Blog Title: MABFAN's Musings

Interview in Apex Magazine

The December issue of Apex Magazine is now available on their website. This issue includes two items I'd like to point out:

• An interview with me, in which I discuss a few of my influences and talk about what's next;
  
  
• A really freaky short story by Jennifer Pelland called "Organ Nell". As soon as I read this story, I rushed to recommend it for both the Nebula and the Stoker. Highly recommended.
  

[IRTF] Free Fiction and Hour of the Wolf Interview

I hope everyone who celebrated the holiday had a good Thanksgiving. If I have a moment, I'll try to post a little bit about what Nomi and I did.

In the meantime, here's a few quick announcements related to (what else?) I Remember the Future.

First of all, Apex Publications has informed me that all of the pre-ordered hardcovers have shipped, with the exception of those that were damaged or went missing. If you are expecting a copy of the book and have not received an email from Apex, you can assume that your copy is on its way.

Second, Apex Publications routinely offers free fiction at their Get a Taste of Apex page, and right now they're offering one of my stories from I Remember the Future. The story, Paying It Forward, is one of my favorites, and this is your chance to read it for free if you haven't read it yet. As an added bonus, they've even put up my afterword to the story, which is original to the book. So go read and enjoy.

Finally, as I noted last week, on Saturday morning I was the featured guest on the WBAI radio program Hour of the Wolf. If you missed my appearance (which was taped a two months earlier), you can now listen to it via mp3 streaming audio on the WBAI archives at Michael A. Burstein on WBAI's Hour of the Wolf. As an added bonus, for part of the interview I read aloud the title story of my collection.

So there you have it. Two free stories to enjoy, one on a website, and one as an "audiobook." Let me know what you think.

Website Overhaul

Back on October 29th, I introduced my new website Burstein Books to promote I Remember the Future. My very good friend Heather Greene designed and set up the site for me, and I mentioned at the time that she was helping me update my author site as well.

Heather has done it again. Now my main author site, Michael A. Burstein's Homepage at http://www.mabfan.com, has been completely overhauled in its design. Please take a look.

And, as I said before, if you're an author looking to have a website designed and set up, Heather's rates are very reasonable.

[IRTF] Two Reviews and Hour of the Wolf

A few quick announcements:

First of all, for those of you in the New York City area, this Saturday morning WBAI (99.5 FM) will be broadcasting my latest appearance on the Hour of the Wolf radio show. The host, Jim Freund (LJ:jfreund), and I taped the interview on September 19, so you'll have to cast your mind back to International Talk Like a Pirate Day when you listen. But this is your chance to hear me read the title story of my collection I Remember the Future.

If you're not in New York City, the show is also available via streaming audio over the Internet. For more information, check out WBAI, New York.

Secondly, there have been two recent reviews I've been meaning to mention. Fortunately, Apex Publications has already done so on their blog, so I can link to their announcements.

The first review was in Science Fiction Weekly. In the Apex blog post on the review, Apex extracts out some nice praise for "Time Ablaze." Paul Di Filippo wrote the review, and he makes it clear that my writing style is one of clarity. I would probably have added the word "Asimovian" to describe my style, and I'm not the only one. As Robert J. Sawyer said on his own blog, "Michael A. Burstein is an Isaac Asimov for the new millennium."

The second review is not available on line unless you're a paying member of the magazine, but it's a nice one. The American Library Association publishes a monthly magazine called Booklist, in which they make their recommendations to member libraries. As noted by Apex in their blog post about the review, Regina Schroeder of Booklist had praise for the two new stories in the book:

“Empty Spaces,” the first of the new tales, is another speculation in the particle-accelerator saga of the three supercollider stories. “I Remember the Future” is a touching ode to the golden age sf writers who inspire Burstein. Like those of the early sf masters, Burstein’s stories aren’t always carried by the characters; speculation takes center stage more often than not. That said, he has got a good hand on the classic genre tropes, and the collection is well worth reading.

An Unexpected Day Off

So I arrive at the office this morning and find that the power grid has been shut down in most of Copley Square due to manhole explosions in the theater district. They sent us home.

I know there are many other things I could be doing today, but I think I'll spend much of the day reading.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

[IRTF] Better Books, Not Battered Books

It's just been reported on the Apex Publications blog under the title When doing your job is good news that the other four boxes of copies of I Remember the Future arrived fairly intact. So while Apex is still going to take a hit on the two earlier boxes of damaged and stolen books, things are not as bad as they might have been.

