Science Fiction and Politics at Think Galactic

It was my first time at Think GalactiCon. And I must admit, it was my first time at any Sci Fi con. And I must further admit that it was my first time really talking about the convergence of science fiction and politics in any real and sustained way. And my final admission is that the combination of these factors resulted in me actually talking very little (or at all) in the panels and discussions, though I certainly talked up a storm in smaller venues, between panels, over lunch and dinner and beers. I realized there is so much I haven’t read and need to read, so much I’ve only vaguely thought about, but never sharpened into real coherency by translating it into the concreteness of actual words.

And it was brilliant, of course.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in a room where everyone seems to have read and loved Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin. Where radical politics are related back to zombie wars and the struggle for life on Mars. I think I’ve been wanting a room like that for some time without consciously realizing it, much less looking for it. My own great loss. There are two things I love about…what should I even call it? Speculative fiction is the term  I think. I admit I have a wee bit more love for fantasy over straight sci fi, though I think much of the distinction between the two rather absurd. Still, I love those splendidly feral worlds of the imagination, rich tapestried language, monsters, magic, places where no one has the same rules, or they have invented new ways of breaking them. I’m the kid who heard fairies outside her window growing up, and hasn’t given up on them yet. And of course you have authors like William Gibson who take technology into places where my experience can’t follow, and it all comes back to what might as well be magic again (for me, I don’t mean to cause any controversy by labeling cyberpunk magical, which I know it’s really not!). Still, fantasy leans towards the callings of destiny, the great kings, the happiness that comes from feudalism…I don’t like that at all. But there are those novels like the Gormenghast trilogy that have brought so much wealth to my world through their very existence, and books by authors like M. John Harrison and China Mieville where I see some of my own politics echoed back at me, even amplified.

I love things like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy too, but they don’t make me hold my breath until the page dims due to lack of oxygen.

For so many years I never consciously brought that together with my love of social justice and my struggle for a better world… as an organizer the books didn’t seem to have the same importance and I stopped reading so much. Of course, that wasn’t just true of speculative fiction, it was true of absolutely everything. Sleeping itself was cut down to below the minimum needed, much less literary exploration. It’s been nice to emerge from the fog of living emergency to emergency, political moment to political moment, meeting to meeting.

And what a joy to come back to these books, to re-read things in light of all I’ve learned, to hurl myself into the world as it was or could be or is now with some (monsterific) modifications, all through the words of some of the greatest writers bar none. At its best the genre allows so much scope for playing with ideas, for turning ideals and theory into things that are alive on the page. It is a genre for dreaming, for analyzing, for theorizing, for experimenting… all the things that turn me on the most when paired with imaginations that spark my own.

Friday night I saw Eleanor Arnason reading an exquisite little story about a silly king and a statue and the little hatmaker…I sadly missed the other reading as it was a long train ride home to the place I was staying. But Eleanor is a facsinating author dealing with so many issues of class, race and gender in her work, and always a pleasure to read. Even more of a pleasure to meet in person, we talked quite a bit over the course of two lunches, and I am proud to say that we at PM Press will be publishing one of her stories and an in depth interview with her next year, Mammoths of the Great Plains.

I also spent a great deal of time with Josh MacPhee, who brought a load of incredible prints and posters from Just Seeds. PM will also be publishing his next book Paper Politics, which is exciting. And it was nice to have someone else in the same boat more or less…the perilous dinghy of being a fan but much more of an activist, with little experience in combining the two. I think both of us felt we were in a little deep! But It was great to finally meet someone I’ve worked with and chatted with over email face to face…And there were so many more people I talked with, but I’ve limited mention to people who I know enough about to give a plug for and a nod to their work!

