tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57890876027942461122024-03-16T02:22:12.118-05:00M-BRANE SFChristopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.comBlogger465125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-62139327200734980652013-05-21T14:12:00.000-05:002013-05-21T14:12:26.445-05:00SKINJUMPERS published!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a long time coming, but M-Brane Press has a fresh new book out in the world as of today: <i>Skinjumpers</i> by Michael D. Griffths, with a vivid front cover by Hannah Walsh. This is a book that I committed to so long ago that I was still living in The Exile in OKC when I first announced it. I remember sitting at my desk there informing the Twitterati about it. And I returned from Exile three years ago, so it's been a while. Several issues of the first year of <i>M-Brane SF Magazine </i>during 2009 and 2010 featured a serial of short fiction by Mike concerning the adventures of the Enforcer Dak and his body-swapping partner Erin in the deadly city of New Cluster. This new novel continues their tale in a big way, but it is not necessary to have read the original stories to enjoy this new one. It stands alone just fine. I placed a preface in the front of the book, the text of which I will copy below.<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Skinjumpers-Michael-D-Griffiths/dp/0983170959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369154128&sr=8-1&keywords=skinjumpers"> It's for sale now on Amazon</a> and will show up elsewhere shortly.<br />
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PREFACE to <i>Skinjumpers</i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I first encountered the world of <i>Skinjumpers</i>—a strange and dangerous milieu—in a short story that the author submitted at the end of 2008 to my then-fledgling zine <i>M-Brane SF</i>. The story “A Clone of a Different Color” introduced New Cluster, a decaying city in an unspecified future and location, run by a corrupt and authoritarian police-state structure that resembles a mafia as much as a government and which is shot through with struggles among various factions. But it was not the post-cyberpunk veneer of this tale that appealed to me, but rather its subversive core conceit that people can move their consciousnesses, their very selves, from one body to another and somehow remain whole.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Specifically, the first Skinjumper tale evoked a topic that I’d wondered about a lot before I’d read that story: if I somehow change bodies (a perennial fantasy of mine), am I still <i>me</i>? Is there even actually a “me” outside my physicality? This remains a vexing question that we may—within the lifetimes of people reading this—have answered for us when we find out whether or not it is possible to separate consciousness from the body, move it into another body or possibly into a computer construct and learn whether that consciousness can survive intact or if it will be radically altered by the nature of its new physical form. I’ve wondered whether my “selfness” is really somehow a wholly different thing than my body in the way that humans tend to believe it is or if all I am is simply the compound of the literal physical stuff of my body. Is that which makes me an individual, a consciousness, actually a real thing that can be taken out of my body by some sort of futuristic instrumentality and moved elsewhere? Or is my body’s physical gender, its chromosomes, its genitalia, its sexual orientation, its age and condition and experience inseparable from the “me” of me? We don’t know this answer yet in the real world, but in the world of <i>Skinjumpers</i>, the answer is <i>no</i>: we <i>can </i>separate from our bodies and remain ourselves. We can even become <i>even more our real selves </i>by doing so.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In Michael D. Griffiths’ series of Skinjumper short stories that I published in <i>M-Brane SF</i>, and in this novel, a lot of questions are left unanswered. One is not given a detailed rationale as to why things are the way they are in New Cluster, but the reader doesn’t really need one either. The titular Skinjumpers threaten the social order and draw the fire of the authorities because (among other reasons) they are sex-rebels. They not only change bodies and cheat death by “jumping” into cloned replacements, but they can change physical gender. Some of them choose to do so permanently. In this story, you will meet Erin, a young woman whom you may underestimate at first because of the way she chooses to present herself. She is the long-term girlfriend of our protagonist Dak. But Dak has a particular sexual kink that is fabulously enabled in this world: he is oriented toward men who inhabit female bodies. Erin was once a guy and still somehow is even within her unambiguously feminine physical form. But she seems to not quite fit into our current understanding of LGBTQ-ness either. She and he are a shade different than what is enabled by or even understood in our so-called “real” world. Underneath their more or less conventional gender self-portrayals, they are both fascinatingly queer.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I am brought back to my original wondering about whether all this is possible and plausible. If I could move from my own body into that of a female, would I still be basically the same person, a gay male but somehow with a female physicality like that of Erin? What if I moved into the physicality of a straight guy? Or that of a one hundred-year- old man or a ten-year-old boy? Or even a younger clone of myself? <i>Skinjumpers </i>proposes, with great enthusiasm, that it is all possible: you can have the body you want and still be you—and maybe even a <i>better </i>“you.” It’s wonderfully subversive in the world of New Cluster in almost the same way that simply not being straight can be in our real world.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now, please relax, turn the page, and recline into a world where your body is not a permanent boundary.</span></div>
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<br />Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-76212180950783564822013-02-06T21:10:00.000-06:002013-02-06T21:24:07.298-06:00Thoughts on THE WANTING SEED <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Usually someone gives me an Amazon gift card around the
holidays, and annually I use that as justification for the delivery of a bunch
of books I might not otherwise have purchased—and, of course, I always way exceed
the gift card’s value in doing so. Among this season’s haul is a nice Norton
trade paperback (<i>not </i>pictured here) reprint of Anthony Burgess’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wanting Seed,</i> his other futuristic dystopia, written and
published at about the same time as his more famous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Clockwork Orange</i>, and which dwells upon some of that book’s same
themes of whether human goodness is innate or not, and what, if any, kind of
government or social order can foster the best sort of behavior in people.</div>
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Since the book is readily available, and summaries of it abound
online, I won’t detail its plot overly much, but it’s generally about a social
transition that occurs in England during an unspecified future era, and the
things that happen to a few closely connected characters during that period.
The world is somewhat Orwellian, with a fair amount of Newspeak-style
short-word jargon, but it’s not ruled by quite the same sort of repressive
totalitarianism as <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four’</i>s Ingsoc
regime. Instead, as the story opens, England is part of a multinational state
called the “Enspun” (Newspeak for the English Speaking Union), which in turn is
part of a world order that also includes the “Ruspun” (Russian-speaking,
naturally), and its government and society is in what is described as a
“liberal” phase. More on these phases later, but contemporary American
Teabaggers and moral majoritarians would eat this stuff for breakfast, lunch
and dinner. Because the excesses of far-future liberalism, according to
Burgess’s future-world, include: Forced Abortion! One-Child-Only Policy!
Self-Sterilization! No Religion at All! The Intermixing of the Races! and, most
obnoxious of all, Glorified Homosexuality!</div>
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Burgess was a comic novelist primarily—even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Clockwork Orange</i> with all its horror
is frequently laugh-out-loud funny—and his wit is baked thoroughly into the
cake of his writing style, his word choices and multi-lingual jokes and
seriously enormous vocabulary (who ever actually says “eleemosynary" several times in a single book, really?),
his unexpected and sometimes weird metaphors, and jokes that are drawn out over
long sections of the novel. For example, a secondary character’s odd verbal tic—he
peppers his speech constantly with the phrase “do you see”—comes back
eventually as the highlight of a stupidly funny scene well after one has
probably forgotten all about it. So <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Wanting Seed</i> is super-funny fairly often, but…but…</div>
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But it’s also chockfull of homophobia and racism, do you
see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not generally one to
criticize dead writers and their work based on these things when they and it
are of a period in history a lot different than now, and when the work is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not primarily </i>all about those issues.
Also, I know that social change in England and America on issues like race and
homosexuality has happened more rapidly in recent decades than it did during
most of the twentieth century. I get it that everyone who has ever written
fiction tends to have been a creature of his or her own era. For example, I
strenuously disagree with a lot of other readers and writers in the spec fic
genres who think that we ought to jettison H.P. Lovecraft and ignore his
influence on the genres because he was a typical man of his culture—a
turn-of-the-20<sup>th</sup> century New England white man freighted with tons of
racist prejudices and patrician class biases. Unattractive? Sure as hell it is.
But he didn’t write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mein Kampf.</i> He
may have been insensitive to and fearful of and uncharitable toward the Other
but he wasn’t on an explicit mission to oppress people and didn’t actively work
at promoting a hate-agenda with his work. One might think the same about
Burgess, a man of his time, certainly not on a hate-crusade. Yet I winced and was annoyed
every single time, while reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Wanting Seed</i>, when I encountered a stereotypical or straight-up mythical
characterization of gay men and every time I encountered a reference to the
non-English “races” and their attributes. </div>
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And they are legion: </div>
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This novel is hung heavy with the preposterous conception
that a majority of straight men (they in the yoke of population-control
“liberalism”) will actively feign homosexuality in order to secure career
advancement, and that to feign such an (obviously) undesirable condition, one
must simper and caper and lisp and have their balls cut off and otherwise
cultivate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">faux</i>-“effeminate”
characteristics, and such references dot this tale almost from cover to cover,
fading out only toward the end (when society has changed blessedly back to
hetero-normal). Also, there eventually comes into being a brutal security
force, crewed entirely by homo men, with a mandate to oppress the breeding
straights, and which resembles somewhat the thuggery of Alex and his droogs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clockwork</i> (I must admit that this development
appealed to me rather more than a little bit after chapters of homo-cliché…but
still). But this is purely a satire, right? A joke, right? Maybe. More on that
in a minute.</div>
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It’s also larded through with race business. Asians are
small-boned and high-pitched in voice. Africans are huge, frightening. One of
them, a Nigerian, has such a large mouth that it beggars the imagination that
he is able to pronounce properly the sounds of English (he also seems endowed
with a supernatural number of teeth). One woman is an “orchestra” of races,
indecipherable as to her whole complex lineage. Again and again it is commented
upon when non-white people appear, as if they are anomalous even in this future
society of the Enspun which is supposedly past having such worries. Never is a
non-white man mentioned without also mentioning some supposedly intimidating or
unflattering characteristic of his appearance or behavior. It’s a multi-racial
world with a lot of white people worrying overly much about mixing it up, and
the reader is reminded of this all the time and by an uncritical narrative
voice. However far in the future this England is, it’s still the ideal social
norm to be white, rather patrician, and more than a bit scared. </div>
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Oh wait, how about sexism? From cover to cover, it’s this
novel’s stock in trade, perhaps even more so than homophobia and racism. In the
far-flung future of the Enspun, even when having babies is state-discouraged
and literally illegal if you’ve had one already (even one that died young),
women still don’t seem to have any reason to exist at all other than for reproduction.
There is not anywhere in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wanting Seed, </i>a novel replete with incidental characters, a single occurrence of a professional woman other than a servant nor any sort of
woman not in the thrall of an undesirable man and his broken-down jalopy of a social
order. Which is just plain bizarre given the rest of this story’s trappings. I
could embrace this more readily as the reader if the author didn’t seem to be
tacitly in alliance with that social order.</div>
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Burgess proposed an idea of cyclical social/political
history. It’s indicated in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Clockwork
Orange,</i> but elucidated more fully in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Wanting Seed</i>. Basically, the organization of human affairs turns again and
again from a “Pelagian” phase to an “Augustinian” phase, with a tumultuous
transitional period in between. The names for the phases refer to the
theologians Pelagius and Augustine. To very crudely summarize it, Pelagius
believed that humans are basically decent and can be prodded toward good works
and ultimate spiritual redemption, free of the Original Sin. Augustine, on the
other hand, subscribed to the concept of Original Sin and pretty much assumed that
humans had no chance at all short of redemption by way of submission to the
Christian faith’s most doctrinaire doctrine. In the novel, Burgess’s protagonist
calls these phases, in Newspeak fashion, the Pelphase and the Gusphase, with a transitional
Interphase. As the story get under way, we gradually learn that the Pelphase is
ending and a violent Interphase is beginning. What’s striking about these
developments is that they appear to have little at all to do with the specific actions
of the government of the time. Indeed, the Prime Minister, in one scene, lazes
about in bed ignoring attempts at soothing from his “catamite,” oblivious to
and helpless against the turning of the historical wheel that is happening
around him. The protagonist explains to his social studies students early in
the novel that the actions of parties and parliaments had eventually come to be
irrelevant over the ages because the affairs of people just somehow naturally
cycle from Pelphase to Interphase to Gusphase, and do so with a consistency
that can be seen again and again in the historical record. </div>
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This book is comedic and satirical, but it feels as if its
author’s views on things like race, gender and sexuality have passed almost unfiltered
into it, because the comedy and satire seems never aimed inward at those biases. Though
he indicates a calm and unworried supposition that the transition from Pelphase
(liberal) to Gusphase (conservative) and back again, over and over, is the
normal order of things, his own authorial alliance seems clearly with the Gusphase
and its return to traditional roles for women (breeding stock), non-white races
(scary, undesirable) and gays (outlawed). But why does this bug me more in
Burgess’s book than it would if I’d encountered it in something written a
half-century or more before it (like Lovecraft) or even from someone else from
Burgess’s own time period who didn't delve into spec fic? I think it's because that he chose a couple of times to write science fiction in
an era when he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i> have been more
progressive. And also because he was in fact a real intellectual, world-traveled,
an internationalist, and should have somehow just been too modern to have been
so reactionary about social change. It’s almost like the reason that I don’t
cut any slack for Orson Scott Card. Though in the case of Card, there is much
less excuse: he is a currently living, producing writer who is also actively
promulgating a crazy-ass view of things for political reasons. It's maybe
because Burgess is a bit too recent, and that’s probably not a rational reason,
but there it is anyway. But it does somehow <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feel
</i>different when Burgess refers to the weird and frightful attributes of the
various races (the non-English people) than when Lovecraft gives the cat in
“The Rats in the Walls” the name “Nigger Man” or when Card openly calls for the
toppling of the United States government should gay marriage become legal (even
while he continues to milk the gay-ass Enderverse for all its worth). </div>
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Since the course of real-world history seems always, in fits
and starts, to be toward greater tolerance, inclusiveness and equality among
various peoples, I think it gets under my skin when science fiction writers are
so aggressively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>progressive, and
it bugs me more the closer they are to being my contemporaries. I can deal better
with Lovecraft’s bigotries because his work is most of century in the past and
it was never principally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about </i>being
a bigot. I can<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> deal with Card
because he is currently working and is actively and deliberately a bigot.
