Inquiring Minds II

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker liked questions. She loved puzzles, and questions were the doorway to her favourite puzzles: what’s it all for? Why is it here? What is Here? What happened? And what happens next?

She loved simply asking questions. A good question to pursue through various resources was like a huge, unwrapped sweet to her. If it led to more questions, and more searches, and succeeding layers of wrapping removed from succeeding layers of sweeties – so much the better. If she’d been able to unwrap the separate layers of a jaw breaker, they would have been her favourite candy. And even though you can’t, she still took jaw breakers out every few minutes to see what colour had been most recently revealed …

Luckily – ’cause jaw breakers in progress get pretty sticky – she usually reserved the technique for research projects. It was why she finally became so devoted to the Internet. One single parsimonious query could multiply through infinite time lines and dimensions, blossoming into a parallel Universe of facts that were just then connected in Kage’s mind. A lot of plotting went through its initial stages while she chased some outre image through the aether.

Did you ever see any episodes of a PBS show called Connections, Dear Readers? (Check it out on Amazon and imdb.) It was written by and starred author/historian/producer James Burke, one of those amazing polymath Englishmen that only that sceptered isle seems to throw at regular intervals. Connections I and II, and its companion series The Day the Universe Changed, were what taught Kage how she wanted to do research. Her style of gathering information, her preferred method of then disseminating it; especially – if you were ever fortunate enough to hear her teach, or speak at a Convention – her style of lecturing were all fathered by those shows.

The basic idea is that everything is connected to everything else: identifying the connections is the game, as well our responsibility as sentient organisms. Every path of connectivity (and there is seldom only one road between Fact A and Fact B) yields access to yet another world. Follow those paths further and you enter into an entire Universe, which is not the Fields We Know … that was where Kage always wanted to be. And for her, it always started with that one question.

She was therefore in the habit of asking every question that entered her mind. Not indiscriminately, mind you – you get some funny looks in restaurants doing that, and we got enough of them while discussing the behaviour of cows in low gravity, or what could create an Event Shadow. Does it have to be a Huge Thing, like Kennedy’s assassination, or could it be a Merely Large Thing, like the Beatles’ debut on Ed Sullivan? But in private – at home; on a quiet hay bale at Faire; in the car somewhere between the Giant Gopher Hills* and Coral Hollow** and the last gas station before the 580*** …

But Kage’s very favourite time to ask the truly deep and peculiar questions, the ones that often led to plot points or stories or even entire novels, was at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning.

Mind you, Kage was not by nature an early riser. Given her druthers, she stayed in bed until it was just barely still Ante Meridian. But that didn’t mean she was asleep. Oh no! She woke up, as she had from infancy, in the fizzing pearly light just before the sun broached the horizon. She loved to see the dawn, the first flaming edge of the light taking over the sky and spreading over the earth like honey. She had a dozen names for different kinds of dawns: the chalk-blue dawn. The tinsel dawn. The green bottle dawn. And she’d wake up and glory in the sunrise, and then she’d go back to sleep … unless her thoughts got up and took off.

She called it dawn-running. When she was little, she literally got up and ran when the sun rose; she was still doing it from time to time in her teens, and I saw a lot more dawns over the Hollywood Hills than I wanted to, staggering along behind Kage to prevent the mountain lions from eating her. In our eventual maturity and middle age (because somehow the mountains lions never did eat us), Kage would instead think up weird questions and then wake me up to ask me.

“Can you really transplant a head? Why not? What about those Russian guys who did it?”

“How do allergies work?”

“How many gallons of blood are there in a person?”

“Where can we get some squids around here?”

“How many planets are there? What are their names?”

None of these may seem especially weird on their own. But when it happens weekend after weekend – when someone comes padding into your room, or shakes you awake in your sleeping bag, or sings “Reveille” to you until you open your eyes (the Royal Navy version of course: Wakey Wakey, Lash up and Stow!) – and then asks you to describe how to cut into a living chest: well, you begin to suspect your sister has developed an even weirder habit than usual.

She hadn’t, though. She’d just added something to new to an old habit. Wake up early, admire the dawn, then start a conversation to get your mind running fast and strong. Pour coffee into your sister before she wakes up enough to kill you …

I find, Dear Readers, to my considerable surprise, that I  miss that. I really, really do.

 

 

*      A field full of dump-truck loads of dirt and several huge plywood gophers along I-5

**    It’s actually Corral Hollow, but one year the sign was screwy … Kage never forgot.

***    It had restrooms, but no toilets. Just holes and hand rails.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Menus, Pantries, Grocery Lists

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker, for all her peripatetic weekend urges, was a great fan of cocooning. Spending a weekend, especially a Sunday, cozily cloistered indoors against the seasonal gales was something she actively enjoyed.