And the panels? Oh, they were great. They covered race, class and gender in the genre, looked at the future of food, the role of science and technology in the world we are building, the place of the superhero in comics…and so much more. Everything ran smoothly, the food was delicious, the stencil and print workshop was brilliant, the games mightily enjoyable…and Roosevelt University an incredible space. All in all I enjoyed myself immensely. Everyone there seemed amazing and I’m just sad it wasn’t longer, as there were a number of folks I didn’t talk to at all (I’m still a bit shy as well!). But what I have taken away is the compilation of a massive reading list, and the percolation of a million great ideas. The extraordinary women who put everything together deserve an immense amount of credit, and I definitely hope that it continues long into the future…

Nobody Rocks Press and the future of books

Well! It has been a while since I’ve blogged, I think the Michael Jackson post was just a bit too hard to follow. And it has been a long couple of weeks full of events and book festivals and far too much alcohol and a bike accident that left me battered and scraped and bruised…

So I wanted to introduce Nobody Rocks Press, a great independent press just starting up like my own. Unlike PM Press, however, they have fully embraced the new digital reality of the 21st Century and have eschewed all physicality for the world of the download. So grab your new and improved kindles and get ready for a crazy ride. We’re all watching with breath held…

‘Twas a warm Wednesday evening at Stories bookstore in Echo Park (it’s new and one of my favourite little independents, they’ve got great selection, great coffee, and great patio seating, who could ask for more?).  We milled, mingled, I tried half-heartedly to figure out who exactly Greg Aden was, a friend of a friend and the reason I was there. When after some warm up acts, Jason Flores-Williams, author of the cult-classic The Last Stand of Mr. America, set the crowd on fire. Raw and powerful…and shocking. I can think of nothing more likely to jolt you, eyes blinking and extremities tingling, entirely out of the ruts of your everyday life and into the greater world of experiences you could never ever imagine. Explicit as all hell, and I think my eyebrows must have hit my hairline. They have almost returned to their original place…I didn’t get any photos the night of the event, but here’s one of the man himself at the march on May day.

The San Francisco Examiner calls him “a literary force of nature…A train wreck of genius.” I’ll let you know if I agree when I read it, or you can tell me. I will say in all honesty it was a reading like none other. The only other person who could possibly match the content is my friend Larry Fondation (yet another amazing writer), but I must admit, I haven’t seen him read those particular pieces in a crowded room.

And of course, we finished the night off in alcohol fueled style at the Gold Room. It was rather joyous.

And it will be interesting to see if it works…I am torn by the question of the new electronic media. It means that books are immediately available at the touch of a button to anyone with the technology to read them. It makes books a great deal less expensive, though the kindle and sony player are still costly enough to keep them out of the hands of the masses (for now). It makes books  searchable, you can pull directly from the text for quotes and notes, you can store loads of them on your computer and carry all of them with you wherever you go.

And yet…and yet I find such a pleasure in books themselves. It’s a very sensual pleasure to open a book for the first time (and the hundredth), or to look at a row of them sitting on your shelf. The books you know and love shoulder to shoulder with the new and the unexplored. Troves waiting to be mined. Knowledge still hidden but on the brink of revelation. Words of power and beauty. Imaginings that will throw your mind wide open. Illustrations of grace, and the art and colors rampant over the covers.  I know I’m a big book nerd, but that shit gives me chills. And what would those classic crime novels have been without those amazing lurid covers? I wonder.

I imagine the future will be a hybrid of the two desires, the usefulness and easy access of one. The physical joy of the second. For myself, nothing beats a book for reading in the bath, or lying curled up under covers, or kicking it on the beach (Sand, water, sleepiness and electronics are always a bad combination). And I love marking up those tomes of theory and philosophy with a pen and writing the ideas sparked in the margins. Books are for passing on as well, often I finish a book and immediately know which of my friends would absolutely love it. What greater pleasure then to share something like that? And I will always love the smell of ink when you get a box of books fresh from the printer. The anticipation and weight and feel of them in my hands. Staring at them on my shelf and the brief joyous reliving of other worlds that comes with it.

But I will be getting a digital reader one day, once the damn price has come down. And I am rather excited about that. And I suppose it’s good for the trees, and the landfills full of remainders that no one could be convinced to buy. Of course that might be cancelled out by the oil and metal required to create any technology, and the business practices of all corporate bastards, it’s a complicated world we live in. But I think having access to ideas and information in many different forms can only be a good thing. And I’m a bit jealous of the incredibly low overhead, though truth is it’s uncertain exactly whether this new technology will lead to decent wages for writers and publishers, and how. Of course, the publishing industry as it exists is crumbling anyway, we’re only a few years behind the music industry.  So cheers to some of the leaders in the field, may they flourish and open up new visions for what is possible…

Homecoming, conspiracy theories, books…what better weekend?

