Who Is That Strange Dude?

September 11, 2021 at 9:49 am

There’s a lot of strange stuff on YouTube. I never know what I’m going to stumble on.

Sometimes I stumble on myself. As in this interview from 1991 (or so it says), where I pontificate about science fiction and fandom.

(In those days, five years before A GAME OF THRONES was published, science fiction was what they asked about when they interviewed me. When they bothered to interview me at all).

I have absolutely no memory of this interview. Where I was, who was intervieweing me, why… none of that.

I remember those glasses, though.

I don’t remember that hair. My hair was dark brown when I was young. When I got older, it went to gray and then white. Judging from this clip, I guess 1991 was when it changed, but I don’t ever recall it being half-and-half like that, or having a dark beard with white hair. But I guess I did.

Blasts from the past.

Tags: interviews, science fiction

Death Draws Again

September 7, 2021 at 8:57 am

DEATH DRAWS FIVE is one of the rarest of the Wild Cards series.

The series started with a twelve-volume run at Bantam Spectra, then moved to Baen Books in the early 90s for three books. (Not the brightest decision I ever made as editor, but that’s a long story for another day). The Baen books — the Card Sharks triad — were among our strongest, I thought, but for various and sundry reasons they did not sell nearly as well as the Bantam twelve, and afterward Wild Cards was without a publisher. Seven long years ensued, and for a time it appeared as if Wild Cards might be dead — to the dismay of all of us involved in the series. Then, as now, we loved the world we had created, and the amazing cast of aces, jokers, and deuces we had created to populate it.

Then Byron Preiss came to the rescue with iBooks (which had nothing whatsoever to do with iPhones, iPads, or iAnythingElse, let me add). A fan of the series, he stepped up with an offer to reprint some of the old Bantam titles, long out of print, and do two new originals as well. The first of those was DEUCES DOWN, an anthology of stories about those the Takisian virus had given small, useless, sometimes silly superpowers. Volume sixteen in the overall series. The second original, volume seventeen, was a solo novel by long-time Wild Cards stalwart John Jos Miller: DEATH DRAWS FIVE.

Though iBooks was a small publisher with limited distribution, the revived series was doing okay…. until Byron Preiss was killed in a tragic automobile accident on the Long Island Expressway. His company did not long survive him, alas. The last book they published was… you guessed it… DEATH DRAWS FIVE. iBooks closed up shop a week later and soon filed for bankruptcy. We were told that fewer than six hundred copies of John’s novel ever made it into the bookstores.

That was a shame. DEATH DRAWS FIVE is a damned good read, and it deserved better.

Later, another small publisher called Brick Tower acquired the assets of iBooks in a bankruptcy sale, and issued their own editions of DEUCES DOWN and DEATH DRAWS FIVE on a print-on-demand basis, but those did not get any distribution to speak of either, and the two volumes remained hard to find even for the most ardent Wild Cards fan.

But now… at long long last… DEATH DRAWS FIVE is getting a new lease on life, as a hardcover from Tor.

DEATH DRAWS FIVE features John’s popular ass-kicker Billy Ray, aka, Carnifex, and the long-awaited return of Fortunato, one of the most popular characters from the early days of the series. This is also the volume that introduces John Nighthawk, the oldest man in the Wild Cards universe, and the Midnight Angel. It’s a wild ride, and one you won’t want to miss.

On sale NOVEMBER 9 in hardcover from your favorite online bookseller or local bookshop. And yes, signed copies will be available via mailorder from Beastly Books in Santa Fe.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: tor, wild cards

Let’s Go Mets

September 2, 2021 at 9:52 am

The year was 1986.

Was that a lifetime ago, or last week? Sometimes I am not sure.

For me, it was a pretty good year. I had my first job in television, writing for the CBS revival of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. I had gone through a very rough time financially the preceding couple of years, but now things were turning around. In the NFL, the Giants were looking damn good and winning a lot of games. And in baseball… in baseball, we had the Mets. After teasing us in 1984 and 1985, the Mets caught fire early in 1986, took charge of the National League from pillar to post, and made it to the World Series against the Boston Red Sox.

