Nick Mamatas' Journal

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Procrastination Station: Amazon Reader Reviews of Favorite Books
Here's a little something I haven't done in a while — the game is an easy one. Go to amazon, find some of your favorite books, and post the most distressing one-star reviews.

As it turns out, Nathanael West was not writing fables for kids!

1.0 out of 5 stars a new veiw, September 4, 2001
A Kid's Review
miss lonley hearts is a truely tragic story centered around a depressed lunatic and his immoral and drunk freinds. he sets out to solve peoples problems and ends up only making them worse ruining his life as well as others. while the writers craft may be good, and there are many levels to this story, it is not one to contrive morals from.

(I wonder if the kid's opinion changed seven days later, or what he thinks now for that matter.)

"Kate" (if that is her real name!) is all wrong, but she does nail Bukowski in a sentence, I must say.

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of a generation, December 4, 2005
By Kate M. Maldonado "cromatica" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This book was so bad that it actually made my blood pressure go up. Since it was written in the '50s, Gnossos' lack of charm or even the most basic social skills may be seen by those who grew up in that repressed era as signs of having a free spirit, or of being a rebel. It seems Farina couldn't see outside the little construct of his college/drug scene, which, even in the sixties, did not define the world. Anybody can take massive quantities of drugs and inflict themselves onto others under the impression that they themselves are being interesting.
It's as if Farina was in a boardroom with Fox network producers; "Ok, is there lots of drugs? violence? vandalism? Don't forget the lesbians! Point of the story? Never mind, we've got lesbians!"
I think people like this book for the same reason that they like TV shows like "Cops"; a vicarious experience of a degenerate lifestyle.I can see how, 40 years ago, one may have felt a bit naughty reading such graphic fare, but this book is about as hip as wearing a peace medallion with a fringed leather vest. No wonder so many baby boomers are having cuddle parties and paying people thousands to come to their corporate office to teach them to juggle and tune their wind chimes.
Bukowski was a jerk, but at least he was funny.

This one must be from the first reviewer's mother or father:

1.0 out of 5 stars In Bad Taste, January 8, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Geek Love (Paperback)
I had to read this book for an English Lit course and I really had a very hard time finishing it. I must be pretty abnormal since most reviews were good. I found the content very disturbing. For someone's mind to come up with such horrific actions which I feel are immoral as well as sick must have a twisted outlook on life. I really couldn't see the author's point. The ending was a pretty common ending to murder, incest and drug taking. There are so many wonderful literary books out there, I can't understand why a Professor would recommend this book.

(I hope the "Professor" assigned Lolita immediately after this one. You know, as a sorbet.)

And what would a reader review be without a rejoinder to an unnamed group of apologists for Nazism, which had nothing to do with the book in question (hint, parts of it were published in a magazine the year before Hitler was born):

1.0 out of 5 stars A favorite of Neo-Luddites and Neo-Nazis, March 20, 2003
By Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Hunger: A Novel (Paperback)
Can you seperate the art from its creator? Of course not. "Hunger" is not an exceptional piece of literature by any means. Hamsun's fame rests in large part on his "oppression", as some would have it. I.e., he was opressed after WWII in the same way that Quisling and Goebbles were oppressed.

As Hamsun's popularity gorws, so does the whitewashing of his memory and the moral equivocation that allows some intellectuals to do so. I cannot count myself among them.

Honestly, kids
...wake me when it's time for Artdecopunk.

Three, she's a magic number!
I just sold my third story to Εννέα (3+3+3=9!), which pays three eurocents a word. The story in question, "Impression: Sunrise", was the third piece of fiction I ever published. It has now been published in three magazines — the first two being the now-defunct Webzine Speculon.com (one of three sales that got me into SFWA years ago) and the now-defunct community arts paper Wide Angle NY (no connection to three there, but it was run by Greeks). I did have to cut three hundred words to meet the strict Εννέα guidelines, but did earn ninety-six (lots of threes there!) euros for that ...yep, three minutes of work.

