Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for August 26th, 2024. In today’s article, we get the week …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Fragrant Story & Papaya’s Path’, Plus Today’s Other Releases and Sales"

Apple just announced October 2024’s new Apple Arcade games with NBA 2K25 Arcade Edition as the headliner. Following yesterday’s news …

Continue reading "‘NBA 2K25 Arcade Edition’ Headlines October 2024’s New Apple Arcade Releases With Three App Store Greats"

An activist investor with a $5 billion stake in Honeywell International is calling for the company to separate its Phoenix-based aerospace division into a separate business.

Combining DNA analysis, archeological techniques, and historical records overturns some assumptions of the people of Pompeii.

Go beneath the waves and back in time to explore the incredible story of the German attack on Bell Island. In 1942, four merchant ships were sunk by Hitler’s U-boats, coming to a final rest on the ocean floor. Now, we’ve teamed up with historians and divers to take you on an underwater tour of the shipwrecks.

There are not many usable precedents for what J. D. Vance can do with a one-term vice presidency.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 05, 2024
Imagining a vast ice sheet sprawling over Canada and extending down into what is now the northern United States, reaching as far south as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, helps us grasp the scope of ancient glacial coverage between 19,000 and 26,000 years ago. Yet, while picturing this immense ice mass is fascinating, the present-day implications of its retreat - parti

As people gather to remember those who fought and died to protect this country in past wars, a new poll suggests many Canadians know little about their country's history.

A MINE could deliver water security to vegetable growers on the Lindenow Flats in East Gippsland.

It is difficult to disentangle Russian and Chinese scientists from international science cooperation. That is a good thing

Today’s guest post comes from Chris Dowd, Senior VP of Market Development at ConnectiveRx.

Chris examines three key trends that will affect patient support programs: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), legal/regulatory battles over copay adjustment programs, and uncertainties following a national election. He then outlines three actions that should guide manufacturers' preparation.

To learn more, register for ConnectiveRx’s free webinar on December 11: The Perfect Storm? Patient Support Programming in 2025 and Beyond.

Read on for Chris’s insights.
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On this date 349 years ago, Samuel Pepys relates in his famous diary a remarkable story about an upcoming medical experiment. As far as I can tell, this is the first written description of a paid research subject.

According to his account, the man (who he describes as “a little frantic”) was to be paid to undergo a blood transfusion from a sheep. It was hypothesized that the blood of this calm and docile animal would help to calm the man.

Some interesting things to note about this experiment:

• Equipoise. There is explicit disagreement about what effect the experimental treatment will have: according to Pepys, "some think it may have a good effect upon him as a frantic man by cooling his blood, others that it will not have any effect at all".
• Results published. An account of the experiment was published just two weeks later in the journal Philosophical Transactions. 
• Medical Privacy. In this subsequent write-up, the research subject is identified as Arthur Coga, a former Cambridge divinity student. According to at least one account, being publicly identified had a bad effect on Coga, as people who had heard of him allegedly succeeded in getting him to spend his stipend on drink (though no sources are provided to confirm this story).
• Patient Reported Outcome. Coga was apparently chosen because, although mentally ill, he was still considered educated enough to give an accurate description of the treatment effect. 

Depending on your perspective, this may also be a very early account of the placebo effect, or a classic case of ignoring the patient’s experience. Because even though his report was positive, the clinicians remained skeptical. From the journal article:

The Man after this operation, as well as in it, found himself very well, and hath given in his own Narrative under his own hand, enlarging more upon the benefit, he thinks, he hath received by it, than we think fit to own as yet.

…and in fact, a subsequent diary entry from Pepys mentions meeting Coga, with similarly mixed impressions: “he finds himself much better since, and as a new man, but he is cracked a little in his head”.

The amount Coga was paid for his participation? Twenty shillings – at the time, that was exactly one Guinea.

[Image credit: Wellcome Images]

In the spirit of the Halloween season, IEEE Spectrum presents a pair of stories that—although grounded in scientific truth rather than the macabre—were no less harrowing for those who lived them. In today’s installment, Robert Langer had to push back against his field’s conventional wisdom to pioneer a drug-delivery mechanism vital to modern medicine.

Nicknamed the Edison of Medicine, Robert Langer is one of the world’s most-cited researchers, with over 1,600 published papers, 1,400 patents, and a top-dog role as one of MIT’s nine prestigious Institute Professors. Langer pioneered the now-ubiquitous drug delivery systems used in modern cancer treatments and vaccines, indirectly saving countless lives throughout his 50-year career.

But, much like Edison and other inventors, Langer’s big ideas were initially met with skepticism from the scientific establishment.

