Author Archives: mikekmac

High Density

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Inertia dictates that all manner of objects will collect in the corners of one’s life. I’ve been in my office working on rebuilding my daughter’s desktop computer, and while looking for a particular installer CD I came across a shoebox holding some retail floppy disc boxes.

Two were partial boxes of virgin 5.25″ HD floppies. (HD=1.2MB – remember?)

One contained archival backups of several novels and assorted other early writings.

And two were stuffed full of empty 5.25″ sleeves from assorted brands. It must have made sense to me to have some in reserve so no floppy would ever go naked. But 40+? Inertia again, I suppose.

For the nostalgia value, here’s a photo with some familiar and some nearly forgotten names.

Heavy Metal

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And that’s the way it’s done.

I felt like I was 14 again watching it.

Reportedly, there’s also a diecast Tesla with a tiny astronaut somewhere in the car, as an Easter egg.

And this is the prettiest sight I’ve seen in a long time.

Address Update

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I’ve closed the post office box which I’ve been using for business since 1991, so as of 10/30/2017
 
PO Box 22066
Lansing, MI 48909-2066
 
is no longer a valid address for me. Please update your records accordingly–thanks!
 
This was my “public” mailing address, which was published in my STAR WARS novels and possibly some others. It also appeared in some editions of the Fandom Directory, and for many years in both the SFWA Directory and the WGA Directory. But my googling suggests that it hasn’t crossed the divide and lodged in very many places on the Web, which simplifies things.
 
I won’t be creating a substitute public mailing address–I’m easily enough reached online. But if you or your organization should want or need to reach me by street mail, contact me on Facebook or by email for an address.
 
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Julian May

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I’ve just learned that writer and SF fan Julian May passed away on October 17 at the age of 86. Her oeuvre includes more than 300 books, including the very popular Pliocene Exile series which began with The Many-Coloured Land–which was also my introduction to her work. She was active in fandom from her teens, and chaired the 1952 Worldcon at the age of 21.

Julian very kindly provided a cover quote for my first novel, though we weren’t in any way acquainted at the time. As things played out over the years, our paths never did cross, so I didn’t have an opportunity to thank her in person.

Ad astra.

The Persona Paradox, or, 30 Years Online With K-Mac

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Point of reflection: my social media persona is older than Facebook, older than Snapchat and Skype, older than Instagram, WhatsApp, Tumblr, or Twitter. Older than Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AOL, and GoogleTalk. Older than the word blog, or any platform to host same. Older than any part of the Web (on which this personal site first saw light in 1995). My online persona has its roots in the 300bps dial-up days of computer bulletin boards and PLATO, and came of age in CompuServe and GEnie’s science fiction fora.

And I -still- have never gotten comfortable with the performance art aspect of being a writer online, of the implicit expectation that you should always be in Entertaining mode, always trying to raise your profile, to build and keep an audience for your books. Which, I suppose, accounts for why I’m so bad at it. I have <50 Twitter followers, <500 Friends on my personal and pro accounts (Facebook’s 5000-friend limit holds no fear for me).

Now we’ve crossed over into an era in which many creative people find it necessary and/or desirable to not just leverage but monetize their digital presence, by directly selling Items and seeking sponsors (Patreon, GoFundMe). And more power to them, it’s tough to make a living in the arts, but I can’t seem to get comfortable there, either.

Example: I have copies of my back titles, quite a few copies, in some instances, and would be more than happy to sell them to readers new or old. But I’ve never really earnestly tried to make that easy, whether on my own web site, through a store on an e-commerce site, or even just periodically saying out loud on Facebook “Hey, by the way, folks, I have these out-of-print titles/editions available at these modest prices.”

Admittedly, some of that is probably fear of [crickets]. But mostly it’s that I came online, and stayed here, for contact with an interesting mix of people otherwise unreachable. I am here for my tribe, for faraway friends and the friends I’ve never met. It’s a reflection of my disposition toward being at a con–even when I’ve been a GOH, I haven’t gone there to hold court, monopolize the conversation, and Sell! Sell! Sell! My main reason for going was always to spend some time hanging out in the alternate social reality my friend Barry Childs-Helton calls the “flying island of fandom.”

That’s my main reason for being here, too.

But it’s a changed world, and I am coming to accept that sometimes we need to fight against our own reflexes shaped in other times. Evolve or die, as the pragmatists say.

So today I’m here with a modest request, and a Yellow Alert.

The request is this: if you’ve never posted a review of one of my books on Amazon or B&N or GoodReads or the like, please consider doing so for whatever work of mine happens to be your favorite. I’m still working on getting my backlist released as ebooks, I’ve begun actively working on a new novel, and positive energy will help with both.