It was a sunny, warm day in Los Angeles; but that is not lasting. The temperature is dropping rapidly, and by midnight we expect to be drowning. An aerial river is aiming at Southern California, having already commenced flooding Northern and Central Californias, and we are hunkering down. It’s made me think of all the years: years in the Hollywood Hills and the Northern oak groves and the Pismo streets above the Pacific Ocean, where Kage and I sheltered through so many winters like a pair of demented sparrows … Kage had whole provisioning rituals worked out.

Usually, the ritual began on Saturday, with a tour of Costco and Trader Joe’s – Kage’s idea of squirrel Heaven, wherein she could gather all manner of symbolic acorns. She was one of those people who makes her menus first and then bases her grocery list on them – maybe it had something to do with her penchant for playing cooks and housekeepers. She’d stock up on all her planned feasts for the week, plus any conspicuous holes in the pantry – she couldn’t abide it if there were not backup pounds of flour, salt, butter and diverse dry goods on the shelf.

I lived with that woman for almost half a century, and we never ran out of salt or sugar or flour. There were always a few cans of soup in the pantry; a tin of Spam, a bag of rice, a Tupper of oatmeal – can’t leave cereals in the boxes, the weevils and grain moths get in. Corn meal was with us always, as was Bisquick. As we got older and more experimental, the flours got more exotic: English brands of self-rising, all the King Arthur Flours, Red Mill and other health food milled products. But Alber’s Corn Meal and Gold Medal Flour stayed on the shelves, too, for fast meals when inspiration failed and muscle memory took over her cooking.

Kage could make good, edible pizza out of Bisquick, tomato puree, Kraft Parmesan and Spice Island Italian Seasoning. We were poor a lot, but she never felt that being poor meant being lazy with your cooking. What she could do, in more solvent times, using White Lily flour, hand-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and the herbs and tomatoes from our garden (when we had one) was an occasion of mortal sin. Olive oil only, please; the good stuff, so pure you could burn it in an oil lamp if the power went out …

And by this time of the year, we’d pretty much gone through the Christmas and New Year’s leftovers. If there was a ham bone left, it might end up in pea soup; but all the ham chunks had already met happy fates in creamed ham, and ham fritters, and hot sarnies. The prime rib was only a vanished dream of carnivory; but if there was any gravy stock in the freezer,  sometimes Kage would whip up  Yorkshire pudding and we would feast on force-meat and drippings.

Funny thing. Kage favoured loaves and lumps of Yorkshire pudding, made in bread pans or in the end of the roast pan when the the beef roast came out. Me, I prefer little round, flat, individual puddings, like gilded flying saucers, and so I make mine in special pans. You can get Yorkshire pudding pans (Williams-Sonoma has the kind I like), or in a pinch you can use muffin top pans instead. It all tastes the magnificent same. Though it’s easier to fill my chubby little UFOs with gravy than Kage’s flat golden slabs of pudding …

Whatever, this is the time of year for hot gloppy foods in a warm room, while the storm ravens at the windows and can’t get in. That’s the big trick, of course. Whether you’re licking beef drippings or melted cheese off your fingers, the main thing is that dinner is hot and you are dry and the winter is outside. The pantry is stocked with staples. There’s a fire in the grate and a comforter on each bed.

Time to take stock of some basic comforts, Dear Readers. And to stay safe.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Hobby Horses

Posted on January 7, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker  had any number of pet topics, peeves, interests and hobbies – like everyone, really; although maybe some of hers were a little unusual. But, also like everyone, she cherished these topics and would happily embark on lectures to her companions and auditors, on those subjects dear to her enthusiasm and curiosity.

And Kage could not be stopped when she so embarked. She had Asperger’s Syndrome, and once she began a remark, she would go on to the end as she had envisioned it. Anyone who talked with her was familiar with the sequence – she’d begin to talk, her conversational partner would say something: and she would wait, as tensely poised as a hunting cat, for their breath to run out so she could pick up right where she had left off. Sometimes, she’d run back a sentence or two – word for word, usually – just to make sure she was back in the right place in her narrative.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care what you were saying – she did, at least as much as anyone ever does; we’re all guilty of just waiting for our next turn in a conversation. But she had worked out what she had to say, she had a script in her head, she had a sequence, damn it, and she had to get through it. She was the same way with physical tasks, too – as so many Asperger’s folks (and lots of other people, too) are; but it was harder to notice those unless you lived with her. But Kage got up, got washed, dressed, breakfasted, caffeinated and began her day’s work: all in a carefully orchestrated and repeated sequence. And if she missed a step, she usually went back and did things over to get them in there.

Kage was perfectly aware of this. She knew she had a touch of OCD; she deliberately harnessed it to her work habits, as an engine and a tachometer. She used to tell me I needed more of it myself. I think she regarded my more improvisational approach to life as suspiciously  laissez faire, and she may well have been correct. There’s just no denying that some of Kage’s indomitable work ethic was partly based on mad compulsion.

