Category: Writing

Art

Feeling A Bit Horizontal

The novel is proceeding apace. Having come to a pivotal moment, I tend to step back, appreciate what is there (or not) before continuing on. While pausing, I do other things, like music or photography. So…

 

 

 

Art

Simpler Complexities

There are times I wonder why I do what I do. I mean, the thought occurs that there are simpler things in life. How did I ever convince myself that I could be a writer?

I cannot retrace the steps, not at this point. Somewhere back in the restructured haze of youth I had this idea that it would be cool to tell stories and get paid for it. I can do that, I can make things up, I do it all the time, all I have to do is write it down and send it in.

Well, I will not retrace the learning that showed me how wrong I was about my abilities. Death by a thousand rejection slips.

I’ll admit, I was baffled. I don’t know about others, but for a time I honestly could not see a difference between what I read in the magazines and what I was putting down on paper. You just tell what happens next. What does logic have to do with it? Life doesn’t follow rules like that, why should fiction? And this is science fiction, so rules should apply even less. I mean, what does it mean, it doesn’t make sense?

Because I did not know any of the rules, not even the rules of submission, I received no feedback in those early attempts, and drifted away into something else. Something I thought would be simpler. As much as I appreciate complexity as such, I was not good at creating it or dealing with it. How I managed to reach adulthood with any capabilities at all is one of those mysteries never to be fully—or even partially—answered. It was never that I thought the rules didn’t apply to me, it was that I never recognized the rules.

And still I managed.

It’s remarkable that I’m even alive.

But there were guardrails. My parents, other adults in my life, the rough outlines of general rules, a certain unexamined caution in my approach to daily life. And limited opportunities to get in over my head. In many ways, I had a sheltered upbringing.

That and I read. (One of my favorite films is Three Days of the Condor and one of my favorite scenes is the one where all these CIA operatives are discussing Robert Redford and how dangerous can he be. He has no field experience, why are we worried. “He reads,” Cliff Robertson tells them. Clearly most of them don’t get it. I loved that. He reads.

I read. A lot.

Not as much as I once did, but I retain more now, so it balances out. While I can’t point to a specific example (other than in a debate or argument) where having read something made a difference in a given situation, the cumulative effect has been like a form of experience.

I grew up at a time in a place soaked in the kind of received nonsense that requires outgrowing. At one time or another I have believed a great many false narratives, especially about the relative value of different people, different kinds of people, and like most of the people around I would let proof of my beliefs dribble from my mouth from time to time.  Some of my contemporaries, no doubt, never grew out of that. For whatever reason, I was fortunate in a disposition that made it impossible for me to categorize anyone I personally knew according to prevailing stereotypes, and by extension whatever group they supposedly represented. Little by little, over time, I left a great many prejudices behind. Can I take any kind of credit for that? I’m not sure. The simplistic veneer of easy discrimination always gives way to the complexness underneath, and I have always preferred to embrace the complex—even when I didn’t understand it. And what I eventually understood is that prejudices, especially towards people, are products of simplistic thinking. The defense of such thinking, when pursued far enough, results in complicated structures that ultimately will not even support themselves. That genuine understanding results in simpler structures that allow us to see clearly.

Because I have learned (eventually) that complex is not the same thing as complicated and that often, perhaps usually, complexity manifests in simple forms. When we examine the properties of a nautilus shell, we see something quite simple in presentation. We can take it in at a glance and appreciate what it is fairly easily. It is a simple thing. But the layers of complexity is contains and offers up with investigation amaze us and lead to a trove of questions which, pursued diligently, offer up a glimpse into the underpinnings of the universe. A simple tune, easy on the ears and elegantly comprehensible in its performance, yields up myriad mathematical, harmonic, and even cultural aspects, an onion in its layers, beautiful complexity that manifests in simple melody and harmony. As noted by Samuel R. Delany, a simple declarative sentence—The door dilated—unpacks in ways that suggest an entire civilization beyond the threshold, all the assumptions necessary to result in the logic of that sentence and what it tells us.

Learning to see the two in collaboration can give us a more satisfying experience of life itself.

