Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker wore reading glasses.

That is, she wore them to read notes and scripts at convention events; to watch television (but not at the movies); and to actually read books least of all. That was because she found it difficult to get the time to read. She didn’t wear them to write, unless it was rising midnight and her eyes were tired. She had pretty good eyesight – if not quite binocular – and so she always treated her glasses as  unnecessary and indulgent jewelry.

She had to wear an eyepatch in her childhood, following surgery at age 2 to correct the inward strabismus of one eye. The surgery was not a clear success; Kage was left with one eye turning outward, instead. She’d actually enjoyed the eyepatch – Pirate, don’tchye know, matey, aaar! – although the classic pink rhinestone kitty-eye glasses she needed to wear for a few years after that were, in her opinion, an abomination. She ran spectacle-free through most of her life, until her 40’s, when the reading glasses became necessary. And then she chose scarlet frames, no more damned sparkly cat eyes.

In fact, Kage was talking thoughtfully of taking eyepatches up again in her last year. We were doing some pirate events just before she got ill, and she amused herself by designing various decorative and/or ladylike patches to wear over the wandering eye. I thought it was a great idea. I was looking forward to Mrs. Drumm, my redoubtable cook from Dickens Fair, adding a nice Christmassy eyepatch to her ensemble. Kage said she could change to a nice black one with white lace trim for the evening hours, so as to look respectable …

I. on the other hand, have worn glasses continuously since I was 10. That’s when the nurse who did the annual eye exams at school realized I had memorized the eye chart, and was actually half-blind. Everyone else had just assumed I was appallingly clumsy, as I went through life falling over furniture and siblings and caroming off door jambs. I embraced spectacles with a fervent glee, even though I too was burdened with the damned cat eyes. Mine were blue.

Most of my glasses over the years have been horn rims or plain steel, as close to perfectly round as I could fine. National Health specs, as Kage observed. When we got into historical re-creation, those were also pretty much acceptable for eras from the 17th to the 20th century; I had a special, primitive pair for the 16th century gigs. I was too blind to go without specs in costume … and as the years went on, Kage didn’t want me to try. For one thing, I fell down altogether too much. For another, I did all the driving and it’s considered optimum for the driver to be sighted.

Most of all, though, Kage disliked change: I wore glasses, I had worn glasses for years, so I should always wear glasses. I didn’t mind – I predate soft contact lenses considerably, and the hard ones hurt.

Bearing in mind Kage’s oft-repeated instructions – because her taste was always better than mine – I went hunting for good old National Health frames recently. They are harder to find these days, and are usually pompously advertized as “John Lennon Frames”: which would have caused that gentleman to say something rude, I have no doubt. Anyway, I found them  and took them to my optometrist today.

My astigmatism she described, rather awed, as “massive.”  Whoo hoo! Personal Best! I need more magnification, but not much else … except, she told me quite casually, for the cataracts growing in both eyes. WTF? I had just assumed that my glasses were getting old and scratched – which they were, but evidently my natural-born eyeball  lenses were, too.

A lot of things can cause cataracts, but mine are due to exposure to UV light. Well, I do live in sunny California. And I have spent several months each year out in the sun all day. And I just can’t stand the way it burns when I rub sunscreen in my eyes, so I stopped doing that … I am now advised to cultivate hats with brims and consider sunglasses. And since sunglasses are not cool on me (I look like a pug in a sad MIB costume), hats it is.

The sun is not my friend. But I already knew that.

But technology has a nice surprise waiting for me. When my cataracts can no longer be corrected for by glasses, I get implants. That’s the drill these modern days: hollowing all the cloudy crap out of the lens, then inserting a nifty little artificial lens inside my aging    eye. And, best of all? After that, I won’t need glasses anymore! They can fix my near-sightedness, my astigmatism, everything! So right now, I’m 60 years old with cataracts – but by the time I’m 65 or so, I’ll probably be able to walk around spectacle free for the rest of my life.

Amazing. Just … amazing. Now I can hardly wait for my eyes to go south.

I wonder if I can get  IR bifocals?

Kage Baker is having a pretty good publishing year, especially for a writer who is, you know, dead.

I’ve been asked to keep you up to date on what’s coming when, Dear Readers. So here is a PSA to present what I know for sure (there are sometimes anthologies in the works with a singleton story that I don’t find out about at once).

