The Return of David R. Bunch

In the earliest days of this blog, I declared David R. Bunch to be "unjustly neglected". This was true back then, but not nearly as true as it is today, when all his books are out of print and usually sell for high prices on the secondary market (if you can find them).

After I wrote that post in 2004, Jeff VanderMeer and I started talking about ways to get Bunch back into print. I sought out every stray Bunch story I could find. I tracked down the rightsholder. I typed up a section of Bunch's novel-in-linked-stories Moderan before tendonitis forced me to stop typing much of anything for a few months, and made the thought of returning to typing up Moderan painful. Various obstacles presented themselves. (I started a master's degree. I became series editor for the Best American Fantasy anthologies. I moved to New Jersey. My father died. I moved back to New Hampshire. Etc.) In amidst it all, I couldn't follow up on the idea of reprinting Bunch, though it was never forgotten by me and a few other folks, at least.

Jeff and Ann VanderMeer moved from one success to another, in terms of Jeff's writing, Ann's editing, and their joint anthology projects. As they began putting together The Big Book of Science Fiction, they thought of Bunch, ultimately reprinting three of his Moderan stories, the first time any Bunch had been reprinted in almost 20 years. 

And then they wondered if maybe they could find a way to do what we'd dreamed of doing more than a decade ago: Bringing Bunch back into print.

Their tremendous efforts have now paid off. New York Review of Books Classics will publish a new edition of Bunch's Moderan, possibly with some previously uncollected and/or unpublished Moderan stories (Bunch kept writing about Moderan after the book was published, and always dreamed of a complete Moderan volume. It's too early to say whether this edition will be able to be that).

A Decade of Archives 10: 2003

This is the tenth in a series of posts leading up to this blog's tenth anniversary today, August 18. In each post, I look back on one year, sometimes specifically and sometimes generally. All the posts can be found here.

Well, here we are. The beginning.

I started the blog after reading something in an emailed newsletter from my internet provider about Blogger. It sounded interesting, and I was curious to learn about HTML, which you needed to know the basics of to be able to format anything, so I took some of the last few days of summer vacation and played around.

I'd recently begun reading science fiction and fantasy again after a relatively long absence. The New Wave Fabulists issue of Conjunctions brought me back, showing that some interesting stuff had happened since I'd stopped reading SF with any regularity in the mid-'90s. I got interested in the writers associated with the New Weird, and, especially, the contentious discussions that surrounded it for a while. Kathryn Cramer's blog was a definite inspiration — I'd discovered it because of some of her political writings, then used it as a hub for links to things SFnal as well.

It's strange now to think back and remember just how relatively barren the landscape was for people using blogs to write about books, never mind about science fiction and fantasy. That's why I thought I might be able to carve a place for myself. I'd had some interest in writing about current events and politics, but I have little talent for it, and even in 2003 there were dozens and dozens of people using blogs for political purposes, often eloquently and intelligently, which was more than I could manage. So I wrote about books and movies.

The first post is just a definition of mumpsimus. I chose the name after reading about it in Forgotten English by Jeffrey Kacirk. If I was going to be offering ideas and opinions, I thought, I should at least acknowledge that I know such an endeavor to be perilous, even foolhardy.

A Year of the Weird Fiction Review

Behold!

The Weird Fiction Review website has existed for a year now. During that time, it has published work from around the world, including such wondrous things as a new translation of Bruno Schulz's "The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hour Glass", Olympe Bhêly-Quénum's "The Night Watchman", and Finnish writer Leena Likitalo's first story in English, "Watcher". And tons of other things, including my own "Stories in the Key of Strange: A Collage of Encounters". The website has become a hugely valuable resource, and it just keeps getting better, more varied, more surprising, more impressive. If you haven't spent time with it, you're missing a treasure trove.

On Weird Tales

It was a sad day when Ann VanderMeer and the rest of the staff at Weird Tales were fired when the magazine was bought by people who wanted to change the direction away from the great innovations Ann et al. had brought to it and instead return the magazine to publishing, apparently, Lovecraft pastiches. Apparently, Ann and creative director Stephen Segal winning a Hugo for their work wasn't good enough. The new owners wanted, they said, to return the magazine to its roots.

