The Broken Man

The good folks at the World Fantasy Awards have nominated The Broken Man for their novella award this year — which means I’ll have a good excuse to hit the World Fantasy Convention San Diego this October.  (Hey, it’s San Diego, why not?)   What’s The Broken Man?  Why, it’s my new (and nicely short) novella from the UK horror/scifi/fantasy publisher PS Publishing.  You can get the Kindle version here – and the old-fashioned dead-tree version here.  What’s it about?  About 60 pages.  A gorgeous hardback, in fact, with a little surprise waiting in the endpapers, and an original painting on the cover, and lots of death and sex inside.   How can you resist?

A promising cinema director in his long-lost youth, Hollywood mogul Gary Rivoli now finds himself at the helm of his 33rd low-budget horror flick, The Broken Man. But number 33 is posing a problem: he seems to have hired a real-life witch to build his new monster — or at least there’s something decidedly creepy about Alice White, about the new creature as it comes into being, and about Gary’s beautiful life as it slides horribly, and terrifyingly, away from him.  How long can he survive in a monster movie come to life — and at what cost?

 

My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us New Pizza…

Hence the pizza!  Nice of the NY Times Op-Ed page to allow me a little room to celebrate what would have been Clyde Tombaugh’s 105th birthday.

 

What manner of beings they may be…

No doubt Percival Lowell (1855-1916) is worth a novel in his own right.  Though he’s been dead nearly a century now, his life has to strike us as almost theatrically staged, tinged with madness, loss and obsession — and aligned in some mysterious fashion with the hidden workings of the universe.

The Lowell family is legendary in Massachusetts; with the Cabots, Lodges, Forbeses and Adamses they are (or were) the Brahminest of the Brahmins, producing inventors, entrepreneurs, novelists, abolitionists, architects, etc.  His brother Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856-1943) became president of Harvard; his sister, the poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925), won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Percy himself studied mathematics at Harvard under Benjamin Peirce, graduating with distinction.  In 1893, having encountered the work of astronomer Camille Flammarion — and finding his way thereby to the wonders of Mars via a “spiritist” avenue — Lowell turned his attention to the nighttime sky.

He was an intent, imaginative observer; his hundreds of drawings of the Martian surface attest to his many long nights at the objective.  We now understand that the “canals” he saw were in fact moving patterns of dust and sand, varying seasonally with the changing of the Martian weather.  (And if you’d like a tour of the Martian landscape today, you can scoot on over to Google Mars.  Too cool.)  Still, Lowell’s drawings retain their evocative power.  In their unusual proportions, odd angularity, and the patterned combination of irregular nodes and slender tendrils, we may see an echo of the spidery elegance of the Art Nouveau movement exerting some imaginative influence:

And I know I can’t be the only one to see the Paris Metro design as peculiarly Martian, or at least H.G. Wellsian…

with the defining Art Nouveau monsters being the terrifying Martian tripods!

Anyway, Lowell’s 1895 volume Mars makes for interesting reading today; in it, we can see Lowell struggling to make sense of what he saw — and struggling to restrain his own excitement about what he thought he saw — which was, to his mind, evidence of an advanced civilization at work, effortlessly altering the surface of its home planet. It is, I think, a hopeful gaze that Lowell turned to Mars; and surely his mix of imagination and dedication also characterized his later search for Planet X.

Safe to say, Percival Lowell began with a hypothesis that excited him — that Martians existed, that Planet X was out there — and worked through his evidence, hoping keenly he would find what he wanted to see, occasionally tempering his hope with caution:

But look!  Here’s some evidence that the Martians are actually paying some attention. That, or the rubber gloves don’t fit AT ALL at Google Books.

(What can be going on here?)

 

Hello, trailer!

Thanks due to Antoinette Beiser, Kevin Schindler, Travis Marsala as Alan Barber, Kevin Strehlow as Clyde Tombaugh, and Chris Crockett (for his cameo as Vesto Slipher!) — and of course to the fine crew of Nobun Productions, without whom this book trailer etc etc.

 

Wrexie and Percy.

Percival Lowell and his secretary, Wrexie Louise Leonard, were constant companions from 1893.  They exchanged fond letters; they each had a bedroom in the Baronial Mansion on Mars Hill; and together they tended the garden behind the Clark Observatory, proud of the watermelons and wary of the invading rabbits – calling them “Jack Rabbit, Esqr.”

But, as William Putnam says in The Explorers of Mars Hill, “proper Bostonians just did not marry their secretaries.”  Instead, Percival Lowell married the irascible Constance Savage Keith in 1908.  What exactly compelled him to choose Constance over any of the other options is unknown; it is well known, however, that Constance disliked the long-established Wrexie, believing her a rival for Percy’s affections.

