Janeen Webb's wonderful launch address for Mud and Glass (edited extract)

The amazing Janeen Webb, author, editor, critic, and academic, has graciously given me permission to post the address she gave at last night's launch of Mud and Glass, my new novel. I present an edited extract of it to you here:

Faculty and Fiction

As a lapsed academic, my first thought on starting to read Mud and Glass was that Laura Goodin has spent far too much time hanging around in University corridors and staff rooms: her comic version of academic life rings all too true.

Mud and Glass is a hilarious portrait of second string academic institutions everywhere. We all know them: they are the places where intellectual enquiry has been reduced to an endless quest for resources, and any project, no matter how mad, will get the 'go ahead' if sufficient funding can be found for it – and never mind how dubious those funding sources might be. In the world of this novel, the deeply corrupt, proto-totalitarian Praxicopolis cartel is providing the finance for researchers to dig up the mud of a particular delta every year: they won't say why, but interested parties suspect it has something to do with glass beads. The madcap escapades that ensue remind me of at least a dozen adventure stories, but there are also darker echoes here of Hermann Hesse's brilliant novel, The Glass Bead Game, where austere intellectuals devote their entire lives to an arcane game based on a complex synthesis of the arts and sciences.

Does that remind you of the game playing that passes for intellectual enquiry in so many academic faculties? It should. Mud and Glass holds up a mirror to the many institutions where moral flexibility and intellectual compromise are prerequisites for promotion. I know. I've taught there.

Laura Goodin has a keen eye for the absurdities of University life. I'm sure I've worked with Norella Honeycott, the devious, scheming academic of the novel: the name was different, and the woman in question was not nearly so attractive, but underneath she was pretty much the same – a second-rate apparatchik creepily prepared to use her sexuality for any hint of political advantage. But I'm sorry to say I don't know any rogue librarians or insubordinate security guards – I'm afraid these things may, indeed, be the stuff of Laura's imagination. I was never blessed with students who baked sublime cookies, and I'm not sure whether any of them were actually practising ninjas, but some of them were certainly involved in bizarre adventures: I remember when one creative writing class was having difficulty with dialogue I suggested they should spend some time just listening to how people actually speak. The course venue was in Melbourne's trendy Fitzroy, and I expected some polite lunch hour eavesdropping in the local cafes – but my literal minded little darlings managed to get themselves caught taking notes of a fairly heavy drug deal going down in a backstreet bar. They got chased off at knife point, thus learning a valuable lesson in how to read body language.

For me, one of the most endearing aspects of Mud and Glass is the involvement of an entire retirement village full of superannuated academics – still sharp as tacks, and cheerfully getting their own back on the University that blighted their intellectual lives, sticking it the University's board of hopelessly inept governors. Good for them, say I!

And finally, I really should say a word about the hero, Celeste Carlucci – the idealistic, intrepid, as-yet-untenured geography lecturer who, in trying to save the Purple River and solve the mystery of the disappearing mud flats, finds herself leading the resistance against the Praxicopolis family's conspiracy for domination: today, the University, tomorrow, the World. Celeste has, shall we say, 'issues', but she manages to keep going anyway, with the help of the handsome and resourceful drama lecturer love interest, Russ Gartner (in whom I detect more than a trace of Laura's charming husband, Houston).

The novel ends happily, as such things should do: University life returns to something that passes for normal.

Mud and Glass should be required reading for all academics. I recommend it to you. Enjoy.

Janeen Webb
22 April, 2017

In Which Humility Is Shown to Be a Virtue, and I Get a Fabulous Blurb from a Fabulous Author

Every social system evolves its own hierarchies and indications of status. Science-fiction conventions are no exception. One of the jobs that's often seen as just a tad less prestigious than being on a panel is moderating a panel. You haven't necessarily done anything jaw-dropping in the speculative-fiction world; you're just willing (and confident enough) to help things go smoothly. You don't get to be famous; you just help other people be famous. Still, it's a job that usually needs doing, especially at bigger cons, with bigger rooms full of more people whose needs must be coordinated with those of the panelists and the con in general.* I enjoy doing it, and I'm told I'm good at it. And it's also got some benefits: you get to meet and talk to the more-famous-than-you panelists, and 99 times out of 100 they are utterly wonderful, kind people, well worth knowing even without the shimmering mantle of fame that billows about the shoulders of each of them. And sometimes even cooler things happen, as I shall now relate.

