Sybil's Garage No. 7

(Another bit of shameless cut-and-pastery, I fear, to give you the skinny on Sybil's Garage No. 7, out now with a story by meself...)

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Senses Five Press is pleased to announce the release of Sybil's Garage No. 7.

Where can you find a television that sees five minutes into the future? Where can you find
dragons trapped in a jar and an illness which turns people into glass? Where might you
find families who sell their brainpower to corporations for penny wages, or dead relatives
that sit down for family meals?

Why, in the pages of Sybil's Garage No. 7, of course.

In this seventh issue of the highly acclaimed series, you will find twenty-seven original
works of fiction and poetry from today's top talent, with suggested musical accompaniment,
our trademark design aesthetic, and much more. But be sure to leave a trail of breadcrumbs
on your way into Sybil's Garage, or you may not find your way out.

6"x9", 206pp
ISBN: 978-0-9796246-1-2

Available from:
Senses Five Press

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

BarnesAnd Noble.com

And other fine bookstores. Just ask for it by name.

For more information click here:
http://www.sensesfive.com/publications/sybils-garage-no-7/

Table of Contents:

Fiction

"By Some Illusion" -- Kathryn E. Baker
"Suicide Club" -- Amy Sisson
"The Noise" -- Richard Larson
"A History of Worms" -- Amelia Shackelford
"Thinking Woman's Crop of Fools" -- Tom Crosshill
"The Unbeing of Once-Leela" -- Swapna Kishore
"How the Future Got Better" -- Eric Schaller
"The Telescope" -- Megan Kurashige
"Under the Leaves" -- A.C. Wise
"The Ferryman's Toll" -- Sam Ferree
"The Tale of the Six Monkeys' Tails" -- Hal Duncan
"The Poincar� Sutra" -- Anil Menon
"Kid Despair in Love" -- M.K. Hobson
"My Father's Eyes" -- E.C. Myers
"An Orange Tree Framed Your Body" -- Alex Dally MacFarlane
"The Watcher Thorn" -- Cheryl Barkauskas
"Other Things" -- Terence Kuch
"The Dead Boy's Last Poem" -- Kelly Barnhill

Poetry

"Seven League"s -- Lyn C. A. Gardner
"One October Night in Baltimore" -- Jaqueline West
"Indian Delight" -- Alexandra Seidel
"Candle for the Tetragrammaton" -- Sonya Taaffe
"Emigrant" -- Linsdey Duncan
"Schehirrazade" -- Amal El-Mohtar
"The Hyacinth Girl" -- Adrienne J. Odasso
"Pathways Marked in Silver" -- Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
"Rain " -- Juliet Gillies

Non-Fiction

"Glourious Homage: Quentin Tarantino's Love Letter to Cinema" -- Avi Kotzer

http://www.sensesfive.com/publications/sybils-garage-no-7/

Wizard's Tower Press

I'm guessing anybody reading this will already know it, but on the off-chance you missed Cheryl Morgan's announcement over the weekend, here's the skinny:

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Introducing Wizard's Tower Press

Wizard’s Tower Press is a new small press publisher specializing in science fiction, fantasy and related literature. Founded by Hugo Award winning critic, Cheryl Morgan, the company aims to do the following:


* Make long out of print works available again as e-books
* Help authors and small presses exploit the e-book market
* Publish anthologies highlighting new and minority writers
* Publish an online literary review magazine, Salon Futura, which will launch at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention


Much has been written of late about the impact of e-books on the publishing business. Regardless of their impact on new titles, however, there can be little doubt that they provide a cheap, low risk means of making books available to the public. For books that are long out of print, this is an attractive option. Sadly much of what has been done so far has had low quality standards. Scanning and automated conversion alone result in an inferior product that gives e-books a bad name. Wizard’s Tower Press aims to ensure that all of its books are properly proofread and corrected before publication.

Markets such as the Kindle and iBooks are simple ways to bring e-books to market, but their catalogs are already vast and growing quickly. To sell effectively, a specialist genre requires a dedicated online market where readers will find the sort of books they are looking for, and where publishers can effectively promote their wares to their target audience. Wizard’s Tower will be happy to provide such a service to any e-book, whether they publish it or not.