Burgess is somewhere in between. He came of age before the Second World War,
but he saw the world from a position of great privilege after it—even living
for a while in a motorhome on the Continent as a tax exile from Britain because
he was so well-to-do and didn’t like paying his taxes. Because he was such a
good stylist of a prose that can be so much fun to read, I wish that I could
read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wanting Seed</i> without all these
annoyances that repeatedly made me trip and stall during my hours with this
book. </div>
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In fairness, it's true that some of these things can easily be spotted in other British spec fic of the period, particularly in regards to the assumption that the English are the most accomplished race of people ever (a bias that white Americans inherited and still cultivate aggressively even now). For example, in J.G. Ballard's <i>The Wind From Nowhere</i>, we learn that the ever-accelerating titular wind is blowing to the ground all the shoddy cities and hovels of most of the rest of the world at a point where it has only reached the level of a nuisance in stoutly-built London. </div>
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But, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really?</i>
Extra teeth? A mouth so large, do you see.</div>
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But, on the other side of the ledger, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wanting Seed</i> does fairly pillory war and all the frauds surrounding
it with some very funny comedy and satire. Later in the book, as the world passes
out of the Interphase and into the Gusphase, a professional army is raised, its
function: war. But the world has known no war in generations, England has no
real infrastructure for it, and no particular enemy to fight, (shades of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1984</i> where it remains unclear whether
Oceania’s perpetual enemies even actually exist). So the War Department—now not
even a department of government but rather a private contractor—creates the illusion
of such, shanghaiing people into the army, duping them with mock campaigns,
noises of battle literally blasted over loudspeakers from record players. It’s
all a scam to create corpses for the processed food industry and to provide a
useful lie to sedate the public. As a character very cannily observes,
perpetual war is perpetually popular so long as it has no impact on day-to-day
civilian life. “Civilians love war,” it is noted, so long as they can continue
to be civilians during it. It sounds very, very familiar and timely.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-14383360757166879572013-01-15T17:57:00.002-06:002013-01-16T16:40:47.487-06:00The delayed re-launch further delayed!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Egads! This place needs a good dusting and general tidying-up! When last I visited this, the official website of the <i>M-Brane SF Magazine</i>, I was mired in intense day-jobbery and still undergoing a bit of sadness over having ended the monthly run of the zine. I posted over there under "Writer's Guidelines" that I'd get things relaunched in 2012 and news would forthcome. But then it didn't. The great Ralan (of the site where editors notify of the existence of their publications and writers find their guidelines), mailed me a few days ago, noted that 2012 had passed and 2013 had set in without another breath of life from the supposed <i>M-Brane</i> re-launch, and wondered if all was well.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The zine?</h3>
So, for anyone who may still care, here's an update. Yes, I do wish to resurrect <i>M-Brane SF</i>. I love it, it was great, and want to do more. But I haven't decided on the best way to do it yet, and maybe somebody will give me some opinions on it. The old format of monthly issues got to be too much. So I think it needs to be something with either less frequency or less content. Maybe it could be monthly still but only one or two stories? Or a quarterly with a few more? Should it be a free web-posted thing? I will probably still always want to compile print anthos, like I did for the last twelves issues of the old zine, the four print Quarterlies, which were beautiful thanks to the unbelievably imaginative writers who filled them. But the subscription model for the electronic version never did work very well, and was a giant pain in the ass to maintain. In fact, I did <i>not </i>maintain it. At all. There were some readers who paid for a subscription back during the beginning of the first year and ended up getting all three years of it without ever renewing and with me never once bothering them about it. Basically, I hate selling stuff and I hate the fuck outta fundraising. The whole sales/money-finding aspect of editing and writing and publishing never was the thing for me, and I know that clearly now after the experience of <i>M-Brane SF</i>. So, yes, I think the new zine will be freely available online. And I will probably still do print versions of it for fun. And then I need to figure out what I can pay writers, how or if I am going to have some kind of income stream for it in order to fund those payments, and so on.<br />
<br />
Whatever form the re-launch takes, I think I need to offer up much higher pay for the writers (even if I can't figure out how to fund it, which I probably won't because I will not engage in anything more than the most passive fundraising activities). During the final year of the old zine, its pages were filled with writers who were either already pros or have since become so, and I considered myself lucky to have had my pick of such good content. I am not even sure why that happened, and I am too modest to think that some kind of weird respectability and cachet had evolved around my modest publication, such that certain authors would take my paltry compensation for their work in exchange for an appearance in its pages.<br />
<br />
But then that becomes a whole new problem: if the new <i>M-Brane SF</i> pays significantly more than the old one did and reaches a wider audience (due to the new free-everywhere format), then I am going to be faced with an even larger mountain of slush than ever before. Because sf writers who sub to the micro- and small-press pubs naturally work down the list from those who pay something to those who pay a little bit and then to those who pay nothing. Even though it is basically impossible for anyone--even the most established pro--to make any kind of noticeable money from short fiction anymore, the tendency is still naturally to try for at least <i>some</i>. Which leads me to the other thing I don't really want to do, try to recruit uncompensated slush-readers. Because the day I re-open to submissions, I am going to be swamped. That's what slowed me down so much during those last few issues of the old zine: I was buried in "real life" work <i>and</i> buried under heaps of <i>M-Brane</i> subs that I had to cull ruthlessly, some by barely reading their first sentences. No way to live, and not fair to the writers. So, do I ask for help? Not sure right now.<br />
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<h3>
<b>Other stuff:</b></h3>
In other news, there is some new and pending activity in the broader M-Brane Press itself. I am finally, after about three years of promising it, rolling out Mike Griffith's <i>Skinjumper </i>novel. That's hopefully on the February docket, and I'll announce it officially as soon as a couple details are settled. The new, and (alas) final, issue of <i>Fantastique Unfettered</i> is finally about ready to roll out after some delay. But the wait will be worth it. And then there's some rumor and hearsay afloat regarding a possible new antho (something to do with "aether" of all things) and maybe a short fiction collection from a major figure in the M-Brane expanded universe and the vague possibility that I may just go ahead and expose my own nearly-done WIP if I don't get immediate agreement-of-awesomeness from some other pub, we will see (it's<i> not</i> more Justin Bieber fan fiction, btw!). I'm also considering a follow-up to <i>Things We Are Not</i> (the queer antho from 2009), but maybe with some kind of very specific hook or semi-shared reality for all the stories.<br />
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<br />Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-14615752528170748812012-06-20T17:37:00.000-05:002012-06-20T17:37:06.899-05:00Crossed Genres close to becoming a PROzineBelow is an update from publisher Bart Leib of <i>Crossed Genres</i> (posted to the Outer Alliance list earlier) about their Kickstarter campaign to raise sufficient funds to elevate their wonderful magazine as a SFWA pro-rates-paying market for fiction. If you can help out at all, please do so. They are offering some nice incentives, and it would be terrific to see <i>CG</i> at pro-paying level. I've always had a lot of liking for that zine and for Bart and Kay personally. Like <i>M-Brane SF</i>, their zine ran on a monthly schedule in electronic and print formats, and also managed some very cool stand-alone book projects, and we had a lot in common as far as the kind of stories we liked, including an openness to and desire for socially progressive material. Our ToCs over our overlapping period of publication included a lot of the same writers, which always made me happy. Also, I was very proud to have one of my own stories published in <i>CG</i> about two years ago, an item that I wrote to fit that issue's theme. I was very happy with the story, but I wasn't sure it was going to find a home elsewhere if it didn't work for <i>CG</i>, so I was thrilled when it was accepted and I showed it off far and wide when it went live not just because it was my story but because it was my story in a zine that I was a big fan of.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Hi all,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">I apologize for multiple posts on this. But we're down to the wire and we need a last, big push! After saving Crossed Genres from extinction,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><b>we're trying to raise funds so that CG Magazine can pay SFWA-level pro rates for fiction! </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">We've managed to get our Kickstarter up to $11,361 - that's over 80% of our stretch goal! But</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><i>we still need $2,639 more, and we have only 55 hours left!</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">No matter what, CG Magazine will continue to encourage and publish progressive, inclusive fiction. We want to be able to compensate authors better than token payments for their excellent work!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Also, as a market that always wants to support and help develop new/emerging authors, if we reach our goal we intend to implement a "Spotlight" feature, where each month a new author gets their first pro sale, as well as an interview and hopefully some extra promotion as well.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">More info about WHY we're pursuing pro rates is in this post:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://dft.ba/-2NUa" target="_blank">http://dft.ba/-2NUa</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">There are some great pledge rewards: you can preorder ebooks of everything we publish through 2013 for just $25, or add all our current titles (7) to that for $45! There are t-shirts and photo prints (including the well-loved cover of our LGBTQ issue by Julie Dillon), signed or OOP books, even one or two short story critiques still available! And</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><b>ANY pledge of $25 or more gets ebooks of the 2013 year of CG Magazine FREE!</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Please support our efforts with a pledge, or help spread the word with a blog post, FaceBook Like, tweet, or sharing via word of mouth.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><b>We have until 5pm Eastern time on Friday!</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Kickstarter main page:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://kck.st/LdGatJ" target="_blank">http://kck.st/LdGatJ</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Thanks!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="HOEnZb"><span style="color: #888888;"><br />-Bart</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="HOEnZb"><span style="color: #888888;"><br /></span></span></span></div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-5816866242506459622012-06-19T20:35:00.001-05:002012-06-19T20:35:38.950-05:00Quarterly #4 is out (finally)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJFtxxw9kmeyMkXOyWkDlOA-CV4bvcJZ4PKlBN4DL4mUNmCW0erm8xPhDUq8SjrhZK4Cg2lyaDhhwNSMmJPzJci15fB__Z5tX3JSn5ZXsMs0b2ewTd6cIVWHlR9Xo1xFaS4e2jrMWa6c/s1600/51g9qGe8llL._SS500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihJFtxxw9kmeyMkXOyWkDlOA-CV4bvcJZ4PKlBN4DL4mUNmCW0erm8xPhDUq8SjrhZK4Cg2lyaDhhwNSMmJPzJci15fB__Z5tX3JSn5ZXsMs0b2ewTd6cIVWHlR9Xo1xFaS4e2jrMWa6c/s320/51g9qGe8llL._SS500_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I finally managed the long-delayed publication of the <i>M-Brane SF Quarterly #4</i>, compiling in print form the fiction from the last of the electronic issues of <i>M-Brane SF.</i> It's a really nice book with a lot of interesting entries from a lot of really fine creators. It's up <a href="http://www.amazon.com/M-Brane-SF-Quarterly-Christopher-Fletcher/dp/1477615709/ref=sr_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340154898&sr=1-22&keywords=Christopher+Fletcher">now on Amazon</a> and should appear shortly on B&N, and it marks the conclusion of the zine's regular operations. Details still to come on future projects for M-Brane Press.<br />
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Speaking of B&N, I just noticed that a number of back-issues of the zine have materialized there as Nook ebooks, which struck me as quite odd since I had never created Nook versions of them. But evidently some of the print versions that I made available from Lulu back in the day were converted by Lulu. I vaguely recall being aware of them doing this some time ago and not responding one way or another on whether I wanted this done. I guess it explains why I still periodically receive very tiny little royalty payments from Lulu even though I haven't used their print-on-demand service for M-Brane projects in a very long time. I have no idea what these issues might look like or behave like in Nook form, but they are there.<br />