In a couple of weeks, ESPN will be bringing back those halcyon days with a four-part two-night documentary about that amazing season.

It should be a cool couple of nights. And you know the best part? I’m in the show. Can’t say how much or how often, but they came up to my cabin a few months back and interviewed me for an hour or so (and never asked once about THE WINDS OF WINTER or the new GAME OF THRONES successor shows I am developing for HBO). Maybe a couple of minutes of that will make it into the film, but hey, that’s cool… they have a lot of other exciting interviews in there as well.

But why should they interview a fantasy writer at all about the 1986 World Series???

Well, because… Parris and I were at Game Six.

And THAT experience I will remember till my dying day.

Happy Mets fans at the end of game 6. Find me and Parris (not the best pic of either of us, but we are there).

Somewhere around here I have my Mets cap and a baseball signed by Lenny Dykstra. Need to find those before showtime…

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Tags: baseball, interviews

The Cooters Are Coming!

August 24, 2021 at 7:14 pm

Howard Waldrop will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal a few months hence. It’s well deserved. There has been no finer short story writer in all of science fiction and fantasy in the past half century than H’ard. No one else writes like Waldrop. And Howard never writes the same story twice.

His best story? Damned hard to say. So many classics.

But one of them, surely surely, is “Night of the Cooters,” a finalist for the Hugo Award and Locus Award (did not win either, alas), and the title story of his second short story collection. Inspired by H.G. Wells and WAR OF THE WORLDS, it is all about the time the Martians invaded Pachuco, Texas.

And now, I am thrilled to announce, the Cooters are coming to the big screen.

Or maybe the small screen. Or the medium-sized screen. But some kind of screen, anyway. Right here in Santa Fe, we have just wrapped principal photography for a brand new film version of the Waldrop classic. “Night of the Cooters” is a short story, and our version is going to be a short film. I’d guess it will come in somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, shot with a combination of live action and state-of-the-art animation. If you loved the story, we think you will love our movie.

Howard has been part of the project since the start, of course. (The start being some five/six years ago).

The screenplay was written by JOE LANSDALE, and who better? The Sage of Nacogdoches, Texas is a major writer in his own right, author of the Hap & Leonard series and about a zillion other books and stories, writer of thrillers, horror stories, science fiction, westerns, historicals, and all manner of other cool stuff.

Directing, and starring as Sheriff Lindley, is the one and only VINCENT D’ONOFRIO.

If you have seen any television or film in the past thirty years or so, you know the work of Vincent D’Onofrio. He was Detective Goren in LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. He was Private Pyle in FULL METAL JACKET. He was the young fisherman who gets jilted at the altar in MYSTIC PIZZA. He was the alien in MEN IN BLACK. He’s the Kingpin in Marvel’s DAREDEVIL series. And… probably my favorite of his roles… he was Robert E. Howard in THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD (a wonderful film that deserved a LOT more attention than it got). And more and more. You can check out the full list of his credits on IMDB. He’s simply an extraordinary actor, with a range second to no one, and it was such an honor to work with him.

He’s also a terrific director.

The supporting cast includes Hopper Penn as Sweets, Harrison Page as Luther, Martin Sensmeier as Leo Smith, Cristin McCleary as Atkins, Elias Gallegos as DeSpain, Luce Rains as Skip, Jazzy Kim O’Brien as Lil’ Chisum, and Darius Eteeyan as Billy Strother.

And what about the Cooters, you may ask?

The cooters will be supplied for us by Trioscope Studios. Check out their website at https://www.trioscopestudios.com/ for a smaple of their work… or watch their WWII film THE LIBERATORS on Netflix.

The producers of NIGHT OF THE COOOTERS — in no particular order — are Vincent D’Onofrio, Justin Duval, Joe Dean, Taylor Church, Martin Sensmeier, L.C. Crowly, Greg Jonkajtys, Elias Gallegos, Lenore Gallegos, Amy Filbeck, Joe Lansdale, and Howard Waldrop His Own Self.

And me… though I rather think I may credit myself as The Big Cooter.

When and where will you be able to see NIGHT OF THE COOTERS?

