Not A Blog

Vic Milan has left us... but his words and his work live on, so long as he is being read.

Tor has asked me to announce that his new story, "EverNight," is now available to purchase in ebook on Amazon and other retailers. Here are the links:

https://www.amazon.com/Evernight-Tor-com-Original-Victor-Mil%C3%A1n-ebook/dp/B079Y7NC1N/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519227187&sr=8-1&keywords=evernight+victor+milan

http://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250198167

For those looking for his recent books, the first three volumes of his DINOSAUR LORDS series are available via mailorder from the Jean Cocteau Cinema:

http://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/author/m-p/milan-victor/

All the dinosaur books are autographed.

Some of his fans have emailed to ask if there will be more dinosaur books coming. My understanding is that he had done an outline for three more volumes, and had written some portion of the first of those, but did not have a contract to continue the series. How much material he left behind, or whether he would have wanted someone else to finish the books, I cannot say. If I learn more, I'll be sure and let his readers know.

He does have one more Wild Cards story coming out in TEXAS HOLD 'EM, scheduled for release in hardcover in October. It features a new character, Dust, and Candace Sessou, the protagonist of "EverNight," and I know Vic was very pleased with it.

Our writing community here in New Mexico, and the world of SF and fantasy in general, took a blow this afternoon when our friend Victor Milan died after two months of suffering and struggle in a series of Albuquerque hospitals.

I first met Vic not long after I moved to Santa Fe in 1979. Outgoing, funny, friendly, and incredibly bright, he was one of the cornerstones of the New Mexico SF crowd for decades, a regular at Bubonicon in Albuquerque, the perennial masquerade host at Archon in St. Louis, a fan, a lover of ferrets and collector of guns, a gamer (I can't tell you how many times we stayed up till dawn playing Superworld, Call of Cthulhu, and other RPGs with Vic, and laughing at the outrageous antics of the characters he created). But above all, he was a writer.



He wrote all sorts of things, in and out of our genre: westerns, historicals, men's action adventure, more books than I could possibly list... but it was in science fiction that he did his best work. CYBERNETIC SAMURAI and CYBERNETIC SHOGAN were two of the best known from the old days. More recently, he was finding new readers by the score all around the world with his DINOSAUR LORDS series.



He was also a Wild Cards writer, of course; one of my aces. In a sense he was the father of Wild Cards. It was Vic who gave me the Superworld game as a birthday present back in 1983, and it was those long long nights of playing Superworld that eventually inspired me to start Wild Cards.

Vic was an integral part of the series right from the very start, and the characters he created were among our most popular. Among them were the Russian ace Molniya, the Harlem Hammer, the twisted German psychopath Mackie Messer, Dr. Pretorius, Ice Blue Sibyl, Flipper, Dust, the Darkness... and above all, Mark Meadows, aka Cap'n Trips, and his "friends" Jumpin' Jack Flash, Starshine, Moonchild, Aquarius, Cosmic Traveller, Monster... and the Radical. The long saga of Mark Meadows began in volume one, and was brought to a close in volume twenty, SUICIDE KINGS. It was a long strange trip indeed, and every step of it was exciting, thanks to Vic.



Sadly, Vic's health has not been good in the past few years, and it finally gave out on him. But his warmth, his wit, and his talent will be long remembered by everyone who knew him, and his words will live on after him.

And, as irony would have it, he has another story coming out tomorrow on Tor.com. It's a Wild Cards story called "EverNight," set in the catacombs of Paris and featuring Candace Sessou, the Darkness, a character he introduced in SUICIDE KINGS. The link will not go live until 9 am EST tomorrow, but once it does you can read the story here, for free:

https://www.tor.com/2018/02/14/wild-cards-evernight-victor-milan/

It saddens me that Vic did not live long enough to see his story on Tor.com, or appreciate the gorgeous piece of John Picacio art that adorns it (he was a huge fan of John's)... but I hope that many of you will read "EverNight." If you like it, do leave a comment. I think that would have pleased him.

I believe that Vic may have another book or two in his DINOSAUR LORDS sequence coming out, but I am not sure of that. I do know that he will be represented in two more Wild Cards books. He has a story in TEXAS HOLD 'EM, due out in October, and a collaboration in the book we're doing now, JOKER MOON. Would that I could say that there will be many more after that, but I fear those will be the last.

Fare thee well, Vic. It was an honor knowing you.

I was very saddened to hear of the death of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the great SF and fantasy writers of the past half century.

Over the years, I had the honor of meeting Le Guin a few times, but I cannot claim to really have known her as a person. Our encounters, such as they were, were all at conventions or Nebula banquets or writer's workshops, and they were all brief and forgettable.

But I certainly knew her work... as anyone who calls themselves an SF fan surely must. She was one of the giants. A gifted storyteller, dedicated to her art, she influenced a whole generation of writers who came after her, including me. THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS ranks as one of the best science fiction novels ever written, in my estimation, and THE DISPOSSESSED and THE LATHE OF HEAVEN were splendid works as well. The original Earthsea trilogy occupies a similar lofty position in the fantasy pantheon (though it was badly served by its television adaptation).

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is usually reckoned to have been the Campbell Era at ASTOUNDING, and its Big Three were Heinlein, Asimov, and Van Vogt. Yet as important as that era was, for me the true Golden Age will always be the late 60s and early 70s, when the Big Three were Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin. We shall never see their like again.

The world is poorer today.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all my friends and readers out there.

I had a lovely Christmas Day with friends and family, and Santa was very good to me. I hope the same is true for all of you.

Even so, I look forward to the new year. I thought 2016 was a bad year, but 2017 was even worse... if not so much for me personally, then certainly for a lot of my friends and loved ones, and for the nation and the world as a whole.

