Mabfan's Musings

Two years ago, Smart Pop Books published Webslinger: SF and Comic Writers on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man edited by Gerry Conway, and I was pleased to have an essay in the book. I grew up in Forest Hills, the same neighborhood of Spider-Man's secret identity, Peter Parker, and as a result I always took a greater interest in the character than I might have otherwise. It didn't hurt that I, like many others, identified with Peter and the difficulties he faced in his regular life. So when I had the chance to contribute to the book, I plumbed my own personal life and wrote an essay about the real Forest Hills, as opposed to the one in the Marvel universe. I explored what Peter's life might have been like had he grown up in the neighborhood of my childhood, noting the actual stores, schools, and sites he would have woven into his background.

Smart Pop Books is promoting their line by running whole essays from their books, and for this week only my essay is available. So if you never picked up the book, but would like to see what I said about Spider-Man (and about my own childhood, come to think of it), check it out here:

"The Friendly Neighborhood of Peter Parker"

About a week or so ago, I noticed that the Borders store next to my office building was advertising Jeff VanderMeer's appearance to promote his new novel Finch. Sadly, the event was scheduled for tonight, so there was no way I could attend and finally meet Jeff in person.

However, Jeff happened to be staying in the area, so we met for breakfast.

Michael A. Burstein, Jeff VanderMeer Copyright ©2009 by K. L. Bryant

It turned out that we had a lot to talk about. We discussed science fiction and fantasy writing, of course, and teaching, and Clarion experiences, but we also talked about Florida. In my day job, I'm working on a project for Florida, and it turns out that Jeff had some relevant experience in the same field. So who knows, maybe we'll be working together on something totally different than fiction later on.

Jeff graciously signed my copy of his book Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer, which I highly recommend. The link will take you to a website devoted to the book that includes a lot of supplementary material. Check it out if you're trying to carve out a life as a writer in today's world.

Today, August 11, was the original due date for the babies. Although we were given this due date very early on, because we were having twins it was generally assumed that the children might arrive early. As anyone reading this knows, Nomi and I have now been parents for a little over three weeks, which I hope explains why I seem to have dropped off the face of the planet as far as blogging is concerned.

The Bursteins at Home Nomi holds Yael while Michael holds Elisheva. (All rights reserved.)

It's been a great three weeks, but our routine has been vastly altered. We spent the first week in the hospital, as Nomi recovered from surgery and we learned what basic baby care we needed to know before coming home. Since then, it has been a whirlwind of learning. Schedules are a thing of the past; we really have to be on the babies' schedules, which varies. In essence, our role for the past two weeks has been to provide the babies with their needs. This means feeding them when they are hungry, changing their diapers, and comforting them when they cry.

None of this should be a surprise to anyone who is a parent or even to those who have only heard parenting stories second hand. Quite honestly, I feel that the details are either irrelevant or uninteresting to anyone who isn't us, so I don't see the need to bore people with stories of how much the children ate or what their diapers were like. (You may thank me for that.) What I do want to let people know is that as a result of our current schedules, we've fallen behind on things like writing, dealing with email, and keeping up with the world. I've wanted to post about things like the Hugos this past weekend, and the publication of By Blood We Live with my story "Lifeblood" reprinted in it, and maybe I'll find the time to do so later. (Just briefly: the short story "I Remember the Future" earned 18 nominations and in another year might have been on the ballot, and "Lifeblood" is available free on the book website for anyone who would like to read it.)

For those of you who are personal friends, Nomi has set up a closed Flickr group where we'll be posting pictures of the little ones. If you want to have access, send her or me an email and we'll make it happen.

As for the rest of our personal life, I'm going back to work next week, although I have to admit I have a hard time imagining what it'll be like to be away from my children every workday. Nomi will still be on leave, but she'll continue to have her hands full until our nanny starts in September. We have been very grateful for the generosity and support of our local and extended community, as we haven't had to cook for ourselves until this week. We've also been given and lent a lot of useful things, including baby clothing, a co-sleeper, and infant car seats.

If anyone had any questions for me, feel free to post and I'll do my best to answer them.

Reading back over my previous discussion about valuing creator's work properly, I've been pondering the correct way to ask someone to provide something for free. Specifically, I've been thinking about the request I had received to allow a nonprofit to reprint a story of mine in exchange for exposure. And I asked myself, if they knew from the outset that they couldn't offer me any money at all, was there a way they could have asked me that would have led to my agreement?