But hey – everyone does have their hobby horses and favourite topics. Kage’s included automatons and clockwork in general; historical pomology; Catalina pottery; silent genre movies. Cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, hauntings. She’d have sold a limb for an authenticated oopart, or to taste a Black Ben Davis. And she worked a lot of these things into her stories, which I happen to think were often some of the best grace notes and flourishes in them. I have lots more, in the Notes …

And of course, I too have my own hobby horses. Maybe they’re just ponies, as I don’t think I am quite as obsessive as Kage – but I must admit, these are the topics I research idly when I am just wandering through the aether; these are the topics I consider when I don’t know what to write about.

Today is the actual, practical beginning of a new year of work and endeavour. “Old Christmas is past, 12th Night is the last -” as the old song goes; yestreday was 12th Night. Today our lights came down or changed colour, from multi-coloured strings everywhere, to just a few in icy blue and white, to honour the Winter. I took yestreday off and spent the last day of Christmas in childish soft clothes; but today I am dressed: jeans instead of jammy pants. a real shirt. All the underwear – socks, panties and bra. Yes, Dear Readers, for me complete undergarments equal social responsibility; you should see what I wear at Dickens Fair …

Anyway, I thought I would share a few little obsessions with you all today. They are interesting, nay, fascinating; there maybe stories in all of them. And Kage was intrigued by most of them, too. Any and all of them will alter the way you look at the world – and really, that is one of the Great Good Things of Life, isn’t it?  So, for your delectation, I present:

Bruniquel Cave, where Neanderthals may have been experimenting with religion. Or ball room dancing. Either way, unique and wonderful.       http://tinyurl.com/j9x4e9c

Nova in 2022. In the constellation Cygnus (best observed in the Northern Hemisphere in the Summer) two stars are colliding. They will produce a nova, expected to be visible from Earth in the year 2022. Nobody die in the next 5 years!   http://tinyurl.com/hmcstha

Extinct trees found in Queen’s Edinburgh gardens at Holyroodhouse. This one would have been especially dear to Kage. Wentworth elms have been sheltering with Her Majesty, Elizabeth the II. God save the Queen! http://tinyurl.com/jgfnyd4

5 unconsidered problems from global warning. And this one particularly amuses me. Stuff gets thawed when the ice melts, you know? Some of it is going to make life much more interesting, even though there is no real expectation of either giant monsters or Brendan Fraser.  http://tinyurl.com/hd8odd3

99 Reasons 2016 Was Good. Just because it appears I am still a semi-incorrigible  optimist.   http://tinyurl.com/z2hkk6k

There, a few little somethings to spice up the New Year. Because when you stop being able to peer through new Facets of the Universal Prism, it’s probably time to let go and die.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Bleah

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker – there, my ritual salutation is in place.

My ex-agent, Linn Prentis, died Christmas Eve. I just found out today. I am sad and sorry, though we did not part on the best of terms: maybe, sadder and sorrier because we did … but she was good to and for Kage. I hope she is happier now, off at a really good cocktail party in a New York filled with glittering friends, somewhere where her back no longer hurts.

Tor Books returned my book Knight & Dei, with a  polite “No”. On the other hand, they now have a novella program, so my agent is sending them “The Teddy Bear Squad”. And if we can land another editor with that– maybe one with a less refined sense of humour – my picaresque novel may yet sell.

And Tor is re-issuing Kage’s books in e-format, with quite lovely new covers. So her backlist is alive and in good health, huzzah!

Also, Hungary has made an offer to buy The Women of Nell Gwynne’s. Whoopie! Another foreign market – that always thrilled Kage.

Me, I feel like an egg dropped on a sharp rock tonight. So I am going to curl up and stare at the penultimate night of the Christmas lights, and probably go to bed early.

Happy 11th Day of Christmas, Dear Readers. Not all of 2017 is starting out bad, after all.

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

The Peculiar Satisfactions of Careful Research

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker was, at heart, a researcher.

She liked to track ideas through the multiverse of available thought. That meant all forms of media, all sorts of communication, all kinds of art. She liked to start with a single concept or image – solid rocket fuel, perhaps; or the development of bread leavening; or how every written language seems to go through crude blocky printing before it tries for a cursive or demotic style. And then she liked to trace that one idea or picture through a variety of environments, and see what various people did to it along the way.

There’s a scene in the film Zardoz – which is a bizarre movie, and was one of Kage’s favourites, ever – where the idiot resident rebel intellectual is arguing with an early visualization of Siri, Cortana or Alexa, who is showing him a series of photos of evolving automobiles. But it’s not what he wanted – he wanted the evolution of a specific vehicle over the broad history of cars, not the development of just one model; he’s irritated as hell, waving away the images offered in glowing colour on the thin, thin air … Kage was totally enthralled. She loved that scene more than any glimpse of Sean Connery in a leather loincloth. “That’s what I want a computer to do” she would exclaim every time we watched it. “That’s what a search engine should be like! He just didn’t ask it the right way!”

