With Jeff Vandermeer gallivanting in France at the Utopiales Festival International de Science-Fiction de Nantes, I was asked to fill in for him over at Omnivoracious, the Amazon.com blog. Click here to check out my World Fantasy Convention and awards coverage.
David Moles, who makes his F&SF debut in the December 2007 issue said in an interview that his story "Finisterra" is about a would-be aeronautical engineer from a backward future Earth who finds her obscure skills unexpectedly in demand on a strange and distant planet.
"It’s a riff on an old theme — the skilled protagonist who’s called on to travel to a strange locale to do a job that only that protagonist can do, and who ends up changed by the experience," Moles said. "’Finisterra’ would mostly make sense, I think, to any SF reader back to the Golden Age — apart from the setting, it would probably make sense to Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain."
The first inspiration for "Finisterra" was an illustration called "The Engineer," Moles said. "[The illustration was] an homage to Vermeer’s ‘Geographer,’ by my good friend Lara Wells," he said. "[It’s of] a woman in early modern costume working at a window, in a room full of illustrations and models for airships and Da Vinci flying machines. A woman in Da Vinci’s time wouldn’t have had the opportunities Da Vinci had, and Lara wanted to capture that — her Engineer is trapped in that room, dreaming of flight but unable to fly. The character of Bianca Nazario came directly from that image, though I transplanted her to a different time and place, and gave her a means of — qualified — escape."
For those of you in the New York City area, today from 5-7 PM, Michael Swanwick will be doing a reading at James Cummins Bookseller in Manhattan. The information I have lists the event as a "reading and reception," so I assume that means there will be some sort of Q&A as well as a reading. The reading is to support Swanwick’s new story collection, THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW.
Here’s where the reading is taking place:
James Cummins Bookseller
699 Madison Ave., 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10065
212-688-6441
In an earlier post, I alluded to Shimmer’s WFC Pirate Party, which is being held Friday night. Well, I now have other pertinent details, namely that it’s in suite 556, starting at 9:30 PM.
A writer friend of mine recently had someone email him to tell him a story of his was "brilliant," which rather made his day. The fan said that Spider Robinson instructed her to be sure to tell artists when you like their works. Because, you know, they’re all people, no matter how famous they are, and a note like that might just make their day. And, hey, if they’re totally not famous yet, then it’s even more likely to have a real impact. So don’t hold back. It’s easy enough to find contact info for most authors these days. Find out how to get in touch and tell them how much you liked that story.
On another note, I have to say, I still kind of resent this one author who I emailed back in 1999 or so when I was just a nobody in college. I found him on AOL while I was searching for people to chat with. (I was searching by subject, and stumbled across him.) His profile indicated he was the author I thought it was (not just someone with the same name, which would have been unlikely). So I emailed him, told him how much I liked his book. His first novel, btw, and this is someone you’ve never heard of. But I never heard back from him.
So I guess there’s a lesson in that too. When someone writes you a nice note like that, thank them.
SCI FI Wire print news, week ending October 26, 2007:
Does anyone going to World Fantasy have one of those Sony Readers? If so, are you planning to bring it, and may I take a look at it?