As a youth, I was dazzled and delighted by the complexities. Sometimes I mistook complications for complexities. Detail can fascinate, even when it might not add up to anything coherent. A consequence of age and continual observation is that I learned to see the whole where before I might only have seen the components. The art of recognizing and assembling complex ideas and details to create a comprehensible something is the art of recognizing that elegance, truth, and understanding should not confuse. We strive for clarity, which usually presents as simplicity.

But like the misidentification of complexity with complication, we have to learn to tell the difference between simplicity and the simplistic.

Thank you for your attention while I did some sorting.

 

 

 

Art

On The Road, Off The Road, In Between

We attended an out-of-town convention last week, the first we have done together in many years, the first I’ve done since 2015. I made a policy not to go on the road when I have nothing to promote. The exception to that is the chance to see friends who will be at a con or who live nearby and the dates just happen to coincide. In this case, two of our favorite people live in Pittsburgh and seeing them was the deciding factor in choosing to attend Confluence.

Confluence is a small local convention that has in the past been surprising in what it offered, namely the chance to sit down with writers I respect and admire. I’ve had breakfast with Gene Wolfe, longish conversations with Michael Swanwick, met William Tenn (Phil Klass). The panels are of interest and usually the interaction with fans has been on a high level. I like the people who run it. They do a good job.

But it’s quite a drive from St. Louis to Pittsburgh, and while it has become a familiar one, we are older and more susceptible to road-burn. The weather was pleasant enough going up and it remained moderate while we were there, but it was hot coming back and we return to a scorching week. It’s Friday and I’m still recovering.

One off-site event was fascinating. Friday morning, before the con got started, a small group of us drove into the city to tour a church with some amazing murals. St. Nicholas in Millvale. Go to site, take a look. A Serbian artist named Max Vanka painted murals over most of the interior and they are amazing. Done in stages,  from World War I on, they are more than just religious paintings, and they are radiant. There is an organization trying to save them (watercolor over bare wall, the leaching is bad) and I commend you as an art lover to help if you are so moved.

You might wonder, knowing me, why I would marvel and support something like this. Religion aside, which I could not care less for, these are works of art. This is the product of people of skill and imagination. The passion is evident.

After that, we returned to the hotel (out by the airport) and spent a few days being fans. I reconnected with some folks I haven’t seen in some time. And we spent time with our friends, Tim and Bernadette, who are amazing. We needed a longer stay, but alas.

Confluence, as I mentioned, is good convention. They take science fiction seriously and are good to their guests. But I will tell you that I’m now of a disposition that I’m less inclined to just pop into a town, especially that far away, for just the con. Next time we will take more time, do other things, relax. The in-between time from the road is the vital part, even though we generally like traveling.  I want to take things more leisurely in future.

Next up, SF-wise, is Archon. Perhaps I’ll see you there.

Meantime, it’s good to be home….and not moving.

career

Bending the Timestream

At the recent book release event at Left Bank Books, the question was raised if I am ever tempted to bend history. After all, I write fiction. I said no, that sticking to history is important to me.

Thinking about it since, I have to backtrack a little. I took the question to mean am I ever tempted to substitute a wholly fictional history for genuine history. I mentioned James Michener, who wrote dense, lengthy historical novels with such authority that one could be forgiven for believing things actually transpired that way. It is difficult to see where what really happened parts from what Michener intended as story. And surely here and there details get confused or altered or contoured to fit the narrative. Is this bending history?

History itself is somewhat malleable in the telling. Why else would we have so many books about the same events and periods? Interpretation of known events and extrapolation about the gaps in our knowledge occur all the time. What we think it meant plays a huge part. Is this bending history? How are we to regard those works that have been superseded by new information that overwrites what was once thought to be The Facts?

The challenge of historical fiction, it seems to me, is to be true to the spirit of a period. (In much the same way as in science fiction we strive to be true to the idea of science even when creating a whole new branch or reinterpreting for our purposes known science.) If there are events which occurred that form the background of our narrative, we are, I think, obligated to accept them as essential and not throw them out because we would rather something else had happened. If we occasionally put words in a historical character’s mouth he or she never said (because we have them talking to a fictional character that never existed in the first place) we have to be careful not to change that figure’s character. We’re walking on the eggshells of consistency and a careful tread is required.