Which was probably correct. When Zardoz was made, almost no one had any idea about search parameters; certainly, few ordinary people. That all had to wait for search engines: Webcrawler. Lycos. Alta Vista. We got them all as soon as we could, and Kage learned them all – it was the one and only area of computer use where she taught me, because she seemed to understand data strings and parameters and key words instinctively, from the git-go. She was the very Queen of Search Engines long before Google hove on the horizon. And when it did, she glommed on to it before I even heard of it, and had mastered it before I was quite sure it was safe …

Search engines were her security weakness. In her insatiable appetite for MORE INFORMATION NOW!!!, Kage was heedless and fearless. She’d follow a trail anywhere for just one more interesting detail or blurry ancient photograph. My job was to somehow – and she didn’t care how, as long as I didn’t make her get off the Internet – make it all safe for her to explore. Consequently, I learned a lot about security much sooner than most home users. I consider it a mark of my care that Kage only managed to kill one (1) computer system with a virus in her years of nearly continuous use.

I know other people do this, too. Skimming through the electron paths in the monitor screen is how an awful lot of people get their kicks – even without counting pornography. Kage understood perfectly the people who pored over Google photos, looking for anomalies and unsuspecting citizens caught en flagrante delicto … she even sympathized with the nutcases who spend hours examining pictures from the Mars Rovers, looking for faeries and Scotty dogs and jelly doughnuts – and finding them.

“Nope, it’s another rock,” Kage would pronounce in satisfaction, armed with a magnifying glass at her computer, in search of the newest alien skull. “Ha! Mars has more interesting things to show us than this silly crap!”

Which, of course, it did. And Kage tracked those treasures through all those Martian snapshots with the same intensity as the hysterical folks who keep finding tiny little men and giant worms and garden slugs on the Tharsis Bulge. Mars, once she began researching it, fascinated her totally. And she was determined to make her conceptualization of it true to the facts as we knew them.

She found dust storms much more magical than  Storm Trooper helmets. The blue sunsets and exotic ices – and on Mars, even water ice is exotic! – thrilled her. The enormous reality of Olympus Mons was much more exciting than a pareidolic Face in a Prince Valiant page boy bob.

Kage did her best to make the Martian setting true to life – true to some sort of life, anyway, and specifically to the sort that could be lived on a planet where the atmosphere is no more useful to breathe than the wisps of gas released from a popping Coke can … So she was more and more happy, more and more excited, every time one of our guesses about the physical nature of Mars was proven plausible.

There’s probably magma. Olympus Mons still has a faint pulse. There is fossil water, lots of it; and there are ice cliffs of both H2O and CO2 at the poles, just waiting for freighters and graffiti artists. There’s frost, there are clouds, there are Dorothy Gale-scale tornadoes, sometimes liquid water still comes shyly up to the surface where it could be trapped and used. There might be algae – in fact, if there isn’t now, there will be. Algae will be easy to grow on Mars, and help us grow real soil and more complex plants …

We made a lot of good guesses. Kage danced with glee whenever one was proven correct.

I just found an  article and a picture, about a new design for Martian dwellings:  http://tinyurl.com/hq4arro   

marshouseAin’t it cool? Of course, this one is shiny-new, smooth and clean and neat; the design specs call for it to be insulated with a shell of frozen water ice, like an igloo. Under that, it’s an inflatable. What I loved was the domed effect, that it is meant to be covered with something, and that it comes equipped with an exterior airlock.

Now: imagine the Empress of Mars. It would be covered with Martin concrete instead of ice, because ice is not really so common on Mars that it can be wasted as plaster. Besides, Mars has a micro-meteorite problem, and an inflatable would need a tough shell. And that airlock would connect to the long transparent Tubes running down to the Long Acres and out to the Trailer Park. And under the dome – enlarged, of course – would be all the little pigeon holes and lofts where Mary and her minions sling their hammocks in the steamy brewery air of the Empress …

Wild, huh? Kage would be dancing all over the house.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Domestic Bliss

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Kate

 Kage Baker was not especially fond of animals, in general. She liked animals the way she liked people – as individuals, one on one, for their specific unique personalities. And very few of them. To Kage, most animals were a suspicious mob – except the ones that were strangely-shaped people. Pretty much exactly how she felt about people-shaped people, actually.

But she was fascinated with domestication. It’s such a really weird phenomenon, when you think about; almost as rare as tool-making, which is itself pretty thin on the ground. Few animals have managed to make it work. Humans, dogs, ants. Maybe some corals. And who’s running the show with sharks and remoras, or crows and wolves? It’s a huge, intriguing mystery, and a heck of a strange thing for any animal to have invented.

Humans have done this, Kage observed, with all manner of things they thought might be useful if just persuaded to calm down and cooperate a little. All kinds of cattle, goats and sheep and horses, large edible birds and numberless plants. They’ve done it with each other, with varying degrees of success, resulting in lots of diverse forms of societal structures and civilizations. Cats are still in negotiation over the details of the process. And recent research shows that dogs may have done it to us – or that the domestication thing there was at least mutual and simultaneous.