I already noted that I would have been more amenable if the man who made the request had started by asking me what I would charge as a reprint fee, or if he had said that they didn't have a lot of money but had offered me a token sum. That would have acknowledged from the outset his understanding that my work had value to it. But then I thought of one other approach he could have taken. I can't be sure this would have done the trick, but I think I would have been receptive had he said the following:

"I'm sorry to say that I can't offer payment. Would you be willing to donate your work?"

I would have been a lot more comfortable with this kind of request. Why? Because the original "offer" implies that "exposure" is a valid form of payment. But the request as phrased above makes it clear that the publisher understands that the work has value, simply by using the word "donation." And it implies a level of respect for the creator and the work that the offer of payment by exposure does not.

Of course, that mostly works if the asker is running a nonprofit or a charity, and if the writer can afford it.

Writers do donate things all the time, such as signed copies of their work or the chance for a person to appear in a book, to charity auctions. But people need to keep in mind that just because someone is a writer doesn't mean that they can actually afford to make donations. The writers who can are usually ones more famous and better off than I am, and yet there are a lot of people out there who seem to think that if you're a fiction writer you're automatically very well off, even if they don't see your name on the Times bestseller list.

I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Stephen King on an episode of Celebrity Jeopardy, trying to raise money for a good cause (and if Wikipedia is to be trusted, King did in fact appear on the show to raise money for the Bangor Public Library in 1995). But most of us who are writers would rather appear on Jeopardy for our own benefit, so we can avoid missing our mortgage payments.

If you do approach a writer for a donation, and you're turned down, you ought to be gracious about it. When I was just starting out, I got an email from some school asking me to make a donation of a personal item for a charity auction. (These requests are a lot more common than people realize.) I emailed back, explaining that I was a teacher myself (low-paid, of course, as many teachers are) and had agreed with my employer that I would only make such donations for my own school's auction. The other school's representative emailed me back indignantly, saying that he had never heard of such an arrangement and casting aspersions on my moral character because I wouldn't part with one of my possessions to help them out.

You can be sure that I crossed that school off my list of places I would ever help out if I found myself in a position to do so.

So let's go back to the question of Google and the artists that spurred these articles in the first place. Would it have been better or more appropriate for Google to ask the artists to donate their work instead of offering exposure? I would say no, that Google isn't in a position to ask artists to donate their work, for the obvious reason. Google isn't a charity; it's a company that makes a large profit every year and is looking to increase its own profits with wider distribution of their Chrome browser. In the end, I return to the point I made at the beginning: if Google thinks that the artists' work has value, they should be willing to match that value with payment.

When I first wrote about Google's offer of exposure to the artists, I didn't think I'd be writing about it again for another two days running. But as I keep thinking about the questions of how much creative work is valued and how much it should be valued, more thoughts I want to share come to mind.

Today, I want to discuss the concept of an option, which is relevant when a writer is contacted regarding the film or television rights to a story or novel.

For those of you not in the business, let me give you a simple definition of an option. Writers usually do not sell film or television rights to their work outright, because there's always the chance that the person who buys those rights won't end up being able to make the film or TV show, and then you can't sell the rights again because someone else owns them. This actually happened to Isaac Asimov. Orson Welles expressed interest in his story "Evidence," and Asimov was so thrilled by the thought that Welles was planning to make a movie out of the story that he sold Welles the rights. Welles never did make the film, and when Asimov optioned the rights to the collection I, Robot years later, he couldn't include "Evidence" as part of the deal. (FYI, Asimov's I, Robot never got made; the Will Smith movie is a different animal entirely.)

So when "Hollywood" comes calling, the standard custom is that you don't sell them rights outright, but rather, you sell them the option to try to develop the property as a film within a certain period of time. Options payments are much smaller than the payment for rights, so it also benefits the producers, as they don't have to tie up a lot of their money in your work. And when an option is sold, the agreement signed by both parties includes a payment schedule and explanation of rights that will be sold should the option be "exercised." If the producer is able to sell the film to a studio, then you end up with a payment for the sale of the film rights, and that's the end of that.