Well, that’s hard to say. We shot everything on green screen, so the post production process is going to be a lengthy one. The ball has now been passed to our friends at Trioscope, who will supply the backgrounds and special effects. We are thinking the final cut won’t be ready until early next year. And once the film is complete… well, alas, I doubt it will be showing at a multiplex near you. It’s a short film, as I said, and shorts just don’t get the distribution of full-length features. They hardly get any distribution at all, sad to say. I expect we will enter COOTERS in some film festivals here and there. Maybe some streamer will pick it up. Maybe we can release it on DVD or Blu-Ray. Maybe we can make a few more Waldrop movies and assemble them all into an anthology of sorts, like CREEPSHOW or TWILIGHT ZONE. One thing I can promise: we will be having a premiere somewhere down the line at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe.

Howard never made much money off his stories. I expect his film won’t make much money either. But that’s not point.

Some stories just need to be told. Some movies just need to be made. Call it a labor of love.

Tags: films, movies, television and film

Farewell to an Ace

August 15, 2021 at 3:13 pm

I am very saddened to report that we have lost another of our Wild Carders.

I received word yesterday that Steve Perrin, the writer/ creator who gave us Mistral, her father Cyclone, and the ace reporter Digger Downs, died at his home in California. I am told that he died painlessly in the night, from an atrial fibrillation.

Steve had been part of Wild Cards since the beginning… BEFORE the beginning, actually… though he never actually wrote a story for us until the triptych in our latest volume, JOKER MOON, which just came out. I am very pleased that he was at least able to see his story in print and hold the book in his hand before he passed away. But his contributions to the series went way, way beyond that one tale. Steve was a game designer, a mainstay at Chaosium and other game companies, and was one of the creators responsible for such landmark RPGs as RUNEQUEST and CALL OF CTHULHU. He was also the writer and designer for SUPERWORLD, the role-playing game that inspired Wild Cards. Without his game, there would never have been a Wild Cards series.

I first “met” Steve when both of us were in high school (me in New Jersey, him in California), writing amateur superhero stories for the ditto’ed fanzines of the fledgling comics fandom of the 60s. I met him the same way I met Howard Waldrop (who was also writing for the same fanzines) — through the mails, and in the lettercols and comments sections. He was a very prolific writer, turning out far more stories than me and Howard combined, and creating dozens of characters… among them, the very first African-American superhero of the Silver Age, the Black Phantom… who made his debut in a fanzine well before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came up with the Black Panther.

Perrin was also one of the founding members of the SCA, and loved games. He was a big DIPLOMACY player, as I recall, and later on, with high school and college behind him, he made his career designing and writing role-playing games. There was none better. I have no doubt that if he had decided instead to write for Marvel or DC, he would have been just as successful.

I never actually met Steve in person until the worldcon in San Jose in 2002, but we kept in touch, off and on, over the decades. He was a true ace, and all the gamers out there will miss him, as will our Wild Cards readers, and his fellow members of the WC consortium.

Current Mood: sad sad

Tags: fandom, life and death, wild cards

Tuf Is Coming… Back

August 10, 2021 at 8:06 am

Long before I ever dreamed of Westeros, I had another setting I returned to again and again and again in a long series of short stories, novelettes, novellas, and even one novel (DYING OF THE LIGHT). The Thousand Worlds stories spanned centuries and light years and had their own cast of heroes, villains, legends, and colorful characters… none of them more colorful than the trader (and ecological engineer) Haviland Tuf, the protagonist of a long series of stories I collected together in the fix up TUF VOYAGING.

I always meant to write more Tuf stories. At one point, back in the 80s, I planned a second collection of stories (TWICE AS TUF) and a full-length Tuf novel (TUF LANDING)… but, alas, other novels and television and ICE & FIRE came along, and what with one thing and another I never got around to writing them. From time to time, I’ve even played with the idea of a television series about Tuf and his adventures… the stories are presently under option, as it happens, but… well, that hasn’t come to pass yet either.

But I am thrilled to be able to say that Haviland Tuf and his cats (he likes cats, y’see) ARE coming back… in a graphic novel.

