2012 - 04/2012 Meeting

Page Created: 02/16/12. Last Updated: 10/21/14.

FELIX GILMAN

Official Site: http://felixgilman.com/

Novels:

Thunderer

Gears of the City

The Half-Made World

The Rise of Ransom City

The Revolutions

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: April 14, 2012.

Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, Upper Saddle River.

Official Attendance: 24.

Meeting Program: Talk with Q & A by Science Fiction / Fantasy Author.

Notes:

The write-up of the Meeting continues in Notes after the Newsletter Account.

Newsletter Account:

The monthly General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center in Upper Saddle River on Saturday, April 14, 2012. Fantasy writer Felix Gilman was our speaker.

Mr Gilman is the author of three novels: THUNDERER, GEARS OF THE CITY, and THE HALF-MADE WORLD. The books are alternate-world fantasies with elements of steampunk, but not part of the mainstream steampunk sub-genre.

Our guest always enjoyed reading fantasy and science fiction, but was long unaware of science fiction conventions and other aspects of fandom. his first stab at writing was a school assignment when he was 11 or 12. Our speaker compiled a "huge notebook" of world-building notes and then wrote a Shannara knock-off.

Time passed. Mr Gilman met his future wife (she was 18 and part of a school abroad program), went to Harvard, studied law, and went to work handling commercial literature litigation at a large law firm.

Our speaker dabble in writing for a number of years, starting various works but never completing anything. It was during a six month stint between jobs that he had both the inclination ("if not now, then never") and the time to get really serious about writing.

The resulting book was THUNDERER. It is part of the "big, huge city" subgenre of science fiction / fantasy which includes works by China Mieville, William Hope Hodgson, Terry Pratchett and Samuel R Delany. The works of Mervin Peake are a major influence on the opus which opens with the arrival of the protagonist at a large and mysterious city.

Having a complete story was only the first step in transforming the manuscript into a book. Felix Gilman had no idea of his audience or how the publishing industry operated. ("I'm always confused about everything," he confided.) He asked around and learned about which editors and agents handled science fiction and began sending out the work. In time our guest discovered he knew someone who knew someone who knew literary agent Howard Morhaim.

The manuscript was read by one of Mr Morhaim's assistants who liked it enough to recommend it to the boss. Howard Morhaim's critiques were devastating, with statements like "I was incredibly bored here." Mr Gilman reworked the material as requested, sometimes going with his agent's suggestions and other times finding another path to resolve a difficulty.

THUNDERER was bought by editor Juliet Ulman of Bantam Spectra. It had modest sales, which is normal for a first novel. There were difficulties with the author's next work, GEARS OF THE CITY, however.

GEARS labored under two burdens. The work, which Mr Gilman stated was influenced by Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series, was darker and weirder than his first effort. It also had the misfortune of being released when Bantam Spectra was in the process of vanishing. This resulted in the novel receiving minimal marketing and promotion.

The demise of Bantam Spectra not only made our speaker an orphaned writer, it made him an orphaned writer whose last book had crashed. Fortunately, editor Eric Raab of Tor Books took and interest in our guest's next novel, THE HALF-MADE WORLD.

WORLD is an alternate-world 19th Century fantasy. It is a weird western set partially in the wild, wild west, and partially in Australia. Live demon-trains are bringing civilization of sorts to the outbacks of both lands. They are opposed by outlaw gunslingers armed with demon-possessed guns.

Notes:

The forthcoming THE RISE OF THE RANSOM CITY is set n the same universe and features many of the same characters, but it is not a sequel. Much like Orson Scott Card's Shadow series, it relates some of the same events, but through a different point of view. This is the first work by the author to be told in first person. Although all of Mr Gilman's books have included elements of steampunk, he believes that this is the first title to fit comfortably into that niche. Both WORLD and CITY will also appear as audio books.

Felix Gilman is currently writing a book set in Victorian London among the Victorian Spiritualists. Its working title is A PLANETARY ROMANCE and is the first book the author has set in the real world. For the first time our guest has to research items like the average pay of an insurance clerk in 1893. This is also the first time he is trying to sell an incomplete manuscript.

The book is about one-third done, but our speaker has not worked on it for eight months. This is because there is now an eight-month-old baby in the house. Mr Gilman is now slipping in little bursts of writing "at odd times," but says it would be a lot easier if he could figure out how to do without sleep.

Mr Gilman is particularly interested in British fantasy's treatment of the breakdown of the traditional English class structure. One branch of the U K fantastic follows in the footsteps of J R R Tolkien and affirms the societal status quo. Another branch follows Mervin Peake and creates a society which is dysfunctional on some level and needs to be taken apart.

Other subjects touched upon over the course of the evening included movie options ("options give you money to not do anything with your book") and a discussion of the steampunk genre.

Our thanks to Felix Gilman and to everyone who helped with the set up, clean up or contributed in any other way to making the meeting a success.