tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4175885989722107332024-02-18T22:25:02.745-08:00NarratologyJ.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-1486522974542837872018-02-04T23:18:00.001-08:002018-02-04T23:18:08.208-08:00Upcoming reading at the University bookstoreAt 7PM on February 9th, we will be <a href="http://www.ubookstore.com/events?evmonth=02&evyear=2018&eventid=2018010912515400&pre=20180201&pst=20180212" target="_blank">reading</a> from Welcome to Dystopia!<br />
We are:<br />
Eileen Gunn<br />
Elizabeth Bourne,<br />
K.G. Anderson,<br />
Leslie Howle,<br />
and myself.<br />
Here is the link: <a href="http://www.ubookstore.com/events?evmonth=02&evyear=2018&eventid=2018010912515400&pre=20180201&pst=20180212" target="_blank">University bookstore event</a>J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-74015666644499471652017-10-28T00:13:00.000-07:002017-10-28T20:15:15.501-07:00Welcome to Dystopia!<br />
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<b>The future is now. </b></h2>
Have you had this feeling lately? Snuggling with your next dystopian novel looking forward to the spectacularly failed futures and grim alternate history lines that you can explore and experience while protected by a force-field shield of a book page, did you realize suddenly: wait a minute, this is no longer a parallel universe. No longer an alternate history that had been split away from the main, robust stalk. This is not even in a safely distant future! ... This is... this is much too close to home..... wait.... WAIT, damn it! Let me out! HEY! This is no longer funny!........<br />
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You are right. <a href="http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/welcome-to-dystopia/" target="_blank">WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA</a>. <br />
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<img alt="welcome to dystopia cover" border="0" id="featured-book-img" src="https://www.orbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/WelcomeToDystopia_CVR_3D_300x370.jpg" style="margin-top: 10px;" /></div>
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This is an anthology of visions of the beautiful, beautiful future where America is made great again. <br />
Edited by GORDON VAN GELDER, the anthology is coming out in December 2017 from OR Books. It features short stories by forty five authors and includes work of eight Clarion West alumni, counting myself. <br />
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J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-1179539401306302832017-10-24T09:37:00.000-07:002017-10-28T11:28:38.399-07:00From Words to WorldsNeurophysiology and neuropsychology of reading? Psychonarratology? What are these things?<br />
These are some new developments in the humanities that borrow techniques and insights from the experimental sciences to tackle age-old questions: why and how do stories hold our attention? What happens between a story and its reader (or viewer)? On November 12 I will be teaching a <a href="https://www.clarionwest.org/workshops/oneday/from-words-to-worlds/" target="_blank">One-Day <b>Clarion West workshop</b></a> about it because as an author and a scientist, I find some of this research incredibly
exciting, and I believe writers can use it to hone their craft. J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-31267792893278153062016-11-28T12:42:00.003-08:002016-11-28T12:42:50.344-08:00The Science Fiction by Scientists Anthology is out!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhugUkF76iueda0I8BoTzAq2BcPRKRMyYNdgDSTA8J3yHQNg2n58GFQOUHwi9yAvAV-Hc7eIWAPgG2bJi8lQfPXm9XYsO9FLa18pysEIjkViD3JYc3oz3eC3wSzLhzN_D-k-NIDO-2PqcI/s1600/51xLHcm9O7L._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhugUkF76iueda0I8BoTzAq2BcPRKRMyYNdgDSTA8J3yHQNg2n58GFQOUHwi9yAvAV-Hc7eIWAPgG2bJi8lQfPXm9XYsO9FLa18pysEIjkViD3JYc3oz3eC3wSzLhzN_D-k-NIDO-2PqcI/s320/51xLHcm9O7L._SX328_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Today</td></tr>
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I am happy to announce that a new anthology of <a href="http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319411019#aboutAuthors" target="_blank">S<span id="goog_327463792"></span><span id="goog_327463793"></span>cience fiction short stories </a>written by active scientists and writers who'd trained as scientists is finally hitting the electronic and real book shelves. The anthology is edited by <a href="http://www.mikebrotherton.com/" target="_blank">Michael Brotherton</a>, an astronomer whom you know as an author of <i>Star Dragon</i> and <i>Spider Star</i> novels (Tor), and founder of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers. I am thankful to Springer, an academic publisher for their interest in the project, and to Michael for picking up the task and doing such a great job of working with us. This anthology renews the tradition of Isaac Asimov's Great Science Fiction Stories by the World's Great Scientists series, and it is something I dreamed of doing one day -- although I am even happier that Michael has stepped up to the plate first and did all the hard work, leaving to us the pleasure of story writing. We were told to base our stories on real science (as theory, fact, or occupation) but not forget to thrill and entertain, as good fiction supposed to do.<br />
Here is a quote from the original call for submission: "<i>Our goal is a balanced volume, ideally covering multiple disciplines
such as physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science,
geology, planetary science, robotics, etc., without being focused too
heavily in only one or two areas. ... Show us what’s fascinating, exciting, or
important about science. Bring us a sense of wonder. Share what it is
to think like a scientist.<br />
Inspire us to want to support science. Point out the dangers and
responsibility ever increasing knowledge brings. Write a story that
puts the science in science fiction</i>."<br />
Check out how we did!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfV7nrBJ58ulpJ2TdcHTb3CViqClh36Uq5tVxKh_sIi6fJReZC5D8GuhXhUTBFSJld0ICZOPI-7j3Sb6al0UfjUqYwWjCSDfbrV39QbxejBBbLt0Nc1snYp5pC1DPKrIZJlt_OAVC9VQI/s1600/25923966.0.x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfV7nrBJ58ulpJ2TdcHTb3CViqClh36Uq5tVxKh_sIi6fJReZC5D8GuhXhUTBFSJld0ICZOPI-7j3Sb6al0UfjUqYwWjCSDfbrV39QbxejBBbLt0Nc1snYp5pC1DPKrIZJlt_OAVC9VQI/s320/25923966.0.x.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back in the day</td></tr>
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Yes, I have a story in this anthology, titled The Gatherer of Sorrows. It is inspired by one of the quiet scientific revolutions afoot today: the study of epigenetic regulation of the human genome in general and of epigenetic inheritance in particular. As I write this post I have not yet received my author's copy. I hope to add more material to this post once I get to read the whole book! In the meantime, here are links to other resources related to this anthology:<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Scientists-Anthology-Stories/dp/3319411012" target="_blank">Available from Amazon </a><br />
<a href="http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v12/n9/full/nphys3881.html" target="_blank">A review in Nature Physics</a><br />
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<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-5105709061397454892016-04-10T13:11:00.000-07:002016-04-13T22:54:26.313-07:00Exploration narrative, magic, and the Thing<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, "And Then We ate the Dogs" -- some thoughts triggered by the panel discussion at ICFA<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">by reading<i> </i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Locating the Thing: the Antarctic as Alien space in John W. Campbell's "Who goes there?"</i> an artic<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">le </span>by </span>Elizabeth Leane,<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> published in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jul., 2005), pp. 225-239.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Without delving into exploration as a human endeavor and the reasons behind it, let us just assume as a default that at least
some
societies were, are, and will foster the enterprise of exploration and
at least some people in all societies will be exploring whatever they
can get to explore, either on their own or as part of an organized
enterprise. What I want to discuss instead is why an exploration
narrative invites, more so, can't help being perfused with the
fantastic, which let it readily colonize science fiction when the
latter came along as a genre.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">Here is what I think may be the
answer.</span> All starts with the capacity of a human mind to generate ideas
of the fantastic, wondrous, and miraculous. I believe it is innate,
something of a side effect of a highly developed consciousness. Our
minds are <span style="color: red;">figment generators</span> as well as consumers, and this ongoing
"magical thinking" may be a just another part of a healthy relationship
with the world and reality, as important as its opposite -- the
operational assumption that the world is regular, understood,
predictable, and mundane. The fantastic is brain's sugar, the mundane
is its oxygen. And the fantastic, in this context, needn't be a fully developed Narnia or Skyrim, it can also be all kinds of small, everyday, sometimes deeply personal "magical" associations, explanations, fables that we generate spontaneously. It can be something as trifle as "crows carefully swap plant tags in my vegetable garden" or "rocks self-generate underground in wintertime and then work their way to the surface". </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If so, it is not surprising that the fantastic needs a
legitimate place, a safe harbor where it can dwell unmolested and
unquestioned by the mundane and regular; and what better place than the
terra incognita beyond the boundary of the well-known world? Thus
Coleridge uses a sea voyage to the South Pole, and before him, Mandeville
needs a journey to the Arctic to introduce strange creatures and
occurrences; let's also not forget Gulliver's travels.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As the
world became more and more explored, mapped, and regularized, and the
terra incognita shrank, <span style="color: red;">new dwellings for the fantastic had to be found</span>.
