Science Fiction - by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Raven's Heart by Jennifer Dunne, Speculation Press, 2000
To Kill An Eidolon by W. F. Halsey, Speculation Press pb, 1999
Of Honor and Treason by C. J. Merle, Speculation Press pb, 2000
Tribute Trail by Terri Beckett and Chris Power, Speculation Press pb, 1999
[see Sources (1) below for Speculation Press web address]

Teenagers! A Bewildered Parent's Guild, by Elizabeth Caldwell, Silvercat Publications, 1996

A glimpse that persists is what a motion-picture or animation actually is. It consists of many cells or frames, glimpsed one after the other so rapidly the eye can't register the intervals between glimpses. Vision "persists."

As Below: So Above. This hardwired physiology in the human eye/brain has its analog in the realm of The Sight and the other perception modes native to the astral plane.

I am writing this on July 2, 2001. At this time, the economy is still not responding to the rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. Experts still aren't sure if we'll skim 0% growth and recover, or plunge into a pit of negative growth.

Politically, the country is still waffling, the world's economies are destabilized, and the internet build-out has paused. Demographically, the U.S. is due for a mass-retirement beginning in the next few years, and the number of college grads to take the places of the retirees is too small.

The only way corporations can fill that gap is with technology replacing workers -- which means that when the boomer-echo generation born in the 90s gets out of school, there won't be any jobs for them until they make some for themselves.

This past weekend the Theatrical Release A. I. led the box-office draw. Coincidence? Or a group-mind that has glimpsed the implications of what is happening?

A few weeks ago, I "discovered" a new on-paper publisher. The company heard about our operations at simegen.com and bought advertising on our pages. Some of their authors are likewise advertising with us. This constitutes for me a "conflict of interests" as a reviewer. However, had they not come to us, I might have read Susan Sizemore's Gates of Hell from Speculation Press (which I reviewed last month) but not pursued all the books from this publisher.

As it is, I have found a new publisher to rave about -- one which has provided one "cell" image for my inner eye, a "glimpse" of the future.

Speculation Press may well rise to stand beside Toad Hall [see Sources (2) for web address] among the small publishers working in the paper market -- for consistency, quality, and for targeting a specific taste. And SP may soon stand beside Awe-Struck E-Books (whose works I've also raved about in this column) in the e-publishing trade.

I read the above-listed stack of four novels after reviewing Susan Sizemore's Gates of Hell. I have now read five titles from this press without major disappointment. In each case, I can find no flaw in the writers' clarity of style and definitive storytelling. The production values on these works is excellent. Good paper, solid bindings, clear print, crisp copyediting. (Okay, the cover art could be improved.)

This is the first time in a couple of years I've been able to read five novels in a row with pure enjoyment. Some are e-book reprints that won awards, and all are smooth, good reads.

In each case, I have been able to see clearly why the big publishers (which are still getting bigger) could not have accepted these novels for publication. I hope to use some of them as textbooks in our WorldCrafters Guild. The only thing "wrong" with these novels is that they are specifically targeted at too small, illusive, non-cohesive, impossible to define, difficult-to-advertise-to readers.

Speculation Press bills itself as SF & F "with a woman's touch," but I don't see it that way. I see them creating a backlist of intimate adventure -- which is not gender-specific. This may be the first publisher to exist solely to publish intimate adventure. We'll see what they do next.

Last week, when I was almost finished reading that stack of SP books, I wrote a Writer's Workshop post titled Fiction Delivery System 3 [see Sources (3) below] using material generated in an online chat with one of our students in the WorldCrafters Guild, Lillian Caldwell -- a professional writer of nonfiction who is now launching a career in fiction.

Her currently available nonfiction title, Teenagers! A Bewildered Parent's Guild, by Elizabeth Caldwell is listed on amazon.com erroneously as by Elizabeth Francis Caldwell (who also writes on psychology but isn't the same person). I have reviewed Teenagers! on amazon, and you can read my review and buy the book [see Sources (4) below]. I would never have found this book if Lillian hadn't volunteered to work in our new Author Spotlights section at simegen.com.

On chat, Lillian and I were discussing the disarray of the paper publishing industry in the fiction arena and the forces driving the fiction market now. Simultaneously, I was corresponding with Speculation Press and one of their authors. And another agent in the business offered more observations. At the same time, I read the Science Fiction Writers of America Forum -- where discussion centered on the results of the publishing industry's disarray. The resulting Workshop post is so long it has an index, and two additional files linked to it. It is filled with "glimpses."

All of these glimpses occurring so close to one another persisted and overlapped -- forming a little animation in my mind.

During discussion on another subject, Speculation Press told me that they are planning to launch an e-publishing initiative next year to supplement their paper works. Why? Because they've found so many worthy titles they can't afford to present them all on paper. Paper publishing is expensive and getting more so while e-publishing is cheap and getting cheaper.

Simegen.com will host a web-based short historical fiction magazine called Bygone Days. It is moving here because there's currently no paper market for short historical fiction and their previous hosting service collapsed. This is professional level work that has plenty of readers.

Speculation Press, like many other small presses I know, is making the bulk of their sales through the small specialty bookstores, not the chains like Barnes & Noble. And the small stores are still disappearing while the huge chains are still "consolidating."

In June '01 we posted a "Spotlight" -- a close-up of an author including a short conversation -- on Sherry Gottlieb, who was an owner of the vastly influential specialty bookstore, Change of Hobbit (now gone). She is a successful tree-published author. She gave us insights into the secrets of marketing in her spotlight and subsequent open chat we held with her online (which is also posted for you to read [see Sources (5) below]):

As president of a dot-com business, I am aware of the failure of many dot-coms this year. Although the volume of sales of e-published fiction is increasing, many e-publishers have collapsed. In this climate, other "tree publishers" who have paper-backlists are launching e-initiatives.

During the 70s and 80s, I watched the Star Trek fanzine publishing industry re-invent the wheel -- i.e., discover and implement the power of genre-labeling to market product.

So all these glimpses flickering by so swiftly create a similar impression to what I saw during those decades.

I see a fiction-delivery system re-inventing itself from scratch in the e-world. This time, though, because of the collapse of the tree-market, professional writers and editors who have proven their understanding of how "marketing" works are struggling to learn the tools of the e-publishing trade so they can apply what they know of genre signatures and marketing to e-publishing.

E-publishing is a microcosm, a "Below," which reflects the "Above" of the total economy. And the economy and its underlying politics are reflected in developments in ecology -- the life-sphere of this planet. Understand one of these levels of manifestation, and you will have a good grasp of what is happening in all of them.

If Speculation Press does succeed and does become a publishing house focused on intimate adventure (as no giant publisher can afford to be) it might become the next significant trend-setter.

Read these books. Join the greater group mind. Focus its attention on the problems in intimate, personal relationships that cause global political disasters. Be part of the solution.

Sources

(1) www.speculationpress.com
(2) www.laceyville.com/Toad-Hall
(3) www.simegen.com/school/workshop/WORKFictionDeliverySystem3.html
(4) www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/096249450X/rereadablebooksr/
(5) www.simegen.com/writers/spotlights/vampires/