Jared Oliver Adams Weighs In

…on the genre conversation regarding his story, Whiteface.

I asked Mr. Adams what genre he considered Whiteface to be.  His answer is below:

I'm intrigued by this question. I've actually spent some time thinking about it myself, because I submitted it to Writers of the Future and wondered if they perceived it as "not-fantasy-enough."

But, I'm a teacher, so I'll answer your question with another question. If you stripped George R R Martin's Westeros of its magic, would "Song of Ice and Fire" still be fantasy?

To me, the magic element in SoIaF is the least compelling part of his work (well, besides the explicit sex scenes), so I'm perhaps biased in this particular case. But, I think the fantasy element comes primarily in the world he built, the history and cultures. Because that's essentially a speculative, fantastical thing, building a world.

So, in that sense, I would call "Whiteface" fantasy, because the cultures never existed in reality. But then, maybe we need some more distinctive labels, because it's not fantasy in the same way "Way of Kings" is fantasy. I didn't recreate the physical laws that govern the world like Sanderson did. I aimed for a particular historical period, and set it in this world, then built my society.

I’ll just point out (to Mr. Eric Jerkface Stone) that the…authoritative answer is “fantasy.” 

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

Genre Musings and Whiteface

One afternoon, ensconced in the posh InterGalactic Medicine Show offices, fellow Assistant Editor Eric James Stone and I fell into a disagreement.

“What genre is Jared Oliver Adams’s Whiteface?” he asked.

I put a dollop of caviar on a slice of baguette while I considered his question.  “Historical fantasy.  Historical because it presents a culture similar to a primitive culture that might be found on Earth.  Fantasy, because even though they are humans, and their culture is analogous of a number of pre-historical societies, they are not factual.”

He mumbled something and fetched some crab dip.  He spread it on a Ritz cracker.  Plebian, I thought.  There are slices of crusty ciabatta right next to the dip.  Might as well put it on Goldfish as put it on an abomination like a Ritz cracker.

“It’s sociological science fiction,” he declared at last, crumbs tumbling from his lips, sprinkling his goatee.  And the divan I was stretched out upon.

I looked at him.  He blinked at me.  He did not offer to pick up the crumbs.

I signaled the maid.  While she swept up his mess, I asked, “How do you figure it’s science fiction?  There’s no science in it.”

“Anthropology is a science.  Certainly knowledge of previous cultures plays a part in Whiteface.”

“Anthropology isn’t at the center of the story.  Anyway, science fiction has rivets; fantasy has trees.  There are trees in Whiteface; there are no rivets.  Ergo…”

“That’s simplistic,” Eric James Stone said.  With his mouth full of crab dip and crackers.  “It’s a what-if story about human culture, and the culture does play a central part of the story.”

“All fiction is a what-if story about human culture,” the maid said.

We stared at her silently until she left.

“All fiction is a what-if story,” I said, resuming the conversation.  “It being a what-if story doesn’t make it science fiction.  If the beings depicted in Whiteface were described as aliens, then it would be science fiction.”

“The culture is alien.”

"The culture isn’t science.” I took a sip of aqua gassata.  “If Otter had made a point of studying other cultures in a kind of…nascent anthropology then maybe you could call Whiteface science fiction because science would be at the heart of the story.  But no—instead, the story focuses on the human connections between Otter, his wife, his son, their tribe, and the enemies of the tribe.”

“By that definition, the only science fiction is hard science fiction.”

“By your definition, some Westerns are science fiction.  For Pete’s sake, Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear is science fiction!”

From there, the conversation devolved into fisticuffs.  An hour later as I held a nicely aged, perfectly marbled New York strip to my eye, and Eric swallowed mouthfuls of crème brulee to get his adam’s apple back in place, he said slowly,

“I seem to recall you once said that Monster Hunters International is science fiction.”

At least his mouth wasn’t full this time.  “Yes,” I said.  “Because of the focus on weapons  technology and the pseudo-scientific nature of the way Correia’s protagonists approach hunting them.”  I neglected to mention that I never actually finished MHI…

“And you think Peter Beagle’s Trinity County, CA is also science fiction.”

“Yes, and for the same reason.”

He shook his head.  “You are a moron.”

I threw my New York strip at him.

Nanoparticle Jive—Tomas Martin

I started writing the story that would later become 'Nanoparticle Jive' when I was halfway through my PhD in nanophysics at the University of Bristol. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the work that goes into a doctorate, but over the course of three hard years I gradually came to refine my definition of a PhD as a 'voluntary nervous breakdown with graphs'.

Research is a gruelling process that often requires long hours trying to make your experiment work, but it is the existential angst of not knowing  the right answer  that really got to me. When you start a science PhD, you are given a task - some small aspect of science that is unknown, no one knows how to solve it and it's your job to go away for 3 or 4 years and work it out. I was lucky enough to finish in just over three years, but I know people whose doctorate took far longer.

I studied physics at the university of Bristol, England, and started a PhD because it was related to a field I was extremely passionate about - solar power. My task was to research the modification of artificial diamond crystals with lithium, in order to make a semiconductor that could potentially generate electricity from heat. The eventual plan was to concentrate sunlight onto these crystals using large mirrors, giving a more scalable solution to concentrated solar power than the existing water-based turbine systems being built in deserts around the world.

Although using diamond sounds like it should be some expensive boondoggle, it is only natural, dug-up diamond that is expensive. In labs such as the one I worked in, it is possible to grow artificial diamond on a fairly cost-effective basis, using high pressures and temperatures to compress graphite, or growing diamond films using gas phase chemistry. For the first few years, the problem seemed impossible. I had many experiments that did nothing, and many days where I'd be in the lab for 10 or 12 hours without achieving anything.

I've always been a writer alongside being a scientist, and began to make my first few breakthroughs into the professional SF short fiction market as I began my PhD. The challenges of balancing slaving away in the lab on tiny slices of diamond in vacuum chambers with coming home and being creative was an interesting one. On the one hand, writing science fiction was a great outlet for my frustrations at the end of the day, but on the other hand the creative demands of trying to solve what seemed an insurmountable challenge at times left me drained of any desire to write. I was caught between two masters - science and art.

'Nanoparticle Jive' was a story that evolved out of that conflict. I'd already jotted down a few notes about the other part of the story - the reputation based economy, based on a short little story about the future of social networks. It also linked back into ideas I'd been reading about sustainability, the environment, and the economy, such as efforts by Nobel prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz and others to use something other than GDP to measure progress in a way that better reflected the world's needs. It seemed to me that social networks and the way the popularity of people on places like twitter and the blogosphere could easily work as a social currency, especially in a world where global warming and peak resources restrict the amount the economy can grow. People require such things as a sign of their status in the world, and even if the money dried up and capitalism struggled to a halt, I thought that those people who find their way into careers like investment banking would find other ways to get to the top of the status pile - which is where the idea of a reputation based economy emerged.

