2012-09-18

Anton Chekhov - early writing (up to 1885)

I've tried to collect some information on Chekhov's earlier stories. If you now more, please email me or add to the comments. There are a lot of blank spaces here:-(




Short stories


Plot summaries of the early short stories of Anton Chekhov.

1880


  • "Because of Little Apples"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    Teenage boy and his sweetheart are caught stealing apples by a cruel landowner and his sadistic assistant. The tortuous tribulations they put the young couple through is interuppted by the landowner's daughter. The story ends with the landowner continuing his sick ways and the traumatized couple never seeing each other again.

1882




1883


  • "The Bird Market"


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417
  • "The Daughter of Albion"

    Summary:
    A landowner goes fishing with his children's nanny, who does not speak Russian. A friend of the landowner
    shows up and the landowner berates his children's nanny endlessly. Whn his hook gets stuck on a log
    in the river, he decides to strip completely, swim out to free his hook, and return to the riverbank to fish.


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414
  • "The Death of a Civil Servant"

    Note:
    Also "The Death of a Government Clerk"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414
  • "An Incident at Law"

    This appears in "Early Stories" and in "Chekhov: the comic stories".

    Summary:
    A passionate lawyer gives an emotional plea for his client's innocence. This causes his client to get emotional as well, and he confesses.

  • "Fat and Thin"

    Summary:
    This is about two school friends who meet by chance years later after they are grown up. They are happy and friendly towards the other. When one discovers the other is a Privy Councillor, he becomes overly formal and ruins the happiness of the meeting.


    Audio:
    Read by Kenneth Branagh (on youtube).


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414

  • "Rapture"

    Summary:
    A young man excitedly describes to his family some news about him which will appear in a local newspaper. He family got caught up in the excitement until it is revealed to be an accident report where his injury was described as "superficial."

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982. Also in "Chekhov, the comic stories."

  • "The Swedish Match"

    Note:
    Wikipedia says the day of this story is unknown, giving 1882-1885. However, litmed gives 1883. Early detective story, pre-dating Sherlock Holmes' story by Arthur Conan Doyle but not Edgar Allan Poe's in "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" (which Poe published in 1841).


    Summary:
    This is a mystery, solved when the clue of a Swedish match is tracked down. It turns out, the man was not a victim of foul-play, but instead ran away to his (married) girl-friend's garden shed, where stays drunk but he keeps a low profile. See also
    http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1708


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417
  • "The Trousseau"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13416


    Characters:
    • Mark Ivanovitch Klyauzov (the "victim")
    • Police superintendent of the district, Yevgraf Kuzmitch
    • Psyekov, Klyauzov's steward
    • Yefrem, Klyauzov's gardener
    • Nikolay Yermolaitch Tchubikov, examining magistrate
    • Dyukovsky, assistant, and secretary to Tchubikov
    • Artsybashev-Svistakovsky, the police captain
    • Dr. Tyutyuev
    • Akulka, a cook who has slept with most of the men
    • Nikolashka Tetchov, servant of Klyauzov
    • Marya Ivanovna, Klyauzov's sister
    • Danilko, a shepherd
    • Olga Petrovna, wife of police superintendent Kuzmitch

    Plot: Psyekov goes to the police station to report to Kuzmitch that Klyauzov has been murdered. The police go to Klyauzov's manor, break down the bedroom door to discover a little blood, signs that someone climbed through the (first floor) bedroom window, and a "Swedish match". They go to the garden outside Klyauzov's bedroom window and discover more blood and dragging marks indicating a body was dragged away. They interview some servants and the sister. Except for the sister, who is crazy, no one remembers anything because they were all drunk. The cook, Akulka, is apparently an attractive young local woman who slept with almost all the men, and the police suspect a fight over her favors. Eventually, the police arrest both Psyekov and Nikolashka and charge them with murder. Over a week goes by. Dyukovsky happens to find a clue, The person who bought the Swedish matches, which were unusual at the time, was Olga Petrovna, wife of police superintendent Kuzmitch. Dyukovsky convinces Tchubikov to go with him to question her. They convince her that they know what she has done (which is a lie) and to confess. She shows them to a large garden shed in her large backyard, where Klyauzov is sleeping. He is Olga's lover and she decided to take him home one night after he got very drunk in his bedroom. He decided to stay in her garden shed for a few weeks, to be closer to her. Supplied with plenty of alchohol and food, he was happy until the police arrived. However, he agrees to finally go home.

    Questions: Who is Nana?
  • "Two in One"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A rich boss rides a streetcar for a change. He hears a confident conversationalist who sounds like his meek clerk, but with more intellience than he expected. When the boss laughs suddenly, the clerk recognizes him and reverts to the meek personality he takes at work.

  • "A woman without prejudices"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia.

    Summary:
    A man embarrassed of his past falls in love and marries. On his wedding night, he confesses that he was once a clown. His new wife loves him even more, to his surprise and happiness.

    Text:
    In "Chekhov, the comic stories".

1884


  • "A Chameleon"


    Summary:
    Amusing story of an officer who cannot make up his mind what to do to the owner of a dog who has bitten a shop-keeper. The dog could be a General's pet. He puts on or takes off his coat each time he changes his mind.


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417

  • "After the Fair"

    Text:
    See After the Fair.

  • "The Complaints Book"

    Summary:
    Story about a book inside a railway station designed for the stationmaster to make notes on lost luggage, etc. Instead, it is filled with silly notes.

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982. Also in "Chekhov, the comic stories".

  • "Choristers"


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414

  • "A Dreadful Night"

    Summary:
    A fellow renting a room in a large house goes out to a seance. When he returns, there is a coffin in his room. He suspects evil spirits until he discovers a hand-written note inside the coffin written by a friend. The friend's father is a coffin maker and wants the fellow to store it for a week.

