Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 20

Table of Contents

A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica

by Catherynne M. Valente

Birdwatcher

by Garth Upshaw

Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games

by Justin Howe and Jason S. Ridler

An Interview with John Picacio

by Jeff VanderMeer

why i'm here

Art by Cuson

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2008

www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica

Catherynne M. Valente

Lot 657D

Topographical Map of the Ross Ice Shelf (The Seal Map)

Acuña, Nahuel, 1908

Minor tear, upper left corner. Moderate staining in left margin.

Landmass centered, Argentinean coast visible in the extreme upper quadrant. Latitude and longitude in sepia ink. Compass rose: a seal indicating north with her head, east and west with her flippers, south with the serrated ice floe on which the beast is situated. Legend in original handwriting. Ross Ice Shelf depicted with remarkable precision for the era, see Referent A (recent satellite imaging) for comparison.

The 1907 expedition to the Antarctic continent was doubly notable: it was on this virgin crossing that young Nahuel Acuña, barely free of university, lost his right foot to an Orca in estrus, and by simplest chance the good ship Proximidad employed an untested botanist by the name of Villalba Maldonado. Maldonado, himself a recent graduate of no less note than his illustrious shipmate, worked placidly as a cook to gain his passage, having no access to the funding that pursued Acuña through his career like a cheerful spaniel.

One may only imagine an unremarkable Saturday supper in the ice shadows and crystalline sun-prisms in which Villalba, his apron stained with penguin oil, his thinning black hair unkempt, his mustache frozen, laid a frost-scrimmed china plate before Acuña. Would he have removed his glasses before eating? Would they have exchanged words? Would he have looked up from his sextant and held the gaze of the mild-eyed Maldonado, even for a moment, before falling to? One hopes that he did; one hopes that the creaking of the Proximidad in one’s mind is equal to its creaking in actuality.

Acuña’s journal records only: seal flank and claret for supper again. Cook insists on salads of red and white lichen. Not to my taste.

The famous Seal Map, the first of the great Acuña Maps, offers a rare window into the early days of the rivalry, and has been assessed at $7500US.

Curator’s Note: Whiskey stains date from approximately 1952.

Lot 689F

Topographical Map of the Ross Ice Shelf (The Sun Dog Map)

Maldonado, Villalba, 1908

Single owner, Immaculate condition.

Landmass low center, no other continents visible. Latitude and longitude in unidentified black ink. Compass rose: three-horned sea-goat, a barnacle-crusted tail indicating south, upturned muzzle designating north, vestigial fins pointing east and west. Sun shown centered, with rays embossed in gold extending all the way to the ice shelf. Parhelion is indicated, however, in the place of traditional concentric circles, two large dogs flank the orb of the sun, apparently Saint Bernards or similar, their fur streaming as if in a sudden wind, embossed in silver. Their jaws hang open, as if to devour the solar rays; their paws stand elbow-deep in the seawater, creating ripples that extend to the shoreline. The Map Legend explains that the pair of dogs, called Grell and Skell, may be found at coordinates (redacted) and that they require gifts of penguin feet and liverwort before they are willing to part with a cupful of the sun, which if carried at the end of a fishing pole and line before the intrepid polar conquistador, may burn with all the heat and pure light that he requires.

Offshore, a large, grinning Orca whale is visible, with a severed leg in her mouth.

When Maldonado returned from the Proximidad expedition, he arranged, presumably without knowledge of any competition, for the dissemination of his maps in parallel to Nahuel Acuña’s own efforts. The printing of the Sun Dog Map, illustrated by Maldonado himself, was funded by the daughter of Alvaro Caceres, best described as a sheep and cattle magnate in the grace of whose shipping interests the Proximidad functioned. Pilar Caceres was delighted with the Maldonado sketches, and sold an ornate necklace of onyx and diamonds (Lot 331A) in order to finance this first map.

While the phenomenally precise Seal Map made Acuña’s name and allowed him a wide choice of whalers and naturalists eager to avail themselves of his guidance, the Sun Dog Map stirred a mania for all things Antarctic in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, Maldonado was not able to fund a second expedition until 1912, while Acuña booked passage on the Immaculata the following spring, confounded by the popularity of a clearly fraudulent document. He gave a lecture on the necessity of precision at the Asociación Cartographica Argentina in December of 1908, declaring it a ridiculous matter that he should be required to address such an obvious issue. He was, however, interrupted by vociferous requests for more exact descriptions of Grell and Skell.

Maldonado himself declined to appear before the Asociación despite three invitations, and published the Toothfish Map (Lot 8181Q) in early 1909 without their stamp.

This first and perhaps finest example of the cartography of Villalba Maldonado is one of only three remaining copies and has been assessed at $18500US.

Lot 699C

Map of the South Orkney Islands

Acuña, Nahuel, 1911

Sun damage throughout, fair condition.

Four large islands and sixteen smaller isles lie in the center of the map. Isla Coronación is the only named landmass. Latitude and longitude demarcated in Mediterranean octopus ink. Thirty-two point compass rose, crowned with military arrows wrapped in laurels, and bearing the archaic Levante designation on its eastern arm. See Referent B for satellite comparison.

The comparatively moderate climate of the South Orkney Islands (now the Orcadas) allowed Acuña to remain there throughout the war, returning his maps to the mainland via Jokkum Vabø, an illiterate sealer and loyal friend of the cartographer. The two men built the cabin in which Acuña worked and lived, and Vabø made certain that they smoked enough seal-meat in the summer months to keep his friend breathing, returning with costly inks and papers when migrations allowed. This was to prove the most prolific period of Nahuel’s life.

From 1909 to 1918, Nahuel Acuña walked the length and breadth of the South Orkneys, polishing his teak prosthetic with the snow and grasses of the coast. He built a circular boat of sealskin and walrus-bones (Lot 009A), paddling from island to island with a gargantuan oar of leather and Orca-rib, a tool he must have found rich to use. He grew a long black beard that was said to glint gold in the sun, and never thereafter shaved it. He claimed later to have given Maldonado not the slightest thought during this hermitage, though Vabø would certainly have reported his rival’s doings during his visits, and as the coyly titled Seal Pot Map details just this area, there is some dispute as to whether Maldonado might have actually managed landfall during his 1912 expedition aboard the Perdita and met cordially with Acuña. It is not possible to ascertain the authenticity of such rumors in either direction, but it is again sweet to imagine it, the two bearded mapmakers seated upon a snowy boulder, sharing lichen-tea and watching the twilight fall onto the scarlet flensing plains. It is a gentle pleasure to imagine that they had no enmity for one another in that moment, that their teapot steamed happily between them, and that they discussed, perhaps, the invention of longitude, or methods for slaughtering walrus.

