David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

My story “Floaters” has been published at Buzzy Mag! Read it for free here: http://buzzymag.com/floaters-by-david-levine/

So I’m at the airport heading to San Jose, where I will appear tonight as a speaker at Singularity University at NASA Ames (Moffett Field) in California. I’ll be participating in a panel discussion with Pat Murphy (in person) and David Brin, Greg Benford, and Greg Bear (via video conference), talking about the feedback loop between science and science fiction. Whee!

This all came together in the last couple of days when one of the scheduled speakers had to back out at the last minute. It’s a quick one-day visit crammed in between the SFWA reading in Portland and the SFWA reading in Seattle, and it’s really quite insane for me to be doing this, but Singularity U is paying for it and it’s such an honor to be invited that I couldn’t say no.

I will be heading home tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday 7/18), but there is a possibility I might be able to do lunch tomorrow with some Bay Area friends. Drop me an email if you’d like to get involved.

Again, whee!

This is just a quick reminder that SFWA’s Pacific Northwest Reading Series is having its next events in the coming week!

On Monday, in Portland, we’ll have New York Times best-selling author Daniel H. Wilson, along with Rhiannon Held, whose urban fantasy novel Silver just came out last month, and Isaac Marion, author of Warm Bodies. Wrigley-Cross Books will be on hand again selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Monday, July 16, 2012, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

On Thursday, in the Seattle area, we’ll have local favorite Louise Marley, along with Rhiannon Held and Isaac Marion. The University Bookstore will be selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Thursday, July 19, 2012, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

Both events are free and open to the public.

I hope you can join us! It should be a lot of fun.

See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information and to RSVP (not required, but encouraged).

As you can tell from yesterday’s big catch-up post, I managed to fall several months behind in updating my tracking spreadsheets and my web page. Now that I’m all caught up, I idly counted up the number of sales, and I was astonished to find that I passed 50 some time ago.

Here’s my list of sales, in approximately the order they were written:

Now, not all of these are “stories” (some are non-fiction, some are flash) and not all of them sold to SFWA-qualified paying markets, but they are all SF, Fantasy, or related works, and I did get paid — or at least promised — something for each one, so I’m pretty sure that somewhere in there I’ve sold at least 50 SF and Fantasy stories. But I’m not going to try to declare which one was the 50th.

Still, ::confetti::

Now back to work on that novel…

I was behind in reporting my writing news even before the trip to Europe, and I got still further behind during that trip, so here’s a massive update.

I have two new sales to report:

• Science Fantasy novelette “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure,” to anthology Old Mars, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, forthcoming from Random House.

• Fantasy novelette “Liaisons Galantes: A Scientific Romance,” to webzine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews, forthcoming Fall 2012.

(and what is is with me and italicized phrases in titles?)

I also have a bunch of reprint sales:

• “The Last Days of the Kelly Gang,” from Armored, to podcast Journey Into, edited by Marshal Latham.

• “The Tides of the Heart,” from Realms of Fantasy, to anthology Heiresses of Russ, edited by Sacchi Green and Steve Berman, forthcoming September 2012 from Lethe Press.

• “Firewall,” from Transhuman, to anthology Digital Rapture, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, forthcoming August 2012 from Tachyon Publications.

• Hugo-winner “Tk’Tk’Tk,” from Asimov’s, to anthology 21st Century SF, edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, forthcoming in 2012 from Tor.

And several of my older stories are now available for Kindle:

• “Trust” in Daily Science Fiction Stories of March 2011.
• “Finding Joan” in Daily Science Fiction Stories of October 2010.
• “Pupa,” from Analog, in Into the New Millennium.
• “Fear of Widths,” from Land/Space, as an Infinity Plus Single.
• “Love in the Balance,” from All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, in Gears and Levers 1: A Steampunk Anthology.

I was also interviewed on the SF Signal podcast.

I think that’s everything. Whew!

So, now that we’ve been back from Europe for nearly three whole days, it’s time to get on an airplane again: we’ll be leaving tomorrow for Wiscon. Yes, this is rather insane, but it’s one of my favorite conventions and also a chance to visit my father in Milwaukee.