A key element of the Wizard’s Tower strategy will be Salon Futura, a monthly online literary review magazine that will highlight the best and most interesting releases in the science fiction and fantasy fields. The magazine is currently open to submissions for critical articles, book review articles and cover art. Initial pay rates will be 5c/word, up to a maximum of 2000 words. The first issue will be available at the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention (Aussiecon 4) in Melbourne, Australia (September 2010).

Everyone involved in Wizard’s Tower loves physical books too. Very small presses cannot compete effectively with large, multinational publishing houses when it comes to novels, but we do aim to publish a limited number of special interest anthologies. Our first publication will be Dark Spires, a collection of fantastic stories from the Wessex region of England edited by Colin Harvey. It is scheduled to be launched at BristolCon in Bristol, UK on November 6th 2010. It will also be available as an e-book.

Wizard’s Tower press is owned and managed by Cheryl Morgan and based in the UK. Cheryl has won two Hugo awards for her online writing. She is the non-fiction editor for the Hugo, World Fantasy and Locus Award nominated Clarkesworld Magazine. Cheryl is also a director of San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions Inc, and of the Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation.

For further information please email info@wizardstowerpress.com or visit the website at http://wizardstowerpress.com/.

Yellow Face: The Documentary

Courtesy of Racbending.com, here's a great little documentary on Yellowface, made in response to the segregationist casting on M. Night Shyamalan's adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Must-see.

Look! Look! I'm On The Telly!

The Finnish Nine O'Clock News covers Finncon, with a bit of blather from yours truly on strange fiction.

Thought for the Day

After I posted up the mp3 reading of this, the opening of "The Parables of Jesus Motherfucking Christ, Live at the Palladium," a wee while back, someone commented to request a transcript. I figured what the hell. And it is Sunday today, after all, so it seems apt. So here ye go.

The Parable of the Sower
So this guy goes out one day to sow some seed. Not wild oats, mind, cause that would be a whole other parable. No, he's sowing his seed in a good Christian way -- no sex involved unless it's absolutely necessary. Or with altar boys. But, anyway, he's scattering his seed all willy-nilly, this way and that way. Just a-scattering his seed.

[Canned laughter]

Hey, come on. Get your minds out of the sewer. I don't mean sowing his seed that way either. Like in Kleenex.

[Canned laughter]

So he's sowing his seed, and some of it's falling on the rocks, where it's only going to get eaten by the birds, and some of it's falling on thin soil, where it ain't gonna grow for shit, and some of it's falling in the weeds, where it's just gonna get choked. Right?

But you know what? Some of it actually does fall on good ground, and fuck me if he doesn't get a crop that's a hundred times what he'd sown. Well, OK, maybe sixty. Well, OK, we'll call it thirty. So I'm exaggerating for effect. Sue me. The point is, he gets a fucking decent-sized crop just from scattering his seed -- behave yourselves -- scattering his seed willy-nilly. Cause some of it fell on soil that was really fucking fertile.

Cause it was thick as shit.

[Canned laughter]

Yeah, you hear me, don't you?

The Parable of the Weeds
Anyway, this guy's sowing seed in his field -- same guy, different field. And this is good seed too, none of your low-grade cheap-ass birdseed. This is gooooood seed, man, not baaaaad seed. It's never gonna play with Nick Cave, this seed, no; this is not the sort of seed that, you know, gives seed a bad name. Cause seed does get a bad rep, you know. Like, if I was seed, I'd be pissed off, all those people talking about how this or that has gone to seed. Or how this or that is seedy. Like: yeah, thanks, use me as a benchmark of dissolution, why don't you? Porn, drugs, jazz, pretty much anything the panty-waist prudes don't approve of -- that's seedy, right? Man, if I was seed, I'd be starting a pressure group or something. Like the Pip and Kernel Association Against Defamation or something. Lay off the seed, motherfuckers. Stop using using our fucking natural state of being as an insult.

That's so gay.

[Canned laughter]

Yeah, I'm glad you got that. Some audiences don't.

Anyway. So, this is non-seedy seed this guy is sowing. I don't know what the fuck that even means, but if it's good seed, and being seedy is bad, then that must mean this is, like, the opposite of seed, right? Like the opposite of human would be... inhuman, I guess, so this is inseed. Which is good, apparently, unlike inhuman. Go figure. Or maybe... never mind.