For those of you who pre-ordered the hardcover, Apex will be filling the orders over the next few weeks as quickly as possible. We need to ascertain which copies disappeared and were damaged so we can arrange replacements, so for some of you this may take a little longer. Fortunately, I labeled each book with a post-it note, so we should be able to ascertain which customers need replacements fairly easily.

And for those of you who haven't yet bought the book, or can't wait for your pre-order, check out the Where to Buy page for I Remember the Future.

A Very Busy Weekend, With Damaged Books

As I mentioned on Friday, a bit of Town Meeting/Library Trustee business threatened to fill up my time. But no matter what might happen in the world, Nomi and I always have Friday night and Saturday off, because, of course, of shabbat.

Nomi and I had a very nice shabbat. On Friday night, we ate dinner at the home of our friends the Cypesses, and we met a most fascinating visitor to Boston for the year, an air force chaplain who has been sent to study at Boston University. You don't meet too many Orthodox Jewish rabbis from the air force.

Shabbat lunch we were invited to the home of the Weinbergers, a family we're been meaning to have lunch with for a very long time. The food was delicious, and the conversation flowed.

Finally, back at Kadimah, I gave a talk on this week's Torah portion, Vayeira. My father died many years ago on the shabbat of this parsha, which includes the story of Abraham arguing with God about Sodom and Gommorah. I based my talk on the question, "Shall not the judge of all the Earth deal justly?" and used it to discuss both my father's love and pursuit of justice and my own belief that God created the world with scientific principles and laws that we can trust in.

When shabbat ended, I discovered two things that had developed over the day to press upon my time.

The first one had to do with town politics, more of the same from Friday.

The second one is best described on the Apex Digest blog, under the post The Battering of Burstein. The basic facts are that two of the boxes of autographed hardcovers of I Remember the Future that Nomi and I packed up very carefully, with the same padding in which they arrived at our home, ended up arriving at the publisher in damaged condition. One of the boxes was apparently completely sealed and intact, but with nothing in it. Needless to say, this has both of us distraught on many levels; Nomi and I went to great effort to take these 30 pound boxes to the Post Office, and I can't understand how one box could end up empty and sealed in transit unless someone stole the contents within.

If you see signed and personalized copies of the book being offered anywhere, I'd appreciate it if you'd alert me immediately. And if you're inclined to purchase a ticket in the Apex raffle for any of the items they're offering, Apex and I would both appreciate it.

Anyway, the rest of Sunday worked out nicely. Nomi and I went to the movies, saw many friends, and caught up on a little television. But for the rest of the week I have Town Meeting, so expect me to be scarce.

Brookline Town Politics Update

So next week is Town Meeting.

So on Sunday a Town Meeting Member filed an amendment to the standard revisiting-the-budget article to move the Library RFID money out of the capital budget and into a reserve.

So on Monday we had a Library Trustees Meeting to discuss a response.

So on Tuesday I crafted a response, which the Trustees looked over and which we sent out as from the Trustees.

So on Wednesday I was on the phone a lot.

So on Thursday night I was out at the Old Lincoln School, the temporary Town Hall, to attend meetings of the Advisory Committee's Administration and Finance Subcommittee and the Advisory Committee, along with a few other Trustees and our Library Director.

So today, I'm exhausted. And the three nights of staying up late for Town Meeting aren't until next week.

If I have time, I'll post details later. All you need to know is that Trustees still fully support funding the RFID program, as Town Meeting voted to do back in May.

New Scientist Science Fiction Special

New Scientist magazine has posted the articles from their New Scientist Science Fiction Special: The Future of a Genre. All the articles will be appearing in their 15 November issue as well.

The articles include the responses from six writers to the question "Is science fiction dying?"; a series of book reviews, including a list of other great books to read that includes I Remember the Future; and the results of their poll of people's favorite science fiction movies and novels. The winners: Blade Runner and Dune.

Joel David Burstein (December 11, 1929 - November 2, 1990)

[Note: Although the Gregorian calendar anniversary of my father's death is November 2, on the Hebrew calendar that date was 15 Heshvan. I'll be observing Dad's yahrzeit starting tonight.]

Eighteen years ago tonight, by the reckoning of the Hebrew calendar, my father Joel David Burstein died.

