Written in the water

And if the world does not correspond in all respects to our desires, is the fault of science or those who want to impose their wishes on the world?

Carl Sagan

Rodolfo Martinez
The gap in the mirror
Hegemon, Zaragoza, July 2008
ISBN: 978-84-935639-3-6

In general, I am not reviewing things already published more than a polished surface or correction of any errors.

Assertion is not without its funny, because if we think of Sherlock Holmes and the wisdom of the dead, went through a revision and extension when editing Bibliópolis prepared and has been revised again to the issue of Alamut. So one thing is the "general guidelines" that would Barbosa in Pirates of the Caribbean, and another harsh reality.

In any case, as I said elsewhere, I was never quite satisfied with the abyss stares back at you. He felt he could have done better, that there were parts of the story that demanded to be enlarged and even that plot elements that were implicit or were barely mentioned deserved to come back on them and Sachse to light.

That's what I did with The gap in the mirror. The result? About fifty pages that were not in the original version, plus a few specific tweaks here and there. Is it a novel different? Well, yes and no, I guess. Depends how you look at these things.

What does remain is one of my most personal works. Much of my story is encoded in their pages (in a way, I hope, that only those involved in it are able to decipher) and no doubt put a lot of myself in it. Which is not to say that when I write do not put other things, but certainly the level of involvement was higher here than in other cases.

The result still I still love, that mixture of psycho thriller and fantasy novel that is gradually looming and think it's one of my novels more accessible to the general public. At the time went unnoticed (as did the collection when it was published, unfortunately), we'll see if now, with the help of Hegemon editions, is capable of finding a wider audience.

• The gulf is already home
• The gap in the mirror
• Akasa-Puspa (1): Worlds in eternity
• "The Princess Bride" revisited
• The red king's dream

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of one.

Galileo

Rodolfo Martinez
Sherlock Holmes and the heir of one
Alamut, Madrid, June 2008
ISBN: 978-84-9889-008-2

Would be my third novel Sherlock Holmes. And also the last. For those coincidences of life (as I told here) ended up becoming the fourth. And last?

I would say yes, but at this point, of course, I will not dare to be categorical. So I say yes, that is the last, for now.

It has been four years of my life, since I started going to review Sherlock Holmes and the wisdom of the dead for editing Bibliópolis, until Sherlock Holmes and the heir to one in Alamut, the new label of Louis G. Prado.

Obviously, I have not spent those four years entirely devoted to Sherlock Holmes. I've written some other things (several already published, the other, I hope not soon see the light), I have reviewed earlier stuff (The gap in the mirror, for example, although not exclusively), and in general I 've managed to still have time to continue with my life.

But undoubtedly, the presence of Sherlock Holmes (and, above all, the fictional universe that was built around it) has been dominant in the literary sense, during these four years.

And what I feel now that it seems, I have finished my relation to the detective? In some relief. In part release. And partly, I will not deny, rather sorry that things have come to an end.

If they have done, of course. We'll see.

I am aware that there may be people who think they have written these novels and haberles devoted so much of my life, is a task wasteland. A waste of time, in a way. You might think that all that I have dedicated to the character of another, it's time and effort you've taken to work in my own work. In fact, I commented that it in Sherlock Holmes and the mouth of hell (or, more accurately, what did Rodolfo Martinez who translated the novel, that's not me, but a literary character who shares my name and some of my features).

I have that feeling, however. Not losing time, nor the time to be removing my own work. Among other things because these four novels are also my own work. As much mine as it may be the red king's dream, or Los hitmen sky, to name just two.

And on the other hand, these four novels have brought me plenty of perks. Not only for the host, generally favorable, they have had with readers, but because in the purely literary have been, for me, the most satisfying thing I've written. Not to mention that I've thrown them to try new things and techniques and narrative formulas that, for some reason do not fully understand, do not try in my other novels. Well, yes I do: at the end of the day, one of my constant is always looking for a way to have different things that I've previously tested, and no, not for the sake of experimentation, but by pure and simple fear of boredom. However, my Sherlock Holmes novels have been bolder than the rest of my work.

