Jim’s Mini Rant: I wish more writers would post their stuff on the web this way because the PDF format is just so damn readable. But since the Acrobat software you need to convert your word-processor’s files to PDF lists for $249, I doubt these weary eyes will catch a break any time soon. Sigh.
dangerous adjectives
I remember being a new writer. Actually, you can be a new writer for a considerable length of time in our genre. Of course, you start being new when Sheila Williams writes something like this for your author’s blurb: "This is Connie McMaster Le Guin’s first sale," or perhaps, " ‘The City And The Robot Will Fear No Evil’ marks Isaac C. Heinlein’s first appearance in Asimov’s." Manage to place a second and a third story here and your next blurb will read "New writer Harlan Silverberg returns with another gripping tale of erudite mayhem." This can go on for at least two years after your first sale, since that’s how long you’ll be eligible for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award <http://www.sff.net/campbell-awards>. And even then it doesn’t stop. Say you’re a Campbell nominee (even if you lose) or make it onto one of the other award ballots (even if you lose) or get selected for one of the Best of the Year anthologies, or place well up in one of the various readers’ polls. Why then, my friend, you get promoted to the rank of hot new writer. And you can stay there for years. I know, because I did it. I broke into the field with a number of forgettable stories that most people–surprise!–forgot. By the time they started paying attention to that hot, new writer James Patrick Kelly, I had been selling this stuff for almost a decade.
Once it is clear that you are neither new nor hot, however, finding the adjective that best describes your career trajectory becomes a dicey proposition. Critically acclaimed? (Translation: doesn’t sell.) Prolific? (Translation: writes way too much.) Veteran? (Translation: so eighties.) Best selling? (Translation: writes Star Trek novels.) One of our most popular writers? (Translation: gets entire family down to the second-cousins-once-removed to vote for him in the Readers’ Poll.) Still, I suppose it’s better to be a critically acclaimed veteran than to have some blurbologist write, "Old, tepid writer Kim Patrick Kessel returns after too long an absence with another artful tale of confused baby boomers who are afraid of their computers."
groping for groups
There is a long and honored tradition in our genre of writers coming to prominence in bunches. Take the Futurians <http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/20th/etudes/anderson/futurians.html>, for example. Or the New Wave <http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/scifi/history/newwave.htm>. You may recall that we considered the rise and fall of Cyberpunk <http://www.jimkelly.net/pages/cyberpunk.htm> in an earlier installment. Ever since the heat death of cyberpunk, readers, writers, and critics have been casting around for signs of the Next Wave. By some estimates, its arrival is long overdue.
It occurs to me that if there is to be a Next Wave, the writers in it are probably among us. The question is, where? May I suggest that one place to look is in the pages of Asimov’s, which is–it says here–the greatest science fiction publication in the known universe?
I have concocted a filter to screen the very newest writers from the sort-of-newbies. In order to make my Next Wave list, an Asimov’s writer needs to have published in a major magazine or anthology no earlier than January, 2000. Thus they would be the first batch of twenty-first century writers. (Yes, I expect I’ll be hearing from the calendar cops on this column.) I acknowledge that this is an arbitrary filter, which screens out such hot new writers as Daniel Abraham <http://www.danielabraham.com>, Jim Grimsley http://literati.net/Grimsley, Richard Wadholm <http://www.electricstory.com/authors/richard_wadholm.asp> and Liz Williams <http://www.arkady.btinternet.co.uk/Index.html>. And it also leaves out the up-and-comers who have published fine stories in other magazines but have not yet sold stories to Gardner and Sheila, neos like Tobias Buckell <http://www.sff.net/people/torhyth>, Charles Coleman Finlay <http://home.earthlink.net/~ccfinlay>, Theodora Goss <http://people.bu.edu/tgoss>, Naomi Kritzer <http://www.naomikritzer.com>, Benjamin Rosenbaum <http://home.datacomm.ch/benrose> and Greg van Eekhout <http://www.sff.net/people/greg> to name but a few.
so new
Alas, not all the very newest Asimov’s writers have websites that you can visit. Of the fifteen Next Wavers that pass my filter, six have no official presence on the web that I can find: Tavis Allison, Michael Bateman, Jim Cowan, Richard Flood, Sally Gwylan, and Therese Pieczynski. And that number might have been two higher. In the course of writing this column, I Googled <http://www.google.com> and ISFDBed <http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb> all the potential candidates and then posted the list of siteless new writers to the ever helpful Asimov’s Forum <http://www.asimovs.com/discus> to ask if anyone there knew of author sites I had missed. Two of the writers on the Next Wave list who happened to be browsing the Forum volunteered to get skeletal websites up before my deadline (literally overnight, in one case!) so that I could mention the URLs in this column. They promised to post some real content by the time you read this and I’m counting on you to hold these two, Matt Jarpe <http://home.attbi.com/~m.jarpe> and Jack Skillingstead <http://www.geocities.com/jskillingstead> to their words.
Meanwhile, let’s go visiting.