Not that it works on everything, of course. Kage was interested to learn that not all bovids are amendable to domestication – you can domesticate cows of hundreds of species, but buffalo are never going to agree to it. And the domesticity dropouts will kill you; water buffalo are notorious for being deadly, killing more people every year than big cats.  Horses ditto – most equines are tameable, but not all, and zebras will happily kill and eat you.* So will pigs. Why do you think everyone panics so much when Dorothy falls into the pigpen in Wizard of Oz? They aren’t worried about her pinafore getting dirty, Dear Readers; those happy little oinkers will flat out eat a bitch. As it were. Ahem.

And these are the animals that are our friends.

Birds are wonderfully weird and alien; in fact, recent studies show they are even more alien than we had originally thought. There’s 70 million extra years of evolution underlying the brains in their colourful heads; and a lot of them have used that time to develop intelligence just as good as humans’: but different. We used to think that their tiny brains were low-wattage. They’re not. The corvids, the psitticines, maybe some of the ratites – they’re scary bright. Kage always wondered if the Maori ate the moas in simply primate greed – or out of self-defense against birds who were twice their size and close to their intellectual equals.

Birds aren’t really domesticated, either; like cats, the issue is still in negotiation. One must assume, also, that humans have preyed most successfully on the morons among the bird tribe. Chickens are not renowned for their sharpness, and they are enslaved in their billions. But the humans who work with fiercer or smarter birds do so in much smaller numbers and with considerable safety precautions – even my happy little thug of a Harry gets handled a lot more carefully than a dog or a cat.  Anyone who has lived with birds – and Kage did – will assure the rest of you that the dinosaurs did not lose out entirely in the intelligence lottery … I’ve got notes for a couple of stories on that subject. And you can see Kage’s suspicions about the intelligence of parrots in several of her books and stories.

On the subject of friendly animals, Kage felt that keeping pets was vastly different from domesticating animals. For one thing, domestication is not always a friendly process – it’s a lot more like slavery. Not a lot of humans will bother to keep hundreds of animals they can’t use for something – and we generally question their sanity when they do. Crazy cat ladies? Dog hoarders? Really peculiar people with reptile collections? But no one thinks twice about some guy with a thousand cows or a few dozen sheep – not as long as he occasionally, you know, kills them for something. That’s apparently normal.

Pets, though, you keep because you like them. Because you like to look at them, touch them, listen to them; because you have an emotional relationship with them. Is that normal? Well, it happens a lot … Kage figured that was as good a definition of normal as you could probably get for human behaviour. She also felt that, along with their tribalism and xenophobia, most humans have a wistful urge to meet with what is undeniably alien – and animals are as close as most people can get to it without triggering other, nastier, more violent instincts.

Obviously, human beings would really, really like to be friends with someone. Maybe not other humans, but certainly someone. Kage figured the history of humans and animals showed that clearly.

Gorillas, you know, who are more peaceful than humans, do occasionally keep pets in their own captivity. Chimpanzees – who, conversely, are even worse characters than humans – don’t. An interesting difference, Kage thought.And remember, she held apes firmly on the “people” list.

Why do people try so hard to communicate, for instance, with dolphins? Because they are extravagantly alien, obviously intelligent, and accidentally endowed with smiles. The ones that don’t have those nice smiles – the orcas – are cautiously assigned a certain gravitas and dignity, but no one really wants to go play with them – they’re scary. And yet, as Kage observed, most dolphins are thorough dicks – but they’re dicks in a human way, and it’s mostly the guy dolphins, and anyway – boys will be boys …

But animal domestication did make Kage nervous. She felt it was necessary but was unsure if it was moral, and she didn’t like having to balance ethics against necessities. She liked to eat meat, and was on good terms with her canine and incisor teeth. Some of her friends, besides, had 4 legs or wings, and she enjoyed their company. She researched PETA and came away horrified: sorry if I offend anyone, Dear Readers, but those folks are insane. Also, they kill more animals than they save – Kage , whose sympathies were ready to be engaged by them, instead came up with the viciously idiotic Beast Slavery Movement to point out their asininities. It all left her on the fence where domestic animals were concerned.

What’s my point here? I am not sure, Dear Readers. Probably a story idea is gestating, and I am suffering intellectual cravings …  It may be part of the Charlotte story; it may be something unrelated to Kage’s Canon. But I do have her notes, and her thoughts on the conundrum of the Matter of Animals; I have the many, many articles people send me on lost and/or recovered species in the world. I have the little life sitting next to me as I write, singing himself softly to sleep and occasionally calling out from under his cage cover to make sure I – the flock, the Companion, the approved Other- am still here in the dark …

We’re all in the dark, you know? Kage always did say, you should hold fast to any love you find. Offer it freely. Scorn none.

Maybe that’s all I’m doing tonight. There are worse ways to begin a new year.

