Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness
Page 29
“Although the rotating narrative voices are now the most prominent (and, for me, the most fun) aspect of the story, they were not my original plan. The first draft, titled ‘Done Before,’ contained only the three historical scenes with Jan, Anne, and Alexandros. Friends told me that it needed more connective tissue, which led me to the debate between the archeologists Leo and Mathilde; this is when I changed the title to ‘Lineage.’ Then other friends said that the story lacked closure, that too much was left unexplained. This prompted the disembodied voice of the spirit itself. It often happens that way for me: the niftiest ideas don’t pop up until the third or fourth draft.”
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John C. Wright is a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor (details below) who was only once on the lam and forced to hide from police who did not admire his newspaper.
He graduated in 1984 from St. John’s College in Annapolis, home of the “Great Books” program, and in 1987 from the College of William and Mary’s Law School (going from the third-oldest to the second-oldest school in continuous use in the United States), and was admitted to the practice of law in three jurisdictions (New York, May 1989; Maryland, December 1990; DC, January 1994). His law practice was unsuccessful enough to drive him into bankruptcy soon thereafter. His stint as a newspaperman for the St. Mary’s Today was more rewarding spiritually, but, alas, also a failure financially.
He presently works (successfully) as a writer in Virginia, where he lives in fairy-tale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children: Eve, Orville, Wilbur, and Just Wright. His novels, all published by Tor Books, include The Golden Age trilogy (The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant, The Golden Transcendence), the War of the Dreaming duology (Last Guardians of Everness, Mists of Everness), and the Chronicles of Chaos (Orphans of Chaos, Fugitives of Chaos, Titans of Chaos). The first Chaos novel was a Nebula Award finalist, and the entire trilogy was short-listed for the Mythopoeic Award. His most recent novel is Null-a Continuum, a continuation of the classic and bizarre Null-A series created by A.E. van Vogt. His short fiction has appeared in various “Best of the Year” antholologies.
About “Murder in Metachronopolis,” John says, “In writing a time-paradox murder mystery story, one has to keep in mind that the readers will expect the detective, the murder victim, and probably the murderer too, to turn out all three to be the same man; unless, of course, the murder victim turns out to be no one at all, as when the event is retroactively made never to have happened; or both.
“There is something about time travelers that always provoke my suspicion, if not indignation. Since the time travelers do not follow the law of cause and effect, why need they follow any law at all?” He says he wrote “Metachronopolis” in order “to examine that suspicion” and adds that “for the reader’s convenience, the sequence of events is numbered according to its anachronological order.”
“Metachronopolis” shares some elements of setting with John’s story in the first Clockwork Phoenix volume, “Choosers of the Slain,” making it the first tale in our pages to expand on a previously introduced multiverse.
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Nicole Kornher-Stace was born in Philadelphia in 1983, moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again by the time she was five, and currently lives in New Paltz, NY, with one husband, two ferrets, the cutest toddler in the universe, and many many books. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several magazines and anthologies, including Best American Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Ideomancer, GUD, Goblin Fruit, Lone Star Stories, and Farrago’s Wainscot, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of one novel, Desideria, and her featured poems from the Summer 2009 issue of Goblin Fruit are collected in the beautifully illustrated chapbook Demon Lovers and Other Difficulties, available for sale at goblinfruit.net. For further miscellany, check out her blog at wirewalking.livejournal.com.
About “To Seek Her Fortune,” she rather puckishly elucidates, “This story is the result of my taking the time-honored tradition of expanding a short story into a novel and running it in reverse. The novel in question is underway. (Mythpunk/steampunk/paranormal mashup! Now with about 900% more Sentient Airship!)”
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Tanith Lee was born in 1947, in London, England. After non-education at a couple of schools, followed by actual good education at another, she received wonderful education at the Prendergast Grammar School until the age of 17. She then worked (inefficiently) at many jobs, including library assistant, shop assistant, waitress and clerk, also taking a year off to attend art school at age 25. In 1974 (curious reversal of her birthdate) DAW Books of America accepted three of her fantasy/SF novels, (published in 1975-6), and thereafter twenty-three of her books, so breaking her chains and allowing her to be the only thing she effectively could: a full-time writer.
Since then she has written seventy-seven novels, fourteen collections, and almost three hundred short stories, plus four radio plays (broadcast by the BBC), and two scripts for the British TV cult SF series Blake’s 7. Her work, which has been translated into over seventeen languages, ranges through fantasy, horror, SF, gothic, YA and children’s books, and contemporary, historical and detective novels. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror. She has also won major awards for several of her books/stories, including the August Derleth Award for Death’s Master, the second book in the Flat Earth series.
Speaking of Flat Earth, Norilana Books is currently reprinting the entire Flat Earth opus plus two new volumes in the series. Also the Birthgrave series and the Vis trilogy—with one new novel that links both these stories together.
She lives near the south east coast of England with her husband, writer-photographer-artist John Kaiine. And two tuxedo cats of many charms, whose main creative occupations involve eating, revamping the carpets, and meowperatics.