I have no idea why more people aren't submitting their short SF (2500 words or less, no fantasy or horror, but if they take my SF, it can be soft as marshmallow) to Εννέα. They run 52 stories a year and are always eager for content. Just email Mr. Mastorakis at angmstATenetDOTgr with a RTF file containing your story. It really is the easiest thing in the world, plus euros are hot these days and the magazine, a newspaper supplement full of comics in the Euro/Heavy Metal mode, has 200,000 readers.

Current Music: Gogol Bordello, "American Wedding"

Clarkesworld: Queries, send me queries!
As far as fiction goes, I am, as of fourteen seconds ago, buying for 2009.

However, if you're looking for a quick payday, you'd be smart to send me a query for a feature article. I hardly get any, and those I do get are grotesquely inappropriate. While a dime a word is definitely on the low end of the non-fiction payscale, it is not as though Clarkesworld's non-fiction features involve a lot of shoeleather journalism. As it stands, I actually have to go out and solicit articles like some kind of schmuck, and sometimes people even tell me ridiculous things like, "I'm not good at non-fiction." A bizarre response to "How about some free money?" I say.

I'm happy to take science articles such as the one we ran on supersperm and genetic competition between parents and offspring, personal essays such as Rick Bowes piece on experiencing the World Fantasy Convention as a sober person or Tim Pratt's on being a deadline novelist and a new father, narrative interviews (NOT Q/As, those are not my department) with either an interesting individual or group on some specific topic, or some pop culture stuff such as our article on pro wrestling.

What I DON'T want is this: your term paper. Feature articles are those non-hard news/non-scholarly articles published in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly or even your local community weekly newspaper. The one about the guy with the shoelace collection, or the story about the house that burnt down in 1858. That sort of thing. Literary criticism also counts, but I am not running either book reviews or scholarly papers. Look at the New Yorker's literary journalism or even something like Bugfuck! by Rick Cusick (albeit at 1/12th the length).

Too many of the queries I get are for Q/As (see above) or for what was pretty obviously a school assignment that just happened to be about monster movies or Barry Malzberg short stories from forty years ago. Term papers are essentially designed to have an audience of one, and that person gets paid to read them. That's a word to the wise WRT why I don't want them in my magazine.

Also, when you send a query, this is what you do:

First graf: THE HOOK OF THE STORY. Note that the hook of the story is NOT the first paragraph of a term paper, ending with a thesis statement. It is a one or two-sentence description of the "nut" of the story. Something like, "Everyone loves free. Today, bestselling SF authors like foo and bar are putting their books online, for free, and even letting fans play around in their fictional universes. It's called 'Creative Commons', and it may just change the way geeks read." Stories should be focused. There is no such thing a story about "fantasy is better than science fiction", as that story has no focus.

Second graf: WHY YOU SHOULD BE THE ONE TO WRITE ABOUT THE IDEA.

Third graf: Specifics — WHO will you be talking to, WHAT books/movies/whatever will you be looking at.

Fourth graf: Proposed word count, prior pubs, clips if possible.

That's it. It's really very simple.

I have an article in the works for 6/1, but after that I am totally free. This is probably the easiest way in the field to make $250 by the Fourth of July. Note that queries are by definition non-exclusive, which is why they don't get rejected. The assumption is that a query is being shown to any number of venues. Just send something in and if you don't hear after a few days, understand that we don't want that story idea. Feel free to query again right after that with a different concept.

Wiscon: Did I say that the magical realism panel was the worst...?
One of the perennial concerns of the Wiscon regulars, pacing the rest of the white left, is "Where are all the people of color? Why don't they want to hang out with us!" Well, of course few people want to hang out with SF nerds regardless of politics, but Wiscon does itself no favors when it launches panels asking whether or not ~~the Mexicans are coming over here and stealing our jobs~~ magical realism is real genre of fiction.

