Ellen Kushner's Blog

I'm not usually much of a short story writer, but I just published a new one in the new anthology "Silk & Steel," edited by Janine A. Southard. It's another in the "family saga" that my first novel, Swordspoint, seems to have spawned. You can get it as a last-minute gift for someone in e-book form.

And speaking of last-minute gifts. . . . Here is my new riddle:

I am the gift that cannot be wrapped.
Without wings I fly like a bird.
Seen but not heard,
I make you journey far,
Never stirring from your hearth.
What am I?

Can you guess?

Click on through to find out.


https://ellenkushner.substack.com/p/n...

I’m going LIVE tomorrow, Sunday, December 6th, in a virtual Stroll at 5:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 p.m. UK etc.

We’re not actually strolling anywhere: I’ll probably sit in my living room, and talk, responding to questions that you type in. I’ve done it once before: it’s fun, and pretty lively!

It’s happening on Facebook, via the page Stroll With the Stars: Home Edition Fall 2020. You sign in there and join my Live Video. If you don’t do Facebook, I apologize. I hope to be doing a similar thing on Instagram sometime soon.

Here it is! I put it together as a way of staying in touch with people, and of letting you a little further into the world that is my brain.....

https://ellenkushner.substack.com/p/a...

It's on Substack, which means you can either read it online, or subscribe to have posts appear like magic in your e-mail from me. (And if anyone wants to explain SubStack better than that, I'm all ears - I'm just getting the hang of it myself!) Either way, you're very welcome:

It's been a wild ride - from Julian Yap asking me if I wanted to oversee the creation of a "collaborative serial narrative" based on my Riverside novels (Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and The Fall of the Kings) . . . to THIS:

. . . the print version of our first season's adventures, which occur about 15 years before the events of Swordspoint.

It's a grand and glorious cover, and of course I'm delighted that people who don't wish to read an online serial now have our story between the covers, as it were.

But for illustrations, my heart still and always will belong to our fantastic weekly illustrator, Kathleen Jennings:

I got a letter today from a relative, accusing me of something dishonorable that I would never do, and in fact could not have done.

I'm glad I'm in Brussels where there's lots to distract me from my reaction. And I'm glad I'm not 28 any more, because when this kind of thing happened then - and believe me, it did! - I would have written back a very emotional letter defending my integrity foremost; whereas now, I can just look at the facts, convey them to rel. in a straightforward way, and hope that clears things up.

My heart is really with rel., who must be feeling that someone they loved betrayed them, which is one of the worst feelings in the world.

I did end up going to Simchat Torah ("rejoicing in the Torah") services at Romemu yesterday - and enjoyed every minute of it! We danced and sang in the synagogue, holding each other, holding the torah scrolls, dressed in their silver and embroidery, like a child or a lover in our arms. All that joy and ritual over a TEXT - a collection of carefully-preserved and collected words . . . (made me think, only half-jokingly, that we should have a similar community ceremony at WFC for LOTR and a handful of other Ur Texts!).

But it also reminded me that singing and dancing are as much enjoined on us for the High Holidays as fasting is on Yom Kippur. It's all part of this 40-day continuum. It is a shame that most of us (myself included) usually only go for the painful one, and skip the joy and general goofiness. --Or the sensuality of carrying - and smelling - the etrog & lulav around the synagogue - and then eating outdoors in a Sukka smelling of autumn fruits and leaves - for Succoth…. Something to remember: take the Yom Kippur fast seriously, but remember that it is just part of a whole that includes these others, and give them equal measure.

Yes, my friends, the Grey Sweater is this year’s Fashion Must.

How do I know this?

Well, last night, after a delightful evening at the Cirque Alfonse, followed by dinner at L’A.O.C. in New York’s now fashionable Greenwich Village, Delia Sherman & I walked to the subway along the it-used-to-be-funky-and-weird but is now nauseatingly full of trendy and unaffordable big-name boutiques Bleecker Street … and what did we see in *every* window (on mannequins you wouldn’t bring home to meet your mother)? At least one - sometimes 2 or even 3 GREY SWEATERS!!!

Truth.

And what was I wearing? The dear little grey sweater that Delia knit me 2 years ago.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Reading: Ellen Kushner

Friday 18:00 - 18:30, London Suite 1 (ExCeL)

Imagining Fantasy Lands: The Status Quo Does Not Need Worldbuilding

Friday 16:30 – 18:00, Capital Suite 11 (ExCeL)
Mary Anne Mohanraj (M), Tobias Buckell, Kate Elliott, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Ellen Kushner

Fantasy world-building sometimes comes under fire for its pedantic attention to detail at the expense of pacing or prose style. Do descriptive passages clog up the narrative needlessly, when reader imagination should be filling in the gaps? Where does that leave the landscapes and cultures that are less well represented in the Western genre: can world-building be a tool in subverting reader expectations that would otherwise default to pseudo-medieval Euro-esque? If fantasy is about defamiliarising the familiar, how important is material culture - buildings, furnishings, tools, the organisation of social and commercial space - in creating a fantasy world?Note: the title of this panel is a reference to Kate Elliott's essay:http://www.kateelliott.com/wordpress/index.php/2013/09/the-status-quo-does-not-need-world-building/

