Speaking of Imagining the Future...

[ecosophia]

I'm delighted to announce that the first issue of New Maps, the new quarterly magazine of deindustrial future fiction, is in print and available for purchase. It's got stories by a fine mix of established deindustrial fiction authors and newcomers to the field -- Pierre Magdeleine, Dawn Vogel, Daniel Chawner, Jonathan Reif, Jeff Burt, David England, G. Kay Bishop and Violet Bertelsen -- as well as a book review and a letters column that is already full of conversation. I'm eagerly looking forward to my copy. 

If you're interested, you can get more information here. Copies of the first issue or subscriptions to the first four issues can be bought here. (Sensibly enough, you can also subscribe by mail -- instructions are on the bottom of the order page.)  Interested in writing for New Maps?  Publisher-editor Nathanael Bonnell would love to hear from you; please check out the submissions page and proceed from there. Want to write a letter to the editor?  Here's your link. 

As we move deeper into the penumbra of the deindustrial age, and the failed certainties of the conventional wisdom collapse around us, new maps of the territory ahead are one of our most pressing needs. As I noted in a recent blog post, while politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from imagination, and the stories we write and read today are crucial resources for helping us navigate the possibility space of tomorrow. 

Comments

[hippieviking]

Well, I was planning to save this post for Magic Monday tonight, but this synchronous lead-in appeared.

Over coffee yesterday my wife and I began to assemble an idea whose beginnings had been coalescing for some time. My wife works as managing editor for a small packaging company. A packager, for those who aren’t familiar, is a company that subcontracts to larger publishing companies to do work in editing, design, writing etc on specific projects. The industry that my wife works in is and has been, for quite some time, frustratingly “woke”. Many of the projects she works on are white-washed to the point of utter ridiculousness. Most of these projects are aimed towards school-age children and are marketed to librarians and schools.

We feel that there is a market for real books for kids. Our idea is that we could write and produce a series of books that would actually appeal to parents and their kids, especially given the rise in home education that we expect to stay post-covid. We have the technical ability to do parts of this (the writing, the editing) and the connections to accomplish the rest (design, graphics). The more questionable part would be the actual publishing or marketing. We also, due to some recent windfalls, have several thousand dollars that we could use to get the project rolling.

Our idea was to create a book series, perhaps starting with four sub-series, each of which published graphic novel type stories of traditional mythological tales (an Irish, a Norse, a Greek, and perhaps something out of west African tradition were the ideas that we threw around so far.) The general set up would be to produce one graphic novel in each of the four sub-series per year. The stories would be written in a way that included the whole gamut of intrigue, sex, mayhem, valor, back-stabbing etc that makes for a good story and would try to be more true to the idea of the mythological figures as complex entities rather than just the boring two-dimensional good/evil cut-outs that feature so regularly now in everything. Something more akin, perhaps, to what the old myths were. We feel that this sort of story might be the kind of thing that could capture the interest of kids, especially the coveted “teenage boy” demographic that is known in the industry as the near-impossible nut to crack.

Perhaps this isn’t a “new map of the territory”, but perhaps it might help to blow the dust off of some of the forgotten old maps too.

The questions that we have are;
1 What would be a generally fortuitous time to begin such an undertaking?
2 Given the readership here includes a number of budding/practicing authors do you or any of the readership have any advice they could offer to this sort of undertaking?
3 Does anyone have any ideas/thoughts/suggestions on the project itself?

[ecosophia]

I think this is an excellent idea and would be delighted to help promote it once it gets that far.

1) To choose a good time -- well, how are your astrological skills? I can give you plenty of details but if you don't know how to use them that won't do much good.

2) It sounds as though you've already got an excellent idea. One thing to consider is doing a novel with some illustrations rather than a graphic novel as such -- graphic novels take an enormous amount of effort on the part of the artist or artists, while doing (say) one illo per chapter will keep it lively with a much lower workload on all sides.

3) Start your own publishing company and market it under the radar via homeschooling communities as an alternative to wokeism. My guess is that you'll have a booming company on your hands in no time. You might want to think about what other projects you might be interested in publishing, because you'll get inquiries from authors!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!

1. I'm not familiar enough with astrology to justify complex advice. I'm more of a natural magic planetary days and hours type. I was thinking something more along the lines of a Thursday (for Jupiter) in the hour of Jupiter during a new moon. Or would this perhaps be a mercurial undertaking, because of its association with commerce?

2. You are spot on as for the expense of the illustrations for a graphic novel, although we do potentially have access to some very good illustrators who might be interested. We figured that if we went the graphic novel route the illustrations would be the major initial cost.

[ecosophia]

1) In terms of folk magic, Friday during the hour of Venus is a classic -- in hoodoo practice that's standard for anything that's intended to make money.

2) I'm thinking not only of expense, but of time -- I have it from those who've done it that doing the art for a graphic novel is a very time-intensive activity. Still, if that's the way you think it would work best, by all means.

Libraries, Publishing, New Maps

[sothismedias]

I can attest to the woke stuff being bought by libraries, though they get plenty of other stuff too. It's just partially a problem that the larger players in the publishing industry are so woke themselves.