And then there's these two panels, extra hilarious in their juxtaposition:

"Elves are slim, tall, light-skinned forest-lovers. Dwarves are stout, working-class, good craftsmen. Asians are good with math. Jews have a natural gift with money. Issues of racial stereotyping in fantasy are generally passed over pretty lightly. If a race of lizards are portrayed as slow-moving and lazy, well, that's to be expected, they're cold-blooded, right? They're biologically different from the rest of us. Is it OK to casually make generalizations and judgments about cultures and races in SF/F, whether real or imaginary, or this dangerous racism? Do responsible authors owe it to their readers to avoid using simple biological imperatives instead of carefully developing alternate cultures? And what of the characters that rebel against the norm? Are they brave iconoclasts, or merely the exception that proves the rule?"

and

"Indigenous peoples everywhere have experienced the natural world as imbued with spirit. Their beliefs, long dismissed as superstition, are now being echoed in the findings of quantum physics. Which SF/F works address this fusion of environmental science and spiritual truth, and how persuasively do they make the point?"

Show your work in the comments!

Ghostpunk Rules OK?
Update: Some of you saw the post below a week ago. As it turned out, Heliotrope has an, uhm, unusual staging process so the links I provided were not supposed to be live. So they took the mag down entirely to finish it up. Well, now the issue really really is live.

The new issue of the online magazine Heliotrope is now live, and the featured fiction is my short story. Check it out:

G-O-O-D-B-Y-E

Redbelt
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu expert Mike Terry is in trouble and only Randy Couture's cauliflower ears can save him in Redbelt, which is sort of an inferior Spanish Prisoner gene-spilced with Cockfighter.

Being a Mamet film, it is also very very stagey. Here's a typical Mamet dialogue between two characters — just swap out the sandwich for jiu-jitsu, wristwatches, loan shark debts, access to Brazilian sweatshop labor, or broken windows.

"I've got a sandwich here."
"You want a sandwich?"
"A sandwich, I already have it. Roast beef."
"You have a roast beef sandiwch. You are standing here, talking to me, with a roast beef sandwich..."
*holds up sandwich* "Now it's going in my mouth. The roast beef."
"Then you will not have a sandwich anymore."
"The sandwich? This roast beef sandwich? I'll just have the roast beef sandwich in a different way after I eat the roast beef sandwich."

Anyway, Mike Terry is a peculiar jiu-jitsu guy in that he doesn't fight and he hands out black belts for no reason. Then, this being Mamet, accidents happen. Mike meets a speed-freak lawyer who accidentally tries to shoot a cop and a famous movie star. The movie star steals Mike's awesome training idea of using marbles to introduce handicaps, such as a bound limb, in sparring and uses it to spice up a mixed martial-arts pay-per-view and fix the matches. Mike's wife, who is tied in heavily with minor figures in the Brazilian martial arts/organized crime scene, is also played by the movie people into spending thirty grand on textiles (really!), so she betrays her husband with the horrible secret of the druggy lawyer so that he cannot sue for dumb gimmick infringement. Al Bundy shows up in a cameo for no other reason than he is a real-life brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Mike's only choice is to fight in the ring and become Cockfighter of the Year. Or...is it!

Well, no. Mike is way too spiritual for that, so instead he gets into a brawl with twenty different people under the watchful eye of The Professor, the titular redbelt who apparently doesn't know that he's up to his ears in mobsters and scum. Then Mamet stops writing any sides and the last ten minutes of the flick is all stage direction (another obvious homage to Cockfighter). It's not bad; Mamet spent two acts pointing to the rifle on the mantlepiece and then the entire wall spins around to reveal a secret chamber. Unfortunately, the contents of that chamber aren't all that interesting. For example, if you want some extra dialogue during the climax of the film you can shout "USE THE FORCE, LUKE!" when The Professor rises to his feet to watch Mike choke someone out in order to stand up for the sacred and pure principles of dirty fighting.

