I was checking some articles on my old web site and was struck by how, well, for want of a better word, useless some older posts on the business of writing were. I mean, take the one on manuscript preparation, for example. Perfectly good advice…for 1997. Back when most venues were still paper-only and email was only good for querying, and not always then. Now it’s email attachments or online submission forms in all cases except a handful, though when I first started submitting the publishers were fighting those kind of changes tooth and nail and more teeth. That was then, and not everyone could wrap their heads around the notion that the way it was didn’t necessarily reflect the way it would be. Continue reading
Category Archives: Collection
Review: Beaker’s Dozen by Nancy Kress
BEAKER’S DOZEN by Nancy Kress, Tor Books, August 1998, Hc, 352 pp., ISBN: 0-312-86537-6
Nancy Kress is known as an Idea writer (Capital I with fanfare and flourishes) with a tendency toward polemic. I don’t think the reader can find better examples of both traditions often in the same story as are found in BEAKERS DOZEN. I also don’t think there’s a better capsule summary of both the potential rewards and pitfalls of either approach.
Kress starts the collection with her Hugo Award winning “Beggars in Spain.” This is arguably Kress’s most well known story, and it’s also a good introduction to her fascination with biotech. As the story opens, Roger and Elizabeth Camden are meeting with a geneticist to order the enhancements they wish for their planned child, rather like a young couple of an earlier time might meet the architect of the house they wished to build. The enhancement that Roger–but not Elizabeth—wants most is sleeplessness. He gets his way, with one glitch: instead of a single daughter, two are conceived. One with the enhancement, Leisha, and one, Alice, without. Continue reading
Ghost Trouble: The Casefiles of Eli Mothersbaugh
Pardon the commercial interruption, but I believe that some of you out there might actually want to know this. After several months delay, I’ve finally assembled the complete (and I do mean complete) collection of the Eli Mothersbaugh Ghost Hunter series in ebook (Nook and Kindle) edition. This includes all seven of the Eli Mothersbaugh stories previously published plus five stories written especially for this edition. And by “especially written” I mean just that. The intent all along was to include these stories as originals in a collection of the Eli Mothersbaugh series, and that’s what I’m doing. I won’t guarantee that there will never be another new EM story after this, but in my mind the series arc is complete, and right now I can’t see writing any more of them. I consider this the definitive edition. Continue reading
Richard Parks 