Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 (21 page)

Everywhere the horizon waits to claim
the careless shot, and though you may
think this heaven (with no wind,
you can never slice the ball)
any successful shot still must curve
back down out of the sky. It's easy
to launch an orbit shot. Still, your
greatest puzzle is which hole in the Swiss
landscape must be the right one.

Remember, friend, you're not the first,
all the greats that came before are up there
in the ground in the sky above you,
so before you play, bow your head
in reverence (though for reasons
of frailty, you shall remain exempt
from removing your headgear).

I have peered through the fractured windows of Prypiat,
walked corridors and roads graveled by one shattered moment,
my virtual feet unfeeling and distant, my eye a goggled, gleaming lens.
One tiny decay, one slip, one instant, and a city is fled bare,
left for weeds to gather on rooftops, slink through empty bedrooms,
slowly thieve away structure, atom and shingle and chair,
the maples and the elk ticking over with hubris.

I have flown, arms wide as imagination, over Hashima,
stood on its sloping porches and leaned fearless on its tenuous rails,
never to be trapped nor dead beneath it, one blink to carry me away.
One chemistry supplants another, and the city is bled dry of men,
left for time to scour above, rock and pick abandoned below,
as coal-dark remnants, skeletal and grim, loom upright,
stalwart in a captive stillness they cannot evade.

I have sat beside you, listened to the pull and snag of your breath
as the morphine drowned you, drip by drip, like winter rain,
and you lay curled in your favorite chair that you would never leave.
One bad cell, divided, multiplied, hiding in the body's underground,
feint and riot and angry rabble, they burn the establishment down,
your hand in mine, held together like we were children again,
and it was real, this city of you, as the last lights winked out.

For five cents you could ride
the mechanical red rocket

round in circles just outside
the supermarket. Or sans conveyance,

you could expeditiously travel
the galaxy from anywhere

at all provided the neighborhood
Mom-and-Pop store carried

the appropriate fuel. You needn't
even bother putting on a space

suit in those days, a candy wrapper
was more than enough to open up

the universe before you, starting
with a Moon Pie (orbitally dark,

of course, until that first gibbous bite),
then proceeding to a Mars Bar
before leaving the solar system
altogether for the wide open caramel

and chocolate parsecs of a Milky Way.
And if as you traveled further out,

Starbursts began to gum up your works,
your mother's insistence that you always

brush your pearly whites after each glucose-
abetted jaunt usually helped damp down

the worst damage. Alas, over time, other
effects were less easily countenanced.

Now, many years later, the rocket ride
is a collectible and a needle probe

of insulin chains me to the Earth beneath
sweet stars. Now it's my boyhood

that recedes galactically beyond the light
years of nickels and candy red rockets.

Here's what happens
after we die,
after everybody we know dies,
after the sun cools,
after all the stars cool:
Everything decays to iron.
Then, slowly, it all falls into black holes
until there is nothing else left,
just black holes
and the cooling microwave background.
After ten to the trillionth years
all the black holes decay to thermal photons,
all the photons stretch out
and stretch out

and stretch out
to perfect nothingness,
crystalline vacuum,
and then,
the most improbable thing ever:
even the vacuum
decays.

In time beyond our imagination
symmetry breaks
into another
bang.

A DAY AT THE FAIR

Photo by
Jackie Sherbow

Off and on, for many years, we ran a subscription table in the Dealers' Room at the annual World Science Fiction convention. Authors would help out by signing books while pitching subscriptions. Frequent con participants knew this was the place to go for the year's most heavily discounted subscription. The subscription offers worked well for us, too, because the sale was made straight to the consumer—no middleman to share profits with and no expensive direct mail campaign. I always found working the table exhilarating. It was a great opportunity to meet long-time readers as well as solicit new subscribers.

Many of the authors, like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, and Joe Haldeman, made hilarious sales pitches. Others, like Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, and Allen M. Steele, took more decorous approaches. All of these methods contributed to sales and fun adventures.

One such occasion occurred during Philadelphia's Millennium Philcon in 2000. Connie Willis signed books and magazines while my seven-year-old hollered out "get your half-price prescriptions." Our commotion soon caught the attention of a brand new conventiongoer who happened to be looking for an autograph from one of her favorite authors. That's how I first met the singer/songwriter and SF reader Janis Ian.

An awkward incident occurred while working the table with Cory Doctorow. We were approached by a man who I erroneously assumed was an
Asimov's
or
Analog
reader. I was about to make the usual sales pitch when some clue seemed to imply a certain level of disinterest. After a brief conversation with Cory, the man continued on his way through the Dealers' Room. Cory then explained that our guest was a founder of the shared software movement. His enthusiasm for free and collaborative teamwork made it seem unlikely he would have welcomed my come-on for a
paid
subscription to
Asimov's.

Despite this close call, my passion for the table never waned. Spending time there was a great way to hear about the items subscribers particularly liked as well as their gentle suggestions for improvements to the magazine. Alas, though, our official days in the Dealers' Room came to an end. No more adventures at the table and a harder time Sheila Williams, Robert Reed, and Emily Hockaday making face-to-face contact with readers.

For the past couple of years, though, I've had the chance to meet readers in a new venue. Two years ago, the mystery and science fiction editorial assistants— Jackie Sherbow and Emily Hockaday— suggested we attend the Brooklyn Book Festival as vendors. The fair is held in the fall at Brooklyn's Borough Hall. Book related events occur all week long and there is a swanky vendors party the night before the festival. Fellow guests at this year's party included Alaya Dawn Johnson and N.K. Jemisin.

All these events are exciting, but the best part is the day at the fair. On a crisp Sunday morning, Emily and Jackie set up a beautiful table decorated with printouts of some of our most classic covers. We distributed free magazines and great subscription offers to our four fiction magazines—
Ellery Queen
and
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines
in addition to
Analog
and
Asimov's.
Two years ago, Michael Swanwick came up from Philadelphia to sign autographs and hang out at the table. This year, Robert Reed flew in from Nebraska and Tom Purdom took a bus from Pennsylvania to do the same thing.

Visitors to the 2013 table included Jane Yolen, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman. New
Asimov's
writer Jay O'Connell stopped by as did 2011 Dell Magazine Award winner Seth Dickinson. Jay had recently sold me four stories, but this was our first opportunity to meet in person. I was also delighted to see Seth who has started to sell tales to publications like
Lightspeed, Clarkesworld,
and
Analog.

I didn't meet as many subscribers as I would at a science fiction convention, but we did entice a lot of fairgoers to our table. By the end of the day, we had given away over three hundred copies of
Asimov's
and hundreds of subscription offers. We'd touched base with some stalwart subscribers, reconnected with some lapsed readers, and introduced
Asimov's
to a bunch of new people.

When the last copy of
Asimov's
flew out of my hands, I hurried over to the Festival's "Youth Stoop" to catch Alaya, Jane, and Delia's five P.M. panel on "Realms of Illusion and Imagination." Hearing the authors' thoughts on YA books and other worlds was a nice finish to a fun day connecting with writers and readers. Maybe next year, I'll see you at the fair!

BLUES AND GREENS

I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, and when I was a boy I lived and died by the ups and downs of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a long-vanished baseball team whose modern successor plays the game in Los Angeles. When the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Dodgers in a playoff for the 1946 league championship I was disconsolate; when the New York Yankees defeated them in seven games in the 1947 World Series, despite some astonishing heroics by hitherto obscure Dodger players like Cookie Lavagetto and Al Gionfriddo, I mourned bitterly. Whenever I could manage it, I went to games at Ebbets Field, the Dodger stadium, antiquated even then and surviving now only as a plaque on the wall of the apartment house that occupies its site. In my adolescent days I went to the occasional basketball game, too, and some football games, and even a hockey game or two.