Author / DrMabuse

by DrMabuse

Hugo Nominations

Gwenda beat me to it (for obvious reasons), but the Hugo Nominations are up. A certain Christopher Rowe was nominated. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, put the word “iron” in your title if you hope to get nominated for an award.

BEST NOVEL:

The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Iron Council, China Mi鶩lle (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross (Ace)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
River of Gods, Ian McDonald (Simon & Schuster UK)

BEST NOVELLA:

“The Concrete Jungle”, Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives, Golden Gryphon Press)
“Elector”, Charles Stross (Asimov’s Sep 2004)
“Sergeant Chip”, Bradley Denton (F&SF Sep 2004)
“Time Ablaze”, Michael A. Burstein (Analog Jun 2004)
“Winterfair Gifts”, Lois McMaster Bujold (Irresistible Forces, NAL)

BEST NOVELLETE:

Biographical Notes to ?A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes? by Benjamin Rosenbaum”, Benjamin Rosenbaum (All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, Wheatland Press)
“The Clapping Hands of God”, Michael F. Flynn (Analog Jul/Aug 2004)
“The Faery Handbag”, Kelly Link (The Faery Reel, Viking)
“The People of Sand and Slag”, Paolo Bacigalupi (F&SF Feb 2004)
“The Voluntary State”, Christopher Rowe (Sci Fiction 5 May 2004)

BEST SHORT STORY:

“The Best Christmas Ever”, James Patrick Kelly (Sci Fiction 26 May 2004)
“Decisions”, Michael A. Burstein (Analog Jan/Feb 2004)
“A Princess of Earth”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Dec 2004)
“Shed Skin”, Robert J. Sawyer (Analog Jan/Feb 2004)
“Travels with My Cats”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Feb 2004)

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD:

Elizabeth Bear (second year of eligibility)
K. J. Bishop (second year of eligibility)
David Moles (second year of eligibility)
Chris Roberson (second year of eligibility)
Steph Swainston (first year of eligibility)

by DrMabuse

Tanenhaus Watch: March 27, 2005

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WEEKLY QUESTION: Will this week’s NYTBR reflect today’s literary and publishing climate? Or will editor Sam Tanenhaus demonstrate yet again that the NYTBR is irrelevant to today’s needs? If the former, a tasty brownie will be sent to Mr. Tanenhaus’ office. If the latter, the brownie will be denied.

THE COLUMN-INCH TEST:

Fiction Reviews: 1 – 1 1/2 page review, 1 one-page review, 1 one-page roundup (Fiction in Translation), 1 half-page crime roundup, 1 half-page review. (Total books: 13. Total space: 4.5 pages.)

Non-Fiction Reviews: 1 2 page review, 1 – 1 1/2 page review, 3 one-page reviews, one half-page review. (Total books: 6. Total space: 6.5 pages.)

This week’s fiction coverage, most of it asphyixiated in roundups, is such a joke that not even Tanenhaus could be compelled to list the crime roundup novels in the table of contents. In fact, I’m surprised that Sarah hasn’t weighed in on this. It’s bad enough that Marilyn Stasio devotes a mere paragraph to the reissue of Joe Gores’ A Time of Predators, only to dwell upon how the Edgar Award-winning novel “shows its age” while declaring it a “good choice.” But Rupert Holmes’ innovative mystery novel-plus-CD, Swing, is pretty much dismissed through a comparison to one of “those interactive mystery game-books that were popular back in the mid-1980s.” Consider, by contrast, an honest assessment of Holmes’ caper, along the lines of what John Orr did last week in the San Jose Mercury News.

You have to love the disingenuouness of the roundup format, where you can offer general platitudes for the blurb whores (“thought-provoking fiction” and “strirring, impassioned glimpses of lost souls amid the rubble of history,” says Anderson Tepper), while avoiding any penetrating insight because you don’t have the space.