Why? I know, the truth. But throughout the four novels I have time and again embarked in areas not previously explored and, most importantly, I've done without fear and without stopping at the possibility of failure. I think I enjoyed looking for new things so well (completing the stage, looking for new insights provided interest was recreating the universe, trying their luck with ways of telling the story I had not used before, trying to approach the story from new places, metaliterary playing with aspects of the case) that even considered the possibility of crashing in the process.

He did then, of course. Once each novel. Here comes the insecurity: "I worked out well, I've screwed up? But those questions did not exist while writing. ... I think only the euphoria is the word, the result of doing something I liked and enjoyed the feeling of being like a baby every step of the process.

I am of those writers who have a good time with the writing itself (and as good friends, like Juan Miguel Aguilera, tell me that for them the physical act of writing is torture, I confess I am amazed and express my incomprehension) and I think which was in these novels that I enjoyed more. In a way I'm back to being a teenager and I've written without worrying about what might happen, where it was coming or what was meant to accomplish. Just roughing fear was writing. As long ago that I enjoyed.

I again become, in some ways the child you Superman, Phileas Fogg, Zorro, Spiderman, The Black Pirate, Old Shatterhand, D'Artagnan, Tarzan, Tom Sawyer, Michael, the Avengers, Shane, Scaramouche ... and, of course, Sherlock Holmes himself, lived in the same universe at different times or different places, but in the same fictional universe. So that one day I arrived to find desabellado appeared. In fact, I remember when as a child, a friend brought back from Germany the comic with the first meeting between Superman and Spiderman, found nothing strange about that. At best, I wondered how it was that they had not met before, living so close.

I'm back to being that child, he said, and I reconstructed on paper what he had then in my head. Such a universe where everything had a place and anything could happen. And in the process, as I said, I've spent some time as I enjoyed that.

Let it fall into the pernicious vice of self-quotation, and ending with a short paragraph that I included in the acknowledgments of Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone:

Does that mean it's over, no longer write more novels of Sherlock Holmes? It is likely that this is (though not entirely abandoned the idea of a book of stories about the detective, but that's another story).

But, does that mean I'm done with the fictional universe I've been re-created in these four novels? I would say no.

The only question really is when will it. We'll see, I do not think too much longer. I like too be there.

• Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone, I'ma poor lonesome cowboy ...
• Nobody's heir: all good things ...
• There are three no four, say
• Jardiel Poncela and Sherlock Holmes
• Was Sherlock Holmes the thirteenth apostle?

All great truths begin as blasphemies, but not all blasphemies become great truths.

George Bernard Shaw

Rodolfo Martinez
The appreciation of a lady
- Comp (o) ut Leonardo, Semana Negra de Gijón, July 2004
- Maze of Mirrors, Editorial Berenice, 2006

One is working quietly when suddenly the phone call and a familiar voice with a strong Mexican accent, midway between urgency and fun asks for five days before a text about Leonardo da Vinci bound to next draft of the Semana Negra de Gijón. I have total freedom to do whatever he wants, provided that "whatever he wants" to be delivered before the weekend and turn around the figure of the Italian Renaissance artist.

As Les Luthiers say "What stake, what commitment!". Because, let's see, what do I know about Leonardo da Vinci, which was beyond machine designs that were never manufactured, who was an extraordinary painter and his painting is about a woman who does not know very well What are smiles hung in a Paris museum of France?

A white knight in the form of uncontrollable Mieres, came to the rescue. Javier Cuevas gave me an idea for my story about Leonardo. In the beginning was nothing but a joke discreet smile that could arouse the reader or pissed off, depending on the mood of it. But turning it over, which was only a joke, a trivial story, ended up becoming almost a criminal story, black, that considering who would publish the book, was quite adequate.

Thus was born "The appreciation of a lady," a pastime without significance but which I think is performing its function. Besides appearing in the miscellaneous volume Compa (o) ut Leonardo who edited the Semana Negra de Gijón in 2004, was picked up in my second anthology of short stories, Labyrinth of Mirrors.