(There are other details, of course, such as whether or not you're holding onto literary rights to your work, whether you get a percentage of licensing, etc. But those are mostly irrelevant to this current discussion.)

Now, believe it or not, I do get emails and calls from Hollywood, asking whether the film rights for various stories of mine are available. Fortunately, I have a lawyer to handle those details for me, because some of the time, the people calling want to purchase what we would call a "free option." You can probably guess what that means simply from the name, but just to be explicit, a free option means that the producer wants the right to try to develop your story as a movie for some period of time, but doesn't want to pay for the privilege of doing so.

I can see situations in which a writer might be willing to grant a free option. For example, if the producer who wants to develop the property is a close friend who is just starting out, and if you're a writer who is just starting out as well, it might make sense to grant the free option. Or if the producer can show some emotional investment in the work, you might be willing to let them have a free option because you think they will do right by it should the movie get made.

But I see two issues with that offer. The first one is that if the producer doesn't pay you anything for the option, they have less incentive to try to get the movie made. Giving you money is their investment in the property, and it's only by selling the final film to a studio that they're going to get their money back. So if a producer has a free option, where's the incentive to move forward on the project?

The other issue is that movie rights usually cannot be sold non-exclusively. In other words, I can't sell the film rights for one of my stories to (say) both Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, as they're competing studios. (Well. I could try, but I would be laughed at.) So during the time that Joe Neoproducer has a free option to my story, its rights are tied up, and should Stephen Spielberg come knocking on my door, I wouldn't be able to sell him the option. I'd have to wait until the option with Joe expires. And I doubt Stephen is going to wait around that long, given that the rights are tied up with Joe.

But overwhelming both of those issues in my mind is again the concept of the value of my work. So if someone comes to me wanting a free option, I have one question rattling around in the back of my brain: if you feel my work has value, then why aren't you willing to pay for it?

My friend Robert J. Sawyer discussed this in his own blog two years ago, in the post Film Options. I like how he describes the concept of a free option:

I've got a lottery ticket; you want me to hand it to you so you can hold onto it until such time as the drawing is held. If it's a loser, well, then you'll give it back to me. And if it's a winner, then you'll make a small payment to me.

Exactly. If you think my story has value, and you think you can develop it and sell it to the movies and make a ton of money doing so, you should be willing to risk some of your own money from the outset. After all, you're asking me to take a risk as well.

Come back tomorrow, and I may have more to say on the value of our work.

And in other news...

In August, Nightshade Books will be publishing the collection of vampire stories By Blood We Live edited by John Joseph Adams. Jennifer Brozek has reviewed the book, and had this to say about my contribution, a reprint of my story "Lifeblood":

For me, there are three outstanding stories in this collection that shine above the rest. It is their writing, perspective, and originality that made these stories stick in my head long after I finished reading them...

“Lifeblood” by Michael A. Burstein – This story tells the tale of combating a vampire with faith – Jewish faith rather than the traditional Christian faith. The use of song and prayer within the song is a brilliant reinterpretation of brandishing the crucifix.

It's very high praise to have a reviewer cite my story as one of the three outstanding ones in the book, even more so when the name writers in the book include Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, and Stephen King.

The review can be found here: Review of By Blood We Live. It's also on her blog at jennifer_brozek.

Maybe I should start writing my own vampire trilogy...

Yesterday I wrote about getting paid for creative work, and sifting through the comments I realize that there is a point I'd like to make clearer or address better.

To start with, I want to emphasize that my main point was not that doing creative work for free or for exposure is wrong. As I said yesterday, I've done some creative work for free myself, and I even have a friend who is doing pro bono creative work for me (although I did offer payment for it, and would be willing to pay, if she wanted).

My main point can best be illustrated by the following story.

In his autobiography, Isaac Asimov told of the time a woman of his acquaintance asked him if he would take on some volunteer project for the community. From what I remember, Asimov said he would have been fine doing the project, but then the acquaintance went on to say that she would have asked Dr. So-and-so, but Dr. So-and-so was a very busy man.

And that statement stopped Isaac Asimov cold. He was incensed that just because he was a writer, this acquaintance assumed that he wasn't busy and had plenty of time. What bothered him was her unwarranted assumption about his life as a freelance writer.

And that's what bothers me about Google's approach to the artists mentioned in the article. It's the assumption that of course an artist would be happy with exposure as payment. Because it's not Google who gets to make that decision – it's the artists.

