The Half-Made World Felix Gilman, Tor, $25.99 (480p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2552-5Gilman (Gears of the City) honors the beauty of the frontier while skewering the colonists who despoil it in this vivid wild west–flavored fantasy. At the western edge of the world, time and space behave oddly and monsters roam. Colonizers push west, enslaving the magic-using Hillfolk (a questionable stand-in for human natives) and bringing industry, religion, and war. The violence-loving followers of the Gun are slowly losing to the engine-worshippers of the Line; avoiding the conflict, psychologist Liv Alverhuysen treats and studies those driven mad by the Line’s noise bombs. Then a wily agent of the Gun kidnaps Liv and her patient, the General, whose broken mind holds a secret that can destroy the gods of both forces. Line drudges and machines pursue the trio into the titular unfinished lands. Though the story moves slowly, the lyrical descriptions of the harsh, dramatic, and mystical frontier compel the reader onward. (Oct.)

I will be at a thing for the New Atlantic Independent Bookseller’s Association on September 20th in Atlantic City.

I will be doing a reading of some kind at the Steampunk Indie Mart in Brooklyn on October 24.

I will be World Fantasy in Ohio on October 29-31 if at all possible.

I will probably be at Steamcon in Seattle on November 19-21.

Probably everyone who can vote has voted by now, but if you can and you haven’t may I urge you to vote for Juliet Ulman in the Best Editor category? She acquired and edited my first two books, she’s great, and it would be nice to see her get the whatever it is, the rocket ship thing, you know the thing. I would like to win myself but do not expect to.

One of a number of things I very much like about it is the opening paragraph:

The Ellsworths of Long Parkmead had the regard of their neighbours in every respect. The Honourable Charles Ellsworth, though a second son, through the generosity of his father had been entrusted with an estate in the neighbourhood of Dorchester. It was well appointed and used only enough glamour to enhance its natural grace, without overlaying so much illusion as to be tasteless. His only regret, for the estate was a fine one, was that it was entailed, and as he had only two daughters, his elder brother’s son stood next in line to inherit it. Knowing that, he took pains to set aside some of his income each annum for the provision of his daughters.

Openings are important and difficult and this is very nicely done indeed - I’m thinking particularly of the way glamour in the third sentence and entail in the fourth play off each other. Both words catch your attention in the same sort of way. You probably have a vague idea of what they might mean, but you don’t know any of the details of how they work or what they do.* Glamour is made up and entailment is real but they’re sort of equally familiar and unfamiliar here - entailment gets a touch of the exotic and otherworldly and glamour gets an overlay of real-world plausibility. Both seem like they’re important to the world on about the same level: a certain amount of low-key fantastic, and the ins-and-outs of inheritance and property law and money. One already gets the sense of interesting friction between the two to come. This is a very elegant way of conveying what the book’s about and what the world’s like in just the first few sentences.**

One of the other things I like about it is that Mary, an American, has been forced to spell “neighbour” with a “u”. This balances the karmic scales for the fact that I have had to Americanize all spellings in The Half-Made World. Such is the great circle of life.

* Unless you are a fairly well-informed historian, or went to law school and paid more attention in Property classes than was really, let’s face it, worth your time.

** Unless I’m wrong and from Chapter Two onwards it turns out to be about a gore-soaked Predator invasion or something. I don’t know, I don’t have a copy.

But is the best possible subgenre? I think not. The first person who writes a teddy-bear-collecting-themed-murder-mystery-where-a-hardbitten-sexy-leather-trousered-lady-cop-has-graphic-sex-with-a-werewolf will make a million.

I note that the man who writes these books about teddy bear collecting is an honest-to-god former homicide detective, bomb squad member, and hostage negotiator, and apparently all-round authentic tough guy. Just think how many genre writers would kill for that kind of gritty hyper-macho bio. Imagine what Richard Morgan would give for it! And this man spends that hard-won tough-guy authenticity on teddy bears, because he is so real that he just does not give a shit. Fantastic.

11. [NEBRASKA]. [RAILROAD]. HARVEY, A.C. [GEN’L LAND AGENT]. GO WEST! ON HARVEY’S EXCURSION TO NEBRASKA. 9″ X 25″ BROADSIDE. Boston: Rand, Avery & Co., Railway Printers, 1880. First edition. Yellow broadside printed in black ink. The Union Pacific Railroad Company made available a special trip from St. Johnsbury, Vermont to the rich farming lands in central Nebraska leaving on Tuesday, June 15, 1880. Arrangements have been made to accomodate passengers from other parts of New England and Canada to connect with this special train. These excursions will be accompanied by the well-known Excursion Agent, A. C. Harvey, who will endeavor to make the trip pleasant, and see that they have comfortable first-class cars, check baggage and furnish full information regarding the routes, lands, etc. A tiny bit of wear to bottom edge, else near fine, bright broadside. $1000.00 (29593)