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982. Also in "Chekhov, the comic stories."

  • "In the Graveyard"


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13412
  • "In a Strange Land"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13412

  • "He quarrelled with his wife: an Incident"

    Summary:
    A man has an argument with his wife and goes to bed. He hears the door open and thinks she has returned, wanting to be forgiven. It was the dog.

    Text:
    This appears in "Chekhov: the comic stories".

  • "Minds in Ferment"


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409

  • "Oysters"

    Summary:
    A young boy and his father are starving. He begs rich men for oysters and they feed him, mocking him when he bites into the shell. His father still hungry, watches over him in the hospital.

    http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12000


    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417

  • "Perpetuum Mobile"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    We've gotten into a vicious circle, one of the protagonists remarks near the end of the story. The two men have a duty to perform - after all, there is a corpse waiting for them in a village down the road - but somehow they keep going around in circles.

    http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1478

  • "The Skit"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A skit is written and read by its author to some friends. First, they love it. Then they suggest changes. Then they say to trash it.

  • "Vint"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].
    The game of vint is also known as "Russian whist".

    Summary:
    An administrator passes his office building one night after work on the way home from the theater. Seeing lights on, he goes inside expecting his workers to be working on
    a eport. Instead, they are playing vint, but using card combinations named after the the administrators (including himself). He joins them. The story ends with the janitor overhearing some of their funny-sounding arguments over their card game.

  • "Worse and worse"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A choir master is sued by one of his members for insulting him. The former apologizes to the latter, but in the process makes even more insults. Once in court, he gets 2 months jail time. He insults the trial judge and the appelate judge as well.



1885



  • "The Cook's Wedding"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417

  • "A Dead Body"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409

  • "Drowning"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A hustler works the docks trying to get money for jumping off the dock to impersonate a drowning victim. The first man is not at all interested. The second is, but will give him hardly any money for the act. The man jumps in, does his thrashing, gets out
    soaking wet and collects his money.

  • "The Fish"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417
  • "The Head of the Family"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13415
  • "The Huntsman"

    Summary:
    While walking along the roadside, a hunter is stopped by his long-separated wife rushing out of a crop field.

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.

  • "The Looking Glass"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409
  • "Mari d'Elle"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13414
  • "The Malefactor [The Culprit]"

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.

  • "A Man of Ideas"

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.

  • "The Marshal's Widow"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13412
  • "The Misfortune"

    Note:
    Also, "A Misfortune" or "A Calamity"

    Summary:
    A story of the bored wife of a notary republic who is pusued by a younger lawyer. She, "like a bumblebee bumping up against the window-pane," yearns to escape her marriage and run away with him.

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13413

  • "Notes from the memoirs of a man of ideals"

    Missing form Wikipedia.

    Summary:
    A man rents a vacation for a month from a very charming lady. They seem to agree on 25 rubles for th month. In the end, she charges for coffee, servant duties, vodka, and so on, increasing the final bill by almost 10-fold.

    Text:
    In "Chekhov, the comic stories".

  • "Overdoing It"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13412
  • "Old Age"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13409
  • "Saintly simplicity"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A son returns home to visit his father after many years absence. The father, a priest, cannot believe his son, now a very successful lawyer, has become so wealthy
    and distant.
  • "Sergeant Prishibeyev"

    Summary:
    Sgt P thinks he must control people, as though they were Army subordinates, even when he is out taking a stroll with his wife. On one occasion, he assaults a policeman and is taken before a judge. The story takes place duirng the trial when the Sgt tries to explain his actions to the court.

    Text:
    In "Early Stories" (transl. by P. Miles and H. Pitcher), Oxford Univ. Press, 1982.

  • "Small Fry"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  • "Sorrow"

    Text:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1732
  • "Two of a Kind"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].


    Summary:
    A newly married young couple are visiting relatives. Embarrassment over the relatives' behavior is replaced by relief when they find that the other spouse's relatives are also crazy.
  • "The Villiage Elder"

    Note:
    Missing from Wikipedia. Appeared in [Y].

    Summary:
    A man tells a story of a village "bumpkin" who makes good and is elected Village Elder. Not wanting this position of responsibility, he does all he can to be discharged.

Plays


Plot summaries of the early plays of Anton Chekhov.

1881 That Worthless Fellow Platonov
Note: Also known as Platonov.


Novellas


Plot summaries of the early novellas of Anton Chekhov.

1884 The Shooting Party

Note: The first novel (ever) written in the format of a mystery. In its innovative structure, the book prefigures Agatha Christie's most famous novel, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" written 45 years later. Christie's novel caused a sensation with its narrator-as-murderer plot device. It is interesting that The Shooting Party was first translated into English in 1926, only a few years before Agatha Christie published "Roger Ackroyd." Perhaps Chekhov invented Agatha Christie's famous device?
Summary:
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12462


References




[C] A. Chekhov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov_bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_short_stories_by_Anton_Chekhov
Stories of Anton Chekhov:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a708

[Y] Avrahm Yarmolinsky (translator and editor), The Unknown Chekhov, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
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2012-09-15

An interview with science fiction writer Bud Sparhawk, I

These are notes from an interview 2012-04-11 with John "Bud" Sparrhawk. A shorter version of this interview was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Maryland Writers' Association newsletter Pen in Hand. Video of the interview appeared in a four-part series: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Among other awards, Bud Sparhawk's stories have been a finalist for a Nebula Award three times (Primrose and Thorn, 1996; Magic's Price, 2001; Clay's Pride, 2004) and have been selected for several "Years Best SF" anthologies. His first short story appeared in 1976 and he has published about 90 short stories and novellas since then.
He writes about writing on his blog, Musings.

This first part is on Bud's career in the Air Force.




