I have a series of tough months ahead for my leisure reading. In September, I taught a workshop and read a lot of manuscripts, which took time from my leisure reading. I’ll be doing a longer workshop in October, and another in November. So any leisure reading I can do, I’ll be happy about.

Which is why I only list the things I enjoyed each month. Those stories and novels are ones I love to share. Here’s September’s….

September, 2008

Asher, Neil, “Alien Archeology,” The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois, St. Martins Press, 2008. This was a cover story for Asimov’s, but I got behind in my reading last year and didn’t get to the issue. Still, as I was reading this story, the cover came immediately to mind. Gardner, in his introduction, calls it a space opera tale of cross and double-cross, but it’s more than that. It also creates several fascinating societies, some interesting characters, and some nifty sfnal ideas. The gabbleduck alone—which shows up in a later story published in Asimov’s this year—is worth the price of entry. But this story kept me reading long into the night when I should have gone to bed—which I see as one of the best recommendations of all.

Baxter, Stephen, “Fate and the Fire-Lance,” Sideways in Crime: An Alternate History Mystery Anthology edited by Lou Anders, 2008. Every story in this book has to have a mystery and an alternate timeline. Stephen Baxter choses to set his story in London in a world where Napoleon never sold the Louisiana Purchase to raise funds and the Roman Empire still exists. Only this story happens in 1914—at what was, in our world, the cusp of World War I.

Baxter plays with that, as well as several other historical tropes. He posits a murder, that if it went unsolved, would have been as devastating as the murder in Sarajevo, which was the spark that set off what was then known as the Great Cataclysm.

You can read this story without that knowledge, of course, but it’s more fun to see the riffs he plays on WWI. He has a spunky British heroine and a Roman prefect who becomes the stolid hero. Nicely done, with a neat very British cozy twist to the mystery as well. And, in the spirit of all good alternate history, it is the changed history that leads to the reveal in the mystery. So beautifully done that as a writer of alternate history, I’m envious.

Bear, Elizabeth, “Tideline,” The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois, St. Martins Press, 2008. When the final Hugo ballot came out last spring, I promised myself I would read everything on it. I, of course, failed. I am only now getting to some of the stories, and that’s because I’m reading Gardner’s Years Best, as I do every year.

“Tideline” is a lovely science fiction story. Well written, full of heart, it is exactly what science fiction should be.

Stunning.

Chiang, Ted, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois, St. Martins Press, 2008. As I mentioned above, I missed reading the Hugo stories this year. I finally got to “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” It is only nominally science fiction. It does have a device for time travel—and a man with an understanding of the way that device works. But the story is set sometime in the past in what we now call the Middle East.

It’s a tour de force—stories inside of stories inside of stories, clearly inspired by A Thousand And One Nights. Most writers who attempt this kind of story don’t realize that the stories inside the overall story must have some kind of link, and the overall story needs an emotional punch as well.

Chang does all of this and gives us a nice meditation on time, the past, and change. Clearly one of the best stories of the year.

Clark, Rod, Voice Over, Rosebud, Summer, 2008. Rod Clark’s editorials for Rosebud are always interesting. I read them the day the magazine arrives. This one, about writing methods, is particularly strong.

Dessen, Sarah, The Truth About Forever, Speak, 2004. I went on a bit of a Sarah Dessen binge after reading This Lullabye in August. The Truth About Forever is my favorite of the three Dessen books I read this month. The characters—always her strong suit—are particularly strong here, particularly the catering crew that brings much-needed chaos into the life of our heroine Macy. I find myself thinking about this book at the oddest times. There are so many nuggets of wisdom here as well as moments of characterization that seem so real, it’s as if I’ve lived them myself. Recommended.

Di Filippo, Paul, “Murder in Geektopia,” Sideways in Crime: An Alternate History Mystery Anthology edited by Lou Anders, 2008. My favorite story of the month—one I’m recommending to every geek I know. In a world where geeks rule (and everyone knows [and loves] every single geeky reference), a private detective (actually a man with his Nick Carter license [gotta love it]) discovers a scheme to create ubergeeks. But, like a good Raymond Chandler story, the plot here is secondary. We have the blonde walking into the office, we have the big schemes, we have the snappy language—and even better, we have a world so large and interesting that I hope Paul writes more stories set here.

Loved it. Loved it. Go get a copy of the book and read it. Now.

Kress, Nancy, “The Erdmann Nexus,” Asimov’s, October/November, 2008. Nancy Kress’s novellas are always interesting, but this one is one of my favorites. Something odd is happening at a retirement center. People are fainting, losing consciousness, and having strange experiences—mental experiences. Not that unusual in a place that caters to the very old, except these experiences happen at the same time, to a very large group of people. Something is going on, and our heroes—many of them elderly—strive to figure out what.