The Best of Kage Baker –  out September 2012 from Subterranean Press. Available from Amazon and from Subterranean (http://subterraneanpress.com/)

Nell Gwynne On Land and At Sea – out January 2013 from Subterranean Press. Available from Amazon and from Subterranean (http://subterraneanpress.com/)

In The Company of Thieves – due out October 2013 from Tachyon Publications. Available from Amazon and from Tachyon (http://tachyonpublications.com/)‎

There are also The Mammoth Book of Time Travel, edited by Mike Ashley, just our from Running Press; and After The End: Recent Apocalypses, edited by Paula Guran, from Prime Books. Each of those has a story from Kage, along with lots of other goodies. I especially recommend The Mammoth Book simply because that series has been consistently terrific. And the name amused Kage.

In answer to a question about “buying where it will do the most good” – well, Dear Readers, actually buying books is the best thing you can do for an author. Buy them from  the literary Godzilla Amazon, or your favourite indie book store, or from the publisher: as long as it comes from an actual book dealer, the author will receive their due. So, like, don’t buy ’em on EBay unless the author is selling them there – which some do.

Most of all, though, don’t steal books from libraries! You wouldn’t believe how many people wrote to Kage to proudly announce that they had wanted her books so much that they just had to nick them from the local lending library. This does the author no good, prevents others borrowers from reading them, and is a sin. So kindly refrain.

Kage Baker was cautiously interested by science.

It’s kind of a requisite for a science fiction writer. Luckily, there all sorts of studies that qualify as science – it’s not all the hard stuff like physics or engineering. Even though the fanboys would prefer that … but as science is a way of researching and learning things, so  there are the so-called “soft” sciences; called “soft” partly in scorn from the physicists and engineers (and fanboys …), but also because they literally deal with things softer than, oh, steel, hard radiation, or rocks.

Social science is a soft science, and lots of science fiction writers have used it to explore ideas about the human condition. For every writer of ray-gunned and steel-walled space operas (and there are a lot of  good ones) there’s a writer who composes speculation on alien, evolved, devolved or mutated societies. Charles Stross is currently writing novels whose plots hinge on economics. Some writers manage the hat trick of writing about both hard and soft sciences at the same time: Isaac Asimov. Robert Heinlein. Lois McMaster Bujold.

Kage didn’t quite trust science, though. She had no facility at all for mathematics, and so had to follow the current events in physics and related fields on educated faith. She was slightly more comfortable with biological sciences, but when it came down to basic tropes … Kage rather liked the theory of humours, and personally preferred clockwork to nanobots.  She dealt in harder stuff because she had to; even to her, some plots didn’t make sense without a  foundation in modern science – though she refused to get too far into how her machines worked. She knew how they worked; she’d worked it out to her satisfaction. She just didn’t feel like sharing it with the sort of critic who wrote to her to tell her that immortality was impossible. Or that there were no fossil aquifers on Mars, or that Olympus Mons could not still harbour simmering gas and lava.

That, she said, is why it’s called “science fiction“.

And by the way – there are fossil aquifers on Mars. And some indication that the heart of Mars is not quite cold all the way through, either. Research catches up with speculation, and sometimes speculation wins.

But in her heart of hearts, Kage was more comfortable with history and cartography and language. She liked knowing what had happened in the past, and where it happened, and what ordinary people had said about it. And as you all know, Dear Readers, she had a facility for theorizing how that would effect what happened in the future.

Me, I have a lively interest in science – partly because I was Kage’s clipping and translation service for years. I subscribe to several aggregate services from Scientific American and Discover magazines, and check several more blogs daily. Some of that is my attempt to stay up to date with stuff; and some of it is the constant search for ideas. And I shamelessly check a few weird news site, looking for the really peculiar gems that surface unexpectedly – I mean, a star ruby or a flawless emerald is nice, of course; but sometimes a goat bezoar with the face of Alan Turing on it is the winning jewel of the day! One needs a broad outlook …

I recently was amused by an article from SA inquiring in its title: “What Did Extinct Giant Vampire Bats Eat?” Was this a trick question, I wondered? It turned out just to be oddly phrased: it should more accurately have said Whom … they ate blood, of course, just from equally extinct megafauna that are now gone from our ken. But I did get a picture of a charming vampire bat skeleton, which suggested they could get second jobs as staple removers:       Rather charming little guy, really, especially when reduced to his ivory essentials.