In the end, I'd go back to Google and anyone else offering naught but exposure, and ask them this – who exactly do they think is going to pick up the slack and pay artists if word gets around that they'll work for exposure? At what point would Google consider an artist's work to be of value? (As sethg_prime noted in the comments, Google surely paid Scott McCloud to create the online 39-page comic book introducing Chrome to the world. If McCloud's art is worth paying for, why isn't everyone else's?)

Expectations need to be set accordingly.

(As an aside, there's a fascinating chapter in the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely about social norms, and how we keep them separate from market norms. Ariely has placed an excerpt from that chapter here, and I encourage everyone to take a look.)

As a freelance writer, I frequently find myself concerned with the question of how much a particular piece of writing is worth. In general, the market sets the rates for writing, usually offering a few cents a word for a piece of fiction and more than that for a piece of nonfiction. We tend to expect a professional website to offer something reasonable for the use of our work, even in the Internet era of quick links and frictionless copying. My basic rule is a simple one; if the magazine or website is making money by selling advertising or access to their content, then I should be given some sort of payment for generating that content in the first place.

Even if the site isn't making money on its own, if it serves as a loss leader for a company, I'd also expect to get paid. For example, if a TV network sets up a website to attract viewers, even if that site loses money on its own, overall the site is helping them with their bottom line. I would expect to be paid for whatever I provide them, just like they pay studios for the programs they broadcast.

So I was intrigued by this article I read in the New York Times this morning: Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google. Google has invited dozens of prominent artists to contribute work that they will feature on their new Web browser, Chrome, and when some of the artists asked how much they would be paid for their art, the answer was nothing. Google released a statement in which they said that while they don't usually offer money for the use of the art in the browser, they feel that they would be giving the artists an opportunity to display their work in front of millions of people.

In other words, no money, but think of the exposure!

How I have come to hate that word.

A few years ago, someone whose name I won't mention wanted to reprint one of my stories in a booklet that a nonprofit organization planned to distribute to a variety of synagogues across the United States. I had passed along the story at the request of a mutual friend, and he was so excited by the story that he really wanted others to read it and be as moved by it as he was.

But when he asked if he could reprint the story, his first words were to tell me that he wouldn't pay anything, but he could offer me "exposure." It rankled me to hear that. He wouldn't consider not paying the costs of printing the booklets or distributing them, but when it came to the content, he didn't seem to grasp why it was so wrong to offer no compensation at all.

The irony here is that in this particular case I really didn't want a reprint fee, just respect. Had the guy approached me and asked what the reprint fee would have been – or even if he had said something like we don't have a large budget for this project but I can give you $10 – I would have replied thank you for asking, but for your cause I'm willing to let you have it for free.

This is not to say that I wouldn't write something and offer it for no charge. I've written for fanzines before, and I would never think of charging them for an article, because that's not how the model works. (Also, fanzine editors make it clear from the outset that they're not a paying market.) I don't get paid for my blog posts, obviously, as this blog is my communication with friends and fans. (I do keep a small link on the side of the front page to a PayPal button, because I don't want to deny someone the choice of making a donation if they'd like, but I don't push very hard for donations.)

And this is not to say that I don't write for "exposure" sometimes. The difference, though, is that when I write for "exposure" I'm doing it on my own terms. I'm choosing to provide articles or stories for friends or for partners, and usually there's an added quid pro quo that is no one's business but my own.

What bothers me most of all is that people who believe their own industry is of value often think nothing of asking writers to provide work for free. Or think we should be happy if our work gets distributed without permission. A few months ago, a friend of mine who is in one of the professional fields suggested that I should be happy if a story of mine got copied over and over on the Internet and earned me millions of readers. After all, isn't that what a writer wants, to be read?

Well, yes. But a writer also wants to be paid. Does a lawyer offer all of his or her services for free? Would a doctor be happy to not draw a fee and simply treat people without payment?

Would you be willing to do your own job for no payment?

I think the executives at Google who made this offer of "exposure" to artists need to answer that question for themselves.

For those of you interested, in honor of the 100th episode of the TV show Lost, which airs tonight, I have the following piece up at SCI FI Wire:

Before watching Lost's 100th episode tonight, check out 14 other sci-fi milestones

The most interesting aspect of writing this piece for me was discovering just how few genre shows have made it to 100 episodes...