I realized after the event mentioned above that I could have given a fuller answer. Because I have written alternate history, which is a form that not only bends history but quite often twists it all out of shape, supplanting what happened with a might-have-happened, I should have said that, yes, sometimes I am very tempted to bend history. Just not when I’m trying to write history.

Which leads me to another part of the conversation wherein I posited that historical fiction and science fiction can be seen as the same sort of endeavor, just taken in opposite directions. SF can be taken as history that has not happened yet. To a certain extent, it has to follow the same rules as historical fiction, namely period consistency. And it has to unfold the way we recognize as historically plausible. Furthermore, with historical fiction, it is not inaccurate to say that as we go back in time we are visiting another country. Go back far enough, another world. Further still, and we are in alien territory. The extrapolations necessary to create characters that live and breathe in the world of two, three or ten centuries ago are not that different from imagining humans in a very different world of a thousand years from now.

So a certain amount of bending happens, whether we wish it or not, in order to make room for the actual fiction. The best outcome is a work in which our fictional characters walk among the historical people as if they could really have been there, disturbing the timeline hardly at all. If here and there a bit of a tug or push is necessary to make the story work, well, we should bend it back by the end.

There’s more to consider in this and going forward I will be thinking about it. No doubt the history of my fictions will be bent a little in the process.

career

Going Forward

The new novel is officially launched. Last night at Left Bank Books, in conversation with the owner, Kris, whom I am privileged to call friend, Granger’s Crossing was introduced to the public. The event was streamed and recorded.

It was a terrific evening. Good conversation, a good response from the audience, even a couple of new connections.

Now I have to plan on the next thing. I know what I want to do, the question is, as always, can I pull it off. I’ve already started work on the next Granger novel. As mentioned in the video, I’d originally intended a very ambitious series, but that was a decade ago. It remains to be seen if I have the time and energy to do that. All I can do is what I always do—start and see what happens. Everything I’ve done in this career has come down to a one-step-at-a-time approach that eventually results in something interesting, even special.

But I’d like to say thank you to everyone who showed up last night, both in the flesh and virtually, and further to say thank you to the amazing constellation of people who have helped me all these years. You stun me with your generosity.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know what comes next. The minute I know.

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…And In Other News

A new look.

I know, important things happened, yesterday, today (someone got fired) but here is mine. New website.

Today is the release date for my new novel, Granger’s Crossing, and I feel like being symbolic. There are things I’ve wanted my website to do for a long time and never got around to actually figuring it out. Well, I didn’t this time, either. I must give a tip of the hat to Danielle, who has done this, and will from time to time help me tweak it to make it even more…what I want it to be.

With this book, I’m stepping outside my usual comfort zone. Historical fiction. Oh, I intend to continue doing science fiction, I love it too much, and the last couple of years have seen a renewed presence of my short fiction. But I’m excited about the possibilities going forward.

In time there will be better access to my photography as well. And maybe some other things will pop up. There’s sorting to do.

But in the meantime, please—treat yourself to my new novel. I’m already working on the next one.

Welcome to the new digs.

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Have I Mentioned…?

Did I mention I have a new book? It launches in April, the 25th to be exact, and I’d like to tell you something about.

Granger’s Crossing is a departure for me. At least, at first glance. After decades of writing and publishing science fiction, I took a shot at historical fiction.  In fact, this novel came directly out of another project, which was science fiction.

Quite some time ago I had an idea for an alternate history. I poked around for a good departure point and settled on the Louisiana Purchase. What if, I asked, it had never happened? What if Napoleon had never sold it to the United States? What if the continent had remained divided between France and the United States at the Mississippi?

After digging around I found what I considered a reasonable justification for this scenario and then went on to flesh out the novel, which took me in some fascinating directions.