 

 

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/8056491/Zebra-attack-woman-recovering-after-mauling.html

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Inquiring Minds

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker had an inquiring mind.

Many writers do, of course; though not all. James Fenimore Cooper did not like to speculate much, which is how he wrote such supremely boring novels about a well-documented historical period barely a generation before his own. But another, more inquiring and imaginative writer – Samuel Clemens – used Cooper’s habit to produce the hysterically funny “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”*, which Kage cherished as a guide on how NOT to write historical fiction. So every technique has its uses.

But most writers like to know the details; especially fiction writers and historians. They want to know what happened next, or what would happen if, or what might have happened if no one had been watching …  Being writers, as well as possessing inquiring minds, they then are compelled to tell someone else what they think occurred.

You get a lot of “secrets of history” books out of this sequence of events and compulsions. It’s about even odds as to whether the resulting story is  faerie tale or truth; if the author puts in enough footnotes and references, you may still be unsure by the time you reach the end of “How the Battle of the Bulge Secretly Hinged on the German Consumption of Vichyssoise”. Especially if you find out there that the author mistook potato leek soup for a French government.

But, you know, these things happen. Merely having an inquiring mind is insufficient to the task of producing either poetry or prose. Humans have a unique ability to convince themselves of the veracity of their own conclusions. A lot of people spend a lot of their time absolutely certain sure – probably wrong, but sure. And a lot of those are writers.

The knack that writers of this ilk have for producing books that sell plentifully is a torment and a mystery to writers like Kage: writers who are dedicated to research, who prefer truth to fantasy, who want to know the inner workings of whatever they are presenting as What Might Have Been. Kage agonized over whether or not the technology in her science fiction had a deep enough foundation in real physics, or science, or engineering: I would assure her that it only mattered if she understood sufficiently enough to write about it. But she did not agree, saying that she had to understand how it worked before she could speculate on what else it did ….

As she was not of a STEM-inclined set of mind, that was hard. We worked out the technology in madly involved details, in order to make things at least plausible to Kage herself. “It’s your world!” I would exclaim. “It works the way you say it does!” And she would glare at me and say, “That’s cheating. It’s got to connect to reality at least a little bit.”

And she was undoubtedly correct. She did get some disgruntled letters from readers complaining that the science in her stories was wrong, or the fiction was too fictional. Since they were usually citing her interpretation of Mars, we tended to tell these folks, “No, sorry, it’s valid extrapolation on known facts”. And then cite the reports we’d used for the description. Funny thing: a lot of what Kage wrote hopefully into her version of the colonization of Mars has come true – there’s water, there may very well be microbial life, there’s magma under the almost-dead crust. An even funnier thing: no one ever complained about Time Travel or immortal cyborgs – although several people got rather stroppy when Kage refused to explain how either process worked.

(It’s the Pineal Tribantine-3, of course. And you can make it up in the kitchen sink, like Love Potion No. 9. Someone does, somewhere in the Company books.)

But her ever-increasing insistence on connecting her fantasy to reality paid off in richer worlds, as well. Her Operatives were originally conceived as running on clockwork and hypnosis – their workings were gradually converted to GMO techniques, gene splicing, nanobots and unscrupulous biochemistry. This change produced more, and more interesting, stories. Two of the most tangible results were the story “Facts Relating to the Arrest of Dr. Kalugin”, which revolved around an Operative who was allergic to his own memory RNA; and “O False Young Man”: about a dapper bachelor who was, indeed, run by clockwork.

Even her outright sorcerous fantasy – specifically, the universe of Smith, the Anvil of the World and the improbable Lord Ermenwyr – was based on as workmanlike and hands-on a school of magic as Kage could imagine. It works on mathematics, music theory, Chaos and Uncertainty in their swallow-tailed formal working coats.  For example, the reason Gard becomes a successful sorcerer while his saintly foster brother does not, is that Gard has perfect pitch – and Ranwyr is tone-deaf.

“That is just the kind of crap that really happens,” Kage would mutter, lost in creation at her keyboard. “The world needs more grit!”

Maybe she was right. But I know (because she did it) that Kage could look at the grittiest and most realistic story available in the news, and her eyes would unfocus softly, and she would say in a musing way (as if the ideas actually connected somehow) : “Hey, have the Russians really managed to transplant a dog’s head alive?”

“NO!” I would say indignantly. “And Lysenko didn’t grow beans inside of pumpkins, either!”

“Oh, I know that,” Kage would say. “That whole fiasco was exposed by Walt Kelly in Pogo.” She would consider her source then and add, “but what if they could?”

Then, that Halloween, she planted runner beans in a rotting Jack O’Lantern. And they grew …

*http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Signposts of Casual Eternity

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Kate

Kage Baker was a firm believer  in signs and symbols.