Mars became one of these places in the 19th century, boosted by the
notorious discovery of the martian "canals". And the space, of course, the cosmos, has proved the best of them all. It is practically infinite. It can accommodate
endless output of our figment machines. As if the Universe was not big
enough, however, we are already claiming a multitude of parallel
Universes for the same purpose. Not to mention rounding up virtual
realities, refurbishing the past through time travel, and carving out
new caverns of terra incognita in zones of urban decay or natural
disaster.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There are<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">,</span> I will argue, a couple of more reasons other
than simply territorial, that solidify the union of exploration and
fantasy, and these reasons may have to do with mental, physical, even biological effects the endeavor of exploration appears to have on an explorer. The unknown world both <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fosters conditions where <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">fantastic becomes more prominent on the brain, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">forces on a human <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">something</span> that rightfully belongs to the realm of the fantastic: </span></span></span>the metamorphos<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">i</span>s. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To venture into new and strange environs is first and foremost to loosen or lose altogether one's frame of reference, one's model of the world. To fix that (because he cannot go completely without one) an explorer hastily stitches together new variables and puzzling phenomena with cause-effect shortcuts that can sidestep into miraculous. </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The mind of an explorer can't help but model </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">the new world, as yet undifferentiated by knowledge, as a contiguous <i>thing</i>, agent, entity -- aware, wary, unified, and usually adversarial. <span style="color: red;">A glacier groans, a forest watches with a thousand eyes.</span> These are not metaphors, although they are helpful as such, these are actual feelings an exploring human can't help but have, when dropped into an unknown world like onto Lem's Solaris.</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Just recall the <a href="http://www.universetoday.com/14455/the-human-brain-in-space-euphoria-and-the-overview-effect-experienced-by-astronauts/" target="_blank">spiritual effect</a> space flight has on astronauts!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Furthermore, the trope of an explorer who is changed prof</span>oundly and irreversibly by the time she is done exploring, is not incidental. The physical change of an explorer is profound, molecular. It harks back to the very basics of life, where an expanding<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, exploring animal species evolve<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s</span> into another species en route. </span>From<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota" target="_blank">microbiotic</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics" target="_blank">epigenetic</a></span> changes deep dow<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n, <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to</span> interconnected <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">with</span> th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">at</span>, mental changes up on top, the explorer comes out of his quest with a<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> proverbial <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">albatross</span> wound around his neck<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and does not even notice it<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, only proving <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">that his original wariness <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of </span><i>th</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>at thing, the new world</i>, invading his being and causing a metamorphosis, was <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">spot on. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And that is w<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hy, for as long as human<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s</span> explore and tell tales about i<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t</span>, there will always be the</span> fantastic lurking in <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">them.</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">T</span>he fantastic is truly the Thing that lies in w<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ait </span>in an un<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">known</span> corner of the Ea<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rth, </span>or <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the Galaxy, or <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the Cyberspace<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">;</span> th<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thing</span> that will <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">invade you and turn you into something else<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's what I think</span>. </span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-46474421408242281792016-04-04T18:15:00.004-07:002016-04-04T18:15:53.241-07:00ICFA 2016Earlier this month I was at the annual conference of the <b>International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts </b>-- my first time attending this truly fantastic conference, which mixes scholars and writers of speculative fiction in an Orlando area hotel complete with a luscious pool and nearby -- a natural pond where fat carp dig holes in the muck and where one can readily spot off a view deck an alligator's snout sticking out of the water (besides, where else can one glimpse Ellen Datlow with a fishing rod, standing over that pond and fishing, no doubt, for the alligator?)<br />
I had a great, great time, and I want to say big thanks to the incomparable <a href="https://karen-burnham.squarespace.com/" target="_blank">Karen Burnham</a> who invited me to attend the conference.<br />
I took part in the panel cheerfully titled "And then we ate the dogs" where we looked at historic relationships between exploration narratives and speculative fiction, in particular the science fiction of space exploration. Moderated by the awesome <a href="http://www.english.udel.edu/people/Pages/bio.aspx?i=37" target="_blank"> Siobhan Carrol</a>, an author, scholar, and my Clarion West workshop classmate, we poked at the tropes of exploration/expansion into the strange and new, the romantic explorer, and last but not the least, the disaster. <br />
I'm still mulling about all that, and I figured I might as well put some thoughts and impressions from the panel and from my homework for the panel, on paper (digital "paper," at any rate). But since I cannot compose it fast enough it will have to be in the next post. <br />
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J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-35492829738513845202015-01-25T19:45:00.000-08:002015-01-25T19:48:32.198-08:00Help! There is science in my fiction!On Sunday, February 22nd I will be teaching a Clarion West One-day Workshop. As follows from its title (see above) this workshop is about writing science and scientists in science fiction. I am looking forward to it!<br />
For details and registration follow the link <a href="http://www.clarionwest.org/workshops/oneday/science-in-my-fiction/" target="_blank">here.</a><br />
J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-22961748321112218142014-11-28T23:43:00.000-08:002014-11-29T20:36:56.191-08:00Russian fantastika reading list:Vita Nostra<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><b>Vita Nostra</b> is an award-winning fantasy novel by <b>Sergey and Marina Dyachenko</b>, first published in 2007. When asked to describe the book, Sergey and Marina say simply: </span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">As with all our books, it is an investigation of those things called love and meaning of life. “In the beginning was the Word,” that’s John 1:1. But what does it mean? So we just tried to answer that question.”</span></span></div>
<div class="yiv6718868798">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">A visit to the book’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16159259-vita-nostra" target="_blank">Goodreads reviews page</a> left me stunned</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">by the outpourings of praise <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOh1Nn3_BFF_DR6OHEs-5FCGxZw0sfTQ9nKb5JnF_NcDB_ZaO3d_j5x9y-3uU_lfnPc2pOcvhV4eBvzUuHG0p96rLrAi1o79Imz3zC9_AWeKxaslkD2TtMBkCLw78wvYOP-5zzn8rJFds/s1600/VitaNostra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOh1Nn3_BFF_DR6OHEs-5FCGxZw0sfTQ9nKb5JnF_NcDB_ZaO3d_j5x9y-3uU_lfnPc2pOcvhV4eBvzUuHG0p96rLrAi1o79Imz3zC9_AWeKxaslkD2TtMBkCLw78wvYOP-5zzn8rJFds/s1600/VitaNostra.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vita-Nostra-Sergey-Dyachenko-ebook/dp/B00A7GP5ZW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417241850&sr=8-1&keywords=vita+nostra" target="_blank">look it up on Amazon</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