Today, while unabashedly reading Fark.com,  I encountered a fascinating link to the current state of home gardening in Fukushima, Japan:

http://now.msn.com/fukushima-vegetables-mutated-in-viral-photos-possibly-due-to-radiation

It’s a slide show of photographs right out of a florid 1950’s SF pulp magazine. I was surprised at the lack of tentacles … at least until I got to the eggplants, which do seem to be attempting tentacularity of some sort. The last photo was also impressive, because it isn’t a plant. It’s a frog.

Food for thought, as they say. Better living through science in the 21st century!

Enjoy, Dear Readers.

Kage Baker liked sabbaticals.

The dictionary definition includes the classical meaning of a year off granted to a teacher, for study and/or travel – usually every 7 years. Kage liked the ritual sound of that, as if (she said) you got to make periodic pilgrimages to the Pierian Springs to refresh your knowledge.

The dictionary also has the secondary definition of a vacation or relaxation from routine: but Kage liked the idea of going off on a scholarly journey. We frequently went haring off for no particular reason – she never saw a horizon she didn’t want to see up close – but whenever she could, she planned research goals into the itinerary. We might not be sure where we would sleep that night – that happened a lot, actually – but Kage knew exactly how far to the purported remains of an adobe tavern on an unnamed crossover between Highways 1 and 101 we needed to go.

Sabbaticals are cool. The peaceful acquisition in information is a divine way to spend time; and it usually was peaceful, too; because Kage planned them to avoid contact with anyone we knew. So no one heard from us for a weekend – no reason to panic. Our sisters might well have objected had they known we were wandering around 3/4 lost most of the time, sleeping rough and living on weird sandwiches … but since nothing ever did eat us, we always made it back with interesting tales and ideas for stories.

I have lived, in this pursuit of both information and high-octane sensation, a  life rich in unusual experiences. One doesn’t have to indulge in extreme sports to manage that: following the impulses and directions of an eccentric lady novelist can provide a surprising amount of adventure in life. More than anything else, the sabbaticals were fun. Such things we saw and did … chased by feral cattle through a field; sleeping 1,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean in a meadow full of bear tracks; lying snug in our sleeping bags and looking up into the night sky above a newly-mown hayfield, arguing about whether the blinking silver dot we were watching was an alien spacecraft or moonlight on the breast of a passing bird …

The world, as they say, is so full of a number of things.

Of late , though, it’s also been full of crap. I can manage to cope with my own problems; I don’t like being made faint and ill by the heat, or having to cope with a heart given to tantrums. But, you know, it’s the common fate of humankind, and I am 60 now, and have led a, shall we say, strenuous life … so that’s not so bad. Getting old is certainly nothing for the faint of heart and purpose to undertake, but on the whole I think I am managing rather well.

But the world isn’t, and the last little bit has been intolerable. Politics is an ever-increasing snake pit. The government is a bad joke. Plane crashes, fires, explosions, murders – they all evoke louder and louder hyena choruses of blame and vilification; no one wins.  Schoolgirls die in plane crashes, and the media of a major city indulges in 4th-grade humour at their expense.  My home town (all right, it’s a huge, demented, ravenous dystopia; but it’s MINE) is busily shooting itself in the feet, setting fire to itself, and just generally having a public melt-down. And this all over a travesty of a trial on the other side of the continent …

Those damned suffering animal infomercials from the ASPCA are on all the time. And the protesters in L.A. – most of whom do have a valid reason for demonstrating – are tonight being reputedly joined by the Communist Party, two groups who claim to be Black Panthers (and aren’t), and a revival of the Wobblies. We are descending into the surreal around here.

So I have been on sabbatical, Dear Readers. In my own head, mostly, where the vistas are vast and empty and I can drive for a thousand miles and not see another being. But also in books, which have always been my refuge and sanctuary. It’s interesting in books; you meet marvellous people and magic flourishes wild and free. You can go it alone or share it with someone; I’ve always best enjoyed travelling with my sisters, and so Kimberly and I are sharing literary journeys right now.

