A rainy morning in a west end town…
I don’t always get to things as soon as I should. I have friends who send me things to read or discuss, and I set them aside meaning to give them proper attention, more than just a quick cursory glance and a comment. What this usually means is that sometimes months can pass before I do anything, which is not good. However, I do usually get to things. . .

A while ago Jeff VanderMeer emailed me a copy of a new story of his “Three Days in a Border Town”, which is due to appear in Deborah Layne and Jay Lake’s Polyphony 4 later in the year. For some reason, though I’ve read and enjoyed Jeff’s collection Secret Life and a handful of his stories, I just didn’t get around to reading the story. In some ways I think that might have been a good thing. Why? Because this morning I got to have one of those special moments when a reading experience synchs up in an unexpected way with your environment, and makes the story resonate even more.

It’s cold and wintry this morning, dark clouds looming overhead and freshly fallen rain on the streets. I start work early, so it was still dark when I sat down in a warm cafe to have breakfast, looking out at neon reflecting off the wet street, to read “Border Town”. It’s a touching, eerily beautiful piece of work about a loner coming out of the desert in search of the world’s only surviving city, a woman who has lost everything she holds dear and travels from dusty border town to dusty border town looking for a hint, a clue as to how to get to her goal. Along the way VanderMeer gives tantalising glimpses of a fallen future world, an environment ravaged, and a civilisation living in its own ruins. It’s great power, though, is that VanderMeer doesn’t lay things out in deadening detail, instead leaving the reader with the room to imagine what lead to this, what might be behind there, what that might mean. Powerful, romantic stuff. And somehow, the desert of the story complemented the empty streets of my morning perfectly, resonating. What more could you ask of a story, or of a morning?

Bestseller?
The HarperCollins website lists the Top 20 Dymocks SF/Fantasy Bestsellers for the week ending July 10, 2004. Selected highlights include:

# 9. The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams
# 15. Abhorsen, Garth Nix
# 16. The Locus Awards, Jonathan Strahan & Charles N. Brown

I can recommend all three books (I’m actually reading Sean’s book right now), and am reasonably pleased with the sales on the anthology.

In his blog, IC London, IC France, Howard Waldrop begins a discussion of this year’s retro-Hugo Awards. They’re something I have problems with, but Howard is always worth reading and, who knows, he might even persuade me to vote.

It may not look like it from a distance, but being an anthologist can be hard work, and doing year’s bests takes a lot of time and effort. Now, no-one who does it that I know is complaining, but you do need to take the time every now and then to appreciate the good moments. So, many, many congrats to Kathryn and David on this piece of news. You should all go buy their book, and then check out Gardner’s too (I know you’ve already got mine). In fact, this year more than any other of late, is a good year to pick up the various ‘year’s bests’ and compare them. I think they all have something good to offer.

I don’t know why this makes me happy, but it does. Paul Di Filippo has a new website at www.pauldifilippo.com, which is a good thing. I find Di Filippo a fascinating writer to follow. In some ways, he reminds me of Elvis Costello. Very prolific and just as likely to produce something you love as something that leaves you going “huh?”. It makes it exciting to check out what he does. The only flaw in the site, for me, is the lack of a ‘Forthcoming work’ section. But, you can’t complain. Speaking of Di Filippo, the good folks at ibooks are reprinting his novel Fuzzy Dice in October. If you don’t have the PS Publishing edition, then grab this when it goes by.

On unrelated news, there’s a good interview with Jack Dann over at SciFi.com. He talks about his cool new novel, and other good stuff. Worth reading.