One thing it gave me was more than a passing appreciation of early St. Louis history. After completing the first novel, I thought (quite arrogantly) hey, I could probably write a halfway decent historical novel.

On such unexamined assumptions surprising things are born.

This is NOT the alternate history. This one is the historical, though that doesn’t mean it is any less speculative.

One of the most under-attended periods of American history seems to be the Revolutionary War in the West. The eastern seaboard draws all our attention. That, after all, is where all the myth-making occurred—Philadelphia, Boston, New York, the Chesapeake, Baltimore. The prominent names are all  there—Washington, Hamilton, Greene. The West seems less important, but the Mississippi River was important and the proximity of Spanish Territory played into strategic equations more than is taught in the average high school history class. 

Even in my home I was surprised at how few people knew there had been a major battle. 

Looking into it led me into a deeper exploration of that whole period of St. Louis history and the shape of a story began to coalesce. 

I have never understood the general indifference toward history, particularly among people who otherwise love good stories. Pick up a volume of history and give it more than a little attention, and stories are everywhere. 

In constructing the plot for Granger’s Crossing, I found a cast of characters almost begging for attention. I had no shortage of actual people living in St. Louis at the time to fill out the substance and flavor of the village. 

At some point in the alchemical process of creating fiction, my hero, Ulysses Granger, took form. Step by step, I found cause for him to be there. I felt comfortable using a murder mystery template, at least to start the action, and once I found The Body, the plot began to take on a life of its own.

Given the circumstances—the Battle of St. Louis, known then as L’Annee du coup, in 1780—I had to establish a reason for my Continental soldier to either stay or return to St. Louis, which led to further research. The issues around the rivers at the time and the various interests involved, American, Spanish, French, British, provided the canvas on which to depict my characters, their motives, the challenges. 

Somewhat to my surprise, the world of young Ulysses Granger took on the familiar attractions of the worlds I had explored in my science fiction. In that, I find historical fiction mirrored by science fiction. In a way, both are history and both require an attention to detail and an ability to imagine displacements from the present. Halfway into the writing, it felt familiar, at least in the sense of examining places and people wholly unfamiliar to me.

(One of the curious things I found is that of all the things one might expect the “Americans” to have brought to the region, the one thing they did provide was record-keeping. A lot of it, although most of it appears to be a byproduct of, essentially, title searches.)

This is exciting. This is one of the chief pleasures of fiction, the chance to see life through eyes other than our own. This is a culture we can only assume to be familiar, but really it is in many ways quite alien and in that quite exotic. 

It took a few years to get this “right,” and by right I mean a satisfying narrative experience. Finding the beginning histories of my home town proved a delight and a pleasure. You can look at this place, where cultures met and intermingled in curious ways, and wonder how we came to be. As the population changed due to immigration and the long-distance decisions by powers not present on the ground, I found this period a kind of oasis in time, a singular setting for an evolving identity. Granger himself is very much an outsider, giving him a vantage point from which to see St. Louis as an observer. Though with Martine, the woman who takes center stage in his life, he is more intimately connected. 

It will be interesting (to me and hopefully others) to see how Granger changes at time goes on. Yes, that means I have more stories about him to tell.

I am delighted that Blank Slate Press is publishing the novel. Their enthusiasm has been infectious. My thanks to them all.

The official release date in April 25th. There will be a bookstore event at Left Bank Books in St. Louis. Call them for details (314-367-6731) and please consider attending.

Art

On Branding

A couple of recent eruptions over literary works have caused me to contemplate a curious aspect of the cultural situation. The move by Roald Dahl’s publisher to “bowdlerize” his children’s books, to render them more palatable to contemporary audiences, and the to-do over the creator of Dilbert’s public expressions of problematic attitudes. These are the most recent after a long string of reactions to artists who turn out to have opinions, beliefs, and political positions seemingly at odds with their work. Or not. Some of the review of said work has all the makings of a minor industry of reassessments based on the failings of the creators.*

There is a legitimate question of what then to do about the work itself once the creator is revealed to be some degree of objectionable. How does the revelation of an odious aspect of the writer/artist affect the work itself? If one once loved the work, what does one do now that one has been soured on the author?