in at least four languages — Russian, English, Polish, Ukrainian, and others I can’t recognize.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">An attempt to draw a comparison revealed that readers have likened Vita Nostra to the titles ranging from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter to Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game; with Chuck Palahniuk’s The Fight Club somewhere in the middle. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">I turned to Vita Nostra’s English translator, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6583450.Julia_Meitov_Hersey" target="_blank">Julia Meitov Hersey</a>, and asked her to tell me more about the book. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JS: Tell us how you came to translate Vita Nostra.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JMH: Forgive me an old, but in this case highly appropriate, cliché --sometimes books speak to you, and VITA NOSTRA has been more than eloquent. I came across it by chance – I love books about learning, about colleges or private schools; it is such a rich setting -- an enclosed space, where one is encouraged, or even forced, to grow intellectually, all the while being stuck inside with the same demons, external or internal. VITA NOSTRA is an example of my favorite genre – a slice of reality placed inside a fantasy concept. I eventually brought VITA NOSTRA to the attention of Lev Grossman, the author of THE MAGICIANS trilogy. I found it remarkable how both the Dyachenkos and Grossman had the same technical approach to magic, providing a step-by-step description of each new task their characters had to master. I mentioned the book to Lev at his reading/signing for THE MAGICIANS, he asked me to translate a few pages, and I ended up translating the entire novel mostly for his benefit; my non-Russian-speaking family members could now read it as well. Once the manuscript was completed, I sent a courtesy copy to the Dyachenkos using the contact information listed on their website. Luckily for me, Marina and Sergey actually read their fan mail and even take time to respond!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JS: </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> Any challenging or rewarding moments that you can share?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JMH:</span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> There were three rather challenging moments. I was deathly afraid of missing certain technical or scientific concepts – such as the “spiral arms” at the very end of the novel, or mental health terms that Sergey (who was a professional psychiatrist before he became a writer) was likely to hide in the text. I still comb through the text every now and then for anything I could have missed. I also had to pay very close attention to the literary quotes and allusions hidden in the text –anything from Le Guin’s <i>A Wizard of Earthsea</i> to Garshin’s <i>The Scarlet Blossom,</i> to Plato. And another thing that I found extremely difficult was translating those passages when all Sasha’s seemingly pointless labors begin to make sense to her. Those pages are so emotionally charged that I had an actual physical reaction to them. Here is a couple of examples of those passages:<i><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Julia%20Hersey" datetime="2014-11-24T09:41"></ins></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Every second the world around her altered. Some connections strained and grew, others broke. The process resembled convulsions: every now and then Sasha would stand still, listening to herself: inside, an invisible thread would tauten, cutting and rehashing, weakening and twitching again. Occasionally, she saw herself from the outside: a small lake of melted ice cream, and in the coffee-colored slush swam a tiny acrid nubbin—Sasha’s fear. Sasha disliked looking at her fear. It resembled a half-digested chunk of meat...”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Or </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“<i>…staring back into those eyes, Sasha realized with all her core being something that many understood before her. The creature did not care that she was loved by someone. And that she loved someone herself. And that she had a childhood, and she splashed on the sea shore; and that she had an old knit sweater with a reindeer embroidered on the front. There were plenty of people loved by someone, the ones who carried a seashell, a button, or a black and white photograph in their pockets; no one had been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">There are some really frightening moments when Sasha’s body mimics the transformations that her mind is undergoing. You know how, when you study for too long, your eyes get red and your body feels all achy? Sasha takes it to an entirely different level: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">“Her eyes no longer had pupils or irises. Only the whites with red streaks. Sasha threw aside the mirror but continued seeing herself; now she realized that she saw with something other than her eyes. She saw with the skin of her face, her elbows, neck; shaking, she pulled off her tee-shirt and saw the room through the skin of her back. She took off the sweatpants she forgot to take off last night, and with the sweatpants she pulled off her underwear. Now each spot on her body saw the entire picture, and combined, all these pictures constituted the world-without-Sasha. Her body—white, skinny, shaking in the middle of a messy dorm room—was the only entity outside this world.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Sparks ran along her skin. Shy little fires like rolling drops. Tiny flashes of lighting. Underneath the skin membrane, in nearly transparent places, she could see her veins, blood vessels and tendons—a mysterious forest. Her back itched like crazy—something was going on with her spine—it crackled, was nimble, alive, full of its own existence.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">This just makes my heart beat faster, and I wanted to make sure the reader’s heart would do the same. This would be the rewarding part of the process.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JS: </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> As a translator, how do English and Russian compare as medium of expression? What things are best said in English and what -- in Russian?</span><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JMH:</span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> What I find extremely frustrating about English is the word order. In Russian, one can throw things around as one pleases – and the nuances change ever so slightly. I don’t have this luxury in English. English forces me to be far more disciplined. And then there is this painful issue of utter disdain or any other emotion one can express by using a particular form of a person’s name – and in VITA NOSTRA the heroine goes from being called Alexandra by her professors to Sashka by her peers to Sashenka by her mother. I eliminated all those forms of her name from my translation to make it a little easier for the English-speaking readers, but a big part of me hates me for it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JS: </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> In your opinion, are there any barriers in understanding that an English reader can experience reading Russian fantastika? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">JMH: </span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The main barrier is that the sci-fi/fantasy market in the U.S. is so incredibly oversaturated! However, Russian literature offers plenty of brilliant examples of one genre that is almost non-existent in the U.S. – a realistic plot prompted or directed by a sci-fi/fantasy premise. VITA NOSTRA is not a book about transformations or wings, it is a book about learning and the power of fear. Another book by the Dyachenkos I translated recently, THE VALLEY OF CONSCIENCE, is not a book about supernatural deaths; it is an extended metaphor of love and the choices we make when we have power over other people. This genre deserves recognition, along with steampunk, apocalypse, space travel, etc. To me, the social fantasy genre is what blends the line between literary and genre fiction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">So what does it mean, “In the beginning was the Word”? I hesitate to interpret this statement as it is sometimes quoted in its partial form, because it is, in fact, followed by “…and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and the agnostic in me has a tough time truncating it. However, the linguist in me rejoices – of course it’s all about language, of course, the world is the ultimate hypertext! The Dyachenkos will tell you all their books are about love – but VITA NOSTRA is also about learning, about the power of information, about constructing a new informational structure. It is the most cerebral Dyachenko novel to date. Its loosely associated sequel, DIGITAL, describes just that -- a society built on the new informational structure, but this is a topic for another interview.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>An interview with Marina and Sergey Dyachenko </i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this second installment of RUSSIAN FANTASTIKA reading list I am thrilled to present – an interview with Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, the power couple responsible for some of the absolute best writing in Russian-language fantasy literature of the last two decades. As coauthors, Dyachenkos published 26 bestselling novels, dozens of novellas and hundreds of stories, and received numerous prestigious awards. In 2005 they were inducted into the European Science Fiction Society Hall of Fame at the Eurocon in Glasgow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Born in Kiev (Ukraine), they’d lived in Kiev, Moscow (Russia), and most recently have made their home in California. They write in Ukrainian and Russian. Below, Marina and Sergey give us by turns earnest and whimsical overview of their writing life, their craft, and the place of speculative literature in the Big Scheme of Things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">[The following interview was conducted in Russian and translated into English by me with the help of Dyachenko’s English translator, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6583450.Julia_Meitov_Hersey" target="_blank">Julia Meitov Hersey</a>. Julia will join us in the second part of the interview to talk more about Vita Nostra.] </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS:</b> Which one of your books would you recommend to a first-time reader?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>BOTH:</b> Our novels <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scar-Sergey-Dyachenko/dp/B00AKQO5C8/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415294432&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=sergey+and+marina+dyachenko" target="_blank">The Scar</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Age-Witches-Sergey-Dyachenko-ebook/dp/B00MAFMKZ6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415294645&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=sergey+and+marina+dyachenko" target="_blank">Age of Witches</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vita-Nostra-Sergey-Dyachenko-ebook/dp/B00A7GP5ZW/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415294645&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=sergey+and+marina+dyachenko" target="_blank">Vita Nostra</a> (as an e-book), and a novella <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Burned-Tower-Sergey-Dyachenko-ebook/dp/B006CPVRAE/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415294645&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=sergey+and+marina+dyachenko" target="_blank">The Burned Tower</a> have been published in the US. We are expecting the release of the novel The Ritual, which is being adapted for the screen by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0067457/" target="_blank">Timur Bekmambetov</a> (<b>JS: </b>known in the US for<span style="font-family: inherit;"> directing and producing <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_6" target="_blank">Wanted</a>, a<span style="font-family: inherit;">s well as </span></span>his Night Watch and Day Watch franchise).