Puck

Nisi reads from her new story collection, Filter House, and answers questions about African Americans in speculative fiction, Filter House, and Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction at BookPeople in Moscow, Idaho, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Copies of Filter House and Writing the Other will be available for sale, with a signing session following the reading. BookPeople is at 521 S. Main St., Moscow, ID, 83843.

Also, Nisi and I may play one of my songs together at her reading. She’s got a great singing voice and I’ve written an SF carpe diem love song we like to do.

This is a brown-bag affair, so hit the farmer’s market to score some lunch to munch while Nisi reads to you. Bring questions and ideas, too, on anything about writing, life, the universe and everything, as we’re hoping for a lively postprandial discussion.

My review of Filter House is here. Nisi’s Science Fiction Writers of America page is here.

Filter House, said writer and critic Samuel R. Delany, “is just amazing. What a pleasure and privilege it was to read it!”

The eminent novelist and critic Ursula K. Le Guin wrote of Filter House: “From the exotic, baroque complexities of ‘At the Huts of Ajala’ to the stark, folktale purity of ‘The Beads of Ku,’ these fourteen superbly written stories will weave around you a ring of dark, dark magic.”
Matt Ruff, author of Set This House In Order and Bad Monkeys calls Filter House “A travelling story-bazaar, offering treasures and curios from diverse lands of wonder.”

Karen Joy Fowler declares, “Sometimes enigmatic, often surprising, always marvelous. This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places.”

Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies, concurs that these are “Remarkably involving stories that pull you along a path of wonder, word by word, in worlds where everything is a bit different.”

Un-spun by DJ Skrotekkki

[Note: In "The Harrowing Highway," part one of the DJ's odyssey, he tries to ride the bus from Pullman to Spokane without being molested.]

I stumbled around the city of screams, determined to spend the two-hour layover somewhere other than the bus station. Riverfront Park looked inviting enough, so I explored it for a while and was solicited yet again – alas, only for spare change this time. Thank goodness. I called a friend who lived nearby, and worked even nearer. He agreed to meet up before going to work.

“Excellent,” I said, “I have a crazy story to tell you.”

That all went according to plan. He agreed that the tale I related was indeed unusual. We caught up until it was time to go our separate ways.

By this time, I figured, someone with a four-and-a-half-hour layover would have gotten the hell out of the bus station. And with only about twenty minutes left before my bus was supposed to arrive, I was sure I could return for the short wait without much chance of running into my new “friend.” I was partially right.

But what luck! We just so happened to cross paths again. Fortunately, she was just leaving the station. “I got hungry” she explained. Then she expressed her surprise at seeing me again. “I thought this was your stop and you’d be long gone.” I could only wish. Read the rest of this entry »

Un-spun by DJ Skrotekkki

I boarded the bus in a slight hangover haze and sleep-deprivation daze, looking forward to snoring my way through the ride that awaited me. As soon as I settled into a seat next to the window, however, those hopes were lost. Between the seat’s build and my own, it was impossible to get comfortable enough to nod off. In retrospect, I should have given it a try and at least pretended I was sleeping, because by the end of the trip I would find out just how uncomfortable that particular seat could be.

I gazed out the window through the enormous sunglasses that were hiding more than my eyes until I couldn’t stand it any longer. The young man who had gotten on the bus at the last stop was half my age, but even so I was attracted and couldn’t help but entertain carnal fantasies about him. I decided to break the ice. “There’s no need to remain silent.” Read the rest of this entry »

poem by Robin Pugh Yi

From bitter cold predawn shadows you called out, “Hey, come here!”

The woman pretended not to hear as she hurried away. You persisted, “I want to show you something,” your deep voice echoing every storybook villain.

She barely restrained herself from running away, searched the street for an escape route, for anyone else awake who might save her.

“It’s a telescope,” you insisted, not considering the possible innuendo. “You can see the rings of Saturn.” She slowed to an almost normal pace as she approached the street corner, wondering if this stranger might really be offering nothing more than free candy.

“They’re so beautiful. I just want to show someone.” You almost couldn’t see her turn slightly toward you. You shoved your hands into your pockets, kicked some fallen leaves, resigned to whatever decision she would make. Hesitantly, she turned to walk back. Her face lit with wonder at the stunning shiny rings. She bowed a little to thank you.

I saw her leave as I approached, and shook my head at how oblivious you were to her fears. Then, teeth chattering in the eerie wind, you showed me those rings. And luminous sister Venus. Blurry hints of the Martian canals swam like a river of old stories. Candy from the dark, stranger man.