• Exhuming: 2003-2007
• We're back
• The appreciation of a lady
• Tarot
• Week mediated

It's much, much better to be firmly anchored in the nonsense that go sailing through the troubled sea of thought.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Rodolfo Martinez
Everything flows
- Parsifal 5, 1995
- Seeds of time 1, Bibliópolis Pocket, 2004.
- Maze of Mirrors, Editorial Berenice, 2006

What do you do when you wake up with memories of three seemingly unrelated bits of sleep but surprisingly evocative? You can forget about them, of course. Or you can try to build a frame around the encompassing narrative and sense them.

Throughout my career I have done similar things more than once. The difference with "Everything flows" is normally isolated image was then I suggested a story. In this story, however, was three times (a man waking up next to a pregnant woman whose belly was about a belt with a metallic sheen, other men entering a living room topped by a huge window behind which I saw a forest, and a television report on the remains of a crashed helicopter which then miraculously appeared recomposed) that bore no apparent relation to each other but somehow they were determined to remain in my memory again and again.

The story built around them is undoubtedly one of my strangest tales, with an unmistakable air "Dick's short fiction" that permeates the entire story. When I started writing it did not quite know how to assemble these three pieces as different, but somehow things were fitting, and the story finally makes sense.

When it came time to include it in one of my two anthologies, the most logical thing would have been incorporated into dead ends, which is where I grouped all my science fiction stories. However, in some strange way, it seemed more appropriate for Labyrinth of mirrors, which featured the stories of fantasy, among other things.

• Event Horizon: A Report
• Here, there, everywhere
• Tarot
• In foreign territory
• Exhuming: 1984-1989

The appearance of a ghost is the result of a nervous system disorder, or a vivid imagination, aided by a bit of credulity and carefully mixed with a moderate dose of mental anxiety.

Horace Smith (Paul Chatfield)

Rodolfo Martinez
Here, there, everywhere
- Gigamesh No 34, July 2003
- Maze of Mirrors, Editorial Berenice, 2006

I once said, half seriously, half jokingly, that if I am more or less healthy (mentally) is through literature that has allowed me to exorcise most of my obsessions and dark moments.

"Here, there, everywhere" is a perfect proof of that. Their starting point was a small personal obsession did not grow up worrying because, among other things, I could scan it, enlarge it and take it to its ultimate consequences in story form.

Juanma Santiago was published in the journal Gigamesh and then picked it up in Labyrinth of mirrors, my second anthology of short stories.

It's one of my favorite stories, not just because of everything that has coded autobiography, but by the way it is narrated: everything from the eyes of the victim in this and in the second person singular, is a sort of dress rehearsal a style that later became dominant in my science fiction novel The Dream of the red king.

• Tarot
• Everything flows
• The appreciation of a lady
• Pyrrhic Victory
• In foreign territory

I would not have the slightest scruple to renounce my atheism, the day before the eyes of all men that inhabit the Earth, God appeared to me crying with a loud voice, "Why do you persist in both deny my existence? .

Norbert Hanson

Rodolfo Martinez
Through the desert
- Utopiae 2002, Libraire l'Atalante, 2002.
- Asimov 6, Madrid, March 2004.
- Dead ends, Editorial Berenice, 2005
- Dimension Espagne, Riviere Blanche, 2007

A few years ago, I wrote a story destined for the contest "Antonio Machado", sponsored by the Railways RENFE. Among the competition rules, a warning that the story should revolve around trains.

I wrote a story based purely on the images and force, more or less, that they may have. Nothing to write home about, really: the last train ultratecnológico touring again and again without stopping dead and barren land in which does not gather or collect ever, any passenger. Although, as I said, the idea was not much I liked the image of desolation and futility that entailed.

It won the contest and languished for several years in a drawer, until those responsible for the anthology Utopiae (through the charming and efficient Sylvie Miller) has contacted me and requested that story, among the many that I had sent him Sylvie in her day.