He came up in the 1970s as a chemical engineering postdoc working in the lab of Dr. Judah Folkman, a pediatric surgeon at the Boston Children’s Hospital. Langer was tasked with solving what many believed was an impossible problem—isolating angiogenesis inhibitors to halt cancer growth. Folkman’s vision of stopping tumors from forming their own self-sustaining blood vessels was compelling enough, but few believed it possible.

Langer encountered both practical and social challenges before his first breakthrough. One day, a lab technician accidentally spilled six months’ worth of samples onto the floor, forcing him to repeat the painstaking process of dialyzing extracts. Those months of additional work steered Langer’s development of novel microspheres that could deliver large molecules of medicine directly to tumors.

In the 1970s, Langer developed these tiny microspheres to release large molecules through solid materials, a groundbreaking proof-of-concept for drug delivery.Robert Langer

Langer then submitted the discovery to prestigious journals and was invited to speak at a conference in Michigan in 1976. He practiced the 20-minute presentation for weeks, hoping for positive feedback from respected materials scientists. But when he stepped off the podium, a group approached him and said bluntly, “We don’t believe anything you just said.” They insisted that macromolecules were simply too large to pass through solid materials, and his choice of organic solvents would destroy many inputs. Conventional wisdom said so.

Nature published Langer’s paper three months later, demonstrating for the first time that non-inflammatory polymers could enable the sustained release of proteins and other macromolecules. The same year, Science published his isolation mechanism to restrict tumor growth.

Langer and Folkman’s research paved the way for modern drug delivery.MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital

Even with impressive publications, Langer still struggled to secure funding for his work in controlling macromolecule delivery, isolating the first angiogenesis inhibitors, and testing their behavior. His first two grant proposals were rejected on the same day, a devastating blow for a young academic. The reviewers doubted his experience as “just an engineer” who knew nothing about cancer or biology. One colleague tried to cheer him up, saying, “It’s probably good those grants were rejected early in your career. Since you’re not supporting any graduate students, you don’t have to let anyone go.” Langer thought the colleague was probably right, but the rejections still stung.

His patent applications, filed alongside Folkman at the Boston Children’s Hospital, were rejected five years in a row. After all, it’s difficult to prove you’ve got something good if you’re the only one doing it. Langer remembers feeling disappointed but not crushed entirely. Eventually, other scientists cited his findings and expanded upon them, giving Langer and Folkman the validation needed for intellectual property development. As of this writing, the pair’s two studies from 1976 have been cited nearly 2,000 times.

As the head of MIT’s Langer Lab, he often shares these same stories of rejection with early-career students and researchers. He leads a team of over 100 undergrads, grad students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scientists, all finding new ways to deliver genetically engineered proteins, DNA, and RNA, among other research areas. Langer’s reputation is further bolstered by the many successful companies he co-founded or advised, like mRNA leader Moderna, which rose to prominence after developing its widely used COVID-19 vaccine.

Langer sometimes thinks back to those early days—the shattered samples, the cold rejections, and the criticism from senior scientists. He maintains that “Conventional wisdom isn’t always correct, and it’s important to never give up—(almost) regardless of what others say.”

Many companies are entering the digital youth mental health space, but it’s important to know which ones are effective, according to a panel of investors at the Behavioral Health Tech conference.

The post Measuring Impact in Digital Youth Mental Health: What Investors Look For appeared first on MedCity News.

Neurogene’s Rett syndrome gene therapy has preliminary data supporting safety and efficacy of the one-time treatment. But a late-breaking report of a serious complication in a patient who received the high dose sent shares of the biotech downward.

The post Neurogene Gene Therapy Shows Signs of Efficacy in Small Study, But an Adverse Event Spooks Investors appeared first on MedCity News.

My first editor, Rukun Advani, once described himself as ‘a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European’, who sought to reconcile ‘within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as contradictions.’ This self-characterization I might avow as my own. One mark of the Anglo-European in me is that, unlike members [...]

Mar 28, 2024

We have heard much about the puzzle that US economic performance under President Joe Biden has been much stronger than voters perceive it to be.  But the current episode is just one instance of a bigger historical puzzle:  the US economy has since World War II consistently done better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents.  This fact is even less widely known, including among Democratic voters, than the truth about Biden’s term.  Indeed, some poll results suggest that more Americans believe the reverse, that Republican presidents are better stewards of the economy than Democrats.

Jul 24, 2024

The defining tension in Middle Eastern politics today—and the most combustible pile of tinder—is between the State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The antagonism between the two countries has existed for more than forty years. It has played out across the region for more than twenty years within the context of the Middle East’s wider tumult. It has not been restricted to diplomacy, either, but has played out through various means: covert, proxy, political and psychological warfare. Observers of this conflict have as a result tended to describe this state of affairs with obscure terms: “cold” war, “shadow” war, or other words that allude to the existence of an active and geopolitically consequential antagonism but imply an ambiguity that plain old “war” never could.