Q1: You have a biography online but could we go into more detail? You got a degree in Mathematics from UMCP.

A: And a minor in philosophy. The only reason I got that minor was because the philosophy department was the only place that taught Logic in those days.

Q2: Was there a favorite philosopher or was it really the logic courses?

A: It was the logic. Although, I did take some other courses as well - "Philosophers of the Western World,'' that sort of survey course.

Q3: Your online biography mentions that you went to Air Force Officer Training School after graduation.

A: Right - Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas.

Q4: Was this during the Vietnam War?

A: Leading up to it.

Q5: Your bio mentions you went into the communications community.

A: Yes, but I applied for computers. I had taken some of the first computer courses ever offered at the University of Maryland. The instructor was Dr Sinkov, who was head of the computer department at NSA.

Q6: The same one who wrote a book on cryptography?

A: Yes. A very well-known man. He was very very proud of their recent acquisition of a frame of tiny magnite donuts (holds up hands in shape of a 6''x6'' square), with copper threads running in 6 directions connecting the donuts. This thing had the capacity of 120 bits! That was amazing! And there was an entire room full of equipment depending on this one little thing.

These things were actually made - this was Ross Perot's early business - by Mexican women sitting in his garage threading the copper threads through those little donuts on those frames.

How far we have come. Now we have these (taking out an iphone)!

Q7: You went to UMCP, then to Air Force communications school ...

A: I put in for computers but instead they sent me to communications/electronics school at Keesler [an Air Force base in Biloxi, MS]. When I was in the third from the last class in that sequence of courses, they started the first computer course for those going into the computer community. It was in the same facility, so I wandered over to talk to them. I found that they were mostly English and History majors! (Laughs.) There just ain't no justice in this world! (Laughs.)

Q8: Did you laterally move over to another community later?

A: No. I was always a communications/electronics officer. My first assignment was to Waco, TX, supporting Tactical Air Command for the Twelfth Air Force. Then I was sent to Europe. I went to a small station in Vernou-la-Celle-sur-Seine, about 75 miles south of Paris near Fontainebleau. We had a microwave station which was the central node for all microwave communications in Europe. We also had a World War II era manual telephone exchange switchboard, operated manually by operators using a plug-board, where every appearance of a call between military installations in Europe were routed.

Then de Gaulle kicked us out. I had volunteered for Vietnam duty twice, and tried to get into Army helicopters. I was not successful. Instead, I was sent to Uxbridge, England, where I worked for the Eighth Air Force. I began working in communication security there, which immediately put me into a new category. After that I went to Keesler AF Base for more communications/electronics training, I then got assigned to Security Service. This bumped up my security classification so high that I could not be assigned to certain locations. I was eventually stationed in Okinawa, where I was responsible for CommSec and OpSec review of the entire Pacific theater - from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean, from North Pole to South Pole. OpSec, or Operations Security, is the job of figuring out what others can figure out about you without knowing any classified information. Case in point: Thailand. C130 recon missions were being shot at. They couldn't figure out how the enemy knew about their flights. It was operationally no different - their flights were at night without patterns to their flight plans. No radio communications were used. They could not figure out how anybody was finding them. We looked at every single procedure they followed and could not figure out how people would know these recon flights were going on. Then we went to the flight line and asked them which plane they were using. They said "The black one!'' (Laughter.) People are so oblivious to the most commonplace events that they don't even notice them anymore.

During my stationing in Japan, I had to travel to Osawa Air Force Base in far northern Japan, near Sapporo. It was winter and there it got unbearably cold. I didn't feel like putting on heavy clothes to walk the quarter mile to the Officer's Club, so I sat down and read this paperback book I'd picked up. It was called "Dangerous Visions" by some jerk named Harlan Ellison. I read it and got halfway through the book and thought "This is crap! I can write better than this. These guys just don't have any decent ideas!" That week I wrote my first science fiction story in long-hand. When I got back to Okinawa, I typed it up and sent it off to Ben Bova at Analog. It got rejected. Then I sent a second story to him and got a two page letter of rejection. I did not realize the importance of a 2 page rejection letter personally signed by Ben Bova. I threw that draft away, and the letter, and, 35 stories later, I managed to make a sale.


This is continued in part two here.
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An interview with science fiction writer Bud Sparhawk, III

These are notes from an interview 2012-04-11 with John "Bud" Sparrhawk. A shorter version of this interview was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Maryland Writers' Association newsletter Pen in Hand. Video of the interview appeared in a four-part series: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Among other awards, Bud Sparhawk's stories have been a finalist for a Nebula Award three times (Primrose and Thorn, 1996; Magic's Price, 2001; Clay's Pride, 2004) and have been selected for several "Years Best SF" anthologies. His first short story appeared in 1976 and he has published about 90 short stories and novellas since then.
He writes about writing on his blog, Musings.

This third and last part discusses Bud's ideas on the scifi publishing industry. The first part of the interview is here, and the second part is here.


Q14: Your Analog story "Encounter in a Yellow Wood" seems less about a specific situation than about the relationship between two people and how it mirrors events in the story. Do you agree?

A: There were three ideas in that story. One was idea I read about in Discover magazine about micropipettes. I used that to explain the technology of the artificial trees in the story which performed the waste removal. To get that into the story, I invented a character - an engineer who had to travel to a location to consult on these trees. Another idea was on the difference between the various environmental communities. Environmentalists in one camp emphasized sharply different goals than environmentalists in another camp. It was about environmental protection verses preservation verses purification. All have noble objectives but come into conflict. This is mirrored in the conflict of the two main characters in the story.

The readers of Analog are primarily engineers, not just science fiction fans. The majority of the readership are in applied technical fields and, if you get a fact wrong, you are toast! Absolutely, fricking toast! Example: I've heard of very intense arguments over something like a figure used, say 0.06572. Was that accurate or was that a guess? Shouldn't there be another significant digit if you really want to get the point of the story across?