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Hopefully nobody would mind too much if I returned to this site periodically to just point out things or issue updates on stuff that is interesting or stuff that I am reading, like I used to do back in the day. In recent times, I have felt kind of isolated because I have so busy with my work life, and I miss saying stuff here and in my Live Journal. But things are calming down a bit at work, and I have no regular publication deadlines for a while, and I am doing a little bit of writing again, so I think I'd feel more "normal" if I posted stuff once in a while. So I'll try to do that more often.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-3144750537615041302012-02-20T17:28:00.000-06:002012-02-20T17:28:46.509-06:00M-Brane SF #30 released; downloadable for free right here<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNgZM-RVHoujdiDcFDI1-S8EaRbt_gZFazT7OSbVme6PsryqwQ8A99eP3wUnPCu297w5uKt65fF2lseqQD7HixSOvXBebEvPAND77gEzlJ9WfJHSTYjzR9g3ftN6RVVhf-Hpe-7o-vd1g/s1600/0001SY.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNgZM-RVHoujdiDcFDI1-S8EaRbt_gZFazT7OSbVme6PsryqwQ8A99eP3wUnPCu297w5uKt65fF2lseqQD7HixSOvXBebEvPAND77gEzlJ9WfJHSTYjzR9g3ftN6RVVhf-Hpe-7o-vd1g/s320/0001SY.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>The new issue of M-Brane SF is available now, for free download, by<a href="http://www.box.com/s/kd0ulcndrk569he776dl"> clicking right here</a>. It features the following great new stories.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22px;"><b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22px;"><b>Travis King</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22px;"> "Stumptown Physics: Toward a Unified Theory of Infinite Probability Amplitudes, Elective Affinity, and Amanda Palmer"</span><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Mary E. Lowd</b> "A Second Enchanted Evening"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Chris Stamp</b> "Dandelion and Gossamer"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Corin Reyburn</b> "Endangered Species"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Andy Dudak</b> "The Blind Can't Hear the Stars"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Sevan Taylor</b> "Long Haul"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Robert Drake</b> "The Vitruvius Project"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Margaret Karmazin</b> "Watch Over Me"</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Cambria; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Christian Arrowmaker</b> "Mirrors"</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22px;"><b>Jude-Marie Green</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22px;"> "Shiver"</span><br />
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It also happens to be the final issue of the normal run of this zine. I am planning a return with a different format later this year, but for now, this is it. Last night I posted <a href="http://www.mbranesf.com/2012/02/acknowledgements-m-brane-30.html">some comments and reflections</a> about this.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-84588184603523024132012-02-19T23:22:00.001-06:002012-02-19T23:25:57.514-06:00Acknowledgments; M-Brane #30<i>The following is from my rather lengthy editor's notes section from M-Brane SF #30, due to release tomorrow, Monday. It contains some overdue acknowledgments for some people who made it possible for me to do the zine and the books for three years. </i><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Three years ago when I published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF #1</i>, I wondered if anyone would ever notice or care, and I did not imagine that there would ever be a #30. Beginning this zine in the first place was a thing I had been wanting to do for years previously, but I began it more or less in the dark, not sure exactly how I’d even make its existence known to anyone. I wasn’t sure it was even worth the effort at all, but as a thing to do with my time it helped bring me out of a very depressing period of my life in part because it ended up connecting me, through social media, with a huge cadre of comrades that I’d never have met otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">This new issue is the last of its kind. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> will reincarnate later this year in a new form, but these regular monthly issues (yeah, I know it’s been seven months since the last one) must end now for reasons of personal time management. So before we start reading this thirtieth batch of stories, I want to acknowledge a few of the many people who were integral to life on the Brane over the last three years:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Brandon H. Bell,</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> author and editor. He appeared in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF #1</i> and in a couple other issues, and wrote the gorgeous novella <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elegant Threat</i>, which I published as one half of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF Double #1</i> last year. He also founded and edited our lovely, incomparable sister zine, the print-only beauty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fantastique Unfettered</i>. He conceived the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aether Age</i> shared universe and co-edited the anthology with me. And he’s been my very good friend this whole time, too. We have never met in person, but I feel like I know him as well as almost anybody in my immediate meatspace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Prolific Writers:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Rick Novy, Derek J. Goodman and Michael D. Griffiths supplied me constantly with entertaining and thought-provoking stories and made my job a lot easier, especially during the rocky early months of the zine when I wasn’t drawing as much attention from writers as I’d have liked. All three of these guys are involved in M-Brane Press books projects: Rick Novy’s (as editor) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2020 Visions</i>, a seriously good antho of very near-future SF; Derek J. Goodman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Machina</i>, a lovely quartet of novellas that I wish to hell more people would buy (get thee to Amazon!); and Michael D. Griffith’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Skinjumper</i> is forthcoming this year. This is a novel-length sequel to a series of shorts that I ran in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i>, and which I will repackage in book form with the new novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Random Actors of Kindness:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Writer <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dan Tannenbaum</b>, out of pure generosity, donated a ton of time to creating ebook versions of a whole bunch of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> issues and several M-Brane Press books, including my queer-fic antho <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Things We Are Not</i>. Artist and writer <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Mari Kurisato </b>provided two cover arts for that same antho and donated several covers to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> zine issues and created the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> logo that appears on the cover of this issue and on our print quarterlies, all for no ascertainable reason other than that she is made of awesomeness. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eric T. Reynolds</b> (Hadley Rille Books) decided to take a chance and sign on as publisher of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Aether Age</i>, completely sight-unseen, nothing to go on other than our description of how cool it would be. This is an example of a very cool comrade who “gets” it. I’d also put in this category a few friends who (possibly unwittingly) did a lot of promoting of my zine and my personal existence via social media, these being the intellectually stunning <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Harrison Brace</b>, and the mysteriously compelling <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Red Bakersen</b> and the incomparably sweet and wise poet <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Lydia Ondrusek</b> (who really tries to stop me from fucking up my hair, alas to no avail). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Editor-Comrades:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Without the generous feedback from, assistance from, and general camaraderie with other people who were also engaged in the crazy project of publishing short fiction zines, doing my zine would have a hell of a lot harder. I made some really great friends among my peers, such as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bart Leib and Kay Holt</b> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crossed Genres</i>); <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eden Robins and Caren Gussoff</b> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brain Harvest);</i> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Kaolin Fire</b> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">GUD</i>); <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jason Sizemore</b> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex).</i> Those are all, by the way, great writers, too, and I published all of them in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> at one time or another. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Those Literati Who Remind Me Why I Do This:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> I am an emotional dude susceptible to crazy highs and lows, and many times during the run of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i>, I would get discouraged and wonder why the hell I was bothering with the endless labor over it. And then, wallowing in a bed of disillusionment, I’d remember that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alex Jeffers</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cesar Torres</b> still walk the Earth and just might once again send me something to read and publish, and I’d arise ramrod straight and get back to work. Alex’s work is jaw-droppingly beautiful, and I have gotten to show it off a couple times in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF,</i> and in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Things We Are Not</i> antho, and in the Double (his half was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People</i>). He is woefully under-recognized as an author and that needs to change. Cesar is the author of the little gem of a book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 12 Burning Wheels</i> (M-Brane Press, 2010) and the short story “The Nagual’s Elision” which appeared in the zine and in the print <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quarterly #1</i> in 2010. He’s a relatively new writer and he is going to be a big deal. These are two genre-blurring writers who seem capable of almost anything with their words, and they are the names I would invoke if ever asked to prove to a jury that I am a competent editor and publisher: read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 12 Burning Wheels</i>—case closed!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">The Haters:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Actually they were blessedly few in number but extant nonetheless, those who felt they needed to bash me for my “lifestyle” or for my “normalization” of what they see as abnormal behavior, sending me hate mail, attacking my partner, and so on. And some of them do remain housed within the fiction genres and the small-press publishing world, and the big-press world, too. I won’t dignify any of them by actually stating their names. The Outer Alliance, of which I am proud to have been a founding member, rose to stand against them not with violence and ignorance and hate but with reason, science and art. If the Haters don’t come around, then they may eventually find themselves cordoned into a tiny little intellectual ghetto as stifling as the whole-real-life one that I spent most of my life in. So why do I even mention them here in this makeshift elegy to the end of the First Age of M-Brane SF? Because their very existence occasionally (and ironically) pulled me out of the very deepest depths of depression in the early days of the zine: out of sheer cussedness and pissed-offedness, I rose from the dead to battle my arch-enemies. I’ve seen some blog chatter in the last year about how science fiction is somehow an inherently rightwing, closed-minded (ie. “conservative”) genre. That’s a bunch of bullshit. SF is fundamentally a forward-looking and therefore, by its very definition, a progressive and open-minded genre and I have a huge stack of zine issues and books to prove it. If the impression of the genre is otherwise, then it’s because we don’t speak up enough when assbags spew venom. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">The Departed:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> We lost a few friends. Author <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Glenn Lewis Gillette,</b> whose story “Time Enough for a Reuben” was the first story of the first issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF,</i> left the world, succumbed to disease. He was a great writer and a cool dude and we miss him. Author <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jamie Eyberg</b>—who was a great Twitter friend to me personally—appeared a couple times in the zine with really cool stories, and we lost him, too, along with his wife in a tragic accident in 2010. The very last sentence of his final blog post before he died still haunts me and occasionally inspires me to action: “Sometimes life really does get in the way.” Don't forget it. I’ll also mention <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Emily Moore</b>. She had nothing to do with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> world but she was a very dear friend and the very best friend ever to my partner Jeff. She was also a talented creator, and would have been a great published writer had she made it a few more years. She died in November at much too young an age. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Those Too Numerous to List:</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Sometimes when I see an entertainment or sports celeb receive some kind of honor and thank “God” or “the Lord” for it, I think to myself <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“If I were getting this kind of award, I’d say to everyone that God had frak-all to do with it, no miracle involved, I did all this by myself, thank you, good night.” </i>But it’s not really true that all of the cool shit I have been able to do could have happened without help. It wasn’t from God, but it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> from all the people above and all the many, many more that I did not mention by name here but whose contributions, friendships, kind words, nicenesses, great art and general coolness are nonetheless deeply appreciated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-78208150021194246992012-02-06T18:04:00.001-06:002012-02-19T12:57:57.749-06:00M-Brane SF #30 Contents Announced<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1LUf8f4L5kDFRwGrvtFbiQqo4Lw6VzVLmiW7jljT16e7HtkQBjBP8-GEzESY2p0Co-tKDNgeDCo-zNC-OcN-hgsi_uQW61G22_M3oIJX4-e8oaX1fhYMcc6OoMokrhgNmx13TPunLyiM/s1600/0001SY.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1LUf8f4L5kDFRwGrvtFbiQqo4Lw6VzVLmiW7jljT16e7HtkQBjBP8-GEzESY2p0Co-tKDNgeDCo-zNC-OcN-hgsi_uQW61G22_M3oIJX4-e8oaX1fhYMcc6OoMokrhgNmx13TPunLyiM/s320/0001SY.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>Below is the list of authors and stories that will comprise the forthcoming new issue of <i>M-Brane SF</i>. It is our 30th issue, after a hiatus of about seven months, and it will be the last one in its familiar format. A couple months ago I said that there would be a 30th and 31st issue, each with six stories, before ending the zine's run and shifting to a new concept, but some of the stories I wanted to include between those two issues fell though (my fault for being too slow at grabbing them) and I eventually decided to put these ten stories together into a somewhat fatter issue #30. Posting for the last time the ToC for my beloved zine kind of makes me want to cry, but it also fills me with a little bit of pride for the work that <i>M-Brane SF</i> did in bringing forward so much really great work from a lot of new writers. It was a really great run. And it's not over anyway: I will relaunch <i>M-Brane SF</i> in a new format later this year. The new issue will appear shortly and its subscribers will get their usual PDF download. Also, on publication day I will post its entire content for download on this site, and all of its stories will appear in print as part of the M-Brane SF Quarterly #4.<br />
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<div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Travis King</b> "Stumptown Physics: Toward a Unified Theory of Infinite Probability Amplitudes, Elective Affinity, and Amanda Palmer"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Mary E. Lowd</b> "A Second Enchanted Evening"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Chris Stamp</b> "Dandelion and Gossamer"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Corin Reyburn</b> "Endangered Species"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Andy Dudak</b> "The Blind Can't Hear the Stars"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Sevan Taylor</b> "Long Haul"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Robert Drake</b> "The Vitruvius Project"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Margaret Karmazin</b> "Watch Over Me"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Christian Arrowmaker</b> "Mirrors"</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Cambria; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Jude-Marie Green</b> "Shiver"</span></div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-82177589129708611172011-11-21T20:09:00.000-06:002011-11-21T20:09:41.606-06:00Hiatus!As those few of you who still pay attention to me know, my other-life of busy career has caused a lot of serious delays with <i>M-Brane SF</i> publication. What I said in the last post--that I intend to publish the final two issues of the current format shortly--is still true, and I am close to done with content selection for those. I have, however, closed to further submissions. I haven't yet made final decisions as to which stories will fill those last two issues, but I believe that I have them in hand and just need separate the great from the really great. Since I am no longer taking subscriptions for the current (soon-to-be-former) format of the zine, the final two editions will be released for free on this site and elsewhere.<br />
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<i>M-Brane SF </i>will appear in a new iteration in 2012, details forthcoming. In the meantime, this site will remain a place for news of my small press's business, including future book projects, our fantasy zine <i>Fantastique Unfettered</i> and other cool stuff.<br />
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Thanks, everyone, for all the support, companionship (and patience!) over the past three years. I have some good stuff in the works for after the end of this little hiatus.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-34505115798834550542011-10-06T21:17:00.000-05:002011-10-06T21:17:25.916-05:00Update on the Recent InactivityI've made no new post to this blog since July, and that one was about how I imagined my schedule was back under control and that M-Brane Press and zine matters would resume their normal calendar. Such has not happened. Since that post, the situation with my day job has changed fundamentally. We are in a transition there, and I have been doing essentially the work of at least two people. An average work day has been about 14 hours, and I haven't had a single full day off since Labor Day. I am not complaining (I do like my job), just reporting facts by way of explaining why <i>M-Brane SF</i> has not had a new issue lately and why writers who have stories in submission have been awaiting reply for an exceptionally long amount of time. So I want to update anyone who still cares about what's going and what the future holds for my little publishing operation...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1hFaVDQy-BmkB7K7o-uJeeGMc0WOU-iRKc4rrYQu90OeCqo4-bMHnU0SbBLCllfjPEBaGHIJ2ps8gkHW-UiM5deqUX-jI4fWgUBgavIzwzvVRQZaz55Axw_47jmHLy7-re3G65PEJcU/s1600/starbuck_l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1hFaVDQy-BmkB7K7o-uJeeGMc0WOU-iRKc4rrYQu90OeCqo4-bMHnU0SbBLCllfjPEBaGHIJ2ps8gkHW-UiM5deqUX-jI4fWgUBgavIzwzvVRQZaz55Axw_47jmHLy7-re3G65PEJcU/s320/starbuck_l.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>1) The <i>M-Brane SF</i> zine will appear in its normal format twice more, as issues #28 and #29, probably in November and December. After that, I intend to change it into something else. I want to continue curating the particular kind of fiction that I have attracted to <i>M-Brane SF</i>, but it needs to be in a manner that both draws more attention to its writers but which also requires a less crazy amount of labor on my part given the ongoing facts of my "real" life.<br />
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2) Writers who have stories in submission to <i>M-Brane SF</i> (or whom may still submit) can either patiently await my reply or email me at mbranesf at gmail dot com to inquire about their submission status or withdraw their submission, no hard feelings. A bunch of stories have already been in the "maybe" folder for going on 90 days, which is crazy-long by my standards, so I understand if anyone is tired of waiting. That being said, stories that I have here will be replied to eventually, and new submissions will be considered for the last two normal "monthly" issues until I have them filled.<br />
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3) M-Brane Press projects such as our fantasy zine <i>Fantastique Unfettered</i> and our various book projects will be unaffected by the change with the <i>M-Brane </i>zine.<br />
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4) Some new M-Brane Press projects--including a re-imagining of the <i>M-Brane SF</i> zine concept--will be announced later. We have have a couple of books on deck, and have a few other cool things in the cooker.<br />
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I've learned a lot, met a lot of cool people, and done a lot of wicked awesome stuff in the almost three years since I launched <i>M-Brane SF</i>, and I don't intend to stop doing any of that. It will just be different and probably better. Thanks, all, for not sending me a lot of hate mail during my recent relative silence.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-15514518187492785202011-07-12T20:41:00.000-05:002011-07-12T20:41:27.744-05:00M-BRANE SF #29 releases tonight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXMMvXchkM16u9FR77kDxkG8uymQFLrPIkhN8Mg5HBwdqIU2qBKKYNwDZo-LvdOTE3bQtaE4poLBusSD0vkNiHuwW1-G58-pHsOQgCDeZuR7VUk7PDRffXkNBWrtkC0YG1XKonHI8HwE/s1600/0001ZZ.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXMMvXchkM16u9FR77kDxkG8uymQFLrPIkhN8Mg5HBwdqIU2qBKKYNwDZo-LvdOTE3bQtaE4poLBusSD0vkNiHuwW1-G58-pHsOQgCDeZuR7VUk7PDRffXkNBWrtkC0YG1XKonHI8HwE/s320/0001ZZ.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>The new issue releases in PDF form to its subscribers tonight in about an hour. Below is the usual PayPal button that one may use to purchase a copy. Money received in this way is a large part of what keeps the zine going. Due to various delays, I missed my usual post previewing the table of contents and the writers, so I copy here my intro notes from the issue:<br />
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<div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: .3in .6in .9in 1.2in 1.5in 1.8in 2.1in 2.4in 2.7in 3.0in 3.3in; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">EDITORIAL NOTES 6/11<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Since I’m already late with getting these stories to you, I won’t take up a lot of time with my usual news updates and other ramblings. It’s a powerful quintet of astounding visions that comprises this new issue, and together they form an answer to the question, “Why science fiction?” A writer can explore big ideas and smaller-scale personal situations in any genre, but there’s not a genre quite like sf for probing into those interstices between the grand and the minute, the cosmic and the personal, the Big Idea and the assimilation of it on a smaller scale. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Occasionally I hear complaints that a “sense of wonder” left the genre a long time ago, supplanted by smaller ideas and unimportant concerns. When I hear this, I wonder what people are reading because this is certainly not true of the best of the contemporary genre. This attitude emanates, I think, from a conservative outlook on the genre and a notion that the old Golden Age, and its total occupation with Idea and Plot, was necessarily superior somehow to contemporary work where Character and Style are of interest and importance and where the imaginary boundary between science fiction and “literature” has blurred and broken down. I think that over time with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> I have managed, unintentionally, to show that this debate is at least somewhat contrived. Because here we have it all. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The new issue opens with A.J. Fitzwater’s stunning “Twixt,” and it ends with Kenneth Burstall’s lavishly bizarre (and very “M-Braney”) item “The Cone.” In between, we have stupendous entries from Mark Ward (“After the Fall”), Mason Gallaway (“Ocean of Change”) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> veteran and recent Writers of the Future winner Patty Jansen (“War Games”). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Engage and enjoy.—CF <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;"></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-85834507530563633162011-07-01T22:00:00.002-05:002011-07-01T22:15:19.252-05:00Back to business, for the most partReaders of our zine, or people who follow it or me in other online ways, may have noticed that I have been somewhat off-schedule and generally absent for the last few weeks. A big pile-up of projects in May, plus an incredibly busy work schedule through May and June caused some problems: we missed entirely our May issue of the zine. The third print Quarterly (collecting issues #25, #26 and #27) is a bit late, as is issue #29 (we're skipping #28--it may show up later in some kind of special off-schedule form). But the good news:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabGwHbL8C98_hwsfkt71EjrDPAQ_MNuKMIqkkBGlXM2oaUGGVTZMOYlCKCE9DfW5DQVi1qHMRtml7Zgp9mprOSjlMn7NM4Ry2R1AhFoJaMCor8JkE8JqIsRBkaE_phtDT6zzFYiGRjWM/s1600/IMG_0140.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabGwHbL8C98_hwsfkt71EjrDPAQ_MNuKMIqkkBGlXM2oaUGGVTZMOYlCKCE9DfW5DQVi1qHMRtml7Zgp9mprOSjlMn7NM4Ry2R1AhFoJaMCor8JkE8JqIsRBkaE_phtDT6zzFYiGRjWM/s320/IMG_0140.JPG" width="240" /></a>1) Issue #29 is basically done and will release in a few days (it will be called the June issue, even though its release will happen a few days into July). It's full of terrific new stuff. I'll post its table of contents, info about its authors, and its cover image shortly.<br />
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2) The third Quarterly is also basically done, and it, too, will show up within a few days. I have to finish its cover and a few other little details, but it's about there. It will feature some great content not seen in the electronic issues: two brilliant stories by Adam Callaway and an interview with him.<br />
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3) Issue #30, July, is expected on schedule, returning us to our normal calendar.<br />
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4) I may have an announcement about some kind of cool new book project soon.<br />
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My day-jobbery is always busy (and a fresh new change in my job description adds to this), but it has a couple of high seasons each year, and last week was the climax of one such. I worked all seven days of it and clocked about 74 hours on duty. While that was a bit out of the ordinary, it's not too different than what most weeks have been like for the last couple of months. But we're in a bit of slower spell now for a few weeks, and I intend to catch up on a lot of other business.<br />
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Thanks everyone who has supported <i>M-Brane SF</i> and M-Brane Press's other projects over the last couple of years. We've been a bit quiet lately, but are still in business.<br />
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<b><i>(The image, appropos of nothing, is of the dessert from a wine dinner I prepared in June--part of the day-job work. It is a chocolate-peanut butter ganache tartlet with salted caramel sauce, accompanied by red and white wine jellies. Yeah, zinfandel and chardonnay solidified with apple pectin, like wine Jello shots!)</i></b>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-41651839814518644942011-06-07T17:26:00.001-05:002011-06-07T17:27:46.289-05:00Behold, the M-Brane SF Double!A short vid of me showing off the proof copy of the <i>M-Brane SF Double</i>. It should be live for purchase on the major online booksellers any hour now. Also, I will still honor the pre-order special indefinitely if anyone wants to take advantage of the electronic freebies, because why not? Click on that "related articles" item at the end of this post for more info on that.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IGiJQG1iX2U?rel=0" width="425"></iframe>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-35538242724282649582011-06-02T21:22:00.000-05:002011-06-02T21:22:30.191-05:00M-Brane SF #28 is late!So this is all rather embarrassing: the month of June seems to have begun already without there ever having been a May publication of <i>M-Brane SF</i>. The twenty-eighth issue fell to my crazy work schedule during May, plus the final push to finish <i>The New People/Elegant Threat (M-Brane SF Double)</i>. We had a situation like this in December when the December 2010 issue was actually released in the first half of January 2011, followed two weeks later by the January issue. This might be how it plays out with May and June this time. Expect either two nearly back-to-back releases this month, or a double issue.<br />