I began a story along similar lines, about a kid who is desperately trying to escape the poverty of his family upbringing by gaining reputation and becoming a famous DJ. The story had some game, it flowed nicely, but when I got about a third in, I ran out of steam. I needed more conflict to drive the story, something to give the main character Brendan a real choice. My fellow writers on the writers' forum Codex helped a lot to point this out when I had the story out for critique.

The struggles I was experiencing in my PhD naturally presented themselves as a solution. I began to craft that conflict between art and science into the main story, detailing Brendan's struggle to choose between selling himself out to gain the reputation he craves or pursuing an exciting scientific project. Once I had that conflict in place, the story fell into place, and I'm very happy with the result. I think it's one of my best works, and I hope you'll agree.

I received my doctorate in early October 2011, and left academia for a career in the renewable industry, where I can work hard in the day towards an achievable goal and still come home with enough brain space to write. A month later, this story was published in IGMS. That seems strangely fitting to the themes presented in 'Nanoparticle Jive.' In a way, I've made the opposite choice to Brendan about what I want from my life, choosing my art over science. In my case, I don't feel like I'm selling myself out. It's more like coming home.

--Tomas Martin

Under the Surface—Nina Kiriki Hoffman

I was taking a master writing class from Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch over on the Oregon coast, and one of our assignments was to write a story about a tsunami.  In Lincoln City, there are a number of blue Tsunami warning signs along the highway and the beach.  I did library research on tsunamis, and I also wandered the town, wondering what it would be like if a big wave rolled partway through it.

I had also been thinking about an offshoot branch of the magical family from my Chapel Hollow series.  Many members of this family have elemental powers.

I put the two together.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the assignment finished by the class deadline (I think we had two days to write it), but I did finish it.  "Under the Surface" is the result.

--Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Counterclockwise—Alethea Kontis

I had a dream last night that I attended NY Comic Con. It was a very nice dream. I lay in bed for a while after that dream, smiling. Eventually, I started thinking about all the work I had to do today: like writing the genesis essay for "Counterclockwise." I've been looking forward to this, because I had some great seeds for this one. You know, it's funny that we call them "seeds." One seed grows a plant. But a story is not just a plant. It usually takes many seeds that grow a story. The better analogy would be to liken a short story to a container garden...and something like the Ender series would be the pre-revolutionary grounds at Versailles.

So here are the fun little seeds that grew my pretty little container garden labeled "Counterclockwise":

SEED 1: A PENGUIN

"Counterclockwise" was originally written for the Codex Writers 2009 Halloween contest. (I tied for 3^rd place with Cat Rambo, losing to James Maxey. Again.) As you may or may not know, this particular contest is one that starts with one member giving another member a "seed" that he or she must incorporate into the story. Coming up with the seed is one of the best parts of this challenge. Receiving your challenge is the next best. Sometimes, the more complicated the seed, the easier the story is to write. My seed for this story was: In some way, shape or form, your story must involve a penguin. This didn't give me much to go on, but in many ways left me free to write a story I'd been dying to get on paper. That particular story was:

SEED 2: THE DREAM

As mentioned previously, I do have some pretty spectacular dreams. I wish I could record them and share them with you, because writing never does them justice. I've fought scorpion monsters and serial killers (and invisible Aliens alongside Luke Skywalker!), I've woken from a dream within a dream within a dream (worried that one would be reality and I'd wake up from that too), I've died several times (by fire, firearms, and an atomic bomb), and I've met some of the most amazing people (like an artist and his wife from Italy, and a monk whose gorgeous poem I totally plagiarized). I have the best Premium Channel in the world, and it's all in my head.

Prior to the Halloween contest I'd had this dream, of which I only vividly remember the very end. It was a well-dressed man in a pub of some sort, holding a white glove. He was meeting a beautiful young woman who sat at a table there. She did not recognize this man, even though he held her glove in his hand as proof that they'd known each other. I was hit with an incredible sadness as I realized: they live in opposing timelines, and this is the last time he will see her.

Yes, before you ask, this was long before the most recent season of Doctor Who. And no, I have never read The Time Traveler's Wife. Sometimes ideas--even the really cool ones--are just ideas. But I knew I had to write about these people, their incredible love, and that incredible sadness. Somehow. In some setting. That setting was:

SEED 3: DIANA WYNNE JONES

Ever since I read Witch Week as a kid (which I enjoyed far more than the first Harry Potter novel, btw), I have been obsessed with Guy Fawkes Day. I have always wanted to be in England on Bonfire Night--someday I still mean to go. Witch Week, if you haven't read it (and you really should) is based on an alternate present where Guy Fawkes successfully blew up Parliament in 1605, and in doing so split reality into a World That Could Do Magic and a World That Could Not.

I did some extensive Googling of the subject (as we authors tend to do nowadays) and discovered Change and Continuity in Early Cosmology by Patrick J. Boner. In it, Boner discusses at length the birth of a new star in 1604, the celestial "Fiery Trigon" that resulted, and Johannes Kepler's thoughts and debates about how this unique alignment of stars affected the social consciousness of the time. (It is speculated that a Fiery Trigon also occurred during the rise of Charlemagne, and appeared at the birth of Christ as the Star of Bethlehem.) I was fascinated by the whole thing. I lost hours upon hours on the internet. And yes, I do still have a sick desire to get my nerdy hands on a translated copy of Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum.

So: IF the Gunpowder Plot had been successful, in the presence of this Fiery Trigon, it stands to reason that something celestially and psychologically cataclysmic could have happened, like the world splitting into two. Perhaps it DID, and we found a way to fix it. Perhaps, instead of a World With Magic and a World Without, it split a pocket of London off into two worlds: one that lived forwards, and one that lived backwards in time.

What would these Secondary and Tertiary Universes look like? Would they have the same technological development as British Prime? No way, my worlds would definitely be a little more Steampunk. But my story would not be a story about the worlds. This was a love story. And thusly, "Counterclockwise" was born.

If "Counterclockwise" is like anything, I'd say that it feels most like Somewhere in Time. That soft-focus feeling is the feeling I had while having the dream. I remember loving that film, but I haven't seen it in years. I know, I should really read Bid Time Return one of these days.

Coincidentally, Matheson's Bid Time Return won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel right around Halloween-time back in 1976...the year I was born. I wonder what exactly the stars were doing back then.

Happy Bonfire Night, everyone!

[PS - If you liked "Counterclockwise" and want to read more, there is a deleted scene which I will post in a password-protected blog on my website on Guy Fawkes Day. The password is what the denizens of Nodnol (Tertiary Universe) are called.]

--Alethea Kontis

IGMS #25, Letter From the Editor

Welcome to issue 25 of IGMS.