I hope better times are ahead for all of us.

Yesterday another birthday came and went.

(And thanks to all those who sent me cards and emails. You're very kind. Love you all).

I had a good day with family and friends, but...

69

Really.

Urk.

How did that happen?

Seems like only yesterday I was one of the Young Turks of Science Fiction.

What a long strange trip it's been...

And I still have a ways to go, I hope. Lots of stories still to tell.

(And yes, Mr. Prufrock, I still eat peaches).

I've been trying for several days to write something about the death of Len Wein.

It's been hard. The words stick in my throat. Len was not just a professional colleague, as Jerry Pournelle was. Len was a friend. An old, dear friend. He lived in LA and I lived in Santa Fe, so we never saw each other more than a few times a year, but I cherished all the time I spent with him and his wife, Chris Valada. I don't have a bad memory of Len, and I doubt that anyone does. He was a sweet, kind, funny man, and a joy to be around, to share a meal with (even though he always refused to "eat anything that looked like itself").

Len and I went way way back. We were both there when comics fandom was being born, and we met for the first time in a place called the Workingman's Circle, at the 1964 New York Comicon. The first comicon... and Len Wein was one of the kids who made it happen, one of the organizers, while I was the first fan to send in $1.50 for a membership. We were both in high school at the time. Many years later, at a San Diego Comicon with its 150,000 members, I turned to Len and sad, "See what you did?" He just laughed and replied, "Who knew?"

You don't need me to tell you about his career, his professional accomplishments, his creations. If you don't know who Len Wein is, you've never read a comic book. He created Wolverine, the New X-Men, Swamp Thing, the Human Target, Lucius Fox, and, oh, about five hundred other characters. Maybe a thousand. Most of those were created under the old work-made-for-hire contracts so common in the comics industry when Len stared out, so he had no ownership of any of them, and made very little, if anything, from all the movies and TV shows that featured them. (Lucius Fox was the exception to that, since he was created later, under a contract that gave the creator more rights, In one of the little ironies of life in the comics biz, Len made more money from Lucius Fox than he ever saw from Wolverine). If it had been me, it would have made me incredibly bitter to see my creations making billions while I got some loose change, but Len never bitched about it. He knew the rules when he signed the contracts, he would always say. And he loved seeing his creations on the big and little screens. There was no bitterness in the man, and no anger that I ever saw.

He loved comics, and he loved life, and I'm just one of the many who loved him.

((Comments allowed, but only about Len)).

So a couple of months ago, while I was out at Stokercon in Long Beach, on the mighty Queen Mary, I went out with Scott Edelman for Thai food (yum), and he recorded our conversation for his EATING THE FANTASTIC podcast.

The food was great, and the talk was fun. You can check it out at:

http://www.scottedelman.com/2017/07/21/down-drunken-noodles-with-george-r-r-martin-in-episode-43-of-eating-the-fantastic/

Scott and I both emerged from comics fandom of the 60s, so be forewarned, there's a lot of talk about the Good Old Days.

Last weekend Parris and I drove up to Denver to attend the memorial service for our friend Ed Bryant, who died in February.



It was a long drive and a sad occasion, but I'm glad we went. It's still hard to believe that Ed is gone. The last time I saw him was in November, in Tucson, when he was toastmaster and I was guest of honor at Tuscon. The first time... that must have been '73 or '74, as best as I can recall, at Harlan Ellison's house in Sherman Oaks. A lot of years, a lot of cons.

Connie Willis emceed the event, eliciting both laughter and tears from the large crowd that had gathered to say farewell, most of them in Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps.



Many others rose to speak as well, including me. Ed left a lot of friends.

Ed was a talented writer and a great workshopper, who mentored and encouraged many writers younger than himself and helped them on their way. He was one of my Wild Cards authors, creator of Sewer Jack and Wyungare. But most of all he was a sweet, kind man, with a warm smile and a gentle wit. Science fiction and fantasy will be poorer without him.

Memorials like this are not for the deceased so much as they are for those left behind, I believe. It was good to get together with so many others who cared about Ed, and to share our memories of him, with laughter and love.

I have posted this before, but it comes to mind every year on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day.

Kipling said it better than I ever could.



Words to keep in mind.

Last August the hardcover of HIGH STAKES, the most recent Wild Cards mosaic novel, was released by Tor. We launched the book at MidAmericon II in Kansas City with a huge mass signing sponsored by Rainy Day Books. Most (though not all) of the contributors to HIGH STAKES were on hand, but so were a dozen other Wild Cards writers, even those not in that particular volume. WC fans had a field day, collecting signatures from all the writers present.

Tor also had a video crew on hand, to tape the signing and to interview the writers about their involvement in Wild Cards, and any other projects they might be working on. They got hours of tape, and have been busily splicing and dicing and interweaving snippets of those interviews into a series of short promotional videos. Three of those videos have been released to date, and can be found on our Wild Cards website http://www.wildcardsworld.com/wild-cards-media/ Many more will be coming.

One of the writers interviewed was Edward Bryant.

After we heard about Ed's death, I contacted Tor to ask them if Ed had been one of the writers they had talked with in Kansas City. I am pleased to say he was, and we can now present his interview to you complete and uninterrupted.

All those who knew and loved him will, I hope, appreciate the opportunity to see and hear from Ed one last time... but I should warn you, there is a bittersweet quality to this tape, in light of what was coming. Sad to say, Ed never did finish that last Wild Cards story he was working on, nor any of the other tales that he hoped to write.

Sooner or later, all of us have to see The Jolson Story. Be that as it may, for one last time, I am honored to present my friend Edward Bryant:



((My thanks to Patty Garcia, Sheila, and all the good folks at Tor for making this possible)).