Man on Tracks

The crowd is mesmerized by a man on the subway tracks.

Last night I, my husband and our friends had one of those strange yet eerily familiar moments that seem typical of life in New York City where drama unfolds unexpectedly in front of you and yet at (what feels like) a safe distance.

We'd just stepped onto the subway platform at 34th Street and Broadway when a woman ran to the emergency phone near us and began pressing the call button in a panic. Others began shouting at the clerk in her bulletproof booth, and the rest of the crowd was leaning over the edge of the platform, peering toward the far end of the tracks.

"What happened?" my husband asked the woman on the phone. "There's a guy on the tracks," she blurted, panting with panic. I assumed the man must have fallen or was pushed. My next thought was he might be suicidal. As we drifted with the crowd toward him, we realized he must be either drunk and/or mentally ill. Although dressed like an ordinary citizen of New York, only someone whose thinking was impaired would act as he did: as if he were simply going for a stroll on the narrow wooden platform over the deadly third rail.

People screamed when it appeared he might topple and some were offering their hands to help lift him back onto the platform. I wondered why the Transit Authority didn't shut the power, although I imagined it was probably a complicated process. (A question for officials: shouldn't a simple on-off switch be accessible in emergencies?) Others were mumbling "Where are the police? What's taking them so long?" A local train and an express train pulled partly into the station, inching along until they came to full stops.

For 15 minutes, the man was the star of a scary show, the focus of the crowd's collective panic, voyeurism and agitation. Of course, everyone was snapping pictures and taking video (myself included) which seemed both awful and like a perfectly natural thing to do. When the police finally arrived, I'm told (because I stopped looking, fearing the man's dance on the 3rd rail could only end in tragedy) that they simply grabbed him and pulled him back onto the platform.

I'm sure there's a lesson in this, but I'm not sure what it is. (That one man has the power to stop two trains?) At least I was happy that the police took decisive action and encouraged that the crowd, rather than demonstrate indifference, showed concern and offered to help, even as we took out our smart phones and documented this strange sad moment from many angles.

How $0 becomes $40 and $143 becomes $135 with a magic of an asterisk

Step 1: Make any claim you want in a subway advertisement.
Step 2: Add an asterisk.
Step 3: At bottom of the advertisement, place an asterisk followed by completely different information, contradicting your original claim.
Step 4: Watch the money roll in.

Making a Video in the Bronx

I spent the day with my colleagues at Bronx Community Solutions (including Ramon, top left, who supervises community service crews, and Robin, at desk in photo at right, the deputy director of the project).

Juan Carlos Borrero, the man with the camera, is helping me make a video about the project, which provides alternatives to incarceration to thousands of people a year. In other words, the initiative allows people who commit low-level crimes to stay out jail and receive important services like job-training and counseling. We spent a few minutes in the freezing (!) cold so Ramon could explain how offenders, as part of their sentences, helped paint these wall murals in the Hunts Point neighborhood.

Podcast No. 13: Surrendering to the Apocalypse but not to Crime

It’s no surprise that when scientists in Ben H. Winter’s The Last Policeman series declare that a 6.5-mile asteroid is going to destroy life as we know it on October 3, civilization starts to unravel.

Governments collapse. People quit their jobs and abandon their families. Survivalists stock up on guns and food, imagining there’s a way to outsmart the impending holocaust. Fatalists sink into hedonism, depression or suicide.

And then there’s Hank Palace, a detective on the Concord, N.H., police force and the eponymous star of Winter’s trilogy. Faced with the end of the world, Palace does the almost unthinkable: he keeps doing his job.

“He’s taken an oath to uphold the law ... and to him an oath is an oath, a promise is a promise, and it doesn’t matter what the context is,” Winters says in his New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy interview.

Palace remains dedicated to his job as he tries to: determine whether an apparent suicide is actually a murder (Book 1); track down a missing person (Book 2); and find his sister, who’s joined a group determined to save the planet (Book 3).

Throughout the trilogy, Winters demonstrates a mastery of two genres, a fact reflected in the awards the series has collected. The first book, The Last Policeman, earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, while the second book, Countdown City, was recognized for excellence in science fiction with the receipt of the Philip K. Dick Award, and the third book, World of Trouble, which was published in July 2014, is a finalist for (another!) Edgar Award (the winner will be announced in April).

Ben H. Winters

Like his main character, Winters likes to be prepared while remaining flexible. “I always start with a pretty good outline and then by the time I’m really deep into the book that outline is more or less thrown away and replaced by a different one,” Winters says. “I have to allow the outline to be there but for it to always be provisional, to always be a work in progress.”

Among other topics tackled in the interview are Winters’ optimism about human nature, the art of telling a compelling mystery, and some hints about his next book (a mystery in an alternate or “counter-factual” America). 

Related links:

• Follow Ben H. Winters on his blog at http://benhwinters.com/, on Twitter at @BenHWinters or on Facebook.
• Follow host Rob Wolf on his blog at http://robwolfbooks.blogspot.com/ or on Twitter @RobWolfBooks.

