Now Far Ahead the Road Has Gone

Took this photo last month when we hiked beside the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Thought it made a good companion piece to the one below.

Over Rock and Under Tree

Picture from a family hike a while ago in the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve.

"Book Bomb" to help Ben Wolverton

Buying a book by David Farland (aka Dave Wolverton) today will support a good cause. Details via Lou Anders here.

[Edited to make the link actually work, sorry.]

Writing Updates

I'm preoccupied with many things right now, including a family illness. But it's time I posted an update on my writing news.

First, I'm pleased to report that this week my science fiction story "Waiting for a Me Like You," (F&SF November/December 2012) is appearing in audio format at the award-winning StarShipSofa, as narrated by Jonathan Danz.

Second, in recent months I've been working on some fiction for Paizo Publishing, makers of the Pathfinder roleplaying game. As a longtime gamer myself, I have been having a lot of fun with this. More on that as things develop.

Last, but far, far from least, that cover above is by the amazing Kerem Beyit, for the upcoming Gaunt and Bone novel The Scroll of Years, to be published in September by Pyr. The book takes place after the story "A Wizard of the Old School," (F&SF August 2007) in which our semi-heroes finally looked to be settling down. Alas, life for sword and sorcery characters is rarely that simple, and Gaunt and Bone find themselves fleeing from assassins, all the way to the Far East of their continent.

I hope to be more talkative in the future, but this is probably the last post for a little while. A satisfying post to make, though!

Sometimes You Just Have to Cast "Zot!"

Just being silly, and playing with Apple's "Paper" application. I took a break from revising a big project ... and unfortunately there is no "Zot" spell for that!

Four Story Ideas About Books

Bookstalkers

Magic exists, and you need to destroy books to make it happen. More than that, the books need to be powerfully-written and have something to do with the effect you want. Fiction works better than nonfiction. Worst of all are books of nonfiction that purport to be divine or supernatural in any way. Goodnight Moon is good for a sleep spell. Agatha Christie books are good for poisonings.

Sleepers

Librarians dedicated to keeping sorcerous books out of the wrong hands hide the books in plain sight, in a large university library. The books sit openly on the stacks, but they are not cataloged. Their spine labels indicate call numbers that do not actually exist in the Library of Congress cataloging system. Our protagonist gets suspicious because he's a cataloger, and he passes by a book that Doesn't Seem Right. Alas for him, his activities have been noted. A hidden camera watches every forbidden book, though at a distance, since mechanical devices tend to fail around the strange tomes. For that reason there's also the Sleepy Student brigade, slumped at strategic positions with Secret Service style earphones and cell phones. Their job is to identify, follow, and perhaps delay the perusers of the forbidden texts until a senior librarian can arrive. (Other permutations: Books with UV markings and librarians with special dark glasses for reading them; dummy books; books composed of tomes sliced up and spliced together, making it difficult for one peruser to check out a whole text without serious effort.)

Zombie Book

A device that has stored a group of photons, "frozen" them so they cannot propagate. The photons encode the locations and passwords to critical computers on the global net, computers which have already been infected by a virus, but lack only the proper trigger to become "zombies," at the command of the device's master. The device has the appearance of an ancient grimoire, bound in dubious leather.

A Thousand and One For All

A librarian in a fantasy world is charged with weeding books. One ancient book refuses to go gently and promises to tell the librarian a new story each day the librarian keeps it in the library...

Unamerica

I wonder how they vote
In the Americas that are unreal
In the blank spaces of Grover's Corners
In the ancient streets of Arkham
In the graveyard of Spoon River.

I wonder how it looks from the sea-foam of Klatsand
And the dandelions of Green Town
When our candidates Etch-a-Sketch reality
And drone away
What Gotham City thinks of the gold standard
How San Narciso sees Guantanamo
Who will carry the state of Utana
Or Area Code 555
On election day.

Maybe their candidates are fictions too
And it's Jed Bartlet versus Lex Luthor,
Martha Kent versus Mr. Smith.
Maybe their issues are our fever dreams
Of Manchurian candidates or super-mutants,
Mayan calendars or killer comets.

Or maybe it is we who are becoming more like they.
We dream of dystopia and world's end
Instead of paving the potholes.
It's more exciting that way.

The line can be blurry
For this is the country of Oneida and New Harmony,
Thoreau and Emperor Norton.
We like our utopias
And it can seem we're always rolling our stones
Upslope to a city on a hill.

I wonder if tomorrow's America
Looks like a lost Atlantis under rising waters
Or the broken land of Williams' Urstadge
Or King's dusty Gilead
Or all of the above.
I wonder about our ghost Americas
In this witching week of autumn light
Before the votes are all unsealed.

And in the throwing of the switch and the touching of the screen
The checking of the box and the drawing of the line
Which ones we are making real.