And maybe she was.  Percival Lowell asked Wrexie to stay on as his secretary; remarkably, she did.  And when Lowell died in 1916, Wrexie sat down and composed a tribute to the man she had accompanied for nearly twenty years.

The book’s epigraph demonstrates the devotion Wrexie felt for Percy.  As William Putnam helpfully points out, hidden in the epigraph’s several lines are tributes to Lowell himself and two of his most faithful “computers” at Harvard College Observatory — the doughty Elizabeth Langdon Williams and John Kenneth McDonald — as well as the two women who made up the binary stars of the great astronomer’s romantic life.

Preambient light = Percival Lowell
Waning, lingers long = Wrexie Louise Leonard
Ere lost within = Elizabeth Langdon Williams
Just, kind, masterful = John Kenneth McDonald
Life’s sweet constant = Lowell Savage Constance

Could it possibly be a coincidence that only Constance Savage Lowell’s  initials are reversed — Constance being, as William Putnam notes, “the one who almost succeeded in completely negating [Lowell's] life’s work?”  Might Wrexie have been extracting, here, a very quiet kind of of revenge?

In any case, it’s a fitting tribute to a man whose own initials – PL – are embedded in the very name of the planet whose discovery he made possible. If it was love, it was a love contained and tamed – or so it would appear – but one that insisted, in this smallest of ways, on proclaiming itself.

 

Tombaugh’s credit.

A blogger at the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science has been writing about the Planet X story lately; in his most recent post, Darin points out that in the initial announcement in 1930, V.M. Slipher went out of his way to credit Percival Lowell for leading the way to the planet’s ultimate discovery — while underplaying Clyde Tombaugh’s central role in the painstaking photographic search.

The extension of credit to Lowell, and the relative under-recognition of Tombaugh, could suggest that Slipher simply knew where his bread was buttered.  You give credit to the man with his name on the letterhead, after all, not the undereducated farmboy from Kansas.  And part of the mission of Lowell Observatory was to rehabilitate the reputation of its founder, who was thought to be a bit of a kook.

(For example, Lowell had believed passionately in the existence of a Martian civilization — sustained by an elaborate series of canals.)

It’s worth noting that Slipher’s relationship to Lowell — and the Lowell family — was (understandably) a complicated one. By 1930, Slipher’s old friend Lowell had been dead for fourteen years. Constance, Percival’s widow, had been a thorn in Slipher’s side since the astronomer’s death, spending more than a decade fighting Lowell’s multimillion-dollar bequest to his own Observatory and cutting the astronomers’ salaries in the bargain. On the other hand, once the Planet X project got underway again in 1928, the Lowell family (apart from Constance) invested substantially in the equipment needed, including the remarkable triplet lens the 13-inch astrograph required. It can be imagined that the family expected results from their investment, and that Slipher’s emphasis of Lowell’s role in the discovery of Planet X was indeed at once an acknowledgment of his old friend’s ancient, originating ambition and a recognition of the family’s more recent, crucial involvement.

But consider another line as well. Slipher — and others involved in the Planet X search — knew they had an unusual case in Pluto.  Even before announcing their discovery to the world, they had tipped to the notion that Lowell’s calculations had not in fact been borne out by the discovery of Planet X, because it was too small to have been detected mathematically.  Still, one can imagine Slipher and the others being reluctant to get in the way of a good news story.  We don’t know who wrote “confirmed” here in the headline, but I bet Slipher didn’t protest too much.

Note that this question should be distinguished from the matter of whether Planet X should have been called a “planet” to begin with.  What other word would have fit?  Though its exact dimensions weren’t clear, it was still thought to be a fairly large object.  Certainly it was no asteroid.

 

The best case.

Back in October I had the chance to give a talk in conjunction with Dr. Bruce Greenway, a fellow Michigander and an actual professional astronomer.  He made the most convincing case I’ve seen for Pluto’s reclassification — demonstrating beyond the shadow of a doubt that Pluto has far more in common with objects like Eris, Ceres, and Pallas than bodies like Mercury, Mars, Earth, or other canonical planets.  The difference in mass is crucial — and the degree to which this massiveness has allowed the principal bodies in question to clear the neighborhood around their orbits.  If you’re wondering whether Pluto’s more like Eris or Mercury, this graph ought to make the case plain:

I’m cribbing this slide from Bruce’s PowerPoint.  It points out exactly how drastically the difference in mass affects the amount of other “crap” in the neighborhood.  And seems to suggest that — all legacy considerations aside — Pluto ought to be categorized with its fellow dwarves.