As a young girl’s mother, I’m not supposed to confess all the rides I’ve taken with strangers, the candy I’ve eaten, how often I’ve looked at what someone just wanted to show me in the shadows. I can’t deny meeting the ravenous wolf there. Can’t tell you to stop protecting yourself and your children. Please forgive my rashness in answering the ugly clichéd assumptions in the phrase, “You know how men are.” Yes, I do. I’ve accepted countless invitations called from the dark. The ravening wolf is rare. The call of the wild promises joy. The shadows teem with souls who ache to share the night sky.

poem by Kurt Olson

a drunkard-ly Indian
[native American]
{american Indian}
stumbled down the opposite lane
snow bound; plowed

Call it social injustice
Call it personal choices
but I think he was coping
with the humanity
or lack there of
in this town

prescribed to him
by a people of
pale skin and pale character

he looked right through my
middle-class-white “soul”
and I saw why
my ancestors embarrassed me

fiction by Sarah Hafner, from work in progress

I am sitting at the Village Vanguard, listening to Betty Carter. At my right is Topper, a man I met when I was still in high school. I am thinking about David–I always think about him, how far away he is, earning his Ph.D. at Oxford–and about my ballet class tomorrow. Lighting a cigarette, Topper puts his arms around me, making it harder for me to smoke. I am not in love with Topper, but the more I drink the easier it is to think I am. I am getting drunk, Betty isn’t that good, and I cannot have a hangover for ballet, because my sweat will reveal my hangover, and I am frightened of college. My thoughts drift back to David, and his wild proposal of marriage, which I have kept to myself. Now I have the problem that because Topper–what is his real name?–because he bought the tickets to this club, will want to have sex and I will probably go through the motions. Read the rest of this entry »

poem by Robin H. Pugh Yi

Ralphie and I bring flowers to ghosts
we conjure in graveyards.

He likes the ones with
famous dead people:

Didi Ramone and Carl Wilson,
Thomas Wolfe and Washington Irving.

I like little
anonymous ones-

behind country churches,
awkward grassy triangles next to strip malls,

on the edges of towns where Chinese food
is considered exotic,

borders of industrial tracts
strewn with litter.

We read each other the stories
told in names and dates

and a few words carved in stone.
We wonder how survivors

chose the words. And what they left out.
Ralphie sings until the ghosts dance.

I bring food.
On windy days, pinwheels.

story by Robin H. Pugh Yi

“Sweetie, you can’t climb in there,” I call. I catch my three-year-old daughter by the waist just before she hoists herself over the low wall between us and the Smithsonian’s Neanderthal burial exhibit.
“Why?” Rachel’s favorite question.
“Honey, there are some very delicate and rare things in there. We need to leave them alone so everyone has a chance to see them.”
She accepts this.
“Mommy, how close can we get?” she asks, never taking her eyes off the Neanderthal child mannequin bent over the grave.
“This is close enough,” I whisper, sliding next to her on the wall.
A nine- or ten-year-old girl leans against the wall, declaring, “Freaky,” before moving on to the next display. Read the rest of this entry »

poem by Robin Pugh Yi

The first people
invented flutes
before combs.
Music
penetrates
through
flesh and scent
deep into
the new brain,
stripping us
naked
like no other
animal can be,
inviting
uniquely
human
intimacy.

Andrew Macrae, an Australian writer and artist, wrote to say that although he lives

a long way from the centres of cultural production in the northern hemisphere… maybe there’s something of interest in an antipodean perspective.

Oh my. The man knows how to write a pitch to snare an Irrepressible, no?

So check out his typewriter art (I suspect Photoshop or Illustrator, not an “actual” [or "Real," as Andrew says below] typewriter, but I could easily be wrong; and don’t get me wrong: I respect and admire mimicry): Acid Head War. The thing that grabs me about Macrae’s pieces is the bridge between the dot matrix and the typewriter. All you can see here is the dot matrix; to get the typewriter detail, you need to visit Acid Head War.

What we’ve got here is the translation of photographs into typewriter art-via an algorithm which offers, I can only imagine, a good deal of user control. (Indeed, I suspect that each character is handpecked, but I’m a Romantic.) I have no idea of how many languages Andrew speaks (other than an obvious fluency with English, that is), but translation–or anyway, the engineer’s strategy of bridging–is clearly a forte. In that regard, check out Ordinary Magic, “the ecstasy of everyday things,” a minimalist WordPress blog in action. Read the rest of this entry »