Not just a story of science and cognition, but also a tale of the way that we treat those with more experience and more wisdom than ourselves. A suspenseful and heartfelt piece of fiction.

Kress, Nancy, “Laws of Survival,” The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois, St. Martins Press, 2008. A wrenching story set in a brutal world. At times, I read Nancy’s “Laws of Survival” with one eye closed and my face half turned away. Yet she never went to the darkest places she could go. She correctly touched on them and then pulled back.

This story is memorable and heartwarming in its own dark way. Excellent.

Malzberg, Barry N., “Tripping with the Alchemist,” Breakfast in the Ruins, Baen, 2007. Breakfast in the Ruins is an expansion of Barry’s classic Engines of the Night. I’d read most of the essays twenty years ago. I’ve changed a lot since then, although, of course, the essays haven’t. “Tripping with the Alchemist” is the best of the lot, a personal essay about the Scott Meredith Literary Agency and Scott Meredith himself.

When I came into the field, Scott Meredith was a looming presence, the agent, and his agency was an object of derision and envy. Part of that was the two-part agency: he charged fees to have manuscripts read, and almost no clients came from those piles. However, a lot of clients came from the ranks of the paid readers, and Barry was one.

You’ll be surprised at who got their start in that piece-work sweatshop. I was, and I thought I’d known every famous writer who worked there. Barry was there on and off until the agency’s implosion after Meredith’s demise in the early 1990s.

This essay is a nifty bit of sf (and mystery) history.

Denise Little has edited a fun YA anthology called Witch High. She included my story, “Domestic Magic.” Lots of friends (and good writers) in this one too, including Christina York and Phaedra Wheldon. Pick this antho up. It’s fun.

The workshop has ended, but I’m still in teaching mode. It’ll take a few days for that urge to go away. Until it does, let me point out Andrew Wheeler’s excellent blog on one of the (many) pitfalls of publishing. He talks about having books passed over by the major chains, and some of the reasons such things happen.

Unfortunately, it happens to a lot of very fine writers. It’s always better to understand what has gone wrong (and some of the reasons why it could go wrong) instead of flailing around in the dark. So in the spirit sharing knowledge, here’s the link to Andrew’s blog.

A great new article has been posted on the F&SF blog site, interviewing a lot of women in the sf field about women & science fiction. It’s fascinating. I’m happy to be included in it. It’s an amazing read. Check it out here.

Recently, I read Dave Eggers’ essay on the future of reading in Esquire. It’s an excellent essay, using statistics to show us that the future of reading is extremely positive.

But the theory in here–getting kids excited about reading–encourages them to read in the future. That remains true.

Editorial (August, 1995)

Last week, I was scouting the aisles at the local Barnes and Noble when I heard a young boy’s voice speaking loudly.

“…and I wanna get the first one and the second one and the third one because I liked all of them that I got so far. Have you read any? They’re really good. And I’m going to collect all of them, every one of them, and I won’t lend them out because I did that once and the kid didn’t give them back….”

I crept around the Bargain Books until I reached the cash registers. There, a harried looking woman wrote a check while her young son clutched three R.L. Stine books to his chest. A stack of five R.L. Stine’s sat on the counter, and the boy kept touching them as he spoke. No one was really listening to him except me. He was clearly very excited, but his mother and the sales clerk were busy with the purchase.

“I bet R.L. Stine can afford to send his children to college,” the mother said as she handed the check to the sales clerk.

The sales clerk nodded. The boy asked again if he could have the remaining five books, and his mother explained the concept of lay away to him in a tone that showed she had explained this before. Then they left, the boy still nattering happily about all the R.L. Stine books he was going to collect.

I started toward the counter when a black, blue and white streak nearly knocked me over. Another little boy, about the same age as the first, stood on his tiptoes and slapped an R.L. Stine book on the counter. He handed the clerk a crumpled five dollar bill. As she gave him the change, she tried to engage him in conversation. But he said nothing; he was already reading as he ran out the door.

As I walked toward the counter, I remembered the last time I had seen a young boy and R.L. Stine books. A month before, I had been in Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon (a city block of books!) and the boy ahead of me in line was balancing about fifty very thin books between his chin and his hands. His mother had her credit card out and was grinning as she said to the clerk, “I told him he could buy as many as he could carry.”

With that memory in mind, I decided to start an investigation into R.L. Stine. I don’t have children. I am often oblivious to the latest hot thing. I asked the sales clerk if I had just witnessed a fluke or a fad. She looked at me as if I had just climbed out of an isolation chamber.