We have closed a deal with the good folks at Ten Speed Press and Random House for VOYAGING, an adaptation of my novella “The Plague Star.” The very first Tuf story… well, not the first to be published, that was “A Beast for Norn,” but the earliest in Tuf’s personal timeline. More than that I will not say, for fear of spoiling the tale for those of you who have not read it.

The amazing and inimitable RAYA GOLDEN will be doing the adaptation and the art. It will be the third of my projects that Raya had adapted: she did the graphic story version of MEATHOUSE MAN a few years back (and snagged a Hugo nomination for it), followed by a wonderful version of STARPORT, an unproduced television pilot I wrote in the 90s. I loved what she did with that one, but VOYAGING promises to be even more fun.

….these are rough color tests and they may or may not end up looking like this in the end, but I think they’re pretty close to the final versions which I’ll be working from once I finish up the script…

Here’s Raya on the project:

So I’m doing a NEW graphic novel, another adaptation, but THIS one I’ve had my eye on for almost a decade. It’s not slated for release till 2023 as I actually have to Draw the sucker first, but boy am I excited to bring this one to life. For those of you familiar with GRRMs Science Fiction work will be very familiar with this set of short stories BUT due to the nature of this introduction story I don’t want to talk too much about that yet and if y’all remember the story you’ll remember why it’ll be fun to keep the secret with me! Suffice to say this story is an adaptation that is NOT set in GRRMs usual medieval world of Westeros, but instead in his Science fiction universe called The Thousand Worlds.

This first story is just an introduction to this universe, but HOPEFULLY there will be more volumes to come!

Here is the official description:

George R.R. Martin and Raya Golden’s VOYAGING, VOLUME ONE: THE PLAGUE STAR, the first volume of a graphic novel adaptation of TUF VOYAGING, Martin’s short story collection set in his science fiction universe the Thousand Worlds, to be adapted and illustrated by Golden, which follows a group of unlikely spacefaring rogues on a mysterious mission involving unfathomable galactic fame and fortune (but only if they can survive), to Kaitlin Ketchum at Ten Speed Press, in an exclusive submission.

I’ll be working with a friend of mine from College a very talented artist by the name of Ann Marcilleno

https://annmarcellino.tumblr.com

And I’ll be sharing more info as it arrives, but for now I present the cast of the first volume of VOYAGING; from right to left we have: RANITTAS, MUSHROOM (THE CAT), KAJ, JEFRI, CELISE, HAVILAND WITH HAVOC (THE KITTEN), AND AWHINA

Please help me spread the news and like my illustration page

https://www.facebook.com/rayagoldenillustration

AND my website 😉

www.rayagolden.com

If VOYAGING does well, our hope is that Raya will go on to adapt more of Tuf’s adventures into comic form… and who knows, perhaps in time there will even be some NEW tales to tell of our intrepid hairless hero.

As Tuf would say… “Indeed.”

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Tags: comic books

Lords of Fantasy

July 30, 2021 at 8:55 am

The upcoming World Fantasy Convention has just announced the winners of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awards:

MEGAN LINDHOLM and HOWARD WALDROP.

I could not possibly think of two more worthy winners.

Megan Lindholm, writing under the name Robin Hobb, is one of the premiere fantastists of the last thirty years. Her Farseer novels, featuring Fitz and the Fool, are classics of high fantasy. If you have not read them, you don’t know what you are missing. She has also done some great work under the Megan Lindholm byline, stories that fall more in the realm of urban fantasy and magic realism, just as engrossing and memorable as her epics. She was long overdue for some major recognition.

And Howard Waldrop… what can I say about Howard Waldrop? (That I have not already said in my introduction to his collection HOWARD WHO?) What can anyone say about Howard Waldrop? H’ard (as Gardner Dozois liked to call him) is one of a kind. There has never been another writer like him, in fantasy, in science fiction, in literature. Over the course of a career just as long as my own, he has only produced two novels… and one of those a collaboration… but he has turned out reams of short stories.