I’ll be appearing on the following programming items:

Fri 9:00 – 10:15PM, Senate A: Coming Out as Queer, Coming Out as a Geek
David D. Levine, Rachel Kronick, Sara Linde, Roxanne Samer
Let’s look at some of the parallels between coming out as GLBT* and coming out as a geek. Some of us have come out both as geeks and as GLBT* people. How have we used our experiences in coming out one way to help our coming out the other way?

Sat 4:00 – 5:15PM, Senate B: Short Stories vs. Novels
David D. Levine, Benjamin Billman, Richard Chwedyk, Gwynne Garfinkle, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Victoria Janssen
Some writers claim they can only write short, others insist they can only go with longer works. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each form? Should you force yourself to try the length that doesn’t seem natural for you? What benefits are there to those who can successfully write both types of story? At one time, authors were told they needed three short story sales (of the pro variety) before they should try to sell a novel. Is this true? If short isn’t your form of choice, are you just screwed?

Sun 10:00 – 11:15AM, room 623: Writing the Singularity
David D. Levine, Ruthanna Emrys, James Frenkel, Lettie Prell, Talks-with-wind
How do we write stories about life when people are no longer human? What would your characters be like? What would their conflicts be? What would their needs (if any) be? Can you write an agglomerated personality? What about a personality that had never been a biological human? Writers already have difficulty keeping up with current technologies (cell phones, for example). Will writing become even harder as technological advances continue accelerating?

Sun 2:30 – 3:45PM, room 634: Theater Improv
David D. Levine, Emily Jones, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Elizabeth Stone, Elena Tabachnick
Fascinated by theater improv? Come learn and play! Beginners will learn basic improv skills; those with experience already know how much fun it is.

Mon 10:00 – 11:15AM, Conference 5: Newly Professional Older Writers: What Helps, What Hinders
Ada Milenkovic Brown, Wendy Bradley, David D. Levine, Catherine M. Schaff-Stump
Newly professional older writers face special challenges. You need to go to cons and workshops to move forward, but it can be emotionally draining to be constantly reminded that the other people your age are the wise women of the forest and the grand viziers, while you’re still the assistant pig keeper trying to figure out how to reforge the broken sword. Your peers, the young newly professional writers, can jump higher, work faster, stay up later, and drink harder than you can. And they can actually hear the conversations in the crowded bar rooms where most writer networking takes place. Let’s discuss what helps and hinders older new writers, and create a space for older new writers at WisCon to connect with each other.

Mon 11:30AM – 12:45PM, Capitol/Wisconsin: The SignOut
Come and sign your works, come and get things signed, come and hang out and wind down before you leave.

Word count: 0 Step count: 13,825

This will be a brief post because the wifi keeps going up and down (annoyingly, when it’s down there’s still signal but no data, so our phones insist on trying to use it instead of the 3G).

Out of yogurt at the apartment, we set out in search of breakfast. But though this is a pretty good neighborhood for restaurants, it’s more of a bar-and-club sort of a place than a breakfast place, and most of those we found were just bars that had baked goods and coffee in the morning. We settled for a croissant and coffee, but I think the lack of a proper breakfast put me out of sorts for the rest of the day.

Today is our last day in Europe, at least for this trip. We spent the day preparing for the trip home, mostly, sorting through papers and packing and going to Kaufhaus Galerie to buy another bag (yes, we did buy a lot of souvenirs). Kate also browsed in bookstores and bought a scarf and a few other things. I wrote and mailed a few last postcards, but mostly just lazed around the apartment in a traveled-too-much stupor.

Had currywurst (Curry 61 at Alexanderplatz was better) and doner kebab for first and second lunch. FYI, “kebab” means meat grilled over or near flame, “shish” means skewer, and “doner” means rotating, so when we Americans call skewers “kabobs” we’ve got it all wrong.