First in the Orcadas series, this prime specimen of Acuña at his height has been assessed at $6200US.

Lot 705G

Map of the South Orkney Islands (The Seal Pot Map)

Maldonado, Villalba, 1914

Single owner, very slight water damage, lower right corner.

Five large islands and twenty-six smaller isles lie in the center of the map. All are named: Isla Concepción, Isla Immaculata, Isla Perdita, Isla Proximidad, Isla Gloriana, Isla Hibisco, Isla Sello Zafiro, Isla Pingüino Azul, Isla Cielo, Isla Pájaros del Musgo, Isla Valeroso, Isla Ermitaño, Isla Ocultado, Isla Graciento, Isla Mudanza, Isla del Leones Incansable, Isla Sombras Blancas,  Isla del Ballenas del Fantasma, Isla Zapato, Isla del Mar de Cristal, Isla del Morsas Calvas, Isla Rojo, Isla Ónice, Isla Embotado, Isla Mentira, Isla del Araña Verde, Isla Abejas, Isla del Pie de la Reina, Isla Acuña, Isla Pilar.

All ink sepia, compass is a seal’s head peeking out of an iron pot, her flipper pointed south, the pot handles east and west, and her head, capped by the pot’s lid, indicating north. Smaller versions of this creature dot the island chain, their faces intricately inscribed. The legend claims that these Footless Seals can be found on the sometimes-green shores of Isla Graciento, on the long Norwegian flensing plain that occupies most of the island: When the Iron Try Pots left to render Seal Fat are left to boil until Moonrise, it occasionally Happens that a severed Seal Head which has a Certain blue Tinge to its whiskers will Blink and open its Eyes, and with Cunning Hop Away into the surf, carrying the Iron Try Pot with it as a new Body. If an Explorer is very clever, he will leave a few of his campfire Embers burning and pretend to Sleep. If he is an Excellent Feinter of Slumber, the Queen of the Seal Pots whose name is Huln will come to rest upon the dying Fire and warm Herself. If he has brought three Pearls as tribute, the Queen will allow him to dip his Spoon into the Pot and drink of her Broth, which is sweeter than dandelion honey, and will keep him Fed and Happy for a fortnight and more. (translation: Furtado, 1971)

Unable to convince the skeptic Alvaro Caceres to fund a second expedition despite the popularity of his work, Villalba Maldonado contented himself with the attentions of Pilar Caceres. Portraits (Lots 114 & 115A-F) show a handsome, if severe woman, with a high widow’s peak and narrow eyes. She continued to sell her jewelry to print his maps, but no amount of necklaces could equal a southbound vessel. However, she became an expert in the preparation of sheepskin parchment, and in this manner became all the more Maldonado’s patroness. She wore red whenever she met with him, and allowed her thick hair to fall at least three times upon his arm. With the grudging consent of Alvaro, Villalba and Pilar were married in April of 1911. She wore no jewels, and her dress was black sealskin. She was soon pregnant, and their daughter Soledad was born shortly after Maldonado departed on the Perdita in 1912. Pilar arranged for him to stay on through 1915 as a nominal military service, and thus both cartographers walked the ice floes during the Great War, far from each other and as ignorant of the other’s activities as of the rest of the world.

Six maps were printed and distributed between 1908 and 1912. Each was received with ravenous acclaim, and applications for passage to Antarctica tripled. “Paquetes” were sold at docks (Lots 441A-492L), wooden boxes containing “supplies” for a successful Antartic expedition: desiccated penguin feet, bundles of liverwort, fishing poles, sheets of music to be sung at the ice-grottos of the Dream-Stealing Toothfish, cheap copies of the six maps, and three small pearls. However, most enthusiasts found themselves ultimately unable to make such a perilous voyage, and thus Maldonado’s reputation grew in the absence of Acuña or any definite rebuttal of Maldonado’s wonderful maps.

Not to be confused with the plentiful copies included in the paquetes, this original Caceres-issue map has been assessed at $15900US.

Lot 718K

Map of Queen Maud’s Land

Acuña, Nahuel, 1920

Single owner, immaculate condition.

Landmass right center, Chilean coast visible in top left quadrant. Latitude and longitude in iron gall ink. Compass rose is the top half of a young woman, her head tipped up toward north, her arms open wide to encompass east and west, her hair twisting southward into a point. See Referent C for satellite comparison, Points 1, 4, and 17 for major deviations.

Curator’s Note: Obviously Queen Maud’s Land was not the common appellation at the time of Acuña’s map, however, his own term, Suyai’s Plain, was never recognized by any government making a claim to the territory.

Upon returning from the South Orkneys in 1919, Acuña was horrified by the paquetes and Maldonado’s celebrity. The sheer danger of packing penguin’s feet instead of lamp oil made him ill, and he immediately scheduled a series of lectures condemning the cartographer, challenging him to produce either Grell or Skell (he did not state a preference) on a chain at the Asociación banquet, or Huln, if the dogs were recalcitrant.

Attendant at these lectures was a young woman by the name of Suyai Ledesma. In imitation of her idol, Suyai had begun to produce her own maps of the pampas, the vast Argentine interior where both she and Acuña had been born. She presented her research at the Asociación banquet in a modest brown suit, her voice barely audible. She concluded with a gentle reminder that “the cartographer’s art relies on accuracy as the moon relies on the sun to shed her own light on the world. To turn our backs on the authentic universe, as it exists beneath and before us, is to plunge into darkness.”

Though Ledesma and Acuña never married, they were not often separated thenceforward, and she accompanied him along with their two sons on the Lethe expedition to Iles Kerguelen in 1935.