(And I couldn't help but notice that the 100th episode of Lost coincides with the 100th day of Barack Obama's presidency. Given the subject matter of Lost, this can't be a coincidence.)

I've been meaning to let people know about all of the following, just haven't had the time. None of this is Earth-shattering, but it might be of interest.

First of all, I reviewed the play The Superheroine Monologues for SF Scope. Unfortunately, at this point the play's run is over, but if you're interested in my opinion, you can find it at The Secret Lives of Superheroines – a review of The Superheroine Monologues: A Parody of Super Proportions.

Secondly, and a little more timely, I had an opinion piece appear on SCI FI Wire (soon to be Syfy Wire?) about tonight's season finale of the TV show Heroes. I managed to snag quotes from Paul Levinson, Bob Greenberger, and Miranda Thomas about the show; I thought Miranda's point about a need for a big battle was a good one. You can find the article at 5 things Heroes must do to deliver a killer season finale.

Thirdly, John Joseph Adams has chosen to reprint my Jews versus vampires story, "Lifeblood," in the anthology By Blood We Live (Night Shade Books). I suspect it's going to be a somewhat different take on vampires than the other stories in the book. "Lifeblood" originally appeared in the 2003 DAW Books anthology New Voices in Science Fiction edited by Mike Resnick, and I'm glad to see it come back into print.

Fourthly, Apex Publications announced that they're doing a book collection of stories from Apex Magazine, and it turns out that they're including the two stories I selected for the special issue as part of the book: “Waiting for Jakie” by Barbara Krasnoff and “The Last Science Fiction Writer” by Jamie Todd Rubin. If you want to learn more about Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine volume 1, read their blog post Apex Magazine antho: Update.

And finally, the Falmouth Public Library in southern Massachusetts has invited me to participate in their SCI FI Author Panel on the evening of Wednesday, June 17. I'm particularly pleased to be invited to speak at a library because of my own connection to libraries in Massachusetts. One of the other panelists will be my good friend Jennifer Pelland, so I expect the audience that comes to the event will hear a lot of brilliant repartee. (At least, I'd like to think so.)

I'm delighted to announce that the April 2009 issue of Apex Magazine, the issue for which I served as Guest Editor, is now available.

I'm very proud of this issue. As I discuss in the editorial, the stories I selected for the issue struck some very personal chords with me. "The Last Science Fiction Writer" by Jamie Rubin and "Waiting for Jakie" by Barbara Krasnoff both explore themes that I've also explored in my own fiction.

I was also pleased to be able to support science fiction poetry by publishing two poems: Michael Ceraolo’s “Message in a Bottle” and Elizabeth Barrette’s “Fallen Gardens." Apex Magazine doesn't usually publish poetry, so this was a departure for them. I'm glad they were willing to go along.

Editing the special issue of Apex also allowed me to reprint one of my favorite stories of all time: "Love, Dad" by Jeffery D. Kooistra, which originally appeared in the March 1992 Analog. It's also a bit of a departure for Apex, as it's more touching and moving and perhaps less dark than their usual fare, but I think Apex's readers will like it nevertheless.

Finally, the cover art by Stephen Rider does a wonderful job of illustrating "The Last Science Fiction Writer." You can see it for yourself if you check out the catalog page for the PDF version. And while you're there, maybe you'll consider buying the PDF; it's only $2, well worth the cost to support great short fiction online.

In addition to editing this issue, I also wrote a blog entry for the Apex Blog, Thoughts on Professionalism and Guest Editing, in which I discuss the process of serving as guest editor for the issue. I actually had a few surprises in store for me when I took on this task, and I encourage anyone who wants to know what happens on the other side of the desk to check it out.

Once again, many thanks to Jason Sizemore, the publisher of Apex, for allowing me this opportunity.

(Permalink to the April 2009 Apex Magazine)

A year ago today, the world got the news that the last of the Big Three science fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke, had died.

Growing up, I wasn't much of a Clarke reader. I loved Asimov's work, though, and Asimov himself used to say that people who liked his work also liked Clarke's. But for the most part, I never enjoyed Clarke's books as much as I did Asimov's. However, I did find Clarke's ideas mind-blowing, and I did enjoy Clarke's short stories more than his novels. (Who could forget "The Star" or "The Nine Billion Names of God"?)