I don’t actually know how deeply she held some of them, for all that she announced them as they appeared to her – I must admit, her distress when I put a hat on the bed always did seem more like an excuse to launch my hats across hotel rooms like floppy Frisbees. I confess to liking weird hats: I favour bag caps, solanas with wide brims, and knit eccentricities. My favourite ever – and the one Kage hated the most – was a Mongolian shepherd’s cap: a triangular leather job dyed red, that came to a peak and was rimmed in fleece. It looked like what Colbert now wears in his Big Furry Hat skit, only – you know, daintier.

But Kage claimed it was an omen of Serious Disaster.

Nor do I have any certainty of her belief that spilling salt was bad luck – only that she would go to extremes to make sure she could grab a left-handed pinch of it ASAP, and fling it over her left shoulder. It may be bad luck because this is a great way to throw salt in one’s own eyes. At best, you get in your sister’s eyes, and all over the carpet. But apparently the flinging of it, despite being a disaster in the short run, was vital for averting the End of the World and similar.

Hummingbirds meant good fortune on a trip; so did oranges in the road. And really, who cares how or even if it works? The repetition of the habit produces endorphins, and so one becomes accustomed to a feeling of joy when these things are sighted – and how can that do anything but contribute to good luck? The sight of a blue heron means money is coming, and I have never known this sign fail – eventually. I’m pretty sure the “eventually” part is the active ingredient here, but again – why doubt? To be convinced extra money is on the way is a good and cheering thing.

Never tell your dreams aloud before you eat breakfast or they won’t come true. Or maybe they will – it depends on whether they were good dreams or bad ones. Always yell “New road!” when you turned on to one; that guaranteed there would be adventures. I always felt we didn’t need any further guarantees of adventure; the only way our trips could have gotten more exiting was if we had been trying to get rid of a cursed ring … Always begin a day’s writing with a few games of Free Cell; I’ve tried to adapt this one to Mahjonng, just because I like it better, and I have to admit it seems to help focus the mind.

Kage didn’t ascribe to my rationalist views at all. She maintained that all her habits, omen- spotting and disaster cures were of immense spiritual value, and that she was in clear contact with the Ephemeral and Cosmic. The emphasis with which she would insist on, for instance, the necessity of bathing in the sea at midnight on New Year’s Day was absolutely suspect – a certain daft glint in the eye, and her resolute “You have to believe me – I’m psychotic!” kind of hinted that she was having me on.

But still, she’d do these things! And they’d work. She was the only person I have ever known for whom visualization actually succeeded on a regular basis – the ability of her whim and opinion to alter reality was undeniable. Even her Tarot readings – a practice at which she was both skilled and yet scornful – always came out right. The cards never lie, she would state solemnly; the old gypsy woman, she’s full of shit: but the cards never lie.

But she wouldn’t take money for a reading. Doing that made the cards come out wrong.

I am trying to hit a few points of observance and observation today, in an attempt to set the tone for the new year. I choose to regard the Twilight Zone marathon going on in the living room as a sign of the triumph of virtue – because even though the victory is sometimes Pyrrhic, the Good Guys tend to win in Twilight Zone stories. I choose to take my stiff back as a sign of being anchored to my desk: I will write more. I choose to take the unexpected Teddy Bear I got from my nephew – a Gund bear! A really good one! – as a sign of increased security and love. And I am resolutely regarding the ham currently perfuming the house from the oven as a promise of prosperity and plenty. Also, of ham; and how can that be anything but fortunate?

And so now, here we are at New Year’s Day. It’s a quiet one for Los Angelenos: but we are between rain storms, mirabile dictu, which promises we may escape desertification for another year. No Rose Parade or Rose Bowl today: Pasadena, in its 19th-century wisdom, never runs either the Parade or the Game on a Sunday – they say it’s a bargain with God, to prevent it raining on The Day.

Kage completely understood that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Year’s Eve, 2016

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Kate

Kage Baker liked a quiet New Year’s Eve. She liked to maybe go out for a modest dinner, at a local 5-star restaurant (there was one in Pismo). It had an ocean view, killer cocktails, and was decorated in a chrome/neon/aquarium style that she happily described as looking like Zaphod Beeblebrox’s bathroom.

We would wear glittery dresses and cardboard tiaras, drink just a little too much, eat steak and lobster … my original plan was to trade my steak to Kage for her lobster, but the plan backfired one year when she finally tried the lobster and discovered how wonderful it was. So I only got half as much crustacean, but had the satisfaction of seeing Kage admit she liked eating a giant arachnoid.

Then we’d go home, watch the ball drop in Times Square and listen to Casey Kasem pontificate affectionately from his glass jar. Kage always shot the champagne cork off the front porch at 12 AM, we made our constant resolution – “To Survive!” – and then we’d walk down to the beach so Kage could wade into the icy midnight Pacific and pledge herself to the creative arts … then she’d walk home blue and dripping wet.

How she avoided pneumonia long enough to die of cancer is an unfathomable miracle.