All you need is one look at the website of Lee Allred <http://www.leeallred.com> to realize that he’s got a wonderfully self-deprecating sense of humor. You have to love his logo! According to his site, Lee "has had the usual assortment of writerly jobs–cartographer, radar maintenance technician, commercial artist, butcher’s assistant, soldier, missionary, construction foreman, ranch hand, newspaper sports photographer, etc." One reason to stop by here is to click the wealth of links he’s made which track his diverse enthusiasms. He would appear to be fairly busy these days, since the site hadn’t been updated in a while when I visited. Still, well worth a click.
Barth Anderson <http://www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards/barth.html> is one of a group of four writers who call themselves The Ratbastards <http://www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards>. Barth comes to our party with an aesthetic chip on his shoulder as an advocate of non-traditional narrative strategies. On his minimalist page you can try your hand at some of his quirky writing exercises or read the impassioned essay in which he sets out his artistic agenda. "I want to write the way (Dizzy) Gillespie played. I want the power and density of thought that marks the greatest works of our sprawling genre, but I also want to seize my writing with the adventurous spirit of a Beat poet, to improvise and experiment against the rich backdrop of science fiction and fantasy."
We last visited Michael Carroll <http://www.spacedinoart.com/intromc.html> back in January as part of the survey of Asimov’s cover artists. Michael is, of course, best known for his space art, although he paints a mean dinosaur as well. Thus far he has published just one science fiction story, although he has written a series of religious children’s books as well as articles for Popular Science, Astronomy and Sky & Telescope. Here’s a brief excerpt from his eloquent personal statement about his faith: "I realized that if the God of Christianity was really who they claimed, He must be–just as science is–consistent, beautiful, and His claims must be testable."
Alexander Irvine <http://alexirvine.net> has produced a very cool site, which should come as no surprise since Alex has written web pages for cash in one of his various work incarnations. Currently he is pushing his excellent first novel A Scattering of Jades and his "already-legendary-probably-one-off-but-possibly continuing magazine of just plain ripping yarns (insert deep breath here), The Journal of Pulse Pounding Narratives." He has posted three of his stories for your reading pleasure; I was impressed to see that they were in Adobe PDF format, which means you can read them with the free Acrobat Reader 5 <http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html>.
Meanwhile, back at Alex’s site, here’s an excerpt from his "A Short Exhortative Polemic," which urges readers to support the sf magazines. "The magazines are where you find the writers who aren’t starting off with multi-book Tolkien ripoffs or endless tales of pseudomilitary derring-do; which is another way of saying that the magazines are where you find real, living, breathing literature of the fantastic." Hear, hear!
Michaeljasper.net <http://www.michaeljasper.net> is the web presence of Mike Jasper, who for some reason has decided to subtitle it "Another Wrecked Web Site." Mike’s engaging site features his fiction–he’s writing mainstream, sf, fantasy and horror–a fine and often funny web journal and a links page to work of other journalistas. The title of the entry for November 5, 2002: "Forehead on keyboard, full steam ahead!" makes perfect sense when you realize that Mike was trying to write an entire novel in a month as part of "National Novel Writing Month," or, as it’s better known, NaNoWriMo.
Ruth Nestvold <http://www.ruthnestvold.com> presides over what is one of the most polished of these newbie sites, which is not surprising given that she is not only a writer of stories but also of hypertext. Her site offers a generous helping of her work. She is especially astute on writing about writing, although her other essays are well worth your time, with topics ranging from gender issues to the use of Second Person in Electronic Fiction to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. But what intrigued me most was her hyperfiction, especially Joe’s Heartbeat in Budapest, of which Ruth writes: "In this imaginary conversation, you make a place for yourself in the fiction according to the responses you give. ‘You’ (the character) are a different person depending on the way ‘you’ (the reader) participate in the conversation, and your relationship to the narrator is different as well (aside from a few details common to all the narrative threads). Not only that, the narrator is a different person, depending on the kind of relationship you establish with him or her." Very cool, sez Jim.
Karen Traviss <http://www.geocities.com/kvtpo5> runs a barebones (hold the graphics, please!) personal site wherein you can find a bio, a list of Karen’s fave writers, and links to resources for beginning writers–not to mention some modem-busting pictures of her pet rats. Check out Ten Things I Wished I Had Known When I Started. Number One is "Writing really is like having homework for the rest of your life." So true! Number Eight is "Make lots of writer friends. Nobody else will understand." Absolutely!
exit
Of course, clicking websites doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about what the Next Wave is going to be about. Or does it? I’m struck by how many new writers not only have websites, but also have published fiction on the web. I’m quite sure that one characteristic of Next Wave will be a high degree of comfort with reading from and writing to screens. And if, as I believe, the unique characteristics of the net will warp the nature of our narratives, maybe they will be the first to develop a new digital aesthetic.
And what will we really call the new movement when it comes? I freely admit that Next Wave is neither original nor particularly descriptive. It’s just a place holder for the real name, deployed for the purpose of this column. How about the Neos? Nah, sounds like a compact car. The Twenty-First Centurians? Puh-leze! My pal, Longtime New Writer Cory Doctorow <http://www.craphound.com> was trying to float the moniker Nerdcore at the San Jose WorldCon. While it has Cory’s usual flair, I don’t think it covers all the territory.
Hey, Gardner always gets credit for naming the cyberpunks. Maybe we should leave this to him?