However, until the 1935 expedition, Acuña felt it was his duty to remain in Buenos Aires, to struggle against Maldonadan Antarcticana and its perils, and to rail against his rival whenever he was given a podium and a crowd with more than two folk to rub together. These philippics were eventually assembled and published posthumously by Carrizo and Rivas under the title On Authenticity (1961). One copy remains outside of private collections. (Lot 112C)

Maldonado responded slowly, as was his habit in all things. In 1922, his sole rejoinder was a small package, immaculately wrapped, delivered to Acuña’s home. Inside was long golden chain attached to a crystal dog’s collar (Lot 559M) and a note (Lot 560M) reading: As you see I do not, as I see, you disdain. It is big enough.

But fate would have her way, and in the end the Antarctic was not quite big enough after all. In January of 1922, three young men were found frozen to their ship on the Shackleton Ice Shelf, still clutching their paquetes, in possession of neither a cup of sun nor the Queen of the Try Pots. In May, Acuña had Villalba Maldonado arrested for public endangerment.

This pristine map of Queen Maud’s Land, produced at the height of conflict, has been assessed at $6700US.

Lot 781A

Map of the South Pole (The Petrel Map)

Maldonado, Villalba, 1925

Significant damage, burns in top center portion

Landmass center, eastern Antarctic coast visible. Latitude and longitude in walnut ink, black tea, and human blood. Compass rose: a snow petrel rampant, her claws demarcating southeast and southwest, her tail flared due south, her wings spread east and west, and her head fixed at true north. Beneath her is emblazoned: Seal of the Antarctic Postal Service — Glacies Non Impedimenta. (Ice Is No Impediment.) Alone of the Maldonado maps, color of indeterminate and probably morbid origin have been used to stain portions of the interior red, differentiating zones of “watermelon snow,” fulminating plains of lichen grown bright and thick, bearing fruits which when cracked open are found to be full of fresh water, more and sweeter than any may ask. The red fields encircle a zone of blue ice, frozen rainwater enclosing a lake of brine. Upon this rainwater mantle, explains the map legend, sits the Magnetic Pole, which is a chair made of try pots and harpoon-blades. The Pole sits tall there, her hair encased in fresh, sweet water gone to ice, her eyes filmed. Her dress is black sealskin, her necklaces are all of bone and skulls. Grell and Skell they are Her Playmates, Her Guardians Dire, and Huln she is Her Handmaid, but Never moves She, even Once. (translation: Peralta, 1988.)

She is waiting, the notations go on to state, for the petrels which are her loyal envoys, to deliver a letter into her hands, written on sheepskin, whose ink is blood. What this letter will read and who it may be from, no whaler may say — it is for her alone, and she alone may touch it.

The Petrel Map was produced in Maldonado’s third year in prison, delivered to the printer’s by his bailiff and repaired there, as the original document was created using unorthodox methods, owing to Villalba’s lack of access to plentiful inks. The viciousness and length of his incarceration and Acuña’s uncommon success in enforcing the sentence may be credited to many things: the influence of the spurned Asociación, the corrupt bureaucracy which was prone to forgetting and misplacing whole cartographers, the persuasiveness of Acuña and the pregnant Suyai as to the menace of Maldonado and his clearly deliberate deceits. Nevertheless, the summer of 1925 saw the first map in three years, and a new rash of paquetes eagerly broke the docks, the Shackleton incident all but forgotten. Stamps of the Antarctic Postal Service were now included, along with stationary and “ice-proof” pencils.

The Petrel Map was completed from memory, according to Pilar, a testament to an extraordinary intellect bent on total and accurate recollection. Public outcry warred with the Asociación on the subject of Maldonado’s release, and funds were mounted for a Proximidad II expedition, but there was no one to receive it, the Caceres-Maldonado accounts having been frozen, and the usual half-benign institutional fraud absorbed the money once more into the body of the state. Meanwhile, Acuña’s tarnished star rose, and he was commissioned  by the British Navy to deliver maps of the subcontinent.

By 1928 Maldonado was in complete isolation. He was not allowed visits from his wife, or perhaps more tellingly for our purposes, letters. Acuña was recorded as visiting once, in 1930, with his young son Raiquen. It is not for us to imagine this meeting, so far from the decks of the Proximidad and salads of lichen, far from claret and the green shadows of the aurora australis. However, after this incident, Acuña arranged for Maldonado to be moved to a special penitentiary in Ushuaia, on the southern tip of Argentina, with the shores of the South Shetlands in sight, on very clear days.

The Great Man looked up from his bread and held the eye of the Naval Cartographer. Their beards were both very long, but Acuña’s was neatly cut and kept, while Maldonado’s snarled and ran to the stone floor.

“I promised you, my friend,” he said, his voice very rough, “that it was big enough. Big enough for us both to look on it and hold in our vision two separate countries, bound only by longitude.”

“What’s big enough?” little Raiquen asked, tugging on his father’s hand, which had two gold rings upon it.

But Acuña did not answer. For my own part, my heart was filled with long plains of ice receding into eternity, and on those plains my prisoner walked with bare feet and a cup of gold.

—Keeper of the Key: The Autobiography of a Prison Guard, Rafael Soto, 1949

Villalba Maldonado died at Ushuaia on June 4th 1933. Acuña lived, feted and richly funded, until 1951, when he drowned off the shore of Isla Concepción. Suyai and her sons continued in residence on the islands, producing between them twelve maps of the area. (Lots 219-231H) Raiquen relocated in middle age to the mainland where he lives still in well-fed obscurity.

The Petrel Map was Maldonado’s final work, and as such, has been assessed at $57000US.

Lot 994D

Captain’s Logbook, the Anamnesis, disembarked from Ushuaia, 1934

Here is presented the logbook in which Soledad Maldonado signed her name and declared her cargo — an iron coffin lashed to a long sled. She left her ailing mother in Buenos Aires and sailed south as soon as tide and melt permitted, and Captain Godoy deposited her on the floes of the Weddell Sea per instructions. His full account of the voyage and Soledad’s peculiar habits, studies, and intentions will be released only to the buyer, however, his notes conclude thus:

I watched the young lady amid her supplies, her sled, her eight bristling dogs, her father’s long, cold coffin. She gave me a cool glance in farewell and turned southward, towards the interior ice. She waited for a long while, though I could not think what for. It was drawing on night, and there were many stars showing when it happened, and I must insist that I be believed and not ridiculed, no matter what I may now write.