There's a lot of poorly motivated stuff going on. The cop shoots himself for litle reason except to make Mike almost cry. The druggy lawyer seemingly gets over her many problems after one jiujitsu lesson. There are easier ways to fix fights than to get one guy to tie his hand behind his back (which just drains all the suspense from any fight anyway, and means that you need more fights and thus more paychecks to fill airtime). In the end though the pseudo-spiritual shit works just well enough to be entertaining, except that Mike gets the redbelt from Obi Wan which is just totally ridiculous. Then Redbelt doesn't so much end as it just stops.

PS: Ricky Jay can't act.

Wow
I just got a royalty check for two dollars and ten cents.

A clever idea

sirhc_warrior forwarded me this link. I've not LARPed in years, what with being a grown-up an all, but I have to admit that the idea is so clever I'm surprised it hadn't been conceptualized before.

Anyway, the URL says it all:

http://www.zombielarp.com

Clarkesworld: The Slush Pile, A Visual Aid
This is what my Clarkesworld slushpile looks like:

Please stop.

Surprise
I sold an essay to the latest BenBella "Smart Pop" book: Ardeur: Unauthorized Essays on Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series..

Yes, it is a positive essay. It's about the first book. I call it "Giving the Devil Her Due." (Literally, that's the title.)

Smart Pop keeps me busy: I've had work in the Charmed, King Kong, Narnia, X-Men, Star Wars, Lost, CSI, Halo, House, and Batman anthologies since '05.

There was also an essay for a projected second Golden Compass book, but that title never materialized. Got paid though. Yay.

OMG Spoilers!
There are few elements of online "culture" more tedious than the hysteria over "spoilers" and having some film or book spoiled. Even the term "spoiler" and its new meaning is annoying. If you don't want information, you should probably stay off the world's biggest informational multimedia platform. Here's an example of how ridiculous spoiler culture is, and note that the difference between the upset betrayed in this chat transcript that was sent to me (which I edited a bit for space reasons) and any issue you might have with being "spoiled" is ONLY a matter of degree. Emphasis is mine:

01:34:08 ViceArtist: Wait, so in The Incredible Hulk, Tony Stark is a character? wtf?
01:34:32 Aker: I don't get what you are talking about.
01:34:42 Aker: but whatever it is, no spoiler.
01:34:49 ViceArtist: Tony Stark = Iron Man
01:34:56 Cammy: you spoiled it
01:35:09 ViceArtist: spoiled what
01:35:20 : Cammy whaps ViceArtist. "Next you're gonna tell me that Peter Parker is Spider-Man or something..."

01:35:40 Aker: I honestly don't know anything about iron man but apparently now I know something. I really wish I don't. ><
01:35:41 Tansorya: Oh Em Gee Bruce Wayne is Batman

01:36:00 Aker: Shut up already. Spoilers are not funny.
01:36:28 ViceArtist: Harry Potter is a wizard! ZOMG spoilz
01:36:50 Aker: Look.
01:37:10 Aker: If you want to be lame go somewhere else please.

01:37:50 ViceArtist: Aker, are you being serious? Everyone knows Tony Stark is Iron Man, it's like... you find that out within 5 minutes of the movie

01:38:05 ViceArtist: hell, Marvel tells you
01:38:07 Aker: I don't know. And yes I am serious.
01:38:26 Aker: That's why I don't watch trailor, stupid company keep spoiling stories unnecessary
01:38:56 Aker: but there are always some jerks insist on telling people things
01:39:12 Aker: even after I said "no spoiler"
01:39:30 ViceArtist: you're a very strange bunnygirl
01:40:13 Aker: No you are strange. I just like thing my way. Dont' justifies your inability to comply with simple request like "No spoiler".

...

01:44:18 Amelia_E: VA in the comics, Iron Man and Hulk are founding members of the Avengers together (i hope Aker doesn't mind me spoiling a comic from like 1963)
01:44:39 Aker: What is WRONG with you people?!