Well, Lovecraft was a thoroughgoing racist, and apparently those were the roots editor/publisher Marvin Kaye had in mind, although in his mind it's actually "non-racist". Sure, keep telling yourself that. [Update: Weird Tales has taken Marvin Kaye's post down from their website, so the link there doesn't work. However, there's a Google cache. I'm happy the publisher has apologized, but I'm not a fan of memory holes.]

For a better chronicle of the awful, see Nora Jemison's post on the topic. I'm sure there will be more. I'll update this post as time allows.

For now, though, I'm going to follow Nora's lead and post my story "How to Play with Dolls" here on the blog. It was published by Ann in WT 352, and it is one of my proudest publications. But I want it to be free from association with Weird Tales in its current incarnation.

Update: Completely, totally, and hurriedly stealing some additional links from Shaun Duke:

• "Racism, Revealing Eden and STGRB" by Foz Meadows (Shattersnipe:  Malcontent and Rainbows)
• "Down with 'coals'; save the whites!  Revealing Eden pt 1" by acrackedmoon (Requires Only That You Hate)
• "Fuck You, Weird Tales" by Carrie Cuinn (There's a Story in Everything)
• "Special Offer:  Weird Tales Subscription Trade-In" by Weightless Books
• And Shaun's own post, "The Weird Tales / Save the Pearls Fiasco: Preliminary Reactions"

Also, Rose Fox makes a good point:

Given that Revealing Eden would not generally fall under WT's genre purview and that the prose and story are hardly so transcendant as to justify making an exception, it’s impossible to read Kaye’s decision to reprint the first chapter as anything other than a defense of racist writing. It is just barely possible that Foyt may have had the best of intentions and been genuinely taken aback when her book was called out for displaying her unconscious racism. Kaye, however, has no such excuse. This is a calculated statement of scorn for non-white authors and readers and their allies, and it stinks.

Update 2: Weird Tales backpedals.

Update 3: Ann VanderMeer resigns as senior contributing editor of the new WT.

Stuffs

Google has done gone and broke Google Reader, removing the sharing function to encourage people to use Google Plus instead. This means the "Fresh Links" section over on the sidebar is no longer able to be refreshed, and I'll probably go back to occasionally doing linkdump posts. Here, for instance, are some links:

• My latest Strange Horizons column, "Reading Systems", has been posted, as has my latest Sandman Meditations piece. (The Sandman pieces are going to be biweekly for the rest of the year rather than the regular weekly schedule because I'm just too busy to keep up with a weekly schedule right now, and I was getting really frazzled.)
• Team VanderMeer has launched The Weird Fiction Review, an online journal about kumquats. Famed kumquat collected Neil Gaiman is interviewed, and there's an interesting selection of nonfiction, art, and fiction about kumquats. Don't believe me? Well, go over there and see for yourself!
• In publishing news, it turns out that libraries are actually good for the publishing industry.
• Fandor has a great set of tributes to the great Derek Jarman. I'm working on something about Jarman's Caravaggio (25 years old this year!) and also a piece about Jarman for Rain Taxi, but I'm finding Jarman much harder to write about than I expected, and both pieces are vastly late. But I shall persevere!
• And here are 92 open-access film e-books. Never again will you complain about lacking something to read!

A Contribution to Schaller-VanderMeer Studies

After my own previous contribution to the burgeoning academic field of VanderMeer Studies, I am happy to christen yet another field: Schaller-VanderMeer Studies, a discipline inaugurated in ivy-covered halls with the Illustrating VanderMeer exhibit. True (Schaller-)VanderMeer Studies scholars do not limit themselves to the study of half a VanderMeer, however, and so I am happy to present here a monograph by Eric Schaller about the woman who was described by Xaver Daffed as "the better half of VanderMeer" (325).

This monograph was originally published in the Fogcon program book, March 2011.