John Peden - #NMClientStory

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Associates at VPI share their stories in honor of National Pet Cancer Awareness Month. Find out how you can help #CurePetCancer, visit www.CurePetCancer.com

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Trust is critical, especially for a person with autism and their family. Meet the Vollmert family and get a sense of how they approach daily life and planning for a financially secure future with their autistic son, Scott. Learn more: http://u.nm.com/1AQBAsN

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Charlene Su, mother of a cochlear implant recipient, shares her daughter's hearing loss story. Learn more about hearing loss treatment options at IWantYouToHear.com.

Hi there everyone.

This is such a challenging time.

Every day we're having to sit and watch in disbelief as people lie to our faces about COVID-19, how bad things are, and what to do about it. We watch in disbelief as nonviolent protesters are arrested and accused of violence — while the police use tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and batons against them. We watch in disbelief as white women pull guns on Black people after saying the actual words, "White people aren't racist… No one is racist." Our president lies so often, so willfully, childishly, self-centeredly, and so without compunction that FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics, has a Donald Trump archive that is 107 pages long. And now I read that we've started executing federal prisoners again — despite what we all know about how flawed our criminal justice system is.

It can be hard to keep on top of how awful everything is.

I wanted to provide a few clarifying links, and recommend a book.

First, if you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of people in denial around you — and the capacity for people to lie to themselves and others about reality — I want you to know that you're not alone. Also, you're not crazy. Also, THERE IS AN OBJECTIVE REALITY. Keep hold of it. And if you don't know what cognitive dissonance is — this might be a good time to learn! A couple links —

• Cognitive dissonance is a huge factor in people, especially white people, denying the existence of structural racism and refusing to acknowledge our own investment in it. For just one example of how this plays out, check out "The psychological phenomenon that blinds Trump supporters to his racism," from the Washington Post a year ago.

• Cognitive dissonance is also playing a huge role these days in the pandemic. Check out "The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic," at The Atlantic.

Cognitive dissonance, when handled badly, is a killer. It makes people inexcusably ignorant, hurtful, and destructive. I find it helpful to learn about it, so at least I know what we're up against — and also so that I can be better equipped to watch for it in myself, because after all, I was socialized into this society too. Maybe you'll also find it helpful, especially now. When you're surrounded by people who are lying to themselves… It can be incredibly disorienting! And distressing, if these are people who profess to care about you. Learn about cognitive dissonance and shine some light through the bullshit around you.

Next, on the not unrelated topic of "The Letter" ("A Letter on Justice and Open Debate," published on July 7 at Harper Magazine and signed by 153 writers, artists, academics, and journalists). I really liked Hannah Giorgis's thoughts about The Letter, over at The Atlantic: "A Deeply Provincial View of Free Speech". Giorgis skewers The Letter's vagueness. She also reminds us of what free speech actually is, and what threats to free speech actually look like. An excerpt: "Any good-faith understanding of principles such as free speech and due process requires acknowledging some basic truths: Facing widespread criticism on Twitter, undergoing an internal workplace review, or having one’s book panned does not, in fact, erode one’s constitutional rights or endanger a liberal society." Yes!

Finally, I'm listening to a really great audiobook: Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair, by Danielle Sered. Sered is the director of Common Justice, which is a program in Brooklyn that provides a survivor-focused alternative to incarceration for violent crime. What I love about this book is that while I've been aware that our criminal justice system is broken — and that it's a lie that prisons keep anyone safe — I hadn't realized that there are workable alternatives already in play. Sered presents an alternative to incarceration that creates not just safety, but healing. The program is very survivor-focused. Survivors are deeply involved in decisions about how the people who harmed them are held accountable. And since most people who commit violent crime have also been victims of violent crime, the program helps those who've caused harm to heal too. The book is realistic about why people harm each other, and about how to change the system. It's a good introduction to the growing movement of restorative justice, and reading it makes me hopeful.

A heads up that Sered has a crystal clear grasp of what it's like to have PTSD and is searingly articulate about how it feels to want and need a person who harmed you to accept responsibility for what they did. If you are a survivor — of any kind of harm, not just violence — parts of this book may be gutting. I recommend taking breaks now and then.

Also, if you don't have time to read a book or if you can't access it right now while the libraries are in flux, I can recommend a recent podcast episode on the same topic. It's from the The Ezra Klein Show and it's the episode called: "A former prosecutor's case for prison abolition: Paul Butler on how our criminal justice system is broken — and how to fix it". I learned a LOT about how broken our criminal justice system is from that episode. I noticed that Ezra also has an even newer episode, an interview with sujatha baliga called "The transformative power of restorative justice." I haven't listened to that one yet, but it's on the same topic, so I'm guessing that's also an interesting and informative conversation.