8. [NEBRASKA]. BRININSTOOL, E.A. CRAZY HORSE. THE INVINCIBLE OGALALLA SIOUX CHIEF. THE “INSIDE STORIES” BY ACTUAL OBSERVERS, OF A MOST TREACHEROUS DEED AGAINST A GREAT INDIAN LEADER. Los Angeles: Wetzel Publishing Co., Inc., 1949. First edition. 8vo. Presentation inscription, “How Kola Pard Spragle, To my dear old Pard of 33 years ago when we cleaned the sluices and dug the nuggets in old Nevada. With all best wishes from his good side-kick, E. A. Brininstool, May 3/49. The best things always come in small packages, this is one of em!” J. H. Spragle were long-time friends, having met in the late 1890s in Reno, Nevada, each for the purpose to divorce their first wives. Cloth, gold stamping on front cover and spine, 87 pp., frontis., introduction, illustrated. The “inside story” of the dastardly murder at old Fort Robinson, Nebraska, September 5, 1877, of Crazy Horse, the great Fighting chief of the Sioux nation, is given here in full detail by military men who were present on that tragic occasion. In the margin of the Introduction, the author has added some penciled notes. Laid-in is a brief note to L. H. Spragle from Brininstool, plus a promotional postcard for the book, CRAZY HORSE. Very good in dust jacket with a closed tear to top edge of front panel and light wear to spine ends. $500.00     (29392)

27. [CANADA]. BARBEAU, MARIUS. HAIDA MYTHS ILLUSTRATED IN ARGILLITE CARVINGS. [Ottawa]: Department of Resources and Development, National Parks Branch, National Museum of Canada, [1953]. First edition. 8vo. Bulletin No. 127, Anthropological Series No. 32, National Museum of Canada. Pictorial stiff wrappers, ix [blank], 417 pp., preface, introduction, illustrated, plates, bibliography. All illustrations are Argillite carvings with a few wood carvings. This is the first volume in a series of three which is designed to illustrate Haida argillite carvings. Although the myths or tales all belong tp the Haida, this cultural growth at first germinated and developed in Asia and Europe. Over time it spread by word of mouth in migratory tribes to the New World at large, and then to the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands in the North Pacific. Near fine, tight copy of a scarce item. $225.00    (28989)

17. HAYES, BENJAMIN. PIONEER NOTES FROM THE DIARIES OF JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES 1849-1875. Los Angeles: Privately printed, 1929. First edition. 8vo. Dark blue cloth, gold stamping on front cover and spine, xi [1], 13 - 307 pp., frontis. [portrait], foreword, illustrated, plates, portraits, map, facsimiles, index. A good account of early California, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino. Chapters titled SAN DIEGO AND SAN BERNARDINO, 1856-1857

4. (KANSAS). [PHOTOGRAPHS]. [n.p., n.d.] Five original photographs of damages caused by a locomotive boiler explosion at Atchison, Kansas sometime in the late 1880’s or 1890’s. Photographs are all 5.374″ in width and vary from 3″ - 3.25″ in height. Three of the photographs show extensive damage to the tracks, platform, and bricks. Two of these show executives of the railroad, Dr. Dan and C.M. Rathburn, President of the Atchison Union Depot & Railroad Company. The other two photographs are of locomotive #17 and 2 train men, but it does not appear to be the one that caused the damage. A very good set. $100.00 (29273)

It’s easily the most cultured and interesting spam I’ve ever attracted. If I were rich I would buy so much of this crap. But reading the descriptions is almost as good.

For instance: will they lay out their trash-built temples facing toward the Evil, the better to make propitiatory sacrifices to it, or north-east away from the Evil, to deny its power? Will the words Deepwater Horizon be a curse, or an obscenity, or a Name Of Dread Power, Never To Be Spoken?

(The altar in the temple is made out of parts of an old pick-up truck. The pointy thing that sits on it, made out of bent plastic forks and straws and bits of chickenwire and bone, was once supposed to be a model of an oil rig, though no one remembers that any more. They sacrifice to it by burning pelicans).

Anyway: new contest! The first person in comments to propose a method of plugging the Deepwater Horizon Gate to Hell will, if it proves successful, win a signed copy of my new book.  Cost-effective solutions only, please.

This is my way of doing my part.

My 100% sincere life goal is never to have to do anything at all ever again except sit quietly in a cool darkish room eating cake, where the cake is provided either by the government or by a trust fund or by kindly private benefactors. I don’t care which, so long as no one ever makes me interact with the benefactors.