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS: </b>What subgenre of the fantastika do you identify with?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MARINA:</b> When they talk about subgenres, I always imagine an octopus brandishing its tentacles. And we are caught in those tentacles: we had started out with a child-like fairy tale for adults, then we <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span>villainously<span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span> betrayed the genre, and finally <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span>fell<span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span> as low as social and philosophical fantasy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>SERGEY:</b> Personally, I christened our method “M-realism.” What is it? Open to interpretation. Maybe meta-realism, maybe magic realism. My definition: Marina’s realism. No, I am not trying to butter up my co-author here, I think she loves me as I am. It’s just that everything that we write is filtered through her heart. That’s where the romanticism comes from, and the stubborn humanism, and the hope for white magic and a better tomorrow. I am just spoiling all that by dragging in my psychology and every once in a while — psychiatry. She lives by her ideals and I — by my scars.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBHiarIAlMRgeFPEfhI9G-_BnhyAZsrbN1S4yXKyVDij6v2u3U2zEZLdRA5lUxERNaRSSs5Ys0pROJ8boDp25jcY4Sewz8THgTYFXMHHFur9KuASkTBxhj3c4VQ5fqUN9ZwJXddANVao0/s1600/infinicat+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBHiarIAlMRgeFPEfhI9G-_BnhyAZsrbN1S4yXKyVDij6v2u3U2zEZLdRA5lUxERNaRSSs5Ys0pROJ8boDp25jcY4Sewz8THgTYFXMHHFur9KuASkTBxhj3c4VQ5fqUN9ZwJXddANVao0/s1600/infinicat+2.jpg" height="196" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS: </b>What do your novels originate with — an idea or a character, or else?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>BOTH:</b> It depends. It can start with a discussion, or with a tapestry of impressions, fragments of phrases, movies. Quite often parts of narratives come in dreams as startling visual or sensory impressions. And of course life’s experience and memories force us to compare, analyze, project. Ah, if we figured out how narratives get born, we’d get a Nobel Prize in psychology. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS:</b> How do you manage writing as a family affair? Would you mind sharing some of your approaches?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MARINA:</b> Early on Sergey was more like a teacher and I — more like a student. But by now we have equality. We invent a story together, then I write it down, and then Sergey makes everything come together as a whole. It’s sort of a one-actress play where I am the actress and he is the director.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>SERGEY:</b> I’d say I might be more in charge of the dramaturgy and Marina — of the language and style. She’s got a gift, and I still marvel at it: how precise, how fine, how poetic. A woman is wiser this way. She is made of magic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS:</b> What inspires your creativity?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>BOTH:</b> If we may say so — the creative process itself. It’s our highest reward. It’s somewhat like a Perpetual motion machine. We actually have several projects going at once, one is finishing, another in the middle, a third is just starting. All of them catalyze one another. You know, it’s like in the morning you step on a treadmill, the belt moves, and there is no stopping. And it gives you such a high! If some misfortune happens and the belt stops — this feels like a physical breakage, a disease. Writing, quarreling about writing, lamenting one’s uselessness in finding a solution and then seeing the said solution and rejoicing — all of this is a source of endorphins for us. You know, the happiness hormones of the brain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We find inspiration in spending time with our daughter Anastasia (she is now a student at the USC SCHOOL of CINEMATIC ARTS), and with our relatives and friends. For twenty years we had a favorite coauthor and a Muse— our black tomcat Duchess.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>What else? Traveling. We traveled half the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS: </b>Some would say that a writing a novel and a screenplay are different occupations, even different frames of mind. Yet you work in both simultaneously. How do you switch back and forth? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MARINA:</b> But that’s what Sergey is, a screenwriter. He lives and breathes cinema.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>SERGEY: </b>And Marina lives and breathes literature. So we are like a DNA double helix, we wind around one another. If needed, we divide by mitosis, and then rebuild our double helix. Except that our bonds are better than chemical. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS:</b> Tell us how you became writers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>MARINA:</b> I began to make stories in kindergarten, before I learned to write. A thank you goes to my parents – I dictated and they lovingly transcribed it in a quadrille notebook. These notebooks are in the family archive now — A “Tale about a steam locomotive” and “A Thief’s jaunts”.Then I went on writing stuff in high school and in the Theatre school, but didn’t show it to anyone. My entry into real writing happened when I met Sergey. At that time he already was an accomplished writer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>SERGEY:</b> That was 21 years ago. I was wooing Marina. I saw her acting talent, her beauty and intellect, but her literary gift caught me unawares. When I got to read her first novella, I was thrilled. The Burned Tower – it was by no means perfect, but it had the style and the originality, and she nailed the details, and above all it just radiated kindness and harmony. Ever since then fiction and cinema had become part of our lives and I thank my lucky stars for that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As for me, I too started telling stories as a kid, to my playmates. I spun tales at playgrounds and in back yards, in woodsheds and basements. And preferably at night, so it would be spookier. Once, at a critical moment in a tale, when an evil Martian trained a gun on a brave Earthling, I pulled a trigger on a homemade BB gun, and there was an earsplitting bang. One girl fainted on the spot… Well, later my dad gave me a whipping, but that did not purge a passion for story-telling from me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always dreamed about movies but followed in the family steps and went to medical school. I have degrees in psychiatry and genetics. Then as an adult, when I already was a faculty at a research institute in Moscow, I went to study at the National Institute of Cinematography (it was the only such school in the country, and it was well-regarded internationally). I wanted to become a screenwriter. My first book and first films were about the tragic times in the Soviet science when the Stalinist government prohibited teaching and studying genetics. Yes, in the late 1940s – up to the early sixties, genetics in the USSR was branded as a “slave of imperialism,” many geneticists were suppressed and persecuted, even executed by a firing squad, whole research institutes were depopulated. For decades it was Middle Ages in science, barely educated charlatans and swindlers ruled the roost. I brought back from oblivion the name of Nikolai Vavilov, an outstanding plant geneticist who would not forsake his ideas and died of hunger in prison as “an enemy of the people.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vavilov had created a unique seedbank, a collection of genetically diverse agricultural species. Twenty tons of grain seed from all five continents. Imagine — Vavilov’s students and colleagues preserved it all through the Second World War during famine in the blockaded city of Leningrad. They had to passage the specimens, plant the seed and grow plants and let them go to seed, hold the grain in their hands — and all the while they were starving away. Many of these scientists perished of famine but the collection was saved, and later it became the basis of the so called Green revolution in agriculture, where they created many new cultivars of wheat and other grains through crossing existing varieties with Vavilov’s seedbank specimens. This feeds millions around the globe now. What Vavilov’s followers did was an act of selflessness and heroism of the highest caliber, I literally do not know any other examples like this in history. So that’s what my diploma project screenplay was about. That was in 1980 — the time when you could not speak out the truth about Stalinism and its crimes, it was an absolute taboo. One popular playwright, a member of my graduation committee accused me of anti-Soviet views and they nearly expelled me. It took years for the screenplay — and the novel about Vavilov to become acceptable and accepted. The novel earned me a membership in the Writers’ Union and the movie based on the screenplay won a State award. So as you can see I used to be a hyper-realist and had a chance to suffer the wonders of censorship and persecution on my own hide. But after I met Marina, I became a fantasy writer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">[JS: want to know more about Vavilov and persecution of science? -----<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov" target="_blank">read here<span style="font-family: inherit;">]</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>JS: </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why speculative fiction? What role does it play in your books? In the society?</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>BOTH:</b> Fantastika (i.e speculative fiction) can do everything that a regular literature can do, plus a bit more. It has extra possibilities. They have to do with seeing life in a paradoxical light, juxtaposing the un-juxtaposable. It’s a possibility of the impossible. If literature is — doctor’s offices and hospitals, ambulances and maternity wards – and life without them is impossible, of course —then fantastika is a research lab. Yeah you can do without it, but where will the progress come from?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fantastika lets us perform experiments with the future, she searches for future even in the past. Fantasika writers can travel through galaxies and through wormholes of the subconscious. Fantastika<span style="font-family: inherit;"> rules, she <span style="font-family: inherit;">has no bounds or boundaries, she is the freest genre. She is the highlight that transforms a drab and dusty house into a magic palace by night. A while ago we came up with this tongue-and-cheek Fantastika Manifesto for our workshop. It goes like this:</span></span></span><br />