There's so much to tell I hardly know where to begin, but let's start with the schedule, since this issue is 30 days later than expected. For a variety of reasons, we've permanently shifted our schedule, so from now on issues will be published for January, March, May, July, September, and November. Issue 25 being published as the November issue instead of the October issue is simply to reflect that new schedule and shouldn't affect your subscription in any way. In the unlikely event that it does, please let us know immediately and we will take care of it.

In addition to being the beginning of our new schedule, issue 25 also marksIGMS's 6^th anniversary. Six years! Wow. That makes me optimistic that this whole internet publishing thing might be for real. What next? Electronic versions of whole entire books? (Kidding. We know THAT will never happen.)

Speaking of books, within the next few weeks we'll also be celebrating the release of the InterGalactic Awards Anthology - Vol. 1. It's a collection of the winners of the 2010 IGMS InterGalactic Awards Reader's Poll (both the stories and the artwork), plus popular stories from the years before the award was launched. Edited by Orson Scott Card and yours truly (Ed Schubert) and featuring an all new introduction by Peter S. Beagle, InterGalactic Awards Anthology - Vol. 1 will be available from Spotlight Publishing shortly after Thanksgiving.

Getting back to our 6^th anniversary issue, we're pleased to bring you the following:

Cover story "Under the Surface" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (which is also our audio story, read by IGMS regular, Tom Barker). "Under the Surface" tells the tale of a young girl from a family with powers tied to nature, and how a monumental natural disaster forces her to make choices and grow up faster than anyone could have predicted.

"Walks Before Greatness" by Kate Marshall is a fantasy tale about a young girl who struggles as she literally Walks-Before-Greatness (her older sister) and how this young girl comes to peace with her role in the world.

"Nanoparticle Jive" by Tomas Martin is a near-future sf story about a graduate student in the sciences who learns a few things about the power -- good and bad -- of social media.

"Counterclockwise" by Alethea Kontis (our resident princess and book-reviewer) is a timetwistedsteampunklovestory (yes, that's all supposed to be one word) that also turns out to be a yrostevolknupmaetsdetsiwtemit. (You could sit here and try to puzzle that out or you could just go enjoy the story.)

Part Two of "Whiteface" by Jared Adams concludes the novelette started in issue 24; it's about a father's quest to find a place in the world for his son, a son who repeatedly chooses the path of the outcast, first as an unknowing child, but also later in life with the full knowledge of not only the ramifications of his choices, but the full knowledge of his father's displeasure with those choices.

Darrell Schweitzer interviews John Clute, whose articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1970s. Clute is co-editor ofThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with Peter Nicholls) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (with John Grant), as well as The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction, all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Non-Fiction.

Last, but by no means least, we bring you part two of our sneak-peek at Orson Scott Card's forthcoming novella Shadows In Flight, a direct sequel to his hugely popular novel, Shadow of the Giant. Shadows In Flight is due out from Tor in January of 2012, but IGMS is previewing it, presenting chapter one in the last issue, and chapter two in this issue.

And as we go into 2012, be on the lookout for more new features from IGMS. Details are still being finalized, but we are looking at a variety of ideas to bring you even more content in each and every issue, with no increase in the cost of a subscription. More great stories, more great articles, more great greatness -- all for the same low price. Stay tuned!

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

P.S. As usual, we've collected essays from the authors in this issue and will post them on our blog (www.SideShowFreaks.blogspot.com) Feel free to drop by and catch The Story Behind The Stories, where the authors talk about the creation of their tales.

Delayed Publication

It is my sad task to let you know that between the werewolves, love-sick androids, extra-dimensional Seelie Courts, paranormal toddlers, and Eric James Stone, we at InterGalactic Medicine Show have fallen behind.

Issue #25 will be out in November; the new publication schedule will be Nov./Jan./March/May/July/Sept.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor IGMS

Intergalactic Medicine Show #25

Issue #25 is forthcoming; we’ve got some details to flesh out before it’s newstandworthy, but I can give you three words:

Nina.  Kiriki.  Hoffman.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

On TV: A Strange World

The best new television show this fall features the following elements:

1) An alien world filled with danger.

2) Beautiful people with tortured pasts.

3) An ever-present threat from an autocratic society.

4) The absolute lack of dinosaurs.

That’s right—this fall’s best new TV show (so far) is ABC’s Revenge.  Set in the Hamptons, it features Emily VanCamp as the radiant and vengeful Amanda Clarke/Emily Thorne, and the matriarchal and proud Madeleine Stowe as the primary antagonist, Victoria Grayson.  The set up is thus: Amanda’s dad was a financial wiz who got framed for providing dollars to support a terrorist organization that blew up an airplane.  Amanda grew up without her dad, but believed his innocence.  Dad leaves her notes and clues about who did him in, but begs her not to take revenge; she ignores him and goes about dismantling the lives of all the people who did her and her family wrong.

Stowe is chilling as “Queen Victoria,” the ruler and authority figure of her little world.  Sure, the men make the money, but everyone knows, from the very first minutes of the show, who the real power house is: it’s the Lady.  She is fiercely protective of her clan, and utterly nasty in exiling those who’ve wronged her.  But we see the cost of her power—she is estranged from everyone.  Despite how she rules them, it is a rulership of fear and pressure.

VanCamp’s Emily Thorne evokes Veronica Mars.  She is competent, driven, and a bit ruthless.  The people she’s doing in deserve their fate.  Emily is as chilling as Victoria, in her way—we are left wondering how much of her smile is façade, and how soon that façade will break.

It’s a delicious quandry to be in.

The writing is well done and feels authentic.  The people act like people instead of stupid plot devices.  The world is truly another world, as foreign to me as a jungle full of savage, grunting thunder-lizards.  (Victoria Grayson would rip those mealy-mouthed predators to shreds with a single disapproving glance.)  But nevertheless, it’s a satisfying weekly journey so far. 

If you’re looking for strong characters and an engaging plot, Revenge is a dish you’ll savor.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

Under The Shield—Stephen Kotowych

 

The genesis of “Under the Shield” was my own realization that I knew far too much about Nikola Tesla.

I’ve been writing a novel that involves Nikola Tesla, so I’ve read pretty much every biography of Tesla over the last couple of years (as a former grad student in History, I feel uncomfortable unless I can cite my sources.) So given the chance, I will talk your ear off about the man, and what a tragedy it is that he and his scientific accomplishment are not better known. He should be mentioned in the same breath as Einstein and Thomas Edison as a giant who helped shape the modern world (the phrase used by several of his biographers—that Tesla invented the 20th Century—is not far off.) Yet if Tesla is remembered at all today it’s more for eccentricity than electricity (he gave the world alternating current, amongst other innovations.)