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While just being too busy (average work week was 65-70 hours during May) was the main factor, there was another situation that contributed to this unusual lateness. I just didn't really have enough stories that I wanted for it. I looked at a ton of submissions and didn't see a lot that was quite right. I did not, however, want my decision-making to be too much affected by fatigue--and the fact that I was seeing basically<i> nothing </i>indicated that the problem might lie partly with me--so I held a lot more candidates in the "maybe" folder than I might have otherwise. I've gradually worked through it, and there are now only eighteen stories submitted since April 26 that are awaiting a decision, which I hope to get done within a couple days.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-45597593898307485522011-05-26T22:16:00.002-05:002011-05-26T22:38:17.293-05:00Zack Kopplin cheered for blasting Bachmann<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_Z81XTrZLgbRnR18eb3NU78LhWSbW0Q9O5sR8dUuss5I8-XgmS-1aDJ-FvwgbNYtAg2u-hshv9Y8NclZpcsVsZkPsvVoK3bLE5wwf0dXt6uzOrZ2jmPhE197DN6nY9xEl6-im1Rutu0/s1600/Zachary-Kopplin-225x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1_Z81XTrZLgbRnR18eb3NU78LhWSbW0Q9O5sR8dUuss5I8-XgmS-1aDJ-FvwgbNYtAg2u-hshv9Y8NclZpcsVsZkPsvVoK3bLE5wwf0dXt6uzOrZ2jmPhE197DN6nY9xEl6-im1Rutu0/s1600/Zachary-Kopplin-225x225.jpg" /></a></div>At M-Brane Press, we defend rationality, sanity and science. Over <a href="http://mbranesf.livejournal.com/47496.html">on my personal journal</a>, I tonight declared 17-year-old Zack Kopplin an M-Brane SF "Anti-Douchebag" for his campaign to repeal Louisiana's idiotic Science Education Act, which opens the public schools wide to Creationist bullshit, and for directly challenging Congresswoman Bachmann to cough up her alleged Nobel laureates who actually believe in "intelligent design." The occasional acknowledgement of a regular civilian who has done something great to defeat stupidity used to be something that I just did personally, but now it is an "Official" program of M-Brane SF and M-Brane Press. Stupidity and anti-science are on the march everywhere in the United States. M-Brane stands against this madness.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-30209792323940742242011-05-17T18:56:00.006-05:002011-05-17T19:08:12.686-05:002020 VISIONS released in epub format on B&N<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPbQn2NQ828HxYk_7Z4XS7f7BVaFDPKIE4nJQ-NWBoMj10R0THmqu2RLT8ixGmGUj91fE_EkQqCuC6JtmFjRFrTxkHWfE5aTaVkb2Gvl2W90NptBXbXxxAuKsErqLYl0iTeUCu5rM6890/s1600/2020nookcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPbQn2NQ828HxYk_7Z4XS7f7BVaFDPKIE4nJQ-NWBoMj10R0THmqu2RLT8ixGmGUj91fE_EkQqCuC6JtmFjRFrTxkHWfE5aTaVkb2Gvl2W90NptBXbXxxAuKsErqLYl0iTeUCu5rM6890/s1600/2020nookcover.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">It's a few months later than planned, but we finally have an .epub-format ebook version of Rick Novy's <i>2020 Visions</i> available <a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/books/e/2940012585554/?itm=1&USRI=2020+visions">as a Nook Book at Barnes and Noble</a>, and directly from M-Brane Press as well (details below). It's our hope that people who passed on the lovely print version of the book (also available at B&N as well as Amazon) were just waiting for a version that they could read on their Nook or iPad or a variety of other devices and will now go ahead and get a copy of this great book. <i>2020 Visions </i>is a beautiful original anthology of very near-future speculative fiction (the "2020" in the title refers to the year) featuring stories by Mary Robinette Kowal, Alex Wilson, Jack Mangan, David Gerrold, Emily Devenport, Alethea Kontis, Ernest Hogan, Jeff Spock, David Lee Summers and many others. This is a very cool book, and for only $4.95 at Barnes and Noble, it should not be missed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">You can also buy it right here for only $3.95, using the Pay Pal button below (takes credit cards and e-checks if you don't have a Pay Pal account). One may wonder why we seem to be undercutting our own price at Barnes and Noble. We're really not--it's just that direct purchase from M-Brane means a bit more money more quickly that can eventually go to the authors when this book goes into profit. But if you're shopping at B&N anyway, then by all means get it there. By the way, if you purchase it here, allow anywhere from a few hours to a day or so for delivery: we're not rigged for direct download from this site, so we send a link to you by email.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b>One last special detail:</b> Anyone who buys <i>2020 Visions</i> in any format (print, Nook, Kindle) from B&N, Amazon or directly from M-Brane Press will get a <b>free subscription</b> to the electronic (PDF) edition of <i>M-Brane SF</i>, our very nice monthly magazine of short speculative fiction. If you purchase from B&N or Amazon or any other retailer, just forward a copy of your order confirmation or receipt to mbranesf at gmail dot com, and we will add you to the <i>M-Brane SF</i> subscription list.<br />
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</div></form>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-23457379809470179172011-05-01T14:58:00.009-05:002011-05-01T19:28:52.632-05:00The "DOUBLE" PRE-ORDER SPECIAL BEGINS!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqqVQ-5WM8qUiLEG_Arn2toZDg4TJTsxLffk2Jnge8ibQFJUYgUj9nej8DUzW308WOJS9WGvlpaTGnp4KVEYzIzgYeiPZYH0fUXnytV3JlpC9aoDKZW3n6pFxKGToniKslViWTVGFJqw/s1600/doublecover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqqVQ-5WM8qUiLEG_Arn2toZDg4TJTsxLffk2Jnge8ibQFJUYgUj9nej8DUzW308WOJS9WGvlpaTGnp4KVEYzIzgYeiPZYH0fUXnytV3JlpC9aoDKZW3n6pFxKGToniKslViWTVGFJqw/s320/doublecover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The <i>M-Brane SF Double, </i>by <a href="http://sentenceandparagraph.com/">Alex Jeffers</a> and <a href="http://www.nithska.blogspot.com/">Brandon H. Bell</a>,<i> </i>is finally within days of completion. This beautiful book is due for official release May 31. People who have followed my blogs or paid attention to me on Twitter and Facebook over the past year know that I have long dreamed of publishing a book that would honor the style of the old Ace Doubles from decades ago, those wonderful books where two short novels were published back-to-back (and upside down in relation to one another), so that the book has the effect of having two front covers. Over the last two years, I have had the joy of publishing monthly issues of <i>M-Brane SF</i>, a couple of gorgeous anthologies, a couple of lovely single-author short fiction collections, and the new fantasy periodical <i>Fantastique Unfettered</i>. I adore all of these things, but this new book, the Double, has become something of the new baby of the family, the special adored one, the focus of all attention (The rest of my operations will probably be glad when it's finally released! )</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">While I have worked hard on this project, the work I that have done is petty, insignificant, a mere trifle compared to that of the real talent behind it, the two great writers and the one great cover artist. These three came together to make my pet project not just real but actually a thing worth doing. I am going to introduce the two authors and their stories at length below, in the form of publishing here the actual intros that I prepared for the book. But first I want to acknowledge artist Jeff Lund for making two fine, matching covers for this book which each catch an essence from the stories they introduce but which also together create the whole look that I was after for this book. Of course everyone who knows me at all knows very well that Jeff is also my life partner, but his employment as the cover artist was by no means an easy inside job. He fought me for months on actually doing the work, insisting that he wasn't qualified for it. But I knew that he could do it--because I had seen so much great work from him before--and that he was the exact artist that I needed for this very special project. <a href="http://mbranesf.livejournal.com/tag/the%20double">This post on my Live Journal</a> , from many months ago, tells the story of getting the covers done in more detail.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">M-Brane Press is offering a fine domestic (US and Canada) </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">pre-order special </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">for the </span><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">M-Brane SF Double: The New People/Elegant Threat, Print Edition.</span></b></i> Buy here, using the Pay Pay button below (takes credit/debit cards and e-checks if you don't have an actual Pay Pal account) for <b>$14.95</b>. For this price, <b>you will get a copy of the beautiful print edition</b> of this book (shipping included) plus t</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">his giant slew of electronic bonuses: </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>1) </b>A <i>permanent</i> electronic (PDF) subscription to <i>M-Brane SF</i>, the monthly magazine of astounding science fiction. Your subscription will begin (and never end!) with a three-issue "starter pack" consisting of issues #25, #26 and the new #27--check out a free issue with the button over in the right side bar...</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>2) </b>Electronic copies of <i><b>Fantastique Unfettered </b></i><b>#1 and #2</b> (worth the price right there). <a href="http://www.fantastique-unfettered.com/">Fantastique Unfettered</a><a href="http://www.fantastique-unfettered.com/"> </a>is our new "Periodical of Liberated Literature," a gorgeous magazine edited by Double author Bell... </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>3)</b> Electronic copies of our fabulous anthologies <i><b>Things We Are Not</b></i><b> </b>(queer sf) and <i><b>2020 Visions</b> </i>(near-future sf)<i>...</i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i></i><b>4)</b> An electronic copy of <i><b>Ergosphere</b>,</i> the special twelfth issue of <i>M-Brane SF</i>, guest-edited by Rick Novy...</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><b>5)</b> A giant mega-bundle of <i><b>the entire second year of M-Brane SF</b></i>, back issues #13 through #24. </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><i><b>(Again, US and Canadian orders only; sorry, we can't manage high overseas shipping costs at this low price, but the print book will become available in the UK, Europe and Australia after release.)</b></i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">We are giving away nearly everything we have to give away with this special. That's how terrific we think it is, and how important we think it is that people get a copy of this book. <b>But there's one catch:</b> The special ends by the 5/31 publication date <i><b>or as soon as 100 readers order this special</b></i>. As soon as order #100 is received, we will will shut down the pre-order and the book will then be available only through B&N, Amazon, etc. (This isn't just an arbitrary number or a gimmick--processing pre-orders is a lot of work, and a 100 is about as many as we want to commit to in the next couple weeks). Readers who decide to jump on this good deal should do so right now by using the Pay Pal button. Allow us up to a day to send you by email the details of your purchase, including all your download links to your fat new cache of electronically preserved fiction. The print <i>Double</i> won't ship to you until 5/31, but you'll have more than enough to read in the meantime.</span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">he fact that Alex Jeffers does not quite yet seem to be a common household name among readers of speculative fiction is a deplorable situation that I mean to do whatever little I can to correct. A writer of fantasy, science fiction and difficult-to-categorize literature, Jeffers has been one of my favorite writers that I have encountered over the last couple of years. He is a storyteller of remarkable imagination, a wordsmith of great talent and an editor’s dream of a writer with whom to work on a project. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOhfekzRmd_bwlj-FZtzIboW4FsYnCc1uMqS5sOwEpiU4PzdM59XTKkLxhOm8PrfLwuDvoXqItfnNrsowYEHLMLH765p9z61A3IakvDNBMCVe2Q-xcb9H3P3ppBF_cy_bfc9e6H80lkLA/s1600/newpeoplecoverpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOhfekzRmd_bwlj-FZtzIboW4FsYnCc1uMqS5sOwEpiU4PzdM59XTKkLxhOm8PrfLwuDvoXqItfnNrsowYEHLMLH765p9z61A3IakvDNBMCVe2Q-xcb9H3P3ppBF_cy_bfc9e6H80lkLA/s320/newpeoplecoverpic.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> I first learned of Jeffers when he offered a story for my GLBT science fiction anthology <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Things We Are Not</i> (2009). I accepted “Composition with Barbarian and Animal”—a gorgeous, exotic, enthralling tale—for the book and counted myself lucky to have gotten such a nice item for my first attempt at editing an anthology. After I learned more about Alex Jeffers, I suspected that he was a writer perhaps a bit out of my league at the time (as the very small-time editor I was), and I doubted that I’d have a shot at publishing him again any time soon. But a short while later he surprised me with “Jannicke’s Cat” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF #10,</i> November 2009). And it was then, while reading this achingly lovely story, that I learned of the singular world of Rahab, an oceanic place with but a few small islands where humans live in interstellar isolation from their cousins on other distant, out-of-reach planets. There befell a situation that resulted in the birth of no more females to the last generation of women on that world. Jannicke, an old woman at the time of the story, is one of the last of her sex, in a soon-to-be all-male world where the very survival of the species may be in peril. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Fast-forward many, many years: Science found a way where nature didn’t, and the humans—the men—of Rahab survive and flourish as humans always have, living their lives, dreaming their dreams, marrying and having families. But something else also remained the same as it had always been: most males were still born heterosexually oriented but they would live their lives never knowing a single living woman. This biological, existential conundrum and one possible solution to it are at the core of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People</i>. If, based on what I have just said, you have already formed expectations or made presumptions about what you will find in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People,</i> you are probably wrong. Jeffers surprises throughout both with the details of the story and the way his vividly rendered characters navigate through it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> When Jeffers submitted <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People</i> to me over a year ago, I was frankly stunned. Because he submitted it for consideration as a story for the normal run of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> magazine, taking me at my word that I had no upper limit on word count. Indeed I do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> have a firm upper word count limit for the magazine, but a thirty thousand word novella that I suspected would be fantastic (before I’d even read a single word) seemed altogether too much to treat as a normal submission. So, what to do? I had already been chattering on the web about my dream of creating a new book in the old style of the Ace Doubles, but I was still pretty far away from committing to the actual doing of it, and I had no idea what I’d be able to get for its content. But as I started reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New People</i>, I realized that I had one half of my Double in hand already. It was the perfect situation all around: I had one story that would work beautifully for the new book, and it was a story that had long deserved but had never gotten a proper presentation to the public.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> As with the story that forms the other half of this book, Jeffers’ tale is one stand-alone piece of what we must hope will one day come forth as part of a much larger story. Jeffers says he has in process a work called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Boy’s History of the World</i>, which will incorporate all of his Rahab stories. This is something that ranks highly on my personal list of Books That I Wish Existed. But for now, I will content myself with the terrific pleasure of being the one to point toward this great open window into that world. Enjoy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> —Christopher Fletcher, Editor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"><i><b>Foreword to Elegant Threat by Brandon H. Bell..</b></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 70px; line-height: 49px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: normal;"><i><br />