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<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-70191947879971614852014-09-04T23:18:00.002-07:002014-09-04T23:18:46.230-07:00The gentle hopefulness of terrible disasters <!--[if !mso]>
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<h3 class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> An interview with Seattle author Caren Gussoff</span></i></h3>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Avinashi did what she considered
her greatest work with the warm weight of her daughter against her back. That
series, done while Lily was an infant, was less critically and commercially
successful than her first series, ‘Horrible Ways to Die,’ but she herself
preferred the gentle hopefulness of ‘Terrible Disasters.’”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLzTA1rr1ptuL58pH8Y7LYwWrCQuXwbHWoG4K5AGfRj-H7xAmS5bHTU6rLcLCwMpJgH_Ww0gLO1oGed2kILYEvNIPm6aj8o_osFeQ2iyUAtEZhq144rC5E530rB-9HtP7uQ3hHYFGqiU/s1600/41R6mz8yXFL._AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLzTA1rr1ptuL58pH8Y7LYwWrCQuXwbHWoG4K5AGfRj-H7xAmS5bHTU6rLcLCwMpJgH_Ww0gLO1oGed2kILYEvNIPm6aj8o_osFeQ2iyUAtEZhq144rC5E530rB-9HtP7uQ3hHYFGqiU/s1600/41R6mz8yXFL._AA160_.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is
one of my favorite passages from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Birthday-Problem-Caren-Gussoff/dp/1939056063/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409897218&sr=8-2&keywords=caren+gussoff" target="_blank">The Birthday Problem</a> (Pink Narcissus Press, July 2014), a novel by Caren Gussoff, a Seattle author, a colleague, and a
friend (visit <a href="http://www.spitkitten.com/" target="_blank">Caren's web site</a> to learn more about Caren and her
fiction).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avinashi
Gopal was a celebrated artist. Her mother, Malaya, created the nanobots that
eradicated human disease. Her daughter Lily opened a bakery. Her granddaughter
Chaaya recites Fibonacci numbers when stressed. She is or will have been a
mathematician — if not for the nanobot plague. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Gopal
women are a few among many unforgettable characters one meets in The Birthday
Problem, the novel that it about… well, very much about this— the gentle hopefulness
of terrible disasters, much like Avinashi’s paintings. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I asked
Caren a few questions about her novel and herself. Here is what she told me.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: You have come into speculative
fiction from literary fiction What does spec fic let you do that literary
doesn’t, and vice versa?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: My first two books, Homecoming
and The Wave and Other Stories, were both driven by character and language over
plot and idea. Yet I think you can see the seeds of my conversion to spec fic
in both books; the settings are hyper-real, the coincidences are near-magical,
and, in at least one story from The Wave, features characters of mythical
origin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve always been a sci fi and
fantasy fan, and for the first part of my life, was sure I was going to be some
sort of scientist. I think of my time in lit fic as my apprenticeship to craft,
since it was the genre most embraced in writing programs…and it was easier to
get feedback on my work if I wasn’t always having to explain my ray guns and robots.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: And I thought you were a literary “plant” in the spec
fic world. Turns out you’ve always been a spec fiction plant in the world of
the literary! </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: Yes, ray guns and robots,
metaphorically speaking, are my interest, and I love how I can explore really,
really divisive and touchy subjects (colonization, gender, race), as well as
mushy subjects (memory, identity, redemption) with readers – and eliminate some
of the resistance – by setting it on another planet, in alternative history, or
played out by non-human beings.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: Oh, that’s interesting, about
tough subjects. Why do you think this is? Is it like hiding a bitter pill in a
cookie? Or is there something else going on, like we always need a mirror of
the “other” to see ourselves?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: I think it is exactly like
hiding a pill in a cookie – it’s very human to resist change and to feel
defensive when presented with data that clashes with what we do and how we
live. No one likes being shown that they are a racist, for example, by directly
pointing out how their specific actions stem from being raised inside an
institutionally racist system. Most folks would immediately jump to wanting to
defend their actions, as if their very goodness was what was in question. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve found that using an analogy
eases this…it lets readers safely draw the parallels between the fictional
world and their own world themselves. It’s both gentler and more effective. It
sinks in this way, and encourages dialogue.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were to pigeonhole yourself and your
works, which one will you end up in? Do you consider yourself a genre-bender?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
CG: I’m definitely a science fiction writer. I occasionally use fantastical
elements, but even then, I find I’m weirdly scientific about it (for example, I
have a vampire story, but I explain the vampirism as a function of a
boutique-designed virus). The only true departure from
plausible-but-nonexistent science I do is when I write ghost stories. Then, and
only then, does logic go out the proverbial window.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: One thing that fascinates me in
your work is your ability to bring to life people from different cultures and
walks of life, people simple or smart, plain or complicated, straightforward or
twisted. How do you create these Others and how do they affect you once they
are alive on your pages?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: That’s so nice of you to say!<br />
I think my portrayal of the “other” stems from feeling, myself, like an
“other.” I’ve always felt like my environments have been slightly oppositional
to some part of me: growing up poor in an upper-upper middle class
neighborhood, being fat/Rom/Jewish/smart when any of those things were not
desirable, and the like.<br />
Even now, I think people are surprised to find out things like: I’m a science
fiction writer who attends church (I’m a Unitarian Universalist), that I’m
healthy-looking but am actually sick (I have psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing
spondylitis), and that my father is as old as my peers’ grandparents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS:
Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it. And jokingly, if I might: what does not
kill us makes as a better writer. That’s what I believe.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
CG: One thing I try and do when designing my “others” is to make them
intersectional, real people, whose “otherness” serves the story, or affects the
choices and outcomes of the story in a tangible, important way. While I love
seeing as many diverse representations as possible in fiction and media, making
an “other” just for the sake of having an “other” – as novelty or shorthand –
doesn’t do anything for the reader.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: Your novel The Birthday
Problem is set in the near future, in the time that is still recognizable and
continuous with the present yet is a couple of steps ahead. Is this a
coincidence or something that attracts your imagination? What are the aspects
of the imagined near-future that are most fascinating to you?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: I find myself thinking 50 to 100
years in the future a lot. The seeds of what’s going to happen then are planted
now, today, and it’s a really fun and terrifying exercise to extrapolate out
what could happen based on what <i>is </i>happening. Next book, though,
I’m moving between the past (early Twentieth century) and far future (200+
years in the future).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be fun to move with you. Who is your
favorite and least favorite character(s) in The Birthday Problem?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: Ahhhhh! I love them all, in
their own ways…even my psychopaths, Eliza and Eden. My favorite-favorite is
Book, though, who is super-loosely based on my husband, in terms of personality
and background. My other most fave is Mrs. Lopez, the barfing cat (the only one
not named Ira). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: I concur. About Book. Not the
cat. I’m, ahem, a cat-hater (There. I’ve said it). You have mentioned that the
King of Seattle character is based on a real person. I’ve noticed that in the
novel, the character does not fare very well. Is there a story hidden here?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: He is based on a real person, a
family friend: singer/songwriter Frank Fuller, whose own “King of Seattle”
tattoo inspired the crappy draft of the story (which led to the book). Frank’s
tattoo, eyelashes, musicality, and romanticism were lifted whole for the King,
however, the King quickly became his own megalomaniacal person. And the King’s
tragic end, seriously, has nothing to do with Frank, who I’m happy to say is
happy and hale.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now that I’ve met the real King of
Seattle, OMG, I do see the resemblance… Ok now, beg pardon, but I have to ask
this one: what’s up with the masks?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">CG: I became fascinated by the
prevalence and decoration of face masks in Asia during the first outbreak of
H5N1 (Avian Flu). I saw news footage of fashion-conscious young folks who’d
really personalized their protective masks and gear, and something about it
struck me. <br />
Combined with how quickly clothing and body taboos come and go (it really
didn’t take that long to move from covered ankles to bikinis) that started me thinking
about a generation raised with masks, and how the function of the mask (to
protect against disease) could lead to social mores about baring the lower half
of your face. By the time of The Birthday Problem, the masks serve no
protective purpose, but have, instead, become a social expectation.<br />
I’m also interested in the “previous” older generations who have troubles
adjusting/get left behind when new fads, customs, and technologies arise.