So, once again, raised a son killed before my eyes, but this time he did a strange and speaking a language that was not with his birth. Strange, sometimes even uncomfortable, but fascinating.

A couple of years later. Domingo Santos would be interested in the story and it would, at last, in the Spanish edition of the magazine pages Asimov. It passed, of course, my anthology of dead ends. And like "The Road" was recorded in Dimension Espagne, the Spanish sci-fi anthology that Sylvie Miller prepared for the French market.

• Dimension Espagne
• The road
• From the land beyond the forest
• The robot
• Everything flows

The facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that is remotely true!

Homer Simpson

Rodolfo Martinez
Sherlock Holmes and the mouth of hell
Fantastic Bibliópolis, Madrid, June 2007
ISBN: 978-84-96173-79-8

I have spoken a few times in my relationship with the creations of Arthur Conan Doyle. In this blog, in fact, you can find a few entries on the subject. So try not to repeat too much.

While writing Sherlock Holmes and the traces of the poet had in mind then no one, there was no plan to continue writing about the detective from Baker Street. I had gone very well, more than ten years ago, writing "The wisdom of the dead" and this new novel I was having better and also allowed me to explore a different from the usual Holmes, an old man, maybe a little cynical about himself and his extraordinary abilities. It also allowed me to try a few things I had not done before, not knowing whether or not get to arrive safely to port, and the truth is that it was exciting to do so, jump without a net, in a way.

It was after the novel was finished and already in press when I thought I had tried to Holmes in his maturity and old age and therefore would have some logic that now present in his youth.

I started mulling over several ideas and was quick to germinate in my mind a new story. I even had title and everything: Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone. I started writing it and, damn, that worked: the story flowed well, tell it how I liked and things were falling into place as they should.

But is not that novel of'm talking about.

Because at the end of 2006 I was invited, using the Portuguese version of Sherlock Holmes and the wisdom of the dead, the Fantastic Forum Portugal. I've talked about these days in Lisbon and its surroundings elsewhere. And I told my visit to Boca do Inferno. The truth is that the place imposed. And the false plate in which he spoke of suicide attempts of Aleister Crowley in this place began to turn the levers and warning lights turn on in my head.

I returned to Spain with the embryo of a new Sherlock Holmes story. I resisted a little writing, yes. I had to focus, I said, my priority was to Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone and that mental excrescence that had just emerged (and I say, give as much to a story) should not stand in their way.

But he did. I could not stop thinking about it, thinking it over, play with the idea again and again. Little by little I unthreaded the skein of history and I realized that it was a novel at hand, not a story that not only fit with my other novels but Sherlock Holmes was the perfect bridge to the next, well to let me explain some of the plot inconsistencies that had arisen between the first and second and explore in greater detail several secondary characters he created for them.

Sherlock Holmes was born and the mouth of hell. A novel that has a lot of "look between racks" to what happened in Sherlock Holmes and the traces of the poet. It narrates much of what happened in the world while the detective was engaged in hunting especially in the Spanish Civil War and, incidentally, extends the story beyond a few years until the completion of the plot which had begun in 1895 with the theft of the Necronomicon, while advance some of the elements that appear in more detail in Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone.

Does that mean that the novel is meaningless by itself, which is more than just a bridge between the previous and following? I think not that the story is enjoyable and understandable without knowledge of my other Sherlock Holmes novels. No doubt will have read the panorama of history is wider and is more complete, but I tried to Sherlock Holmes and the mouth of hell itself had entity.

That, of course, is up to readers to judge, not mine. Although the reactions of some people who read this novel without having read the previous (and in some cases without having read any of the above) I think I succeeded in my attempt.

• There are three no four, say
• Sherlock Holmes and the heir to anyone, I'ma poor lonesome cowboy ...
• A third time lucky not
• Sherlock Holmes and the wisdom of the dead
• Sherlock Holmes and the traces of the poet

All great truths begin as blasphemies, but not all blasphemies become great truths.

George Bernard Shaw

The video quality is not much, but given the night and we talked about the camera of my Nokia N70, then we will not ask for more.