Now, I won’t deny that Tesla had his peculiarities. He really did have phobias and neuroses focused on (amongst other things) human hair and pearls on women, as I mention in the story. And Tesla didn’t do his legacy any favors toward the end of his life when, once a year on his birthday, he would invite reporters to interview him. The newsmen were rewarded with fantastic headlines about Tesla’s theory on how to split the world in two like an egg using its own resonance, or the death ray he’d been tinkering with, which would end war for all time.

These interviews would invariably end with Tesla’s assurances that the designs were complete, the testing almost finished, and that all he needed was funding to make the devices into practical realities (Tesla was forever in need of cash—making and spending several fortunes in his life, before dying utterly destitute in 1943.)

So I realized that I knew all this stuff about him, much of which wouldn’t even feature in the novel. What do you do with that as a writer? A short story, of course.

What would have happened, I wondered, if Tesla had found the money he said he needed? What if his backer had all the money in the world—the United States military—and began to develop his fantastic technologies. How would the world have changed?

The departure point that starts off this alternate history is the explosion in Siberia’s Tunguska river valley in 1908. Now, the incident was likely caused by the air burst of a meteoroid or comet fragment (some have theorized a small black hole collapsing) but in the darker corners of the internet (the moon-landing-was-a-hoax-fluoride-in-tap-water-is-CIA-mind-control kind of corners) people have postulated that the Tunguska explosion was a test of Tesla’s death ray. And if it had been, I wondered, what would
have been the result?

The rest of the story unfolded from there.

As I wrote and began to work out the implications of my “What if?” I noticed certain patterns emerging in the story that to my mind echoed not only the Cold War, but also the War on Terror. The novel I’m writing about Tesla also involves his close friend Mark Twain, and I was reminded of his quote that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

So “Under the Shield” tries to examine some of the motivations of those who employ terror as a weapon, and of those who sympathize with them; of those who might be radicalized by geo-political circumstances; of those people who suffer an unjust assumption of guilt-by-association, simply because they share the same ethnicity or religion as those we call our enemies. And I wanted to try and find out how it feels to be torn between feelings of duty and loyalty to two opposing worlds, and what it’s like to consider doing the wrong thing for the right reason.

Once you’ve had a chance to read the story I hope you’ll be in touch at my blog (http://kotowych.blogspot.com/) and let me know how you think I did.

- Stephen Kotowych

Under the Shield—Stephen Kotowych

The genesis of “Under the Shield” was my own realization that I knew
far too much about Nikola Tesla.

I’ve been writing a novel that involves Nikola Tesla, so I’ve read
pretty much every biography of Tesla over the last couple of years (asa former grad student in History, I feel uncomfortable unless I can
cite my sources.) So given the chance, I will talk your ear off about
the man, and what a tragedy it is that he and his scientific accomplishment are not better known. He should be mentioned in the same breath as Einstein and Thomas Edison as a giant who helped shape the modern world (the phrase used by several of his biographers—that Tesla invented the 20th Century—is not far off.) Yet if Tesla is remembered at all today it’s more for eccentricity than electricity (he gave the world alternating current, amongst other innovations.)

Now, I won’t deny that Tesla had his peculiarities. He really did have
phobias and neuroses focused on (amongst other things) human hair and pearls on women, as I mention in the story. And Tesla didn’t do his legacy any favors toward the end of his life when, once a year on his birthday, he would invite reporters to interview him. The newsmen were rewarded with fantastic headlines about Tesla’s theory on how to split the world in two like an egg using its own resonance, or the death ray he’d been tinkering with, which would end war for all time.

These interviews would invariably end with Tesla’s assurances that the designs were complete, the testing almost finished, and that all he
needed was funding to make the devices into practical realities (Tesla
was forever in need of cash—making and spending several fortunes in
his life, before dying utterly destitute in 1943.)

So I realized that I knew all this stuff about him, much of which
wouldn’t even feature in the novel. What do you do with that as a
writer? A short story, of course.

What would have happened, I wondered, if Tesla had found the money he said he needed? What if his backer had all the money in the world—the United States military—and began to develop his fantastic
technologies. How would the world have changed?

The departure point that starts off this alternate history is the
explosion in Siberia’s Tunguska river valley in 1908. Now, the
incident was likely caused by the air burst of a meteoroid or comet
fragment (some have theorized a small black hole collapsing) but in
the darker corners of the internet (the moon-landing-was-a-hoax-fluoride-in-tap-water-is-CIA-mind-control kind of corners) people have postulated that the Tunguska explosion was a test of Tesla’s death ray. And if it had been, I wondered, what would have been the result?

The rest of the story unfolded from there.

As I wrote and began to work out the implications of my “What if?” I
noticed certain patterns emerging in the story that to my mind echoed not only the Cold War, but also the War on Terror. The novel I’m writing about Tesla also involves his close friend Mark Twain, and was reminded of his quote that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it
does rhyme.

So “Under the Shield” tries to examine some of the motivations of
those who employ terror as a weapon, and of those who sympathize with them; of those who might be radicalized by geo-political
circumstances; of those people who suffer an unjust assumption of
guilt-by-association, simply because they share the same ethnicity or
religion as those we call our enemies. And I wanted to try and find
out how it feels to be torn between feelings of duty and loyalty to
two opposing worlds, and what it’s like to consider doing the wrong
thing for the right reason.

Once you’ve had a chance to read the story I hope you’ll be in touch
at my blog (http://kotowych.blogspot.com/) and let me know how you think I did.

- Stephen Kotowych

What Happened At Blessing Creek- Naomi Kritzer

"Will the government make these Indians go west?"

"Yes," Pa said. "When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west, any time now. That's why we're here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now do you understand?"

"Yes, Pa," Laura said. "But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won't it make the Indians mad to have to--"

"No more questions, Laura," Pa said, firmly. "Go to sleep."

--Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

I loved the Little House books as a kid.

I was never particularly into the TV show (I was a literary purist: if Michael Landon wanted to play Pa, he needed to grow a beard, as far as I was concerned) but I read and re-read the books. I played pioneers in the back yard with friends, fantasized about having an attic with pumpkins for chairs, and coveted the prairie-style dresses some of my classmates had (even though I mostly refused to wear dresses; costuming was a whole different matter).

Then I had kids of my own, started acquiring a book collection filled with the classics of my childhood, and re-read them.

These books are a whole different experience when you read them as an adult. The parents are shockingly dysfunctional: Ma openly favors Mary, and Pa openly favors Laura. During one of their moves, Laura and her cousin go to pick up laundry from a laundress who tells them that her thirteen-year-old daughter has just gotten married. (To be fair, Laura is also shocked by this.) When Laura is fifteen, she's sent to live with an unhinged and homicidal woman while teaching school to kids almost as old as she is; she rides home with Almanzo on those long, cold winter rides (on one of which she nearly freezes to death) because she's in literal fear for her life.