Okay! So those are the things I wanted to share. Hang in there, everybody. I'll be writing another craft lesson blog post soon. Also, in Winterkeep news, I expect to have a cover (or several) to share with you soon! Be well, everyone.

Before I start talking about Victor LaValle's beautiful book, a point of housekeeping: Now that an eon has passed, I've finally updated my praise and awards page for Jane, Unlimited. I have a bad habit of never getting around to this task until it's time to start clearing things out for the new book. The nice thing about it is that I get to revisit a book that's dear to me, years after I've stopped thinking about it. Jane is a book that divides readers for sure. I want to thank everyone who got that book and took it into your hearts and brains. If you don't know about Jane, Unlimited, here's a quick intro: An orphan named Jane arrives at an island mansion owned by a friend, then quickly starts to get the sense that strange things are afoot there. At a certain point, when Jane needs to make a decision, the book breaks off into five different decisions she could make — and each decision takes her into an adventure in a different genre. There's a mystery story, a spy story, a horror story, a sci-fi story, and a fantasy. They're all connected and interwoven; and yes, the multiverse exists :). It's a weird book and I'm very, very proud of it! If you're curious, I'll point you to the NYTBR review, which is concise and generous and does a good job expressing its flavor.


So. Today I want to talk about the craft of using existing, well-known stories to fortify your own story — thus building ready-made narrative magic into your story's foundations.

Reimagining a classic story is, of course, an age-old tradition. There was a time when I read all the King Arthur retellings I could find, though this list shows me that I missed a great many. Some of my all-time favorite books come from this tradition: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, a retelling of the old Scottish ballad that takes place in a fictional college in Minnesota in the 1970s; Deerskin by Robin McKinley, which I held close to my heart while I was writing Fire and which is based on the Charles Perrault fairy tale Donkeyskin; Ash by Malinda Lo, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. Every writer who goes down this path has their own take on whatever story they're reimagining, disrupting the familiar in their own unique way so that we can get some objective distance and consider the story again in a new light. One of the best things about stories is the way they all change and grow in meaning and significance with every new story that joins the pantheon.

Victor LaValle's The Changeling is a modern-day, New York City-based retelling of the old changeling folktale. In the classic version of that tale, fairies steal a human baby and replace it with something else, usually a (creepy) fairy child. In LaValle's retelling, the focus is the emotional journey of the baby's father, Apollo Kagwa, whose wife Emma Valentine starts acting odd after their baby is born. Horror ensues. In the wake of the horror, Apollo must figure out what the heck just happened, and how to move on.

LaValle's take on the changeling story is unique in plenty of ways. For example, the way race and gender factor into the power dynamics. The choice to center the point of view around a father. The extreme horrificness of the violence that occurs. The story's broad-ranging modern-day New York City settings, from a fancy Manhattan restaurant to Apollo's home in Washington Heights to an abandoned island in the East River to upscale suburbs and a forest in Queens. These are the sorts of alterations commonly made by writers retelling old stories: time, location, culture, tone. When we know we're reading a retelling, we expect changes in these categories.

But LaValle does something else too: he infuses this book with many, many stories that aren't the official story he's retelling. The Changeling is a book positively swimming in story. And one of this book's charms is that as a consequence, Apollo spends a lot of the book making mistakes about what story he's in. LaValle uses stories to illuminate, but also to mislead. I think it makes for a really unique approach to characterization.

It also steers Apollo through a character transformation that I find exquisitely touching, for reasons I'll try to explain without spoiling the plot too much.

Apollo Kagwa's father, who disappears before his fourth birthday, is a white man from Syracuse. His mother, Lillian Kagwa, is a Black woman, an immigrant from Uganda, who raises him and who recognizes early on that her son lives and breathes stories. Lillian can't find enough books to satisfy young Apollo. He also has a mind for business. When Lillian discovers that Apollo has been selling his books after reading them, she helps him establish a used bookselling business. In due course, he grows up to be a rare bookseller.

Unquestionably, this is the story of a man who knows all about stories. As a rare bookseller who spends his time digging through rude and racist people's basements looking for valuable treasures, Apollo deals in stories. He seeks stories out, recognizes their value, owns them, sells them. He also builds stories around himself as protection and comfort, often repeating to himself, in moments of anxiety or fear, the mantra, I am the god, Apollo. I am the god, Apollo. And he uses stories to comfort and ground himself — particularly Maurice Sendak's picture book Outside Over There, a changeling tale that Apollo believes his missing father lovingly left for him.