Philip K. Dick Award Nominees for 2014

Congratulations to the six authors nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award:

ELYSIUM by Jennifer Marie Brissett 
THE BULLET-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER by Rod Duncan
THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE by Meg Eliso
MEMORY OF WATER by Emmi Itäranta
MAPLECROFT: THE BORDEN DISPATCHES by Cherie Priest
REACH FOR INFINITY edited by Jonathan Strahan

Emmi Itäranta was one of my first interviews as host of New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I have a special fondness for her book, which offers a tender, wise vision (with a strong female protagonist) of a world irrevocably injured by climate change.

And after my next interview airs (with Ben H. Winters, another award winner, of The Last Policeman fame), I'll be chatting with Rod Duncan. His interview probably won't air until March, but I'll be sure to ask him how it feels to be nominated.

First prize will be announced on Friday, April 3, 2015.

Podcast No. 12: 'You’re only as good as your last book,' says Kameron Hurley, author of The Mirror Empire

Here are some highlights from my conversation with Kameron Hurley, author of The Mirror Empire, on New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Although her first book was a success (winning the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel), the other two books in the series, Infidel and Rapture, were hurt by the financial troubles of the publisher. Hurley rallied, finding a new agent and a new publisher, but the path wasn’t easy. As she says, “You’re only as good as your last book. If your last book doesn’t sell, then you’re not going to sell other work. … This is an up and down business. It’s not a straight trajectory. You have to work very hard, and I think that’s very motivating for me to know I have to work very hard just to stay in the game.”

While writing is a solitary affair, Hurley has surrounded herself with a circle of supporters—and advises everyone to do the same. “If you’re going to have a goal in life… You want to be a CEO, you want to open your own business, you want to be a writer [then] you need to surround yourself with people who support what you are doing. And that’s everyone. If your family doesn’t support what you do then maybe don’t see them as much. I hate to say it. And if you have a partner who doesn’t support what you do, then maybe you should look at a different partner. If the agent that you have is not working out and your styles just do not work and you’re not getting what you need from that relationship then you need to find an agent that works.”

Check out Hurley's essay "We Have Always Fought"—about the history of women in conflict—which was the first blog post ever to win a Hugo Award. 

Podcast No. 11: Alex London Discusses Pen Names, Gay Characters, and the 'Dystopia' Label

This week’s podcast was an experiment. Rather than record the conversation with author Alex London over Skype, I decided to take the subway to Brooklyn and meet with him face-to-face in a coffee shop. I found it liberating to be unchained from an Internet connection, which has been known to fail mid-conversation, but the price of having a barista nearby is boisterous background noise.

London’s novels about class conflict, debt, and rebellion are set in a dark future. A significant portion of Proxy takes place in a city where the poorest citizens dwell in a violent shantytown known as the Valve while the wealthy thrive in well-guarded neighborhoods of private speedways, luxury homes, and high-tech toys. The sequel, Guardian, is set in a crumbling Detroit exponentially more decrepit than the Motor City of today.

As London explains, the horrors of the Valve are his “futuristic re-imagining” of slums outside of Nairobi, which he witnessed while researching one of his non-fiction books, One Day the Soldiers Came, about children affected by armed conflict. “For a lot of children all over the world caught up in wars and poverty and natural disaster … dystopia is not some kind of fantasy but the day-to-day reality of how they are living,” he tells me.

Although the books portray a grim future, the publisher avoids the word "dystopia" in its marketing of Proxy and Guardian. “They call it a ‘futuristic thriller,’” London says. The marketing department also shies away from the science fiction tag, fearing it's too narrow. But London says he embraces the label. “Science fiction for me implies … an awareness of possibility.”

London himself is brimming with possibility. For one thing, he writes under three names. Proxy and Guardian, which are aimed at young adults, bear the name Alex London. But as Charles London, he’s published adult non-fiction about war and the survival of beleaguered Jewish communities around the world. And as C. Alexander London, he continues to write for middle-grade readers about real-life war experiences and fantastical adventures involving squids and dragons.

Like any good science fiction writer, London seeks to push boundaries. Proxy explores what would happen if wealthy transgressors rigged a system of debt and credit to avoid punishment for their crimes and instead made the poor (known as proxies) receive the punishment instead. London also pushes cultural boundaries: Proxy and Guardian’s main character, Syd, is gay, which makes him unusual as the star of a science fiction series geared for young adults. As a result, London has received an outpouring of fan mail from young people seeking advice. “It’s been very touching to see kids who might not otherwise be drawn to explicitly queer books … find their way to Proxy,” he says. Because the books are primarily thrillers, some kids, especially those living in conservative communities, feel safer reading them than gay-themed books that focus on romance or coming out, he explains.

“I’ve been getting letters from a lot of actually straight boys writing about their friends and wondering how they can be better allies. Those are my favorite,” London says.

Related links:

• Keep track of Alex London on his website and Tumblr.
• Follow the New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy podcast on iTunes, Facebook and Twitter and through host Rob Wolf’s blog and Twitter feed.

Spoiler alerts:

• From 18:45 to 22:16 we discuss some aspects of Syd's love life that those who haven't read Proxy and Guardian may prefer to skip.
• From 33:12 to 34:00 we discuss the science behind a key plot point integral to the resolution of Proxy.