Because the work is what is it is. It hasn’t changed. We enjoyed it once (presumably) and now, because of factors not in evidence in the work itself, it becomes problematic to admit to once liking it. Why should this happen?

I suspect what we’re seeing is a consequence of the way an artist is marketed now. We live in an age of Brands. To a certain extent, this has always been the case. The Auteur becomes the reason to not only buy the work in question but forms part of the pleasure we derive from it. We seek out that artist’s work because it is that artist. We’re buying the brand. The so-called Madison Avenue Effect is in full play. Marketing has centered not on a given work but on the artist.

In a way, this is smart, because no artist is consistently brilliant, and there has to be a way to sell through lesser works. You make it important that the work is by a brand you value. When successful, this branding can transcend an individual work and guarantee sales it might not otherwise garner. This is most evident when the Brand is sublet, so to speak. Authors become a name on a cover of a book written by someone else. Franchise work. We don’t buy those books because of the (considerably) lesser known writer who actually did the work, but because the Brand above the title promises something we value.

The successful branding has the shortfall that the value of the work becomes secondary. The question of how to regard the work in the event of a catastrophe loss of face is rendered awkward, because while a perfectly reasonable disclaimer that the artist is not the work may be valid on one level, if the value of the work has been displaced by recentering that value on the Brand and the Brand is inextricably bound up in the artist, then effectively we have accepted that the artist is the work. They are of a piece and public disgrace, for better or worse, does accrue to the entire package.

Because we have long lived in the age of the Cult of Personality, is should come as no surprise that the money behind the personality have refined their models to achieve the profits of successful Branding. But once done, then the separation of artist and work, at least in terms of popular acceptance, becomes impossible. We each individually must do the moral maths to determine where the value actually resides. If the artist willingly goes along with the marketing process and embraces the idea of Branding, then it should also come as no surprise when with scandal the work is debased in the same breath.

Is there a way out of this for the artist? I don’t know. If successful enough, other forces will come into play to make him/her/they a Brand. Control slips away. But. One can always just keep one’s mouth shut. Or try. The humility to realize that while you may be very good at this one thing such skill and talent does not translate across disciplines. You are not necessarily guru material. And maybe your feelings about certain things really are not elevated above the simply odious because your popularity has handed you a megaphone.

This requires some sorting out. By all of us, really, but very much so by artists with aspirations to Brandhood.

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  • Yes, we already have something like this, but perhaps not to the level of seeing actual university courses wholly focused on the subject and a burgeoning tell-all industry actively rewarding revelations of personal badness confined to personal opinion. It’s a massive seismic movement now that is largely opportunistic, but is well on its way to becoming a full-blown anti-PR industry.
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Year One

A year plus since retirement. October, 2021, I left the regular work-world. It was a harder decision than anyone knew, even me. I’d certainly given myself enough advanced notice, letting my employer know eight or so months in advance. Plenty of time to train replacements, let people get used to the idea. Even me.

Now it’s December of ’22 and I wonder at the time.

I’m sure most people have plans. Plans. “I’m going to do—.” Sure. And then reality swallows everything and what happens happens and maybe some of those plans survive. I’m looking around an office I had every intention of thoroughly cleaning, rearranging, and updating. Well, the piles are in slightly different places, and some of them are different piles than before, but in the main it doesn’t look like I’ve done a thing.

The same goes for the rest of the basement. Attempts have been made, but frankly I need a month in which nothing else makes demands on my attention.

I have, however, managed to clear some dust off my career (writing) and make some headway in getting it back on track. After my novel-writing period more or less crashed and burned, I finally decided to turn back to short fiction, and to my pleasant surprise things picked up. I’ve written and sold a score of new stories. And now I have a new novel coming out in the spring. (Not science fiction, which is a bit of a surprise, though very welcome. More about that later.) In recent weeks a few things have occurred to give me hope that matters will turn around even more. Allow me to leave that vague for the time being.

