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To Sci-Fi or Not?

9/5/2018

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For a group of experts about the technological future, and all other aspects of the future, the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (PSFS) has an oddly low-tech online presence, a minimalist website. We think it's because they can't be bothered with the 21st century when they're so busy imagining the 25th. There's a lot to be said for that approach.

However that may be, our author Miriam Seidel will appear at the next PSFS meeting, September 14, to read from and discuss her novel The Speed of Clouds.

​Click here or on the image for details about the reading.

The PSFS event creates another oddity because the book isn't really sci-fi. It's about sci-fi fans, and it contains snippets of futuristic fan fiction, but it's actually a literary novel set in the late 1990s. Or perhaps, because it includes a real plot and a budding romance, it's a mainstream novel with literary leanings. Or maybe, since it features a young female protagonist in a wheelchair, it's chick-lit, disability lit, coming-of-age lit, or -- hell, we don't know what it is, but we're immensely proud to have published it. Come to think of it, a Harley plays a prominent role, so let's call it motorcycle lit.

Miriam tells us she's grateful for her warm welcome by the sci-fi community even though her novel doesn't fit the genre. Now it's up to the Harley community to adopt her as well.

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"A story about avoiding truths"

8/31/2018

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In a new interview at Cleaver Magazine, Grant Clauser talks with Nathaniel Popkin about the many explorations of theme and form in Everything Is Borrowed. Some excerpts:
GC: There are several different storylines running throughout the book, some even on different timelines, yet you weave them in and out through each other. Did they evolve at the same time as you were crafting the story, and how did you decide on their intersection points?

NP: 
This is the formal experiment of the novel—to present the historical past, the recent past, and the present all in the present tense. This written form is the analog to the city’s mounting layers, which collect and store all of it.... Yet because the time fields shift naturally (at least I hope) they come to form a dreamscape to mirror the cityscape and Nicholas’s inner life.

***

GC: On one level this is a story about avoiding truths as much as digging them up (or realizing them). Why does avoiding something in front of your face seem to also trigger another discovery? Is it nature that eventually brings a person around full circle?


NP:
 Oh yes, repression never really works does it? You can’t really erase or avoid or ignore. Whatever’s lurking there will find a way to make itself known—because you need it to. Nicholas needs to deal with his own personal memory, his own sense of shame. But I don’t believe in the full circle. Who knows where it will take him? Maybe not full circle.

***

GC: Anarchy plays a significant role in this book. How did you come upon the story of the anarchist Moskowitz (I’m assuming he’s real) and why did you choose to build a story around him and that movement?  


​NP:
 I came upon the story of the anarchist Moskowitz in the same place Nicholas does—the history book by Harry Boonin.... This led to a significant thematic exploration of the book, between anarchists who in popular imagination tear down and architects who in popular imagination build up. In the world of this book if not in real life, though, anarchists espouse a philosophy of building organic community without state interference—almost in exact opposition to conventional wisdom—and architects all too often are the ones, out of ego or desires of the marketplace, to tear down.
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Intimate Relations with a Cyborg?

8/28/2018

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In his latest podcast, Norman B. gets right to the sensational part of Miriam Seidel's novel The Speed of Clouds. In his lead he mentions "intimate relations with a cyborg."

Well, yes, that's in the book, but it's actually not the most fun part of the novel. Play Norman's Life Elsewhere podcast and see what you think. It's show #287, 8/26/18, with multiple options for listening.

Before dealing with cyborgs, Norman interviews Craig Unger, author of House of Trump, House of Putin, about a certain individual's ties to the Russian mafia. After that, you'll definitely be ready for romance with an alien.
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An Eye for Detail

8/10/2018

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While Nathaniel Popkin is on tour, speaking for America along with other contributors to the anthology Who Will Speak for America? (Temple University Press), reviews continue to come in for his novel Everything Is Borrowed. Here's an excerpt from the most recent:
Popkin’s eye for detail leads to many resonant vignettes of Philly in the summer, like the bus driver who wears a rolled-up white towel on the back of his neck, or the parking-lot attendant’s shack with its “cheap desk fan” that “rocks back and forth, letting out a tiny wail each time it turns.” The author’s sense of sound is acute. In the library, he writes, “my chair against the polished floor lets out a trumpet note, slashing the silence of the reading room.”

Liz Spikol in the JEWISH EXPONENT
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Nathaniel Popkin Up in Lights

8/8/2018

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Pods Galore

7/9/2018

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Our peripatetic author Nathaniel Popkin is featured on yet another podcast, in addition to the ones listed in our previous post.

