Letter From the Editor—Issue #17—June 2010

Putting this magazine on hiatus was not an easy decision to make. Even though the weekly review columns continued to be posted regularly, this would be the first time we missed an issue of stories in almost three years. That was a record I was proud of - and loathe to give up - but to be blunt, life had overwhelmed me and I needed a break. Everyone knows the old cliché about "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade," but I've had enough lemons coming at me over the course of the past year to fill the Pacific Ocean with that popular summer-time beverage.

Once we got back to work (and by "we" I really mean "me," because while I was licking my wounds, managing editor Kathleen Bellamy, web-guru Scott Allen, all of our assistant editors (Sara Ellis, Eric James Stone, Scott Roberts, and Chris Bellamy), and all of our columnists worked ceaselessly and tirelessly to keep things moving along) Okay, so . . . once I got back to work, the first thing we did was step back and assess the way we had been doing things here at IGMS. And as we did so, a better way of doing things would present itself, or become absolutely necessary, or become suddenly obvious when it hadn't been before. And when we changed that one thing (whatever that thing may have been - process, procedure, policy, whatever), another would present itself, and then another, and another, until it was clear that we had inadvertently created the perfect opportunity to make the magazine over and re-launch it, fresh-faced and reinvigorated. We would have been fools not to make the most of it.

So here it is: Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, v2.0.

The biggest and most obvious changes are two-fold (as befitting a v2.0):

1) Our web designer worked long and hard to give IGMS a cleaner, sharper look. Navigation around the site will be simpler. With each new issue, the background will change to showcase some aspect of the issue's cover art. Explore it; I think you'll find it an intuitive and pleasantly easy experience.

2) We now have something available that our readers have been asking for for a long time: an annual subscription. From now on, instead of having to purchase each issue individually, you can buy a year's worth of IGMS at one time and then not have to worry about it again; each issue will be there for you, ready and waiting as soon as it's published. And there's particularly good news (and a good reason to subscribe); the way our new subscription will work, you will not only have access to each new issue as it is published, you will immediately have access to every issue already published. That means that if you missed any of our previous issues, your $15 dollars will gain you access not just to the next six bimonthly issues, but to all sixteen issues already published. And that unrestricted access will last as long as you keep your subscription current. That means for those of you who've only read an issue or two, you'll be getting every story we've ever published for less than a buck an issue. So if you've seen IGMS mentioned in numerous Year's Best anthologies, on Locus's recommended reading list, or on any number of awards ballots, and wondered what the magazine was all about, there's never been a better time to try us out.

Other smaller changes await as well, ranging from the addition of things that will be readily apparent (such as our on-going weekly comic strip Dedd and Gohn, following the adventures of Mike Dedd and Julia Gohn, a pair of Gen Y paranormal investigators who explore everything from the horrors of ghosts who won't go away, to the horrors of personal relationships when they want to get married but one of them still lives at home with his parents), to things less readily apparent (such as the way we've asked our artist and illustrators to do their work in a format more suited to presentation on a computer screen).

We've also lined up some exciting things for upcoming issues beyond our re-launch issue. We've got a brand new story coming soon from regular and beloved IGMS contributor, Peter S. Beagle. And to celebrate our fifth anniversary issue, the October 2010 issue (#19) has something extra special in store: a brand new tale from the man who founded and publishes this magazine; the first new Orson Scott Card story we've published in over a year and a half. It's not just a story though, it's a sneak peak at his forthcoming novel, Pathfinder. The first fifteen chapters of Pathfinder each have a mini-prologue, that, when strung together, form a complete story. So IGMS's sneak peak isn't just a sneak peak, it's the only place you find "The Expendables" complete and whole, as a stand-alone story.

I could go on and on about the changes, but at this point I think the best thing I can do is shut up and let you get to the good stuff: Issue #17's science fiction and fantasy. "Ten Winks To Forever" by Bud Sparhawk; "An Early Ford Mustang" by Eric James Stone; "Sparrowjunk" by Margit Schmitt; "Sister Jasmine Brings The Pain" by Vonn Carr; "Frankie and Johnny and Nelly Bly" by Richard Wolkomir; another in our series of author interviews by Darrell Schweitzer; plus an audio production of "An Early Ford Mustang" that you can download and listen to anytime, anywhere.

I can't say it often enough, but I'll limit myself to saying it one more time: I hope you can tell how excited I am by the relaunch of IGMS. I hope you'll join us; and I hope you'll stay with us for a long, long time. It's going to be a lot of fun.

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 (http://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.

InterGalactic Medicine Show #17: Stories

IGMS returns in June with a new look, and brand new stories!

Bud Sparhawk explores the depths of space and the meaning of humanity and relationships in the context of time-dilation in Ten Winks to Forever.

In Sparrowjunk, Margit E. Schmitt reveals the power of stories. A single father courts the favor of a not-quite-human woman in order to keep his cancer-stricken son alive. He barters fairy tales for his son’s health—but the creature he’s trading with has an insatiable appetite, and trading with her might cost more than he could possibly imagine.

Duster, Florida, is a town of cheats, swindlers, petty despots, and intrepid eleven year-old Susanna Entwhistle. In Richard Wolkomir’s Frankie and Johnny and Nelly Bly, Miss Entwhistle shares her story of how the biggest cheat, swindler, and despot in town got his comeuppance at the hands of a spellslinger-for-hire. Packed into her account are romance, betrayal, ambition, death, and magic—just what a growing girl needs.

One apocalypse would have devastated the world; Sister Jasmine, in Von Carr’s Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain, has to deal with all possible apocalypses. Vampires, zombies, ninjas, robots, sentient plants, dinosaurs, telepathic mutant geeks—all seem to be gunning for Sister Jasmine and her faithful zombie-hunting robot dog.