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</tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> have been telling readers about Brandon H. Bell since I first read his work in the slush-pile the first month I was producing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> magazine. In the slightly more than two years since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF #1</i>, I have published Brandon’s stories twice more in the magazine and in a couple of anthologies (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Things We Are Not</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF Quarterly #1</i>), and I have been gratified to see, as his list of publishing credits steadily lengthens, that other editors are seeing what I see in this extraordinarily imaginative and intelligent writer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6R6MpD-KEx7cobdtQ9qjG0D-bTYu880K_EqIEkaCLILkCbEMxKCYgx5zXrFOdaxT0iuQ9Wldx9LcVux3OViSzYaS4mSLYVYEW0PAqc2N7YvndAGk_V3uySSJQ_hNlhT5sgiBoioO22g/s1600/threatcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6R6MpD-KEx7cobdtQ9qjG0D-bTYu880K_EqIEkaCLILkCbEMxKCYgx5zXrFOdaxT0iuQ9Wldx9LcVux3OViSzYaS4mSLYVYEW0PAqc2N7YvndAGk_V3uySSJQ_hNlhT5sgiBoioO22g/s320/threatcover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> The story you are about to read is a marvel, and the realization in print of a project that Brandon Bell has been working on for a long time. He has created a rich, lavish, fascinating and sometimes frightening Post-Singularity, interplanetary milieu. Some lucky readers have had a chance to peer into it a couple of times already: one of his first published short stories, “Best Gift” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Return to Luna</i>, Hadley Rille 2008) was, as Bell describes it on his website, “a tale about Sterling Suits, Neo-Dromedaries, and the persistence of love, trust, and faith on the lunar surface.” The next glimpse into this strange world was in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF #5</i> (June 2009), with the story “Abraham Discovers an Artifact Impenetrable to All Harm,” an enigmatic and startling story about an unusual family struggling to make their way in the universe at the edges of an impending war between humans and Post-humans. These stories were so fascinating that my only complaints were that they were too short and that there weren’t enough of them. But now, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elegant Threat</i>, we finally get to spend a longer time in Bell’s world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elegant Threat—</i>the story of people who wrangle aquatic fauna from the harrowing tides of the moon Shanama against a backdrop of imminent conflict with the mysterious Post-humans and sectarian strife within their own ranks—was envisioned by its author as the first of a triptych of stories that will eventually comprise a much longer novel. But this story herein—a novella of about thirty thousand words—is also complete, self-contained and will satisfy readers even if the other portions are never seen (though all readers of this one will certainly clamor for the rest and Bell likely shall feel obliged to produce it soon enough). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Bell has deployed an interesting and unexpected literary device in telling this story. Its subtitle, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Demise of Captain Fantomas Patton-Guerrero and Loss of La Amenaza Elegente</i>, gives the reader a big clue up front essentially how the story is going to end, as does the very first chapter’s final line: “…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Amenaza Elegente</i> dropped toward the planet, beginning its descent toward the place that would soon become its grave.” As with an ancient Greek tragic play or a Shakespeare drama, we go into it knowing that Captain Fantomas and his ship are doomed but the fascination lies in seeing how and why this disaster unfolds. And even though the ending is foretold from the earliest pages, the reader will not see coming the stunning sequence of events that bring about that ending. This way of telling the story, as if it is a recounting of an event that the reader may have heard of before, adds an alluring patina of history to it. But what really makes this story and this way of telling it succeed is the way that Bell draws such lovely, nuanced characters and makes the reader really care about them enough to hope that maybe somehow, against all odds, they will still avert tragedy even though we already know that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amenaza</i> is not going home again.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> Now, without further delay, please visit spectacular, deadly Shanama and witness the fate of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Amenaza Elegente</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> —Christopher Fletcher, Editor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i><o:p></o:p></span></div></span><br />
</span>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-28950360133557229922011-04-29T17:27:00.000-05:002011-04-29T17:27:35.926-05:00M-BRANE SF #27 RELEASEDThe electronic edition of the new issue will be released to subscribers tonight. Others are invited to support future issues by buying for $2.00 a PDF copy of this great new issue using the Pay Pal button below. Within a day, you'll receive by email a link to download your copy. Such contributions make it possible to continue offering this zine each month. Further below, I will post my entire editor's notes from the new issue, introducing each of the authors and their stories. Annual subscriptions to electronic edition may be purchased at the <a href="http://www.mbranepress.com/">M-Brane Press page</a>. The contents of issue #27, along with those of issues #25 and #26, will be featured in print book, along with some bonus material, called <i>M-Brane SF Quarterly</i> #3 in June.<br />
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<div class="MsoBodyText" style="tab-stops: .3in .6in .9in 1.2in 1.5in 1.8in 2.1in 2.4in 2.7in 3.0in 3.3in; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 18pt;">EDITORIAL NOTES 4/11<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">April has been a month of readjustment both in the M-Brane world and in my “real” life as I figure out how to organize my time and energy in the best way to get through the coming months. In my day job, as a chef with a local high-end catering and managed services company, “high season” is upon us. Our special events venues are heavily booked, and our restaurants are getting busier and busier. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> world, it’s also been a sort of high season in that I have had to manage ongoing monthly issues of this zine, the launch of the second issue of our new sister zine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fantastique Unfettered</i> (a gorgeous print periodical edited by Brandon Bell) and the completion and impending publication of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF Double</i>. Also, we recently put out the second <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF Quarterly</i> and have the third one coming very soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Every month for the last four months, I have seriously considered just deciding that the monthly zine is too much work and either putting it on hiatus, restructuring it, or bagging it altogether. Just a week before the time of this writing I nearly decided that there would be no April issue. But what made me get a grip and change my mind was the fact that I had some terrific stories sitting here that needed me to publish them. The selection of each issue’s content is by far the hardest part of this job. As much as fun as it can be, it can be also be very complicated and stressful. The actual work of compiling and formatting and publishing of the issue is nothing by comparison. After twenty-seven months of it, I can do that in my sleep. But after I finally knew what the stories would be this month, I fell back in love with the whole thing again and decided it was decided it was dumb to have ever considered not doing it. I went through that hate-love process last month, too, and may again next month. But there is now, and will be then, a new issue. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">I have a simple system for story selection that works decently well, but where it gets stressful is when—as was the case this month—there are a huge number of stories that make it into the MAYBE folder. This usually just means that I was too easy-going during the initial cull and that I will quickly weed out a bunch more NOs in a few minutes. Stories usually make the MAYBE cut simply by displaying both good writing and some kind of hook that appeals to me on the first page or two, but a lot of them end up sent over to the NO folder later for various reasons when I read deeper into them. (If you have submitted a story to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane SF</i> and have waited much more than two weeks for a reply, it’s probably because your item is sitting in that MAYBE folder.) But there were just so many good ones to consider this time, enough to make the whole project rather discouraging. But, eventually, I sorted out the ones that were good but still weren’t quite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> stories, and I ended up with six, these:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Joyce Chng’s “The Bones Shine Through With Light”</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> mesmerizes with its language and imagery. A mysterious story of someone grappling with a legend of a “tiger demoness” and arriving at a life-changing revelation, it is probably not even science fiction in the way we usually define it, but it is nonetheless the correct keynote for this new issue. Chng appeared here last year, and I have been a fan since. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">The most classic and expected element of military science fiction—the training and deployment of some kind of space-going infantry or marine force—was probably done best in the classics <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starship Troopers</i> (Heinlein) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Forever War</i> (Haldeman), and it has been re-done again and again, sometimes well and sometimes not. I like this subgenre in theory, but I see a lot of stories like that submitted here that do not work at all. But I like it enough that I have been puttering around off and on for about three years with a novel focused on a military unit in the future. The new military sf stories that I want to see (I have said to myself in despair), are either not being written at all or I just never see them.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Ross Gresham </b>delivered an antidote to this problem with his <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Spending the Government’s 28.”</b> I still don’t know exactly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i> this story scratches the itch so well, but it does, and I like it a lot. The writing itself and the voice that comes through it is perfect, and it’s also quite funny—something of an oddity around here in itself, a comical story. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">The idea of “the city” as a sort of character in itself, an unconscious entity holding sway over human characters and their story has often, for some reason, appealed to me a lot. I always think of the puzzle of blighted Bellona, the city of Delany’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dhalgren</i>, that is almost as alive in its way as its human inhabitants. I’ve published a few stories over the run of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> with city-as-enigma at their hearts, and I’ve noticed the development in my own recent work of an imaginary city that stands a bit outside even the stories’ own internal reality. Why I am talking about this will be clearer after reading <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Kaolin Fire’s</b> strange, thoughtful story <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Travelers Through Eternity.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Court Merrigan’s</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;"> offering, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“The Patch,”</b> is rather funny but also a little bit puzzling. What exactly is it about? Are we to take in stride, at face value, the rather preposterous circumstances depicted here, or is there an obvious layer of allegory and deliberate commentary that we are expected to contemplate? I am not going to offer any commentary of my own other than to say that it's an odd entry even in the long catalog of oddness that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> has been. Also, I was mildly surprised to learn that this came from an American author, because it struck me as having some of the same sensibility as a lot of the quirky British stuff that I have published over the last couple of years (longtime readers may know that I have an affinity for such). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">I thought I recognized the name <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">David Alexander Mulis</b> when I saw it as the byline on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Standard Deviation.” </b>I thought I might have published him before, but I haven’t. I checked old mail, and then remembered. He showed me two years ago a story that I didn’t feel was really science fictional enough, though I did think the quality of the writing was quite good. So I was glad to see another one from him and to be able to publish it this time. Readers may wonder well into his new story if this one is indeed a science fiction story. It is, I promise. I suspect that some readers might find the subject matter of this one to be uncomfortable. Its point-of-view character is a porn video director and he does not come off as the most sympathetic person, but it is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i>’s mission to make things easy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">And, with that in mind, we end with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Silverfish.” Hobie Anthony </b>has created a very damaged protagonist and placed him in a horrific world, under the control of one of the most heinous villains I have ever seen in an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane</i> story. Like the story preceding it, readers may wonder for a few pages if they are reading a science fiction story or an out-and-out horror story. It does have a science fictional underpinning that becomes apparent deeper into the narrative, but by the time it does, it almost seems beside the point because the point-of-view character cannot understand it anyway and it is very unclear whether anything can ever change for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11pt;">Enjoy.—CF </span>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-28437529396154589672011-04-26T22:26:00.000-05:002011-04-26T22:26:01.255-05:00Announcing M-BRANE #27 authors and stories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb85c3JMs6SGRp2ynN8aZX_ZP2N1mL4g5bsZEZC-FSAJKpvwiT0Sm3Wm289Q-NVXx5ezAszfvRD8ntJHJFR5x1LPItGsm_nDHBv0MZH1b8i11R1qDE0M16TzZC3TaegMeLmdw4E9M07qM/s1600/0001Nz.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb85c3JMs6SGRp2ynN8aZX_ZP2N1mL4g5bsZEZC-FSAJKpvwiT0Sm3Wm289Q-NVXx5ezAszfvRD8ntJHJFR5x1LPItGsm_nDHBv0MZH1b8i11R1qDE0M16TzZC3TaegMeLmdw4E9M07qM/s320/0001Nz.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>A touch late again, but if it comes out at least by the end of the month, I consider that good enough anymore. Busy around here! The new April issue will release by the 30th now that I have finally finished the painstaking task of selecting its contents. This was a tough one. I had a lot of compelling submissions to sort through. Stories moved back and forth from "maybe" to "yes" and back. Too many good ones didn't quite make it.<br />
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If you're looking for uplift and good cheer, April might not be your month on the Brane. But for some fine, perceptive writing, then this is just the right time. Here's the line-up:<br />
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<b>Joyce Chng: </b>"The Bones Shine Through With Light"<br />
<b>Ross Gresham: </b>"Spending the Government's 28"<br />