If this project gets stuff into print, I'd be happy to put in requests for the library I work at to buy this material. Patron requests often get us some of the more interesting material in the collection these days, though I expect that to change with time.

I personally like JMG's idea of short chapter books with illos at each chapter. Of course, this is your all's project so do as you see fit / as the muse inspires and your resources allow. Anything that adds to the print media ecosystem is good imo.

& I just got my copy of New Maps last week. It's gorgeous and looks to be quite promising going forward.

Re: Libraries, Publishing, New Maps

[hippieviking]

Thank you, second on the chapter book noted!

[(Anonymous)]

2. To add to JMG, in the Japanese publishing industry, novels with illustrations (known as Light Novels) have been an incredibly lucrative format, suitable for a book by book publication schedule. All-illustrative manga comics require a serialized publication in magazines, which are then collated into bound volumes. As these magazines are published on a monthly basis, it takes forever for enough material to be collected into bound volumes. Light Novels on the other hand can be churned out fairly rapidly, as illustrations are used primarily to flesh out character descriptions, as well as illustrating key moments in the narrative. The illustrations for an illustrated novel, being rather few, can be made to a very high standard of quality, in contrast to a graphic novel with rapid production using simplified designs and drawings, or a very slow production with high quality drawings.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not at all familiar with "light novels", but it sounds like it could be a workable format. Something worth looking into. Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

That’s a great idea!

—Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat

[fringewood]

Great idea! I would like to recommend Chris Brennan for electional astrology. http://www.chrisbrennanastrologer.com/2021elections/
I used one of his charts for a recent endeavor that was very successful. You can get a whole year's worth of charts for $35. Good luck.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting, I was under the impression that electional astrology was something that was heavily influenced by your natal chart and, hence, couldn't really be generalized. I could be wrong about that, I don't know a ton about astrology and next to nothing about electional astrology specifically. I'll look into it. Thanks!

Excited for the Next Step

[joelcaris]

My copy of the first issue arrived a few days ago in the mail and it's gone up to the top of my reading queue. I'm excited for it, and in terms of the look and feel alone Nathanael has already surpassed Into the Ruins; it's a really gorgeous publication.

I'm excited for him to carry forward the work. From my conversations with him and what I've come to know of his plans for the publication, I think my New Maps subscription is going to be well worth the cost and I'd encourage others to support it. It's fun to see some of the authors I've grown familiar with along with new ones, and I hope I'll get to join them in some future issue. In the meantime, once I get a chance to read through the issue I plan to put up a review on my blog. I hope others will take the opportunity to spread word far and wide about the publication!

Order confirmed

[(Anonymous)]

I saw this and went immediately to the order page. Thanks for the notice! Let it be known that Violet Bertelsen's name on the cover sells copies.

Re: Order confirmed

[ecosophia]

No surprises there, but she'll be delighted.

Re: Order confirmed

[(Anonymous)]

I second. Order placed.

Re: Order confirmed

[(Anonymous)]

I got my copy last week and already devoured the stories. And yes, I particularly enjoyed Violet's well-woven tale. Great stuff!

--David BTL

Re: Order confirmed

[(Anonymous)]

I was very glad to be able to include a story from Violet. It's a great issue all around - I hope you enjoy when it gets to you!

New Maps by post

[(Anonymous)]

Greetings,
Apart from the frustrating delay arising from transporting physical material, printed items such as books coming to France attract VAT, import duty and an admin fee that can be multiples of the first two combined. Availability of a downloadable PDF version paid by PayPal or similar would get around this problem, and I at least would appreciate it. Please consider adding this capability.
Best regards
Mark

Re: New Maps by post

[ecosophia]

Please contact the publisher of New Maps via the links I provided -- I have no role in the project other than cheering from the sidelines.

Re: New Maps by post

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Mark,

I'm the publisher of New Maps and have been mulling over plans for a PDF version, but I have yet to get it into the pipeline. For what it's worth, I do have a few subscribers in France (and one author in this first issue), and the print editions seem to be reaching them without much trouble or undue cost. But I would like to make a download option available, especially for people in even harder-to-mail-to countries, and hope to be able to announce something within an issue or two's time.

Nathanael

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

I was wondering if you had and updated look at what pieces of industrial society will stop working when? I know it won’t be right, but I am curious if you have a working projection of 5-10 year chunks?

Thanks!

[ecosophia]

Nope. I know the direction of change but anyone who thinks they can predict the pace is a chump.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Thanks for this shout-out! I'm really happy with how the first issue turned out and excited to share more stories as this project goes on. Thank you also for that pithy phrasing — "culture is downstream from imagination." That's one of the main reasons I'm so excited to be taking this project on. (I may well borrow that phrase sometimes when I'm explaining the magazine to people.)

If anyone reading has stories or letters to share, I would definitely love to see them! For those who've ordered and are planning to, thanks so much for your support as this project gets going. I'm happy to be playing a part in building a community around these ideas.

Nathanael Bonnell