An Early Ford Mustang arrives just in time to remind us why author Eric James Stone is a Medicine Show favorite. Brad’s inheritance—the titular mustang—is a nice ride, but underneath that hood, there’s a curse pumping through the engine.

Last but not least, we’ll be reprinting Orson Scott Card’s tale of the power of family, and the lengths one young man will go to escape it. Part 1 (of 3) of Eye for An Eye hits these electronic pages in issue #17.

IGMS On Hiatus

Well, if you’ve been anywhere near the Intergalactic Medicine Show site, you are now aware that IGMS is on hiatus.  First of all, let me assure you: we are still reading submissions; we are still purchasing stories.  We’ll be back in June with a new look and new features.

Secondly, I want to clear up the rumors about Edmund’s surgery.  It was a shoulder surgery; that’s all.  He was not taken to a secret medical laboratory in Alaska and fitted with nanocarbonite underskin.  Edmund assures me that the red tinge in his eyes is merely from a lack of sleep, and not from a mini gauss turret installed in his skull.  His “conspicuous” absence, so-called, at editorial meetings has nothing to do with the lunar cycle; and further, he has ALWAYS liked his steak that rare.

Really.  I don’t know where you people come up with this stuff.  Can’t a guy have  surgery without his peers and colleagues thinking that a shady post-government agency has vivisected him and replaced his guts with robotic werewolf/vampire parts?  Sure, he’s a bit changed after the surgery—but who are we to judge? 

Let he who is without sin, or whatever, cast the first stone.

--Scott M. Roberts, Asst. late night snack Editor

Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two

Ellen Datlow, luminary editor-of-just-about-everything has posted the honorable mentions from her Best of Horror  Anthology (vol 2) efforts.  The following stories from IGMS are…um… mentioned.  Honorably.

Beagle, Peter “Vanishing,” issue 11.
Lustig, E. A. “The Sin Hypothesis,” issue 11.
Roberts, Scott M. “The End-of-the-World-Pool,” issue 12.

You can pick up Datlow’s anthology at the following fine online retailers:

Barnes and Noble

Borders

Amazon

Through the Blood—Mette Harrison

When I first wrote THROUGH THE BLOOD, I had only the idea that there was a king being executed and that he had magic.  The rest of the story came as I was writing it.  And rewriting it.  I remember Ed writing to me and saying that he couldn't use the story as it stood because of some important questions the reader was being kept in the dark about, such as what is the king's magic, what is the relationship between Haber and Elwell, and even why was the king being executed.  He said that he felt this information was being artificially withheld, that the characters knew it and I knew it, but only the reader didn't know it.  The truth was, that I didn't actually know the answers to those questions.  But of course, this information needed to be clearly conveyed because without that information, it was difficult to care about the characters and to feel the real impact of the surprise at the end.  Maybe there is some part of my hind brain that did know the answer to those questions, and it just had to be coaxed into spitting it out properly.  I am not sure I want to know exactly how my writing brain works fully.  It would take away all the mystery and angst and then why would I write?

--Mette Harrison

Mudlarks—Kat Otis

Last summer, I attended a writing workshop where each of the participants was supposed to write a short story... in one day. I brainstormed this vague idea about poor kids with magical powers but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it. Finally, I decided to set my story in London, since I'd just spent six months living there. I've never been big on cities, but somehow London wriggled its way into my heart anyway.

Maybe it's because of the Thames River.

The Thames fascinated me from day one. Every time I rode the Tube over the river, I got up from my seat to look out the windows. Which way was it flowing? How high was the tide? What boats were out on the river? Were there kids playing on its banks? What could I see reflected in its shimmering surface? Whenever I had a day off, I liked to walk the South Bank or the Thames Path and I even went out during the February 2nd "blizzard" to walk (err, hike? wade? flounder?) along the riverside.

After I added in the London setting, my main character quickly developed a very special relationship with the Thames.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history, I've taken a few liberties with it. The curfew was a medieval phenomenon which only applied to the area within London's walls; Fleet Street and Saint Bride's Church are both outside the city gates. And while there were cunning men (and women) in England, they were never incorporated as a livery company. They also never operated out of the Middle Temple – that was and is an Inn of Court, the abode of lawyers.

Odd Jobs—Josh Vogt

Part of Odd Job's inspiration came from reading another all-dialogue short, They're Made Out of Meat, by Terry Bisson. The format captured my interest: two disembodied alien intelligences discussing humanity's fleshiness and debating whether they should allow us "meaties" into their intergalactic fellowship. I loved how much was conveyed through dialogue alone and fiddled with variations of the style for fun. Most of my stories, whether shorts or novels, are often rooted in conversations characters start having in my imagination. So one day, I typed out the opening line, "According to your resume, Mr. Whisk, you spent five years as the Man in the Moon." I let the conversation flow out from there, as Mr. Whisk described his experiences. After I had enough conversation, I had to decide whether I wanted to create a framing scene, character descriptions, etc., but in the end chose to leave it all dialogue and give readers much more room to play. It's a story I hope folks enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing.

--Josh Vogt

www.jrvogt.com

When Giants Fart…

…the whole world stinks. Which kind of sums up the atmosphere in the publishing and authorial world for the past week as publishing giant Macmillan and distribution giant Amazon.com square off and try to decide whose bean processing plant is the most odiferous.

Without getting into the smelly details (which have been discussed on other sites), the gist of the problem lies in the pricing of e-books. Amazon wants a fixed ceiling of $9.99 for premium (read: popular) titles; Macmillan wants flexibility in their pricing, with premium selections fetching $14.99. Sometime on January 29, Amazon pulled the buy button off all titles owned by Macmillan imprints from its website. Offerings from Amazon vendors unaffected, but Amazon itself refuses to sell any Macmillan titles.