ANN VANDERMEER

by Eric Schaller

Something was happening back there at the tail end of the last millennium. And I’m not talking about The Gulf War, McDonald’s opening a franchise in Moscow, the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Spice Girls, or even Bill Clinton demonstrating new uses for a cigar. Although all these probably figure in there somewhere. What I am talking about are THE SILVER WEB (1990-2002), CRANK! (1993-1998), CENTURY (1995-2000), and LADY CHURCHILL’S ROSEBUD WRISTLET (1996-date), four magazines that helped define a new course in speculative fiction. Whereas before, most notably in Damon Knight’s ORBIT series, there had been attempts to define science fiction more broadly, so much so that the old guard hesitated to call it science fiction, here the editors of these new magazines basically said, “Definitions be damned, we’ll publish whatever gives us that certain feeling we got when we first encountered genre fiction, when it seemed to open a new vista on the world, blew our collective consciousness, so to speak. Oh yeah, and we do care about language, so don’t destroy the waking dream by confusing an adjective with a unicorn.”

I notice that I didn’t mention the name of Ann VanderMeer in the previous paragraph, although her presence suffuses it. Ann was, of course, the editor for THE SILVER WEB, the first of these magazines to see print and the one that cast the broadest net in terms of what you might discover between its covers. Completists please note, the first couple of issues were published under the name of THE STERLING WEB. This quickly morphed into THE SILVER WEB but, reports by CNN pundits to the contrary, this change of name had nothing to do with any confusion brought on by the strange coincidence of Bruce Sterling having coined the term ‘slipstream’ and THE STERLING WEB, being an early proponent of strangeness and the surreal in fiction, having no connection to Bruce Sterling himself. But, back to the matter at hand, in THE SILVER WEB you never quite knew what to expect and this was all to the good. There were the short stories of course, but there were also poems, interviews, and essays. There was rock’n’roll (Ask Ann about her years playing bass with Grandma’s House). And there was the art! Great stuff, printed large, that complemented but did not repeat what was in the stories. I know of no other editor who has cared more about the relationship between art and text. Everything played off of each other to create a unique experience greater than the sum of its parts.

A Contribution to VanderMeer Studies

My previous post about The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that it is in beta-text mode and so quite obviously incomplete. Among the lacks are entries on either Jeff or Ann VanderMeer. I am not a contributor to the encyclopedia nor am I in any way affiliated with it, but I do have a great interest in all things VanderMeer.

Earlier this year, I wrote a biography of Jeff for Fogcon, where he and Ann were honored guests. (Eric Schaller wrote the biography of Ann, which I hope he will allow me to reprint here, but he's not returning my calls or email at the moment, probably because I suggested that for Halloween he should dress his dog as a character from Twilight.)

I hope the information provided below will prove useful to the encyclopedists and any future scholars. My only goal in life is to be helpful. Jeff VanderMeer will, I expect, deny the accuracy of some of it, but I believe such denials only confirm the truths I am here able to provide to the world...

THE HOEGBOTTON GUIDE TO THE (MOSTLY EARLY) HISTORY OF JEFF VANDERMEER

compiled from notes found in the files of Orem Hoegbotton, including scrawls attributed to Duncan Shriek

edited and embellished by Matthew Cheney

At the tail end of America's revolutionary years, Jeff VanderMeer was born in Bellfonte, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Centre County and part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. His birth seems to have caused some consternation at high levels of the U.S. government, but all the files have been classified until 2068; we do know, though, that his parents soon joined the Peace Corps and brought the child with them to the Fiji Islands. After their work there was completed, they returned to the U.S. via a circuitous route that allowed the impressionable young man to encounter Asia, Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Long Island — experiences that would deeply influence his later fiction.

Changes at Weird Tales

I was distraught to learn that Ann VanderMeer will no longer be the editor of Weird Tales.

During Ann's tenure, first as fiction editor and then as editor-in-chief, the magazine has been more exciting, alive, and contemporary than it had been in at least 60 years, publishing all sorts of different types of fiction from writers young and old, new and famous; writers known within particular popular genres and writers known better among the literati.

The magazine has been a joy to read. More than a joy, really, because it became an exciting magazine of surprises, and we need all those that we can get.