At the Chicago WorldCon in 2012, I moderated a panel on "Page to Stage" (performance writing and "transmediating" works from prose into scripts, that sort of thing; there's a photo of the panel on this page if you scroll down a bit). As we were setting up, we noticed there was a missing microphone (or some such; it's five years ago now and the details are getting a bit tattered). James Patrick Kelly and I collaborated in a bit of clandestine equipment-pilfering from another room; we bonded just a little bit in that moment of shared and gleeful iniquity. (Yes, we put the equipment back when we were done — we're not common street thugs, after all.)

Fast-forward to early 2017, and my new novel, Mud and Glass, is being prepared for release. I begin to search out blurbers (you know, people who agree to say nice things about your book). Blurbing is a terrific example of why I love the spec-fic community: the more-famous cheerfully, and without earning a nickel from it, help the less-famous become more famous. Just for friendship's sake, and because we all like it that spec-fic writers all over the world genuinely enjoy helping each other out. Figuring nothing ventured, nothing gained, I ask Jim Kelly, best accomplice ever, if he will blurb my forthcoming book. And he does. And here is the blurb:

Mud and Glass is a glorious screwball comedy that propels readers headlong through college classrooms, mysterious underground passages and the halls of a retirement home with insouciant abandon. Along the way we meet a charming cast of heroes and rogues all chasing after a lost manuscript, which may either be a McGuffin or the font of all knowledge. A motley cast of wacky academics, rogue librarians, ninja students, insubordinate security guards and clueless bureaucrats is presided over by the winsome geographer Celeste, a protagonist who puts the luck in pluck. Join her for romance and intrigue, purloined theses and homemade cookies in Laura E. Goodin’s hilarious new novel. — James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards

Isn't that amazing? Many thanks, Jim!

And the moral of the story is: every job at a science-fiction convention has honor and glory in it. Turn not thy nose up at moderating, for in such tasks are the seeds of friendships. Be not an asshole, considering thyself too famous now to do this or that thing. Observe thy heroes in their good cheer and their concern and respect for newbies. Go thou and do likewise. And perhaps thou, too, shalt gain a surprise return on thine investment in good karma and community.

*I did up a guide to moderating con panels that some have found useful; you can read it here.

Mud and Glass is released!

It's here: my new novel, Mud and Glass! It's a roistering adventure, it's a fond and hilarious satire of academia, it's a stirring manifesto of resistance to a nascent totalitarian regime! You can buy it here, or on Amazon (for non-Aussie people). Here's what people have already said about it:


"Mud and Glass is a glorious comedic romp, scything through the sententiousness of the academic world while showcasing modesty, courage and cleverness as virtues. Storytelling rules aren’t so much ignored as imprisoned, beaten up and twisted into outrageous new shapes. Our hero finds love in the arms of a lecturer in the Dramatic Arts — of course she does — but, more importantly, learns to love herself. And through it all Goodin captures perfectly, and with affection, the absurdity of academic life. I’ve not read comedy this clever since Jasper Fforde." — Russell Kirkpatrick, author of the acclaimed science-fiction trilogies Fire of Heaven and Husk

"High jinks in the groves of academe! — concerning matters of tenure, footnotes and postgrad research, along with a secret underground society of librarians, a mysterious Codex in need of a key and an evil Board of Governors seeking total domination of (first) the university and (then) the universe. Shades of Tom Sharpe! A barrel-load of fun!" — Richard Harland, award-winning author of Worldshaker and The Black Crusade

"Adventure, mystery and the quest for permanent tenure. The pace does not let up in this sharp and funny romp through the underfunded halls of research academia." — Shauna O'Meara, Winner of the Writers of the Future Contest and Aurealis-shortlisted writer and artist

I'm really excited! This book was so much fun to write, and I hope it's fun for you to read as well. (For those in Melbourne and environs, it will be launched by Drs Jack Dann and Janeen Webb on Saturday, April 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale Street. You are cordially invited.)