I tend to think Dad was a fascinating person. He was born in December 1929, in the wake of the stock market collapse, and so grew up during the Depression, which affected his outlook for the rest of his life. When he was almost ten years old, he attended the 1939 New York City World's Fair, and fell in love with the visions of the future it presented. He graduated as valedictorian of DeWitt Clinton High School (which was in Manhattan at the time, I think) and started college at Columbia, where he was editor of the college newspaper, The Spectator.

But while he was in his teenage years and World War II was raging, news of the Holocaust came to the United States. My grandfather was a rabbi, and my Dad grew up in a religious household; but the Holocaust caused him to lose his faith in God and to break away from religion.

On the other hand, he felt a strong connection to the Jewish people. In the 1940s he ran guns to the nascent Jewish state of Israel, and then he dropped out of college, never finishing, in order to smuggle himself into Israel and fight in the 1948 War for Independence.

Dad was dedicated to journalism and newspapers. He used to like to quote Thomas Jefferson, who once said that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. Dad spent his life working at a whole variety of newspapers in New York City. In the midst of all this, he married his first wife, Evelyn, and had two sons, my half-brothers David and Daniel. Eventually, Dad and Evelyn divorced. He met my mother Eleanor, married her, and had three more sons: Jonathan, Michael, and Joshua.

By the time I knew him, Dad had been working at the New York Daily News for many years. In 1990, the Daily News unions were locked out and so once again went on strike against the owner of the paper, the Chicago Tribune Company. Dad was in the Newspaper Guild union office eighteen years ago when he collapsed of a heart attack and was pronounced dead at St. Claire's Hospital. My brothers and I were in the Boston area at the time -- Jon in medical school, Josh and me in college. Jon and Josh were on a train home already because my father's mother had just died the day before, and they were going to NYC to be with my Dad for her funeral. We had no way of knowing that on Sunday, November 4, we would attend one funeral after another, with print and TV reporters gathered with our friends and family, the media there to report on my father's death as another tragic story.

My father was a strong believer in justice, in supporting the powerless against the powerful. Two months before he died, I marched with him in the NYC Labor Day Parade. The Greyhound bus drivers were on strike, and Dad – who always kept an eye on family finances – donated money to their fund without blinking. After he died, I found among his personal papers articles he had clipped about a Mohawk tribe in upstate New York struggling to get a piece of land back from the federal government. Dad always shared stories like that with us, to remind us that the fight for justice was a neverending battle.

Dad had been a reader of science fiction and comic books when he was growing up; by the time I knew him, he mostly read mysteries. But he inculcated in me a love of science fiction, and my one regret about my own writing is that he never got to read it. But his spirit infuses every word I write.

Copyright © Michael A. Burstein

Language Question

So far today, I've seen

Veterans Day

Veteran's Day

Veterans' Day

Which is it?

Veterans Day (or Armistice Day)

Today, of course, is the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, the "war to end all wars."

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Danny Dunn and the Internet Search

Yesterday afternoon, I taped an episode of Brookline Writes, a TV show on Brookline Access Television devoted to authors in Brookline. Dan Kimmel, Gary Wolf, and I had a panel discussion on science fiction that will be broadcast in Brookline in December. At some point it will probably also end up as streaming video on the BATV website.

The host of the show, Peggy Hogan, began the panel discussion by asking us what science fiction book we remembered having first read as a kid. Unfortunately, I can't recall the exact first science fiction book I read, although I did mention that Isaac Asimov was the first writer I really became aware of. But Peggy's question did spark another memory, and I answered that I also remembered a series of young adult science fiction books very fondly, the Danny Dunn series.

Does anyone else remember the Danny Dunn series by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams? Danny was a teenager who lived with his widowed mom in the home of Professor Euclid Bullfinch. Danny had two friends, Joe and Irene, and the three of them would get into odd adventures, usually because the professor had invented some sort of new technology. My favorite book was Danny Dunn, Time Traveler, in which a quick trip to the future causes them to have two versions of Joe adventuring with them as they go back to the eighteenth century. But I also vividly remember Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine, in which Danny and his friends get shrunk to a tiny size and have to figure out how to get rescued.

I went looking for fan sites and there don't seem to be any. I found the Wikipedia page about Danny Dunn, but there isn't much there. Sadly, it looks like all the books are out of print, and any copies I might own, if I still do, are in storage.

I've requested a few from the library, but it would be really nice if some publisher considered bringing these books back into print.

Obama on Science

Like many of you, I have a maelstrom of thoughts swirling through my mind about the results of the presidential election. I'm doing my best to figure out how to put it all into words.