About “Fold,” she shared this note: “I’d just completed another, much much darker story, which also concerned letters written from a (very different) type of isolation. However, the theme of this one came—nor for the first—from an idea of my husband’s. I rest my case…”
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Choose one of the following: Mike Allen is (1) the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology series called Clockwork Phoenix (which, by coincidence, includes the book in your hands); (2) the editor of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last year with the publication of a Neil Gaiman poem; (3) a Nebula Award-nominated short story writer with short fiction in Interzone, Weird Tales, Cabinet des Fées, Pseudopod, Podcastle, and the DAW anthology Cthulhu’s Reign; (4) a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for best speculative poem of the year, with more than two hundred poems published in places like Strange Horizons and Goblin Fruit; (5) the arts and culture columnist for his home city’s daily newspaper; (6) a husband of more than eighteen years to his tolerant wife, Anita, and owner of more than six years of a goofy dog named Loki, all of whom are slaves to three psychotic cats; (7) a middle-aged white guy with a not-so middle-sized paunch and a very manly beard. Take your answer, multiply it by 26, divide it by Planck’s constant, round the result to the nearest real number, count down that many cards from the top in a Thoth Tarot deck, turn that card over and record the result. Wrong answers will be recorded as black marks in both the Book of Life and the Book of the Dead.
On passing the first test, you may be permitted to take the second: in less than two hundred words, describe the purpose of a clockwork phoenix. The subject of the first quiz attempted the second, and this is what he wrote:
“You could say it’s my selfish attempt to build a better monster, since so few I encountered in the wild either frightened or seduced me. You could say I wanted a creature made from the baroque and bizarre that felt no need to make a statement about its parts, but would content itself with mere being. You could say that all the mutant’s parts, gifted with sentience of their own, had to sin
g sweet poison in the key of beauty, spin tales rich in both what’s said and how. You could say these explanations, like the phrase ‘clockwork phoenix,’ mean nothing at all.”
Clearly, the subject failed. The consequences involved intravenous quicksilver, hand-cranked trepanation and concertina wire. Don’t let yourself make the same mistake.
AFTERWORD
for the digital edition
I hope you’ve enjoyed this electronic edition of Clockwork Phoenix 3: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness. My gratitude goes out to those who gave me the inspiration and tools to create it: Vera Nazarian, Charles M. Saplak, Rose Lemberg, Michael DeLuca of Weightless Books and Erzebet YellowBoy Carr of Papaveria Press. Thanks must especially go to Elizabeth Campbell, who took on the hard work of creating this while I was too busy with other deadlines. And of course, my wife Anita, who guided the organization of these stories to emphasize their thematic links.
For the sake of expediency, and historical preservation, the biographies of the authors and your humble editor have been left as they were when this book was first published in trade paperback by Vera Nazarian’s Norilana Books in July 2010. However, much has happened in two years’ time. All of these writers have continued to blaze their own paths. Some have become editors of important publications. Some acquired major book deals, published new novels, were nominated for or even won major awards. I encourage you to click the links embedded in their bios to see what each one is up to now.
It occurred to me, too, that I should share a little about the bragging rights the authors in Clockwork Phoenix 3 accumulated after this book came out. Publishers Weekly raved in a starred review about these “extraordinary short stories” perform together “without a wrong note” while Booklist called it a “a very successful collection” full of “magnificent interpretations of fantastic ideas.” Claire Cooney’s “Braiding the Ghosts” in particular sprouted long legs, picked for both The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 Edition edited by Rich Horton and the Locus Magazine 2010 Recommended Reading List, and the ambitious authoress has now adaptedher tale to the stage and performed it in the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Nicole’s story reappeared in The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace. Tales by Georgina, Gemma, Claire, Cat, Gregory, John G. and John W. received honorable mentions from various “best of the year” anthologies, and all the stories received critical acclaim from various corners.
Under the Mythic Delirium Books imprint I’ve already released the first two volumes in this series, Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness and Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, available for sale at Amazon.com and at Weightless Books. I’m working right now to see whether a fourth is feasible.
To exchange my editor hat for my author hat for a moment, I’ve also released three of my short fictions as e-books: these include the dark cross-genre short story She Who Runs, my critically-acclaimed and somewhat controversial novelette Sleepless, Burning Life (which first appeared in Steam Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft) and a science fiction novelette, Stolen Souls. I previously announced that I’d also release a collection of horror stories, titled The Button Bin and Other Horrors, but as fortune would have it that collection was purchased by Apex Books, with a tentative release date set for early fall.
Watch for even more news at mythicdelirium.com.
—Mike Allen, July 2012
Footnotes for Tomorrow Is St. Valentine's Day
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1 Hamlet 1.1.118-9. How Shakespeare knew of the mer-people's tidal migration to the moon remains a mystery, but these lines show that the Bard knew even more of Faery than we have given him credit for. Hamlet is not usually considered an elficological play, but in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Faeries C.C. Temple uncovers a wealth of hidden references and makes a compelling arguement for Hamlet as a radically Faery-based text. (return)
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2Hunt, Diary of a Man in the Moon, 17. (return)
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3Ulysses Wright, quoted in Early Accounts of Moon Exploration, ed. S. Bannerjee, 87. (return)
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4Northcliffe, "The Moon-Jewel." (return)
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5Northcliffe, "The Three of Cups," c. 1886. (return)
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6As collected in True Nightmares: Sex on the Moon vols. I, II and III, ed. Jared Norman. (return)
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7Notes collected from the RAEI by Lucien Farrell, British Library. (return)
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8Creschen, The Mermaid Wife, 149. (return)
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9Creschen, Memoirs, 624. (return)
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10Hamlet 4.5.48-55, recorded in song-shell, Luna 13 February 1889, accessed by the author at the St. Ives Ocean Observatory. (return)
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11Cutter, "Notes on a late Nineteeth Century Song-Shell," Metaphysics Quarterly, October 2008. (return)