Nani’s challenges with living with the masks, a requirement/custom that arose
when she was already an adult – verses Chaaya, who’s always worn a mask –
explores issues of aging and generational touch points.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS: Thanks so much for talking with
me! One last (but not the least) question: If you were a Queen of science
fiction, what would you order it to be?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <br />
I think SF is going exactly where it needs to be. More diverse voices are
expanding the genre, and there’s so many opportunities to tell stories, even
though publishing has changed, and all writers have to wrestle with a high
signal-to-noise ratio. But if I could order something genre-related, I’d pin
down a team of TV execs to give Joss Whedon another series and prevent them
from dumping it in a horrible, Friday night slot and cancelling it too soon (or
ever).</span></div>
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J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-34248382023054772572014-07-14T20:08:00.001-07:002014-07-21T15:18:52.614-07:00Russian Fantastika reading list -- this is where you startAt Readercon, a couple of folks asked me to point them to good books of Russian fantastika available for reading in the original language or in English translation. Here is my very first list item: start with Strugatsky brothers. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky is where modern Russian fantastika comes of age -- and into her own -- social sciences fiction somewhere in between science fiction and fantasy, surreal like a spaceship chained to a birch-tree, familiar like a voice that says in your ear, <i>There is something wrong with the world as you know it</i>.<br />
Pick up any of these three novels -- as a matter of fact, new and improved translations into English by Olena Bormashenko are available for two of them:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5RfgQqnnBzMg8d7kMsebHk3heyUxRiN9jxaS2lUSqh3hvWmoreNthZSqxmf2-1f-IOoE9z0hg5-Hh6Z67JEPhxS31CIu-z-Xw_zLZ3qcOQjKY_3WQbfDqpI4YtMhKxDGCreAflM2h4Y0/s1600/Hard+to+be+a+god.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5RfgQqnnBzMg8d7kMsebHk3heyUxRiN9jxaS2lUSqh3hvWmoreNthZSqxmf2-1f-IOoE9z0hg5-Hh6Z67JEPhxS31CIu-z-Xw_zLZ3qcOQjKY_3WQbfDqpI4YtMhKxDGCreAflM2h4Y0/s1600/Hard+to+be+a+god.jpg" height="320" width="207" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Chicago Review Press (IPG, dist.), ISBN
978-1-61374-828-2</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">What a cool cover! The image is from the film a prominent Russian director Alexei German made based on the book.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: normal;"><b>Roadside Picnic</b></span> <br />
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Chicago Review Press, ISBN-13: 9781613743416 </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: normal;"><b>The Ugly Swans</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">only an older edition available -- 1980, Collier/Macmillan, ISBN13: 9780020072409 </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you'd like to read any of these (and any other works) by the Strugatsky brothers in Russian, they are available here</span><br />
<a href="http://lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">http://lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/ </span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and are titled, respectively</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/be_god.txt"><b>Трудно быть богом</b></a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><tt><small> </small></tt> <a href="http://lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/picnic.txt"><b>Пикник на обочине</b></a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <a href="http://lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/lebedi.txt"><b>Гадкие лебеди</b></a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Enjoy! <b><br /></b></span><br />
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<br />
<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-74911078888296158962014-07-06T10:24:00.000-07:002014-07-06T10:24:18.915-07:00Clarion West Write-a-thonThis is the third year I participate in Clarion West's Write-a-thon event that is held during the six-week workshop. What is <a href="http://www.clarionwest.org/" target="_blank">Clarion West</a>? It is a non-profit organization that is behind the highly competitive annual short story workshop for aspiring writers of speculative fiction genres, held in Seattle, WA. Clarion West also organizes year-round events for writers and readers -- such as the famous <a href="http://www.clarionwest.org/writeathon/" target="_blank">Write-a-thon</a> -- and is truly the fabric that connects a community of writers, readers, fans here in Seattle, all across the US, and internationally.<br />
Write-a-thon is a fundraising event and a platform for writers, beginners to professionals, to introduce themselves and show their work, as well as impose writing deadlines and discipline upon themselves, should they still need any. I take part in Write-a-thon because I am a graduate of the Clarion West workshop and because I owe so much to the workshop and the community that makes it possible. Please visit the <a href="http://www.clarionwest.org/writeathon/" target="_blank">Write-a-thon</a> page to meet writers like Elizabeth Bear, Eileen Gunn, Andrea Hairston, and many others, including my friends and classmates Randy Henderson, Kris Millering, Emily C. Skaftun, Lucas Johnson, Joel Walsh, D. Elizabeth Wasden, Katrina S. Forrest, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Vicki Saunders. See what they are up to, and sponsor them.J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-1305209198531820942014-07-03T08:30:00.000-07:002014-07-03T08:41:35.115-07:00My Readercon 2014 schedule<div class="schedule_item">
<i> </i>Readercon 25 schedule is out! The full schedule can be downloaded from <i><a href="http://readercon.org/program.htm" target="_blank">Readercon program</a></i></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
</div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i>My part of it is as follows:</i></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<b>Friday, July 11</b></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<br />
<div class="schedule_item">
<b><i>Panels </i></b></div>
</div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i>1:00 PM</i>: <b>The Difference Between Magic and Science</b>
with <i>
Max Gladstone, Lev Grossman, Andrea Hairston, Kenneth Schneyer (leader)</i></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
</div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i> 3:00 PM</i>
<b>Russian Traditions of Science Fiction and Fantasy </b>with
<i>Michael Kandel </i></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i> </i>
</div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<b><i>Presentation </i></b></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
</div>
<i> 9:00 PM</i>
<b>Parallels Between the Evolution of Human Language and Genetics.</b>
<i>
</i><br />
Reprising my 2013 talk at the Art+Science salon at the Tacoma Art
Museum, I will give a popular science-level overview of
parallels between evolution of human languages and human
genomes/epigenomes as tools of expression and communication. The presentation will be based in serious academic literature
on the subject, though will also aim to provoke imagination and just
have some intellectual fun.<br />
<br />
<h3 class="panel_day">
<span style="font-size: small;">Sunday July 13</span></h3>
<div class="schedule_item">
<b><i>Reading</i></b></div>
<div class="schedule_item">
</div>
<div class="schedule_item">
<i>12:00 PM</i>
EM I will read<b> </b> from the novel <i>The Age of Ice</i> and unpublished work . </div>
J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-19003568864530581792014-06-30T21:41:00.002-07:002014-06-30T21:41:12.968-07:00A new story out in Devilfish Review<br />
My short story Rohrschach Redemption is out online in <a href="http://devilfishreview.com/issue-ten/rohrschach-redemption-by-j-m-sidorova/" target="_blank">Devilfish Review</a> magazine. <br />
The story's idea originated at a workshop taught by <a href="http://littlebig25.com/" target="_blank">John Crowley.</a> J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-77506571103470699532014-06-18T08:33:00.002-07:002014-06-18T08:33:58.379-07:00Readercon 2014!I am looking forward to participating in this year's <a href="http://www.readercon.org/" target="_blank">Readercon</a>, a conference on imaginative literature held in Burlington, MA on July10-13. I will be on a couple of panels and will have a reading. Details to follow.J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-83893124415849519662014-02-17T18:15:00.000-08:002014-03-06T22:25:12.286-08:00Allow me to introduce -- Anna KashinaShe is a mother of two, a cellular biologist, a fantasy novelist, a friend of twenty plus years without whom I would not have read The Lord of the Rings when I did, and not seen Star Wars when I did; a girl, unchanged by time, at whom I marvel to this day because she is a marvelous person —and because she is still a mystery to me.<br />
The credit for starting this friendship goes to a lab course of immunology. Students had to pair up to do the experiments of the course, so she and I formed a team. We performed classical hands-ons, like letting an antigen and an antibody diffuse towards each other through a slab of jelly, and observing formation of arc-shaped zones where the two met and, if they were a match, formed a precipitate. We too proved a good match. <br />