So. Apollo knows stories. And yet, as I said above, as this story plays out, LaValle gives us evidence that Apollo is often wrong about what story he's in. He admires the wrong people in his life as heroes (for example, his father). He misses the incredibly powerful sorcerers right in front of his eyes: his wife Emma; Emma's sister, Kim; Emma's friend, Nichelle; his mother, Lillian. As he moves through the world, he imagines he sees fairy tale traps where there are none, and he misses the huge, important fairy tale turning points, the moments that really matter. The clues are right in front of his face. Sometimes the women in his life even announce them aloud to him, and he still disregards them. Like all of us, the story Apollo tells himself about his own life is flawed and distorted by his own wishes, heartbreaks, assumptions, and biases. Among those biases, by my reading, is the tiniest edge of unconscious condescension to women. Or maybe even that's going too far; maybe it's simply that Apollo fails to see and appreciate the women around him fully. He's a good man. But he doesn't quite get it.

And yet, Apollo's story is one of transformation. Over the course of this book, through a great deal of trial and tribulation, Apollo learns to see what story he's in, who the heroes are, and who has the power to create a safe world for him and his family. And who are these heroes? Ultimately, women. What Apollo learns is that he's in a story in which he needs to see and respect the intelligence, insight, and power of women. Black women, specifically. By my reading, this is a tale of a well-meaning, vulnerable, flawed man learning feminism.

Maybe you can see why I love it?

And I also love how it's done. I love the way this book swirls with stories, and the way both the reader and Apollo are moving along on different paths through the stories, trying to understand which of the stories matter to Apollo's story, and how.

It makes me think in a fresh, new way about how to weave other stories into one's story, whether one's story is a retelling, or just a story with narrative influences. There's no end to the creative approaches to this — but if you're imbuing your own story with other stories, I do think it's a good idea to choose a deliberate approach. There's a danger in trying to use other stories in your story as a shortcut for creating mood and meaning. The author who throws lots of existing stories into a book might create the impression of depth, but you want to make sure it's not just an impression. You don't want to use other stories to obscure an empty hole or a weak foundation in your own story, or make it seem like your story has meaning it doesn't have. I say this as a writer who's familiar with that moment when, after trying to shoehorn a known story into something I'm writing, I realize I'm being lazy. I'm trying to make someone else's work do my work. Or maybe I realize that I simply don't know enough about my own story yet, and I'm using those other stories to obscure that fact from myself.

If you're alluding to another story in your story, there needs to be a reason. Ask yourself, what structural function are these references performing? What manner of tool are they? What do they accomplish? Why have I chosen the stories I've chosen?

There doesn't need to be a profound or complicated answer, but there needs to be an answer. For example, in Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, Miranda's favorite book is A Wrinkle in Time, for what turn out to be some pretty straightforward textual reasons. In the space of that book, it ends up being a perfect allusion. In the review of Jane, Unlimited I linked to above, the reviewer notes that it turns out there's a reason Jane wears Doctor Who pajamas. Though I wouldn't call Jane my most straightforward book, there are some pretty straightforward reasons I dressed her in those pajamas! You can have simple or complicated reasons for referring to other stories in your story. It can be a reason that's quiet, subtle, and small. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking. But you have to link those stories to yours in meaningful ways, and you also have to make sure that your own story is the biggest and most relevant story in the book. If you find yourself trying to create depth in an insubstantial story by borrowing someone else's story, then I recommend spending some time focusing on the hard work of your own story.

And if, in the process, you find yourself jettisoning some of the references to that other story, or even abandoning that other story altogether? That's fine too. One of my current works in progress started out as something of a Peter Pan retelling. It's now come so far from that point that the only remaining allusion is a couple of names — that I'm probably going to change, because the book doesn't need them anymore. That book needed to grow the way it did. J. M. Barrie's book was my path in; my story needed to start with his, then diverge. Another example: Earlier in this post, when I explained that Jane, Unlimited is about an orphan named Jane who comes to a mysterious house, maybe you thought of Jane Eyre. In early drafts of that book, I kept trying to work in versions of actual scenes from Jane Eyre. For example, I tried hard to find a place for a scene paralleling the one where Jane almost gets run over by Mr. Rochester in the dark. Eventually, I let all that go. At a certain point, the needs of my story became a lot more important than strengthening allusions to Jane Eyre (or Rebecca, or Winnie the Pooh, or any of the other texts that Jane, Unlimited references). I found a balance with all the allusions — or I hope I did, the reader is free to disagree! — and tried hard to focus on my story, my versions, my point. I think Jane still swims with those other stories, hopefully in ways that create depth, and part of getting to that point was letting some of it go. Often it doesn't take much to invoke a story that's part of our cultural consciousness.

