New Space Opera 2 wins the Locus! Happy St. Swithin’s Day!
Posted on 29 June 2010
It is unseemly to vaunt, therefore I vaunt in an unseemly fashion.
NEW SPACE OPERA 2 Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan (Editors) in which my short story, ‘The Far End of History ( a Tale of the End of the Seventh Mental Structure)‘ has just won the prestigious Locus Award (announcement is here).
I also note with pleasure that another anthology in which a tale of mine appears, SONG OF THE DYING EARTH Gardner Dozois, George R.R. Martin (Editors) has won the additional laurels of having what is now an Locus Award Winning short story, ‘‘An Invocation of Incuriosity’’ by Neil Gaiman.
While my story in that volume, Guyal the Curator, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Gaiman’s well merited award, I would like my loyal reader (Hi, Mom!) to imagine or to pretend that the judges were put in a good and receptive mood by reading my story first, so that the judges doubtless would have been unable properly to savor Mr. Gaiman’s story had it not been for me: in this way, with the same august dignity as, for example, Gollum shows while lusting for the One Ring, I can have my loyal reader pretend I have a right to bask in the shiny reflection of Mr. Gaiman’s glory. Thank you, reader! We will let you out of the basement on St. Swithin’s Day, and for a whole week, you will not have to share your mat on the concrete floor of the utility room with the dog, Sloober.
All these books make great gifts for St. Swithin’s Day (15 July). Imagine buying crates and truckloads for all the members of your extended family, your baseball team, school classmates, battalion, regiment, and every voter registered in your parish or country, and everyone in your local phonebook. You can enjoy the entertainments of these fine books while singing the St. Swithin’s Day Song that we all know and cherish from our childrenhoods:
Saint Swithun’s day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
Saint Swithun’s day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
Saint Swithin
Let us see what the Internet says about him?
This saint was chaplain to Egbert, King of the West Saxons, and tutor to prince Ethelwolf. Bishop of Winchester, England. Miracles are associated with his relics, but his shrine was destroyed during the Reformation. Almost 60 ancient British churches were named for him. His patronage of the weather arose when monks tried to translate his body from an outdoor grave to a golden shrine in the Cathedral in 871. Swithin apparently did not approve as it started raining for 40 days.
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How well we all remember the festivities of Saint Swithin’s Day, playing hide-the-bumbershoot, drench-and-scurry, or holding Hither to the Shrine races! How we all enjoy the traditional Swithin cake made from frogberries, shoat and gooseliver, and how we young tykes used to stare and groak watching the cake hardening in its traditional spot on the chimney stones before the solemn Swithin’s Day feast! And who did not, when he was young, lay awake on Swithin’s Eve, listening for the pitter-patter footsteps of the Raindrop Elves that were said to leave gifts in the shoes of good little boys and girls, but poisonous toads in the shoes of the naughty? And how we would laugh when some bully or heckling boy would come screaming and hopping into the town square that morning, his foot swollen and blue, begging through his pathetic tears for the butcher to cut off his foot before the poison spread and killed him! Ah, the golden memories of those times!
And you too can relive, or, better yet, invent wondrous holiday memories by buying ridiculous numbers of these books! Remember, buy now, and we will let you out of the basement for an afternoon!
Groak in awe at all of the John C. Wright books by visiting his Boast Page!
Congrats!
Ahh…. not unlike the frolicsome Cheese Rolling days in Glouster! http://www.cheese-rolling.co.uk/
I enjoyed reading The Far End of History. However it brings up a question; at the end of The Golden Transcendence Phaeton goes hurtling off to Cygnus X1 and the Silent Oecumene. Since in TFEoH we learn of the war between both civilizations continuing after Phaeton’s journey, what happened to Phaeton?
I have no idea what eventually happens to Phaethon. I just take down dictation from the muses, like a secretary.
If inspiration strikes at some point in the future, we may find out. I do not have any current plans to write anything else in that background (albeit my plans are not the last word.)
Those who do not believe in muses can substitute “the subconscious mind” or wherever it is they think stories come from in the first sentence with no loss of meaning.
I hope one day that your muses/subconscious mind send you a tale of the heroic Phaeton and his voyage to the Silent Oecumene some time in the future.
I just ordered three of your novels from Amazon. They should be good. Let us hope so.
St. Swithin is a good choice for an sf writer’s devotion. The healing of the broken eggs seems pretty quantum.