An announcement, Private Rites, and collecting Ford
WHM's forthcoming story collection; a thought on Private Rites; and why WHM collects the work of John M. Ford but maybe isn't a collector.
I have news: given that all that's left is to verify one change to the cover and complete the final proofread, I now feel comfortable announcing that I will be publishing my story collection Oddities: Fantasies & Science Fictions this fall (sometime between mid-September and mid-November). It will re-print the stories you may have already read in Big Echo, all of which were science fiction-ish, but will also bring you something you haven't seen from me so far: a bunch of fantasy stories, including a novelette (plus a few other SF stories that haven't been previously published). All told, there's about 65k words of fiction, which both seems like a lot and not very much at all.
Let me know if you'd be interested in an eARC. I will do a proper introduction to the collection in the next email (which comes out in late September).
What else?
- I wrote about John M. Ford's Aspects for my website. This is one of my patented "it's a bit of a personal essay, a lot of an analysis of a specific text, and some thinking about broader genre issues" things. If you haven't read it yet, please do—even if you haven't read Aspects. It has some relevant lessons for/observations about 21st century secondary world fantasy as a whole.
- I attended 4th Street Fantasy, but only made it to the first day because I was ill the other two days. This was highly disappointing. There are so many people I was hoping to have conversations with. Here's the one note I came away with that seems worth sharing. I jotted it down during the Friday evening panel on American road trip narratives: is there a difference between an American road trip undertaken in a Ford vs. a Honda?
- I haven't completed many new words of fiction this summer (although I did finish a long-ish short story in late June); however, my ideas file has grown quite a bit over the past two months. I suppose we take the victories where we can, but it's also easy to let new ideas let you off the hook. Just like actually starting new projects can let you off the hook for bringing other projects to actual fruition. More simply, though: I'm always less productive in the summer. Not for the reasons most people have—vacation travel, so many things to do outdoors, etc.—but because summer and I don't get along, and my brain just functions better in fall and winter.
So that's my news for the last two months. What follows is a look at Private Rites through a specific lens followed by a piece on why I own most of the published work of John M. Ford and whether that makes me a collector (or what kind of collector that makes me).
On Julia Armfield's Private Rites and SF novums
I keep a list of what I read and watch. Sometime I even jot notes on that. Here's what I wrote about Private Rites after I finished it: "stunning, but less because of the surprise ending, which doesn't feel like much of a surprise if you've read your M. John Harrison and more because of the pockets of sentences that read like they're from a litfic novel, but take on extra intensity because it's not one; I'm unsure about the efficacy and value of the CITY sections."
I've had more time to reflect on the novel since then, plus I've read reviews of it and seen how it's talked about genre wise (as in: it seems to me more climate fiction or weird fiction that science fiction). I think there's a good case to be made there, but what stops me is something I've noticed in the reception of work by writers like Armfield, Joanne McNeil, Tim Maughan, M. John Harrison, etc. that fall into the near-ish SF with crossover with climate fiction, design fiction, literary fiction and/or weird fiction: an avoidance of the key technologies (metaphors) the authors are deploying that make their works fiction.
I don't wish to rehash Darko Suvin here (I'm not sure I'm even equipped to do so), but I'd like to think about the house in Private Rites as a science fictional novum, recognizing, of course, that the non-SFnal/more weird flooding setting of the novel complicate things.
This house reminded me of the AllOver car in Joanne McNeil's Wrong Way in that it represents a space for the rich to refuge themselves that also has a negative side effect on those ensnared in it. In McNeil it's more ground and sociological; whereas, in Private Rites it's more psychological and occult. But even so, it's still a house that an architect build for his family that is meant to be able to rise as the flood waters rise and thus keep its' occupants sheltered from the negative effects other citizens of Britain are facing in the novel; it's an SFnal idea meant to respond to an SFnal condition (that is an extrapolation of an actual real condition of the world). Yes, it's an act of hubris.
Yes, it's an embodiment of this architect's career, which has focused on creating structures that hide, insulate, distract from the horrific conditions of the world. But it's also an act of technology. It's an extrapolation of current technologies.
This house and other metaphors/novums (like the AllOver car or Maughan's various networks, apps, and mobile devices) are technologies that could exist, but they don't exist in the way they are presented in the fiction by the authors I mention above (and others) at this point in time.
Doesn't that make them science fiction? Doesn't that make them participatory in a Suvinesque project much more than projects that rely solely on well-established science fiction tropes?