“We ordered 76 copies of the latest in the Goosebumps Series,” she said, “and sold out in a week. We just got our reorder of 50 and those will be gone by tomorrow.”

Her statistics are not a fluke. According to Publisher’s Weekly, the Goosebumps series (which is aimed at the 9-12 year old age group) accounted for 13 of the 15 paperback front list spots on the children’s bestseller lists in 1994. (It also accounted for 13 of the 15 paperback backlist spots.) Since the series debuted in 1993, it has sold 13,880,000 copies (or over 500,000 copies per novel).

Children are reading. Goosebumps appeals to both boys and girls in the target age group, and for older children, Stine has another series called Fear Street. It’s not quite the same phenomenon — only 4 million copies sold to date — but the numbers are impressive enough to make R.L. Stine the hottest writer in America today. He’s hotter than John Grisham, Stephen King, and Danielle Steele.

But the important point is that R.L. Stine writes genre fiction. His genre happens to be the same as ours. His novels range from horror to dark fantasy to suspense.

The informative sales clerk also told me that “it’s too bad kids are reading Stine. They don’t learn anything from the books.”

I was intrigued enough by the children’s enthusiasm and by the clerk’s comments to buy a pile of R.L. Stine books myself. Last Saturday — a blustery rainy day — I had a cold (the annoying version that saps energy and makes me long for chicken soup). I figured I couldn’t get any closer to feeling like a kid (except, of course, when I do something exceedingly fun like cannon balls off a high dive), so I stretched out on the couch, pulled up a blanket, and read R.L. Stine.

I had several shocks. First, I enjoyed myself. The books read quickly and scared me in a number of places. Second, I found myself wanting to read more. And third, Stine did things I didn’t expect — he kidnapped parents (the kids rescued them, of course); he killed a dog (but it became a zombie so it was still mobile); he menaced kids at a deserted house (and let one teenager die!). The blood and violence were off-stage, however. The ghosts, zombies, phantoms and witches I encountered were tough and scary — and all defeated by the ingenuity of the protagonists. (Stine writes most of the novels in comfy first person to provide a subconscious reassurance that the narrator will live.)

I would give R.L. Stine novels to my children. True, the books are horror, but they contain fears I remember from my childhood. Welcome to Dead House, the first book in Goosebumps, deals with the terrors of moving to a new place. Missing, a Fear Street novel, focusses on parents who mysteriously disappear. The events in Phantom of the Auditorium, a recent Goosebumps novel, would never have happened if the grown-ups had listened to the kids. Stine is in touch and in tune with that child part of himself, and he explores it with gusto.

The endings are all upbeat: the kids get to move back to their old home; the parents get rescued by their children; and the poor phantom gets laid to rest. The books make kids examine the boogeymen hidden in the closet and then turn on the light as reassurance.

I spoke with a few parents and some children’s book writers about Stine. The parents complained about the cost of the books ($3.50 per month takes a bite out of the allowance), and the book writers complained that Stine’s novels make no sense. (In Welcome to Dead House, the zombies go around in the daytime in the front half of the book and at the end are killed because they cannot go out into the sunlight.) The parents are dealing with the money situation: lay away, making the children pay from their allowances, or having the child buy as many books as he can carry. The fact that parts of the novels make no sense should bother me on an editorial basis, but it doesn’t. The stories are rollicking good fun, scary in a non-threatening way, and different enough so that I didn’t feel as if I were reading the same book over and over again.

My concern comes from two places. First, the assumption of the sales clerk angered me. When she mentioned that children “don’t learn anything” from these books, I snapped at her (in a voice loud enough to turn the heads of nearby customers), “I think children learn a lot from Stine. They learn to enjoy reading.” She tried to argue with me that children should learn more than that until I reminded her that much of the population in this country is functionally illiterate. What children are reading matters less than the fact that they are reading and enjoying what they read. They will continue to read in adulthood, if they can continue to find books they like.

That’s where I come in. I have to find a way to lure these readers to F&SF. Not gear the contents toward children, but to have stories here that these Stine fans will like when they are ready to move on. My colleagues at the publishing houses and the other fiction magazines need to do the same.

Does that mean we should buy horror exclusively? Of course not. It means we have to remember that a rollicking good story is twice as important as learning something from the text. Fiction is about adventure, excitement, and exploring ourselves. R.L. Stine has captured those elements. It’s time we — the editors and writers — follow his lead.

Today someone asked me the last time I got excited about a series of books. I would have had trouble answering the question a week ago. I had no trouble now. As I answered the question, I found myself gushing like the little boy in Barnes and Noble — about R.L. Stine.