But then, as evidence and as premiere of this new section, here goes. A minute or so, of fireworks tonight in Gijon. As one would expect, the most spectacular began shortly after the end of recording. The life that has these things.

• Metaphors
• "Third time's the charm?
• Interview in "Lecturalia"
• Quotable quotes: The Man Who Would Be King
• Coda

Life is just a momentary glimpse of the wonders of this amazing universe, and it is sad that so many are wasting the dream of spiritual fantasies.

Carl Sagan

Rodolfo Martinez
With loaded dice
-2001 No. 6, September / October 2002
- Dead ends, Editorial Berenice, 2005

One afternoon, during the half-sleep, I started mulling over an idea of time travel: in principle not seem like much. Two men sitting at a table talking, one of them had built a time machine and the other who was the narrator, trying to convince him to destroy it. But the idea kept turning in my head and grew with each new twist until it finally fell into the claws of a nap.

On awakening I wrote the first version of "With loaded dice" practically in one sitting. I sent it to true and boundless enthusiasm (he was my first science fiction pure and lasts more than six or seven years) to my friends and Juanma Barranquero Gorinkai. They both liked it, but something about the way it was narrated that did not quite convince completely. Reviewing the story I realized they were right and completely redo it, I changed the narrative point of view and incorporated the story a third person who saw and was told what was happening. Finally, with the help of Christopher Perez-Castejon, I gave him a touch (not all that rigorous Cris would have liked, I'm sure) the technical and scientific aspects of the story.

After that the story was ready for publication and shortly after Luis Garcia Prado magazine accepted it for 2001, which number six would see the light and subsequently reprinted in my anthology of dead ends.

It's one of my favorite stories, perhaps largely because it came at a time when it had almost stopped writing short stories. And also, no doubt because it is science fiction and also plays a subject that I liked as a reader but I had never faced before as a writer: a journey through time.

• The road
• A lone rider
• With loaded dice
• From the land beyond the forest
• Raven, plus jamais

A sure sign of the love of truth, is not keeping any proposition with greater assurance of guaranteeing the evidence on which it relies.

John Locke

Rodolfo Martinez
The road
"Parsifal 2, 1993
-2001 Number 1, November 2001
"Galaxies 33, Summer 2004.
- Dead ends, Editorial Berenice, 2005
- Dimension Espagne, Riviere Blanche, 2007

Back in 1989, and greatly influenced by the reading of Portico, Pohl, wrote a story about a man who walked a road on a planet endless absurdity. The story would be published in the fanzine Parsifal my countryman and friend Jose Luis Rendueles and subsequent years, would be remembered as one of my science fiction stories more satisfying. In fact, it would be reissued in the first issue of 2001, the magazine that Louis G. Prado went to Sirius equipment for some years.

The idea of the planet would still spinning in my head and some months later became the embryo of my novella "The alphabet of the carpenter," which in reality is part of a larger cycle which I have given the name of the carpenter and rain, consisting of three stories (the three set in my universe of Drimer) that have some relevance argument, conceptual and environment. These would be "A hole where the rain seeps," "The Road" and "The alphabet of the carpenter" and hopefully someday find a publisher for the book that collects.

"A hole dondese neck the Rain" and "The alphabet of the carpenter" are perhaps my stories wildest science fiction, and certainly the most influenced by the irrationality of Philip K. Dick. “La carretera” iba por otros derroteros, pese a compartir elementos de escenario y tema con las otras dos. It was little more than a narrative experiment. Based on a simple premise (a man travels a road without end on an unknown planet) tried to see where I was and, incidentally, encoding part of my life in history. The result was not entirely unsatisfactory and even today, more than eighteen years later, the story I still operational.

Also my second story has been translated into French under the title "route". Again, read my French has certainly been a disturbing experience. Along with "Il traverse le désert" would be collected in the anthology that Sylvie Miller Dimension Espagne prepared for the editorial Riviere Blanche.

• Through the desert
• The alphabet of the carpenter
• Dimension Espagne
• Exhuming: 1984-1989
• Drimer. Part II: The Age of Expansion