To demonstrate that often it doesn't take much, let's return to The Changeling. I want to show an example of what I've explained about how this book uses stories to elucidate Apollo's failure to recognize his own story. I'll focus on one scene that I think encapsulates the skill with which LaValle layers story over story over story — to tell Apollo's story about misreading his own story. It's also wonderfully written, so that'll be fun to talk about too :).

The scene I'm going to look at takes place over the course of Chapters 11 and 12. The setting is a fancy New York restaurant that evokes a fairy tale aura. If you want to read along, you'll find this scene on pages 41 through 51 in the 2017 Spiegel & Grau hardcover edition. Point of view shifts in this book, but these two chapters are told from Apollo's point of view.

First, some context: in the scene after this scene, Emma Valentine gives birth to their child. (That's an incredible scene too! It happens in a stopped A train on its way to Washington Heights!) This means that the scene I'm about to talk about is Apollo's last chance to understand his own story before everything changes. As I think you know by now, he fails. He barrels into  parenthood still unable to see what's in front of his eyes, and the consequences are catastrophic.

But first, he has dinner at a restaurant! Or rather, he doesn't have dinner, because the items on the menu are terrifyingly expensive, so he just fills up on bread — but we'll get to that.

Let's start with the opening of Chapter 11. We're on Duane Street, a fancy street in lower Manhattan. Apollo has just been digging through the old, abandoned books of some rude people in Queens. Now he's meeting Emma and Emma's friend Nichelle for dinner at Bouley, which is a real New York restaurant. Or rather, it used to be; it closed in 2017, the year this book was published.

Here's how the chapter starts: "Entering Bouley Restaurant felt like stepping inside a gingerbread house. .... when he opened the door and stepped into the foyer, he found himself surrounded by apples. Shelves had been built into the wall, running as high as the ceiling; rows of fresh red apples and their scent enveloped him. The door to Duane Street shut behind him, and Apollo felt as if he'd stumbled into a small cottage off an overgrown path in a dark wood" (41).

(By the way, if this room sounds too playful, magical, or wonderful to be true — here's an article that includes a photo of Bouley's apple entrance: "What's David Bouley Going to Do With all Those Apples When He Closes His Flagship Restaurant?")

So. With these opening lines, LaValle accomplishes two things: (1) he fixes a real-life restaurant firmly in the world of fairy tale. And (2) he signals to us what story Apollo thinks he's in. Because we all know that when Hansel and Gretel step into a cottage off an overgrown path in a dark wood with walls made of gingerbread, cake, and candies, things do not go well for them.

I don't want to take any of the fairy tale references in this book too literally or drag them out too far. Though LaValle can be pretty explicit sometimes about what he's referencing, his touch remains light, and I don't want to beat it to death. But as I said before, Apollo doesn't eat anything but bread during this dinner. He tells himself it's because he's afraid of the bill, but we also know that on some unconscious level, he thinks he's inside the story of Hansel and Gretel. And if you're inside that story, you know damn well that it's not safe to eat the food! Of course, as it turns out, Apollo could eat anything he wants safely, because Nichelle is paying for the dinner. Apollo's wrong: his story isn't Hansel and Gretel.

This is a pretty straightforward example of how this skilled writer uses a conscious and deliberate reference to a widely-known story that then shows us that Apollo is a little bit lost inside all the stories of his life. Also, as settings go, this description of the foyer of Bouley is evocative and beautiful. The sentences of this book are eminently readable. It's something I noticed again and again: despite a fair amount of description, my eyes never glazed over and I never struggled to picture what was being described to me. LaValle doesn't use flowery language or waste words. He tells you what it looks like and he tells you how Apollo experiences it. And he attaches it to story spaces we already know, spaces that are part of our cultural language of stories, so it feels familiar and right. For me, at this point in the book, it was enjoyable to be a little bit lost with Apollo, because the language was so lush and the setting so fairy-tale familiar; because I myself, sitting outside the story, could go eat something if I got hungry, without worrying about evil witches; and also because I had some grounding that Apollo doesn't have. Apollo doesn't know that his own book is called The Changeling. He's just trying to survive each new story, whatever it turns out to be, as he steps into it.

LaValle does a good job creating sympathy in the reader for Apollo's mistakes and confusions. Consider Apollo's experience as he moves further into Bouley: "The dining room's vaulted ceilings had been laid with eighteen-karat gold leaf sheets, and on top of that a twelve-karat white gold varnish, so the ceiling seemed as supple as suede. The floors were Burgundy stone, overlaid by Persian rugs. If the foyer felt like a woodland cottage and the waiting area a haunted parlor, the dining room became an ancient castle's great hall.….Apollo felt as if he was trekking through realms rather than rooms. If there had been men in full armor posted as sentries, it wouldn't have surprised him. And in fact, when the maître d' reached the right table, there was a queen waiting there. Emma Valentine, too pregnant to stand" (42).

