Stalking the Dragon
Page 27
WINGS: The Dragon's wings are approximately the length of his torso. On some—the West Coast Dragon, the Patagonian Dragon, and (especially) the Albanian Dragon—the wings are vestigial. On others—the Beverly Hills Dragon and the South Beach Dragon—a display of the wings attracts members of the opposite sex. (One is inclined to say the weaker sex, but there are no weaker sexes among the Dragon population.) The Dragon can fly long distances, but like any reasonable creature prefers to glide and be carried along by the wind.
LEGS: The preferred number is four. The claws are long and not retractable. Even a Toy Dragon can, when annoyed, rip your face off, if he chooses not to melt it, so always have his favorite snack in your pocket and his favorite toy within reach.
GATE (TROTTING): The Dragon double-tracks fore and aft, and gives the impression of absolute grace, unless he happens to trip on something.
GATE (FLYING): The Dragon is a graceful flyer. The smaller, lighter Dragons will ride the warm thermals, but the larger ones will flap their incredibly powerful wings, making enormous progress while disrupting the air currents for all insects, birds, and three-seat propeller planes.
TAIL: The Dragon uses his tail, which is broadest at the tip, as a rudder when flying, a balance when walking, and a weapon when attacked from behind.
COLOR: The most common color is green, but tan, gray, chocolate, and licorice are acceptable. Points are deducted for red, purple, or multicolored Dragons, and white Dragons, with or without halos, are disqualified.
SIZE: Dragons come in a variety of sizes. They include Toy (under 12 inches at the shoulder); Miniature (12 to 15 inches at the shoulder); Standard (15 to 60 inches at the shoulder); Large (5 to 8 feet at the shoulder); and Humongous (8 feet minimum at the shoulder).
APPENDIX 3
Ode to JJM,
BY BELLE
My love is like a golden phone
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
1. Passionately
ABC2. Eternally
DEF3. Sexually
GHI4. Romantically
JKL5. Intellectually
MNO6. Physically
PRS7. Verbally
TUV8. Unreservedly
WXY9. Intensely
*. Wildly
OperO. Indefatigably
#. With bells on
APPENDIX 4
Percy Picayune's Greatest Cases
1979:
Finds Jimmy Hoffa. (1980: Loses Jimmy Hoffa.)
1983:
Testifies before Congress, recommends an excise tax on exhaling.
1988:
Issues a $1.07 rebate to Al Capone's estate for overpayment of 1928 income tax.
1992:
As revenues drop, recommends amnesty for the tobacco industry, coupled with a tax on nonsmokers.
1998:
Disallows Monica Lewinsky as a tax deduction on President Bill Clinton's return.
2001:
Audits the books on Star Wars, Titanic, Gone with the Wind, and Jurassic Park, concludes that prior investigations were incorrect, Hollywood was right, and all four films are still in the red (though Gone with the Wind is nearing its break-even point).
2002:
Based on his Hollywood findings, consortium of science fiction and fantasy publishers hire him away from the IRS to defend them against a suit brought by outraged writers.
2005:
Initiates a class-action suit against the death tax on behalf of the Consolidated Cook County Cemeteries and Voters' League.
2009:
Clears Illinois governor Rod Blagojevitch of all corruption charges.
2009:
Hired as tax consultant for all members, current, future, and failed, of the Obama cabinet.
APPENDIX 5
Recipe for Elephant-Shaped
Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies
BY GENTLY GENTLY DAWKINS
1. Take an elephant. Preferably deceased.
2. Shrink it down to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. (That's a good old American Ping-Pong ball, not one of those square Tasmanian ones.) There are numerous ways to shrink an elephant.
A. You might try to find a very large vice.
B. You could wet the elephant down, then put it in a commercial dryer at a laundromat. I must confess that I have never tried it with an elephant, but it always shrinks my dress shirts and my pajamas.
C. When all else fails, Big-Hearted Milton, Morris the Mage, Spellsinger Solly, and many other local mages will shrink an elephant for you. (Hint: don't pass any bogus bills when dealing with them. They shrink con men and debtors for free.)