It makes me so happy that my hometown had its first annual book festival this weekend. And to be there with a table full of books and cds and dvds I can be proud of? Even better.

The PM table was busy, very busy, and I am thoroughly exhausted, but in that satisfied job well done sort of way. Yesterday was much busier. The highlights were the elder from the Sioux Nation who broke down for my dad the racism of the courts and the struggle to reclaim their original treaty lands from the US government, stolen after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. She was awesome. There was an older guy with polished and coiffed white hair, khakis, smart blazer. Mirrorish sunglasses. He looked at the Angola 3 video, and told me he had been imprisoned in Angola (the country), by the Cubans (who ran the country at the time). I almost asked him if he had met Che then, but didn’t. I never know if those guys are being serious, I met another old guy who told me once in a bar that he had been in Laos for years, back when he worked for the government, back when he didn’t exist. Whether or not these guys were black ops, they give me the creeps. Somehow I believe them, because they could say such things to 1,000s of  American who would never know what they were talking about.

Dad manned the booth with me yesterday, and was incredibly helpful in many ways. He claims that his role was to distract the big talkers with big theories and allow me time to talk to other people. My feeling is that he did that to some extent, but also ensured they spent an extra 20 minutes in the booth that I could have prevented. Like today, when I learned a great deal about the connections between the Rothschilds and England’s Royal family and how they run the world. And none of the big talkers bought anything. And many of them are emailing me in the next few days.

All of the conversations were interesting though, and I did enjoy them all. Here’s an excerpt from some of the literature I picked up:

“I am now a FELON because I attempted to protect my mother, a victim of Alzheimer’s, from a herd of wild cattle (including bulls) on our own private FENCED property near Snowflake, AZ.

The rancher refused to remove them, so I tried to scare the 30-40 cattle back through our gate with the noise from a .22 rifle and in the process one was killed. It must have been a ricochet since I know that I did not try to hit one.

The rancher (Dee Johnson), has 60 FELONIES against him for CATTLE RUSTLING. He is a cousin to both Jake Flake and Jeff Flake, in the AZ Legislature and US Congress respectively. Is it possible that politics has something to do with this?

you can read more at www.cowcrap.org.

Cattle rustling! God Damn! Oh the good times we had I can tell you! And of course maybe they’re not from the town, but I find mention of the Flake family of Snowflake, Arizona somewhat amusing. If they weren’t connected to cattle rustlers reminiscent of Clint Eastwood films that they seem to be, they would be a Christmas special.

Today was slower, and both parents came along making it a family affair. And Gary was around, speaking on a panel on noir and politics with Kent Harrington, and that was great. He came by the booth of course, even though the printers have yet to find a paper that works for the Jook’s cover flaps so the books didn’t arrive in time, and the book signing that should have taken place didn’t. The biggest disappointment. But here we are, with new our new friend Joy from Revolutionary Grounds.

You should definitely head on down there if you’re in Tucson, and often. Not just because they are stocking many of our books, but also because they are a great space on 4th ave to hang out, talk, eat well and drink Zapatista coffe.

And amazing, I ran into three different families I haven’t seen in 10-15 years, maybe more. The Seoldos and Sharon who used to go to our old church down off of Valencia and 12th, and the Leons. Roy used to be the assistant coach for my brother Dan’s soccer team (good old Santa Cruz, ah I remember the days, I saw them every Saturday for much of my childhood)…it is lovely to run into folks from the old days.

It was a very long, but very nice weekend, full of so many great conversations that I can’t mention them all! Folks here are fantastic. Of course.

Selling books

It’s tough, it’s a tough business. I spent all of Sunday at the West Hollywood Bookfair, and all on my ownsome as well, though it gave me time to think. And resulted in one book being stolen while I was distracted…a cookbook of low-fat vegan deserts, go figure. I hope they choke on their carob brownies of course, as stealing from any independant publisher is a cardinal sin, especially from my broke self! But I still found it funny. At any rate, we did pretty well I think.