I’m not out to further the debate between readers, writers, publishers, and distributors; that’s been done elsewhere. (See Tobias Buckell’s lengthy write up, or LE Modesitt’s for reference) My purpose in this post is to promote some former Freaks who have been run out of doors (as it were) by this fiasco.

David B. Coe (IGMS #9, Cassie’s Story) has a new paperback out. The Horsemen’s Gambit is the second book in the Blood of the Southland series, and follows protagonist Grisna the Weaver as he tries to put a stop to the plagues being perpetuated across his land. Publisher’s Weekly called The Horsemen’s Gambit “intense and appealing.” You can find The Horsemen’s Gambit at Macmillan’s website or at Barnes and Noble.

Ken Scholes (IGMS #9, The God Voices of Settler’s Rest) is the author of the acclaimed fantasy series, the Psalms of Isaac. Lamentation begins the series with the mysterious destruction of the great city Widwir. The Lord of the Nine Houses, Rudolfo, sees the destruction and sets out to investigate. The story of war in the Named Lands continues in Canticle, which was released in October ‘09. Publisher’s Weekly has said of Scholes “…[he]ingeniously fuses epic fantasy and postapocalyptic science fiction... Abounding in prophecy, myth and mystery, this grand-scale saga is a towering storytelling tour de force." You can find Scholes’ books at Barnes and Noble, Borders, or…just about anywhere but Amazon.

John Brown (IGMS #1, Loose in the Wires; IGMS #8, From the Clay of His Heart) is the author of the fantasy Servant of a Dark God. In Servant, soul-eaters steal the days from men and beasts. Surrounded by ancient lies, and pursued by the soul-eaters, young Talen must stop the rise of a dark god. Library Journal said of Servant of a Dark God: “This well-wrought tale of families in conflict against both politics and religion represents a welcome addition to large-scale fantasy.” You can find Servant of a Dark God at Borders, Barnes and Noble, or…just about at any bookseller except Amazon.

--Scott M. Roberts

Assistant Editor

Return To Sender—James Maxey

  "Return to Sender," much like my first story in IGMS, "To Know All Things That Are In The Earth," draws heavily on my experience growing up as a fundamentalist Christian who went on to embrace atheism. My emotional connection to the story comes from my sense of confusion on encountering the outside world and finding things to be not quite as black and white as I had been informed.

It's really tough to explain the degree to which I was raised apart from mainstream culture. For instance, when I got to college, one of the many odd jobs I took to help pay expenses was that of a theater projectionist, even though the church I'd been raised in had denounced movie theaters as cesspools of sin and corruption and forbade going to see even "G" rated films. My first year as a projectionist was kind of amusing: every movie I saw became my favorite movie. I had no filters by which to judge a film, and wound up loving some stuff that I now look back on as fairly awful. (One of the first movies I saw, for instance, was Romancing the Stone, which for a week was the best movie ever, until I saw whatever was shipped the following week. I watched parts of Stone it again a few years ago and was stunned by how boring and formulaic it was.)

Also, much like Crystal in the story, I had grown up without being exposed to rock and roll music to any significant degree. My first exposure to bands like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, singing about sex and drugs, was genuine culture shock. Even though I was identifying myself as an atheist by my first year of college, I still cringed when I heard people using the f-word in songs, and wondered why these people weren't afraid of going to hell.

Finally, I vividly recall the first time I was around a group of fellow students who were drinking beer. Drinking may not be the word I'm looking for--inhaling might be more accurate. They would shake up the beer, then puncture the can with a key, to suck down the entire can in something like thirty seconds. Shockingly, I learned that my fundamentalist Sunday School teachers had been right: Alcohol turns people into monsters! After inhaling a six-pack in about five minutes, guys I normally enjoyed hanging out with turned into surly jerks with unfocused eyes and slurred speech, laughing loudly at their own jokes and crudely boasting of their sexual prowess to women who were equally inebriated. It would be a few more years before I witness alcohol consumed in a more responsible, even genteel fashion and come to see that it didn't have to lead to to such boorish behavior.

It's been close to thirty years since I last sat through a fundamentalist church service, complete with speaking in tongues and the casting out of devils. I've reached as stage in my life where I can look back and be grateful to have been raised isolated at least some small degree from mainstream culture. I think it's useful for any artist to be able to step back from the world that swirls around them and study it with an outsider's point of view. Of course, sometimes when you step outside your culture, you discover you can't get back in.

That, however, is a theme for a whole 'nuther story. 

--James Maxey

Intergalactic Medicine Show #16 is LIVE!

Issue 16 went live this afternoon, with stories from James Maxey, Mette Ivie Harrison, Edmund Schubert, and more!

Go forth!  Feast your senses on the wonderment!

The Freak Filter

Part of being an assistant editor means reading slush. "Slush" is the pile of unsolicited story manuscripts publishers receive from hopeful authors. It's not a pretty name; it's not generally a glorious pursuit. Slush sits in the assistant editor's inbox, dribbling memetic juices all over your mind-space. It occasionally belches, but it doesn't need to. It makes its presence known through sheer virtual weight. That is, Slush is ever-present in your mind as something to do, something that will never get done, a taxing, burdensome, obese thing that drags at your thoughts and threatens your sanity.

But occasionally, you come up with some real gems. Lo'ihi Rising from issue 15, for example—drawn from the slush pile by diligent slush delver, Sara Ellis. Or The Absence of Stars—winner of the Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award, and also dredged up by Sara Ellis.