Q15: As far as the number of characters involved, your story "Encounter in a Yellow Wood" seemed like a simple one. There are exactly three characters. Is that unusual for you?

A: There used to be six! (Laughter.) I wrote one story, "Primrose and Thorn", a Nebula finalist, with basically three characters in it. There are also some minor characters, but the story is set on a big planet with some really advanced technology. The plot in "Magician" revolves around four main characters - a protagonist plus three strangers. I don't like big group scenes. Dialog is too difficult to deal with.

Q16: Of all your stories, do you see one that is more cinematic than others? One you would like to see on screen or would make a neat TV series?

A: You're putting me on the spot here! (Pause.) Recently, I think the best one would be either "Bright Red Star" which was a short story that got published in Asimov's, or its sequel called "The Glass Box". Both of those would be really neat scifi stories to see on screen.

Q17: Speaking of cinematic, when you sell these, do you keep any rights at all?

A: Always. A group of us, back in the mid 1990's, took on Dell magazine. We told them we are going to stop submitting unless they changed your contract terms with regard to electronic rights. We got the Science Fiction Writers of America to back us up and Dell basically took out the electronic rights clause from their contract. That is now the pattern in the entire industry. The publisher only has the rights to the first North American serial publication for a period of 30 days after publication. Most contracts specify that they will pay this much if they include it in an anthology, that much if they sell foreign rights, and so on. I can put my stories up for sale on my website.

I've published just under 90 short stories. However, I have resold a number of those - audio rights, foreign publications, and so on - so, my actual sales are over one hundred.

Q18: Can you talk about your work with SIGMA?

A: There was a book that Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote back in the 1970s called "Footfall". It was about a group of aliens threatening Earth and was written largely from the point of view of the aliens. Very well-done book. In the story, the government didn't know how to deal with the aliens. They called together a bunch of science fiction writers together to advise them, since they've been writing for years and should have thought about these things. This was a McGuffin in the middle of the story. In the story, they weren't very successful but they gave the government some ideas on how to approach things.

Arlen Andrews was very taken with this idea. He suggested we start organizing such a group and offer our services to the government. He acquired a group of science fiction writers, most of whom have PhDs, all of whom are incredibly smart, and all of which have a certain dedication to moving the United States forward technically. SIGMA is a specialized group but there are people of every possible political persuasion. There are guys far right of Genghis Khan and on the other end of the political spectrum, we have some flower children. SIGMA gets called on by Homeland Security and other security agencies. They might throw a scenario at us and ask us how we would deal with it. We try to give them ideas or approaches. They thank us very much and we walk away and never hear anything about it again. Sometimes we do it pro bono. Sometimes they pay us a stipend. Sometimes we are reimbursed for travel and we get a meal out of it.

Q19: Do these conversations spur on any new science fiction stories?

A: Once it did. There was a meeting near Washington DC and they had gathered 8 of us. Michael Swanwick and Walter John Williams were there. We we discussing what would happen if thus and such occurred. Immediately they whipped out their notebooks and started writing like mad. At that point I knew we are going to get two stories out of this! (Laughter.)

Q20: About your own evolution as a writer, some people believe there is a 10 year rule, or 10000 hour rule, on how long it takes to become an expert at something. Do you believe that is true in your writing?

A: I've had a number of arguments with writers about this. Some of whom have said there is no such thing as talent and success is just raw persistence. Others say "It is all talent, because I just write this stuff, hardly ever edit, and just send it in." Immediately on hearing that I say to myself there is a strong smell of bull-shit in here! (Laughter.)

This is something I discuss in my blog. Don't kid yourself, writing is hard work. I think it was Houseman who said "The essence of having the perfect line in poetry is
to know precise word needed on the 56th revision." (Laughter.) It is true. In some sense, the writing doesn't start until you begin editing. Everything else is just throwing words down.

Q21: It does seem though that with all your experience, you now can at least say "Here's a cool idea for a story" whereas someone with less experience might say "I don't know if that idea would make a good story." In other words, you know how to begin.

A: I have as a many false starts as I do successful ideas leading to a finished work.

Right now, I am trying to learn how to write somewhat shorter pieces. I used to be able to write a 5000 word story in a weekend. But it is more natural for me to write novellas, which are 17000 up to 40000 words. However, you can't sell anything over 20000 words to a magazine, as they just don't have the space. Once I started paying attention to the elements of a novella - the story idea, the roles the characters play, description, dialog, exposition of technical ideas - I found it was easy for me to get to 10000-17000 words. So I found that I can reach 17000-18000 words by following a process which felt natural to me. Unfortunately, a few years ago the bottom fell out of the novella market. And most of the e-magazines, the online magazines, rarely want anything over 5000 words. So I said, do I write to my natural length or do I write to market? So I very deliberately started trying to write short works, works in the 5000-10000 word range. On the other hand, I also want to write stories with a social impact, one which addresses some serious themes. I am looking for stories which require more thought and have a strong moral tone to them, ones that had a lesson to teach. For example, "Yellow Wood". So far this year, I've written 45000 words, all short stories, and sold three stories and had four soundly rejected.

Q22: What do you mean "soundly rejected"?

A: I have a tracking tool that I developed. It has a list of editors, maybe 100 or so, at the top are Analog and Asimov's. Analog has a turn-around time of 42 days. So 42 days after submission, I'll get a letter of rejection. Asimov's has a turn-around time of 38 days. On the same day that I get a rejection, I will send it to the next editor on the list.

Q23: Do you get a suggestion for revision?

A: You never get that. If they offer a suggestion of a revision, then that really means "re-write and re-submit". A rejection will say something like, "not for our magazine." I've know all the editors and have been around long enough to earn a little courtesy, so the rejection letters will include a few nice words.