Ann's a great editor and will go on to many marvelous things in the future, as will the rest of the extremely talented staff. They worked wonders with limited resources, and I have no doubt the future holds great things for them all.

Today, though, is a sad one.

Thank you to everybody at Weird Tales over the last five years. You've got a lot to be proud of, and you've made a lasting contribution to the history of a magazine with a history that was already pretty impressive.

Weird Tales News

You might have heard that Ann VanderMeer was promoted from fiction editor of (the Hugo Award-winning) Weird Tales to editor-in-chief. Ann is smart, brilliantly discriminating, down-to-earth, and practical*, so I've been very curious to see what she would do as editor-in-chief.

Well, now we know. Weird Tales has a revamped website, for one thing. (Writers should note that with that comes a new submission portal -- be sure to read the guidelines before submitting. Payment for fiction has also been raised to 5 cents/word.) And the staff is composed of some great folks in addition to Ann -- the great and glorious Paula Guran is nonfiction editor, the glorious and great Mary Robinette Kowal is art director. Aiding and abetting them are Tessa Kum, Dominik Parisien, and Alan Swirsky as editorial assistants.

I'm tremendously proud to have had a story in Weird Tales, a magazine I've been reading since childhood (astute collectors will find a rather embarrassing letter to the editor by someone bearing my byline in a long-ago issue, about which I will say no more), and thrilled to see the magazine seems to really be getting its feets under it for the coming years. The new issue is apparently on its way to us soon, with fiction by N.K. Jemison, J. Robert Lennon, Karin Tidbeck, and more. It's nice to see that the magazine will be back to its regular quarterly schedule, too; it provides less surprise to those of us who subscribe, but still, there's something to be said for the predictability of a schedule...

Speaking of subscriptions, they're still just $20/year.


*this is not hyperbole. If I wanted to be hyperbolic, I'd say Ann leaps tall buildings in a single bound. That's one of the few amazing feats I have not seen her perform.

Third Bear Carnival: Finale

When I came up with the idea for the Third Bear Carnival, I quickly knew one post I wanted: something by Ann VanderMeer, Jeff's wife, who first knew him as a very young and mostly-unpublished short story writer, and who was one of the first editors to publish him with any frequency.  She was Ann Kennedy back then, and it's partly the stories that put her on the path to becoming Ann VanderMeer, because in Ann Jeff found his perfect reader and his perfect love.

It took a bit of convincing for me to get Ann to write about her relationship not only to her husband, but to his stories.  Ann thinks of herself as an editor and not a writer, but she sent me a contribution back in July, and I've held onto it until now.   Much as I love what everybody else has contributed to the Carnival over these past weeks, and grateful as I am to each them ... well, this one's special...

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

VanderMeer Stories: A Personal Reminiscence
by Ann VanderMeer

The earliest VanderMeer stories I read came from The Book of Frog, a self-published chapbook of stories that contained all manner of frogs and toads. In some stories the creatures were featured prominently, but in others, they were merely a whisper. I had to force the then young man of 20 (who was trying so hard to grow a beard) to allow me to purchase a copy (he wanted to give it to me).

“Nonsense,” I said. How will you ever be a full-time writer if you give your work away?” And then I bought five copies; perhaps one of the best investments I’ve ever made (and I am not just talking about how rare and valuable those copies are now).

I knew back then from reading those early tales that this was a writer to watch. He might find those stories sophomoric and simple, but there was a passion to the writing. And heart. And a great deal of playfulness.

He sent me stories for The Silver Web (a magazine I was publishing in the late 80’s early 90’s). One was a god-awful story about a high school girl going to her prom and some secret fantasy world hiding in her closet. I turned that one down quickly only for Jeff to tell me it was a test of my editorial taste. Yes, of course it was, I believe this. I did publish many of his stories during the years of The Web; “Heart for Lucretia” – a far future science fiction piece that fully illustrates the real sacrifice of sibling responsibilities, “Henry Dreams of Angkor Wat” – a surreal look at the horrors of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, “Black Duke Blues” – a story about a gifted musician in New Orleans (this one won him the Florida Individual Artist Grant) and “So The Dead Walk Slowly” – a zombie story long before zombies were popular. Each one more different than the last and yet so uniquely VanderMeer.