We've been trimming the slush pile recently at IGMS. It's looking almost svelte, now. While I'm taking a brief break from reading slush, I thought I'd compose this to let hopeful authors out there know what we, the assistant editors of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, hope to find as we push through the slush pile. Also, what we hope NOT to find.

Scott M. Roberts

I like fiction in which the protagonist is capable and active. Even if it's a tragic story of death, sadness, and woe, the protagonist should be out there either fighting against the Bad Stuff, or actively pushing more Bad Stuff to occur. I have little patience for protagonists whose only contribution to the story is to be sympathetic and abused.

Speaking of abuse—there's a definite limit to how much I can stomach. If you choose to make your protagonist a serial killer, you had better bring some major writing chops along with that axe and buzz saw. It takes pages of really excellent writing to make up for the bad karma of one explicit scene of violence.

I give stories about a page and a half. Within those 375 words, I look for a clear conflict; a sympathetic or engaging protagonist; and competent writing. It's a matter of economy: I'm looking for stories that engage my interest quickly because I don't have a lot of time.

I like experimental prose, to a point. The device must serve the story: if your story is clearer because of the experimental style, then I welcome it.

Much of what I see in the slush pile is grim, gritty, or grisly. Want to stand out in the slush? Be funny.

Bad dialog will get you rejected faster than just about any other element. I am looking for dialog that reveals character. Note that this is more than just indicating that a character is Southern by having them use the word 'y'all,' or by dropping the –g in gerunds. Writing in dialect, especially if the narrator is a participant in the culture that uses the dialect, is liable to get you rejected. Remember, British people don't think they have an accent, and Irish writers rarely write Irish characters as having a hunky brogue.

Eric James Stone

What I like to see: Stories that do a good job of examining X in the question "What if X?" Stories with likeable characters facing overwhelming odds and finding an unexpected way to succeed. Stories in which the protagonists are willing to sacrifice themselves (and sometimes must actually do so) for the good of others. Stories that are funny.

What I don't like to see: Stories with main characters who do not engage my interest. Stories that take too long to get to the main plot. Stories that go from Point A to Point B without any twists along the way. Stories that fizzle out instead of bang at the climax.

What kind of stories I pass on [to the Editor-in-Chief]: Stories that make me think about cool ideas I never thought of before. Stories with engaging characters doing interesting things. Stories that keep me reading all the way to the end because I want to know what happens next.

Sara Ellis

I like stories that surprise me. I don't mind if a cliché is used, if there is a neat twist. What makes your vampire/werewolf/sorcerer's apprentice/space colonists story different from all the others? I once got a mutinous murder on a spacecraft story (cliché), but told from the perspective of a sanitation robot (twist!). I like detail, that makes the character/world real to me.

I like caring about the point of view characters, even if they are flawed. Why are they flawed? I hate stock villains. Villains you can empathize with, even just partially, are always more effective. I also love the themes of sacrifice, honor, redemption, and breaking/questioning tradition. I am inexplicably partial to stories about robots, empathetic monsters, and adolescent boys going through tough times.

I love captivating first paragraphs, and dislike impotent last lines. For most short stories, you have two pages to capture my attention. Do not waste these on exposition. Do not throw away first paragraphs with exposition. I like being shown why or how a character is a certain way, as opposed to simply being told. I like natural, realistic dialogue that comes across as sincere, as opposed to being convenient to move the plot along. I do not mind stylized, snappy, or
humorous dialogue if it fits in with the story and is creative.

One of my biggest turn offs in a story is when female characters are only described physically, or always initially described physically just because they are women. Especially when this only goes as far as letting us know she has great breasts. I hate stock beautiful women in a story that are not fleshed out (ha!). Violence and exploitation of female characters that is not important to the core of the story is a big pet peeve. It usually comes off as lazy or, uh, exploitative.

I also do not like stories where it feels like important or clarifying information is being withheld so it will feel like a surprise or a twist later. Being confused makes me impatient. Another minor thing that pulls me out of a story is "shoutouts." Shout outs to favorite bands, television shows, writers, etc. that are not integral to the plot. It doesn't usually ruin a story, but it often pulls me right out.

I like stories that make me feel passionate about how it will all end.

--Scott M. Roberts, Asst. Editor

"Lo'ihi Rising" by Geoff Cole - IGMS issue 15

A Yeast-Free Recipe to Make Lo'ihi Rise

By Geoffrey W. Cole

In the first year after their children were born, the original inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands would pile their families into their canoes and sail to the volcanic coast of Hawaii, the Big Island, in order to perform a ritual that ensured their children would have a long and happy life.

They walked inland to the field of hardened lava-rock where their parents had performed the same ritual when they were infants. Once settled in, they'd kneel beneath the hot sun and carve a hole in the porous. Then, they'd place the dried umbilical cord of their child in the hole, put a stone over the hole to keep the umbilical cord in place, and camp out for the night.

Above them, the active volcano Kilauea might spit smoke or lava, and sometimes mighty Mauna Loa would belch fire. It was a holy place, close to their gods. In the morning, if the umbilical cord was gone, their children could hope for a long and prosperous life.

My wife and I learned about this ritual during a trip to Hawaii & Maui in spring 2008. We were engaged at the time; she hoped to avoid planning a marriage by eloping on the islands, or as we liked to call it, getting Mauied. During the same visit to Volcanoes National Park, we learned that a new Hawaiian island was growing from the ocean floor southeast of Hawaii. In fifteen thousand to fifty thousand years, the seamount would rise above the waves to become a new island named Lo'ihi. I filed that tidbit of information away in the "oh so awesome what a great idea but it needs to ferment" drawer.