I got there way too early since I’m all new at this, didn’t bring enough stuff, and had far too much time on my hands. And I soon realized that I was sitting next to the Ayn Rand folks, ha! They even gave me some good advice on how to make it look like I had brought enough stuff to fill the two very large tables I was given, and were very complimentary on the aesthetics of my display. They were giving a lot of stuff away…you’d think given Miss Rand’s philosophy they’d be busy proving the worth of their wares by selling it for top dollar…it’s the market that decides value after all! Maybe they figure propaganda works like heroin. It finally got better when the show started, a little old lady singing folk songs in russian, followed by readings of russian poetry, I really enjoyed that bit, hugely, though i couldn’t hear too well. Russian poetry is amazing, though not being close enough, I am not sure what they were reading, it looked like books so I imagine Pushkin and maybe just maybe Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam and…I love Russian poets. I love the fact that the marquis was packed full of older russian folks to hear poetry.

The people watching was good, you could spot the well-kept and expensively maintained hollywood types, no one exciting though. The police wandered by. They didn’t think much of my stuff, though i thought about trying to sell them a real cost of prisons comix. A jedi knight walked past, followed by vader. A lot of couples were wandering around, and i thought again to myself, how do so many couples look alike?? Is it that people are just looking for themselves in someone else? I think that must be it, or perhaps their expressions come to match each others over time or…I don’t know. But too me that seems a horrifying fate, I’d rather be with someone very different who is always making me think new thoughts, try new things. And who doesn’t make me feel like I’m looking at myself in a mirror when I stare into his eyes. The absurd was not missing of course, like the woman with the dog carrier in camoflauge olive and pink, and her wee silly dog wearing some frilly dress thing with rosebuds on it. And the old guy who looked at my books with disgust, we had mumia postcards and he snorted and said that that guy would slit my throat if he could. I smiled. Then he asked me if there were any right wing bookstalls there, and I happily sent him along to the Ayn Rand folks next door.

The best folks there were the booth opposite to me and to the left. Smart gals productions. Their booth was freestanding, and they set up cloth to hang down on all sides, they hung little stars from the roof…and I’m thinking snidely to myself, ha! damn hippies. Bet they’re selling tiedye and clothes made from old saris…but no, they took the two tables down, opened up their bags and pulled out a large perfectly fitted booth size mat and lots of pillows. Then they proceeded to loll about on pillows, and read. One of them was reading Vonnegut if I am not mistaken. A couple of people came by, sat down, chatted. And when I say a couple I mean two. All day. And that is all they did. It actually seemed quite agreeable to lie on pillows in the middle of a bookfair on a beautiful sunday and read, so I had quite a lot of respect for them as they packed up. Though I am curious to know just how you make a living at that, I rather imagine they don’t.

Anyways, this is the happy stuff, even apart from the economy life has been sucking, lucky for everyone I don’t write about that shit.

Sleeplessness

Sleeplessness

I own so many books, they sit multi-coloured on shelves surrounding me, old friends and friends waiting to be discovered, but I only want one and cannot find it, I am in a mood, finding myself in the early hours of the morning unable to sleep, sadness sits like a weight of sand on my rib cage and the back of my neck hurting my shoulders, everything is heavy, I am pinned down though my mind races and cannot still itself, I wanted poetry and Shelley to be specific. I wanted the dead leaves of my thoughts to be scattered, ashes and sparks, among mankind…this is all I can remember of his song for autumn and I went searching, looking for words to express feelings, funny how sadness perfectly expressed by another is perfect company for your own, and I want company. I have none but my own words, other’s words written upon paper, and a face in the mirror that I hardly recognize, the haunted look in my reflection’s eyes foreign and strange. A single cricket sings from outside… My days are unmoored, time does not ride easy…it jolts in fits and starts and all my thoughts are of leaving, running far away, and I am not at all myself at the moment, haven’t a glimmer of humour to lighten the mood.