Two great dogs strode out from the long plains of ice, enormous, thickly furred, something like Saint Bernards. They pressed their noses into her hands and she petted their heads, scratched behind their ears, let them lick her face slowly, methodically, with great care. The huge hounds allowed her to yoke them at the head of her team, and without a whip she directed them inward, onward, hoisting aloft as they flew a long fishing pole, at the end of which was an orb of impossible light, like a cup overturned and spilling out the sun.

The Log Book has been assessed at $10700US. Bidding begins at noon precisely.

About the Author

Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of Palimpsest and the Orphan’s Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and five books of poetry. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Spectrum Award was a World Fantasy Award finalist in 2007. She currently lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner and two dogs. Her crowdfunded novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, can be found at http://catherynnemvalente.com/fairyland

Birdwatcher

Garth Upshaw

I was poisoning crows the day the aliens arrived. They’re smarter than you might think — crows, not aliens — and they don’t go for any of the easy stuff anymore. I had some good roadkill, two squirrels and a raccoon, but I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for using it. The crows would caw and peck at the corpses as carefully as a dowager entering her bath. Nowadays, I had to mash D-Con into a virulent green powder, mix it with honey or peanut butter, and spread it on the underside of a flashy piece of metal. Crows love the sparkle and glitter, and they must know it’s bad, but they pick it up anyway.

My mom’s backyard stretches towards a narrow gully choked with blackberry and old-man’s beard. Right before the ground drops out from underneath you, a gnarled old walnut tree stands guard. The trunk’s as solid as a cement pillar, but covered with head-sized lumps that weep a yellow sap, trapping twigs, dead leaves, and insects in a sticky gruel. The branches are treacherous, thick as regular trees, and jut out at all angles like arthritic fingers. They break off with no warning, crushing the ferns and hosta underneath. The crows love the walnut tree, gathering like impudent black leaves, squawking and shouting in a raucous tumult.

That day, I watched from mid-yard, hidden behind a sheet of gray weathered plywood I’d cut a viewing slit in. A faded pink-and-green lawn umbrella cast an oval of welcome shade, but kept the air close and hot. Binoculars pressed against my sweaty face. I shifted in the folding chair, thighs constrained by the unyielding metal arm supports, and took a long swallow of tepid cherry Slurpee. The sun burned a hole in the sky like the business end of a welding torch, flashing off the pieces of Mom’s hand mirror I’d shattered and arranged on a low, wide stump.

It’s not worth doing a project unless you do it right, and I’d placed each piece with an aesthetic eye towards the whole effect. A landing area free of glass on the side of the stump away from me. Shards tilted different directions to send reflected sunlight 360 degrees. A central triangular piece propped so as to give a curious crow a chance for self-examination. The back of each deadly shard was slathered with my peanut butter concoction.

A dozen big crows descended from the tree, cawing and gabbling. They pranced around the stump, hopping with wings half spread, cocking their heads at the bits of mirror. Their eyes drank in the light, black and shiny as a new coat of paint. An ant crawled up my right calf, and I reached down, slowly, slowly, and ground it against my leg.

The sky flashed orange and purple, like a years’ worth of sunsets had been dumped catywampus and stirred with a big stick. I looked up, surprised and mystified. Purple and orange. My high school colors. It was afternoon, four o’clock at the absolute latest.

“Doyle? Doyle, are you outside?” Mom’s high voice cut through the backyard like a mosquito’s whine. “What was that flash of light? I know you’re there.” Crows flew back to the tree, their flapping wings sounding like half-hearted applause.

I waited to answer, irritated that she’d violated my space. “I’m bird watching,” I finally yelled, twisting in my chair so I could see her. She stood at the sliding glass doors, bleached blond hair cut in an expensively retro style.

“Doyle, could you come here?” Her fingers tugged at her bathrobe, pulling it tighter around her surgically enhanced figure. “Something’s gone terribly wrong with the power.” She cocked her head at the swirling colors still leaking from the sky. “What’s all that? Northern lights?”

I sighed, levering myself out of my chair, and letting the binoculars swing free from around my neck. “Don’t be stupid. We’re too far south.” A wave of petulance swept over me. I trudged towards the stump. The afternoon was ruined.

I drew a tarp over my project, knocking a shard out of alignment in spite of my care. I tucked the corners down, and made my way up the lawn to the house, feeling like I was wading through hot syrup. I stopped at the back patio, peeling my T-shirt away from my belly and flapping the cloth to get a slight cooling effect.

A frown wrinkled the perfect skin of Mom’s forehead. “If you’d go on a diet, get some exercise, or maybe go out with a nice girl...”

“You said the power was down?”

“How’d your interview go?” She flashed her white teeth at me. “For Mr. Perfect SAT scores, the job should be a breeze.”

I turned, and pressing a finger to close one nostril, blew a viscous stream of yellow snot out my nose. Most of it landed on the wilted geraniums that fringed the patio, and I used my T-shirt to wipe the rest off the side of my face. “What do I need money for?”

Mom flinched and retreated inside. “Dad will be home soon, and I’ve been planning a pork roast.” Cool air poured from the house.

“Roger loves his dead pig.”

“He wants to be your friend.” Mom backed into the kitchen and took an invigorating swig from a tall glass. Ice rattled.

“Who needs friends?” I followed her inside, leaving the door open behind me.

Mom pushed several buttons on the stove. “See? Nothing.”

Détente, then. I flicked a light switch to no effect. “I’ll check the breakers.”

“Thanks, dear. I knew I could count on you.” Mom kissed the air near my head.

I rummaged through the utility drawer, found a flashlight, and checked the batteries. The breaker box was on the far side of the garage wall, an obstacle course I was loath to traverse in the dark. “Wait here.”

The hot, stale air of the garage sucked my remaining energy away. I played the yellow flashlight beam over the cobwebs on a jetski that blocked the breaker box, analyzing my path through the detritus of aborted recreational attempts to “bring our family together.”

I’d just flipped the metal latch when a voice whispered in my ear. “Hello, Doyle.”

I jumped, knocking a box of deck screws clattering across the cement floor. A clean-cut man of about forty, dressed in brown slacks and a purple and orange button-down shirt, stood beside me. I spluttered in surprise. “Who the fuck are you?”