<b>Kaolin Fire: </b>"Travelers Through Eternity"<br />
<b>Court Merrigan:</b> "The Patch"<br />
<b>David Alexander Mulis</b>: "Standard Deviation"<br />
<b>Hobie Anthony:</b> "Silverfish"<br />
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<b>Joyce Chng</b> has appeared once before in <i>M-Brane</i>, and is so very welcome back with this strange, lovely offering that I knew needed to lead the new issue as soon as I read it. It's a bit too brief, but absolutely delicious, a fine starter course to what follows. <b>Ross Gresham</b> gave me that rare piece of military sf that I've been looking for. I say all the time that I like the military subgenre, yet I seldom actually find that to be true when I read submissions that deal in it. But this one is nearly perfect. <b>Kaolin Fire</b> (of the great <i>Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) Magazine</i>) returns to our pages with a very evocative, mysterious and lovely item that I shan't say much about so as not to spoil it. He tends to produce stories a bit shorter than I usually want, but they are always thought-provoking and finely told. <b>Court Merrigan's</b> story is just plain weird, but also quite funny and quite pointed. I think people will find it offers a couple different layers of enjoyment. The last two items of this issue may have spent the longest time in the "maybe" box because I vacillated a lot about how dark I wanted to let April get. But the quality of their prose and their directness in dealing with their subject matter left no doubt that they are <i>M-Brane</i> stories even though their sf-nal elements are almost incidental, almost beside the point. <b>David Alexander Mulis</b> visits the dark thoughts of a jaded and tired pornographer during what's probably an important moment of realization and transition in his career, while <b>Hobie Anthony</b> takes us into the nearly unbearable world of a very special and profoundly damaged character under the thrall of a villain running a violent and bizarre conspiracy.<br />
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The new issue will be out in just a few days. News of such will post right here.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-13645871322445639582011-04-23T16:42:00.001-05:002011-04-23T16:53:16.710-05:00New novel from M-Brane alum S.C. Hayden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2n9Z7_xKcjUGE92ofYKh6Og4YnL98tjugGs5fCGQ5hiErzw5EQPbVgQP1v3jR6Y0G-2pKX_SBa-3qE4wFxUcfUqCZMjvaSgiq6LGG_ZnEQNH0nuCAXzSFqtL1p_1qSCggHpT_1rRLLs/s1600/213644_F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2n9Z7_xKcjUGE92ofYKh6Og4YnL98tjugGs5fCGQ5hiErzw5EQPbVgQP1v3jR6Y0G-2pKX_SBa-3qE4wFxUcfUqCZMjvaSgiq6LGG_ZnEQNH0nuCAXzSFqtL1p_1qSCggHpT_1rRLLs/s1600/213644_F.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Writer <a href="http://www.schayden.com/index.html">S.C. Hayden</a>, whose fascinating short story "End Day" was a highlight of <i>M-Brane SF #3 </i>two years ago, has had a string of publications since, and his new novel, <i>American Idol</i>, is just out from <a href="http://blackbedsheet.goshopper.net/m/8660/sean-c-hayden.htm">Black Bed Sheet Books</a>. Hayden describes it as a dark social satire that takes some swipes at religion, consumerism, and politics. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In a twisted yet somehow familiar version of America where militias, doomsday cults and self proclaimed Prophets are as commonplace as gas stations and fast food restaurants, The American Idol Company is born. Their goal: resurrect Idolatry as a prominent religion and get rich manufacturing and selling Idols. They publicly promote their fledgling company as if it were a legitimate religion and they themselves Prophets. The company becomes quickly and wildly successful but outrages millions across the country and around the world. Operating under the belief that scandal and controversy will increase sales, Augustus and Desmond manage to insult everyone from the Pope to the Ayatollah, and come dangerously close to starting World War 3. Meanwhile, a shadowy group of religious fundamentalists manipulate a naive young man named Robert General. Robert, a repressed homosexual and member of the Sweethaven Chapter of the Righteous American Nazis, is used as a pawn in a plot to destroy The American Idol Company. The looming threat of disaster comes to fruition in the city of Galapagos, Texas, when Rob General, confused and drug-addled, flies a small ,explosive laden airplane into The American Idol Company headquarters.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I have only read the first four chapters of this book, and so I cannot provide an actual review of it. But Hayden is a good writer with an engaging style. Very often, satirical speculative fiction that trades heavily in contemporary situations does not appeal to me because it is often too contemporaneous, too self-consciously about current affairs and often quite blunt in an inartful way. But I am not finding this to be the case at all with Hayden's book a few chapters in. Readers who are into this kind of story ought to check it out. It's also available <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Idol-S-C-Hayden/dp/0983377324/ref=sr_1_131?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302698484&sr=1-131">at Amazon</a>.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>By the way, I like to offer plugs for M-Brane writers when they have a new book out, but I have probably missed a lot of such opportunities. So if you are a writer whom I've published in M-Brane SF or in one of our anthologies, and would like a shout-out for your current work, do let me know at mbranesf at gmail dot com. I cannot promise reviews because reading time is so precious nowadays but I'll do my best to help get the word out.</i></span></span></div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-75743943159055961652011-03-28T08:44:00.000-05:002011-03-28T08:44:00.571-05:00FU gets fantastic review<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 20px;"></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRG_CoVHvJgo1fHrJ98FXuuyK_vlJ-BImoEAkzRrLh-q6Ml1xFPWrWJMn4gQaaKIi9N4TGYA-D5SPnAq6pK_Wcl26gXahq6he11ciRNtNj2cjvqR1K7Xyo0ol0-GAAnZ5mBLo4Rb1JR1w/s1600/FU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRG_CoVHvJgo1fHrJ98FXuuyK_vlJ-BImoEAkzRrLh-q6Ml1xFPWrWJMn4gQaaKIi9N4TGYA-D5SPnAq6pK_Wcl26gXahq6he11ciRNtNj2cjvqR1K7Xyo0ol0-GAAnZ5mBLo4Rb1JR1w/s1600/FU.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>I am reprinting here a great review of our periodical Fantastique Unfettered. But you may want to instead visit <a href="http://reviews.futurefire.net/2011/03/fantastique-unfettered-1-2010.html">its original posting at the Future Fire site </a>because links to a lot of the writers are intact over there. </i></span></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Reviewed by Nader Elhefnawy</span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">M-Brane Press, the publisher of small press science fiction magazine M-Brane SF, launched a fantasy counterpart to that publication last year, Fantastique Unfettered (or FU). Under the editorship of Brandon H. Bell, FU has as its stated purpose the publication of ‘well-written, compellingly readable, original stories of fantasist fiction,’ both short fiction and poetry, which is ‘unfettered by traditional copyright,’ so that all its content carries a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The authors appearing in the premier, Winter 2010 issue of the publication, which has eleven short stories and three poems in its 140 pages, offer a wide range of approaches and settings. Perhaps exemplary in this respect is the story to which the issue’s cover art is devoted, Michael J. Shell’s ‘The Death of a Soybean’, which presents an off-the-wall alternate version of the Manhattan Project and World War II. More a uchronia than an alternate history, ‘Soybean’ surreally scrambles the events of our timeline rather than exploring a counterfactual scenario, with Robert J. Oppenheimer just a Los Alamos security guard who happens to be eccentrically preoccupied with an idea called ‘nuclear fission,’ and a femme fatale lady physicist with the unlikely name of Maladi scheming, seducing and killing her way to fame, fortune and a place in scientific history.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Offering a nightmare complement to Shell’s noirish dream is Kaolin Fire’s ‘The Aetheric God’, in which a young technician named Asher who spends his days building steam-men for his employer ‘Chief Technician’ Father Isaiah. He spends his nights hiding in the cathedral’s library-desperately burying himself in its books to try and quiet ‘the voice of God within his head’ calling for Asher’s mutilation and destruction, a crisis that soon enough moves out of his head and into the physical world.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Going in a sharply different direction from either is Alan Frackelton’s ‘A Blessing From the Blind Boy’, the story of a disgruntled gaucho named Juan Hernandez who burglarizes the mansion of his ruthless landowner employer somewhere (and somewhen) in twentieth century Latin America, putting Hernandez’s young son Ramon in the center of a cycle of revenge, loss and longing.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In a lighter, more fanciful vein, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s ‘Breaking the Spell’ (a reprint from Philippine Speculative Fiction 4) has for its protagonist a little girl who becomes fascinated with the miniature world her father keeps under a bell jar. While her father’s fairy tales never ring true for her (she is ‘determined not to kiss a prince’), entry into that little world becomes the object of her own fairy tale quest.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">However, in contrast with exoticism, the issue favors toward contemporary contexts, and compared with the world-changing (and rather nihilistic) events of Shell’s story, or the intense confrontation with the supernatural of Fire’s, subtler uses of speculative elements inside quieter, more personal stories. The descriptor that came to mind when I read Frank Ard’s story of a love triangle between a man, mer-man and woman ‘Small Fish in the Deep Blue’ is ‘slipstream.’ Others incorporate surreal intrusions into what might otherwise be a realist narrative, like in Mary J. Daley’s ‘The Book of Barnyard Souls’, in which a young farm girl named Kalee receives nightly visits from the souls of deceased animals; Natania Barron’s ‘Without a Light’, in which a sixth-grade teacher in a small town starts an affair with a mysterious colleague; Elizabeth Creith’s ‘Five Oak Leaves’, where a man encounters a young changeling girl living on the street.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In Anna Manthiram’s ‘Boris’, a meditation via fortune cookie-like clothing tags on the titular character’s involvements with various women; Christopher Green’s ‘Holding Hands’, in which a Vietnam veteran encounters a girl he left behind at thirteen many years later in his wife’s ballet studio; or Michael J. Deluca’s ‘The Driftwood Chair’, in which a man roams the beach trying to cope with the loss of a love; it is possible to blink and miss the speculative touch.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By and large the sensibility is ‘literary,’ and the quality is high (the two, of course, not always the same thing), virtually all the stories assembled here working, though to different degrees and in different ways. ‘Death of a Soybean’ succeeds on the strength of its pacing and strangeness, Fire’s ‘The Aetheric God’ on the nightmarish force of the telling. The poems offer similar grandiosity, particularly Bruce Boston’s rich, dark, chaotic ‘The Time Traveler Leaves History Behind’ and Alexandra Seidel’s glittering ‘In Babel.’ Daley’s touching ‘Barnyard Souls,’ is the most emotionally resonant story in the volume, though the pieces by Frackleton and Creith also succeed on this level.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That combination of quality and variety means that Fantastique Unfettered #1 offers something for many different tastes, in what seems to me a very promising start for the new publication.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><i>This review is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, (c) Nader Elhefnawy. You are free to republish this review anywhere you like, so long as you give attribution to the author and to The Future Fire and keep this license text intact in any copy.</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cccccc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" style="color: #99aadd; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkD0P1uJa3KkOlG-evVlGfN0sovnOw7vE4zGKZsOUViz1bELTvfMShPERzvrLJ66cLWgNMjvm7VE1Jm3at_Uw9nq2U15otAZj-huuhpiibcpO1fDW8-hLItvVIpu6Yv2pv2pE_QAy_ts/s1600/88x31.png" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; float: left; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;" /></a></span><br />
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</div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-29762547647895424712011-03-27T17:35:00.004-05:002011-03-28T19:50:00.531-05:00M-Brane 26 releases tonight; a few comments on Verday, Dragon Age<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVj9i8igImTrS36Lw2OgB74qUS0C-kcCMGDy1I-iHaYC94vegMo00p1WbYGG4qncTbpkN3NH0Vew_7_dAPzGj8VPuYJZmyrmuqVSrx-Xi5JsBAml_kyCMG89uy9TdhyphenhyphenZ5eNWrNynr8l-E/s1600/0001Y7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVj9i8igImTrS36Lw2OgB74qUS0C-kcCMGDy1I-iHaYC94vegMo00p1WbYGG4qncTbpkN3NH0Vew_7_dAPzGj8VPuYJZmyrmuqVSrx-Xi5JsBAml_kyCMG89uy9TdhyphenhyphenZ5eNWrNynr8l-E/s320/0001Y7.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><i>In a couple hours I will release the electronic edition of M-Brane SF #26 to subscribers. The following is a version of my editorial notes from the new issue. The first section is about the stories; the second part consists of some comments, with links, on a couple of matters that drew my attention this week: author Jessica Verday pulling out of an antho because the editor said her characters didn't have the right gender combo to be acceptable, and game company Bioware rejecting some whining from the beleaguered Straight Male Gamer.</i><br />