After Asimov's rejects it, I will send it to Gordon Van Gelder at Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has a turn-around of 7 days. "Alas ... " is his codeword for a rejection.

Q24: Is it verboten to send it to two places at once?

A: Yes. That is okay for novels but not short stories. I have done that accidentally once but never intentionally.

Q25: You mentioned Wodehouse in your blog. Which Wodehouse story inspired which short story of yours?

A: I love Wodehouse! I don't remember which Wodehouse story it was. There were two twins and they were supposed to go to to school but they went on holiday instead. There was a mad Aunt and the twins were trying to stay out of her way. It was in a Wodehouse collection I read. I really liked the twists and turns in the story. I laid out the structure of the story using a package called "Inspiration", a diagramming package for school children. I laid out the story scenes in block diagrams. I took the "facts" out but wrote my story with the same twists and turns. It was one of the Sam Boone stories. I steal from the best! (Laughter.) In some sense, there is no original story. Every story copies something from a previous one.

Q26: What is the most unusual thing that has happened to you as a writer?

A: I think the strangest thing that has happened was when I was on a panel discussion at a scifi convention with other writers and an audience member said "Where do you get your ideas?" I answered, "I used to think them up on my own but a couple of years ago I found this guy in New Jersey. I send him five bucks a month and every week he sends me a postcard with a story idea. And a lot of them are pretty good! (Laughter.) The crowd laughs. The other panelists laugh. Michael Flynn, who was also on the panel, said "I hope that guy doesn't send you the same ideas he sends me!", and
everyone laughs again. I had fans come up to me afterwards and whisper "Can I have his address?" They were serious! I was talking to a fellow writer and we figured we could easily come up with sixty or seventy story ideas. If we just got a fake address in New Jersey we could start our own business!

Q27: It sounds like you have a lot of fun writing.

A: It is a lot of fun.
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An interview with science fiction writer Bud Sparhawk, II

These are notes from an interview 2012-04-11 with John "Bud" Sparrhawk. A shorter version of this interview was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Maryland Writers' Association newsletter Pen in Hand. Video of the interview appeared in a four-part series: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Among other awards, Bud Sparhawk's stories have been a finalist for a Nebula Award three times (Primrose and Thorn, 1996; Magic's Price, 2001; Clay's Pride, 2004) and have been selected for several "Years Best SF" anthologies. His first short story appeared in 1976 and he has published about 90 short stories and novellas since then.
He writes about writing on his blog, Musings.

This second part discusses Bud's ideas on writing. The first part of the interview is here.


Q9: What inspired your early stories?

A: I took the kids to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at a cinema. While watching that, I got an idea that became the story "Alba Krystal" (Ben Bova's title). I also wrote "The Tompkins Battery Case" around then. Those were my first two published stories, but then there was a gap of 13 years before I started writing again!

When I finished the Okinawa assignment, I went back to Oklahoma City and got into the Masters program. The classes were at night. A buddy and I did this together. We went to school three nights a week, studies three other nights, and we had one day for our wives and children. We worked together during the day, so we did this at lunch too. That was the pattern.

At Oklahoma City University, they used a text "The Theory of Money" that I could not grasp what the book was talking about. It was so opaque. We took the final, which I staggered through with mediocre success, along with my Air Force buddy, Will. We had many more courses and we agreed that when we had to prepare for the comprehensive exams we would devote one day each to study for the other topics. However, we would set aside four days for this Theory of Money, leaving that until last, so we could have the preparation fresh in our minds. The morning of the first of our four study days for this exam, I sat down and opened the book and started reading it. I thought to myself, "The hard part must be further back than what I remember." I kept reading and reading and I finished it by the afternoon! I called Will up and said, "Will, I just finished the book and what was it that we had such a hard time understanding with this?" He said, "I did the same thing! How could we be so stupid?" I don't know if our subconscious finally got enough time to process the information or what. We spend the three remaining study days drinking beer and talking in general about our plans.

Q10: There was an education article recently in the news about some people are better at laterally transferring information from one area to another than others are. Do you think that was involved?

A: I've always been able to make do with the tools at hand. Whether that is mechanical or what.

Anyway, I passed the exams, got my Masters degree in Finance and, shortly after that, got out of the service. Came back east and got a finance job at a commercial communications company called ARINC. I quit that job and went to work at MCI, which was a small company at the time with only 1000 employees nationwide, and only 50 in Washington DC. After that, a friend from ARINC called me up. He wanted to start his own company and wanted me to run his finances. So I quit MCI and did that for a number of years. Then I worked independently for awhile as a IT consultant. Then I worked as a project manager on an FAA contract, some other companies, and the FDA before joining McFadden, a government contractor for several agencies. One day the CEO walked into my office and said "I just fired everyone on the staff. You and I are going to run the company now." Okay! We added a contracts officer and our troika managed the organization. A few years later, after the owner of the company sold it to us, we managed the company from about an 11 million dollar company to a 35 million dollar company. At the point I retired.

When I retired, Barbara Clough had been beating on my head for years to run for the president of SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) and when one of the board members quit I become a board member for the Eastern region. Later, when the treasurer of SFWA retired, I agreed to step into that
position since that is my skill set. I've been doing that for about a year now.


Q11: Do you apply that problem-solving ability in your writing also?

A: I have been trying for the last two years to figure out how it is that I do what I do when I write. I've got it down to a more-or-less mechanical process. On my blog I wrote a post on the 10 stages of writing then I proceeded to document all 10 steps and I actually developed a story. It turned out there were twelve steps! (Laughter.)

Basically, what I did for years was to just sit down and write down the story, as it came to me without thought as to style or structure or any of that stuff.