“We arrive today.” He nodded his head. Every hair stayed in place. “All at once. From far away. For everybody.” He smiled, teeth shining in the gloom like a row of mirrors.

“How’d you get in?” I inched my hand closer to a plumber’s wrench.

“We bring greetings, gifts for you.” He held out a glowing white egg, folding my hand around its warmth, and pressed the top with his thumb.

I sucked in my breath. The garage had vanished. I stood on a beach, waves swishing in and swirling around my ankles. The cool water splashed to my knees. My arms felt firm and strong. A bright orange Frisbee sailed over my head and I jumped, catching it one-handed and flicking it back before I landed. My real father laughed and ran into the surf, diving into an oncoming wave after the flying disk.

“See?” The man’s smile gleamed in the darkness. “You can choose anytime.” He let go of the egg, pressing its smooth heaviness into my hand, before stepping aside and walking away, growing smaller and smaller without ever leaving the garage until he winked out and was finally gone.

I stumbled backwards, abandoning the breaker box. My heart beat so hard I thought my chest would burst. I pushed the door to the house open, brushing spider webs from my face with the hand that still held the egg.

My mother stood in the hallway, hair pressed flat on one side of her head. I looked away from her open bathrobe, not wanting to see more. She raised her arm.  An egg, twin to mine, glowed at me from her hand. Tears leaked from her eyes. “Sorry, Doyle. I haven’t been the greatest mom.” She pressed the top of her egg and vanished.

I sit in the lawn chair, hot air leaden and heavy on me. I try to suck more Slurpee through my straw, but I’ve reached bottom, and the rattling sound echoes in my ears. I can’t hear any cars, and the burnt blue sky is empty of con trails. I stroke the smooth outside of the egg in my lap, and then slip it into a pocket. A crow lands on the stump, cocking its black head sideways. Its feathers are mottled, mangy. I press the binoculars hard into my cheekbones, trying to recover the sense of excitement I used to feel watching the birds take my bait.

I leap up, flailing my arms and knocking the plywood blind over. Crows scatter in a flapping black cloud, cawing their disapproval at me. I lurch to the stump and sweep the shards of glass onto the ground. The tip of one piece cuts my palm, and I bring my hand to my mouth. My blood tastes hot and salty. I hitch my shorts up and turn towards the gully, wondering if any blackberries are ripe.

About the Author

Garth lives in Portland, Oregon with his brilliant, gorgeous wife, Katrina, and his three super-genius children: Chris, Kami, and Luken. He’s had jobs ranging from foundry drudge, bell packer, and tarantula minder to .com CEO, and has recently embarked on a guinea pig breeding project. Garth is an avid biker, refusing to remove his feet from the pedals even in the icy rain that mars the Mediterranean climate of the Pacific Northwest only six to nine months a year. This is his first sale to Clarkesworld Magazine.

Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games

Justin Howe and Jason S. Ridler

“I’d like to throttle Frodo.” —Gary Gygax (1938-2008)

Take a group of socially awkward souls, a few gallons of Mountain Dew, a bag full of funny-looking dice, some sheets of paper, a rulebook or ten, add an argument about vorpal blades and Umber Hulks, and you have a scene that likely strikes a chord with most people involved in speculative fiction.

Since 1974, when Dave Arneson and the late Gary Gygax created Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), role-playing games (RPGs) have had an impact on genre fiction for good, ill, and geeky. Some fantasy fiction magazine guidelines even warn writers against sending “your most recent D&D adventure in prose.” Yet the gap between role-playing games and speculative fiction is narrow, and many similarities exist between the art of crafting fantastic fiction and the imaginative play of RPGs.

We decided to ask some modern fantasists about their experiences and thoughts regarding the games they played and their vocation of letters. We think Mr. Gygax would be pleased with their responses.

Jeff VanderMeer, two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author of Shriek: An Afterword, began playing D&D in grammar school. “I was a Dungeon Master, but I was soon putting too much time into details that had nothing to do with the games. Basically, I was world-building as background to stories and novels.” While enjoying the game, VanderMeer felt that it took away from his writing time. “I enjoyed the adventures, but it was a bit of a relief to go on to fiction — that’s really where I wanted to be, in terms of creating things. Ultimately, playing D&D seemed like a waste of time. It wasn’t, but it seemed like I could be creating something of my own and not just playing around in someone else’s universe. One day I looked up and D&D was in the past and I was a fiction writer.”

Paul Witcover would agree with VanderMeer on gaming being a time-suck from writing, but gaming was also an inspiration. Witcover’s novel Tumbling After features a D&D-type game and explores “the philosophical and existential implications of gaming.” The novel’s twin protagonists, Jack and Jill Doone, share an almost telepathic connection. While vacationing with their family on the Delaware shore, they become play-testers for their Uncle Jimmy’s role-playing game, Mutes & Norms. After a near death experience, Jack finds himself developing unique powers. Soon his story and that of his sister becomes entwined with that of Kestrel, a mutant from the future whose world resembles that of their Uncle’s game.

“If the act of imagining something could cause that imaginary thing to exist in some alternate universe,” Witcover wondered, “then there is a moral dimension to imagination and creation, a responsibility. We are responsible for what we imagine, what we create.” However, he went on to caution writers by saying: “Gaming and game designs are analogous to certain elements in the writing process, and can thus be helpful for writers, but gaming is not writing. Too many writers approach writing as if it were simply game design. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but such books leave me cold. I would rather play than read them.”

On the other hand, Tim Pratt, multiple award-nominated author of Blood Engines, enjoyed absorbing the fantasy of RPG source books alongside other reading habits. “I read Stephen King novels and Ravenloft sourcebooks, I read Deities and Demigods and Charles de Lint stories, I read Unearthed Arcana and X-Men comics. I didn’t make much of a distinction, and often read source material for games I never even played — and in some of my early teen stories I flat-out stole characters and monsters from D&D sources (which is only fair, since they stole many of the same characters and monsters from genre fiction originally — circle of life!).”