We studied for our finals together and walked our dogs together. We pierced our ears together. We each landed in our first serious relationship at about the same time, and went through the requisite ups and downs. We both were taking swings at writing fiction, first in our native language, Russian, and later, in English. We went to each other’s weddings. More than once. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC7uM8J9OPmsxSn7tmIwOz_YIqZeKWdCZNoIQCi5tfR9VuIEKXMgMIbYw-fewrCrnr-kW-4j_J7hOwUlZCI4E5yMKHK-4vELv9rmk98qiavI4OJtfIGOcp9I0oadqQuSVzgm3sQKJCCvU/s1600/514Q1-wFlyL._AA160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC7uM8J9OPmsxSn7tmIwOz_YIqZeKWdCZNoIQCi5tfR9VuIEKXMgMIbYw-fewrCrnr-kW-4j_J7hOwUlZCI4E5yMKHK-4vELv9rmk98qiavI4OJtfIGOcp9I0oadqQuSVzgm3sQKJCCvU/s1600/514Q1-wFlyL._AA160_.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>And yet we are so different — ah, let me count the ways. I can’t imagine why she’d prefer instant coffee to espresso. I had picked up martial arts when she’d picked up ballroom dancing (and went on to become a far better dancer than I — a martial artist). Many-many years ago, before Peter Jackson’s movies, we almost had a fight about the physical appearance of hobbits. And did I mention? She writes fantasy. I don’t, I’m pretty sure. But let me tell you: many years from now, we joke, we may just end up moving in together as two old blue-hairs. We’ll probably fight about hobbits, among other things. It would be fun.<br />
Today, in anticipation of the release of the first book of Anna’s new Majat Code trilogy, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blades-Old-Empire-Book-Majat/dp/0857664123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392688848&sr=8-1&keywords=anna+kashina" target="_blank">Blades of the Old Empire</a> (Angry Robot Books, Feb 25, 2014), and as media outlets talk about the book, allow me the liberty to talk about the author. <br />
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<br />
Anna came to the States from Russia as a postdoctoral fellow, in 1994, and spent three years at the University of California, Davis. Then she moved to Caltech where she worked for another three years. Her fellowship at UC Davis was a success, yielding a publication in a top biomedical journal, Nature; but work at Caltech, while going reasonably well, was overshadowed by a brewing conflict with the head of the lab, a strong-willed and opinionated professor. By that time Anna had written her first fantasy novel in English. One day, on an airplane, she sat next to a guy who said he was starting an independent press. Anna pitched the novel. After some months of hard work, the book came out in print. <br />
A fairy tale beginning? You bet. Then our starry-eyed first-time novelist gave an interview to Caltech’s newsletter, and her boss, the above-mentioned strong-willed professor happened to read it. Coincidentally, the conflict went up a notch: writing fantasy novels did not fit with the notion of the complete and utter dedication to science that was supposed to be practiced in the lab. The time spent writing about made-up girls in magic places should have been spent thinking about science — after hours, weekends, no matter.<br />
<br />
Anna spent perfectly miserable months in an increasingly adversarial environment, while trying to bring her research project to completion so that the results could be published. It was a matter of professional pride, but it was harder and harder to keep a clear line of sight. She used to be an absolute neatnik as far as her lab bench and records were concerned, but now, even being neat and orderly somehow seemed to imply her inferiority as a researcher. That’s when she started learning ballroom dancing — it was a pastime popular with a gang of Caltech’s graduate students, with whom she hung out. She danced almost every night; it helped her cope. Years later she would go on to compete at the Gold level, at the time, life in science was falling apart, and to add insult to injury, her marriage was falling apart too. <br />
In 2000 she finally gave up, quit her job, divorced, moved to Florida. She had convinced herself she had no future and no aptitude whatsoever in science. She was depressed. Her last employer was not about to write her a letter of recommendation — which meant finding her next job in biomedical research would be that much harder. She tried to find work as a science writer or a free-lance editor — to no avail. She moved in with her future husband. She wrote three novels, including a sequel to her first book, but her original publisher went out of business, the trail got cold, and nobody showed interest in the sequel or the new work. Everything just seemed to be closing in around her. So she danced. And wrote about the goddess of dance. <br />
<br />
One day two years later she opened an issue of Science, another top-notch biomedical journal, and saw her name credited in a paper published by the professor she’d used to work for. Her work had not been useless, or dead-end after all, quite the opposite, it broke open a whole new field. Friends started to tell her to get back into research. A former colleague and friend found money for a temporary position at the University of Connecticut. She went. She remembers feeling a sense of endless gratitude — to the gods of simple laboratory techniques, I suppose — for letting things work again in her hands. She’d been convinced she’d mess everything up. She could not believe she still was an able experimentalist. But once she regained her confidence, there was no stopping her. <br />
With the credit on a Science paper, employment, and a kick-start to her research, she could now apply for faculty jobs. She sent out about a hundred applications and got one invitation for an interview. The one and only chance, she was not going to let it slip away. Faculty candidates are expected to give an hour-long talk about their work — the key part of the interview. Anna rehearsed that talk every day, for about a month. <br />
She nailed the interview and got the job. Within five years she established herself as an accomplished cellular biologist at the University of Pennsylvania. A fairy tale ending? Not yet. All the while, she’s been stubbornly writing and rewriting and revising and trying to publish her novels. Casting into the wild seas of the publishing industry brought more than a share of near misses, close calls, false starts, dashed hopes. I suspect that anyone who’s ever been serious about getting in the door has a similar story to tell (I know I have); some stories are worse than others. In Anna’s case, a certain agent, whose name these days is highlighted on Writers Beware as someone who engages in creative bookkeeping when it comes to writers’ earnings and plays fast and loose with foreign language rights, once contacted her, offering to sell her novels in German translation. The books had been sold, translated, printed. The upshot was actually not as bad as it could have been and some earnings made it back across the Atlantic. But in the end, there was no track record, no engagement here at home. <br />
In 2009 Anna, now an associate professor with an impressive track record and forty research papers to her name, was hastily finishing the last draft of what is now Book One of the Majat Code. She wanted to get it done before the birth of her first child, not because she had an agent’s or a publisher’s deadline — she’d given up on submitting — but because finishing that book was important to her. Then, after her daughter was born, the new mom saw that Angry Robot Books, a prominent UK publisher, announced an open submission period. She sent the manuscript in. It sold.<br />
<br />
Now there’s a fairy tale ending. Or is it beginning? These days Anna is busy with two kids, family, lab, and books two and three for the Majat Code trilogy. How she manages to do all that is a complete mystery to me. It is possible that she knows a great secret of productivity, but if you ask her, she’d just shrug. One thing she’d say about it is that it has nothing to do with the word “balance”. It’s more like binge-writing — when the day’s science-work is done —sneaked in when kids are in daycare, or asleep, or looking the other way. It has a lot to do with feeling scatterbrained, overwhelmed, stretched thin. So why do it? Why stretch thin, why double up uncertainties and frustrations inherent both in science and in writing? Does she know the answer? Do I? Because not doing either feels like a loss? There is no miracle in any of it, she’d say, just a whole lot of pushing against a wall and a couple of strikes of luck.<br />
Which may be all one can hope for. <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>
<!-- Blogger automated replacement: "https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-ldK2hRXfTQ4%2FUwLAcB1U04I%2FAAAAAAAAAOU%2FnEIvf_nfp3g%2Fs1600%2F514Q1-wFlyL._AA160_.jpg&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*" with "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC7uM8J9OPmsxSn7tmIwOz_YIqZeKWdCZNoIQCi5tfR9VuIEKXMgMIbYw-fewrCrnr-kW-4j_J7hOwUlZCI4E5yMKHK-4vELv9rmk98qiavI4OJtfIGOcp9I0oadqQuSVzgm3sQKJCCvU/s1600/514Q1-wFlyL._AA160_.jpg" -->J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-29105059630960423482014-02-03T09:28:00.000-08:002014-02-17T19:23:31.607-08:00The Age of Ice is on the Locus magazine 2013 reading list and on the BallotI am very happy to announce that my novel <a href="http://www.jmsidorova.com/" target="_blank">The Age of Ice</a> has made the <a href="http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2014/02/2013-locus-recommended-reading-list/" target="_blank">Locus Magazine's</a> 2013 recommended reading list in the First Novels category!<br />
And not only that, it is also included in the ballot. If you read the novel and enjoyed it, please take a moment to <a href="http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2014/PollAndSurvey.html" target="_blank">go to the Poll </a>and do some voting.<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-33806977215428141312013-12-26T20:10:00.000-08:002013-12-26T20:10:06.532-08:00A review of Karen Joy Fowler's novel We are all completely beside ourselves<br />
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<![endif]-->There are books that tell stories that could have happened.
