I mentioned Imperial Youth Review before. I have a story with Don Webb in the first issue, which is out now. "And Other Horrors" is a Lovecraftian story with a Christmas and 2012 end-of-the-world theme, written first for the abortive Cthulhu 2012 anthology. So buy the rag, and read the story this month!
I was interested in IYR because it reminded me of my early interest in writing, which was originally an extension of my interest in avant-garde film. (Aside: enjoy this interview with Jonas Mekas.) I read Omni as a kid, and liked the films based on Ira Levin novels, and I was a voracious reader of kiddie books and whatever I found in my uncle's closet (Raw, National Lampoon, Village Voice, High Times), but I was never one of the factory-stamped science fiction/horror writers who grew up dreaming of Hugo Awards, or of meeting Stephen King. I read too widely, and was too particularly interested in what wasn't popular, what smelled of the cult and the underground, to go nuts for the SF digests or the Hugo winners or anything like that. If I had to pinpoint any one book that made me think, "I can publish fiction too, somewhere, somehow" it would be The Starry Wisdom, which combined the genre and cult fictions I liked. (Incidentally, if anyone has a copy of the original edition they'd like to sell me, contact me. The new version, which I brought recently to replace my missing old edition, doesn't have a couple of the pieces from the original.)
When I got my contributor copy of IYR the other day, I was thrilled. It's a slim magazine—sort of a classy fanzine, really—with tons of great stuff. I don't think I've given a shit about zombie stories since 2006, but "I Will Refuse" by Edward Morris works well. There's a stunning, brief, essay on childhood dance recitals by Lydia Fascia that would have been reblogged 345963410561346 times had it been presented on tumblr. Nikkie Guerlain's "The Wetlands Are Burning" is another little hand grenade of a piece. Steve Aylett has one of his hilarious detourned comics and there's other surprisingly nice art as well. Basically, it's the underground well-edited thanks to Garrett Cook and Chris Kelso. IYR isn't slick at all, and there are little errors here and there, but it works. The underground was supposed to be superior to the mainstream, not a training ground for entrée into the mainstream, and IYR captures that ethos.
I was reminded of the importance of editing, even when the material is avant-garde or underground, when reading a self-published book I picked up in the "local author" section of one of Berkeley's many independent bookstores. Super Sapien was almost good. (The cashier said, "Oooh, that's a good one" when I brought it to the register. She was half-right.) It's a sexy revenge thriller, with a left-wing punk theme. Valeria is an omnisexual polyamorous squatter vigilante killer who wipes out two cops and fingerfucks a friendly stranger on the BART train in the first chapter. Soon she's patrolling the streets with her lover, looking for more criminals to kill, while a pair of cops named Kirk and Pike (yeah!) are after her. There's an odd split between first person (V) and third (the cops) that becomes odder when we start getting first-person POV from Pike, the smarter of the cops. V also has a dark past and gets hypnotized into remembering some of it. It gets a little V for Vendetta, then. An homage. There's lots of sex, and violence, and cooking scenes—these last because V grew up on a farm and learned the ways of hunting, deballing animals, and making a very good meal as a child. All of these skills come in handy given her new role.
But, at the same time, the book is a mess. The production is awkward and layout is hard to read—paragraphs aren't indented, and there are lots of other little errors and infelicities. There are great streaks of excellent writing, heavily sprinkled with clunky sentences. "My captor is now my prey" is an especially bad one. The author works in a deli I patronize occasionally—part of me wants to dragoon her into one of my writing classes, or hand her a copy of her book with marginal notes so that she can reprint. I doubt author Micaela Petersen has any interest in going commercial, but there's almost nobody who can go it alone.
She does some cool and funny shit:
(Another aside, I met the author of the text of the video at push-hands club a couple times. Berkeley is a very small 100,000-person town.)