Conversely, if the fiction-to-nonfiction ratio isn’t bad enough (a mere 41% this week), adding insult to injury is Clive James’ self-serving takedown of Paglia and poetry (of which more anon) and the deliberate padding within Pete Hamill’s review of Boss Tweed. Hamill not only spends an execrable amount of space summarizing Tweed’s life, but he wastes half a paragraph informing readers about Thomas Nast. Wouldn’t someone interested in Boss Tweed, let alone any NYTBR reader, already know about Nast? Hamill also takes his opening Gore vs. Tweed gimmick a paragraph too far, beating a horse that didn’t deserve to die. (What next, Petey? Telling us you’d rather play sqaush or cross-stitch a quilt with the man? Ha ha! You amuse me. Sushi on me!)

Beyond proving once again how out-of-step he is with today’s fiction (even the Rocky Mountain News covered A Changed Mind two weeks ago), it’s clear that Tanenhaus has abdicated any effort to find the happy medium: the format allowing the reviewer to focus his energies within a taut word count, while preventing unfortunate asides. The 800-900 word review has served several newspapers quite well for so many years. Tanenhaus again demonstrates a truly unfortunate allocation of column-inches.

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE HARD-ON TEST:

This test concerns the ratio of male to female writers writing for the NYTBR.

A total of four women have contributed to eleven reviews. As usual, three of these are fiction chicks, while the only female-penned nonfiction review goes to (go figure) Fat Girl.

This is infinitely worse than last week, particularly when one considers that the big reviews were handed off to those with Y chromosomes.

While it’s true that Rachel Donadio has penned an essay on Harvard, the essay spends most of its time chronicling Larry Summers’ exploits than the two books it cites (and is thus excluded from the fiction-to-nonfiction ratio).

Brownie Point: DENIED!

THE QUIRKY PAIR-UP TEST:

Pete Hamill, Clive James, Rachel Donadio, Liesl Schillinger, Barry Gewen. Yawn yawn and yawn. We haven’t seen such a predictable crop of names since the Fortune 500. What’s the matter, Sam? Is March Madness keeping you from approaching the interesting people?

Brownie Point: DENIED!

CONTENT CONCERNS:

The Sgt. Pepper-style numbered image collage of poets matches Clive James’ essay to a tee. It is as suitably insipid as James’ arrogance in print, little more than a paint-by-numbers palette for bored children who believe in image first and the love of language last.

James bemoans “the airless space of literary theory and cultural studies.” He claims that John Ashbery is “the combined status of totem pole and wind tunnel.” Most alarmingly, he declares that his “own prescription for making poetry popular would be to ban it — with possession treated as a serious misdemanor, and dealing as a felony.”

That such passive ignorance and anti-intellectualism would be promulgated in a book review section of a major newspaper is truly disheartening.

With such obvious enmity against the liberal arts expressed in the first five paragraphs, one wonders why any level-headed editor assign a book about poetry to an overrated, perhaps permanently impotent essayist. It’s clear enough that James would rather spend hours working himself up into an erection over Daffy Duck, Anne Heche and Charlton Heston. The answer: An editor looking for a train wreck, because the very notion of thinking about an interesting problem like the decline in poetry is too difficult and certainly not good enough for the money men.

If badmouthing poetry isn’t enough, James is ready to decimate Paglia over details that have little to do with the book in question. James has taken the opportunity to pull a Wieseltier here, spending a good chunk of his two pages spouting off ad hominen attacks rather than offering specific examples about why and where one should search Camille Paglia for the Number of the Beast. How dare this woman possess “wide knowledge” and “expressive gifts,” while daring to be a clear thinker “on top of a pair of Jimmy Choos!” To suggest (as the cover does) that James “fancies Camille Paglia” is as great a lie as claiming that a Democrat desires to give George Bush a hug.

What’s interesting is that James has very little to find fault with in the book. He declares that Break, Blow, Burn has “few sweeping statements.” He commends her comparison of Wallace Stevens’ “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” with a Satie piano piece. Still unable to separate Paglia the thinker from Paglia the feminist, he points to Paglia’s defense of Ted Hughes as “a quixotic move.”

So why complain that Paglia’s “young students might listen too well?” What the hell does appearing in Inside Deep Throat have to do with the book in question? Why quibble over Ava Gardner being manufactured in a Hollywood studio when Paglia didn’t champion Gardner, but was merely inspired by her at a mere four years old?

Such smears are the telltale signs of a man looking for a fight, combing minutiae and finding nothing to support his argument. This is what’s known in the trade as ignoratio elenchi, or an irrelevant conclusion.