3. Take a bag of marshmallows. Stick the elephant inside one of the marshmallows. Replace the others in the bag (or send them to me, Gently Gently Dawkins, in care of Joey Chicago's Three-Star Tavern).
4. Get some chocolate. Heat it in a small saucepan. If either cooking chocolate or the saucepan are unavailable, improvise. For example, you might hold a Hershey bar over a match.
5. Pour the chocolate over the marshmallow that is holding the elephant. Using a penknife, or a scalpel if no knife is available, hold the cookie (it is a cookie by now) under a light and cut away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
6. Repeat the process as often as desired, or until you run out of elephants.
7. Eat.
8. Always keep an eye out for the elephant's friends and relations.
Or if you're in a real hurry, buy a bag of the commercial kind at Seymour Noodnik's Emporium. And if you have any left over, remember who suggested it.
APPENDIX 6
The Deaths of Dead End Dugan
#1: Died from a batch of bad chili at Ming Toy Epstein's Five-Star Kosher Deli, November 2, 1992. Entombed in Hymen O'Banyon Five-Star Pizzeria and Mortuary, Bronx.
#2: Shot 24 times, 19 of them through the heart, by Genteel Giles Garabaldi, September 4, 1995. Buried in Our Lady of Shameful Passions Cemetery, Brooklyn.
#3: Pushed off Brooklyn Bridge by Shifty Malone, March 5, 1999. Body recovered by The Mighty Modred, a British passenger ship, in the English Channel, January 29, 2002. Given burial at sea with no military honors.
#4: Stabbed 43 times with a butcher's knife in a lover's quarrel with Fifi Schwartz, August 17, 2004. (“I must have been feeling…irritable,” was her successful legal defense.) Buried behind the Chapel of Unexpected Manifestations on Staten Island.
#5: Shot 14 times, stabbed 11 times, bitten by poisonous snake, attacked by guard dog, run over by truck, burned, and poisoned by very annoyed person or persons unknown, July 19, 2006. Buried in Mosque of the Red Death Graveyard in Teaneck, New Jersey; Our Lady of Perpetual Frustration Cemetery in Queens; and Never Say Die Masoleum in Central Park.
About the Author
Locus, the trade journal of science fiction, keeps a list of the winners of major science fiction awards on its Web page. Mike Resnick is currently fourth in the all-time standings, ahead of Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein. He is the leading award-winner among all authors, living and dead, for short science fiction.
******
Mike was born on March 5, 1942. He sold his first article in 1957, his first short story in 1959, and his first book in 1962.
He attended the University of Chicago from 1959 through 1961, won three letters on the fencing team, and met and married Carol. Their daughter, Laura, was born in 1962, and has since become a writer herself, winning two awards for her romance novels and the 1993 Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer.
Mike and Carol discovered science fiction fandom in 1962, attended their first Worldcon in 1963, and fifty science fiction books into his career, Mike still considers himself a fan and frequently contributes articles to fanzines. He and Carol appeared in five Worldcon masquerades in the 1970s in costumes that she created, and they won four of them.
Mike labored anonymously but profitably from 1964 through 1976, selling more than two hundred novels, three hundred short stories, an
d two thousand articles, almost all of them under pseudonyms, most of them in the “adult” field. He edited seven different tabloid newspapers and a trio of men's magazines, as well.
In 1968 Mike and Carol became serious breeders and exhibitors of collies, a pursuit they continued through 1981. During that time they bred and/or exhibited twenty-seven champion collies, and they were the country's leading breeders and exhibitors during various years along the way.
This led them to purchase the Briarwood Pet Motel in Cincinnati in 1976. It was the country's second-largest luxury boarding and grooming establishment, and they worked full-time at it for the next few years. By 1980 the kennel was being run by a staff of twenty-one, and Mike was free to return to his first love, science fiction, albeit at a far slower pace than his previous writing. They sold the kennel in 1993.
Mike's first novel in this “second career” was The Soul Eater, which was followed shortly by Birthright: The Book of Man, Walpurgis III, the four-book Tales of the Galactic Midway series, The Branch, the four-book Tales of the Velvet Comet series, and Adventures, all from Signet. His breakthrough novel was the international best seller Santiago, published by Tor in 1986. Tor has since published Stalking the Unicorn, The Dark Lady, Ivory, Second Contact, Paradise, Purgatory, Inferno, the Double Bwana/Bully!, and the collection Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun? His most recent Tor releases were A Miracle of Rare Design, A Hunger in the Soul, The Outpost, and the The Return of Santiago.