I include as an element of any advice I dispense to want-to-be writers that of paramount importance for a career is Persistence. Just showing up is inestimably vital. You cannot succeed if you quit. Persistence does not guarantee success, but surrender pretty much guarantees no success. I’m now of the opinion that this is a matter of playing in traffic. Put yourself out there, in the flow, and eventually something will hit you. Not the most coherent plan, but with few exceptions the one most of us are able to act on.

The thing I did not count on is the fading of desire. I remember the fire, the urgency, the firestorm of optimism, and the excitement at the creation of new work. The impatience with the molasses progress of execution. Why should it take so long to get these words down in the right order? Why did everything take so long…

And now, forty years after making the decision to pursue this thing, that burning eagerness has lessened. I’ve become a bit jaded and quite tired. Partly this is a kind of maturity that counsels me to use myself more efficiently, that the fire never added much to achievement. It still takes so much time to write something, to edit it, to shepherd it through the stages of getting it out into the world, and that now it seems to take the same amount of time as it did when in the grip of the fever. Calmer impulses marshal resources to better effect. 

But more than that, I simply don’t suffer from disappointment and disillusion as much. Rejections still hurt, but not as much, and there’s a muffling kind of acceptance that seems therapeutic now. If it will happen, fine, I can only work the machine the best I know how and wait.

I wonder if this is not just the result of callouses grown thicker and that I’m missing out on something that I once felt to be so significant, possibly even the point.

Still, I’m working. I believe I’m writing better than ever, the work that goes out is better. My impatience is the only thing that seems lacking.

And then there is the rest of life…

I’ve begun reading philosophy again. Once upon a time, I was a casual admirer of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I appreciated some of his approaches to what was known as Logical Positivism, part of the Analytical School of modern philosophy. Primarily, it was his (quite arrogant) thesis that all of philosophy’s “problems” stemmed from misapprehension and misconstruals of language. That if we just figured out how to be absolutely clear, we would understand. Granted, he realized later how simplistic this claim was and embarked on a deeper analysis of language structures and their application to questions of the real. 

I have believed for some time that science fiction is at base the most philosophical of literary endeavors, that the primary assumptions in most of it have no relevance outside an attempt at understanding the nature of reality in a unique way that emerges in the array of speculative presentations against which human struggle might be understood in evolutionary terms. In a way, the very idea of The Future has no actual meaning outside a philosophical framework. The best we can say is that something will follow the Now in which we exist. We call that the Future, but it has no material reality that we can examine. By the time there is something to examine, it is no longer The Future, and from our position Now we can only make assumptions about the Future because Now is the Future of a Past we can cite.

That is the exact sort of proposition that one would find in a good piece of science fiction. It is also the sort of thing that informs philosophical propositions.

It relates here, now, in this, because the day I retired I had a speculative framework of what my Future would be like. Ambitions, desires, expectations. (If you think about, life is a science fiction story.)

I haven’t attended to philosophy as such for some time now. It would be fun to get together a group (again) for regular discussions. The last several years have in so many ways challenged common agreements on causality, truth, and commonality itself, and it seems the only sane responses are either to yield to the impossibility of ordering the conceptions of the world (insanity) or work at better understanding in order to create conceptions that reduce the chaos. Ultimately we can only control our own reactions. 

Some of this, for me, comes from having reached a strange place in relation to those past ambitions. I am in many ways more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been, but at the same time I recognize the world around me as a place I do not know how I found. I’m reading older books, my indulgence in history has increased, and yet I still revel in the new voices I encounter, even while the names on the spines fail to spark the kind of thrill I once had regularly seeing a new work by an author with whom I was familiar. I can see clearly how nostalgia can become a trap, one we may not wish to escape. The familiar has such gravity, increasing year by year, distorting our path.