Anyway, the guy plants his good seed, and goes to bed all pleased with himself. But in the middle of the night, some fucker sneaks into his field and sows some bad seed. He sows some weeds among the wheat. Worse, he sows some weed. Cause we all know weed seed is bad seed, right? Can't get much seedier than that.

[Canned laughter]

And of course when it sprouts up, there's all this motherfucking weed among the wheat. One of the guy's servants comes to him and says, boss, boss, there's all this motherfucking weed among the wheat. It's all over the place and nobody knows how it got there? Didn't you use good seed?

Goddamned devil must've planted it in the dead of night, says the man.

He'd normally be the type to say, goshdarn, but he reckons goddamned is just objective description in the devil's case. Like a police report. Subject is goddamned male, approximately five-eleven, ruddy complexion, last seen wearing the still-living skins of the victims of God's wrath. But anyway...

Devil must've planted it in the dead of night, says the man.

That's probably not a good excuse to use if the FDA find cannabis amongst your corn, by the way: the devil snuck in and planted it in the dead of night. Trust me on this. Been there, done that.

[Canned laughter]

So, yeah, the guy's servant asks him if he wants it pulled up.

No, no, no, says the guy. Don't do that. You might end up pulling up the wheat while you're at it, and then where would we be? No, just let it grow. We'll keep our fingers crossed no one notices and then, come harvest time, we just make sure the harvesters know what to do. Gather up the wheat and stack it in the barn as per usual. And then collect all the weed and tie it in bundles.

And then we can... I dunno... burn it?

[Canned laughter]

You've still got the four-way party-bong, right?

[Canned laughter]

The Parable of the Rich Fool
So, yeah, in the end, this rich guy grows himself a good crop. Only he thinks to himself, what the fuck do I do now? I got nowhere to store it. But he thinks awhile and he realises: I know what I can do; I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, with space for all my grain, all my goods. He doesn't have to think that long a while to realise this, I gotta say, cause it's not exactly brain science, but yeah, he makes his plans and he's real pleased with em. I'll be sorted for years, he thinks. Time to take things easy -- eat, drink and be merry.

Sounds nice, right?

Only, get this... God comes along and says, You fool! Yeah, just like that. Deep voice. Sorta like a villain on some '30s radio serial. You fool! Or like Ming the Merciless. Klytus, you fool! Gordon has escaped and is on his way to Prince Barin in Arboria. Although that's not what God says, obviously. No, he's like: You fool! This very night you will die! And then who will enjoy the fruits of your labours, the goods that you have gathered for yourself.

In other words, how d'you like them apples, huh? Huh? Huh?

How d'you like them apples, motherfucker? Huh? Huh?

[Canned laughter]

Jim Jefferies

Sometimes I love BlogPatrol, when you click through to a site that's linked to you and find something like this:

New BSC Review Column

Yep, as the title might subtly suggest, I just posted my latest BSC Review Column, in which I basically try to explain why Avatar: The Last Airbender is guilty of "cultural appropriation" and is still motherfucking awesome, while M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender is essentially blood libel and segregation on the silver screen.

Another day, another shitstorm in the SF Café. A couple of months back, some of you might recall, it was one Young Turk turned Old Guard with an ill-fated article on international SF, a Caesar of dubious pontification that met a Senate of aggravated responses. Others said all that has to be said about the article at the time, and it’s sorta blown over now, so I’m not going to add my dagger; but in a couple of the responses (or responses to responses,) as the entrails slipped to the ground, fingers were pointed and the dread words whispered: cultural appropriation. As in the quote above, the link was made.

Yes. Another day, another shitstorm in the SF Café. Only today it’s a shitstorm about a Hollywood adaptation of a well-loved cartoon series — the film being M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, the original series being Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and aired over Nickelodeon. And the shitstorm? Well, that’s circling around a problem that emerged the moment its cast was announced, with three of the four main characters being utterly whitewashed in the eyes of many fans of the original series. In the world of the show, the three heroes have roots clearly riffing off Buddhist/Shaolin monks (Aaang) and Inuit/Eskimo tribes (Katara and Sokka,) while the antihero/villain Zuko’s culture equally clearly riffs of feudal Japan; and the characters are drawn with appropriate skin tones. In the film, three out of the four are played by lily-white European-American actors. You can guess which one is played by an actor with actual Asian roots, right? Only the antihero/villain has dark skin, funny enough.

Forget airbending, the fans said; this is racebending...