And then there's Little House on the Prairie. Pretty much the entire book of Little House on the Prairie.

Pa moves into Indian Country -- knowingly and deliberately. This is land he's not supposed to settle on because it belongs to other people. He builds his house next to "some old trail" (which turns out to be a heavily used Osage trail -- who ever could have predicted such a shocking outcome?) I had remembered the scene where Indians come into Laura's house, but re-reading it as an adult, I picked up on a detail I had missed as a child: "The Indians' ribs made little ridges up their bare sides." She is describing men who are starving to death, and in fact, the Indians came in to demand that Caroline cook them some cornbread. They eat it, take Pa's tobacco, and leave without further incident. Why were these men so hungry? Because their uninvited neighbors were burning their fields in an attempt to intimidate them into leaving their land.

Not long after I re-read the books, I stumbled across a website called Oyate.com that critiques portrayals of Native Americans in children's literature. At the time, they had some very specific critiques of a number of different books, including Little House on the Prairie. They also discussed the problems with "captivity novels" (which I'd also loved as a kid -- these are the books where a white kid, usually a girl, is kidnapped and held hostage by an Indian tribe for months or years).

There are all sorts of other ways to get it wrong: there are also the books where the Indians are the mysterious and stoic dispensers of wisdom -- Yoda with a feathered head-dress. There's also the story where the hapless local tribes are in danger and are saved by the timely intervention of the (white) protagonist. (Both Caddie Woodlawn and one of the Great Brain books use that plotline.)

I pondered this for a bit, then set it aside. Until 2009.

The *plan* is for it to be a settling the frontier book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna).
--Patricia C. Wrede, while working on The Thirteenth Child

In 2009, The Thirteenth Child came out to mostly positive reviews...and a whole bunch of controversy. Wrede tried to avoid all the various bad options by removing Native Americans from the equation entirely, and writing about an American continent without them. Given the generations of effort white people put into removing Native Americans from the continent, this was seen by many people as a problematic solution, at best, to the question of how to write about the frontier.

This started me thinking, again, about all the wrong ways to do it. The problem is that the process of colonizing the Americas was ugly. Stunningly, shockingly ugly. Horrifying even by the standards of the day: "I fought through the War Between the States," wrote a Georgia soldier who participated in the Cherokee Trail of Tears, "and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew." Whitewashing this history is profoundly dishonest. Pretending that the Native Americans were the bad guys is profoundly dishonest. How do you write about the frontier from the white perspective while acknowledging the basic horror of what white people did?

WHAT THESE PEOPLE NEED IS A HONKY

Tom Cruise is the Last Samurai. Kevin Costner wins the heart of American Indians with his wolf dancing. Orlando Bloom, in Kingdom of Heaven, goes from medieval England to Jerusalem to teach the Arabs how to sink wells and transport water. Is there anything that can be done about this plague of Orientalist white-guy Mary Sue-ism?

--Panel description at WisCon, 2007

MIGHTY WHITEY

Mighty Whitey is usually a displaced white European, of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative. Extra points if he woos The Chief's Daughter along the way.

--TVTropes.com

One popular option is the story about the lone white person who Gets It and throws in his or her lot with the Lakota or the Na'vi (and, quite often, because the most perfect Lakota / Na'vi ever, much like the prototypical Mary Sue can out-logic Spock, out-snark McCoy, and get seduced by Kirk, all before lunch.)

These stories give white readers and viewers a comfortable window on the past. Because like the protagonists of these stories, most of us would like to believe that we would have been among the minority who did the right thing. We would like to believe that we never would have been slaveholders -- we would have run a stop on the Underground Railroad. We would like to believe that we'd never have turned a blind eye to the Nazi death camps -- we'd have invited our Jewish neighbors to hide in our attic. We would certainly like to believe that we would have protested the Indian Removal Act.

But even if we had, the vast majority of people around us would have made the other choice.

So what would a story about those people look like?

(Of course, I probably did it wrong, too. But hopefully I at least did it wrong in a different way.)

--Naomi Kritzer

Nick Greenwood wins Chesley Award for IGMS Cover

One of the big differences between IGMS and other magazines (e- or traditional) is that we publish artwork with every story. It’s one of the big selling points of the magazine; I always look forward to seeing what new art is going to be displayed on our lovely virtual covers.

At Renovation over the weekend, Nick Greenwood was honored with the Chesley Award for his cover to IGMS #17 (June 2010). Good work, Mr. Greenwood!

Follow the link for details!

-Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor IGMS

Second Chances Made of Glass and Wood—Michael T. Banker

When I started writing "Second Chances", Nattly's voice just fell onto the page, without even trying. It was one of those beautiful moments in writing when even I didn't know where it came from. And through her voice, Faerci, Papa, Cook, Havrim, everything naturally settled into place. I simply looked through her eyes, and her world opened up to me. It’s a world that I’d like to explore more of in the future.

This was simultaneously one of the quickest and the slowest pieces I have ever written. I came up with the concept for it randomly while on a walk, spent two days mulling it over and outlining (between studying for my actuarial exam, which is what I was supposed to be doing), and then wrote the first draft within 24 hours (technically not of the same day). I was proud of that first draft, and a great deal of the story and voice carried through to the final version. But from there it went through countless critiques and drafts. The ending in particular was reworked several times. A whole character was cut. (Alas, you will never know Gisella.) It made semifinalist at Writers of the Future, after which I did my best to address K.D. Wentworth’s criticisms as well. Finally, the poor, dazed and confused thing found a home at IGMS.

I don’t know where the concept came from. Usually I can trace it, but this time I can’t. As it often goes, I felt as if I was discovering a world that already exists rather than actively inventing it. Every plot choice I nixed, every character who felt somehow off, simply wasn’t a part of that world, and I had to keep searching until I found it.

--Michael Banker

Asst. Editor’s note: When ‘Second Chances’ came to IGMS, it’s my opinion that it was NOT “poor, dazed and confused.”  We don’t accept stories of that type; we’re not an orphanage. 

--Scott M. Roberts, IGMS

Old Flat Foot—Ross Willard

Old Flat Foot was, for me, the result of several seemingly unrelated ideas coming together.

One of the ideas was more of a question. In most of the literature that I read and the movies I watch, when a machine becomes self aware, it does so in large and impressive ways. Perhaps it decides that humans are no longer worthy of control of the planet, or that it no longer wishes to perform the task for which it was created. Both ideas are valid and have ample potential for rich story-telling, but neither really addressed the question that interested me the most: what would define machine sentience?

