Today the mail presented me with two rejections. A personal letter from Gavin Grant and LCRW. And a second-tier form letter from Gardner Dozois! Woo hoo! I made the Asimov's second-tier list! This is the form letter that indicates Gardner most likely read the story himself, and saw some merit in it. This was "Last Fare", my post-apocalyptic Bali cab driver story. Out of all my stories currently out making the rounds, I have the most confidence in this one getting published in one of the big mags.

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After a month and a day (which is a really long time for me), I finished the big fat Viriconium omnibus collection last night. It was interesting to see how Harrison's writing style changed and evolved with each work. The Pastel City was written early in his career (and it shows on the page), but had a fairly fun plot with really creepy brain-eating bad guys. A Storm of Wings was beautifully written (though the prose did get awfully purple in places, and even fuscia in others), but moved much slower, concentrating a lot more on character development, which was sorely missing in the first novel. In Viriconium blew them both (along with the short stories) away. It was by far the most engaging and best written of any piece in the omnibus, and was masterfully paced at the novella length. That story alone is worth the price of the book, and I highly suggest it to everyone out there reading this.

After finishing and laying awake last night, I thought about how I could write a paper about the apocryphal city of Viriconium. Then I realized how many other fictional cities had been written about in the same fashion, through re-visitation and exploration. Immediately what came to mind were Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast (though I have yet to read this, it is now on my Amazon wish list), Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris, and China Mieville's New Crobuzon. JeffV is the only American in among these Brits, but I've always gotten more of a British feeling from his writing; I'm not sure why. (Speaking of JeffV, there's a HWA chat with him hosted by Nick Mamatas Wednesday night at 9 p.m.)

I've held off writing about big cities in my fiction because though I may have lived in them, I've always been in the suburbs, out from the center of town. I was thinking about setting my next story (with my recurring characters Dane and Blue) in Singapore, but I've already forgotten many of my impressions there. I can remember enough to make it plausible, but I want to make you feel like you're there. I wrote "Last Fare" soon after being in Bali, so that the images, sounds and smells were still fresh. So either I need to go back to Singapore (which probably won't be until 2005, unless Janet wins me some tickets through the Tourism Board), or I need to change the location. I've written many stories in my fictional small town of Kildaire, NC, but I think this tale requires the grittiness and energy of a big city.

So what is it about big cities that fascinate us so? There have been many stories written about London, and New York literature should have its own category in the book store. Why do we keep coming back to it? Is it the setting? The endless amount of stories? The pent-up creative energy?

What do you think?

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Now Reading:
Foreigners and Other Familar Faces by Mark Rich

Stories Out to Publishers:
7

Books Read This Year:
29

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
30