Even at his reduced rate, Mike is too prolific for one publisher, and in the 1990s Ace published Soothsayer, Oracle, and Prophet; Questar published Lucifer Jones; Bantam brought out the Locus best-selling trilogy of The Widowmaker, The Widowmaker Reborn, and The Widowmaker Unleashed; and Del Rey published Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia and Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Power. His current releases include A Gathering of Widowmakers for Meisha Merlin, Dragon America for Phobos, and Lady with an Alien, A Club in Montmarte, and The World behind the Door for Watson-Guptill.
Beginning with Shaggy B.E.M. Stories in 1988, Mike has also become an anthology editor (and was nominated for a Best Editor Hugo in 1994 and 1995). His list of anthologies in print and in press totals forty-eight, and includes Alternate Presidents, Alternate Kennedys, Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, By Any Other Fame, Dinosaur Fantastic, and Christmas Ghosts, plus the recent Stars, coedited with superstar singer Janis Ian.
Mike has always supported the “specialty press,” and he has numerous books and collections out in limited editions from such diverse publishers as Phantasia Press, Axolotl Press, Misfit Press, Pulphouse Publishing, Wildside Press, Dark Regions Press, NESFA Press, WSFA Press, Obscura Press, Farthest Star, and others. He recently served a stint as the science fiction editor for BenBella Books, and in 2006 he became the executive editor of Jim Baen's Universe.
Mike was never interested in writing short stories early in his career, producing only seven between 1976 and 1986. Then something clicked, and he has written and sold more than 175 stories since 1986, and now spends more time on short fiction than on novels. The writing that has brought him the most acclaim thus far in his career is the Kirinyaga series, which, with sixty-seven major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction.
He also began writing short nonfiction as well. He sold a four-part series, “Forgotten Treasures,” to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, was a regular columnist for Speculations (“Ask Bwana”) for twelve years, currently appears in every issue of the SFWA Bulletin (“The Resnick/Malzberg Dialogues”), and wrote a biweekly column for the late, lamented GalaxyOnline.com.
Carol has always been Mike's uncredited collaborator on his science fiction, but in the past few years they have sold two movie scripts—Santiago and The Widowmaker, both based on Mike's books—and Carol is listed as his collaborator on those.
Readers of Mike's works are aware of his fascination with Africa, and the many uses to which he has put it in his science fiction. Mike and Carol have taken numerous safaris, visiting Kenya (four times), Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Botswana, and Uganda. Mike edited the Library of African Adventure series for St. Martin's Press, and is currently editing The Resnick Library of African Adventure and, with Carol as coeditor, The Resnick Library of Worldwide Adventure, for Alexander Books.
Since 1989, Mike has won five Hugo Awards (for “Kirinyaga,” “The Manamouki,” “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” “The 43 Antarean Dynasties,” and “Travels with My Cats”) and a Nebula Award (for “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge”), and has been nominated for thirty Hugos, eleven Nebulas, a Clarke (British), and six Seiun-sho (Japanese). He has also won a Seiun-sho, a Prix Tour Eiffel (French), two Prix Ozones (French), ten HOMer Awards, an Alexander Award, a Golden Pagoda Award, a Hayakawa SF Award (Japanese), a Locus Award, three Ignotus Awards (Spanish), a Xatafi-Cyberdark Award (Spanish), a Futura Award (Croatia), an El Melocoton Mechanico (Spanish), two Sfinks Awards (Polish), and a Fantastyka Award (Polish), and has topped the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll six times, the Scifi Weekly Hugo Straw Poll three times, and the Asimov's Readers Poll five times. In 1993 he was awarded the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction, and both in 2001 and in 2004 he was named Fictionwise.com's Author of the Year.
His work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Finnish, Danish, Chinese, and Croatian.
He was recently the subject of Fiona Kelleghan's massive Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work. Adrienne Gormley is currently preparing a second edition.