And WHAT short stories! “The Ugly Chickens” won the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award (a long time ago, when it was still the Howie) and lost the Hugo. A great story, but Howard has produced many other tales just as good. “Heirs of the Perisphere.” “Night of the Cooters.” “Custer’s Last Jump.” “Black as the Pit, From Pole to Pole.” “A Dozen Tough Jobs.” “Fin de Cycle.” “God’s Hooks.” “Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me.” “Do Ya, Do Ya Wanna Dance?” “Flying Saucer Rock ‘n Roll.” “Mary-Margaret Road-Grader.” “Heart of Whitenesse.” “Ike at the Mike.” “Man-Mountain Gentian.” “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway.” Oh, and more, and more… I could go on and on.

Waldrop never writes the same story twice. He writes stories that no one else could possibly write. Funny, and sad, and whimsical, and erudite, and… words fail me, but they never fail H’ard. In a just world, he would have a dozen Nebulas and as many Hugos by now. SFWA would have named him a Grand Master ten years ago, and some worldcon would have made him its Guest of Honor. But such accolades seldom come to short story writers, no matter how singular and amazing they may be. This year’s World Fantasy Award panel of judges deserve kudos for recognizing this genius in our midst.

This year’s World Fantasy Convention will be in Montreal in early November. I hope that both Howard and Megan will be able to make it, to accept their Trees in person. I doubt that I will be able to make it myself… though I am tempted, I am so tempted… but that sound you hear will be me, applauding madly from afar.

(Oh, and watch this space. I hope to have some more exciting Howard Waldrop news soon).

Current Mood: happy happy

Tags: awards, conventions

Back to the Midwest

July 16, 2021 at 4:09 pm

I am so far behind in my Not A Blogging. This post should have been posted back in June, but… better late than never, right?

ANYWAY… I was on the road for ten days back in June, to Evanston (where I went to school, 1966-1971), Chicago (where I lived after school, 1971-1976), and Dubuque (where I taught school, 1976-1979). It was the first time I’d left home and/or cabin in a year and a half, since the start of the pandemic and the quarantine. I have to say, it was great to get away from my office chair, even if it was only for a few days.

First stop was Northwestern, and the convocation for the graduates of the Medill School of Journalism, where I was given an honorary doctorate. Professor Emeritus Roger Boye gave me a very kind introduction, and presented me with my new hood as Doctor of Humane Letters. And then it was my turn.

The Northwestern campus has changed a great deal since my days as a student, half a century ago. So has the city of Evanston. Old landmarks gone, new buildings everywhere… but still, enough remained to give me some vivid flashes of memory of years gone by and friends and lovers and teachers who changed my life and… for good or ill… helped make me the person I am today.

Thomas Wolfe said that you can’t go home again. Maybe so, but you can visit. Thank you, Northwestern. It was nice to be back, however briefly.

After Evanston, I spent a few days in Chicago, accompanied by my loyal minion, Sid. That was great as well. Of course, we had to visit Greektown for some saganaki at the Greek Islands, where I first learned to love flaming cheese while still a student at Northwestern. OPAA! OPAA! I also got to enjoy dinners with Mary Anne Mohanraj, one of my wonderful Wild Card writers, and Eve Ewing, who presented me with the Carl Sandburg Award on my last visit to Chicago, both of them amazing writers. That was fun too.

While I was in Chicago, I did an interview with the local PBS station.

Next we took to the road, across Illinois and through the scenic and historic town of Galena (Abner Marsh’s home town) to Dubuque, where I once taught journalism at Clarke College and acted as advisor to the student newspaper, the COURIER. The reason for my visit was… ah, well, no, can’t tell you that, not yet… but I got to see a few old friends, eat chili at Mulgrew’s in East Dubuque and pizza in Dubuque proper, and… take a ride on the riverboat TWILIGHT. Okay, it’s not a real steamboat, not even a paddlewheeler, but it’s a cool boat all the same, and I loved sailing down the Mississippi for a few hours. I even got to visit the pilot house and blow the whistle.

We got back home on June 23rd. It’s always nice to be back in Santa Fe and the Land of Enchantment, but I have to admit, it was great to get away for a few days.

Of course, during my ten days on the road and away from the internet, the email piled up, and I found some eight hundred letters waiting for me on my return. Which may help explain why I am weeks late in making this post, but…

That’s all for now. The woods were lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and books to write before I sleep.

Current Mood: contemplative

Tags: awards, journalism, speeches, television, writing

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