I’m still keeping that resolution for both of us. The last year has been an extremely hard pull, and I very nearly lost my momentum. Sorry, Constant Readers. All I can plead is one of those emotional sucking chest wounds that occasionally afflict all of us, and that I got mired in the infamous Slough of Despond.

But it was a good Christmas! And a lot of good things happened this year! And while a lot of bad things happened too – well, you know, they always do. Every year has truly ghastly things occur. We survive. We make things better. We recover some leverage and get the boot in on the bastards – or maybe we accede to the angels of our better nature and feel virtuous instead. Either way, we can take action and do better.

And yestreday, I got an exceptionally sweet reminder from a gentleman of my acquaintance that was time for me to get off my self-pitying arse and blog. It was a kind and paternal reminder, and it made me feel young and loved.  Those are incredible gifts. And, also, he was right.

However, I am hilariously semi-crippled today, having woken up with an inexplicable crick in my back that is keeping me confined to my chair. (Probably happened when I crawled under my desk last night to plug in an errant cord. I forget I am 63 … ) But it’s okay – I have pain killers, I have heating pads, I have new slippers (Black! With fur!) and my pitiful hobbling is probably preventing Kimberly – who also has been issuing threats and ultimatums regarding my inactivity – from tossing me out with the Old Year’s trash.

Because here I am at my desk and computer, pecking away. I’m still in my nightgown, but it’s a fetching one with a hem ruffle; and I have my cool writing hat on. And any day where you manage to pull up your panties has to be counted as a good one.

Begin as you mean to go on, Kage always said. It was why we always pledged to survive. I have done so, and I will do it again.

Happy New Year, Dear Readers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Fish Gotta Sing, Birds Gotta Dance

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Kate

Kage Baker was of the opinion that all writers are exhibitionists.

Many artists of all sorts, of course, are exhibitionists. But not all, by any means – it was Kage’s observation that a lot of actors are severely shy and reserved; so much so, she said, that they spent their lives literally being someone else. Unlike painters, sculptors, dancers,  people who build lingerie shopfronts for mice or stuff yams up body cavities* – postulated Kage – more actors are introverts. And those are the performers who go so far into themselves that they come out the other side.

She herself was mostly, usually, one of those sorts. Kage was so shy that she would become someone else as soon as a crowd reached a certain molecular density; when the primordial gas cloud of a social situation began to cool and thicken, what precipitated out of the mass was rarely Kage. It was someone being operated by Kage, at a safe distance. At science fiction conventions, it was either her aunt, Anne Jeffries, or Agent Scully.  At Renaissance Faires, it was various respectable Dames from the Volland Mother Goose.  At Dickens Fair, it was a petticoat version of Killick, Jack Aubrey’s cranky steward from the Patrick O’Brian novels.

(Sometimes it was an extremely naughty squirrel that only a few people ever saw. I miss her … )

But all of this morphic activity was only for first-person confrontations. When it came to writing, when it was Kage Baker AS The Writer, when it was her Public Voice – Kage was as voluble and extravagant an extrovert as any other gonzo author. She said it was because when it came to writing, she simply could not shut up. She said no writer could.

It’s why writers wrote in the first place. They have something to say, and they are going to say it. And since they are armed with the tools to inscribe what they want to say in physical form – pen and ink, stylus and hammer, spray paint, lipstick, someone’s blood – they will not be stopped. Go through any writer’s closets and bookcases (said Kage) and you will find all the things they wrote before the ones they sent out boldly into the world – and there will be lots, she averred, because the habit is deeply rooted and impossible to eradicate. Everyone is hiding notebooks.

Although, she decided later in her life, maybe not so much as they used to. Now there is social media; now there are websites, and blogs, and YouTube and Vine and all the new permutations imaginable for the determined and motivated graffitiist. The number of walls on which to write is now essentially infinite – and when you consider (said Kage) that not even the eruption of Vesuvius could wipe clean the commentary on the walls of doomed Pompeii, it is no wonder that the Internet is one vast glowing graffito. Scrawl on any surface in that vast series of tubes, and your words will impact countless waiting readers.

Most of them may be cats. That doesn’t matter. Enough will be un-absorbed by fur to win you an audience.

I offer this explanation of the general exhibitionism of all writers as my excuse for wailing and whinging all over the place yestreday. I’m ordinarily a fairly optimistic person; but at the moment, I am suffering from a common traumatic malady. When it gets unbearable, I carry on without shame. Being a writer, I do it here.

It will wear off; at least, the aimless screaming and scrabbling and scribbling on the walls will slow down. I’ve got things to do, things to say – and I simply must be seen to be doing and saying them. I’ve always done these things in my own persona, but who knows? It may be time to branch out. Fish gotta sing, birds gotta dance, writers gotta exhibit.

If it’s not quite who I am …. well, maybe I can metamorphose, too. It’ll have to be someone who can write, though. Dame Julian? Sappho? Lady Murasaki Shikibu?

Kage?

*All of these are things.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment