Vanished Author Hasn't Quite

I just became aware that a one time reader of my novels has put a post on his blog today titled “Another quest to find a seemingly vanished author of my youth ends.” The post is here in its native form. In days to come it will wander deeper, I suspect. I would point to the single post itself, but when I isolate it, it causes my machine to hang. Suffice it to identify the blog. The blogger styles himself pyropyga and lists the Chicago Speculative Fiction Community as his website. That site is here. Now while all that follows is available on this site, I am indeed eager to be known to exist, what with two new novels out and a third about to issue. Therefore I will repeat here that more is to be learned about me at Dwarf Planet Press. And my Amazon.com author page is here. Amazon also lists my two latest novels. I’ve been submerged, to be sure, but now, in the Chicago community, evidently, I’ve been found. And delighted to be found!

ADDED LATER: Thanks to James Davis Nicoll's tip—he is the author of the actual post mentioned above—I now know that the post is available directly here—and without hangs of any sort. The blog is called More Words, Deeper Hole. James Nicoll's base is in Canada, but the blog platform he uses, livejournal.com, permits the sharing of entries between friends. The Chicago linkage I discovered and reported on above turns out to have been one of Nicoll's friends. The mysteries of the Internet deepen. In any case, thanks to one brief post yesterday, Ghulf Genes had an unaccustomed surge of traffic. What Me Worry? Among the visitors was David Dyer-Bennet of the Minnesota Fantasy and SF community. David wondered about rumors that I'd once been a Minnesota author. The list he maintains is here. Yes to that question too. Ah, those crisp Minnesota winters, and the crunch of the cross-country skis over snow...

Not Another Anniversary, Surely?

Afraid so. Ghulf Genes turns one year old today. We had a lot of laughs preparing the celebratory cake. It was intended to look quite different, but in one of those series of events that happen even to seasoned bakers, the thing just would not hold still, and the fixes wouldn’t stay fixed...which somewhat reminded me of the object of the celebration.

Thematics and Appearance

The theme of Ghulf Genes, the blog, comes from the central theme of Ghulf Genes, the novel. The novel came first. Its collective hero is a “peculiar” family based more on shared values than on blood, thus on a shared culture and a will to maintain it. Our own experience as a family gave me the initial idea. As participants in international student exchange we came to enroll young people who were, at first, total strangers into our own clan. They became real children for us. But this did not happen automatically or invariably. Something more played a role, shared values, and not least mutual choice. This insight developed from there. Eventually came the notion of genetics “raised an octave,” as it were, from the physical to the next level above—and the notion that culture itself has a code as flexible, tenacious, and as unforgiving as exists beneath it to support the physical.

When I changed the look of this blog a few days ago, I thought that I’d make this more explicit here and in the header. It might give some minimal orientation to new visitors—and I thought it appropriate now that the blog is approaching its first anniversary. The color change? Since I became the owner of a camera last July, I’ve put up more pictures. I operate a private test blog which uses the Scribe theme; that thematic has a similar beige coloration. Testing photos there, I found that they looked better against a non-white background—hence the change.

In Search of Anna Magna

It is my pleasure to announce that the second volume in the series, Symphony in Ghulf Major, has now been published and is available. It is In Search for Anna Magna. This book continues the Ghulf saga and presents a view of human endeavors (and tribulations) in the generations that follow the first emergence of Ghulfdom into view, the subject of Ghulf Genes the novel.

First availability. This book may be purchased directly from Lulu, our distributor and printer, here. The cost is $31.51 plus shipping. The book is also available from Amazon at the same price—and more rapidly. Amazon stocks copies. Alas, we make much less money on copies bought from Amazon than from Lulu—but be assured: what pleases me personally is readership. I use words like “our” and “we” not to suggest my own royal self but because this project is that of our family enterprise, Editorial Code and Data, Inc.

Now some comments on these first two volumes. Most readers of Ghulf Genes consider that book a little difficult at first because of its breathtaking compass and deliberate beginning: the background, the history of the Ghulf clan, of societal changes in the future, and the development of spaceflight are first outlined in multiple briefer takes featuring minor characters. In our internal discussions of this book, someone once likened Ghulf Genes to a space rocket. After the countdown ends, it just sits there for a while, fire gushing from its rear, but then, slowly, it begins to lift into the vertical. And then, very rapidly indeed, look out! It really takes off. And the combined experience is awesome.

In Search of Anna Magna is much more accessible. The book begins with a great trauma that marks the lives of the principal characters—and of humanity as a whole. The conflict emerges at once. The reach of the novel, however, is at least as extensive as that of Ghulf Genes. Before we’re done, we’ve seen human settlements on a number of planets, and phenomena that were maddeningly incomprehensible at the beginning (i.e., in Ghulf Genes) are beginning to sort. But the readers of Anna Magna see everything through the eyes of Ghulfs—as this clan, vastly extended by now, takes the lead, again, in the exploration of the outer limits.

And then there is Anna's Song—but before I get to that, I have to finish proofing its often magical pages...

Characters Take on Life

The real lord of the universe is Habit.

Lotti Krüger Ptievich Ghulf

It is a peculiar experience to read something you’ve written multiple years ago, having forgotten a great deal of the environment depicted, and then encountering one of your big characters saying something witty, and then thinking, Gosh, Lotti had a sharp tongue. The quote is from the second volume of the Ghulf series, a novel entitled In Search of Anna Magna... Coming soon to a store near you...

Ghulf Genes - the Novel

It gives me pleasure to announce that the novel (it long predates this blog) is finally available to the public in printed form. I’ve had occasion to mention that work in a post I wrote here intended to explain the name of this blog (“The Name of the Rose”). There I recite the troubles I had finding a publisher—and this despite the fact that I’d sold four novels, a short story collection, fourteen novellas or short stories, and an article on science fiction all to conventional, commercial publishers. I finished Ghulf Genes in the summer of 2001 and began to market it right into the 9/11 mess. Ghulf Genes has a positive view of aspects of Islamic culture and a somewhat dark view of the American Empire. Alas. The novel is also long. My time wasn’t right. But the book is good—indeed better than anything else I’ve ever done except, perhaps, the two other novels that, together with Ghulf Genes, form a trilogy. I call that three-some Symphony in Ghulf Major. The other two novels, which I will also publish in the same manner in the coming weeks, are called In Search of Anna Magna and Anna’s Song. Do not be alarmed. The photo shows the front and back of the same book. It’s a single volume of 531 pages.

Now for the particulars. The official publisher of these is or will be Editorial Code and Data, Inc., a company in the reference publishing business that I started in 1989. The producer and currently only distributor is Lulu Enterprises, Inc., a company that might be described, wrongly, as a vanity press. They produce a huge number of books, albums,videos, and CDs (musical and otherwise)—for individuals and corporations—and may represent a new phenomenon in publishing. The author gets nothing up front except (and this I value most of all at my age) the satisfaction of knowing that the work is out there. I haven’t had to pay a dime to get this book to those of you who might be interested. To be sure I’m quite expert in electronic modes of preparing manuscripts for printing. I’ve typeset many, many much more complex books filled with statistics and graphics in my time. I expended labor, not money. But if I wish Ghulf Genes to become available through book stores and Amazon, I’ll have to fork over $75 for what Lulu calls global distribution. And I’ll gladly spend that money.

I will soon display the book and access to it permanently on the front page of this blog. For now, the access point is here. The price is $29.24. As you might expect, I’ll have more postings on this subject for those of you interested in “breaking through,” as it were. The mechanics of this project I’ll feature on LaMarotte, where that subject rightly belongs.

With this I’ve done my bit for Ghulf Genes, the novel, and the rest does not weigh on my mind.

Another Divide

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.
[Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5]

The sense that times are out of joint is present at all times and in every clime, so much so that it seems to be a defining marker of existence. The root of the feeling is that the social landscape is disorganized; we can always trace it to groups, to institutional constraints—or lack thereof. Along with this feeling comes a totally unjustified nostalgia for another kind of order. In democratic times we yearn for royalty, in royal times for liberty, in isolated times for great families, for coherent clans; in times when families dominate, we long for privacy.

Disorder leads to polarization. Here is how: somebody must be responsible for it, and that somebody ain’t me. So it must be those people. And looking at those people, we soon recognize their common traits, ignore the traits we share with them, and now we have someone to blame. But our own desperate coping just adds to the disorder. And those people are doing the same thing. So it goes.

There is a kind of comfort in being, say, a Guelf or Ghibelline. We’re born into one or the other, we learn the ways of our party and find them, therefore, natural. There is a significant sense of exposure and solitude associated with rising above these natural polarizations, like being on a mountaintop without adequate clothing, the wind tearing through the sky. Not only can it be seen by others as indifference, but, to remain detached, one has to practice indifference voluntarily. You can see from the mountaintop but you can’t join in the melee, and it is precisely in the joy of battle that we experience solidarity with our fellow man.

These are real problems. The only way to see reality sharply is by reason, but the polarization that takes place is guided by feeling, by selective viewing, and by shallow penetration. To see things clearly produces the state of indulgence suggested by Madame de Staël: Tout comprendre rend très indulgent*. When people are irritated, they don’t want to be rendered indulgent; they want to be confirmed and want to be fed red meat. This, of course, applies to me as well as anybody else. That’s why I describe this situation as a problem.

As Hamlet says, “O cursed spite!” He expresses precisely the feeling I often have when, stopping in the middle of a passionate rant I realize what I am doing. Damn! The very state to which I aspire demands quite often that I stop indulging in passion and render myself indulgent of bottomless stupidy which, not surprisingly, does take on the semblance of unmitigated evil.

This much by way of trying to transcend the feelings of upwelling ire aroused in me by reading today’s morning paper.

* * *

These days a phrase like Guelfs and Ghibellines may appear like ostentatious display of learning. In the modern manner, I apologize for that. The words refer to what today we would call political parties. Guelfs, to be sure, have a somewhat more intimate relationship to Ghulf Genes because, long ago, I deliberately named a fictional, futuristic family—which was also much more than a family—for the Guelfs. Indeed, my own Ghulfs also had color-based branches, just like, in Italy, the Guelfs came in white and black varieties. But back to the background.