As such, we award Tanenhaus an F for fake, seriously considering the future of our Sunday New York Times subscription.

CONCLUSIONS:

Brownie Points Denied: 3

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[UPDATE: Bud Parr has an altogether different response to Clive James’ review.]

by DrMabuse

How to Read When the Power Goes Off

Last night, at Chateau Mabuse, the power went off. We were sorry to see our pages on the computer lost into the ether. But this did, nevertheless, lead us to the romantic notion of reading by candlelight for several hours.

It proved more problematic than we expected. But since we had a few unexpected hours on our hands, we took the time to experiment and iron out the kinks. Here’s a checklist to help others plan for successful reading during a blackout:

  • Have at least ten candles in reserve, but you will likely need twenty. Depending upon the health of your eyes, you’re going to need enough light to focus on the text without straining too much. Votives and tapers can put out a lot of light, particularly if the wax hasn’t burned into the telltale concave circle of use, eating into the wick’s vertical alignment. Get about six votives placed on an ample surface space in the center of the room (say, a desk or an end table moved to the center of the room) to ensure that you have enough fill light thrown upwards for general ambience. Your sitting or recumbent position should dictate the candle positioning and should allow for fluctuation in body movement (e.g., if you read the lefthand page while laying on your left side, make sure that there’s some candles on your right). Be sure to place at least four bright candles behind your general reading position to throw enough light onto the page.
  • Even if you do manage to perfect a well-lighted room, you’re still going to be contending with less light than a light bulb. (When the power goes back on, the photographers or filmmakers in the peanut gallery can whip out their light meters and see that there’s a notable gap in foot candles between the two illuminated states.) So the books that you read shouldn’t be too unwieldy in weight, nor contain particularly tight typesetting or small font size. We found that a 300 page trade paperback we were reading proved to be more ideal by candlelight than Ian McEwan’s Saturday, a bulky edition of MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating and even a Nero Wolfe mass market paperback we dug up for trial and error. The ideal book by candlelight should be something that doesn’t easily fold into itself (the mass market paperback being the most egregious offender), but that is small enough to hold without difficulty.
  • Prepare yourself for the unexpected shock of the power going back on. Once we had attained an ideal reading position, the sudden whirs of appliances and various lights scared the shit out of us. Turn all your lights off and be aware of what will go on. Because if you get lost in a passage, it’s likely that the sudden climate change will make you believe that this nation is at war with yet another enemy and will take about three minutes to recover from.
  • The added advantage of candles is that they smell very nice. If it is possible, try to coordinate your candle selection with scents that you find desirable. Be aware that this scent will linger, even when the power returns. Be sure that you don’t have a vanilla scent competing with a strawberry scent. None of the scents should be particularly overpowering. Likewise, none of the scents should distract you too much from the reading experience.
by DrMabuse

There’s a Problem When Harriet Klausner is “Infinitely More Qualified”

Stephanie Perry reviewed Richard Bothelho’s Leah’s Way. She didn’t like it. Little did she realize that the publisher (specifically Windstream’s Sue Eccleston) would write back, declaring her absolutely wrong and a “politically correct hate anything Christian liberal” and “a typical Gen-X whiner.” Last time we checked, hostility wasn’t a very good way of establishing rapport. Needless to say, we probably won’t be reviewing anything from Windstream anytime this lifetime. We’re committed to nothing less than honest reviews and we’re glad Ms. Perry is too. (via Collected Miscellany)

by DrMabuse

If You Foolish New Yorkers Read Books on the Subway, The Terrorists Have Already Won

The New York Times: “‘One time I witnessed a robbery on a train,’ Mr. Ortega said, explaining that the victim ‘was wearing earphones.’ Being vigilant is more important, Mr. Ortega suggested, than being entertained: ‘You never know, you know?’ One never knows indeed.”

Here in San Francisco, MUNI Metro is just as susceptible to subway delays as New York. It’s never bothered me much, largely because I probably get an hour and a half of reading in just from commuting alone. And any subway delay is gravy. Because while other folks are miserable, I’m getting in some extra pages.

But this article represents another case of the Gray Lady beginning with an interesting story angle and getting strangely alarmist. Has Campbell Robertson never heard of a concept called “acceptable risk?”