Here's an example. Around 1992 or 1993, Mike Resnick asked me to contribute to a Marty Greenberg anthology. He sent me an email saying "I need a dinosaur story from you of about 5000 words in 3 weeks." I replied "What are the guidelines?" He emailed back, "Dinosaurs. 5000 words. 3 weeks." (Laughter.) I picked up a copy of National Geographic and saw an article about a dig out in Argentina, where they were extracting footprints from a shale formation. I thought, there's the McGuffin. What if they saw tracks? I'll start with a pair of scientists - a graduate student and her
professor and their somewhat stormy relationship. One story would span from the start of their relationship to its untimely end. Then another subplot started from close to the end of the story building up to when she was killed. Then there was the story of the dinosaurs. One story line was fairly brief, another was longer, and the story of the dinosaurs spanned millions of years. I wrote each of these stories separately then put each scene from each story on an index card and shuffled them up (Laughter) and put them on the floor and arranged them in a workable order. This scene is a flashback, that scene is a flash-forward, and so on. I wrote the story up that way and sent it in and he bought it and it got published that way as "Fierce Embrace".

I wrote another story pretty much the same way called "Iridium Dreams", which appeared in the magazine Analog Science Fiction, Science Fact. In that story a dig in the Gobi Desert played the same sort of role as a McGuffin that the Argentina dig did in the dinosaur story.

I started thinking about this thing called structure in a story. Structure is composed of a bunch of scenes. What makes a scene? It has a protagonist, a point of view, an antagonist, the action takes place in a physical location, the weather, time, and so on, has to be incorporated into the story. A story is a sequence of scenes strung along into a plot-line. If you think of a story this way, you can start trying to rearrange these scenes. The process I use to create a story is not necessarily linear. I might come up with the main idea and then think of something else to add here and there. Wouldn't it be neat to go back to the beginning and add this scene? Her background should be inserted there. All these scenes can then be rearranged later into a story. You might know exactly what the time-line of events is, but you might not want to tell the story in that order. Once you have the scenes in the order you like, you write it up.

Q12: Do you worry about background of your character, what they wear, their personalities?

A: I've never really gone into that detail. Nancy Kress told me that she has a good mental image of her protagonist and what the basic story idea is about before she sits down to write. She wants to know her protagonist fairly well. Other people work with outlines. It's one of those things where every writer is going to have their own
unique process that they are comfortable with. Mine is writing scenes and rearranging. What I do in the beginning is to just start typing the story as it comes
to me. Eventually, it gets to the point where I think I have enough to work with. I could have about 2000 words of a 5000 word story at that point. Then I break up each scene-block into an "index card" in the software program Scrivener that I use. These "cards" can be rearranged on the Scrivener "cork-board" in any way you like. At that point, I look for what scenes are missing and start adding new scenes on new "cards".
I might need to add detail to this scene, add exposition to that scene, add description here, add a quirk to a character's personality characteristic there.
After filling all these things in, you get the first rough draft. It will be about five or six thousand words. Then you begin the agonizing process of line-by-line editing. You might do some rearranging and other edits until you get the story in the final form you like.

Q13: In many of your stories, it seems as though you imagine a situation and places characters in that situation, then ask how would these people react in this situation. Do you agree with that?

A: Well, my stories have a very limited scope. No grand conquests. They are usually about some specific thing happening to some individual. That is one reason why I don't do novels. Novels take a lot of effort over a long period of time. I have far too many ideas to stick to one thing. I'm a jack rabbit.


This s continued in part three here.
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2012-09-08

Public domain crime drama: 39 Steps (1935)

In History of Narrative Film, David Cook calls the film 39 Steps one of Alfred Hitchcock's "finest achievments." It is loosely based on the adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. It is based on a story about an innocent man caught up in a plot involving espionage and murder.


Wikipedia entry

Watch or download from archive.org
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Public domain crime drama: Sabotage (1936)

In History of Narrative Film, David Cook regards Alfred Hitchcock's film Sabotage as one of his best, and said it contained some of Hitchcock's "most masterful sequences." The film is based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.


In Conrad's novel, the protagonist Karl Verloc is a shop owner bent on planting a terrorist bomb. In the movie, he is a cinema owner, kind to his wife and her young brother who lives with them. The political motivation of the terrorists in the film is ambiguous.

Wikipedia page

Watch or download from archive.org

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2012-09-07

Aboard the Relief

A short story inspired by A. Chekhov's Gursev.

There was no day or night on the spaceship Relief, a hospital transport ship transporting the wounded back from a battle on the planet Sol-Earth. They had just recently entered orbit of the snow planet Alderan-Taygeta in the Pleidian system.


The Portal by koaltaitemaunga, cc-by-nc-nd

“These MegaCorp spaceships are cheap. I worry we will all die when the ship implodes,” a heavily medicated patient said. He was a wounded soldier the others called Thirteen, named for his bunk number.

“Space is a vacuum. How would it cause a spaceship to implode?” one of the soldiers playing cards asked.

“Explode. Whatever. MegaCrap ships,” Thirteen said, snorting at his pun.

“I served on a ship, the Enterprise, before the Army privitized transportation services - that was a real lady,” said Twelve.

“Make your bet,” another gambler said.

Twelve threw two credits on the empty bunk serving as a card table. The players ignored Thirteen and played their hand. In the end, Twelve lost the hand and said “I’m out” and returned to his bunk.

“A soldier from the transport ship Winnefeld told me they had hit a huge asteriod and knocked a hole in her side. . . . Do you hear me?” Thirteen asked the patient in the bunk beneath him.

The woman the other patients knew as Six was silent. Thirteen raised himself a little in his bunk and said in a whisper, “Can you hear me, Mom? A soldier told me that their ship ran into an enormous asteroid and knocked a hole in her side.”