The Yellow Alert is that I AM going to go into my personal warehouse, make a list, do an inventory, and in the very near future post here the particulars of how You, yes, You, could sponsor and adopt one or more rare, endangered dead-tree varieties of my past writings. If this will make -you- uncomfortable, be prepared to avert your eyes. If, on the other hand, this will make you happy, you can start picking up pennies from the sidewalk and searching the couch for loose change now.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

What Next?

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Which of these would you be most interested in buying/reading:

–the bookend to VECTORS (previously known as FRAGMENTS)

–a sequel to THE QUIET POOLS telling the story of the Memphis

–a stand-alone K-Mac novel in a new universe/future

Drop me a note at michael@k-mac.org, or share your thoughts with me on Facebook.

Lost Treasure

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You can find the darnedest things on the Internet.

I finally got around to registering on Goodreads as an author, and in looking through the listings linked to my name I found a publication which was completely unknown to me. It’s a 1982 German anthology titled ANALOG 5 which contains a story of mine, “Eine Frage der Veranlagung.” The English title was “A Question of Compliance,” and it appeared in the June 22, 1981 issue of ANALOG–my first story there.

Virtually no chance of scaring up a copy for the brag shelf at this late date, of course. ☺ There’s a copy for sale on amazon.de, but it doesn’t appear the seller ships internationally. Maybe I have a fan in Germany who could do me a solid?

(And did the Davis Publications contract back then cover reprints and translations? Hmmm. As long as I’m digging into old files–)

Ad Astra, Jerry Pournelle

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The news that Jerry Pournelle passed away this afternoon is spreading across social media tonight. Over the last hour or so, I’ve been reading remembrances of Jerry by the likes of David Gerrold and Ray Feist and realizing how incomplete my picture of the man was.

I knew the Jerry Pournelle of “Chaos Manor,” his long-running, influential and idiosyncratic column on personal computing in BYTE magazine. Especially early in the PC era, his opinions carried considerable weight in the industry. I still own one of the special “Pournelle keyboards” produced by Northgate in response to Jerry’s commentaries on keyboard layouts.

As a long-time L5 Society and NSS member, I knew Jerry Pournelle the passionate space development advocate. His contributions in this area were recognized in 2016 when he received the National Space Society’s Heinlein Award.

As an SF fan, I knew Jerry Pournelle the novelist. The first of his novels I read was KING DAVID’S SPACESHIP. The best of his novels I read was his first collaboration with Larry Niven, THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE. I have several other of his works on my shelves (despite my limited appetite for military SF and conservative politics).

As a writer, I got glimpses of Jerry Pournelle the con personality–on panels, in the green room, in an elevator, at SFWA meetings, in the SFWA suite. I found that Jerry to be brusque, opinionated, and–frankly–more than a bit intimidating. Consequently, I’m fairly sure I never tried to engage him in conversation, or even asked him to autograph a book.

But I have a couple of memories from lurking in his vicinity. I remember Jerry Pournelle with a mic in one hand and a drink in the other, serving as master of ceremonies for a huge Meet the Pros party (1984 Worldcon, I think)–that Jerry was also very loud. ☺

And I remember the only time I ever saw Jerry Pournelle at a loss for words. In a very crowded SFWA suite (at a Norwescon, I think), he took note of Algis Budrys, the respected writer/editor/reviewer, seated on a couch.

Looming over Algis with drink in hand, Jerry started griping about the review A.J. had given one of Jerry’s books. Algis listened impassively, then said, “Jerry, I will tell you what the problem is with your stories. Too much pushing and shoving.” End of conversation.

Of course, Jerry has vast numbers of fans who’ll heartily disagree. FOOTFALL (also co-written with Niven) went to #1 on the NY Times bestseller list. LUCIFER’S HAMMER made it to #2.

And he was, after all, the pragmatic framer of Pournelle’s Law: “Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money.”

My condolences to Jerry’s family, friends, and other fans. His life changed the lives of uncounted others, from Korea to Washington DC to fandom, and he and his works will surely not be forgotten.

Brian Aldiss, Author & Gentleman

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A few words about Brian Aldiss, who passed away today at the age of 92.

In May, 1982 I attended my first science fiction event of any sort–the Third Conference on the Fantastic, in Boca Raton, Florida. I had to take a couple of days’ unpaid leave from my teaching job in Middlebury, Indiana to do it. I couldn’t quite persuade the superintendent that it should count as a professional conference (I was, after all, teaching science, not science fiction).

