this slim book, I expected a book full of writing exercises—chapters devoted entirely to Description, Setting, Character, Plot, etc.  Was I wrong!

1) The book speaks to all writing—be it writing fiction, poetry, journaling, even scribbling. Each act of writing is treated with importance.

2) I should mention (because I’m a lazy reader) that each chapter is just a very thin slice, often a couple pages long, focusing on one idea at time—getting to the point and moving on to the next lesson.

Continue reading “Calling All Ted Heads…”

f there’s one book that has changed the way I look at my country and my personal history, it’s Michele Stenehjem Gerber’s book, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (Bison, 2002 2nd Edition). I discovered it a year ago in a museum gift shop in my hometown of Richland, Washington. I’ve read it cover to cover three times, and go back to some parts over and over again. In fact,
Gerber’s book has become a trigger for a number of new poems I’m writing—poems that revisit my childhood growing up next to and working inside the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where plutonium was produced for the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs, and where plutonium was the mainstay of the local economy well into the 1980s. (The business of Hanford these days is environmental remediation—the Department of Energy calls Hanford "the world’s largest environmental cleanup.")

Continue reading “SECRET KEEPING IN AMERICA”

o, I finally made it out to the Great Plains Art Museum at the Center for Great Plains last week.  If you’re a lit connoisseur, then you’re probably an art one as well.  Somehow the two seem to intersect in so many ways– take Richard Eckersley, for instance.  There’s an excellent tribute to none other than our famed Richard Eckersley, who passed recently.  If you think you haven’t seen his work, believe me, you have.  Take a look at the UN Press title you’ve got in your hands right now and check the inside cover.  Mr. Eckersley, himself, probably designed that handsome cover.  It took some time, but I’ve decided that my favorite is the White Spirit cover—the clean lines, piercing eyes, chiaroscuro-like contrast of the book jacket photo colors.  And what’s not to love about a monkey?  Let’s cross our fingers and hope the tribute is still on, so you can check out his work.  But if not, hey, don’t worry. You can buy one of the UN Press titles and take his work home with you!

Continue reading “Art in All Forms”