From WorldCon…
Most people I know were running around with cameras at WorldCon. I had one, I just didn’t use it. Still here are two recently developed snaps.

This one was taken just after I’d had lunch with Sharyn and signed the contracts for the new book. We’d been wandering around the huckster’s room and stopped to chat with Kelly, and got this photo taken.

And this one was taken in the Locus suite, with Charles posing for fun. I actually think it’s a cool photo.

Ta da!
When I was in Boston my publisher, Byron Preiss, gave me a sneak peek at the covers for next year’s year’s best volumes. When I’d first heard the artists would be the winners of a competition in a digital arts magazine I was a little nervous, but I couldn’t be happier with the final result. Both volumes look way cool, and I can’t wait to see the final books when they came out next February.

I struggle to read when travelling on aircraft, but with deadlines looming and more than 60 hours of transit time to fill, I tried to read a few books at least. Of the batch I attempted the book I’d been most looking forward to was Michael Chabon’s second McSweeney’s anthology, McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. While I thought the first book was a little uneven and somewhat over hyped, it still had some top notch work, and I’d hoped the second book would be even better.

When I looked down the table of contents and saw Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Steve Erickson, Stephen King, Roddy Doyle, Poppy Brite, China Mieville, Joyce Carole Oates, and Peter Straub listed I really thought I was in for a treat. However, overall, the book was a disappointment. A lot of the stories were unfocussed and just didn’t add up to much. There are also a couple I need to re-read to be sure what I think. Still, the highlight of the book is a new novelette by Stephen King, “Lisey and the Madman”. Clearly echoing King’s recent concerns about writers and their safety, the story tells of the attempted murder of a famous writer, as told by his wife. It’s powerful, moving and heads like a freight-train to its conclusion. Unfortunately for year’s best anthologists, it’s basically a mainstream story, but every reader should try to check it out. I thought Joyce Carole Oates distinctly weird “The Fabled Light House at Vina Del Mar” was the best weird horror story I’d read in years, China Mieville’s almost metafictional “Reports of Certain Events in London” was just engagingly weird, and Peter Straub’s “Mr Aickman’s Air Rifle” was as good as anything he’s written of late. For my money those four stories alone make the book worth the price of admission.

One of the things some reviewers will probably respond to is Chabon’s editorial, which suggests that the role of book’s like the McSweeney’s anthologies is to reinvigorate the modern short story. I’m not sure it’ll do that, and I’m not sure it’s really important what anthologists say in their introductions, but his book is worth approaching (if with some caution).

PS: Readers eager for a second instalment of Chabon’s “The Martian Agent” will be disappointed. Apparently deadlines didn’t permit, but perhaps the tale will be picked up in the next book.