After pondering the question for a while I decided that in order to define a machine as sentient, not merely intelligent, but truly sentient, the machine would have to be able to make a mistake. Not just an error, but make a mistake, on purpose. Though I don't know a great deal about programming, I have spent years studying people, and thinking about what separates us from computers the most notable trait that we have is the ability to come up with excuses for unreasonable choices. From a machine's perspective, I decided, this would essentially be the same as deciding to malfunction.

The second idea that formed the foundation of this story came from my own personal experiences with bureaucracy. Having worked for a number of different companies over the years, I've witnessed a peculiar phenomenon in which companies attempt to standardize their services to such a degree that the employees could well be replaced by machines. Human beings become cogs in a machine, their personal choices and beliefs irrelevant, and their jobs reduced to scripts. Displaying the robotization of people, contrasted by, for lack of a better word, the awakening of robotic sentience, struck me as interesting.

The third and final idea that played into this particular story, was the question of how exactly a machine would show love. The concept of love is complicated enough that humans have been arguing over its exact definition for centuries. So, assuming that a machine could feel love, I wouldn't think that the machine would know exactly what it was feeling. So how would it communicate that emotion? The most interesting answer I could come up with was that the machine might attempt to 'give of itself' in a very real and literal way.

--Ross Willard

Whiteface—Jared Oliver Adams

I wrote the first draft of “Whiteface” at Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, as a direct result of an idea generation exercise that Scott had us do. We were to come up with five stories in particular ways. One way was by walking around town and noticing odd things that could be prodded into a story, and I saw this teenager at a local WalMart with white paint streaked over his face. I got to thinking: Is this some new kind of fad I don’t know about? I decided he was probably trying to look like a vampire or something.

Anyhow, that led to me wondering what would happen if we all had painted faces, and the colors determined something about us. And what if we chose these colors as infants? I had this great image of a baby sitting in the middle of circle of colors, about to choose, and this became the basis of a story about a son who chooses a color that makes him basically a slave to his tribe.

But that story seemed . . . dry. I was interested in the society but not the characters. Enter the second idea generation activity: research.

Oddly enough, my research topic was Nikola Tesla, who figures prominently in this issue’s cover story “Under the Shield.” I’d seen a Discovery channel documentary on him a couple weeks earlier, and was intrigued by him. What I found was that he was a proponent of Eugenics, which is an appalling application of the theory of evolution that says we should keep people with negative traits from breeding in order to increase the vigor of the human race. From that I got a story about a boy who was to be castrated when he came of age because of a genetic deformity.

That story, like the other, seemed lifeless as well. It wasn’t until I combined them that things started coming to life. I realized that the real story was about the father coming to grips with his son’s fate, and that the son was adamant about accepting the color he’d chosen as an infant.

That first draft was rough and full of holes, but the critique process was revelatory. Not only did I get some awesome suggestions from Scott Card himself (Leaping-Deer, Otter’s father, was not in the original story at all), but the other bootcampers supplied me with the most useful, honest critiques a writing group can possibly give. I went back home immediately and got to work on the story, doing more research, and tightening up the story with the help of fellow bootcamper Trina Phillips.

I hope you enjoy reading my story as much as I did writing it!

-Jared Oliver Adams

www.jaredoliveradams.com

IGMS - Issue 24 - August 2011

Issue 24 of IGMS just went live. Let's dive right into the stories, shall we?

Our cover story is "Under The Shield" by Stephen Kotowych. An alternate history tale set in turn of the 20^th century New York, it depicts a world brought to the edge of war by Nikola Tesla's powerful energy shields and death ray, the latter of which was the true cause of the devastation at Tunguska in 1908.

Next up is "What Happened at Blessing Creek," an . . . let's call this one an alternate reality story by Naomi Kritzer, where 19^th century pioneers explore a west that's a little wilder than the one we knew, replete with Indians and wolves, as well as dragons and magicians -- and one young girl who suddenly finds herself thrust into the middle of the conflict between settlers and Indians over the fate of the town of Blessing Creek.

Michael Banker's "Second Chances Made of Glass and Wood" takes us to an intriguing fantasy world where souls can be magically transferred from dying human bodies to carved wooden miniature bodies, and explores this world through the eyes of someone who never walked the world in a human body to begin with, never knew the taste of food in her mouth or the flash of color before her eyes.

"Old Flatfoot" by Ross Willard swings the pendulum in the other direction, showing us the existence of a police robot designed to protect and serve, but never allowed to make a decision of its own. But when 'Old Flatfoot' discovers its days are numbered, it takes matters into its own hands in an unexpectedly sentimental way.

Part One of Jared Adams' "Whiteface" is the first half of a novelette about a father's quest to find a place in the world for a son who repeatedly chooses the path of the outcast, first as an unknowing child, but later in life with the full knowledge of not only the ramifications of his choice, but full knowledge of his father's displeasure with such a choice. Part Two will conclude the story in our next issue.

And as with every other issue, we bring you another of David Lubar's Tale for the Unafraid, and Darrell Schweitzer's InterGalactic Interview with Ben Bova.

Last, but by no means least, we bring you a sneak-peek at Orson Scott Card's forthcoming novella Shadows In Flight, a direct sequel to his hugely popular novel, Shadow of the Giant. Shadows In Flight is due out from Tor in November of this year, but IGMS will preview it, presenting chapter one in this issue, and chapter two in the next issue.

Enjoy.

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Tangent Online Reviews IGMS #23

An overall positive review of the issue.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

Gender and Science Fiction/Fantasy—More Numbers

…from DMS at GeekasChicas.com.

I recently read a blog entry about gender distribution in submissions and publications that Edmund Schubert, the editor of Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (IGMS), posted on Magical Words. He quoted three emails from two assistant editors relating submission rates and then provided publication rates. He then made the claim that they publish women at the same proportion that women submit, calling the ratio “close enough.” I hear not everyone was impressed by this rigorous approach and the subsequent detailed analysis and conclusion. Rather than pick a side, I decided to look at his submission and publication numbers and see if there was a statistically significant conclusion to draw. After all, the data provided is exactly the kind of data I need for a Chi-Squared test. Isn’t it exciting!

Link to the full article.

Side-Show Arcade: Mansions of Madness

A while back, I reviewed the excellent board game, Arkham Horror.  Its sister game—Mansions of Madness—is the subject of today’s investigation.

At first glance—maybe two glances—Mansions of Madness is intimidating.  Even for someone who considers himself seasoned in board games.  There are a zillion little bits and pieces to lose; there are (I am not kidding) 13 different card stacks.  AND there are two rulebooks: one for players, and one for the guy playing against the players.  Not to mention that the game is made by Fantasy Flight, and it’s in their Arkham line—so the gameplay has a good chance of being complicated, and the night is likely destined to end in your character’s demise.

BUT—you can still have a good time with it.