A few months after the tip, after my wife-to-be and I had settled back into our daily routine of work and lunch, and the warm sun of Hawaii seemed but a pleasant dream, I realized I needed to find a birthday present for my lovely fiancé. I opted for a story. Step one: it had to be a love story. Step two: I wanted to evoke our Hawaiian vacation. Step three: there was still a new island growing on the bottom of the Pacific. So I asked myself: what will happen when the new island is born? Real estate boom. The fact that my fiancé and I had been looking to buy a new home in Vancouver's hot pre-crash market helped fuel this speculation.

The world in which the story is set is loosely tied to a series of other short stories and novels I'm working on. For the setting, the history of the Big Island of Hawaii helped shape how the place looked in the future I imagined for it. Over the past couple hundred years, Hawaii has suffered more natural disasters than the average tropical paradise. Towns and villages and individuals have been wiped out by tsunamis, earthquakes, lava flows, ash fall, clouds of poisonous gas, mud slides, shark attacks, and bad shellfish.

Despite these disasters, the Hawaiian people (of all ethnicities) bounce back, re-build, and seem to live care-free lives despite the terror looming all around. My fiancé and I saw a grisly humour in these innumerable tragedies, so I wanted the future Hawaii to suffer her fair share of disasters.

I had a setting, I had an event around which the story would turn, all I needed was the lovers. Thank goodness the post-humans Fadid and Kabime (pronounced the Hawaiian way) came along. They received half the blessing that the ancient Hawaiians sought for their children in the rocks beneath Kilauea: Fadid and Kabime lived for a very long time. They lacked the other half of the Hawaiian blessing: they weren't happy.

How can love survive over decades, centuries, millennia? For my fiancé's birthday, I tried to answer those questions. And I speculated on the best way to cure sentient VDs.

Hey, it worked. She married me!

* * * *

"Lo'ihi Rising" by Geoff Cole is available now in issue 15 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show - issue 15 now available

IGMS issue 15 - November 2009


featuring..


Body Language
by Mary Robinette Kowal
(amazing cover art by Howard Lyon)


Lo'ihi Rising
by Geoff Cole




Aim for The Stars
by Tom Pendergrass


Report of a Doubtful Creature
by Ian Creasy


Sweet As Honey
by Bradley P. Beaulieu


Orson Scott Card audio, reading
Tom Pendergrass's "Aim For The Stars"

Darell Schweitzer's Interviews with the Fantastic: Vernor Vinge


Tales For The Young and Unafraid
Get Out of Gym For Free, by David Lubar


continuing the serialization of OSC's collection of interlinked short stories with "Pagaent Wagon," from Folk of the Fringe

"Hunting Lodge" by Jon Crusoe, art by Walter Simon

THE RIGHT TO ARM BEARS
by Jon Crusoe

When two members of a predator species meet, they follow a specific pattern of behavior in dealing with each other. Animal behaviorists have recorded this for years.

When members of two different predator species meet, unless one backs away, there’s usually a fight. And if both are evenly matched, it can mean mutual death.

The question arises as to what would happen if the two species were both intelligent as well as evenly matched. Hopefully, they would both realize that a fight might just mean the end – the total end – of both species.

Given that understanding (and a willingness on both sides to coexist), they would most likely see the need to establish mutually beneficial methods for dealing with each other.

One of these might be the need for a safety valve that allowed them to limit aggression toward each other. As they are both predators, the aggression would definitely be present.

One way would be to allow the more aggressive members of each race to fight in a specific place, with given rules and handicaps to allow a level playing field. With each combatant having an equal chance to kill the other, there would be less chance of the two races going to war than if one was to be simply killed by the other.

Another point is that many combat situations have become sports over the years. Karate, wrestling, the javelin, and others became sports. The Olympic biathlon that combines skiing and marksmanship came from ski troop training.

It would be an easy step for the safety valve that the two races employed to turn into an organized sport. Hunters from both races would flock to a place where they could hunt the most dangerous game they had ever faced.

Of course once that happened, there would be some who would object to the hunts and vilify the hunters. Some would do it for political reasons, some for racial reasons, and some would commit immoral acts because of their belief in a cause that they consider moral. In all of the above cases, it is a very small step from simple belief in a cause to outright fanaticism.

And when that belief does turn fanatical, people tend to begin dying. It is too easy for the fanatic to decide that some deaths are justifiable when working for The Cause.

Would some humans act this way? Absolutely. Would members of another race? Very possibly. The point is that we would have no way of knowing until we met another intelligent predator species.

This is one of the reasons that humans are one of the races involved in the story. We ground-dwelling, hairless apes are the only intelligent predator that we know of.

Another reason that humans were chosen (and more important to a starving author) is that humans will be paying for this story.

As to the choice of bears as the other race, bears are like humans in that they are primarily solitary hunters. Other predators could have been chosen, but most species tend to hunt in pairs or in packs.

Another factor is the ferocity of bears. Forget the 1950’s touchy-feely “nature” films from a mouse-loving studio. Bears are not cuddly, loving, and playful in the wild. Anyone who has ever seen a half-ton bear attacking with teeth that can be inches in length and slashing with claws longer than an adult person’s fingers is not going to want to get closer than effective rifle range.

Now imagine that this bear is intelligent and stalking its human prey. The human with the rifle might not even know that the bear is anywhere near until it breaks from cover in full charge. Unless the person with the rifle is very fast and very accurate, the bear will be the one to take home the trophy that day.

So if we bald apes ever get off this rock we call Earth in earnest, and we do make it to the stars, we just might encounter another predatory species. They might even look like bears.

And if we survive the initial contact and manage to open up a dialogue, we might find that we have more in common with them than initially thought. If that happens, there might someday be members of two races drinking together in a hunting lodge on the night before they try to kill each other.