Things like Gibson's the jackpot or the weirdness found in Harrison's recent work aren't quite so straightforward, but they are still related to me: they are metaphors that are trying to say something relevant about what life is like right now and/or will be right now-ish.
Or to put it another way: they feel to me like science fiction to me more than a lot of the work that's more solidly labeled science fiction does, and part of why they feel that way is because of the novums (pseudo-novums) they deploy.
I suppose that's a question of definitions and genre priorities and personal taste, etc. But at the very least, as we talk about Private Rites and what it is and does as a novel, we should account for the house as metaphor and as Gothic trope and as technology.
Why I have a collection of the work of John M. Ford
I don't know if I'm a collector or not. That's partly because I've never had the financial resources or space to become a serious collector of anything. But I also don't think I am. I'm more of a magpie, a dilettante, where I indulge various interests and acquire objects and tools related to those interests, but never fully go down the collector route.
So while I can say that I own most of Ford's published work—while I have a collection of his work—I don't know that I'm a collector of it.
Here's what happened: I started attending 4th Street Fantasy. I became aware of Ford and his work. I checked out The Dragon Waiting from my local library and was both puzzled and blown away by it. I explored further and read his stories in the Liavek universe and loved them.
During this time (early to mid-2010s) my commute took me past Minneapolis Central Library, which for a while, had a book shop staffed by the Friends of the Hennepin County Library. I got in the habit of checking it once or twice a week, and if there was a book by Ford in the shop, I would buy it. And, sadly, that happened at least twice, maybe three times (I don't remember). Because Ford was a local author, the library system had numerous titles (and copies of titles) by him in stock and/or would get donations from library patrons who owned books by him.
Then, as I became increasingly aware that most of his books were out of print and that my local library had reduced its' holdings of his work (not eliminated entirely, but down to the level where there were often waitlists or the chance of the only copy being lost), I grew worried that I would not longer have easy access to Ford's work. Also: the book shop shut down.
So I began to search eBay and other used book stores and when I had the budget, I began acquiring all of Ford's work title by title. I felt a sort of mild panic about it, one that I haven't felt with any other author other than Gabriel Josipovici (also an author's author/cult author whose work tends to go out of print). This was less the collector's need to own just for the pleasure of owning and more a selfish act of preservation—the need for a personal library.
I suppose those two are linked. Maybe it's a matter of gradations of obsession. Maybe I'm kidding myself about the utility of the books I own in print form.
But I think gradations are interesting. Why do we own the things, especially books and music instruments, we own and what do we do with them?
My whole adult life, I have rarely purchased a print book I hadn't already read. I'd either buy an ebook version or I'd check it out in ebook or print form from the library, read it, and then decide whether to buy a print version for my bookshelves (which rarely happened).
I broke that pattern for Ford and acquired as much as I could (I think I own all of his fiction but not all his poetry?) and did so even though his published work is quite disparate and while it all may be to my taste simply because he wrote it, not every title fits my natural inclinations as a reader.
For example, I still haven't read Ford's Star Trek novels or his YA novel. Not that I hate Star Trek or YA fiction. Not at all. But The Dragon Waiting, The Scholars of Night, and The Last Hot Time are much more obviously my kind of thing. I suppose I'm waiting for a project where reading those becomes necessary. Or, perhaps, they're the works I've decided to take the to take Kip Manleyean approach with, so I don't have to face the prospect of having read everything.
Or maybe I'm just fooling myself.
Is there really a difference between being a completist out of necessity or out of compulsion? What's the line between "Oh, I will probably use this for something someday" and "I must have this in order to complete my collection"?
Physical media (print books, DVDs, vinyl albums, cassettes, and CDs) has seen a resurgence culturally over the past few years as various actions taken by distributors, copyright holders, and studios/publishers make it clear that any cultural product that is streaming and any electronic file with DRM protections on it can be altered or taken away from consumers. Physical media brings its' own dangers and hassles, of course.
All I know is that I take some comfort in having most of Ford's work sitting on a dedicated bookshelf in my bedroom, and there was something gratifying about being able to move Aspects to the shelf next to my desk that's dedicated to the work I'm considering writing about, as if that act of movement meant something beyond just an intention, the title sitting their companionably in wait, close at hand, ready to engage your mind all over again.
Is there any author whose work you collect? If so, why do you collect their work? What approaches do you take to physical vs. electronic media?
See you in late September!