It’s Christmas weekend. The landscape is punctured by rabbit holes. The people you surround yourself with (and who are likewise surrounded by you) are the only guidons to keep you on the solid plane of vital connections. The deep structures of reality (of perceptions) are anchors to a world navigable to the betterment of the soul. The hypotheses of conspiracy wonks are less than the shadows on Socrates’ cave wall. (I will not call them conspiracy theories—that elevates them above their utility and lends credibility where none exists—but at best hypotheses, at worst con games designed to distract from actual living.) I am still with my partner of over 42 years. Snow fell yesterday. The sun is bright today. I’m listening to some very good music (late period Herb Alpert, if you care to know—he seems to have left behind the heavy reliance on “catchy” tunes and clever hooks that made him so popular in the 60s but he is still one of the cleanest horn players around) and I have the capacity to speculate on matters of moment. The trick is to identify what matters.

Wittgenstein, as I noted, asserted that we need find the clearest way to express ourselves in order to “solve” the problems of philosophy. I have no real quarrel with that idea—after all, I’m a writer, story aside my work consists of trying to find clearer ways to say things that might lead to truth—but I would only add that life does not have A Solution. Living is a process, an evolving set of realignments, relocations, and above all recognitions (re-cognitions). There is no single answer, only the ongoing encounter and construction of an imagination that renders chaos meaningful.

Starting on that path can be as simple a thing as cleaning up one’s office. 

Art

Greg Bear

I met Greg Bear (briefly) in 1984. One of the first of that generation of science fiction writer of whom I’d become acquainted initially through their short fiction. 1983 was a banner year in many ways and Bear was nominated for two stories—Hardfought and Blood Music, novella and novelette respectively—and I thought both of them were just wonderful. (There is something elegant about Hardfought that transcends even its subject, a kind of perfect example of form.) We went to our first worldcon (LACon II) and attended his reading. He was presenting material from his new fantasy, The Infinity Concerto, and I was fascinated. (I also made a bit of a fool of myself with a question, but it was funny.) Afterward we talked to him. The substance of the conversation escapes me, but he was generous and kind and clearly an enthusiast about science fiction as a whole.

I read everything I could get my hands on by Greg Bear. Like others for whom I endured quick obsessions, it burned itself out, and I have a handful of yet-to-be-reads by him, but I have always found his scope and the details with which he built his worlds to be utterly marvelous. I have never not had a great time reading a Greg Bear novel.

I think it was The Forge of God that tripped me up. Amazing book, but it struck me at the time as altogether too depressing. I staggered on through a few more and then my time was consumed by other works.

In some ways, Greg Bear could be seen as the American Iain M. Banks. I am also taken by his occasional forays into prose experiments, his playful deployment of language to set tone. His restraint made these experiments more accessible than others who tried similar things. But always it was the world and ideas that were center stage, carried by an array of characters that were well-made for their tasks. (His short stories are often more experimental and run a gamut of styles and approaches.)

We crossed paths again in 1997 and I got to spend a couple hours with the Killer Bs—Brin, Benford, and Bear. I realize, looking back, that these three writers define a segment of a period for me. The possibilities of narrative trajectories and the skillful interjection of humanist qualities too often under-attended in what we call hard SF. Anyway, grand total of personal interaction with Greg Bear…maybe four hours.

In the lexicon of influences in my reading life (and somewhat in my writing career), Greg Bear is up there with Clarke, Pohl, Anderson, and Gerrold. A very specific set of aesthetics. (Silver Age mainly instead of Golden?) He never got trapped into series, he wrote a wide array of subjects and concepts, and there was a joy inherent in his prose that I found compelling. He reminded me of what it meant to be simply a Fan. The Universe is strange, vast, and polychromatic and he wanted the reader to experience that variety. Did he succeed? Only the individual reader can decide that. The merit is in the attempt and the fact that one can see what he was striving for.

He has gone. I was a little shocked to note that he was only three years older than me, near enough to a contemporary to disorient me a bit. I always think of people who are that good and achieve that much as considerably older than me, which is silly but a heuristic I can’t quite seem to shake.

The books matter. I would like to see them all back in print. We move on too quickly sometimes and forget the pleasures of what came before. I urge any and all to find his books and live with them for a while. Strength of Stones is a marvel. Beyond Heaven’s River an unexpectedly rich treat. Eon a journey to unforgettable time[s]. And do not pass up the short stories.

I’m going to be reading some of those I have yet to. One of our Voices has passed. Read him, let him speak.