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The Speed of Clouds
The Speed of Clouds is a deep dive into fandom at the turn of the new millennium, and the poignant story of one fan’s efforts to find a new way for her to live life on Earth. Mindy Vogel may need a wheelchair to get around, and she may still be living with her mother, but she travels easily between star systems as SkyLog officer Kat Wanderer, while carrying on a romance with a strangely compelling cyborg. And she runs a kickass fanzine. But after a split with her own fan club, Mindy starts to lose her bearings, and at the same time her mother’s affair with a sleazy comics dealer threatens her home. Faced with so many disruptions, Mindy must re-imagine her life on Earth. Set at the moment when fandom went digital, this expansive novel finds room for Buckminster Fuller, the Ghost Dance of the Lakota, and cosmic-themed installation art alongside the fanfic, Cons and cosplay of fan culture.
266 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 10, 2018
1 person is currently reading
217 people want to read
About the author
Miriam Seidel
3 books14 followersMiriam Seidel is a writer and longtime sci-fi fan. Her latest book, written as Mir Seidel, is TESLA'S OPERA: THE REAL, STRANGER-THAN-FICTION NIKOLA TESLA. It tells the story of the visionary inventor through the the opera about him that she wrote the libretto for. The opera, Violet Fire, was performed in New York, Philadelphia, and Belgrade. Her novel, THE SPEED OF CLOUDS, is a genre mashup about science-fiction fandom. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Bourbon Penn, Exquisite Corpse, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and other journals and anthologies. She’s written about the arts for Art in America, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 16, 2020
I received an ARC of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
What drew me in when I first read the blurb was the story’s setting–it’s about fandom before the turn of the Millennium. Computers were a thing, but I’m pretty sure fanfiction.net didn’t exist back then. Or did it? I really don’t know. But, without all the online forums and social media we have now, how did fans communicate in the 90s? Well, read The Speed of Clouds to find out!
Mindy Vogel has spina bifida, uses a wheelchair, and is in the SkyLog fandom. She runs a fanzine and a club, both of which a member of the club usurps. Left in the lurch and also dealing with a tense home situation, this is Mindy’s coming of age story, at the end of the first quarter of her life.
The writing in this book is excellent. It includes excerpts from stories submitted to Mindy’s fanzine and her own fanfic about Kat Wanderer, her Mary Sue. In the first few pages, I was really confused because the fic and the actual story keep alternating. And the fic is all Sci-Fi, which I really don’t care for. Or that’s what I thought. Turns out, I really love Mindy’s fandom. To quote this own book, here’s how the Sci-Fi parts made me feel:
Isn’t this why speculative fiction has so many takers? Is there really life outside of Earth? Even if there isn’t, why can’t we pretend that there is in the stories we tell?
Mindy gets A+ for character development. Also getting an A+? The author, for somehow wrapping up fandoms, Buckminster Fuller, and art shows interestingly, all in 268 pages. Read this book if you like coming of age stories, Sci-Fi, and feel good books.
As for me? I’ve learned that speculative fiction can be fun, and it’s okay if all the books I read aren’t about murder, death, and the big bad world.
What drew me in when I first read the blurb was the story’s setting–it’s about fandom before the turn of the Millennium. Computers were a thing, but I’m pretty sure fanfiction.net didn’t exist back then. Or did it? I really don’t know. But, without all the online forums and social media we have now, how did fans communicate in the 90s? Well, read The Speed of Clouds to find out!
Mindy Vogel has spina bifida, uses a wheelchair, and is in the SkyLog fandom. She runs a fanzine and a club, both of which a member of the club usurps. Left in the lurch and also dealing with a tense home situation, this is Mindy’s coming of age story, at the end of the first quarter of her life.
The writing in this book is excellent. It includes excerpts from stories submitted to Mindy’s fanzine and her own fanfic about Kat Wanderer, her Mary Sue. In the first few pages, I was really confused because the fic and the actual story keep alternating. And the fic is all Sci-Fi, which I really don’t care for. Or that’s what I thought. Turns out, I really love Mindy’s fandom. To quote this own book, here’s how the Sci-Fi parts made me feel:
“…like the way a good episode brings up big questions and lets them float around you, her work somehow throws things together that add up to questions, even if they’re not in words.”
Isn’t this why speculative fiction has so many takers? Is there really life outside of Earth? Even if there isn’t, why can’t we pretend that there is in the stories we tell?