01:47:37 Aker: I asked. "No, spoiler" what part of NO SPOILDER do you not understand?
01:48:17 Aker: Like, when I notices the possiblity of spoiler, I will say "No spoilder"?
01:48:37 Aker: What DO you think I say "No spoilder" For anyway?

I want to see people wearing this T-shirt in con pics!
Paul Jessup made this, for you (yes, you!)

http://www.cafepress.com/fantatwee.263262773

And the winner of This Year's Worst Wiscon Panel Description is...
Title: Magical Realism: Threat or Menace?
"There are great stories being written under the heading of Magical Realism lately. Is it a legitimate subgenre of fantasy, or something else entirely? Does Magical Realism actually exist as a distinct entity, or is it simply a way for academics to study a few select authors that they view as worthy, while keeping the rest of the fantasy genre outside the ivory tower? "

I really enjoy the use of the word "lately".

yuki_onna, you'll bring me back some hearts in a little lacquered box.

PS: Just to show that I am all down with the community and whatnot, allow me to recommend a third pointless rhetorical question — "Are shiftless Mexicans stealing social cachet that belongs to me and my unicorn?"

Hey, there IS a Bingo card

kynn found this one!

It comes from Amptoons, with which I was not previously familiar.

Survey!
Hey, an LJ survey. Haven't done one of these in a while, but when I joined LJ seven years ago next week (seven years!) it was to participate in the surveys I'd seen on

razorart's LJ:

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
The factory preset blue and purple swirl of Macs from 2002.

Q. How many televisions do you have in your house?
One.

BIOLOGY
Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right for pens, left for utensils.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
Do splinters count? Blood? Disagreeable food from a suspicious-looking souvlaki stand?

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
A lathe.

Q. Have you ever been knocked out?
Yes. A few times.

BULL*OLOGY
Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Yes, actually! I'd do all sorts of crazy shit up until that day. Of course, I might also want to know on what day I was going to fall into a coma...

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
I could change my name, can't you? Maybe Django!

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
Dark grey.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
Who hasn't?

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
Sure. $500 if there's a mustache involved though.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
No, of course not.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000
Probably not. Unless it was 50K per year.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
Sure.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
Depends on the number of Scoville units. Blair 2AM? No. Tobasco? Sure!

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
This question doesn't even need the money part!

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
A hole.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
Yes; poor posture has never been more charming.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Hardwood.

Jeeeeealous?

Yeah, you're jealous.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
Stand. People sit? What, under the faucet?

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
None.

LASTOLOGY
Q: Last person who texted you?

buymeaclue

Q: Last person who called you?
A machine. :(

Q: Last person you hugged?
BMAC again.

FAVORITOLOGY
Q: Number?
48 million.

Q: Season?
Autumn

Q: Color?
This one.

CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone?
Not really...

Q: Mood?
The usual vague anxiety.

Q: Listening to?
"Rock Boys", by The Grates

Q: Watching?
The nearly imperceptible oscillations of my monitor.

Q: Worrying about?
$

Q: Wearing?
Black jeans, yesterday's shirt, my dog-walking/taijiquan sneakers.

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
To the computer, sadly.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
Get Sensation sold, I suppose.

Q: Do you smile often?
Constantly. I'm very charming, you know.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
Friendly as karma at half the price, Jack.

Grub Street: Marginal Note
On a story I'm commenting on for tonight's class:

Interesting concept here, but this story needs what a teen girl might say is the cleansing purity of cutting. About nine of the twenty-two pages should do.

Nethack?
Where the heck is the down staircase in the Lonely Tower? (Yes, the character is of the right level and sufficiently well-aligned.)

We don't get a lot of use out of these, but...
If anyone has a few copies of the special "Roma Are Magical Fairyland Creatures Like Shrek" edition of White Liberal Bingo, why don't we sit around the card table and play a few rounds.

Tai chi total
After skipping weeks and even much home practice to get Sensation done, yesterday was my first day back. No injuries or traumas to report, just a sensation (heheh, see what I did there?) of having been beaten with a pipe all over my legs and back today.