Mansions of Madness dangles board-gaming closer to role-playing with a slew of pre-generated characters  and a number of unconnected scenarios to choose from.  The premise is that you are a group of investigators who have stumbled on a creepy, malign plot.  Together, you explore the board, searching for clues to untangle the mystery and fighting terrifying cultists and their otherworldly overseers.  One player (the Keeper) takes the role of all the monsters and the evil forces that control the board; all the others play characters opposing him (the Investigators).  Each group has a specific goal that they must accomplish in order to win the game, but only the Keeper knows his goal at the start.  The players only find out their ultimate goal in the final act, right before the clock strikes midnight.

Where game mechanics enhance the devastating pace of the game, Mansions of Madness is an absolute blast to play.  However, there are so many fiddly bits, and so many cards to shuffle through, and so much to take into consideration, the game can be a bit of a slog at times.  Especially at the beginning—there’s no way around it, getting the game set up is a beast.  The rules state that the players decide amongst themselves which scenario to play; *I* maintain that’s a good way to waste an hour or so of game time.   Whoever is host, SHE should decide on the game, and have it set up before everyone gets there.  The host should also be Keeper, so she can pick what storyline within the scenario she wants to play.  (Yep—each scenario is replayable because they have different story options to choose from.  So, the first time you play, you may have to find the abducted heiress in the basement; the second time you play, you find her corpse in the chapel, and then pursue her killer.)

Setup consists of deciding what scenario, and what scenario elements to play, and then setting up the board.  Mansions of Madness comes with 15 map tiles, with room details printed on both sides.  These are used to construct the board, using the scenario to determine what tiles go where.  After the board is built, characters are chosen, and the Keeper builds the deck to best help her accomplish her own goal.  Investigators are given a clue to start out with, which points them where to go; as they explore the board, the Keeper gets terror points to use against them.  Terror points allow the keeper to buy up all sorts of nasty effects, from declaring that a monster’s attack broke a character’s arm (giving that character a negative modifier on combat checks for the rest of the game), to making monsters appear out of the walls. 

The game is meant to be tense, right from the beginning; that’s how the pace is maintained.  Mansions of Madness has no low gear—it puts itself into “STARK TERROR” mode and stays there until the finish of the game.  A system of time-keeping dissuades the characters from doing anything but running from clue, to clue, to clue; although leisurely exploration is possible, the effects of not staying on task are such that it becomes deadly to dally.

Like other role-playing games, I think that much of the fun of the game exists not in the game itself, but in the way the players integrate into it.  With one group, the game is lively, and fun; with another, it gets bogged down in arguing or confusion over the rules.

I recommend the game with that caveat: know your gaming group.  The insistent rules lawyer has killed more game nights than Cthullhu has devoured planets.

-- Scott M. Roberts

This is My Corporation, Eat—Lon Prater

"This Is My Corporation, Eat" is a story which sprang into my head during a conversation online with Ken Scholes. Neither of us remember the exact context, just that it had to do with zealotry, the Rapture and our similar early aspirations to religious callings and subsequent, err, loss of fervor.

I nearly shelved this one when it was written, because I worried that it was too heretical, too much of an indictment to be stomached by a Christian population already highly sensitized to how Christians are portrayed. I worried that the end of the Christian spectrum who enjoy their martyrdom and righteous condemnation would have a distinct and rock-throwy lack of appreciation for my themes.

I wrote this story in response to zealotry and the commodification of the sacred, in the same way my story "Deadglass" (Writers of the Future XXI) was written in response to the form of religious OCD that the Catholics would recognize as scrupulosity, and my story "The Atrocities of King George" (Ideomancer, June 2010) was written in response to the rationalization and cognitive blanking-out processes that make up a "the ends justify the means" mentality. More recently, I've released a pair of short mashup/experimental novels to Kindle and nook that take on what I see as the flaws in Objectivist Selfishness (The Island of Jayne Grind, with H.G. Wells) and my rejection of the Patriot Act ethos of security trumping liberty (The American in His Season, with Mark Twain and others).

I bring all this up not to shamelessly whore my fiction out, but to lend some background to what makes me tick as a writer and reader. I take themes seriously. I read for that subtle thread, that unifying web of nerve endings that makes a story come alive, moving and wanting and hurting--not for the writer's sake, and not for the reader's sake, but for its own damned sake.

There is a difference when a story is about something; it's as significant and polarizing as the difference between lightning and lightning bug. I relish digging into the work of writers like Mark Twain and H.G. Wells--or modern masters of tone and theme like Gary Braunbeck and the aforementioned Ken Scholes. Collecting and assembling the sublimely deliberate details, those hundreds of conscious and unconscious decisions they've made in their art which add up to a whole that is something emotional, something true. . . THIS is what makes my brain feel like it's finally using that other 90% people like to talk about.

When I say true, I don't mean true in the sense of verifiable fact, but true in that deeper, human, sacred sense that may well fly in the face of every fact known to science. The sense of authenticity that resonates with one message: I believe in this, and I have to share it.

At first, the third act of this story was not authentic to its beginning. A set of conversations with a pair of gifted and spiritually adept editors (Jerry Gordon and Edmund Schubert) helped this old secularist find the authenticity that was lacking at long last. The story wasn't meant to end with a tone of fatalistic nihilism, and changes were made to make that clearer. My protagonist's choices are about his own struggle with zealotry, with how easy it is for a man to make his values into tradable commodities. He finds peace in being authentic to himself and to his new understanding of Christ's message of love and tolerance and rejection of the world (in contrast to the Fundie terrorists, who have just as corrosive a focus on the material world as the corporate ministries they blow up).

But has he merely traded one zealotry for another? This is a cautionary tale, after all, and like a great many satires, deadly serious.

I mentioned above how I read to find that sense of the story being about something that matters to the person who wrote it. I try just as hard in my writing to develop a theme that matters to me. To select details and plot events that pertain and resonate and set off the idea I am exploring. I hope that I've accomplished that in this story, though I usually feel like I've missed the mark.

In the end, it's not a verifiable thing. It's only true if you felt the same sense of 'I believe this, and I want to share it' when you read it. Regardless, whether you are a reader or a writer, I hope I've made you think more deeply about theme with this post. (I'm too unconfident to say the same about my story.)

I hope you start to look for it in all your fiction. To demand it.

I hope I've made a zealot out of you.

Lon Prater
Pensacola, Florida
Summer 2011

How Evil Am I? Oh, About 76.3% On Average…

Some more numbers neepery for you gentlefolk.  Again, these are just my numbers; the other assistant editors’ (not to mention Edmund’s) are another matter entirely. 