Six was motionless, as if she had not heard. And once more there was silence on the ward.

The ship’s thorium reactor coolers pulsed a heartbeat hum that their ears were long accustomed to, but it seemed as though everything were wrapped in sleep and silence. The three patients who had played cards for hours had quit and were now lying in their bunks falling sleep.


A Spray of Light by koaltaitemaunga, cc-by-nc-nd


“The AC has broken . . . ” said Thirteen, wiping his brow.

This time Six coughed and answered irritably: “You talk of a ship colliding with an asteroid,” she paused for a breath, “and now you say the AC is broken?”

“That’s what people say.”

“Do you believe everything people say?”

Thirteen couldn’t see anything to be angry about. What was wrong with his story about the rock or in his saying that the AC had broken? He pressed the plunger on his packet of pain meds and felt better. Thirteen thought for a long time of a rock as big as a planet, crashing into another planet, then that planet crashing into another, ad infinitum. When he got tired of dreaming about planets and began to think of his birthplace, where he was returning after five years’ service fighting wars. He saw with his mind’s eye the great ocean whose shore was covered with snow. On the coast of the ocean was his small town. From the fifth house on the street facing the sea came his brother Blue in a snow-runner; behind him sat his little daughters Violet in large felt boots, and Aqua, also in felt boots. Blue is smiling happily while driving through the newly fallen snow, Violet laughs, and Aqua’s face is hidden - she is well wrapped up.



Winter Wonderland by Uwe Hermann, cc-by-sa, hermann-uwe.de

“The children will catch cold . . . ” thought Thirteen, smiling.

Six coughed loudly.

The thread of Thirteen’s thoughts was broken, and instead of the sea, suddenly he saw his young mother seated, reading to him as a little boy while he played with his childhood toy trains and they went round and round by themselves.

He was glad he had seen his nieces. “I saw them, Mother!” he muttered, and opened his eyes and, seeing his sick Mother asleep in her bunk, felt round in the darkness for water.

His stomach hurt. He drank and then lay down again, and once more he saw the trains, billowing black smoke, clouds of it, going around in circles.

Suddenly Six cheered up. “I’ll tell you a story that will make you laugh.” She took a few breaths and then said to anyone who would listen: “Do you know how they swindled me?”

“Who, Mother?” Thirteen asked.

“MegaCorp,” she said. “You see only warriors get justice. The Supply Corp, we are in another class. Especially women. Complain - you are a bitch. File a rape charge against - they make your life hell in court. Can I afford a private lawyer to represent me? No. I take their appointed counsel, some MegaCorp legal intern. There is no convincing them by law or logic. Their laywers are professionals robbers of human dignity. I always tell the truth. If you file suit against one of the warrior class, especially a MegaCorp Merc, they will twist that around so that you are guilty until proven innocent. I am afraid of nothing and fear no body but I am so naive, it’s funny - for me to think my stand will make a difference is quite a laugh!”

“That’s not funny at all,” Thirteen said softly.

“What happened?” Seven asked Six.

Six tired easily and needed to take a few breaths.

“Yes, Six, tell us what happened” said Twelve.

Then she coughed and went on, “There were four of them. When I die, there will be no one brave enough to stand up to them.” She collapsed back on her bunk, exhausted.

Thirteen had stopped listening. He knew she would not tell them what happened.

Through the darkness Seven began slowly to distinguish the patient in the bunk number six. He saw her sleeping in a sitting position, for if she lay down she could not breathe. Her skin was grey and clammy, but her features were striking and at one time was one of the most beautiful women in the entire military. She was losing strength through her illness and the suffocating heat, and she breathed heavily and was always muttering to herself. Seven was healthier and felt sorry for Six. Thirteen turned to her as well. Noticing that her son was looking at her, she turned toward him and said:

“Are you beginning to understand? . . . Forget the past . . . Try to understand the here and now.”

“Understand what?” Thirteen asked, too weak to try to argue.

“It was strange to me at first, why we, instead of being kept in a proper hospital, should be on this old hospital transport ship in subspace orbit, where the heat is stifling, and stinking, and must be fatal to you. Now it is all clear to me. Do you see it? There is nothing broken. They turned up this heat intentionally. The doctors ordered us here to get rid of us. They got tired of all the trouble we gave them. You are no good to them; no longer being of the warrior class. You only give a lot of trouble, and if you die you spoil their body count stats. Therefore you are just cattle, and there is no difficulty in getting rid of you,” she said with conviction. She paused to take a few breaths and said, “MegaCorp's lack of conscience and humanity makes immorality second nature.”

“The military will find them out,” Thirteen argued.

“They won’t. On a MegaCrap transport, MegaCorp controls our fate. A few sick soldiers will not be noticed.”

Thirteen could not make out what his Mother was talking about; thinking she might not be serious, he said, “I’m not that sick - it’s just that I caught a chill.”

“They are banking on the fact that you can’t last out the trip home... . And that’s all the return you get for faithful service!”

Six looked very angry, and said “They ought to be shown up. There would be public outcry.”

Silence fell. It was very hot and Thirteen could hardly breathe. He wanted a drink, but the water was warm and disgusting.



Glowcube by koaltaitemaunga, cc-by-nc-nd


Once more Thirteen thought of the sea, the snowy village. Violet laughed, and that fool of a little girl Aqua opened her fur coat, and stretched out her feet. “Look,” she said, “my felt boots are new.” “You’re almost six years old and still you has no sense!” said Thirteen. “Instead of showing your boots off, why don’t you bring some water to your soldier-uncle? If you do, I’ll give you a present.” Then came Blue, with his carbine on his shoulder, and there was the train and the black smoke ... .

Suddenly something strange happened to one of the soldiers playing cards. He called ace of diamonds and dropped his cards. He lurched and looked round with empty eyes.

