The Return of "Cow Vase"

Last year I participated in the Significant Objects project, writing a very short story around a knick-knack selected by editors Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn. Now several of those stories have been collected into a book, and I'm happy to be included alongside authors such as Nicholson Baker, William Gibson, Heidi J., Colson Whitehead, Neil LaBute, Sloane Crosley, Tom McCarthy, Jonathan Lethem, Lydia Millett....(I could keep going!)...

It looks like there will be two covers; I wrote about the delightful "Cow Vase" featured on the pink one. The books are out in July and are available for pre-order.

Today the project was featured on Studio 360. There's a contest, and a video...

2660

Who are the super-est supermen of pre-Golden Age SF? Dzyd Joshua has the rundown over at io9, complete with great cover art as usual. Best hero name/book title might go to Hugo Gernsback's 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660.



That name reminded me of this Keeler concoction—probably the only character in literature with not just numbers but fractions, multiplication, and shapes in his name:



(from Richard Polt's essay "Race in Keeler")

(Hmmm, time to read Ch. 20 of Crippled Detectives!)

Bringing home the Bacon

Some gorgeous "pre-Golden Age" science fiction covers illustrate Dzyd Josh's latest transmission at i09 , including Harold Steele Mackaye's The Panchronicon (1904):

I'm informed that The Panchronicon concerns a pair of New Hampshire spinsters who are given the opportunity to travel through time via a solar-powered airship-thing from the 27th-century. See, first you fly the Panchronicon to the North Pole; then you orbit the Earth widdershins (anti-sunwise, like Christopher Reeve does in the 1978 Superman); and presto, you're in 16th-century England, where you're able to disprove the Bacon-was-Shakespeare theory.

And there's an Ouroboros, linking back here, to boot!

7. E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros (London: Jonathan Cape, 1922). More admired than read, Ouroboros is a linguistically adventurous saga recounting the infinite war between the king of Witchland and the lords of Demonland... on the planet Mercury. Call it Nietzschean SF: somewhere out there, the author would have us believe, another world is possible, one in which the self-overcoming values and worldview of Roman, Arab, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, and Scandinavian Vikings will never be corrupted. (As Lord Juss puts it: "For better it were we should run hazard again of utter destruction, than thus live out our lives like cattle fattening for the slaughter, or like silly garden plants.") The end of Eddison's novel is also its beginning, hence the title and Keith Henderson's heavy-metal jacket illustration — a snake devouring itself tail-first. Like they so often do in medieval engravings, Celtic sculptures, Egyptian scrolls, Aztec glyphs, and on Agent Scully's lower back. Wish I could afford a 1st edition.

(Here's my take on the book at Astral Weeks.)

Wylie agency

At io9, Joshua Glenn lists "the Ten Best Apocalypse Novels of pre-Golden Age SF (1904–1933)," with some hypnotic covers.

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 21

What's the "best remunerated poem in history"? Dizzyhead Rachel sifts through the competing author theories for the Christian verselet "Footprints," with some fascinating excursions into the realm of cryptomnesia...Termite Artist Matt on Lust, Caution (smartly comparing it to Black Book) and...Ruthless People?! (invoking Roger Ebert's definition of "idiots")...Isn't it time you enjoyed an episode of Cavemen?...Best line in a recent e-mail: "I'm on my third Sam Adams in the Pittsburgh airport..."...Josh Glenn has a great slideshow on the possible cinematic influence of Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend...(For one more film reference and some literary ones, check out this piece by Parkus Grammaticus)...Look at how I persist in neither italicizing nor enquoting names of comic strips...J.G. also takes aim at a very specific fetish found in the oeuvre of certain Boston-based rock legends—including my beloved Modern Lovers:

(Bonus trivia: Did you know that David Lee Roth was from the Beantown area?)