I also loved Clarke's essays on science and the world. He seemed to have an innate inability to grasp the direction in which we were going as a species.

Oddly enough, when he died last year, I was in the middle of trying to figure out the plot of a new short story, the story that would give its title to my collection I Remember the Future. As I said in the book, Clarke's death somehow triggered in my mind exactly what I needed to write the story, and so I dedicated it to him.

As I noted last year when Clarke died, many people liked to quote his Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") but I was more interested in exploring the ramifications of his Second Law: "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

It's something I try to do every day.

Arisia was a lot of fun, and kept us both very busy. If I have time, I might report on the convention a bit.

In the meantime, here's a link to an interview Steven H Silver did of me in which I talk about fandom, writing, religion, influences, and of course, I Remember the Future:

The SF Site: An Interview with Michael A. Burstein.

The money quote that has been popping up on links to the interview seems to be this one:

You've said that Isaac Asimov was a major inspiration to you. How did he affect your writing career and which other authors do you feel you owe a debt to?

I could write a whole article about Isaac Asimov. Come to think of it, I have, for the fanzine Mimosa, and it's available on my website. It would be far too long to reproduce here. But the short version is that Asimov, being as prolific and open about his life as he was, gave the rest of us a blueprint to follow if we wanted to do so.

(The interview is also available by downloading the latest issue of Argentus.)

My friend Michael Marano, who is a fellow Grub Street instructor, asked me to let people know that the registration deadline for his class on "The Art of Genre" has been extended to Thursday. Also, there are scholarships available.


Here's a description of the class:

Using the unreal in your fiction offers unique opportunities to break fresh, new ground. This class will help hone the tools you’ll need to write genre fiction–be it science fiction, fantasy, or horror–with a distinctly literary bent. In addition to the weekly workshopping of short stories and novel fragments, students will be given a background on the genres’ histories and their respective subgenres, strategies for using surrealism and postmodernism in their work, approaches to using “real world” research as a way to flesh out otherworldly settings and narratives, and ways to use the unreal as a tool to make metaphoric statements that can only be articulated with fantastic trappings. Other topics covered will be strategies for marketing your work, techniques for idea generating, and protocols for developing their work with the help of editors and agents. The goal is to give you a solid grounding in the demands of fantastic fiction, and a better understanding of literary potential of your favorite genres.

As I said a few days ago, I'd be taking this class if I could fit it into my own schedule...

[Note: Although the Gregorian calendar anniversary of my father's death is November 2, on the Hebrew calendar that date was 15 Heshvan. I'll be observing Dad's yahrzeit starting tonight.]

Eighteen years ago tonight, by the reckoning of the Hebrew calendar, my father Joel David Burstein died.

I tend to think Dad was a fascinating person. He was born in December 1929, in the wake of the stock market collapse, and so grew up during the Depression, which affected his outlook for the rest of his life. When he was almost ten years old, he attended the 1939 New York City World's Fair, and fell in love with the visions of the future it presented. He graduated as valedictorian of DeWitt Clinton High School (which was in Manhattan at the time, I think) and started college at Columbia, where he was editor of the college newspaper, The Spectator.

But while he was in his teenage years and World War II was raging, news of the Holocaust came to the United States. My grandfather was a rabbi, and my Dad grew up in a religious household; but the Holocaust caused him to lose his faith in God and to break away from religion.

On the other hand, he felt a strong connection to the Jewish people. In the 1940s he ran guns to the nascent Jewish state of Israel, and then he dropped out of college, never finishing, in order to smuggle himself into Israel and fight in the 1948 War for Independence.

Dad was dedicated to journalism and newspapers. He used to like to quote Thomas Jefferson, who once said that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. Dad spent his life working at a whole variety of newspapers in New York City. In the midst of all this, he married his first wife, Evelyn, and had two sons, my half-brothers David and Daniel. Eventually, Dad and Evelyn divorced. He met my mother Eleanor, married her, and had three more sons: Jonathan, Michael, and Joshua.