This amalgam of fiction and source books not only fueled his imagination but gave him early experience in storytelling techniques. “I’ve been accused of crossing genres a lot in my work, and I think I got that from RPGs, largely... RIFTs combined fairy tales and robots and mythological monsters and aliens, and that kind of freedom and weirdness always rubbed me the right way. Creating RPGs helped me become comfortable with doing big, crazy, wild things — which is a definite advantage in writing fantasy fiction.” Pratt’s writing would attest to that. His collections Little Gods and Hart & Boot feature stories that play fast and loose with elements of the fantastic and the mundane. Punks, magic, detectives, hell-hounds, and ghosts abound in stories set more often than not in a mimetic world. However, the benefit was not entirely in subject matter. Pratt mentioned another skill learned through gaming. “It also helped me learn to improvise on the fly, and, strangely enough, taught me that plot derives from character — you can create a setting and plan an adventure, but the people playing their characters will make their own  unexpected decisions, and push the game in new directions.” Pratt also had to put games down to devout time to his writing career.

Catherynne M. Valente’s Orphan’s Tales series dives deep into the mythic well that inspired Leiber, Howard, Tolkien, and Vance, all of whom were seminal influence on Gygax. However, RPGs had no influence on her early development as a writer. “I think whether or not you get into it at a young age is dependent on having that one friend who’s really into it, and I never did.” She did play a lot of console games such as Final Fantasy and learned the mechanics and terminology through them; so when her fiancé lured her into pen and paper gaming she already knew much of the lexicon. What made her reluctant was the effect this might have on her writing: “I spend most days coming up with characters and back-stories. I didn’t want to do much more of that.” She also feels that “a lot of fantasy novels take far too much from RPG tropes. They read exactly like campaigns — densely detailed weapons and political situations, flat characters who are little more than their races and either ’spunk’ or ’sullen.”‘. I didn’t want to be tainted by that, to let it into my head on a weekly basis.”

Ultimately, these concerns became a non-issue for Valente. As simply a player in someone else’s game she can enjoy the entertainment of playing and stomping monsters without any drain on her own creativity. If she were GMing, however, she believes it would be an entirely different story:  “I don’t think I could justify expending material on a campaign setting that could go into a novel. That would be incredibly hard not to do.”

The major problem RPG-influenced authors face, Valente argues, is an inability to identify cliché. “The world of RPGs is more forgiving of cliché than the world of literature is. Familiar settings and characters help players to locate their function and acclimate to surroundings. ... To create a truly wonderful piece of fiction, you have to aim above the familiar, the tired, and the overused. As an author, it’s my job to have a discerning eye: what is game, and what is book? What is vivid and visceral, and what is cliché? I don’t feel RPGing affects those things, but that is probably because I am a player, not a GM.” (Incidentally, she plays a blunderbuss-wielding tiefling chaos mage in the D&D Planescape setting — using the Heroes system, so no levels.)

Unlike Valente, Jay Lake, Campbell award-winning author of Mainspring, found D&D a great companion to his imagination, perhaps because it entered his life at a young age. “RPGs developed my ability to create narrative flow. They also reinforced my already strong love of fantasy. All of that fed the nascent writer in my head ... they’re also good for learning to get in character, a valuable trait for any writer. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they reinforce your sense of wonder. That is the key to genre fiction.”

Lake also sees the influence of table-top games being significantly different than video or online RPGs. The environment of meat-space RPGs is, like that of a book, live in the mind. “Tabletop RPGs put most of the creative effort on the player, who must visualize the characters and their environment. Online RPGs feed the player a high-impact visualization of the characters and their environment. ... I think the effort of worldbuilding which players of my generation went through has been replaced by the immersive experience. That in turn has substantially changed the relationship between RPGs and the creative process. Whether that change is for the better or the worse remains to be seen. I am suspicious of it, but that might just be middle age talking.”

Unlike the authors mentioned, Tim Waggoner, surrealist-horror author of Cross Country, also writes novels based on RPG properties. He sees a connection between the character and environment of RPGs and print storytelling. RPGs “showed me that the richer the world your characters live in, the more story possibilities there are. When I create worlds of my own — even worlds that are closely aligned with contemporary reality — I try to develop them in as much detail as possible. Gamers read a lot, so interacting with other readers, learning about what they were reading, exposed me to different writers.”

Waggoner also agrees with Lake that RPGs provided early flexing of his narrative muscles by creating characters and dealing with exposition. “As a player, you know a great deal about the world from the various manuals and guides. But your character only knows whatever is part of his or her background, and discovers anything else as the game plays out. I learned a ton about how much information to give readers and exactly when to give it to them from gaming.” As with Pratt, the improvisation of working with players with their own frames of references was also instructive. “Characters can make wrong assumptions and make bad choices. So many writers plot out a story, march their characters through the plot, and then reach the outcome. They forget to leave room for the unpredictable, for the joy of surprise. Gaming taught me that what goes wrong for characters makes for the most interesting stories.”

For Black Gate publisher John O’Neil, Gygax and his game acted as a catalyst for the interest in the fantasy adventure for which the magazine is known. “For someone discovering much of this for the first time,” O’Neil said, “[D&D] was an embarrassment of riches. All of it contributed to a fascination with pulp fiction in general, especially the period from 1930-1950.” Like others he admits that game-mastering served as his apprenticeship in storytelling and he offers some advice for writers gleaned from the gaming table. “No one cares about your 80-pages of background description. Give them something to care about before your start to pull back the curtain on all that homework.

Black Gate managing editor Howard A. Jones notes that lots of new writers, weaned on D&D, may not know the fantasy antecedents of the game’s well-known tropes: “The author doesn’t realize that the fire and forget spell list came from Vance, or that the elves and hobbits came from Tolkien or that thieves’ guilds came from Lankhmar because they’ve never read the source material ... These games wouldn’t exist if Gygax and Arneson hadn’t loved the source material.”

Arthur C. Clarke award-winner China Mieville has had an unabashed love of RPGs since he was a kid. While not a conscious influence on his desire to be a writer, RPGs had a powerful effect on his subconscious in what he referred to as the “awe/system” dichotomy. “Many of us who love the fantastic, particularly the generic fantastic (as opposed to, say, what you could loosely call the ‘haute literary’ fantastic (scare quotes deliberate) of Gogol, Bulgakov, Kafka, etc. —) is an oscillation between two aesthetic gravitational pulls. One is what is sometimes called the sensawunda. From this perspective, what draws us to the fantastic (including sf and, in a ‘bad-numinous’ version, horror), is the awe at the unrepresentable. The vasty strangeness, the ‘Real’ (in Lacanian terms), that which is definitionally beyond our power to successfully represent. You see that in everything from the appearance of Cthulhu to the apotheotic monolith of 2001 to the sudden Becoming at the end of Tiger! Tiger! That’s the side of the fantastic that puts it in a lineage with the visionary and ecstatic.