We ought also to be struck by how extremely unlikely it was that Clyde would have seen such a tiny little thing.

 

What the hell I was thinking.

The stalwart and ever-interesting Fiction Writers Review has posted the conversation I had recently with Michael Shilling (author of the novel Rock Bottom) — in which we get into all kinds of writerly business. Check it out!

“When I’m down in the guts of a book I work sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph, scene-to-scene, and I worry about pacing, timing, narrative interest, that sort of thing, and then suddenly there’ll be a chiming sound from some unfamiliar area of my brain that will suggest that A is going to fit neatly, or interestingly, into slot B. Which I then take note of, I think, and go on doing what I was doing. If you can understand the book you’re writing as you’re writing it, I think, it’s not big or interesting enough.”

 

Clyde Tombaugh, farmboy

The Tombaughs were farmers of wheat and oats; together with other farmers in Pawnee County, they were part owners of a great steam tractor and thresher, like the one here below (I couldn’t find a picture of the Tombaughs farming).  Clyde Tombaugh was responsible for some of the maintenance on the thresher, and some of the same equipment he used for grinding his lenses he also employed in the sharpening of the thresher’s many blades.  The meticulous, umcomplaining work he did around the farm would surely be of help to him later, when he was poring over the endless photographs of the night sky, looking for the one moving speck that would be Planet X.

The steam tractor provides the power for the great whirring thresher belts while you rake the cut wheat and gather it into your arms and throw it into the thesher mouth, to be separated grain from chaff.  After an hour of standing beside the roaring machines, gathering the cut wheat into your arms, bending and standing, raking and kneeling, you stop hearing the engine, you stop thinking of hearing as something you do, and then all at once the noise emerges again into your consciousness, full of its many constituent parts, a rumble and a liquid pounding and a million high whinnying sounds from the belts and other things besides.  You feel it in your sternum in a strangely personal way.

 

Ski Zarmina’s World.

Just too good, that’s all.  See this and other awesome Zarmina’s World tourist posters (from the future) at the old reliable io9.com.

 

Saving up my Interworld Credits starting now.

 

News from the planet Zarmina.

Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz has been getting a lot of attention lately for his discovery of a “Cinderella” exoplanet – one right in the habitable zone of its star.  Officially called Gliese 581g, he’s unofficially named it after his wife, who happens to have an excellent moniker herself — Zarmina.  I think she’s from Earth, but her name is otherworldly, and just the sort of name you want to hang on a newly discovered world.  Lively discussions are underway as to whether Zarmina (the planet, not the lady) might be actually habitable, and if so, by what.  Vogt has, entertainingly, assured us that life does exist there.  Paul Gilster at the superb blog Centauri Dreams has some excellent coverage of the whole question — and manages to fold a lovely review of Percival’s Planet into the mix, too.

Zarmina has an orbital period of 37 days, orbiting at a distance of 0.146 AU from its star. Its mass appears to be 3.1 to 4.3 times that of Earth, with a radius of 1.3 to 2.0 times that of Earth. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a solid surface.   It’s about 20 light years from us — a mere stroll in astronomical terms.

 

The in-flight magazine is complimentary.

Of course, you can always take them home — why not!  Free! 

Spirit, the inflight magazine of Southwest Airlines, has a nice mention here of Percival’s Planet, again alongside some fine company.  It’s nice to be back in Spirit — and who can complain being mentioned alongside the lovely and talented Drew Barrymore?   (I think I’m responsible for about 245,000 of those google hits myself.)  (Too much information.)  Thanks, Derek, for sending this my way!

 

The one with Maura Tierney on the cover.

Parade Magazine, home of Marilyn vos Savant and Howard Huge, gives Percival’s Planet a nice mention — amid some pretty cool company.  I will take this opportunity to announce that starting today I will be doing a three-person show with Patti Lupone and Leonard Cohen, opening in my brain, running for eternity.

 

What’ll we name it, dear?

The letters began arriving immediately – proud Americans clamoring to hang a moniker on the new world.  Thanks to Antoinette Beiser for scanning a few of these beautiful examples – straight from the gorgeous archives of Lowell Observatory.   Planet Eureka:

And Planet Twelow:

And Planet Burdett, of course!

 

Call me Plato, not Pluto.

A fascinating post here braiding together the lives of Clyde Tombaugh, Venetia Burney, and the unusually named Plato Chan.  Born on March 14, 1930, he was supposed to be named Pluto, as it happens — and he would come to his own early fame, as Peter Sieruta points out.  Influences and perturbations indeed!