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<i><b>UPDATED 3/28 to add button to purchase this issue's PDF at bottom of this post; funds raised by single-issue sales support future issues; copies are distributed by way of a link sent by email, so allow up to a day for delivery to your in-box.</b></i><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">This month, we have five terrific entries and a lot pro writers. I am about a week late in presenting them, so I won’t delay things too much further except to say that if you read only five stories this month, you could do a lot worse than reading these five. They are lovely. Of the authors, two have been seen here before. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rick Novy</b> makes his at least sixth (maybe seventh—lost track!) appearance this month with a story that has not previously been printed but which he presented in audio form with music as part of Michelle Welch’s <i><a href="http://www.themeandvariationsanthology.com/">Theme and Variations</a></i> audio anthology. Rick was also the guest editor of our twelfth issue, and the editor of the M-Brane Press anthology <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/2020-Visions-Rick-Novy/dp/0983170908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301264960&sr=8-1">2020 Visions</a></i>. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Michael Andre-Driussi</b> appears here for a fourth time. His vast project of producing reference works for Gene Wolfe’s fictional universe makes him perhaps one of the coolest people around or one of the hardest-core geeks ever. Either way, we’re glad to see him here again. That we ended up with a great story from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">J.M. Sidorova</b> forced me to conclude that she had exhausted all other possible publication options because every other editor had either lost his/her mind or perhaps had too many Sidorova items booked elsewhere already. In any case, I’m thrilled. I don’t know if I was intended to find a big “message” in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eric Del Carlo’s</b> story, but I decided that it’s an appropriate item, especially for our American readers, in our present age of Permanent War where no one seems to directly bear the cost of armed conflict save for the soldiers themselves and their immediate families. Before I saw his story, I was not familiar with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gary Budgen</b>, but his entry was one of those items that went directly from the slush folder to the “maybe” folder after I read the first page. When I went back to look at the “maybes,” it quickly went to the “yes” folder. It’s shorter than I usually choose for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M-Brane, </i>but it’s lovely. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 헤드라인A;">#<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Two items popped up in the last week that crystallized some common sense. The first is this item about <a href="http://www.afterelton.com/other/2011/03/bioware-dragon-age-2-straight-men-complain-gay-men">Bioware telling a spokesperson for the “straight male gamer” demographic to get over it</a> that there is an option for same-sex romance in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon Age 2</i> game. The second is from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hollow Trilogy</i> author Jessica Verday on <a href="http://jessicaverday.blogspot.com/2011/03/being-gay-is-okay.html">her decision to withdraw a story</a> from a forthcoming YA antho. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">The Bioware staffer who responded to a complaint about the possibility of gayness in that game said something that is so obvious when one thinks about it, but said it in a better way than I have seen in recent memory: </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">“And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as ‘political correctness’ if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance.</i> [emphasis mine] They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, and everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">This makes the point a lot more cogently and reasonably than what my response would have been. I am sick of every time someone tries to be inclusive of a minority in any kind of media, it is blasted as “political correctness” and—even more outrageously—as disrespect to the all-important straight-male demo. Because, you know, they’ve never gotten their way with anything. I applaud Bioware for thinking that romance can be for anyone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">Similarly, listen to this from Jessica Verday: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">“You don't choose who you fall in love with and you don't choose to be gay. We're constantly bombarded with messages from sick people who try to tell us that it's a choice or a lifestyle or an agenda. But Wesley and Cameron's story isn't an agenda or an issue. It isn't an ‘I have to prove something to the world’ story. Wesley and Cameron's story is a love story. About one boy who loves another boy </span></i><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">so much</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"> that when something bad happens to him, he'll do whatever it takes to get him the help he needs.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">“Just bittersweet, hopeful, first love. And I think the world needs more of that.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">“While I may not have intentionally written an ‘issues’ story, in the real world this issue is very personal to me. I have gay friends, fans, and family and by allowing my story to be changed in that way I would be contributing to a great disservice to them, the entire LGBT community, and to readers in general. You are not wrong or a dirty little secret for being who you are. Love is beautiful and rare. When you find it, you should hold onto it and not let go. You should not be made to feel inferior.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">The editor, Trish Telep, from whose antho Verday’s story was withdrawn, replied thus: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">“</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">Oh dear. Might as well give you my two cents. Not that it really matters but... Don't take it out on the publishers, the decision was mine totally. These teen anthologies I do are light on the sex and light on the language. I assumed they'd be light on alternative sexuality, as well. Turns out I was wrong! Just after I had the kerfuffle with jessica, I was told that the publishers would have loved the story to appear in the book! Oh dear. My rashness will be the death of me. It's a great story. Hope jessica publishes it online. (By the way: if you want to see a you tube video of me wrestling a gay man in Glasgow, and losing, please let me know).”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">While that’s lovely that Ms. Telep admitted that she made a boneheaded mistake, it’s too bad she did it in such a half-assed and ultimately non-serious way. What’s “wrestling a gay man in Glasgow” got to do with it? Is it supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be a version of “oh, I don’t have a problem with gayness, I have gay friends.”? But here’s what really turns my crank about her response: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there is no such thing as “alternative” sexuality.</i> Sexual orientation is not an “alternative,” it’s not a “preference,” it’s not fucking choice, and I don’t propose to spend the rest of my life arguing about it with fools. The fact that Telep seemed to think that Verday’s story would be perfectly fine for the book if she simply (simply!) changed the gender of one of the characters belies a deep misconception and prejudice of which she may be honestly unaware of inside herself. She needs to take a look at that. I don’t think she is probably a homophobe by conscious intent, but she blithely expresses majority privilege nonetheless.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond;">Privilege always lies with the majority. The majority gets pissed off if they ever detect that they’re not being exclusively catered to. And anyone who doesn’t fit into the majority is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> just some “alternative” that everyone can set just aside. Love is for everyone. Thanks to these people in very different fields for making these points so cogently.</span><br />
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</div></span></div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-76474893661806874892011-03-24T10:52:00.001-05:002011-03-24T18:00:10.895-05:00Announcing M-Brane SF #26 contents<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVj9i8igImTrS36Lw2OgB74qUS0C-kcCMGDy1I-iHaYC94vegMo00p1WbYGG4qncTbpkN3NH0Vew_7_dAPzGj8VPuYJZmyrmuqVSrx-Xi5JsBAml_kyCMG89uy9TdhyphenhyphenZ5eNWrNynr8l-E/s1600/0001Y7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVj9i8igImTrS36Lw2OgB74qUS0C-kcCMGDy1I-iHaYC94vegMo00p1WbYGG4qncTbpkN3NH0Vew_7_dAPzGj8VPuYJZmyrmuqVSrx-Xi5JsBAml_kyCMG89uy9TdhyphenhyphenZ5eNWrNynr8l-E/s320/0001Y7.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>Running a little late this month, but not too badly so. Following is the list of stories and authors of <i>M-Brane SF #26</i>, the March issue will release probably Sunday. Rick Novy (editor of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/2020-Visions-Rick-Novy/dp/0983170908/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1300981616&sr=8-13">2020 Visions</a></i>), returns with a very cool item, as does Michael Andre-Driussi. New to our pages are J.M. Sidorova, Gary Budgen and Eric Del Carlo, all offering some remarkable visions.<br />
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<b>J.M. Sidorova</b> “Watching the Rubber Band”<br />
<b>Gary Budgen</b> “Salt Cellar”<br />
<b>Michael Andre-Driussi</b> “Junkboy and Debutante”<br />
<b>Eric Del Carlo </b>“The Iron’s With Me”<br />
<b>Rick Novy </b>“K.622”<br />
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</div><div>Items from this electronic issue will also be compiled in print with items from issue #25 and April's issue #27 in the third <i>M-Brane SF Quarterly</i>.</div>Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-30357981711613338092011-03-20T13:13:00.001-05:002011-03-20T16:25:52.454-05:00M-Brane SF Quarterly #2 has been released<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqxafdHW5f9KmDsPOT2FVRp525uSpiKbyWyYZTc-8rSp5wslFXLuY1NWdFsyoBFH2jEqO8v1rZISbVkAJsF11UVdquWQUwERlAXLJVnD2rWN8IrscgHs3cA4SLzQSdkwwRrIL5DxgX3c/s1600/Photo+on+2011-03-20+at+13.11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqxafdHW5f9KmDsPOT2FVRp525uSpiKbyWyYZTc-8rSp5wslFXLuY1NWdFsyoBFH2jEqO8v1rZISbVkAJsF11UVdquWQUwERlAXLJVnD2rWN8IrscgHs3cA4SLzQSdkwwRrIL5DxgX3c/s320/Photo+on+2011-03-20+at+13.11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>My real job--the one that provides my paycheck--got rather unexpectedly busy over the last couple weeks, causing me to fall behind on normal updates in the M-Brane world, such as the release of <i>M-Brane SF Quarterly #2</i> last week (thank you to the writers who have done more to spread the word on this so far than I have). This is the second volume of a print book series collecting the fiction from three electronic issues of <i>M-Brane SF</i>. Also, this book contains some items not included those issues: two spectacular stories by Zachary Jernigan and an interview with him. It's such a lovely book, way worth the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/M-Brane-SF-Quarterly-March-2011/dp/146098563X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300644410&sr=8-2">$9.95 on Amazon.</a> M-Brane SF makes a couple dollars profit on each sale, and all of this money goes right back into continuing the zine and our other publishing projects, so picking up a copy is a good way to support us and also to find some really fine fiction.Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5789087602794246112.post-22945829994753052612011-02-23T19:11:00.000-06:002011-02-23T19:11:53.157-06:00Gay Marriage: Will Fletcher appoint Supreme Court?<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b>BREAKING—</b>Anonymous sources confirm that M-Brane President-for-Life Christopher Fletcher is about to announce the formation of a “Supreme Court” which he claims will have “planet-wide jurisdiction over the question of the legality of gay marriage.” For months, sources within the Brane’s administration have indicated that Fletcher has become increasingly impatient with “the sheer idiocy of the anti-marriage-quality position and the slow pace of reform by conventional Earth-based governments. And also dumbassity.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Said one member of the administration, speaking on condition of anonymity, “It’s all he talks about anymore. His entire throne room is acrid with the smoke of burning Maggie Gallagher and Jim Demint in effigy.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Though the composition of this new court remains unknown, critics fear that Fletcher will stack the tribunal with judges sympathetic to his own position on the matter. Possible nominees to the new court include the following:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxSRGpmBV0aPerzIbiR_LJWpA_beKokI2PRMcWGDBrTtDIoBkVsgBHDWKkmja63VbK_4Yc9FbtHO3EGIJLbYsqK4jzLqpt2A-IRSxgySEr5wd6xS5rt0UcqS-qggVHAsR9TK-0H1KH9I/s1600/Teddy_altman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxSRGpmBV0aPerzIbiR_LJWpA_beKokI2PRMcWGDBrTtDIoBkVsgBHDWKkmja63VbK_4Yc9FbtHO3EGIJLbYsqK4jzLqpt2A-IRSxgySEr5wd6xS5rt0UcqS-qggVHAsR9TK-0H1KH9I/s1600/Teddy_altman.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Theodore “Teddy” Altman (aka “Hulkling”):</b> Superhero and member of the Young Avengers. Conservative critics of the M-Brane regime claim that Altman cannot be unbiased on the matter of gay marriage since he himself is gay. It is unlikely that this argument will gain much traction within M-Brane Tower.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_9DTu5wd6BbY9hgMWbtJowN6jbXABkJt3jJx3lNjocyKhTOrQhiZZANRlGGMaU4-uW628tDVzlNQTDksqq4I0churoZ_zKW5hXJq1mF58GbAbMk5DHuISI74AVJuXtx9I6X1v0USDIc/s1600/jquest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp_9DTu5wd6BbY9hgMWbtJowN6jbXABkJt3jJx3lNjocyKhTOrQhiZZANRlGGMaU4-uW628tDVzlNQTDksqq4I0churoZ_zKW5hXJq1mF58GbAbMk5DHuISI74AVJuXtx9I6X1v0USDIc/s1600/jquest.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Jonny Quest:</b> Raised by same-sex parents, Quest is thought to be sympathetic to marriage equality, though his own sexual orientation is unknown. Conservatives insist that Fletcher would never consider Quest for appointment to his new court if he were not already confident of Quest’s bias on the matter of gay marriage. Also, Fletcher’s recent frequent visits to the “Questworld” compound in a subset of aetherspace have drawn much attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRB1ZM3t1AC6GjkTqZDzUwvWOxLI6deBusO6POhiT2jC5hf1QSwNkLSlm4cJPsSzk6zHf8xtC0uFcOaXdKjHqIUBrrMNvdZi5zdr2Z1KzyBU6oq6Qdr-DbdIVC94-yC_qOsOCOlQsSUEA/s1600/magneto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRB1ZM3t1AC6GjkTqZDzUwvWOxLI6deBusO6POhiT2jC5hf1QSwNkLSlm4cJPsSzk6zHf8xtC0uFcOaXdKjHqIUBrrMNvdZi5zdr2Z1KzyBU6oq6Qdr-DbdIVC94-yC_qOsOCOlQsSUEA/s1600/magneto.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Magneto:</b> Possibly the most controversial choice; conservatives decry his attempt of a few years ago to use the “Cerebro” device to find and possibly kill all of the “humans,” which they read as code for “straight people.” Also, suspicions linger that Fletcher has recreated a Cerebro machine at the apex of M-Brane Tower. Fletcher’s close relationship with the rogue mutant has been a subject of controversy for years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZO_enSOeA-ZBhVGrkgkqAkFg-pDKps6jeOwUbXPKPGIx_gEm6fQJdputZ8NOLN3pRV0fA-6P4vRq_wvuyUsLoGmsF6-nmh-Ez9s3Ozk_vbOhY3IUzrqOC2kibN4kGA91WW2zwbIH3z3I/s1600/Photo+403.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZO_enSOeA-ZBhVGrkgkqAkFg-pDKps6jeOwUbXPKPGIx_gEm6fQJdputZ8NOLN3pRV0fA-6P4vRq_wvuyUsLoGmsF6-nmh-Ez9s3Ozk_vbOhY3IUzrqOC2kibN4kGA91WW2zwbIH3z3I/s320/Photo+403.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Jeff Lund: </b>It is assumed that Fletcher’s life partner would be a guaranteed vote for the government position. Liberal critics, however, point to Lund’s frequent condemnations of marriage as a concept (for all people) and suggest that he is a loose cannon whose vote cannot be predicted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Legal scholars remain divided over whether M-Brane Tower, as an extra-planetary domain, can in fact assert worldwide jurisdiction on the issue of marriage rights. They also differ in opinion on a recent “legal finding” by the regime which decrees that a new court, if constituted, may not hear arguments based on religion or “the Bible,” as these would be ruled automatically to be not “rational.” It is expected that when the court is convened, opponents of gay marriage will have thirty days to prove their position “rationally.” It is assumed that they will face an uphill battle if religiously-based arguments will not be heard. Also, it is expected that the “gay sex is icky” argument will be excluded from consideration.</div><!--EndFragment-->Christopher Fletcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693818922723866269noreply@blogger.com2