In the meantime, I share with you this webpage from New Scientist: Obama on science, in his own words It's worth reading, especially for those of us who were distraught over how the current administration was treating science.

Folks who have read my blog over the past year may recall that I spent quite some time looking for information on how the candidates would approach the space program. Admittedly, Obama's words aren't as specific as I would like about a manned space program, but they are most hopeful and definitive:

"As president, I will establish a robust and balanced civilian space program. Under my administration, NASA not only will inspire the world with both human and robotic space exploration, but also will again lead in confronting the challenges we face here on Earth, including global climate change, energy independence, and aeronautics research. I believe that a revitalized NASA can help America maintain its innovation edge and contribute to American economic growth.

"I will re-establish the National Aeronautics and Space Council reporting to the president. It will work toward a 21st century vision of space that constantly pushes the envelope on new technologies as it pursues a balanced national portfolio that expands our reach into the heavens and improves life here on Earth."

The Burstein Administration

Well, the Brookline TAB picked up the story in their blog at Burstein '08!, so I guess I'm an official write-in candidate for President.

Help me put together my administration! I need a Vice-President, and the following cabinet positions also need to be named:

Secretary of State
Secretary of the Treasury
Secretary of Defense
Attorney General
Secretary of the Interior
Secretary of Agriculture
Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Transportation
Secretary of Energy
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Secretary of Homeland Security

I also need a Chief of Staff and a Science Advisor.

My platform places the space program among the highest of my priorities.

And remember: today Brookline Town Meeting, tomorrow the world!

(Blog post fades away to the theme music from The West Wing)

A Vote For Me Is A Vote For Me

One of my co-workers was having difficulty trying to decide how to vote in the presidential race. Neither candidate appeals to him, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to vote for the third party candidate he was most interested in.

So a few days back, I told him that he could feel free to write my name in if he wanted to do so.

He did.

Number of votes I have received for president: 1.

We Voted

Nomi and I got up early to vote today. We almost always do, and usually we try to get to our polling place at 6:50 am or so, ten minutes before they open. But four years ago there was already a long line at that time, so today we decided to get to the polls by 6:30 am instead.

It's a good thing we did. When we got there, there were already ten people on line in front of us. At 6:45 am, I stepped outside to count the number of people on line; it was already up to 43 people.

They opened the polls at 7 am, and we went in and voted. Our ballots were #15 and #16 inserted into the scanning machine.

When we left, the line was down the block, and people were still joining it.

I'm anticipating record turnout today.

The Muller Election

A few folks including my half-brother Danny have reminded me that tomorrow is the date of the Muller Election.

What's that, you ask? It's quite simple. In 2008, the United States, as it had done for the previous few presidential elections, had the supercomputer Multivac determine the winner by selecting one citizen to be America's representative. Multivac chose Norman Muller as the voter of the year for 2008, the man whose views on politics were closest to the American average for the year. Muller reported to Multivac to answer a series of questions about his political preferences and his opinions on the state of the world, and based on that interview, Multivac named the winning candidate who would go on to become president in 2009.

Or so Isaac Asimov wrote in the short story Franchise, first published in August 1955. I had completely forgotten that the story was set on Election Day 2008.

Nomi and I plan to vote first thing tomorrow morning. Go ye and do likewise.

Other Apex News

Two things I didn't want getting lost in the shuffle of my publication party post...

First of all, the November 2 issue of Apex Magazine is reprinting my 2003 story The New Breed, which originally appeared in Men Writing Science Fiction as Women edited by MIke Resnick. If you missed the story when it first came out, here's your chance to read it for free.

And secondly, Apex Publications has announced their annual Apex fall raffle. They have a lot of excellent items being raffled off, including a signed Advance Reading Copy of I Remember the Future. So if you'd like to help support my publisher and have a chance to win some signed books or story critiques, now's your chance. (Personally, I may try to win the story critique from publisher Jason Sizemore himself.)

[IRTF] The Publication Party; or, Today I Am Neil Gaiman

Michael Signing Books at the Publication Party Photo copyright ©2008 by John Pearlman.

Folks wait in line to get I Remember the Future signed by the author Photo copyright ©2008 by John Pearlman.

Copies of I Remember the Future waiting to be sIgned Photo copyright ©2008 by John Pearlman.

[IRTF] Spotted at Brookline Booksmith

I had to go see it for myself...

I Remember the Future at Brookline Booksmith Photo #1 Clarke? Pohl? Who are they? :-) Photo copyright ©2008 by Michael A. Burstein.