Plato (Pluto) Chan, winner of the Caldecott at age 12

 

Not banned in…

Nice review of Percival’s Planet today from the Boston Globe – thanks, Ms. Schlack!

“Deserving of our admiration and awe.  In this quietly poignant book about the search for Planet X (eventually known as Pluto), all of the fictional characters orbiting Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, are in some way navigating that thin and shifting border between what’s literal and imagined, between what’s real and simply longed for.  Pluto, Percival Lowell’s planet, is more than an invisible force exerting gravitational pull. It’s a metaphor for loss and pursuit, for the irregular orbits that define our most meaningful relationships.  Byers’s writing, always lyrical, shimmers and trembles and breaks our hearts.”

 

Life stripped of its ormulu is exceedingly stark.

One of the many pleasures of writing Percival’s Planet was unearthing the glorious slang of the period.  Edmund Wilson’s journals were great for this – deadpan documents of sex, drunkenness, and various kinds of cant (and other things spelled with a c, n, and t).

It was a sort of sport in that day – getting off the best line.  Here are just a few of my notes on the subject — those with checkmarks made it into the book, at least for the space of a draft or two.

 

Why we love independent bookstores.

What do you do if you’re a major book chain – let’s just say you’re the #2 chain in the country – and you see a novel gets the lead fiction review from Publishers Weekly, gets glowing reviews from Booklist and other major pre-pub outlets?  And what if that author lives where you happen to have your world headquarters, in Ann Arbor, Michigan?  Not only that, but teaches at the University of Michigan?  Surely you’d want to promote that novel, wouldn’t you?

Eh, not so much.  Borders doesn’t even stock the novel.  Nowhere, nohow, not nowheres — nationwide.  Calling the local flagship store, one is told that “Borders doesn’t stock books that are out of print or self-published.”  Yeah.  Huh.

This is a little embarrassing to an author, I’ll admit.  Yes, it gives me a cringey, gross feeling in my gut to walk into my local mega-chain bookstore and not find the book I spent years writing.  (Plenty of notecards, vampire novels, and calendars, but no Percival’s Planet.)  But I do think it’s considerably more embarrassing to the Borders chain, who might like to explain why a local author of at least some note (not that much, okay, but some!) isn’t carried in their flagship store. It ain’t me, I’m thinking, it’s them.

As to the looming Borders bankruptcy — well, whatever they’re doing…it’s not working so great.

Meanwhile, Nicola’s Books — the independent store in Ann Arbor – is happy not only to carry the book but to host events for their local authors, not just me but Sharon Pomerantz and Steve Amick and Laura Kasischke, among many others, and they’re also getting Sara Paretsky in the store soon, not bad!

So after walking out of Borders feeling like crap, I walked out of Nicola’s feeling really fine.  Nicola Rooney is a peppery little treasure; the excellent staff makes hearty and carefully considered recommendations, they carry litmags and brand-new hardcovers (and ones that aren’t so new), tons of sci-fi and children’s books, and they’re next to a bagel shop, so your entrance is wonderfully perfumed.

Long live the independents.  It matters where you buy your books, it really does.

 

The gray lady speaks.

The New York Times gives Percival’s Planet a solid review  in Monday’s books section – noting the book’s “untamable yearnings” no less!  (Rowr.) (See below.)

“Vivid…lyrical and exact….The search for Planet X offers Mr. Byers a wonderful opportunity for dramatizing the human desire for discovery, but he’s after an even wider story, one that probes the very nature of searching….A deeply generous attempt to explore the forces that make us restless, that make us want to wander the desert or peer into the sky or pace along our own fence lines, dreaming of finding something that might not be out there.  Mr. Byers reminds us that whether we’re gripped by desire for a new planet or for another human being, that yearning has dignity and its own strange logic.”

Very nice.  And I recommend googling “untamed yearnings.”

"She fought the darkly handsome officer at every turn, clinging to her Indian ways and wondering at his notions of civilization. For certainly there was nothing civilized about the untamed yearnings he awakened as he cupped her ripe curves, rained tender kisses over her soft form and led her into a world of unforgettable ecstasy." -- Cheyenne Sunrise, C. O'Banyon (1990)

 

And lo, the plutovians gather (MSNBC version).

MSNBC’s Alan Boyle, author of The Case for Pluto, makes a nice case here for Percival’s Planet - thanks for the support, Alan!

And if you’d like to check out the trailer shown above, it’s here on youtube.