At the other end of the pole, however, is “our obsessive love for systematization, for categorization and rigid and rigorous taxonomy. This you see in the profusion of bestiaries, of spurious encyclopedias, and above all in the ’stats’ and rules of fantasy RPGs. A lot of what we think of as genre fantasy seems to me a fascinating crossbreed of those contradictory pulls. What we love about Cthulhu is that it is beyond our ken, as Lovecraft repeatedly points out. Then, in an act of Promethean heroic vulgarization, the Call of Cthulhu  RPG neatly laid out Cthulhu’s ‘Stats’ - Str, 100, or whatever it is. This is not a dis of RPGs. My point is that that desire to systematize even the fantastic, the point of which is to evade systematization, is a kind of geek honor, a ludicrous and incredibly seductive and even creative project, an almost majestic point-missing, that in missing the point, does something new.”

Mieville views his own work as oscillating between these poles. “I see that tension between wanting to remain true to what I think of as a M. John Harrisonian fidelity to the inherently unstable and evasive nature of the fantastic — his Viriconium, after all, changes its names and its boundaries, and its refusal to submit to RPG-style rules is part of what makes it magnificent — and the passionate D&D-style desire to rulify and systematize the world — to have stable maps, a set of bestiaries, a timeline, etc. (Perdido Street Station includes a party of cheerfully psychopathic and amoral player-characters, as an affectionate internal swipe at my inspirations.) For me that system/awe dichotomy is key to genre fantasy, and the systematization of the system half of that dyad is the RPG-tradition’s great feat. We can react against it, surrender to it, argue with it, or whatever, but it’s part of the mulch in which we grow.”

Finally, when asked what other fond memories he might have of the game, Mieville made sure to state: “They left me with an intense crush on Morgan Ironwolf, iconic character from the D&D basic rules. I cannot be held responsible for the libidinal drives of my 11-year-old self.”

Of such things fantasy literature is made.

About the Authors

Justin Howe was born and raised in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Spacesuits & Sixguns, and The Internet Review of Science Fiction. His story “Skillet and Saber” will appear in the anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails available from Night Shade Books in October 2008. He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writers workshop, works for an architectural preservation company in New York City, and belongs to the Homeless Moon.

Jason S. Ridler has been a punk rock musician, cemetery groundskeeper, and bookstore clerk. He writes in as many genres as possible because all his heroes do the same. His fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, The Harrow, Dark Recesses, and the anthologies Dead in the Water and Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy. His non-fiction has appeared in War, Literature, and the Arts, the Internet Review of Science Fiction, and Fearzone.com. A graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, Mr. Ridler lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where he is finishing his Ph.D. in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, and writing as much short fiction as his arms will allow.

An Interview with John Picacio

Jeff VanderMeer

John Picacio is one of the respected artists in the field, having won the World Fantasy Award and the Chesley, among others, along with being a four-time Hugo nominee. Picacio is also one of the nicest people in the field, so perhaps it’s no surprise that one of his most recent projects has been creating the cover and interior illustrations for the first of an iconic set of books by the nicest person in the field, Michael Moorcock. Ballantine/Del Rey is launching the new Elric trade paperback series this month with ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS . I talked to Picacio about his work for Moorcock, upcoming covers for Jeffrey Ford, and a variety of other subjects...

The Elric novels are not the first time you’ve animated Moorcock’s work with your art. Do you ever bounce ideas off of him? How well do you know him?

The first book I ever illustrated was by Mike — the 30th Anniversary edition of Behold the Man. I did the cover, interior illustrations, and full book design for that one. I’ve done a few covers for his books since then. This new Elric book really feels like things coming full-circle though because not only am I working with Mike again, but this time, it’s for one of the most iconic fantasy characters ever. Quick story from back when I did that Behold the Man gig... Rick Klaw and Ben Ostrander (editor & publisher of Mojo Press) drove me to Mike’s house to discuss the project. I had done all my reading and had all kinds of questions, and I was thinking Mike would set the course and tell me what he wanted the project to look like. I mean, he’s Michael Moorcock, one of the giants of the field, and I’m a guy who’s never done a book cover before, so I figured he’d just say, “Here’s what you’re gonna do.” Instead, he basically said, “Hey, it’s in your hands. You’ve got talent. I trust you to make it great.” Looking back, that may have been the most important moment of my career. Mike’s faith gave me huge confidence and really, I’ve never looked back since. That attitude of being proactive rather than waiting to be told what to draw and paint....to think for myself and be an active participant in the publishing process....that attitude was really sparked by Mike and his trust back when I did that first gig. Last year, when I did the new Elric stuff, I had a pretty firm battleplan for what I wanted to do, and when I met with Mike to break it down with him, he just kept smiling and giving me the nod. A kind word here, a kind word there, but he again gave me virtually free reign. When I had questions, he was always quick to clarify, but never told me what to do. He’s not only one of the great authors in the history of fantasy, but he’s one of the great gentlemen. I’ve said it before, and it still holds true — I’d take a bullet for the man.

When dealing with classic material like this, do you ever worry about trying to match the vision in the heads of the many, many readers who have a specific idea of, for example, what Elric must look like?

Early on, a good friend pulled me aside and said, “No matter what you do on Elric, you know a lot of people are gonna hate it, right?” Oddly enough, that statement really took the pressure off me. I felt like, “hey, I might as well do my thing because there’s no way to please everyone, so let’s just go for it.” Like I said before, Mike expects out of an illustrator what any creator should expect of themselves — he expects you to bring the absolute most potent and personal vision you can offer to the audience at that given moment. He doesn’t expect my way to look like Yoshitaka Amano or Michael Whelan or James Cawthorn or anyone else. And hell, I’d be disappointed in myself, if my stuff turned out that way. There’s a history of greats that preceded me, and if I’m not adding any fresh insight or vision to the lineage, then what’s the use, really? So I expect myself to bring something fresh and new to the icon. However, along with that, it’s possible that some fans who see the character a certain way may not embrace my way immediately. That’s totally cool; that’s part of the biz.