...and there's a lot of cool and funny shit in Super Sapien, but it just doesn't quite have that level of quality I'm looking for these days. Have I gone too commercial? Have I just gotten old? Or am I spoiled by having easy access to the best of the underground with zines like Imperial Youth Review?
I was interested in IYR because it reminded me of my early interest in writing, which was originally an extension of my interest in avant-garde film. (Aside: enjoy this interview with Jonas Mekas.) I read Omni as a kid, and liked the films based on Ira Levin novels, and I was a voracious reader of kiddie books and whatever I found in my uncle's closet (Raw, National Lampoon, Village Voice, High Times), but I was never one of the factory-stamped science fiction/horror writers who grew up dreaming of Hugo Awards, or of meeting Stephen King. I read too widely, and was too particularly interested in what wasn't popular, what smelled of the cult and the underground, to go nuts for the SF digests or the Hugo winners or anything like that. If I had to pinpoint any one book that made me think, "I can publish fiction too, somewhere, somehow" it would be The Starry Wisdom, which combined the genre and cult fictions I liked. (Incidentally, if anyone has a copy of the original edition they'd like to sell me, contact me. The new version, which I brought recently to replace my missing old edition, doesn't have a couple of the pieces from the original.)
When I got my contributor copy of IYR the other day, I was thrilled. It's a slim magazine—sort of a classy fanzine, really—with tons of great stuff. I don't think I've given a shit about zombie stories since 2006, but "I Will Refuse" by Edward Morris works well. There's a stunning, brief, essay on childhood dance recitals by Lydia Fascia that would have been reblogged 345963410561346 times had it been presented on tumblr. Nikkie Guerlain's "The Wetlands Are Burning" is another little hand grenade of a piece. Steve Aylett has one of his hilarious detourned comics and there's other surprisingly nice art as well. Basically, it's the underground well-edited thanks to Garrett Cook and Chris Kelso. IYR isn't slick at all, and there are little errors here and there, but it works. The underground was supposed to be superior to the mainstream, not a training ground for entrée into the mainstream, and IYR captures that ethos.
I was reminded of the importance of editing, even when the material is avant-garde or underground, when reading a self-published book I picked up in the "local author" section of one of Berkeley's many independent bookstores. Super Sapien was almost good. (The cashier said, "Oooh, that's a good one" when I brought it to the register. She was half-right.) It's a sexy revenge thriller, with a left-wing punk theme. Valeria is an omnisexual polyamorous squatter vigilante killer who wipes out two cops and fingerfucks a friendly stranger on the BART train in the first chapter. Soon she's patrolling the streets with her lover, looking for more criminals to kill, while a pair of cops named Kirk and Pike (yeah!) are after her. There's an odd split between first person (V) and third (the cops) that becomes odder when we start getting first-person POV from Pike, the smarter of the cops. V also has a dark past and gets hypnotized into remembering some of it. It gets a little V for Vendetta, then. An homage. There's lots of sex, and violence, and cooking scenes—these last because V grew up on a farm and learned the ways of hunting, deballing animals, and making a very good meal as a child. All of these skills come in handy given her new role.
But, at the same time, the book is a mess. The production is awkward and layout is hard to read—paragraphs aren't indented, and there are lots of other little errors and infelicities. There are great streaks of excellent writing, heavily sprinkled with clunky sentences. "My captor is now my prey" is an especially bad one. The author works in a deli I patronize occasionally—part of me wants to dragoon her into one of my writing classes, or hand her a copy of her book with marginal notes so that she can reprint. I doubt author Micaela Petersen has any interest in going commercial, but there's almost nobody who can go it alone.
She does some cool and funny shit:
(Another aside, I met the author of the text of the video at push-hands club a couple times. Berkeley is a very small 100,000-person town.)
...and there's a lot of cool and funny shit in Super Sapien, but it just doesn't quite have that level of quality I'm looking for these days. Have I gone too commercial? Have I just gotten old? Or am I spoiled by having easy access to the best of the underground with zines like Imperial Youth Review?