* * * *

"Hunting Lodge" by Jon Crusoe is available now in issue 14 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Winning the WSFA Small Press Award - by Greg Siewert

I found out I was a finalist for the WSFA small press award over the summer, but I didn’t hear that I’d won until two weeks before the ceremony. I’d made the decision not to go simply because I live in California and Washington D.C. is on the other side of the country. I’m a winemaker and when I got the call from Edmund Schubert, the editor for "InterGalactic Medicine Show," I was working for a consulting client who has a micro-winery; he makes Sauvignon Blanc in his converted car port. "I was wondering if you could write something else for me" Edmund said. I didn’t know what he meant and I figured he was talking about a bio or something. Then he told me it was an acceptance speech. I couldn’t believe it.

The journey of "The Absence of Stars" was a weird one. The request for a re-write came long after I’d submitted it and I’d totally forgotten I had anything in submission. It was also a time when I wasn’t very focused on writing. I’m sure any aspiring writer can sympathize with the notion that finding time to write is sometimes the hardest part of the craft. "The Absence of Stars" is a long story, which took me half a year to write. I made the usual circuit of magazine submissions and then put it on the shelf, what else can you do? To find out that the story still had life, and that it was being considered by a magazine owned by Orson Scott Card, was really exciting.

I made it through the re-write process and they accepted it. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that if I’m writing 6 months from now, that encouragement out of the blue had a lot to do with it.

The nomination, and then later finding out I was a finalist, was a very gratifying thing. Banging away at something at home can be a pretty isolated experience. There’s no more difficult task than critiquing your own writing, and when you’re in the heat of creating something, how do you know it’s any good? To know that someone read your story and liked it, is a big deal.

I consider myself a "young" writer, but I mean that not in a chronological sense, (turning 36 canned that for me) but in terms of how much I’ve written. I had this idea, as I started writing science fiction, that I wanted to do my "version" of some familiar science fiction sub-genres. My story "God Loves the Infantry" got third place in the "Writer’s of the Future" Contest and represented my take on the "post-apocalypse urban hell-scape" as I envisioned it taking place in California. My unpublished novella "Boneman" was my take on the popular "demon escapes from hell" story. In my version, the demon is the protagonist and is strongly influenced by the super-hero genre. Anyway, this is all to explain that one of the most well-tread topics in science fiction is the "object is heading toward Earth" story. I knew I wanted to write one, and that was: "The Absence of Stars."

I had a few goals in writing this story that I felt would make it my own. First, the idea that the object(s) could be a hailstorm of black holes seemed really exciting. Second, I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t devote a single word to the consideration of who was and was not worthy of being evacuated. I’m not sure why I find that conversation so annoying and boring but I do. Third, the Earth doesn’t survive. So sad. Not the first story to take this approach but it was important to me. Finally, I’m an amateur physics buff and I wanted to use the story to explore some ideas and air out some opinions of mine about what relativity really means in terms of space exploration.

When I found out I won, I decided to make the trip and I have a confession to make; Capclave was my first science fiction convention. My friends Craig and Mary Beth live in D.C. and I decided that when it comes to writing, life doesn’t always give you a lot of opportunities so you should make the most of any that come along. I didn’t tell anybody that I’d won, not even my family or Craig and Mary Beth. I did this partially because I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and partially because I thought it would be more fun to keep my friends in suspense!

Capclave was great. It was really oriented toward writers. Every hour they had seminars in the different rooms of the hotel. I saw one seminar about the future of the space program and also saw an interview with the Guest of Honor; Harry Turtledove.

My friend Craig joined me for the ceremony and--still not having been told that I won--he was terribly excited and surprised at the result. It was really fun accepting the award and taking photos with the other finalists. After, Edmund was kind enough to show me one of the parties in the hotel and I had a fantastic time. I met a bunch of interesting and creative people and It’s a neat feeling to be around people you share a common passion with.

It was quite a bit of travel for such a short stay, but I have no regrets. Like I said earlier, writing is a craft that doesn’t always provide you with much encouragement, and it’s important to take advantage of any positive feedback that you get. Whatever keeps us writing!

Greg

Welcome to Two New IGMS Assistant Editors

I'm very excited to announce the addition of two new assistant editors to the IGMS staff. My goal is to significantly improve the speed of the response times for all submissions, as well as increase our online/social networking presence. I also realized over this past summer (as I was recovering from surgery on my left shoulder) that things could get out of control pretty quickly, and with a second surgery coming up in a few weeks I wanted to make sure the magazine would keep moving forward even if I wasn't.

Toward that end, I have hired Scott Roberts for one of the assistant editor positions. His primary responsibilities will be setting up and maintaining an IGMS Facebook page, maintaining the IGMS blog, being active in the IGMS forum, and of course reading some of the submissions. Scott is a Writer's of the Future winner, having attended their workshop and been published in their annual anthology. He is also a graduate of Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp and has been published twice in our magazine (as well as the IGMS anthology released last year by Tor).

Assistant editor number two is Eric James Stone. If you read IGMS, you should know his name, becase his stories appear practically in every other issue. Eric is also a Writer's of the Future winner, also a graduate of OSC's Literary Boot Camp, and a graduate of the Odessey Writing Workshop as well. In addition to his IGMS publishing credits, he has also been published in various anthologies and multiple times in Analog. Eric will be taking on a healthy portion of the IGMS submissions.

I'm very excited to have both of these high quality people to work with. It's something I've wanted to put in place for quite a while now, and when I finally got the green light, I knew right away who my first choices would be. Now I've got them both, and I couldn't be happier.

Congrats, Scott and Eric, and welcome to the Show!

Free IGMS Reading

Another hearty congratulations to Greg Siewert, whose story, "The Absence of Stars" won this year's WSFA award for Best Story of 2008. "The Absence of Stars" is a novelette that was published in two parts, in issues 10 and 11.