Did you do any research into prior Elric covers? If so, did you discover anything Clarkesworld readers might find of interest?

Yeah, I was already aware of a lot of the great Elric stuff, but I went back and studied what I thought worked and what didn’t. Like I said, Amano, Whelan, and Cawthorn are a given. Robert Gould, Walt Simonson, Brom, and others...I went back and looked at what they each brought. There’s no seminal research volume entitled The Art of Michael Moorcock’s Elric or something (although it would be nice if one existed, wouldn’t it?). It’s too bad that there isn’t more Cawthorn Elric imagery in print. What’s cool about him is he was there with Mike in those seminal days when the character was first finding his way. He’s the very first Elric illustrator, and I know Mike still considers his b/w ink illustrations to be amongst the very strongest Elric work ever done.

You’ve also recently done the interlocking art for the reissues of Jeffrey Ford’s Well-Built City trilogy. That art seems very different in tone and execution, in some ways, from the Elric material. How would you describe the difference? (In terms of process, etc.)

Yeah, the two really are extremely different. I’m proud of both, but I’m especially proud that I did both simultaneously. I think true artists thoughout history not only respond to time and context, but aren’t slaves to a single method or approach. So these two projects gave me a chance to measure myself a bit. The Elric interiors are all straight traditional pencil on Crescent illustration board. No more, no less. On the other hand, the Well-Built City trilogy is a big shadowbox assemblage of oil paintings on masonite surrounded by found objects and ephemera, all housed in a custom-built box. I was working on the Well-Built City for the better part of a year, but it was a long deadline for that one, so I was able to interweave it between Elric and all of my other cover work.

When did you start creating art?

Yikes....loaded question. Some might say I’ve barely begun to start creating “art!” As far as when I started doing professional freelance illustration work full-time....spring 2001. I had been freelancing professionally part-time doing book covers and editorial work since ‘95 when I did the BEHOLD THE MAN book. I was holding down a day job working in residential architecture from the time I got out of college (late ‘92), all the way until spring 2001. So the cover work soaked up most of my non-architectural waking hours, during those years. It hasn’t been the most conventional route toward becoming an artist, but I guess I’m a late bloomer.

You have a whole book devoted to your art — just a beautiful, wonderful exhibition, really. As a kid, as a teenager, in college — did you ever visualize that moment? Did you think, “Some day I’m going to have a book of my art?” And what else did you think about beyond the art itself as you were developing your craft?

As a kid, I always believed I would eventually write and illustrate comics for a living. All the way into my 20’s, I figured that’s where I’d eventually be, even when I was paying my dues in the architecture world. Of course, the way it worked out, the early self-published comics I did caught the attention of book publishers (namely Mojo Press) and I ended up where I am now — completely in love with book cover illustration for sf, fantasy and horror. So I guess the answer is “no”....I don’t think I dreamed all along of having my own art book. Cheesy as it sounds though, what I did always hope for was that my art would make a difference...that it would make an impact. Back when I was a kid, I dreamed of hanging out with great writers and artists I idolized, and doing work that could be worthy of an audience.

The truth is, when I’m about to start a new picture, I always get the same crazy feeling....that anything’s possible and the new thing I’m about to do has a chance to be the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s like falling in love. Of course, the picture inevitably falls short, and then here comes the next picture, and that crazy feeling comes back again, and so on, and so on. So yeah, I think I’ve got plenty of megalomania to spare, but it always comes down to the joy of that drawing in front of me.

What gives you the most pleasure about the whole process of creating art?

Surprising myself....sometimes it might be a reaction to an accident....sometimes it might be a solution to problems that I didn’t anticipate. Most of the time, it’s things that may be barely apparent to anyone but me. It could be a series of textures or brush strokes that come together in a way that’s better than I imagined... maybe it’s a compositional brainstorm that arrives in the nick of time... it’s definitely the surprises.

You’re exceedingly generous to other artists and I know you’re more than willing to help out new artists. Who have you seen in the last couple of years that you believe we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the next decade?

I think more and more Westerners are realizing how much phenomenal non-American talent is out there. It’s not just all about the Americans and the Brits any more, if it ever was to begin with. Shaun Tan has been a monster for years in his home country of Australia, but he’s finally broken out huge here in America with his book The Arrival. At any rate, it’s hard to call him a secret when he’s already won two World Fantasy Awards, but he’s always terrific. Aleksi Briclot is doing amazing mixed-media work over in Paris. I like a couple of Raul Cruz’s latest spacescape oils a lot; he’s based in Mexico City. Other artists that’ve really struck me lately: Nic Klein (Germany); Xiao Chen Fu (China); Joao Ruas (Brazil); Skan Srisuwan (Thailand); and Maurizio Manzieri (Italy), amongst others. We’re seeing more and more international talent getting American exposure. That’s a good thing.

What else are you currently working on?

I’m juggling a few hot ones right now — a couple of wraparound book covers — one’s for Lou Anders’ Fast Forward 2; the other is for Robert Silverberg’s Son of Man (both for Pyr); a couple of STAR TREK covers for Simon & Schuster/Pocket. Around all that, I’m diving into the aforementioned cover and interiors for the sixth and final ELRIC edition from Del Rey. So I get the honor of bookending that series, and that’s a big deal. It’ll be great to see the work of my fellow ELRIC artists in the series — Michael Kaluta (Book 2 and Book 5); Steve Ellis (Book 3); and Justin Sweet (Book 4). 2008 should be an interesting year. Whatever happens though, as long as I’m working, I’m happy.

(A small portion of this interview first appeared on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog.)

More of John’s artwork can be admired at his website and blog.

About the Author

Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning writer with books published in over 20 countries. He has collaborated on short films with rock groups like The Church, has had his fiction adapted for promotional purposes by Playstation Europe (by filmmaker Joel Veitch), and writes for the Amazon book blog, io9, New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post, among others.

Jeff’s novel Finch and writing book, Booklife, are forthcoming this Fall.