But COTF really was more of an academic conference than a con (it was co-located with a little fan event that I think was called Tropicon, but I don’t remember much crossover or seeing many fans). There was a further division within COTF itself, as the academics seemed mostly interested in dead authors, leaving the live authors to our own devices. We went to each others’ readings, and hung out together by the pool.

That’s where I met for the first time (among others) Harlan Ellison, Fred Pohl, Ellen Datlow, Robert Sheckley, Jay Rothbell, David Lunde, Marilyn Masiker, Charles Platt, Tim Sullivan, Terence Green, David Kyle…and Brian Aldiss.

Brian’s reading was one of several that I attended. I don’t remember exactly how it came to pass, but he invited me to have lunch with him. We walked across the parking lot to a deli in an adjacent strip mall, just the two of us–one legend in the field and one nobody (I had only had a handful of short stories published by then). Over sandwiches, we talked a lot about the business, a little about the art and craft. I remember distinctly how gentlemanly he was, how he treated me as though I was an equal. And he insisted on paying for the meal, too. I felt–well, befriended.

That weekend was the only time I ever saw Brian Aldiss. Through 86 cons across 33 years, our paths never crossed again (I never made it back to another COTF, alas). But when my first novel EMPRISE was being readied for publication in 1985, Brian remembered me from that weekend and that lunch and very graciously provided a cover quote.

I read many more of Brian’s works after COTF3 than I had prior to it. My favorites remain the HELLICONIA trilogy, though there’re certainly many others worth any SF fan’s attention. He also made an important contribution to documenting the history of the field, with THE BILLION-YEAR SPREE and its update THE TRILLION-YEAR SPREE.

If you haven’t discovered his work, it isn’t too late.

And, though it is too late, I want to thank him again for his kindness.

Ad astra, Brian. We will remember.

Farewell, George Romero

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Filmmaker George Romero died on Sunday at age 77. I never met Mr. Romero, but I did do some work for him in the 1980s–specifically, for his television series Tales From the Darkside.

It happened this way: During its first season, the show bought the rights to my story “Slippage,” which had appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine. (The version which appeared in TZM had a large and confusing paste-up error, which I didn’t catch until after the story was reprinted in Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror anthology. It’s a miracle that the story got the attention it did.)

When the episode aired, I was at once thrilled and disappointed. Thrilled to see my name on the screen, thrilled to think “Hey–I wrote a TV show!”–and terribly disappointed with the end result.

I knew almost nothing about the business side of television, mind you, and I was too much of a naif to understand the constraints within which the show was created. Darkside was a low-budget production which was sold straight to the syndication market–it had no network home, no regular time slot.

Nevertheless, I had my gripes. And when an opportunity came along for me to share them with the showrunners–I did. In detail. On paper.

The opportunity came when in the form of a call from the story editor, who was then putting together the second season. He was calling to ask, “Are there any more at home like ‘Slippage’?” The thing is, there weren’t. “Slippage” was the only horror story I’d written (and, arguably, still is).

But I had nothing to lose, so I sent him “Lifebomb,” which had just appeared in Analog. It only required a small cast and simple sets, and had a “be careful what you wish for” kind of twist at the end.

And as an oh-by-the-way, I naively appended to my cover letter my multi-paragraph critique of “Slippage.”

It must have read to them as though I was putting them on notice that if they bought “Lifebomb,” they should be more careful with it. By all rights, that ought to have abruptly ended my association with Tales From the Darkside.

But, somehow, it didn’t. They bought “Lifebomb,” and then–to my enduring surprise–they hired me to write the teleplay. Later, I pitched them an original teleplay, “Effect and Cause,” and they bought that, too. Finally, they hired me to adapt a Fred Pohl story into the episode “The Bitterest Pill.” (An impending Writers Guild strike may have played a role in some of that.)

So I ended up with all four possible kinds of screen credits on Darkside: story, story+teleplay, original teleplay, and adapted teleplay.

Some people (among them my mother) thought I did a lot more than that for Darkside–the reason being that horror writer Michael M. McDowell was also working for the show. (In fact, I was told that the producers found him when they were looking for the author of “Slippage”–and he made the most of it, writing many episodes and a third of the Darkside movie.) A lot of confusion ensued. At a Windycon, a fan asked me to autograph a copy of one of MMM’s Blackwater novels. Even the Writers Guild residuals department got us mixed up a couple of times.

If the screen credit just says McDOWELL, it’s him–if it says KUBE-McDOWELL, it’s me.

I extend my condolences to those knew George, especially other Darkside alumni. And I thank George for the opportunity he created for me, however unknowingly. I hope he had a soft landing, with no twist ending.