Also, congratulations to James Maxey, whose story "Silent As Dust" from issue 7 was one of the other finalists for this year's award. James' story was also selected for inclusion in The Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction 2009 edited by Rich Horton.

To celebrate, IGMS is making both of these stories free for everyone to read until the end of 2009. Dive in and enjoy! Just go to the IGMS homepage, click on the announcement at the top of that page, and get reading.

IGMS Story Wins WSFA Award for Best Short Story of 2008

Congratulations (again) to James Maxey, who got an Honorable Mention at the WSFA Small Press Awards for his story "Silent As Dust," and an extra-large congratulations to Greg Siewert, who was the winner for "The Absence of Stars - Part One." There was an ongoing humorous bit after the award was handed out, when people kept asking Greg when he was going to write part two. I say humorous, because the story was already complete; I sent the whole thing in to the committee when I nominated it. But because part one was published in the last issue of 2008 (the year being considered for the award) and part two was published in the first issue of 2009, the award was officially given to part one. After a while (a very short while, to tell the truth) we got tired of explaining it and started having fun with people, making silly stuff up. Greg was a great guy and it was a pleasure to meet him in person.

Personally, I was particularly happy with the win (even if all I got was a certificate, when last year they gave the author AND the editor an engraved crystal thingamabob for their efforts). Partly it was because John Joseph Adams had two stories nominated from an anthology he edited, and IGMS had two stories nominated, so we made up more than half of the finalists between us and had been ribbing each other on and off throughout the convention about who was and wasn't going to win. But mostly I was happy because it was the first outright win for an IGMS story. We've had stories nominated for awards before, but this was the first time one of my authors went home with some hardware (and a nice check, too). So a great big thanks to Greg for getting IGMS over that hump and into the winner's circle.

CapClave 2009

Heading up to Rockville, MD for CapClave; Oct. 16 - 18. It's a great literary SF convention -- no games, no costumes, no TV or movie stuff; just authors, editors, publishers, and the occasional agent. Also home of the WSFA's small press award ceremony, for which there are two IGMS stories on the list of finalists for best short story of 2008. For full convention details, see the CapClave website.

My own schedule is as follows:

Capclave 2009

Fri 7pm Plaza ‐ Alternate Dogcatchers

Participants: Jim Freund (m), Harry Turtledove, Tom Doyle, Michael Flynn, Edmund Schubert

What makes a good alternate history work and bad ones fail? What points of depature do you change?

How do you build a good alternate history? What alt histories aren't done that we would like to see?

Fri 8:30pm Twinbrook ‐ Reading: Edmund Schubert

Sat 12am Randolph ‐ Writers Workshop

Participants: Allen Wold (m), Davey Beauchamp, Edmund Schubert

Allen Wold and friends will help you become a better writer. Bring paper and a writing implement. All

else will be explained at the beginning of the session

Sat 1pm Randolph ‐ Writers Workshop

Participants: Allen Wold (m), Davey Beauchamp, Edmund Schubert

(part 2 of writers workshop)

Sat 3pm Montrose ‐ Save the Magazines!

Participants: Edmund Schubert (m), Scott Andrews, C. Alen Loewen, Karen Newton, George Scithers,

Shelia Williams

What can be done to save the magazines? Asimov's circulation, once 100,000 is down to 17,000 F&SF

even fewer. Is it worth saving? Are magazines doomed? Can Internet save the magazines? What will

replace them?

Book signing schedule

Saturday

10am Harry Turtledove and Shelia Williams

11am Ed Lerner and Michael Flynn

12pm Andrew Fox and C. Alan Loewan

1pm Dan Danvers and Michael Swanwick

2pm Mindy Klasky, A.C. Crispin, and James Morrow

3pm Alan Smale, Eric Choi, and James Maxey

4pm Lawrence Watt Evans, Catherine Asaro and Donald Walcott (after their concert)

5pm Diane Arrelle, Dr. Lawrence Schoen, and Edmund Schubert

Sat 9pm Plaza ‐ Small Press Award

Participants: WSFA and the nominees

Who will win the annual WSFA small press award? Come and see. Celebrate with cake.

Sun 11am Plaza ‐ Paranormal Versus Urban Fantasy

Participants: Scott Andrews (m), Catherine Asaro, Karen Newton, Edmund Schubert, Jean‐Marie Ward,

Diane Weinstein

Is paranormal romance just another name for urban fantasy? If not, what is the distinction? How do

writers determine the right balance between paranormal and romance? Is it just classic boy meets girl or

does a paranormal being make it different.

Sun 2pm Randolphh ‐ Online Fiction

Participants: Brenda Clough (m), Diane Arrelle, Edmund Schubert, J.J. Smith, Sean Wallace

Is the fiction published in online magazines different from that in the print magazines and if so, how?

What online fiction sources are the best? How do readers and writers find out about online sources?

Pretidigitation - by Philip Powell - IGMS issue 14 audio

Prestidigitation - A Tale of Stolen Fingers

Written by Philip Powell

Illustration by Tom Barker

Performed by Philip Powell, Tommy Trull, Melanie Wallace, Jim McKeny, Billy Christiansen, Tom Barker

Verse bored me. It was my dirty little secret. E-Gads! My snobby friends would have shunned me. By randomly quoting snippets of Moliere I avoided their suspicion. But internally, verse made my eyes roll.

Until, I read "Le Bete" by David Hirson, wonderful play written in the late 80's that had rhyming verse. What was different? It was a modern playwright who had written something for a modern audience. I had been fooled all those years when reading Shakespeare or similar. I thought it was the verse that I didn't care for. But come to find out, the problem was all the anachonistic language. It got in the way of my comprehending the text. Once I actually understood what was being said, verse and I became fast friends.