His latest appearance is on Gil Roth's fascinating The Virtual Memories Show. Here he talks not only about his novel Everything Is Borrowed -- which Roth characterizes as "the anti-Fountainhead" -- but also about the Writers Resist movement, his new co-edited anthology Who Will Speak for America?, his longtime involvement with Hidden City Daily, his contribution to the spectacular photography book Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, and more.

At one point he remarks that writers have to delude themselves about their own importance and originality. Do you agree?

He also notes the flourishing literary scene in Philadelphia -- not that we're deluding ourselves, of course.
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The Well-Traveled Author

7/3/2018

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Our tireless author Nathaniel Popkin has done a host of recent interviews and podcasts about his novel Everything Is Borrowed. Here are some links to check out.

Print interviews
Apricity
Philadelphia Weekly

Podcasts
Give and Take
Life Elsewhere
Reading at Free Library with Mary Morris (Scroll down to the episode released on 5/14/2018)
WYBC/Yale Radio

In addition, the prolific Nathaniel has been on the road promoting a timely new anthology he co-edited, Who Will Speak for America? See his website for details.

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Two for One: Reading and Gallery Tour

7/2/2018

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PictureConnie Mississippi, PYTHAGORAS, 1995 (photo by John Cartano)
As readers of The Speed of Clouds already know, author novelist Miriam Seidel has a wide range of other interests and talents: art, art criticism, design, music, science...

On July 21 she'll combine two of her passions and vocations when she gives a combined reading and gallery tour at The Center for Art in Wood, 141 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, 2:00-3:30 p.m. The occasion is the closing reception for Connie Mississippi: Circle of Time, an exhibition Miriam curated. First she'll read from The Speed of Clouds -- probably the hilarious scene that takes place at an art opening -- and then she'll take visitors on a guided tour of the exhibition.

Click on the picture to go to the Center's web page for the event.

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"A powerful dual force"

5/30/2018

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There's an excellent interview with Nathaniel Popkin, author of Everything Is Borrowed, on the PhillyLitSpace website. Click on the image above for the full text. Here are some excerpts:
On the city as a force in the character's lives:

There’s very much a powerful dual force between the person and the place.... I am a very big fan of fiction writers who have explored place or a specific place or places, or have gone deep with their interrogation of themselves in place....

This book is the most personal yet, because it allows me to consider issues of erasure. Erasure of personal memory or erasure of people, erasure of moments of one’s life, and mirrored in the erasure of the streetscape. Sometimes I’ve written about that erasure of the streetscape almost directly through writing on preservation matters. But in this case, it’s a much more interesting way to consider it. In this book particularly, I think of the city as a text that can be read, that can be drawn on, that can be muted, blacked out, erased, written over, reconsidered, torn out, all these great metaphors....

The way that we imprint ourselves onto the place, and the way that place is alive in our lives— it’s an atmosphere. It’s a moment. It’s a construct. It’s a physical construction that shapes us— shapes our movements. And, that notion is really, really important. I think in some ways the physical being of Philadelphia has more impact on us because it’s— because of the scale of the city. It’s big enough to 
matter or be an – aggressive is not the right word – impactful, apparent force on us. Like, “Oh yeah we feel it.”

On the theme of luring someone into self-betrayal
(discussed in the preceding post on this blog):

We have ideals. We have beliefs. We have values. But how easy is it for us to just lose it and act stupid, and angry? And I find myself doing that a lot. It also made me think about a time in my life where I sort of lured someone into self-betrayal ... and I wanted to explore that moment and I did that through the story of Nicholas and his recent past. The story of his failed love with Eva.
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Luring to Self-Betrayal

5/25/2018

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Another interview of Nathaniel Popkin just posted, this one on WYBC/Yale Radio with Brainard Carey. Here Nathaniel shares the historical story that prompted his novel Everything Is Borrowed: an event from the 1890s demonstrating “the way that we can seduce other people into their own self-betrayal.”

He then explains how he paired this incident with a similar one in the modern protagonist’s own life. The concept is a key to the novel's deep psychological explorations. In everyday life, how often do we lure other people to betray their own best selves, or best principles, without realizing that we're doing so? Do we do it in love? (Think about that a moment.) In business? In politics? The novel prompts us to question our own assumptions of innocence.

Nathaniel also relates the book to “the intense crisis we’re in today,” with issues of “foreignness, immigration, otherness.”

​This is a cogent and thoughtful interview.
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