Translation-Wish, Translation-ObstaclesFriday, Capital Suite 6 (Level 3), 8pm - 9pmTags: Literature, World SF, Non-AnglophoneRochita Loenen-Ruiz, Gili Bar-Hillel, Fabio Fernandes, Nene Ormes, Lionel Davoust,Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo

Many of us have read work in our own languages that we would love to propose to Anglophone publishers.  But how to fund a rough translation of such work?  The Interstitial Arts Foundation is looking to create a new initiative to bring translators together with national and international funders to create a way to make something happen!

(I'm not on this one, but I am its Faerie Godmother, so I'll be there!)


Autographing 2 - Ellen Kushner

Saturday 13:30 - 15:00, Autographing Space (ExCeL)

Literary Beer

Saturday 17:00 - 18:00, The Bar (ExCeL)
YOU HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR THIS ONE IN ADVANCE (AT THE CON)

Imagining the City

Saturday 19:00 - 20:00, Capital Suite 7+12 (ExCeL)

Science fiction and fantasy are filled with memorable imaginary cities, from Minas Tirith to New Crobuzon, Trantor to Vorbarr Sultana. How do writers imagine their cities? What are the advantages and disadvantages of creating a city from scratch versus using one or more existing models? And are there differences in how SF and fantasy approach this task?

You've Ruined It For Me

Sunday 19:00 - 20:00, Capital Suite 3 (ExCeL)

Screen adaptations of genre works are big business, and fan conversation about them often revolves around issues of accuracy and deviation. But what are the other discussions we could be having about the relationship between novel and film? How does our experience of an adaptation shape the way we read a particular book, whether for the first time or on a re-read? Is it possible, any more, to talk about The Lord of the Rings without reference to Peter Jackson? Are 'book purists' too defensive against what is, after all, simply someone else's reading of a work with a budget, or do blockbuster adaptations carry a popular cultural weight that makes them hard to escape?
 [MODERATOR! 'Cause what the hell do I know about movies?  But there is The SwordsmanWhose Name was Not Death….. Do you think the play just ruined the book?]

Due to my own stupidity, I am blessed (or cursed) with a spare set of rooms for LonCon3 which I do not need but cannot cancel and must therefore pay for:2 rooms at the Ibis Styles London Excel-custom House Hotel, right across from the convention center & next to the tube stop for easy escape from ExCel-land.
I booked 5 nights each (August 13 - 18) for:

* 1 Standard double, GBP 540
* 1 Superior Double, GBP 590

All offers gratefully considered.
Please feel free to pass this on to any friends who might be wavering about attending, or who were not able to book at hotels close to ExCel, or who signed on for a super-crowded share and have since thought better of it....

I can be reached directly on gmail at KUSHNER (dot) ELLEN etc.

Delia & I WILL be attending the con - but I subsequently booked us at another hotel and then forgot to cancel this one. I do hope my carelessness will allow someone else to get a good room at a good rate!  All offers gratefully considered, however small.  I'll feel a whole lot better knowing someone will get the good of it!

We saw Lithgow & co's KING LEAR last night at Shakespeare in the Park. Well worth seeing.  Really really smart and interesting direction. Lear & Fool's relationship best I've ever seen:  Fool genuinely bitter about Cordelia's loss at first, all his jokes barbed - then he takes over as Lear's glue & caretaker:  "Keep me in temper" spoken to him and not the gods.  And Edmund a classic Shakespearean sociopath - dispassionate & charming & in cahoots with the audience - in a line with Richard III & Iago - he should always be played that way!  Because of miking, every word crystal clear & some vocal subtlety allowed.  Best Lear-Edgar-Kent-Fool ("I took you for a joint-stool") scene ever, because they were ALL PLAYING OFF EACH OTHER instead of fading into the background when it wasn't their turn.  Edgar's Mad Tom was utterly freaking out the Fool, who kept edging away from him.  Tom very physical, jumped on top of Kent at one point.  Everyone united in trying to protect the unraveling Lear. Kent genuinely funny, Gloucester genuinely dignified - if a bit of a fool (and his eventual transformation less than satisfying).  Cornwall a true brute; Albany irresistibly reminiscent of a nice Jewish man who just wants everyone to be decent - til he sees it's hopeless.  Cordelia's opening scene terrific, as you can see she & Lear have a special bond, so she expects him to get what she's doing…. and everyone's dawning horror when they realize he means it and is not quite himself and nothing anyone can do about it.  How Kent tries! What a writer, that WS - the number of times Kent refuses to give up…. Best closing lines to a play ever ever ever:
The weight of these sad times we must obey;Say what we feel, not what we ought to say.The oldest have borne most; we that are youngShall never see so much nor live so long.