By the time I knew him, Dad had been working at the New York Daily News for many years. In 1990, the Daily News unions were locked out and so once again went on strike against the owner of the paper, the Chicago Tribune Company. Dad was in the Newspaper Guild union office eighteen years ago when he collapsed of a heart attack and was pronounced dead at St. Claire's Hospital. My brothers and I were in the Boston area at the time -- Jon in medical school, Josh and me in college. Jon and Josh were on a train home already because my father's mother had just died the day before, and they were going to NYC to be with my Dad for her funeral. We had no way of knowing that on Sunday, November 4, we would attend one funeral after another, with print and TV reporters gathered with our friends and family, the media there to report on my father's death as another tragic story.

My father was a strong believer in justice, in supporting the powerless against the powerful. Two months before he died, I marched with him in the NYC Labor Day Parade. The Greyhound bus drivers were on strike, and Dad – who always kept an eye on family finances – donated money to their fund without blinking. After he died, I found among his personal papers articles he had clipped about a Mohawk tribe in upstate New York struggling to get a piece of land back from the federal government. Dad always shared stories like that with us, to remind us that the fight for justice was a neverending battle.

Dad had been a reader of science fiction and comic books when he was growing up; by the time I knew him, he mostly read mysteries. But he inculcated in me a love of science fiction, and my one regret about my own writing is that he never got to read it. But his spirit infuses every word I write.

Copyright © Michael A. Burstein

I have a cold that's making it difficult for me to sleep, so I figured I'd link to two recent good reviews that cheered me.

First, a comic book and science fiction fan named Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag recently came across "TeleAbsence" in the Wondrous Beginnings anthology edited by Steven H Silver and Martin H. Greenberg and had this to say in A Sunday Review:

..."TeleAbsence" by Michael A Burstein was a heart-rending tale of what technology should be and could be, with dead-on truths of why it can't be.

Secondly, Rusty who runs his site called BestScienceFictionStories.com posted a review of "Collapse" in which he said the following:

While this storyline may not sound too enticing, I found it to be quite an easy and interesting read. Michael Burstein is a great writer, and that makes “Collapse” a pleasure to read.

It's comments like these that make it all worthwhile, especially when I'm having trouble sleeping.

For anyone and everyone who is interested in the intersection of Jewish themes and speculative fiction:

At Readercon on Sunday (which happened to be the 17th of Tammuz, a Jewish fast day), writer Leah Cypess gathered a small group of Jewish speculative fiction writers together. We sat in the Con Suite, not eating, and discussed the issues involved in writing science fiction and fantasy stories that have a Jewish element or theme to them.

Although there already exist groups devoted to the discussion of Jewish science fiction (the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jewishSF/ comes to mind), as far as we could tell there was no group specifically devoted to Jewish science fiction from the perspective of the writer. Therefore, Leah decided that we should form such a group, and setting up an email discussion group on yahoo is the start.

So, if you're a writer who is interested in writing Jewish speculative fiction, feel free to join. Our grandiose plans include a possible small convention devoted to Jewish speculative fiction, and the question of how to get more markets to publish such fiction.

The group can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jewishSpecFic/ . Our one-line description: Jewish Speculative Fiction Writers is for writers who are interested in working on fiction at the intersection of speculative fiction and Jewish themes. A LiveJournal Community for the same purpose is at jewishspecfic.

So, as my half-brother Danny noted to me in an email a ways back, I haven't been posting here as often as usual. For those of you who are interested, it's because I've been very busy with three things, which I shall summarize below in a handy-dandy list with some explanation.

1. Work.

Not much more to add there.

2. The BU Certificate in Publishing Program

As I mentioned before, ever since January I've been enrolled in the Boston University Certificate in Book and Magazine Publishing program. When I asked friends for advice on whether or not I should try to complete the program within one calendar year, a few people warned me that it would take time away from other things.

Well, they were right, but in the end I'm very glad I chose to start and finish the program in 2008. In about two more months, I'll have completed all the classes and earned my certificate, leaving me free once again those two nights a week.

For the past two months, I've been taking BK 105, Book Editing, and PUB 108, Publishing Law, Copyright, & Literary Agents. Both courses were just as valuable as the other courses I've taken, and I'll have more to say about them later on. For the purposes of this post, however, it's enough to note that the courses and the outside work I had to do for them was another factor in why I've been away from blogging for so long.

