Archive for the ‘events’ Category

What Is Fantasy About?

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

I’m writing this from Miami, where I have come for the Miami Book Festival. Book touring brings me through Florida periodically, and I always have an excellent time there. But that has never been enough to erase my tragic associations with the Sunshine State, which stem from the time I came here when I was 8 and threw up on my grandmother’s white couch.

You don’t forget a thing like that.

I usually end up talking a lot about fantasy at events like this. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot, too, mostly in a desperate attempt to catch up with all the stuff I find myself saying about it.

Because I cross the border a lot between “literary fiction” and “fantasy” (just assume infinite recursive scare quotes around every word for the rest of this post) I often find myself having to try to explain fantasy to audiences of non-fantasy readers who have unexpectedly found themselves in a room with a dude who is reading to them about people casting spells. Once the reading is over, and they are given leave to speak, they sometimes ask me: what is the deal, yo, with this stuff you write about people casting spells and shit? I mean, my child/niece/sibling/spouse is into this shit, but I don’t get it.

That is a good question. It’s hard to put into words what the deal is with fantasy – to say, in a coherent way, what all this stuff is about.

Science fiction is different. It’s much easier to theorize, or at any rate it’s been much better-theorized. Science fiction has known preoccupations. With technology for example, and our interactions with it — are we becoming the tools of our tools, sort of thing. With contemporary socio-politico-economic trends, which can be exaggerated to form interesting possible futures. With the future itself, and myths of progress. With the Other, and contact with same.

Fantasy, though.

Something is up with fantasy – I feel like the zeitgeist is taking an interest in it. Like the Great Lidless Eye of Sauron, the zeitgeist has turned away from the big science fiction franchises of the 1990s (Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix, The X-Files) and swung towards big fantasy franchises instead (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Twilight, True Blood, Game of Thrones). [We’re generalizing glibly here, I know there are a lot of counterexamples (cough, Hunger Games, cough), and I do not repeat not want to get in a big wrangle over whether or not Twilight is fantasy -- sorry. Just go with it for a bit.]
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Canada, a Concept Album, Book Court, Other Things Starting with C

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

This blog post is lacking in any of the Aristotelian unities, but I’m just going to have at it anyway. Take that, Aristotle.

– Here’s an interesting thing. You can send a postcard from Fillory at this website. Even if you’re not actually in Fillory. This may qualify as mail fraud, I’m not sure. At any rate the stamps are gorgeous.

– I’m reading tomorrow night — that’s Thursday night, Sept. 8 — at KGB alongside two fantastically distinguished writers, Lily Tuck (who won the National Book Award for The News from Paraguay) and Francisco Goldman. What were they thinking? I’ll ask them.

– I’ve got more readings in the works: in the immediate future there’s one at Newtonville Books in Newton, MA on Sept. 15 with Sven Birkerts, and one at BookCourt in Brooklyn on Sept. 28 with a player to be named later. Two fantastic bookstores.

– Still more readings: I’ll be touring Canada in October. I’ll be at the Calgary WordFest, which starts October 11th, then I’ll be at the Vancouver Writers Festival, which starts October 18th. Then I’ll be at the Toronto International Festival of Authors starting October 25th.

– Somewhere in there I’ll also be appearing in Austin, TX twice. Texas is not in Canada, though.

– Finally, if you want to have your brain melted a bit, check this out. A new album by a band called Fiction that is — what? Inspired by? Let’s just say it’s not unrelated to The Magicians. And here’s what else: it’s pretty damn good.

Actually it’s kind of amazing.

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Normality Has Been Restored

Monday, September 5th, 2011

“Anything you can’t cope with is therefore your own problem” – Trillian, a.k.a. Tricia McMillan, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Gratuitous picture of Zooey Deschanel

I’m back from tour. The Infinite Improbability Drive is off or at least idling. The list of things I can’t cope with is still worryingly long.

A word about tour. Tour was great. Actually it was amazing. There was a whole new vibe out there. When I went on tour for the paperback version of The Magicians, I saw maybe twice as many people as had come out for the hardcover version. Something had changed. But this time something had really changed. This time I got, like, 5-10 times as many people as for the paperback. Let me tell you, that means a lot to a writer.