During the so-called Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes; and the descendants of these became one branching of the upper layers, the aristocracies, of Italy. Both of these names were originally of Germanic origin, the Guelfs were from the Bavarian house of Welf, the Ghibellines came from the Hohenstaufen line, the name itself derived from their castle of Waiblingen. Two important parties or factions rose from these roots, divided politics, and produce endless civil wars in the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, dominated, as it was, by small city states. The Ghibellines were the party of empire, thus associated with the Holy Roman Emperor from the time of Charlemagne (the first of these) down through time. The Guelfs, by contrast, were aligned with the Papacy, which was the counter-weight to the imperial power. The world tends always to divide into parties, hence my choice here of these two—especially because we are in Ghulf territory here, and, despite aspirations to transcendence, I remain a Ghulf.

* * *

Last, one sentence in that speech of Hamlet's bothered me enough so that I rendered it in modified English for easier grasp. It is:

.... So, gentlemen,
I recommend myself to you, I do.
And what a poor man, like Hamlet, can show
You in the way of love and friendship,
In that, God willing, there shall be no lack.”

Presumptuous? Come on... All poets belong to the same union.
--------------------
*That phrase is often misquoted. The correction necessary is indicated here.

Shades of Mordor

We were talking long-distance with Michelle in Paris. These conversations go on for an hour or so. Along the way we talked about her problems in commenting on blogs. Brigitte then let slip the fact that I operate three blogs, not just one, and that one of those has a French name, La Marotte. Michelle’s reaction to that name deserves a special posting by itself, but today I’ll stick with another. In the course of this conversation I felt obliged to explain the reasons for these blogs, and I did so, pointing to the main thematics of the other two. But Ghulf Genes, I said, is kind of different because it was the first and no restrictions of subject matter apply. Michelle said: “Oh, I see. One blog to rule them all.” This produced a good deal laughter, and I thought I’d share her spontaneous reaction. Her mind works like mine. Pictures flash up...

And, of course, there is the fact that, still in her teens, Michelle persuaded me to read Lord of the Rings, which I resisted for the longest time—only to become a devoted follower of Tolkien’s myths. Our daughters have been active in introducing us to the new and splendid in music and in literature. Monique introduced me to Gabriel Garcia Márquez (A Hundred Years of Solitude) and to Richard Neuhaus (The Naked Public Square). Michelle is now working on me (a decade and counting?) to read the Harry Potter series, or at least to accept J.K. Rowling. I understand that The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be making it across the Atlantic for me to read, and I agreed to do so. Is that the sound of someone undermining the massive stone walls of my castle?

In the meantime I’ve been enriched by the thought that three blogs are like three magic rings. And there is one that rules them all. How many more blogs must I start to reach fullness of measure. Let me grab a slip of paper and calculate this out. Let’s see, 9 - 3 = 6. Well. Miles to go before I sleep.

The Name of the Rose

Within my own family the name of this blog is instantly recognizable as the title of a futuristic novel I wrote ten years ago. I began to market it just a month before 9/11 changed the cultural landscape, although my failure to find a publisher, I hasten to add, had perhaps little to do with that event. The book is rather long and, while technically a work of science fiction, it crosses the boundaries of the genre. This isn’t the case of a would-be author who’d always longed to publish a novel. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s I’d published a number of novels, a collection of stories, and a series of novellas that all appeared in science fiction magazines. I have what is called a “name” in the field—not a big name, but there it is. A search on my name on Google will show that my books are still out there, used copies still available from Amazon.com. Nor did I lack access to publishers in 2001. Several saw the book but chose to decline. Too bad. Ghulf Genes is probably the best work I’ve ever done. Not only that. It is the first in a three-volume work that I’d tentatively named Symphony in Ghulf Major. What I had to say in that series included views that did not resonate with the times, including a favorable take on Muslim culture and a very dark view of the future American empire in the twenty-fourth century and beyond.

The subject of the novel is a fictitious clan, the Ghulfs, whose involvement in space travel is complex and long-lasting—but that’s the outer wrapper. The real essence of the book is the family saga itself, traced across several generations in three separate novels. One of the requirements laid on every Ghulf who wished to participate in the family in a substantial way was that he or she file with Ghulf Records an annual report—by computerized means, of course. When members of my family began to blog in earnest, this suggested Ghulf Records to me, and, consequently, led to my own choice of naming this record after the book in which the clan is introduced to the world at large.

As for the content of this blog, enough of it exists now so that neither introduction nor comment is really required. The perspectives offered here are philosophical, by and large, appropriate for a person of my age and experience. Beyond writing science fiction off and on, I’ve had careers in the military, in big business, and in big government (I was once the nation’s Garbage Man at the Environmental Protection Agency). I’ve been an independent consultant, a self-taught computer wizard, and ran my own small publishing business, Editorial Code and Data, Inc.—which continues on without me. My education, such as it was, centered on literature and history, but most of my work focused on economics, markets, and technological development.

My real interests have always been cosmic, however—and that occasionally bleeds through here although I do try to keep things accessible.

____________

Picture credits: Karen's Whimsy, reachable here.