But I am a little ashamed to have run off to the Territories with no notice. I wanted everyone to know I’m all right.  It’s too hot, too loud, too political, too freaking stupid to put up with right now. But I’ll surface a bit more regularly and wave at everyone from my tent in the Hinterlands.

Just – not quite yet.

Kage Baker was fascinated by weather. She was eternally intrigued by the apparatus of  detecting weather; the cunning artifacts that described it, forecast it, recorded it. Whether it was algorithms that sent updates to her computer, or an old fashioned Kewpie doll that turned pink or blue to indicate humidity levels, she liked it.

Some of this interest arose from being a devoted domestic gardener, one who lived in a city on the edge of a desert. We don’t get rain all year round, here in Los Angeles. We have a dry season – which is most of the time – and a wet season. You need to know what the weather is doing, if you’re trying to keep a garden alive without selling your soul to the Department of Water and Power.

Some it, too, was being an historical re-creator. A lot of the venues were out of doors – Kage was a set designer, a builder and a performer: weather impacted what she built, how long it stood, how it could be used as a stage. Our faux village of the Renaissance Faire was a complicated piece of origami, buildings fashioned out of cheap wood and glorious paint jobs: sea-foam and cobwebs were sturdier. They all looked glorious in the sunlight of a summer day, brave with banners and canopies under the sheltering oaks. And they were fine shelter on the summer nights, lamp lit and padded with rugs and sleeping bags.

But if it rained … all our roofs were compromises between weight and shade. None were meant to be waterproof, and they all leaked. Some structures didn’t even have roofs – just canopies of brightly dyed burlap; when those leaked (and they leaked at the onset of a heavy dew),  you emerged tattooed like a wild Pict wearing  Rorschach blots.

Many were the times I woke in the middle of the night and heard the rain coming down a few inches above my head – we always slept in the Inn lofts, Kage and I, right up under the roof-tree. I’d rouse and climb down to the lower floor  (Kage slept as deep and unwakeable as a 4-year old), to count all my people and made sure they were indoors or under canvas: I could usually hear, above the sound of the rain coming down on the oaks and hay bales, the distant shrieks and laughter of the romantics who had slept out between the bales as they scurried to whatever bit of roof they could find. There would come a long cannonade of slamming wood or plastic doors, too, as some folks took shelter in the privies … man, that was desperation!

If the rain kept up, we were a mud swamp by morning and had to cancel a day’s performance. It meant a long slog out into the parking lot (a field. Always. Just a field …) trying to keep your shoes from being sucked into Hell, to bring in one vehicle to take all my folks out to their own cars. Very few cars were allowed on site in the mud, because they tended to get stuck; so groups would send one driver out to come rescue the rest. I always drove a truck or a van, so it was usually me. No end of wet fun!

Anyway, these were the sorts of things that concerned Kage, who took on weather-forecaster as one of her jobs. I’m thinking of it now because it rained all night here in Los Angeles – an incredible rarity this late in the year! It’s been cool and grey and overcast for two whole days, which is Paradise itself. And it smells and sounds like Faire, summer and hay and wet soil, stone running with silver;  hawks skreeing bad-temperedly where they hunch in the trees. There was a pair of them in the garden this morning, one leaning into the high-arched shoulder of its mate in surprising tenderness …

All the doors and windows are open, to let the sweet moist air in. It’s been a silver ere-dawn all day; it will stay there, posed unlikely at cool sunrise until the sun slides away behind the clouds and all the lamps are lit.

Me, I am safe and comfortable and dry. There’s nothing like 30 years of living on a Faire site to teach one to value dryness, Dear Readers. When I woke last night and heard the rain, old habits leaped up too – I got up and went through the house, checking for leaks, making sure all my family was safely bedded down. The dog didn’t even wake up as I checked on him, sprawled in the hallway like a little lost stole. The rain had lulled everyone to a deep, grateful sleep.

And no cancellation to be worried about tomorrow! No worry that one of my people is trying to sleep in a chemical toilet. No counting the breathers in the dark to make sure  they all made it home, indoors and into a bedroll. No moving the jockey box under a leak to keep the tap-room from flooding.

Oh, my heart beats in the hollow of my ribs, filling up with the sound of the rain. I miss those nights. I really do.