Today is our 21st wedding anniversary. I got Kate a tin of mints with a VW Beetle and the words “Er lauft und lauft und lauft…” (referencing an old VW ad we’d seen at the Glass Factory, it means “it runs and runs and runs…”) and a kid’s book about a sheep, both of which I’d spotted in one of the shops in the Hackesche Hofe. She got me a bar of chocolate with walnuts and marzipan.

We had an early dinner at a Japanese noodle place nearby, called Makoto. The Japanese staff speaking a mix of German and Japanese made my head ‘splode and Japanese phrases lying dormant in my head since 2007 come spilling out. “Eigo-de daijobu desu ka?” I said, and “toide-wa doku desu ka?” I had a Ramune, the lemon drink with the glass marble closure. Our ramen soup was really exceptionally good, and I don’t think I’m just saying that because this is the first time I’ve had Japanese food in a month. After that we wandered through the neighborhood for a bit. I could come back to Venice, Vienna, or Prague but I think I’ve “done” Berlin. It’s got a lot of keen stuff, but it’s just very hard to navigate and there’s a certain negative vibe — might be leftover Nazi and Communist engrams or something.

Cab tomorrow at 4:30 AM for a long, long travel day. And then home!

Word count: 0 Step count: 17,690 + 16,538

Focusing on the past, in various forms, in our last few days abroad. (And why else would an American come to Europe? Oh yeah, the food.)

The music in my head this week is a continuous loop of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel, “The Book” by Sheryl Crow (the one with “three days in Rome” in the chorus), and “DDR” by Tom Robinson. For obvious reasons.

Wednesday 5/16

After our usual breakfast (yogurt with muesli in the apartment, cafe au lait at the cafe downstairs) we took the S-Bahn to Nordbahnhof to see the exhibit on “ghost stations” there. We had a bit of trouble finding the exhibit, but it was well worth it. This has long been a fascinating detail to us of the division of Berlin. The East Germans closed off the station entrances completely, then built little police boxes on top, concealing stairs down to the security bunker inside the station (thus: bigger on the inside).

From there we took a long hike through very-much-under-construction streets to the Naturkunde museum, with giant dinosaur skeletons (and pseudo-augmented-reality goggles to put flesh on them), a keen exhibit on mammoths and elephants, and giant (2-3′) insect models from the 1930s. We are trying to focus on only the best stuff in each museum and then move on — we have a museum card so there’s no need to “get our money’s worth” and there’s a real danger of museum burnout. The museum’s neighborhood did not have a huge selection of restaurants. We settled on an Indian place, Swadi, and it was okay.

We traveled from the Naturkunde museum (which, by the way, was flattened in 1945 and not rebuilt until about 2006 — it still shows blast scars) to Berlin’s Museum Island, which is where the city’s greatest museums have been concentrated since the 1800s. We intended to hit the Neues Museum, then the Pergamon, but the first bridge we crossed took us right into the Pergamon and there was no way to get from there to the Neues without leaving the island so we visited that one first.

Here, as many other museums in Germany, we encountered a frustrating lack of signage, maps, and other directional information (the generic museum names, which translate to such things as “New Museum” and “Painting Gallery,” don’t help either) but OMG the STUFF!! The Pergamon has the largest single objects I have ever seen in a museum (for some value of “single object”), including the ceramic Ishtar Gate with its lions and dragons. What an astonishing statement of power! And the Neues Museum features the famous head of Nefertiti that you’ve seen so many times in photos. But these are only the most impressive and famous bits. Everywhere you go there are amazing historical artifacts. Even the museum itself is a fabulous artifact, with its frescoes and ornaments as well as its war damage on proud display.

That was a full day of museuming, so we walked home, stopping for gelato at Amorino, banh mi at CoCo, and a few groceries on the way. Back home, we ate our banh mi (which was quite good) and napped for an hour before our 9:00 PM appointment at the Reichstag. For, indeed, my Internet adventures on Tuesday had paid off and we were going to see the seat of the united German goverment.

The Reichstag was very cool, the dome of glass and mirrors and its spiral ramp quite impressive, offering great views of the city as the sun set. It was cold, though — the dome is open to the outside air. But still, this democratic institution governing unified Germany shows that things do sometimes get better, that there is cause for hope.