I Remember the Future at Brookline Booksmith Photo #2 Nestled between Bujold and Butler. Photo copyright ©2008 by Michael A. Burstein.

[IRTF] Now I Know It's Real

I just got email from the good folks at Brookline Booksmith, the independent bookstore in Coolidge Corner.

Copies of I Remember the Future are in and ready for me to sign.

The books are sitting there, for sale, in a real brick and mortar bookstore.

Wow.

In other news, one last reminder to all that the publication party will be held this Sunday at the Public Library of Brookline and is open to everyone.

Memories of Elections Past

Weekly Reader has announced the results of their presidential election poll. For those of you unfamiliar with this, its a poll they do every four years of the nation's schoolchildren to involve them in the process and get them interested in voting. It's actually predicted the results of 12 of the last 13 presidential elections.

Reading about their poll reminded me that I too participated in the Weekly Reader poll when I was a kid. My first experience with democracy that I can recall was "voting" in the Ford-Carter election of 1976. My class ended up going for Carter by a vote of 13-7, and when Carter won the presidency, I assumed that my class had elected him.

Four years later, I remember being very surprised when Reagan won. Many of my fellow students and I wandered the halls and stairwells of the school on the day after Election Day, asking if anyone at all knew someone who had voted for Reagan. I was still too young to consider the fact that just because I knew of no one who voted for Reagan didn't mean that no one had. (Growing up in New York City does tend to give one a skewed view of how the country is voting as a whole.)

What I remember most about the Reagan-Mondale match-up was the electoral map showing Mondale with only Minnesota and Washington, D.C. colored in for him. If I recall correctly, the channel I was watching had colored in Reagan's states blue and Mondale's red, the reverse of what the networks tend to do now.

The first election I was able to vote in for real was the Dukakis-Bush election. I will always feel proud of how I voted in that election.

A final thought, somewhat personal.

I remember how, when I was little, Mom let my brothers and me into the voting booth with her. The booth had small levers that put an X next to the names of the candidates, and a big red lever that you pulled when you were finished which went KA-CHUNK, cleared the X's, and opened the curtain for the next voter. Mom told me to keep her vote secret; years later, she told me that as a little boy, my uncle had gone into the booth with my grandmother during the Eisenhower election and returned home to inform my grandfather that "Mommy likes Ike!" As my grandfather was a Democratic ward organizer, and my uncle blurted this out in front of some of his fellow Democrats, it was an embarrassing situation for all involved.

In 2004, Mom voted in a presidential election for what turned out to be the last time. And by an odd quirk of fate, I was there with her, and she let me accompany her into the voting booth so I could help her with the levers.

Next week: no levers, no booths. A bubble sheet and scanning machine.

Two Good Reviews

I have a cold that's making it difficult for me to sleep, so I figured I'd link to two recent good reviews that cheered me.

First, a comic book and science fiction fan named Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag recently came across "TeleAbsence" in the Wondrous Beginnings anthology edited by Steven H Silver and Martin H. Greenberg and had this to say in A Sunday Review:

..."TeleAbsence" by Michael A Burstein was a heart-rending tale of what technology should be and could be, with dead-on truths of why it can't be.

While this storyline may not sound too enticing, I found it to be quite an easy and interesting read. Michael Burstein is a great writer, and that makes “Collapse” a pleasure to read.

[IRTF] Website Tour

One of the important pieces of a marketing plan for a book is to have a website, as noted in the book The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity. A website is a relatively inexpensive way for an author and a publisher to promote a book. I knew that when I Remember the Future was about to be published, I would want it to have its own separate site, independent of my author website and this blog.

So I turned, once again, to Heather Greene.

Years ago, Heather had done the design for Michael A. Burstein's Homepage, and I very much liked the result. Fortunately for me, Heather was willing to help me out again for this new site.

First, though, I needed to figure out what a website devoted to a book needed. I looked at the site that my friend Jennifer Pelland had put together for her collection Unwelcome Bodies along with a few others, typed up some scattered notes, and emailed them to Heather with the request that she work her magic.

And she did.

Burstein Books is now all set to promote I Remember the Future. We've included the following pages on the site:

• An introductory page about the book
  
• A press kit in both HTML and downloadable PDF
  
• A "How to Order" page, which includes links to every bookseller that I know of carrying the book
  
• A Bio page with links to profiles
  
• And links to my blog and home page.