3. "I Remember the Future"

As I noted ten days ago, the main thing that kept me from blogging was the book. You'd think that writing only two more stories to fill out a collection wouldn't take all that much time, right? Well, no. I've been agonizing over the title story to the collection, because I wanted to get it just right. My long-suffering publisher, bless his heart, willingly stepped back and gave me the space and time I needed to complete the story. I finally managed to figure out exactly how to say what I wanted to say with it, and the story is done. But, this means that the publication date of the book is slipping from September to October. To all those of you who pre-ordered the hardcover already or plan to do so soon, you will get your signed copies of the book, trust me. They'll be just a little late, and I take full responsibility for that.

So there we have it; the three things that have been keeping me most occupied. Now that the manuscript is done, I'm hoping to have a little more time to blog this summer. But there's still two more classes, Marketing & Publicity for Book Publishers (BK 106) and Book Workshop (BK 107), to go, and I have to get to work on collaborations I promised to do with three other writers, and...

Expect me when you see me.

As promised, here are some of the answers to questions people have asked me about "I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein" (Apex Books, September 2008). Note that the answers to any and all of these questions are subject to change.

When is the book scheduled to be released?

September 2008.

What will the book contain?

The book will include all twelve of my stories that were nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards; "Absent Friends," which was not nominated for either award but is part of the "Broken Symmetry" series; and two new stories: "Empty Spaces," which is the fourth story in the "Broken Symmetry" series, and "I Remember the Future." It's a total of 15 stories at about 130,000 words.

Wow! That's a big book.

Thanks, but that's not a question.

Will there be a hardcover edition?

The current plans are for a simultaneous release in a hardcover and a trade paperback edition.

How much will the book cost?

No idea at this point.

Where can I order it from?

The book will be available from all the usual sources. If you're in the Boston area, it should be available from Pandemonium and Brookline Booksmith as well as the chain stores. The book will also be listed at Amazon. And Apex Publications will be taking direct pre-orders on their website, at http://www.apexbookcompany.com.

How can I get it autographed?

Aha! If Apex follows their usual procedure, all hardcover copies that are pre-ordered from their website will come pre-autographed. You'll even be able to request personalization of the signature by contacting me.

The trade paperback edition will not come pre-signed; however, I plan to schedule autograph sessions at conventions throughout 2009.

I don't want to buy a copy of the book, but I do want to read the two new stories you've written. Will you send them to me?

Um, no. The point of including two new stories is to encourage people to buy the book.

What if either of those stories gets nominated for the Hugo or Nebula?

Talk to me then. :-)

Will the book include any of your essays?

The book will not include any of my essays. However, for those of you interested in the writing process, I do plan on writing a brand-new afterword for each story.

Who are you dedicating the book to?

My parents.

Will I be in your Acknowledgments?

That depends. Are you Stanley Schmidt, Jennifer Pelland, Bob Eggleton, Andrew Greene, Jason Sizemore, or Nomi? If so, yes. If not, convince me you belong. :-)

Seriously, though, it's hard for me to remember all the people whose help I want to acknowledge, given that we're talking about a time period of over a decade. If anyone reading this remembers my mentioning anyone who played a vital role in helping me develop some of the stories in the book, please let me know. (I'll also do my best to acknowledge people in the various afterwords who helped with specific stories.)

Are the stories any good?

The stories in this book are the best stories ever written in the universe, bar none. (Seriously, what kind of question is that? I think they're pretty good, and obviously a bunch of other people agreed, or else they wouldn't be my award-nominated stories. Also, I've got a few writers lined up to provide the book with blurbs; if you don't trust me, trust them.)

OK, I'm convinced. I want to buy the book when it comes out, but I'm afraid I might forget about it between now and September.

If you keep reading here regularly, there'll be plenty of reminders, don't worry. Or, if you haven't yet, you might consider signing up for my yahoo mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mabfan/ . It's for announcements only, and I promise it won't clutter your mailbox.

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes and their congratulations.

Secondly, I've already had a bunch of people ask me questions about the book, in both email and on LiveJournal. Rather than try to answer those questions individually, I plan to post a FAQ about the book here sometime tomorrow. So consider this a request for questions: if you have one, post it here and I'll do my best to answer it.

As for some of the ones I've already received: the book will have simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions, it will be possible to pre-order the book directly from Apex, and it will be available in bookstores as well.

Any other questions? Here's the place, now's the time.