This piece started out as a script for a NYC 24 hour film contest. The story had to be about a clown, at a party…oh…and it had to be in rhyming verse. So, I ripped out a few verses…but we ultimately went in a different direction. There it sat on my desktop for two years. Until a tag line hit me out of the blue one day. “A tale of stolen fingers” I mused “who would have to the most to lose if his fingers were stolen?” A magician I suppose. Hmmm..that sounds a bit like that piece I started a few years back.” The rhyming verse was already in place so I just went with it.

I learned a lot during the process. The confines were good, as I had to think very carefully about what I was doing. Every word was precious. I had 12 syllables per line, all of their accents had to hit the beat, it had to rhyme…oh, and manage to be funny. Prose never seemed so liberating.

* * * *

Prestidigitation - A Tale of Stolen Fingers

Written by Philip Powell

Performed by Philip Powell, Tommy Trull, Melanie Wallace, Jim McKeny, Billy Christiansen, Tom Barker

is available now in issue 14 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

“For Want of Chocolate” - by J.F. Lewis - IGMS issue 14

***

Something is terribly wrong with Edmund. It’s a well known fact that I can’t sell a short story to save my life. Well. Known. Fact! And then Edmund goes and buys “For Want of Chocolate” putting me in this weird place where I have to stop saying that I’ve never sold a short story. Flat out cruelty. That’s what it is. And from a certain point of view cruelty is what the short story is all about.

Usually, I’m not a short story guy. Write a novel? Oh, yeah. For a short story, though, an idea has to explode into my head fully formed… and in general, I have to finish the thing in a week or it transforms into a novel. Take “For Want of Chocolate.” FWoC started as a blog post about how the vampires in my Void City series can’t eat and how that has driven them to participate in a sort of voyeuristic eating where they make humans dine on what they, the vampires, crave but cannot have. At the end of the post, I asked readers what food they’d miss the most if they became a vampire. Chocolate won hands down… which, given that I don’t really like chocolate, intrigued me.

Around the same time, I was invited to do a reading (I won’t say where) and *after* I accepted, the person in charge asked if I would please make sure to keep it clean. We’ve since laughed about it, but it seemed like a very odd (almost cruel) request at the time. My first novel, Staked, was the only book I had out, and to be frank, the main character is a veteran who runs a strip club and his language is… peppery at best. So, the week before the reading, I wrote the first draft of “For Want of Chocolate” as a vehicle for introducing the way my vampires work, with a fair dose of the humor folks have come (hopefully) to expect from the novels, but without the colorful expletives.

Obviously, the story became more than that… the characters became real and made their own choices and decisions, which is what I’m always shooting for when I write.

Haley, the main character in “For Want of Chocolate” is a newly turned vampire coming to the realization that she can’t eat chocolate anymore. Having her realize that simple fact while standing in front of a Godiva store is my little jab at the chocolate lovers out there and an attempt to awaken in chocolate lovers that craving which never completely goes away. The first time I read the story, people went out and bought chocolate. The second time I read it (at a convention) it was as part of a group reading and two of my fellow authors threatened to kill me if I ever again read the story in their presence when no chocolate was available… threats which made me glow inside, because that is exactly the reaction I wanted. Could the guy who doesn’t really like chocolate make people who do like it crave it? It worked on Edmund. Hopefully, it will work on you, too… and if all works as planned, you won’t have any chocolate at hand either.

Muhwahahaha!

If you enjoy “For Want of Chocolate,” you can check out more tales of Void City in Staked and its sequel ReVamped. A third book in the series and a proposal for a fourth are on my editor’s desk, so hopefully you won’t have long to wait for those either. If I have my way, Haley will have her own novel eventually too, in which the lack of chocolate will be the least of her worries.

* * * *

"For Want of Chocolate" by J.F. Lewis is available now in issue 14 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

"Shadow of Turning" by Joan Savage - IGMS, issue 14

I was stuck in a short story I was working on; so much so that I decided I needed to leave it for a while, give it a break. But it was the same with everything I had on the go. I’d open a file, stare at a story and the story would stare back, but that was it. I was stuck.

A change, I decided, was in order. I needed something new to work on, just for an afternoon, but I didn’t have any ideas for new projects either. Having been recently introduced to the concept of random plot generators I thought, I’ll have some fun, fool around, and then get back to work. So I found a website with a random plot generator and this is what it gave me: “The theme of this story: allegorical action. The main character: focused pedlar. The start of the story: reconciliation. The end of the story: revelation.”

Allegorical action didn’t interest me but reconciliation and revelation are loaded words, rich with connotations. The pedlar came easily—I’m fascinated by vagrant lifestyles and their hardships, and a suffering character always intrigues me. For reconciliation I grabbed the first thought that came to hand: the pedlar had an estranged son.

I began to write as the pedlar walked up to his son’s hut; a snake happened to slither past, just minding its own business and not intending to be part of any story at all. Then father met son and the pedlar began to speak backwards.

I was shocked.

Stories, I know, come from our subconscious, which always knows what it’s doing, but I often wish it would let the rest of my brain in on the process.

I wrote through to the end of their dialogue but then, because I really didn’t know what I was doing, the story stopped. I had had my fun and went back to my other projects. But there was something about the pedlar that intrigued me, something that kept me thinking about him and mulling over his story. He was a character I wanted to spend more time with.

So, after many months, I pulled the story out again and this time sat down in earnest to find out why the pedlar was looking for his son, why he was cursed, and why snakes kept turning up when I kept trying to get rid of them. The result is “Shadow of Turning.”

* * * *

"Shadow of Turning" by Joan Savage is available now in issue 14 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show