“In a moment,” he said and lay down on the floor.

All were at a loss. They shouted at him but he made no reply.

“Are you okay?” asked Seven. “Perhaps we’d better call the doctor, eh? Drink some water. Here, have a sip.”

“What’s the use,” shouted Thirteen angrily.

“Don’t you see?”

“What?” said Seven.

“What?!” cried Thirteen. “He’s dead, that’s what! Doen’t you see?”

Some soldiers had begun to play cards again. Six was propped up in her bunk, and some others squatting uncomfortably on the floor. One gambler had his right arm in a sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow.

“I could never cook. Your father could though.”

“I know.”

“Do you like being a cook?” Six asked Thirteen.

Thirteen said nothing.

“My God, my God!” said Six sorrowfully. “To take a man from Alderan-Taygeta, drag him fifteen parsecs, ... and what for? So he can cook! Where’s the sense of it?”

“You get up in the morning, program the meals for the day into the machine, make sure there’s plenty of coffee and eggs for breakfast, and then there is nothing to do until lunch. The officers make battle plans all day long. You can pray or read books or go out if the ship is docked. It’s a good enough life.”

“Yes. You stay in the kitchen all day long and suffer from homesickness while they make plans. Plans don’t matter.”

“If you follow orders then no one will harm you. For five years now I’ve never been in the brig and I’ve only been to court once.”

“What was that for?” Seven asked, not looking up from his cards.

“Fighting. Four allied contractors came into the kitchen while I was Officer of the Watch. They were wearing swords, I think, but I don’t remember. I had a few beers with my enlisted men and was a little drunk.”

“Drunk on watch?” Seven asked.

Thirteen nodded. "I was drunk on watch."

“Swords but not guns?” asked Twelve.

“Guns were not authorized on that deck,” Thirteen said.

“Oh, okay. Then what?”

“The contractors started it and I defended myself, and that is that. The court ruled it was self-defense, but demoted me to private and stripped me of my medals anyway because I’d been drinking.”

Six was completely exhausted and shut her eyes; her head fell back and then flopped forward onto her chest. She tried to lie down, but in vain, for she could not breathe.

“MegaCorp contractors?” Seven asked.

“Yes.”

Seven snorted and spat on the steel wall.

“And why did you go for them?” Six asked after a while.

“I told you they started it,” Thirteen snapped.

Seven looked at Six and saw a tear run down her cheek before she turned way.

Thirteen drank some warm water and thought of his fight in the kitchen. He remembered he had not paniced when he was first wounded but to focus on the fight. He gave worst than he got, and he dozed off remembering how his knife blade stayed sharp and never broke and how the handle never slipped in his hand despite all the blood. He was good with knives so when he was demoted to cook, he thought it was somehow appropriate. Six slept and he slept, and it seemed that all the world was sleeping.

Two days passed. Six no longer sat up, but lay full length; her eyes were closed and her face seemed to be thinner than ever.

“Mother!” called Thirteen.

Six opened her eyes and moved her lips.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s nothing,” answered Six, breathing heavily and looking away. “It’s better now. I’m much better. You see I can lie down now. If you see Blue and his girls, tell them I’m okay and not to worry.”

The patient’s ward was still stifling and hot. It was hard not only to speak but even to listen without an effort. Thirteen clasped his knees, leaned his head on them and dreamt of Blue and himself playing in their childhood home. He saw himself driving a snow-runner, with Blue behind him, riding fast and Blue was yelling to slow down but he didn’t really mean it. The cold wind slaps your face and freezes your nose and cuts your hands; the lumps of snow fall down your neck. Thirteen laughed out loud thinking of how funny it was when Blue was flung hard into a snow-drift, getting snow in his face! A long time passed in silence, but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.



Snow-covered Field by Caroline Bennett, cc-by-sa

He could hear some one coming into the ward, and some voices, but five minutes passed and all was still.

“May she rest in peace!” said Seven. “She was a tough soldier.”

“What?” asked Thirteen.

“She’s dead. She has just been taken to an upper deck.”

Thirteen tried to sit up in his bunk but fell back, exhausted. “She suffered much. She deserved to die on a better, a more honorable ship. At least her suffering is over now.”

Seven sat down on Thirteen’s bunk and said in an undertone: “You won’t live much longer either.”

“Did the doctor tell you that?” asked Thirteen.

“No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is going to die soon. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, but if you have any credits, you had better give it to the senior officer.”

“I have not written my brother back home,” said Thirteen. “I shall die and he will never know about mother.”

“Your family will know,” said Seven. “When you die they will report your cause of death to your nearest family member and when we dock at Earth they will give your effects, and those of your Mother’s, to the Army headquarters, and they will send them to your family.”

This conversation made Thirteen begin to feel unhappy. He drank water and breathed the hot air; he tried to think of his home and the snow.

“They are going to eject Six into deep space,” said Seven. “They will put her in a capsule and eject her.”

“Yes. That’s the way they do it.”

“There is no love in deep space. It’s better to lie in the ground. Then the family can go to the grave and weep over it,” said Seven.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid to die?” asked Seven.

“Yes. I’m afraid. I have a brother at home, and his family, and I will miss them. But I am tired, just let me sleep a little,” Thirteen said.

Thirteen lay down in his bunk and he he fell into a deep sleep. After some time passed, two soldiers came down and carried him out of the ward. He was placed is a capsule, which looked like a casket, rectangular and black. Round him stood Seven and some other patients.

“May he rest in peace, always, now and forever,” said someone.

An officer pressed a button and Thirteen shot headlong and disappeared onto space. He traveled for some days before his capsule joined his Mother’s and together they entered the upper atmosphere of Alderan-Taygeta. Their capsules impacted the snow planet on the coast of a beautiful ocean, not far from a small village where he was born.

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