This is one of the dangers of being a story man: If your entire life is steeped in story, you're going to see those stories everywhere. Surely that makes it confusing to isolate which story is yours?

On the other hand, Apollo totally notices that Emma is a queen — but then he dismisses it. This is another danger of a life steeped in story: you make associations and assume that they're metaphors. Emma isn't like a queen. She is a queen — or if not a queen, some other category of extremely powerful and important woman. Maybe one of Apollo's problems is that he's so steeped in story that he can't get hold of what's real? Or maybe he believes in magic within the context of a story, but he doesn't believe in magic in real life? Or maybe he lives too much inside stories, and needs to wake up and live his real life?

This is what good layering does. It leaves the reader with lots of fascinating and fun questions!

By the way, Emma has her favorite stories too — and LaValle's choices for her illuminate her character to anyone who's paying attention. The most important movie from Emma's childhood, which she watched repeatedly in her hometown library in Virginia, is a Brazilian movie called Quilombo, "the only movie in the entire library that had black people on the cover. Of course I wanted to watch it!" (28). It's a movie about the slave uprisings in Brazil, and it "shows tons of Portuguese people getting killed by those slaves" (28). At dinner, Nichelle brings it up: "This girl tried to get me to watch a movie about a slave uprising when I was busy trying to figure out how to marry that boy out of New Edition" (47). While Apollo is worrying about eating the food, LaValle reminds us that Emma is engaged in matters of disruption to major power structures. Ding ding ding! Pay attention, Apollo!

But Apollo is too hungry and anxious to pay attention. The dinner progresses as dinners do. Apollo, not knowing that Nichelle is buying, becomes more and more horrified as Nichelle and Emma order delicacy after delicacy. Nichelle gets roaring drunk. Emma, who rarely sleeps anymore, is drifting, half-asleep in her seat. "Apollo, meanwhile, had ingested nothing but tapwater and the restaurant bread. While the bread tasted magnificent, it wasn't enough. By dessert, Apollo and Emma had low batteries, but Nichelle seemed wired to a generator" (46).

Near the end of the dinner, Emma leaves the table to find the bathroom. She's thirty-eight weeks pregnant and "That flan wants to come back up," she says quietly (47). When she leaves, Nichelle, like any good soothsayer in any good folktale, takes the opportunity to try to tell Apollo what matters.

First, she tells Apollo that "There's a nude photo of your wife in an art gallery in Amsterdam." Then she explains that before Emma married Apollo, Emma went to Brazil, where "she had a few adventures" (48). In particular, "Emma met this Dutch photographer down there in Brazil" (49).

Nichelle goes on to explain that one day while the photographer was taking photos in an abandoned factory, he needed to pee, so he left Emma alone with the equipment. And she decided to take a picture of herself, setting up the shot with a timer. "She makes the shot in front of a wall that's been half torn down so you can see she's standing inside a man-made building that's gone to the dogs, but over her right shoulder you can see the forest that surrounds this factory. Two worlds at once. Crumbling civilization and an explosion of the natural world. / "Emma walks into the shot, and just before the shutter clicks, she pulls off her dress and takes that photo nude!"

What's the photo like? How does Emma look? "Wiry and fierce, naked and unashamed. She's looking into that camera lens like she can see you, whoever you are, wherever you are. She looks like a fucking sorceress, Apollo. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen" (50).

So, here's Nichelle, telling Apollo what he's glancingly considered before in a fond, condescending sort of way: Emma is a sorceress. Nichelle is saying this to Apollo in simple, straightforward words: Emma is a sorceress, with a great capacity for adventure.

What is Apollo doing during this conversation?

He's sitting there thinking to himself, "Dutch photographer? / Dutch fucking photographer?" (49)

And when he finally speaks, what does he say?

"'And the Dutch guy?' Apollo asked. 'What was his name?'" (59)

This moment is, of course, the stuff of everyday real life and the stuff of fairy tales. Jealousy and possessiveness, leading to a character's blunder or misbehavior. In fairy tales, we see jealousy as an archetype — like the queen who decides to destroy the young woman who's usurped her position as the fairest of them all. In Apollo's life, it comes across as fairly typical and annoying sexism.

Nichelle's response to this question contains everything. Everything this book is about; everything that leads to catastrophe, and ultimately to Apollo's growth and transformation: "Nichelle watched him quietly for seconds. She narrowed her eyes when she spoke. 'I'm trying to tell you something important, and you are focused on bullshit'" (50).