And then there are books that make you <u>yearn</u> that the story they tell,
however fantastic, had in fact happened — as if without it, without these
particular events and without this human being who’d experienced them and now
tells her tale, there is something amiss in the world. The only disbelief you
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Karen Joy Fowler’s latest novel is one of such books. Written
as a memoir and filled with references to actual events and facts, the story balances
on the verge of “happened” just as the narrator, Rosemary, balances on the
verge of a grand disclosure that will expose her as she is, with all her idiosyncrasies,
to the whole world. </div>
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In a nutshell, the novel imagines the fate of one of the experiments actually performed around nineteen seventies (if I am not mistaken) in the US, and pursuing comparative analysis of human and primate development. In such an experiment, a human and an ape infant are reared together from the very early age on, they are treated in the same way, as if both are human; they know each other intimately, they communicate with each other using sign language. It is researchers’ hypothesis that the ape child may be advanced, behaviorally, closer to the level of a human child. It was the actual outcome, at least in some cases, that the human child began to acquire behavioral traits more reminiscent of an ape. Rosemary Cooke, the heroine and the narrator of the novel is one of such children. She spent the first five years of her life with a sister who happened to be a chimpanzee. <br />
<a name='more'></a>In the novel, Rosemary, now a grownup, recalls events of her childhood and early adulthood and runs a tally of what exactly is different about her, what odd traits have stayed with her, indelible, to make everyone she meets instantly feel she is different from normal humans. Is it her manner of speaking? Her altered perception of personal space? The best thing about this self-analysis is that it is as thorough as it is incomplete. Our most innate, built-in traits are the ones we are blind to — precisely because they are so innate to us. Thus, this reader wonders what other traits and issues are there, the ones Rosemary does not see about herself. She is a wonderfully, disconcertingly, unsettlingly unreliable narrator who leaves an imaginative reader plenty of unlit room in which to start seeing spooky shadows. <br />
<br />Most importantly, by recalling her life’s story, Rosemary works up courage to expose her greatest secret, something that has cracked her and her whole family’s life into two pieces — the Before and the After. The story of Rosemary’s sister’s disappearance. Lest I make a spoiler, let me say only this — in my personal opinion, this is a story of sibling rivalry between two little girls. Both girls are animals, one human, another — non-human. Both girls are culpable in what had happened. Both have good and bad in them. <br />
<br />The book closes leaving one surprised and disturbed by something she did not know and making one want to “read up”, to find out more in witness testimonies, documentaries, to peer behind the seemingly familiar scenes. But most of all —to keep looking for Rosemary Cooke on the web, to search for her in a sea of faces in an airport, a shopping mall. She has to be there, hasn’t she?J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-49042727946618042512013-11-19T10:08:00.002-08:002013-11-19T10:08:35.946-08:00ART+SCIENCE SalonThis coming Thursday, November 21 (6-8PM) I will be participating in a panel discussion on <i>Intersections between literature and science</i> at the Tacoma Art Museum.<br />
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<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-6473072006008050352013-11-11T17:36:00.002-08:002013-11-11T17:36:37.279-08:00Guest-blogging at upcoming4.me<br />
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My recent guest blog post for <span style="color: blue;">Upcoming4.me</span> details some of the story behind writing and researching The Age of Ice:<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;">Memories of Ice</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><em>The Age of Ice</em> started about six years ago, with me reading The New Yorker article by Elif Batuman, <em>The </em><em>Ice Renaissance</em>.
The article discussed two episodes in Russian history separated by two
hundred and sixty six years. One — the building in the winter of 1740,
upon the order of the empress Anna Ioannovna, of a palace made entirely
of ice, where two of the empress’s jesters were forced to spend their
wedding night. The other episode — building of a replica of that palace
on the same site in the winter of 2006, and its popularity with St.
Petersburg’s denizens.</span><br />
Read the full post here: <a href="http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/memories-of-ice-story-behind-the-age-of-ice-by-jm-sidorova" target="_blank">Upcoming4.me</a><br />
<a href="http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/memories-of-ice-story-behind-the-age-of-ice-by-jm-sidorova" target="_blank"></a><br />
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<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-15390962551226790112013-10-08T10:11:00.000-07:002013-10-08T10:11:26.277-07:00A book reading in Bellingham, WAI will be reading and signing The Age of Ice on October 18 in <a href="http://villagebooks.com/" target="_blank">Village Books</a> in Bellingham. Starts at 7:00 PM. J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-45818347457615275732013-08-14T23:19:00.003-07:002013-08-14T23:22:10.182-07:00I agreewith this article in HuffPost <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/14/sequestration-cuts_n_3749432.html" target="_blank">Sequestration ushers in a dark age for science in America</a></span><br />
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It is a detailed, accurate account of today's state of affairs in biomedical sciences: J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-51963656298601602232013-08-07T21:36:00.000-07:002013-08-07T21:36:03.369-07:00A Zeno's paradox and a brinicle videoWill the warship outrun the sailboat?<br />
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I took this pic during my off time at San Diego's waterfront. I am back from trips to LA, San Diego, and Portland where I was reading from, rambling about, and scribbling on The Age of Ice. Thank you all who came to listen to me. I hope you had a good time!<br />
Something I mentioned at the readings -- a video of a "brinicle," a.k.a. an ice finger of death. Make sure you watch till the end, where it is the most icy and deadly. Here is the link: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15835017" target="_blank">An Ice Finger of Death</a> <br />
<br />J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-31408700679286268832013-07-27T12:24:00.000-07:002013-07-27T12:24:54.827-07:00Readings and readingsThank you all for making my first reading from The Age of Ice, held at the University bookstore in Seattle, an awesome event. My next two readings will be in California: one in Pasadena and one in San Diego. Please visit my website's page <a href="http://69.195.124.110/~jmsidoro/author-appearances/" target="_blank">Author Appearances </a> for schedule details and bookstore links.J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-417588598972210733.post-47360443590545330422013-07-23T23:50:00.000-07:002013-07-23T23:50:51.825-07:00Ta-daaaa! The novel is out, officiallyAnd I scheduled a giveaway on Goodreads, of which I am now a member. J.M. Sidorovahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04418107829569147200noreply@blogger.com0