Jeff has always had a fondness for animals, as you can see from his fiction. From frogs he moved onto meerkats, then squid and now bears. He tells me that he doesn’t like talking animal stories and yet…his frogs talk. So do his meerkats. And in his latest new story, “The Quickening,” there is a talking rabbit. I think. At least, it seems to be talking (and it looks like a rabbit).

And this is his strength; writing fiction that has so many layers. When you read one of his stories you are immediately grabbed by his command of the language, the beauty of the words he puts together. You get caught up the characters and sucked right into their screwed up yet amazing lives. And it doesn’t matter if the character is a talking rabbit or a risk-taking surgeon, the president of an alternate United States or even a version of Jeff himself. Because they are all so honestly who they are. And you just gotta know what happens to them next.

When I first started reading VanderMeer, I used to hold one back. What I mean by that is I would leave one story unread until he wrote another one. Silly, I know (and it drove him crazy), but I wanted to make sure there would always be a new story for me to read. Now I am privileged to be on that short list of readers who see the work first. So all I can do is continue to encourage him, and give him the space he needs, to write the next one (‘cause I’m kinda selfish that way).

So yeah, I’ve read all the stories and I’ve read them in every version. Plus I’ve read all the stuff that didn’t go in. And when the final book (or magazine) comes out, it’s such a treat for me to sit and read the stories again just for pleasure as a reader, not an editor and not for critique or commentary. (I must have read at least 100 versions of his novel Shriek, yet when I sat down with the hardcover in my hands, I still cried when Janice considered herself so alone in the world she wished to leave it and I felt a hitch in my heart when Duncan discovered Mary’s betrayal. )

When I immerse myself into Jeff’s world through his fiction, I can’t help but be taken back to the time when I first encountered each tale. Much like listening to certain songs can take you back to the time when you first heard that song, so each of these stories is also a piece of my personal history. “The Quickening” reminds me of that trip to St. Augustine when Jeff picked up that postcard that sparked the story (he wrote the first few snippets then, making me impatient for him to write the whole damn thing so I could read it, damn it!).

“The Secret Life of Shane Hamill” takes me back to that crazy time when Jeff was doing a promotion for his book Secret Life, by writing a customized, unique secret life for each person who bought the book from Mark Ziesing (Ann, it will be easy, only about 10-12 stories – OMG why are there 200 people buying the book???). And he hand-wrote each one. Seriously ... I know because I spent hours seeking the “right” paper for him to use. And they are truly things of beauty.

I can’t read “Predecessor” without remembering when he woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me about a truly wacked-out dream. By the time I arrived at work a few hours later, there was this amazing story in my inbox. Forget about that customer whose computer system was down, I HAD to read this RIGHT NOW.

 Not all the memories are blissful, however. “Errata” takes me back to the worst time of my life. And every time I read it, I cringe and hold my breath because I know where it will go. But how can you appreciate the good times if you don’t have those dark moments, too? So I read it again ... and again. And each time the pain is a little bit less and the creativity of story overwhelms me.

And “The Situation?” Well, of course this is a version of his corporate working life before he became (thankfully) a full-time writer. I KNOW these people and he portrayed them perfectly. He might have even been too kind. So yeah, when I read this, I hear their voices, those turkey-heads. “Lost;” I remember sitting in the blue chair early one morning reading this story and my heart just going out to this poor, poor guy. And feeling a bit lost myself as my daughter was going through some rough times and I didn’t know how to help her.

“Three Days in a Border Town,” is, I believe, the last story he’s written (so far) that takes place in the same world as Veniss Underground. When I first read this I was ready for the rest of the novel. Because these are people and this is a world I want to know more about. At the time Jeff said there would be more. And maybe there will.

OK, so now this book is out. And Jeff is out of town. So this means I can sit back and relax and relive these stories once more. Heaven...