For just a moment, Apollo gets it. He falls "back into his chair as if Nichelle had kicked him" (51). He tells her he's ready, he's finally listening.

And then the maître d' appears, sprinting across the restaurant, shouting for Apollo, because the baby is coming. Which means that everything is about to change, and it's too late.

Apollo's failures in this scene are familiar and understandable, even when they're annoying. He's hungry, distracted, and worried about his wife who's probably vomiting flan in the bathroom. Also, Nichelle is completely, obnoxiously drunk, so why should Apollo recognize the power or truth of her words? Maybe I should clarify that at this point in the book, I didn't appreciate that Emma was a legit sorceress either. We haven't learned the stakes yet, and we don't know how much we're going to be needing a sorceress later. But more to the point, most of this book is from Apollo's point of view, and right now Apollo is hungry, distracted, and worried. There are more important things to worry about, or so he thinks. And I care about him. Even though as the reader, I'm better positioned than he is to recognize his mistakes, I'm right there with him.

This all comes down to LaValle's skilled balancing of story and character. So much comes across in this one scene, and there are so many other equally rich scenes. If you like to sit in that place where spinning stories come together, you should read this book.

I'll close my study of The Changeling by adding this: I know enough from my own experience as a writer to suspect that while LaValle was writing this book, he wasn't always certain what story he was writing either. As we write, our story keeps surprising us, interrupting us, frustrating us and sending us off in the wrong direction. But not only did he find his own story (and Apollo's too), but he did a beautiful job weaving all the other stories in.

If you're writing something that alludes to other stories, I hope you'll find LaValle's use of classic stories exciting, rather than intimidating. When you ask yourself, Why this story?, it's an opportunity to figure out how far along you are in establishing your own story. If you don't have an answer yet, maybe you need to be focusing less on the classic story and more on your own story. If you have a few answers, but you're completely overwhelmed and not sure how many references you should make or where anything is going — take a moment to congratulate yourself, because that sounds to me like progress. When you're in the middle of writing something, there's always a sense of overwhelm and confusion about how well you're balancing things. You have a few potential answers? Great! Soldier on, and after a while, check in again. What's your story now?

And that's that. I hope you've enjoyed my post about the balance of story in Victor LaValle's The Changeling!

Reading like a writer.

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Today’s the final day of (the final hours, at this point) of the Seventy Maxims Reprint project. Here, then is a nice origin story for you, the origin of Maxim 32.

I was signing and sketching at GenCon Indy a decade or so ago when some young men approached the table. They were what a friend of mine likes to call “baby sailors”: relatively new members of the US Navy. One of them said “we have a suggestion for a maxim.”

I smiled. “Let’s hear it.”

“Anything is amphibious if you can fit it into an AAV.”

I chuckled. “That’s pretty good, but the term ‘AAV’ is too specific for Schlock Mercenary use.” Then I went silent, stared off into the distance, and I guess this made everyone uncomfortable because our Booth Captain, Darren, spoke next.

“Shhh… don’t interrupt him. The magic is happening.”

It’s true, I’d been wondering how this US Navy aphorism could be repurposed, but I had expected to be able to mull it over all day. Now, however, Darren had turned it into the promise of performance art. Did I curse silently? Maybe. I don’t remember, because I was panicking.

Still staring into space, trying not to show fear, I dove into the “formulae” for the maxims. I knew that many of the maxims were subversions of existing aphorisms. Several of them formed thematic couplets, like Maxims 2 and 3 (“a sergeant in motion” and “an ordnance tech in motion”) are a great example of this. And Maxim 23, “Anything is air-droppable at least once,” seemed like a good candidate for pairing with what the Navy boys had suggested, especially since “Anything is air-droppable” and “Anything is amphibious” were already pretty close.

All I needed to do was break the amphibious-ness in the same way I’d broken the air-droppability… and I think it was that moment, when I contemplated “breaking” amphibious-ness, when the final text arrived in my head.

“Anything is amphibious if you can get it back out of the water.”

A quick note. The United States Navy exists to keep things DRY. Everything except the hulls, really. The very idea of dropping something into the water that is not already a boat, runs counter to Navy thinking.

So it’s no surprise that those Navy boys were visibly horrified by my subversion of their aphorism. “That’s terrible” one of them said. And then they started to laugh.

And then I wrote Maxim 32 in my notebook, because obviously it was perfect.

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My latest short story is out in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. When I first started writing short stories, back in the 90s, F&SF was one of the ‘big three’ that I really wanted to get a story in to cross off my bucket list. The big three were Asimov’s, F&SF, and Analog. […]

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