Also, we saw someone blowing giant bubbles in front of Brandenburger Tor.

Thursday 5/17

As we’ve done in several other cities, today Kate and I took a day apart. For my part I headed down to Alexanderplatz and walked from there to Checkpoint Charlie, stopping at several points along the way to visit a museum or smash a penny or two. I encountered a lot of construction — the Rathaus (city hall) was surrounded by dug-up earth and was apparently completely closed, though there was no signage indicating why. (Later we learned that today is Himmelfahrt, or Ascension Day, so the government and many businesses were closed.)

At the Marienkirche, the famous Dance of Death fresco was nearly invisible, but to me the figures of Death looked more like alien Greys. Even spookier, perhaps?

Spending more time than usual in highly-touristed areas, I encountered many slim women with headscarves who all approached with the same question: “Do you speak English?” Something about them put my guard up so I just shook my head and moved on. I suspect they were beggars and/or pickpockets.

I found myself at the entrance of the Altes Museum and decided to use my musem pass to pop in and see what they had. Turns out the person who sold us the pass forgot to change the stamp, stamping it with the previous date, and then corrected it in pen — which made it look as though I had altered my pass to make it valid for an extra day. The ticket clerk let me in anyway, but I decided I wouldn’t try using the pass again.

The Altes Museum specializes in Greek, Roman, and Etruscan statuary — more naked and half-naked marble people in one place than I’ve seen in a long time, including a beautiful rotunda with all the Greek gods and a truly stunning Athena. Also an amazing little mosaic, about two feet by three, composed of cubes of stone (in their natural colors!) about two millimeters square.

I had a walking lunch of bratwurst from a sidewalk vendor as I traveled, and noted that “Hallo” is the standard greeting in Berlin even when Germans meet Germans.

At Checkpoint Charlie, I found an informative wall display… behind which someone had set up “Charlie’s Beach,” a large area of sand with beach chairs, palm trees, and food and drink for sale. Didn’t work real well under overcast skies with temperatures in the fifties. There was lots of other tourist kitsch nearby, including a McDonalds. Annoying, but I’d rather have a McDonalds than Soviet and American tanks facing each other down across the German-German border. The name Charlie, by the way, represents the fact that it was the third checkpoint for Westerners traveling to East Berlin: Checkpoint Alpha was at the West German/East German border, Checkpoint Bravo at the East German/West Berlin border, and Checkpoint Charlie at the West Berlin/East Berlin border.

A couple of blocks from Checkpoint Charlie is an excellent, free exhibit called The Topography of Terror, located atop the ruins of the old Stasi headquarters. I took about two hours to read the whole chronological wall — about three Portland blocks long, with photos and text — chronicling the rise of the Nazis, WWII, and the beginning of the Cold War as seen in Berlin. This is the summary of 1930s-50s history I’d been needing for some time. The exhibit also includes some information about the Wall and considerable information about the Gestapo and Stasi, which I skipped due to lack of time and energy.

From there I headed home, with a brief stop at Potsdamer Platz to check out a large, festive flea market. Probably that too is for Himmelfahrt.

We had a lovely German dinner at a place near our apartment called Botzow-Privat, which looks as though it’s essentially unchanged since some time in the 1800s. Wiener schnitzel (not too big) with fried potatoes for me, kasespaetzele for Kate, apple strudel for dessert, yum. Soon we’ll be back home and eating more sensibly.

Even though the restaurant was only about five blocks from our apartment, we took a different route there and back and saw some nice little parks, alleys, and shops we had not seen in the five days we’ve been here. Also, as we approached our apartment building from a different direction, I saw that our apartment — which is quite narrow — is actually the full width of the building. Looks like they shoehorned a six-story apartment building onto a piece of land that formerly held, what, a little corner shop?

Tonight has been a quiet evening of blogging and sorting our stuff. Tomorrow will be largely dedicated to getting ready for the trip home (we leave at oh-dark-early Saturday morning).