Mindy gets A+ for character development. Also getting an A+? The author, for somehow wrapping up fandoms, Buckminster Fuller, and art shows interestingly, all in 268 pages. Read this book if you like coming of age stories, Sci-Fi, and feel good books.
As for me? I’ve learned that speculative fiction can be fun, and it’s okay if all the books I read aren’t about murder, death, and the big bad world.
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April 26, 2018The Speed of Clouds is a truly wonderful and unique book. Miriam Seidel has created a cast of compelling characters in her exploration of the sci-fi and fantasy fan world. Most unusual is that the main character is a disabled young woman -- not the expected main character of such a novel -- who is on her own journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance while negotiating her way through family and friend relationships....none of which are easy. Life within that "con" world, where everyone takes on new identities, lives out fantasy -- is a life that tempts its members to live without regular connection to "real" life. The Speed of Clouds explores those blurred lines between real and imagined, fantasy and fact, life and its facsimiles, and takes its reader on a fascinating journey.
September 7, 2018
I'm not necessarily 'up' on fan fiction. This book did not get bogged down in esoteric jargon. It a really well written slice of a life, an era and a place. I can recommend it for anyone remembering Y2K and the end of the century.
August 29, 2019
What can I even say except that this book is absolutely fabulous?
It was so SO MUCH my thing. Fandom in the 90s? Coming-of-age that's not YA? I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I didn't, because THE SPEED OF CLOUDS is a poignant, masterfully written coming-of-age story that is at once lovingly dated and absolutely timeless.
When we meet our heroine, Mindy, she's in something a little deeper than a slump. She's 24 years old, but still living with her mom and unemployed because of health problems related to her spina bifida that kept her from completing her degree or learning to drive when the rest of her friends were doing those things. The main focus of her life is--or was--her SkyLog fanclub and zine, but she has been voted out as the leader and editor, and now finds herself... kind of floating. That doesn't last for long, though, as Mindy quickly learns that she does have one friend left in Zuzana, the only member of her club who didn't vote against her or stay without her, and that there are lots of different ways to be involved in fandom.
SkyLog is, as other reviewers have pointed out, kind of a Star Trek stand-in. (Side note: I found it really interesting that the actual Star Trek DOES exist in this universe, but apparently only the original series, and it just never took off in this world the way SkyLog did.) I am not a HUGE Star Trek fan, but if you've got even a casual familiarity with that world (especially The Next Generation, which I'd guess the series that Mindy is especially into is based on), you should be able to pick up pretty quickly on the archetypes that the different characters and species represent. I personally LOVED the fandom aspect here, and found it to be very faithful to what I remember of fandom in that era. Another fun aspect for me was the fact that Mindy's mom sells collectibles at flea markets and things for a living... what a wonderfully nostalgic, time-period-appropriate career!
For such a thin book, there really is a LOT crammed into this story, but none of it ever feels rushed or given less space on the page than it deserves. Mindy deals with family issues, with prejudice both in fandom and in the real world, with her own attitude toward mobility and her independence, and with a romantic subplot that took me by surprise, but felt absolutely right when it happened. (Although I'm deviating a bit from my June Pride Month review theme here, there is a TINY bit of queer rep here too, in a secondary relationship, and while small, it's also done very thoughtfully.) All of this felt very balanced, and I was equally invested in all of the characters and subplots by the end.
Some readers might be a LITTLE thrown off by the writing style, which is MOSTLY first-person prose from Mindy's POV, but also includes emails from Mindy and several of her friends, and snippets of fanfiction. I want to tell you to PLEASE stick with it... please stick with the bits of fanfiction that include there/their/they're mistakes and run-on sentences, because it IS leading up to something and it IS there for a reason. All of these pieces end up connecting to the real plot in a way that I really enjoyed.
There was maybe ONE subplot that I felt was kind of introduced out of nowhere and not tied up in a way that felt satisfactory....
(Note: This review originally contained a comment about the ebook formatting that has actually since been addressed by the publisher, so I’ve edited the review accordingly!)
It was so SO MUCH my thing. Fandom in the 90s? Coming-of-age that's not YA? I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I didn't, because THE SPEED OF CLOUDS is a poignant, masterfully written coming-of-age story that is at once lovingly dated and absolutely timeless.
When we meet our heroine, Mindy, she's in something a little deeper than a slump. She's 24 years old, but still living with her mom and unemployed because of health problems related to her spina bifida that kept her from completing her degree or learning to drive when the rest of her friends were doing those things. The main focus of her life is--or was--her SkyLog fanclub and zine, but she has been voted out as the leader and editor, and now finds herself... kind of floating. That doesn't last for long, though, as Mindy quickly learns that she does have one friend left in Zuzana, the only member of her club who didn't vote against her or stay without her, and that there are lots of different ways to be involved in fandom.
