04-28-11:Peter S. Beagle Reads "The Best Worst Monster" and "Up the Down Beanstalk" at SF in SF on April 16, 2011
"...I'm really not about to follow that story with really any sort of conventional fantasy..."
—Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle certainly lived up to his promise. His stories at SF in SF were in no way conventional, they certainly were fantasy and they were both wonderfully witty, intelligent and often laugh-out-loud funny. The thing about Beagle is that he is so incredibly skilled that he makes everything he does look totally simple.
There are two stories in this 22-minute audio podcast, with very little by way of introduction. Beagle gets us right to the heart of the matter with the first story, "The Best Worst Monster." This is his only children's work but has never been published as such, and that's a shame. Like the best children's stories, it's perfect to hear read aloud. Yes, I wish that they'd have let someone illustrate it and so that Beagle could perform it a Powerpoint show. There it is, the future of live children's reading performances — a dodgy M$ flopplication that due to a dearth of competition has become the industry standard. Imagine what you might be driving right now were that level of competition to prevail in the automobile industry. I used to drive a Corvair, so I know.
Beagle's second story manages the unique feat of being a perfect follow-on to the first and being even funnier. "Up the Down Beanstalk" is hysterical, smart and yet, it seems really simple. It's one of those stories that you hear and think that someone, somewhere must have written it before. And just think about the level of skill implied by that assessment; the first time you hear it, you think it is some sort of timeless classic. And in fact, it is. It certainly helps that Beagle has a rich voice and knows just how to deliver his own work. You can take delivery by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
04-27-11:Michael Blumlein Reads from "22 and You" at SF in SF on April 16, 2011
"This is from a group of stories I call The Doctor Diaries...."
—Michael Blumlein
Michael Blumlein is a very interesting writer. I first read his work when Scream / Press published 'The Brains of Rats' about ten million years ago, and the angular observational style has never left my mind. Nowadays, he is writing work that is considerably lighter, but still it comes with a wicked edge.
Alas, he only had time to read the first half of the story "22 and You" at SF in SF on Saturday, April 16. Still, that was enough to hook me. Blumlein does such a great job with his characters and his science that it is very difficult to discern where science ends and fiction begins.
I must admit that from the very beginning, this story put me in mind of the true story of Jessica Queller (interviewed here) and her book, 'Pretty is What Changes.' Both the true story and the short story have at their core the problems produced in our otherwise stable lives when we are able to get more information than we are able to do much with. We now find ourselves being forced to choose between potential tragedy and certain tragedy. The choices we make in these circumstances define us not just as characters in our own lives, but also as human beings.
Brent Hartinger,Shadow Walkers ; Steven Pressfield,The Profession ; Ben Bova, The Leviathans of Jupiter
"...A pleasure to read ..."
—Alan Cheuse
I swear it is just a coincidence that Alan Cheuse and I are on the same page about this — that reading should be a pleasure. While we plan in advance what books we are going to talk about, and we jump all over the fictional map, the conversations are spontaneous and unedited. But since reading should be fun, here are three fun books to read that have enough heft to make them worth your valuable time and are imbued with enough readability to make that time seem to fly.
Brent Hartinger's 'Shadow Walkers' is a YA novel that, at just around 200 pages, may take just an afternoon of your time. But in that afternoon, you're going to get kidnapping, coming-of-teenage sexuality, astral projection and a nicely crafted Lovecraftian monster. I mean, really, what more can you ask? I think that the imprimatur of Mr. Cheuse should do the trick, along with his inimitable analysis.
We also talked about 'The Profession,' a very interesting piece of science fiction by Steven Pressfield. Pressfield has a twenty-foot stack of novels about sword-n-sandal battles in ancient Rome and the like that have passed me by, for the most part. They're the kind of thing I might get suckered into reading if ever anyone gave me money to do so. But 'The Profession' is a nice bit of near-future extrapolation that looks say, twenty years into the future, and finds not an advanced anything, but today's world, only twenty-times more filled with what Bears Do in the Woods. It offers a nice thought-experiment about where the trend towards privatizing military goes and what happens as a result. And fodder for a good conversation about books — leading to Ben Bova.
Bova is a guy I was reading when I was a teenager working in the pet department at Zody's. He was a regular in Terry Carr's World's Best SF Paperbacks. Now, he's doing one hell of a job carrying the torch for science fiction along the lines of Arthur C. Clarke. That would be precisely the sort of books that got me reading in the first place and reading science fiction in particular. That is, reading because reading can and should be fun. You can have a bit of fun listening to Alan Cheuse and I talk about fun reading by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
04-25-11:A 2011 Interview with Henning Mankell
Click image for audio link.
"What I try to do always is to tell a story that has something to do with my life and the lives of others that are living together with me in the times that we see today."
—Henning Mankell
There was not going to be a lot of time to talk to Henning Mankell. I could not get studio time until 11:30 AM, and I knew he had to be at another studio by 12:30 PM. I was going to be lucky to get more than half an hour. I had to make the best of the time I had, and there was a lot to work with.
Henning Mankell might not be so well known in this country, but he's an international bestseller. I'd been buying his books for my wife and myself for many years, always wondering at the weird name that popped up on the cheap paperbacks I found. The thought that I might one day speak to the man would never have crossed my mind.
But when I found myself sitting across from him at KQED, I knew I had made the right decision. Mankell simply has a presence that you cannot ignore. He has done so much for so long, and you can feel the experience he brings to his fiction. But it's not just fiction; there's his work as an activist, the sort of stuff that gets called a "stunt." His actions pissed off the folks over at the Wall Street Journal so much that they didn't review 'The Troubled Man.' They literally reviewed the politics in the book, which they hated. Meeting Henning Mankell in person you can see why he might inspire that reaction in a reactionary media source.
Most people here probably know him for his detective novels and novels of political intrigue; the Wallender series and books like 'The Man From Beijing.' But he's an accomplished playwright, and he says that crime fiction only comprises 25% of his oeuvre. There is, as Terry Bisson is wont to say at the SF in SF gatherings, a lot to talk about.
05-16-12: Commentary : Mark Sundeen Pays Out 'The Man Who Quit Money' : Over the Edges
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Interview with Mark Sundeen and Daniel Suelo : "What would happen if we actually practiced this stuff?"-Daniel Suelo
05-15-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War' : Impure Life
05-08-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat' : Reading in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Mark Sundeen : "...over the years, I had heard through my friends that he had stopped using money and was living in a cave..."
04-30-12: Commentary : Christopher Moore Follows 'Sacré Bleu' : A Story in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Christopher Moore : "...it often isn't efficient to tell a story in chronological order..."
04-27-12: Commentary : Lisa Lutz on 'Trail of the Spellmans' : Meta-Fiction is Fun
Agony Column Podcast News Report: SF in SF from February 11, 2012 : Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake
04-26-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Emmanuel Carrere 'The Adversary' : The Enemy Within
04-23-12: Commentary : T. M. Luhrman Listens 'When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God' : Science and the Supernaturaly
04-18-12: Commentary : Gregg Jones Stirs Through 'Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dreams' : A Dream Of Today From Yesterday
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Gregg Jones : "The Philippinos would welcome us with open arms and greet us as liberators."
04-17-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Caleb Carr 'The Alienist' : Subterranean History
04-16-12: Commentary : Richard Zacks Visits 'Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York' :The Wild, Wild East
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Richard Zacks : "Roosevelt and Riis were out looking, and if they did find a cop, he was talking to a streetwalker."