Here is the percentages of my rejection recommendations since February, 2010:

Month	% of Rejections
Feb-10	79.31
March, 2010	47.92
Apr-10	72.73
May-10	61.76
Jun-10	95.24
Jul-10	76.92
Aug-10	75.00
Sep-10	75.86
Oct-10	70.83
Nov-10	73.68
Dec-10	77.78
Jan-11	53.85
Feb-11	91.67
Mar-11	82.76
Apr-11	85.71
May-11	96.15
Jun-11	88.24

 

Hm… looks like I’ve hit the Terrible Twos.  (I’ve been reading slush for IGMS since August 2009, but didn’t keep track of things until the beginning of 2010.)

In a late night pique of madness, I even went through all the stories I rejected to see if I could pull a pattern from them.

For the stories that I did not finish, my main complaint seems to have been a variation of the below:

“It wasn’t interesting.”

For the stories that I *did* finish and that were rejected, the main complaint was something like this:

“The ending was unsatisfying.”

I cannot stress how important it is for a story to hit the ground running.  Generally, IGMS publishes short stories.  Stories that get through my slush pile demonstrate the author’s ability to quickly establish character, place, and conflict, and no matter if they’re rip-roaring adventure stories, or philosophical comfy mysteries, they keep my attention.  Taking ten pages to get to the conflict will get you a rejection from me.

Most stories I reject don’t last even that long, I’m afraid. 

Endings.  Oh, what can I say here, that others haven’t said?  A bad ending is worse than a boring beginning, because I’ve spent all this time being enchanted, only to be disappointed at the very last moment. 

It’s like falling in love with Angelina Jolie, and then waking up to find out she’s really Ralph Nader.  I don’t care what your proclivities or political positions are, that isn’t a happy occurrence.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

The Hanged Poet—Jeff Lyman

I was inspired by "The Square", by Margueritte Duras, a French novella from 1955.  I found it fascinating that Ms. Duras could maintain over a hundred pages of dialogue between two strangers, revealing their lives and hopes and dreams through their interaction, with very little scene or setting.  I am typically a visual writer with little dialogue, so it would be an extreme challenge to attempt the same.  My original draft failed, as it came across like two people talking in an empty room, so I added back in setting.

The actual kernal inspiration for the story was a newspaper articled entitled "The Hanged Poems of Mecca".  The newspaper was folded across the title, so I only saw the first half and misread it as The Hanged Poet. 

And yes, I feared writing the poet's poem.  Some other writers advised me to leave it implied and unspoken, like some sort of poetic Necronomicon.  I thought that would be cheating the reader.  Veritas' poem came easily, since it needed to change only him.  Theseda Ys poem did not, as it had to be universal enough to be co-opted by everybody who heard it.

--Jeff Lyman

The Trouble With Eating Clouds

Technically my collection of short stories has already been released (it’s been up on Amazon for a week or two), but I’ve been deeply involved in the redesign of the website of the company that published it, and now that the site is live, in my mind it’s official: The Trouble With Eating Clouds is ready and available and looking for a few good readers. I’m pleased with the book overall, and especially happy with the front and back covers as designed by graphic artist extraordinaire, Dawn Mitchell (www.G4GInteractive.com – thanks, Dawn!).

The reason I wanted to wait for completion of the Spotlight website (www.spotlight-publishing.com) before announcing the release of my short story collection is that although the book was/is available on Amazon.com and BN.com, if a small publisher is going to support a writer, I think the writer ought to do what he or she can to support the publisher, too. That’s why I’m suggesting that if you’re thinking about buying the book, please consider buying it at the publisher’s site. I make exactly the same money no matter where you buy it: online or if you ask your local store to order it or if you buy it from Spotlight. However, buying direct from a small publisher makes a big difference to their bottom line. Plus, Spotlight only charges 99 cents for shipping, so it will actually cost you less from them than from Amazon. Spotlight is also running a promotion throughout the month of July and they’re sending autographed copies for the price of regular ones (they usually charge more for autographed copies), so if the deposit of .043 micrograms on ink in the shape of my name has any appeal to you, this is your big chance.

I talked last week about the networking that was involved in the book coming to publication (the networking that was involved in all of my books’ publications), so what I’d like to talk about today is the process by which the stories were selected. The Trouble With Eating Clouds only includes about half of the short stories I’ve had published over the past seven years, so what was the logic (stop giggling David, even I use logic every now and then…) behind what was included and what was not?

There were several thoughts running through my mind while putting this book together, but there were two main ones. First, I wanted this book to be a little more reader/family friendly than my novel was. I don’t use graphic images/scenes, violence, or coarse language casually, but the story in Dreaming Creek required a certain amount of all of that, and if it ever gets made into a movie, it will definitely be an R-rated movie. So all of the stories in The Trouble With Eating Clouds had to be the kind that didn’t require any parental oversight or screening (not that this is a children’s book, by any means).

Secondly, I really wanted this collection to represent the fun it’s possible to have when writing. When I’m at my very best, when I’m writing a story for no other reason that something has grabbed my mind’s attention and wants to come spilling out of my fingers and onto the page, the entire process is a pleasure. But when I’m writing to someone else’s theme, or someone else’s idea of what constitutes “good” fiction, it becomes a ponderous process that’s about as much fun as dragging a wooly mammoth up from the bottom of one of Le Brea’s infamous tar pits. That doesn’t mean the fun stories are easy to write—far from it, most of the time—but even when it’s challenging, there are some stories that are just a pleasure to write. Those are the stories I wanted in this book.

The stories are also arranged in chronological order (as best I could recall) according to when the were written. Years ago I read a collection of short stories by Ursula LeGuin where she talked about “arranging them in the order in which they were written, so that the development of the artist becomes part of the interest in the book.” Or at least words to that effect, the exact quote is in my book (and hers). The term ‘artist’ is never one I’ve been comfortable applying to myself, so call me whatever you like, but I do think there’s something to be said for being able to watch a writer grow and develop over the course of many years and many stories.

In the interest of full disclosure since this is a site devoted largely to writing fantasy, most of these stories read more like an episode of the Twilight Zone than The Lord of the Rings. It’s what I grew up loving, so it’s a lot of what I ended up writing. There are also a few Alfred Hitchcock-type mysteries, a historical piece set in Africa in the 1930’s that I’ve always been proud of, and all of the Dedd & Gohn paranormal-investigator comics I did with my friend Tom Barker before he had to quit the project. Those are a lot of fun to have all in one place, but then that’s one of the central themes of the book—have fun!—so it wouldn’t have been in the book otherwise. It’s even got an introduction by one of my bestest buds in the business, Alethea Kontis. She knows way too much about me personally and she spilled 90% of it in her intro (I paid good money to keep the other 10% out).

So there it is: The Trouble With Eating Clouds: A Collection of Mysteries, Magic, and Madness in all of its glory. Well, not all of its glory, but as much glory as I could cram into a single blog post. So remember, you can order it on Amazon and B&N, but supporting Spotlight is better for the little guy and cheaper for you.