(Also increasing: the amount of e-mail I get. I’m really, really sorry I’m so crap about answering it. The math of it is all wrong: the busier I get, the more e-mail I get, and the less time I have to answer it. It should work the other way.)

I was also surprised by how tough the tour was on me and my family — my being away for that long. Sophie has to pick up a lot of slack when I’m away, and it’s not like she doesn’t have her own professional gigs to deal with. It’s tough to strike a balance. I don’t how much it bothers Halcyon, who’s 1 and therefore still kind of one with the universe in that way that babies are. But Lily (7) basically welded herself to my leg the minute I got home and refused to let go. And I knew how she felt. Maybe I’ll take her with me next time.

I’m not going to do a big roundup of the reviews. Google will do a better job than I will, and it gets paid more than I do. Suffice to say that they’ve been good! And that it’s been interesting watching reviewers and their reviewing organs try to decide whether The Magician King is literature or fantasy or art or entertainment or trash or whatever. (Correct answer is: yes.) Though I will cop to being happy that The New Yorker, that pillar of literary culture, did a short but nice review (this link is pointless unless you subscribe to the magazine, in which case it’s pointless anyway. Sorry.)

And now onwards and upwards! Or at least energetically sideways! There are more projects in the works, which I’ll announce when I can. I have plans for a third and probably final Magicians book. I know how it starts and how it ends, and a certain amount about the middle bits. Damn those middle bits.

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Things That Are Keeping Me Sane on This Tour

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

– Hark! A Vagrant
– The “Guardians of Sunshine” episode of Adventure Time. Also: all other episodes of Adventure Time, which I didn’t know existed until my friend Zack told me about it a couple of days ago

– Room service
– Twitter (note: Twitter is also driving me insane. Call it a wash.)
– “Raw Sugar” by Metric
– “The Calamity Song,” by The Decemberists
– Erfworld
– Working out. Listen, I know, “working out” isn’t a very “me” thing. And it is appallingly painful. I don’t actually “enjoy” it. But Neil does it! And an engineer friend once told me, look, your brain runs off the rest of your body, and if you don’t exercise you’re just hosing your brain. That stayed with me. I know what a hosed brain looks like. My dad has Alzheimer’s. I ain’t going out like that. Well realistically there’s a fair chance that I am. But I’m going to put it off as long as possible.
– Scrabble for the iPhone
– Grim Jogger, ditto
– Drinking
– Not drinking. Have you heard about this? I’m trying to skip drinking one night in three. Well, four. OK let’s go one in five. I’ll get back to you.
– Q&A. When I do an event it happens in three parts. I talk. Then I read. Then you guys ask me questions. You would think this would get old, especially since I’m doing three or four interviews a day anyway on top of it, but it never does. It’s the best part. Like, by far.
– P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves! etc. 1930′s-era comic novels about an aristocrat who is always wrong and his butler who is always right. The BBC made it into a TV show starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, and they nailed a lot of what was good about it, but you really can’t beat the novels, which are in their own way weirdly profound tributes to human indomitability. And drinking, he’s very good on drinking.
– Wellbutrin

Portland tonight, Seattle tomorrow. Come by!

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Seattle and Suchlike and So Forth

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Our city today is quiet, wave-lapped La Jolla, CA. I am here because of its proximity to the great Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, where I’m reading tonight.

A few quick things:

– Watch me win the Campbell award! It’s technically not a Hugo award, but it happens at the Hugo awards! My bit starts at around 1:07.

This picture is stolen from io9. I'm sorry! I couldn't find any others.

– I realize now that I never announced the coordinates of my Seattle reading. That was lame of me. It’s at the U District branch of University Book Store, this Friday night (the 26th) at 7:00.

– My daughter Lily and I are on Pottermore. I left a digital recorder on during our first session and then later, because I thought it was funny, transcribed it and posted it on Time.com, where bizarrely it is currently the most-read story. (I gave her a fake name: Plum.) Now I worry that it reads too much like a negative review of the site. I was pretty impressed with Pottermore, I just thought it could have done a little better job of educating users about how it works and what it wants from them. I do however disagree with “Plum,” who believes that owls are “just a normal kind of animal.”

– If you’ve always wanted to see the Eschaton scene from Infinite Jest acted out over a Decembrists song, you may have to find a new life goal.

– The next three days are: Pasadena, Menlo Park, Portland. If you live in one of those places, come out! I will read to you. It’ll be just like an audiobook that you can’t turn off.

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Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

This morning I left Reno and flew to San Diego, where I’m signing tomorrow night (i.e. Monday night) at Mysterious Galaxy

WorldCon was … pretty amazing. I sometimes get alienated and loner-y at conventions, and wind up cowering in my hotel room, but this particular WorldCon sort of wouldn’t let me. Too many nice and interesting things kept happening. You’d go to a perfectly ordinary cocktail party and suddenly it’s why hello, Kim Stanley Robinson, wow, I am shaking your hand. And yes, I am very pleased to meet you, Robert Silverberg.

I watched George R.R. Martin and Parris McBride get married. I had dinner (separately) with Cory Doctorow and Bill Willingham and other genius-level humans. I did an extended Jeremy Paxman impression as the host of Magical University Challenge. (The Brakebills team was bounced in the first round. But they did, later, rush the stage and beat up Harry Potter, so … redemption?)

We threw not one but two highly canonical Magicians-themed parties, complete with drinks from the books. It has been pointed out to me that maybe I should have more delicious drinks in future books, and yes, fair point. But those parties were damn canonical.

I have to add that the parties happened partly because of the generosity of my publisher, Viking, who funded them, but mostly because of the energy and general kick-assery of Leigh Ann Hildenbrand, who is an extraordinary person and a force of nature. If she had been running the Roman empire we would be wearing a great many more togas nowadays. If you were there, you know what she and España Sheriff (and probably many others who deserve to be thanked) accomplished. For those who weren’t, I have no doubt pictures will emerge.

Leigh Ann’s hard work and support are not unrelated to what happened on Saturday night, which is that I won the John W. Campbell award for best new writer at the Hugos.

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Gimme Welters: The View from Reno

Friday, August 19th, 2011

Greetings from Reno, Nevada. I’m here for WorldCon. It’s incredibly hot here. The kind of heat that kind of weighs on your head, like as if masses of photons are literally pounding down on you. The kind of heat that makes you think,  I am not evolved for this shit.

OK, Google says it’s only 88. But I’m telling you, it feels hot.

I have been reminded of the tour name. It is Gimme Welters. All credit for this great name to commenter Austin Wilson. In honor of the greatness of the name, the infinitely great Amy Billingham has created this official tour graphic:

I know, right? I know!

(People have been asking me when the CafePress store is going to open. Soon. Seriously, I saw the final designs for it like five minutes ago.)

Now some things that need announcing:

– The Magician King will be number 8 on the New York Times bestseller list next week. As far as news goes, this goes in the good category

– Over at Largehearted Boy I wrote a (heavily annotated) playlist of the music I listened to while I wrote The Magician King. Topics covered include: Metric, Ravel, famous people who went to my high school, and the advertising jingle for Mercenaries 2.

– At Whatever — John Scalzi’s blog — I wrote a mini-essay about The Big Idea of The Magician King. Yes, I dragged my mother into it.

– Finally at the Huffington Post I wrote a list of the greatest cocktails in literature.

As Brett Ashley would say: bung-o. If you’re at WorldCon, I’m doing a literary beer at 3:00 today, and tomorrow at 2:00 I’m reading in room A-14. Then tomorrow night are the Hugo Awards. This is important because it’s an excuse for me to wear my tuxedo.

Finally — and I put this to the commenters — I’m trying to decide whether to take an hour off from WorldCon and play some poker in the casino. I’m an avid home-game poker player, but I’ve never taken it to the card room. Because I’m not James Bond. Or am I? The tuxedo could come into play here too.

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The Tour: OK Now It’s Really On

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

This isn’t really the start of the tour. The tour already started. Last week I did a couple of readings in New York and another in Boston.

(Thank you everybody who came. So far they’ve been big, sweaty, standing-room-only readings with tons of questions, which is the kind I love. It especially meant a lot to me at Brookline Booksmith, a store I used to haunt in my awful lost post-college years, when buying a hardcover was enough to bust my food budget, but I would do it anyway. Now not only have I read at Brookline Booksmith, I’ve been in the back. I’ve seen the break room. Bookstores are their own kind of Narnia)

But today the tour starts in earnest. I fly to St. Louis, a city where I do not think I have ever been before. I’m reading tomorrow night at the public library. Come out! We’ll nerd it up.

A map of the Neitherlands. More Amy Billingham brilliance ...

And yes, there is an official tour name. Someone came up with it in comments, possibly on Facebook, and it was tremendously witty, and I’ve forgotten it completely. But it was awesome.

From St. Louis I go to Reno for WorldCon. I’m doing all the usual WorldConny things – it’s all on some celestial WorldCon schedule somewhere – but we’re also doing Magicians-themed parties Thursday night and Saturday night. If you’re at WorldCon, I require you to stop by and partake of free alcohol. I’m also hosting a nerded-up version of University Challenge on Thursday afternoon, featuring teams from Hogwarts, Brakebills, Miskatonic and Unseen University. We still have a couple of openings, so if you want to play, drop me an e-mail.

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The Cat is Out of the Bag, and the Cacodemon is Out of the Tattoo

Friday, August 12th, 2011

The Magician King is out, and I am three events into the tour. Though it hasn’t really started in earnest because I haven’t gotten on a plane yet. Or consumed my first Ativan.

The reviews so far: really really good. NPR, the AV Club, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Tor.com, SF Signal…I haven’t actually read them, because as pathetic as it sounds, I can’t read any of the media coverage at all, not one word, or I will be consumed with anxiety the way a niffin is consumed by magic. (See what I did there…)

Another gorgeous piece of fan art by Cecilia Bohlin

(Actually I did read the Washington Post review. Sing along with Morrissey: “I’ll never make that mistake again … ”

If I were a responsible author without a day job I would aggregate all the interviews I’ve done — CNN, CBS, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Wall Street Journal, etc. — into one handy guide. But I’m just not that guy. I do want to call out a few things though. One is a post I did on Tor.com that’s a guide to the semi-hidden allusions in The Magicians. I also wrote an essay about the process of writing The Magician King for Fantasy Matters — it’s here.

Also I wrote an introduction for a new deluxe edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a beautiful cover by Ivan Brunetti. Probably you’re not lacking for copies of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But if you are, I recommend this one.

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I Seem to See a Tree of Iron

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

I’m just back from Oxford, where I watched my genius sister-in-law get her doctorate in curing cancer.

I love Oxford. My mom went there, and she hated it, and it’s always fun to love the things your parents hate. (In fairness to my mom, as a scholarship student and a woman she ran into a lot of really toxic class and gender prejudice at Oxford. Sorry mom.)

But come on! Tolkien and Lewis taught there. It’s like the Trinity test site for modern fantasy. I made a pilgrimage to the original lamppost that inspired the one in Narnia:

You can’t see the overflowing dumpsters to my left. It’s just as well.

Meanwhile I have shifted modes. My current mode is definitely not my favorite mode, or a mode that I’m any good at it. It is my promotional mode. When you stop writing your book, you have to start forcing everybody to look at it, know about it, and think about it, until their brains are empty of all else.

To that end you give interviews. You write snappy little mini-essays. You go to Comic-Con and sit on panels. (Mine is Thursday at 3. We got the death slot opposite the Game of Thrones panel, but come on! You’ll never get into that one.) It takes up a lot of one’s time that would be better spent blogging. But I will try to keep up better than I have been.

One housekeeping note: I have a story in a new anthology called The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. I don’t often write short fiction, but I was really proud of the piece. The way the book works is, they gave writers pieces of art to riff of; mine was a lovely sketch by Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame. And there are other, better pieces in the book by the likes of China Mieville and Alan Moore. An excerpt from my story is here.

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