SkyLog is, as other reviewers have pointed out, kind of a Star Trek stand-in. (Side note: I found it really interesting that the actual Star Trek DOES exist in this universe, but apparently only the original series, and it just never took off in this world the way SkyLog did.) I am not a HUGE Star Trek fan, but if you've got even a casual familiarity with that world (especially The Next Generation, which I'd guess the series that Mindy is especially into is based on), you should be able to pick up pretty quickly on the archetypes that the different characters and species represent. I personally LOVED the fandom aspect here, and found it to be very faithful to what I remember of fandom in that era. Another fun aspect for me was the fact that Mindy's mom sells collectibles at flea markets and things for a living... what a wonderfully nostalgic, time-period-appropriate career!
For such a thin book, there really is a LOT crammed into this story, but none of it ever feels rushed or given less space on the page than it deserves. Mindy deals with family issues, with prejudice both in fandom and in the real world, with her own attitude toward mobility and her independence, and with a romantic subplot that took me by surprise, but felt absolutely right when it happened. (Although I'm deviating a bit from my June Pride Month review theme here, there is a TINY bit of queer rep here too, in a secondary relationship, and while small, it's also done very thoughtfully.) All of this felt very balanced, and I was equally invested in all of the characters and subplots by the end.
Some readers might be a LITTLE thrown off by the writing style, which is MOSTLY first-person prose from Mindy's POV, but also includes emails from Mindy and several of her friends, and snippets of fanfiction. I want to tell you to PLEASE stick with it... please stick with the bits of fanfiction that include there/their/they're mistakes and run-on sentences, because it IS leading up to something and it IS there for a reason. All of these pieces end up connecting to the real plot in a way that I really enjoyed.
There was maybe ONE subplot that I felt was kind of introduced out of nowhere and not tied up in a way that felt satisfactory....
(Note: This review originally contained a comment about the ebook formatting that has actually since been addressed by the publisher, so I’ve edited the review accordingly!)
March 22, 2018
FULL DISCLOUSRE: I WAS CONTACTED BY THIS AUTHOR AND ASKED TO READ HIS BOOK AND THEN PROVIDE AN HONSET REVIEW. SHE GAVE ME A FREE COPY OF HER BOOK AND I READ IT. THIS IS MY REVIEW.
Eh. It's a story about people writing fanfiction for a TV show not unlike Star Trek. They attend conventions and have meetings to discuss the universe of SkyLog. The problem is you get no introduction to any of it. You just get thrown into the middle of half finished fictions with made up terminology for a show that never existed. None of it makes any sense because most of it never gets explained. To make things worse is sometimes these "fictions" get put into the middle of a chapter with little or no transition. It's very disruptive to what little flow it had going for it. Between these "fictions" is the real life struggles of a woman with a disability and the life she doesn't realize she deserves. While I didn't care for most of it, there is a moment near the end of the book where the main character goes on a motorcycle ride with they guy she likes. It's a nice moment, really, until it's interrupted by an unnecessary fanfiction passage. It just stops the momentum of the moment completely and never quite finds it again afterwards.
Eh. It's a story about people writing fanfiction for a TV show not unlike Star Trek. They attend conventions and have meetings to discuss the universe of SkyLog. The problem is you get no introduction to any of it. You just get thrown into the middle of half finished fictions with made up terminology for a show that never existed. None of it makes any sense because most of it never gets explained. To make things worse is sometimes these "fictions" get put into the middle of a chapter with little or no transition. It's very disruptive to what little flow it had going for it. Between these "fictions" is the real life struggles of a woman with a disability and the life she doesn't realize she deserves. While I didn't care for most of it, there is a moment near the end of the book where the main character goes on a motorcycle ride with they guy she likes. It's a nice moment, really, until it's interrupted by an unnecessary fanfiction passage. It just stops the momentum of the moment completely and never quite finds it again afterwards.
October 17, 2019
Such a good book! Fascinating perspective on both real and imagined worlds that was both eye-opening and heart-expanding, with a very moving human story at its core. Really enjoyed it.
October 14, 2019
A wonderful tale of angst and romance among sci-fi fans. You don't have to like sci-fi to enjoy this book. You just have to appreciate real characters using their imagination to try to live in the real world.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews