Almost Ready: Issue 35 of IGMS

Coming really soon...

 Issue 35 of IGMS, which represents the 8^th anniversary of our magazine. Eight years, wow. Maybe the idea of internet-based publishing just might catch on after all…

Our cover story this issue is "Tangible Progress" by Ed Schubert. No, not me; a different Ed Schubert. Really. Well… okay, it’s by me. But you have to promise not to tell Uncle Orson. ;-) Anyway… “Tangible Progress” is the story of a young girl in the process of discovering that there is much more to life with a tribe of werewolf-hunters than merely hunting werewolves. 

In "Southside Gods," author Sarah Grey introduces us to plumbers and air-conditioning repairmen and other potent deities. (I’d tell you more but then this intro would be longer than the story.) (Further proof that great things do come in little packages…)

"Wet Work: A Tale of the Unseen" is the Halloween centerpiece for this issue. It’s a tale of the idle rich, reality show contestants, zombies, and other mindless things that populate this dark but humorous post-apocalyptic world created by regular contributor Matt Rotundo. Guest-starring the devil, this one truly has something for everybody.

"Last Resort," by Michael Greenhut, is an argument for the redeemable nature of all people (except possible teenagers), set in a parallel-reality prison-world that only looks like paradise on the surface.

And not quite last, but very far from least, is "The Sweetness of Bitter," by Beth Cato. An SF tale in a very different post-apocalyptic world, “Sweetness” shows the very human results of a mother struggling to recalibrate the failing nanites in her daughter’s simulacrum. 

As a bonus for Halloween dessert, S. Boyd Taylor brings us this issue’s Tale for the Young and Unafraid (a feature normally penned by David Lubar). Everything you need to know about “The Elder Thing and the Puddle People” comes directly from the story: “It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter -- oh, the horrible, horrible glitter.” 

And be sure not to miss our InterGalactic interview with New York Times Best-Selling author Faith Hunter, who is so busy these days with novels and compendiums and games and anthologies that I honestly don’t know where she came up with time to do the interview. 

Plus the next installment of our newest feature, an article by our regular movie-reviewer, Chris Bellamy. Be sure to check out his second piece, "Beautiful Demise: Why I Will Be More Than Happy If and When 3D Finally Goes Away.”

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

What the Sea Refuses, by Brian Dolton

One of the things that I always counsel aspiring writers is that this is no business to be in if you're one of those people who likes instant gratification.

I now have the perfect example of that.

I started getting serious about writing fiction around 2005. No, that's not quite true; I had been serious about writing it for at least twelve years before that. But I started getting serious about letting other people read it around 2005. I started getting serious about thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could get paid for letting other people read it.

So in October 2005 I sent out my very first ever submission, to a new market that had just been announced - Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. The story was a short piece called "The Box Of Beautiful Things", featuring a pseudo-Chinese conjuror named Yi Qin.

To my amazed delight, the following June, it was accepted, and published shortly thereafter. The fact that I had sold to a professional magazine right out of the gate was not something I had ever expected. But I had already started sending out a few other stories. In May 2006 I submitted two other stories featuring the same character. One - "The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - went to Abyss and Apex, the other was called "What The Sea Refuses" and went to Black Gate.

They were accepted, too. That meant I had sold three of my first six submissions. It has, of course, become harder and harder ever since, but that's another story. I was lucky; I hit the right markets with the right stories and it gave me the confidence (I am not, by nature, a self-confident person) to keep going even through long, lean spells of rejection after rejection after rejection.

But: back to that Black Gate sale. Black Gate was a beautiful magazine; great production values, and its emphasis on "adventure fantasy" seemed to match perfectly with much of what I was writing at the time. It published some great authors and great stories and I was very pleased to sell to it.

What it was not, however, was fast.

Over the next couple of years I sold two further Yi Qin stories to Black Gate. As you may guess, this was a symptom that they stocked up on inventory. It was 2009 when I sold the third story there, but the first had yet to be published. Because one of the other stories was chronologically earlier in Yi Qin's life - and served as a much better introduction to her - the schedule was reorganised. So "What Chains Bind Us" was published in Black Gate issue 15, with "What The Sea Refuses" scheduled for issue 16.

Unfortunately... issue 15 turned out to be the last print issue published by Black Gate.

They continued publishing fiction, but were doing so only through their website (which, incidentally, I heartily recommend; they have a raft of contributors and are one of my favourite collective blog sites in genre). Publisher John O'Neill - who I met at WFC 2011 and who is an exceptionally pleasant person - put them on the schedule but also very kindly offered me the option of delaying them to see if I could sell them elsewhere.

So I sent "What The Sea Refuses" to IGMS, where I had tried and failed to repeat my success with "The Box Of Beautiful Things". I knew "What The Refuses", at almost 11000 words, would be a tough sell, so I trimmed it down to around 9700 and submitted it. And waited.

And then I got the response from Edmund, who really liked it... except that it was too long He suggested editing it down to somewhere around 6000 or 7000 words. He also wanted some changes to the ending and a couple of other tweaks.

I looked at the 9700 words. I am - as this blog post indicates - a naturally wordy writer. And Yi Qin is a creature of careful precision, of delicacy, of subtlety.

It was not easy. I ended up with about 7500 words. I hadn't shaved off any of the plot, I'd done the changes to the ending (which is definitely an improvement from the original; a distinct increase in tension, which is always good), and I was exhausted. I sent it to Edmund and wondered if I'd done enough.

The rest, of course, you know. I'd done enough. There was a quick round of line edits, a couple of clarifications, some removal of commas (I do overuse commas, oh yes), some subtle shifts of emphasis and tone. But it was a sale.

So a story I wrote in 2005 finally sees publication in 2013.

I'm very pleased to see it - I've always loved this story.

But, oh, what a long strange road it's been.

--Brian Dolton

Three Seconds, by Jonas David

‘Three Seconds’ started as a quick post for my personal blog. At the time I was trying to write a little story or scene every few days, just about whatever came into my head. I had this thought about people trapped in a void and the things they might argue about over the aeons.

As I wrote, though, they became more than human, and came to represent certain parts of our own behavior: creation, destruction and restraint.

Tessa is the passion for creation that we all have, the driving desire to imagine, develop and explore new ideas. She is creation with abandon the part of us all that when considering any project wants to throw caution aside and just do it.

The POV character is the necessary need for destruction--the willingness to let go of old projects that have stagnated, the ability to edit, or kill of a character-- that little part in all of us that sees a beautiful stained glass window and wants to smash it.

To me, Alec represents that part of us all that says 'I can't do it', the self-critical--even self-loathing, sometimes--internal voice that judges everything we do so much more harshly than our peers.

The message as I planned it, was that we should defeat that part of ourselves that holds back, and just create. Whether it be music or writing or cooking or coding, creating--even if you end up creating something broken, or of terrible quality--is always better than sitting around wondering if you are good enough, better than worrying so much about everything being perfect that you never create anything at all.

In my early days of writing this happened to me all too often. I'd come up with an idea, but instead of writing it I'd think 'someone's done this before' or 'I won't be able to do it well enough' or any other number of self-critical things, and instead of even trying, I'd toss the idea aside. Or, in the rare times that I thought the idea was unique enough and that I could do it well, I'd end up focusing so much on every minute detail of everything being figured out beforehand that I'd never start writing.

I think it’s important for any creative person to defeat this part of themselves. Realize that no idea is perfectly unique, and anything you create is going to have flaws, and not everyone is going to like everything you do. Once you can accept these truths and get past them, you’ll find your passion unleashed.

Defeat your own restraint, and your world will explode with universes of creation!

--Jonas David

Thirteen Words, by J. Deery Wray

"Thirteen Words" started life as a desperate attempt to come up with a story in three days based on a prompt I received at Viable Paradise. The prompt consisted of two parts: a theme for a fake anthology and an item I pulled out of a paper bag.

The anthology theme: Cymbid. In a future no one suspected, in a past no one remembers, the cymbid lurks. From horror to hard science, the stories that make cymbids the most exciting plants on the planet by the most exciting science fiction and fantasy writers out today.

The item: a plastic orange harmonica.

The first thing that got stuck in my mind was The Little Shop of Horrors, and it took me hours to get past my memories of that musical and start brainstorming an actual new story. Inside of a day, I had the original idea for "Thirteen Words", but I felt it would be too long to get down in the timespan I had to work in, so I wrote the first paragraph, then moved on to another idea. Seven ideas later, and seven more paragraphs into "Thirteen Words", I gave up on finding a different story and turned my mind to getting my initial idea completed as succinctly as possible.

I sent it off to IGMS, and a few months later received a rewrite opportunity. Edmund felt the story felt rushed, but allowed that he'd be willing to look at another version if I let it play out more slowly.

His comments made complete sense to me given how I'd written the story. So I went back and added in all the things I'd left out in my original rush to complete it, including an entire scene I'd skipped in my dash to the finish line.

The rewrite met with approval in the form of an acceptance, and I'm very happy to see my 'Horror that was Thursday' story live on IGMS.

--J. Deery Wray

Guest Post - Thieftaker Chronicles, Book II: Thieves' Quarry, by D.B. Jackson

“So, what’s your book about?”

“Uhhhhhhh . . . .”

Thieves’ Quarry, volume II in the Thieftaker Chronicles, my series of stand-alone historical urban fantasies, comes out from Tor Books on July 2. It is a murder mystery, set against the backdrop of the British occupation of Boston as it began in September and October 1768. My lead character, Ethan Kaille, a thieftaker and conjurer, investigates the murder by magick of nearly one hundred men aboard a British naval vessel. Along the way, he stumbles across a fight among thieves over a cache of smuggled pearls.

So I suppose you can say that the book is about conjurings, murder, smuggling, and Colonial era politics. And that actually sounds pretty interesting. I could sell a few books answering the “What’s your book about?” question that way.

But I find that what my books are about for me, and what they are about to my readers, are not always the same things. This is not at all a knock on my readers -- we all read books for different reasons, and I know that I take from the books I read different things than the author might have intended. Reading is an interactive endeavor. I know it doesn’t seem that way, but it is. As readers, we each bring a different life experience to the books we read, and so we cannot help but take something unique from the narrative experience.

Sure, every person who reads Thieves’ Quarry is going to find a story about murder, magic, and politics. They’ll follow Ethan as he tracks the killer, grapples with his rival in thieftaking, Sephira Pryce, and interacts with the other characters I first introduced in Thieftaker.

But, if they wish to, they will also find themes of loyalty and betrayal, of duty and sacrifice. They will see portraits of frayed and broken families. They will follow my hero as he struggles with echoes of his past, some of them distant and thought-provoking, others immediate, visceral, and terrifying. That last is probably the most important part of the book for me. As far as I am concerned, at root, Thieves’ Quarry is about Ethan revisiting episodes from his past and being forced to acknowledge the consequences of the poor decisions he made in his youth.

Put another way, it is about a man who is slipping into middle age and thinking about where his life has taken him.

Let me pause here to offer a very brief anecdote that you all might find a bit odd: My wife is a biologist, and she has a colleague who studies birds. At the very beginning of his career he studied sexual response in a certain species. He was a young man at the time, he was courting the woman who would become his wife, and with whom he would soon start a family. Now, thirty-plus years later, as he nears the end of his career, he studies aging in the same species. So, for all you amateur (and professional) psychologists out there, why would I be so interested in writing novels about a middle-aged thieftaker who is coming to grips with the decisions he made in his youth? (Hint: It’s not because I’m a thieftaker.)

I love the all the stuff relating to my plot -- the mysteries, the magic system, the blending of fiction and history. Coming up with the storylines for the Thieftaker books is tremendous fun, and when I am able to piece it all together to create a mystery that confounds and twists and ultimately satisfies, it is remarkably gratifying. Which I suppose is another way of saying that if you read the Thieftaker books because you really enjoy the stories, or because you find yourself fascinated by the historical setting, or because you like the voice and the character, that’s great.

When I’m writing, though, I’m thinking about all those things and then some. I am delving into the emotions and minds of my characters, exploring themes that are important to me not only because they relate to my narrative, but also for reasons that might have nothing at all to do with Ethan Kaille or Colonial Boston. I would never say that Ethan is anything like me. He’s not. He’s braver than I am, he’s led a life filled with ill fortune and sadness, he’s a loner. None of those things is true of me. Aside from our advancing middle age, we have precious little in common. But I relate to him as I would a close friend, and when I write his scenes I focus on his emotions in ways that most of my readers probably don’t. (In fact, if they did, I would be worried about them.)

This is why I really hate the question that appears at the beginning of this post. “So, what’s your book about?”

Sometimes I want to answer, “It’s about life and death, the human condition, the meaning of friendship and enmity, the transformative power of love and the devastating impact of loss. You know: stuff like that.” Because that would probably be the most honest answer I could give. The problem is it would tell the person asking almost nothing about the book. At least nothing that they really want to know.

So instead I say, “It’s about murder and magic in Colonial America. Oh, and there are thieves and smugglers, too. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?” That’s also an honest answer. And it sells more books.

*****

D.B. Jackson is also David B. Coe, the award-winning author of more than a dozen fantasy novels. His first book as D.B. Jackson, the Revolutionary War era urban fantasy, Thieftaker, volume I of the Thieftaker Chronicles, came out in 2012 and will soon be available in paperback. The second volume, Thieves’ Quarry, will be released on July 2, just in time for the July 4th holiday. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.

http://www.dbjackson-author.com

http://www.dbjackson-author.com/blog

http://www.facebook.com/dbjacksonAuthor

http://twitter.com/dbjacksonauthor

http://www.goodreads.com/dbjackson

http://amazon.com/author/dbjackson

Explaining Cthulhu To Grandma—Alex Shvartsman

Inspiration comes in many ways, often from where you least expect it. This particular story started out as a Twitter conversation.

One day, fellow writer Sylvia Spruck Wrigley made a post on Twitter saying something along the lines of "I'm having such a difficult time explaining Cthulhu to grandma." To which I immediately replied with: "this would make an awesome story title."
Sylvia agreed, but when I checked in with her a couple of weeks later, she hadn't come up with an idea for a story yet. So I asked if I could have the title instead, and she generously allowed me to use it. In return, I named the main character after Sylvia, and the characters of grandma and gran-gran after Sylvia's own mother and grandmother.

To be honest, I don't quite understand Cthulhu -- or at least the appeal of the Lovecraftian genre for so many readers -- myself, so it was easy for me to relate to grandma. Lacking the appropriate level of respect for H.P. Lovecraft's body of work necessary to write a horror story, I shoved Cthulhu into a snow-globe and proceeded to put it through a series of indignities instead. And where better to do such a thing than in a magic pawn shop?

I have never set foot inside of an actual pawn shop. However, I've seen several dozen episodes of the History Channel's "Pawn Stars" which allowed me to learn enough about the inner workings of such a place to fake it. One of the most interesting things about "Pawn Stars" to me has always been the relationship between Rick and the Old Man. Both men constantly feel like they know best, and constantly butt heads over each other's decisions on the show. I wanted to capture some of that dynamic in Sylvia's relationship with her grandma. Sylvia feels that she's ready to run the shop, but grandma isn't prepared to admit that her young protege can handle things on her own, and is skeptical of Sylvia's decisions. This dynamic helps drive both the plot and the humor in the story.

"Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma" was incredibly fun to write, and I plan on revisiting this setting in the future. I already wrote a second Pawn Shop story (where a Pandora's box ends up in the shop) and plan on working on several more down the line.

--Alex Shvartsman

Notes on a Page – Barbara A. Barnett

"Notes on a Page" began life as a flash-length story written for a contest over at the Codex Writers' Group called Weekend Warrior. You're given several prompts Friday night and have until Sunday night to write a flash story using one of them. One of the prompts last year was to write a story in which someone finds a secret passage in a public building. At the time, I had just been offered an internship working in an orchestra library, and that inspired my take on the prompt: a portal in an orchestra hall that quite literally takes one inside the music.

I realized two things very quickly with the story: 1) it didn't want to stay at flash length, and 2) my protagonist's internal conflict was pretty weak. My first draft involved her wanting to have learned to play violin, but she had been pressured into learning oboe instead—not a particularly compelling problem. Luckily, my orchestra internship came to the rescue and inspired a more interesting angle.

The more I spent my work hours scrutinizing and marking up scores and parts, the more I thought about how, even though most of us experience music on an emotional level, there's often this amazingly complex level of technical detail beneath it all. But technical perfection, while impressive, usually isn't emotionally satisfying. As a result, sometimes a musician will be criticized for being technically proficient but lacking in personality or feeling. Similarly, we'll often forgive technical imperfection because of the emotional effect achieved. As a performer, it can be a difficult balancing act—how do I invest the music with emotion while still staying on pitch and in tempo and hitting all the right notes with the right rhythm and the right articulation?

For this story, I decided to carry the technical perfection vs. feeling conflict a performer faces to an extreme with a character who was an odd duck because her passion was rooted in technical perfection, because she didn't understand or know how to achieve the sense of feeling that others demanded from her. I think that made for a far more intriguing dilemma than the first draft's "my parents wouldn't let me play the violin" angle.

And perhaps using Beethoven's ninth symphony in the story was the obvious choice given the ironic resonance the final movement's "Ode to Joy" text would have for my protagonist, but . . . well, it just felt right.

--Barbara A. Barnett

Through the Veil—Michael T. Banker

This story was the culmination of two self-imposed missions. One was on a train, staring out the window, telling myself that I had to come up with a story idea this trip. (It's amazing how often that works, actually, I should really do it more often.) I just let my gaze flit around, latching onto random things and immediately twisting them into something else. I am a very visual person, so it's often images I’m working with. This time, melting icicles became melting wax, became a girl encased in wax like a cocoon. So there has to be some sort of metamorphosis, right? I saw her emerging from her cocoon and realizing that the moon shone like the sun, and the sun like the moon. And a boy--husband, brother--was searching for her, but couldn't find her on that other plane. I eventually lost the cocoon, but no matter, I had the seed to my story.

So, fine, mission accomplished, I pocketed that idea, knowing I was going to do something with it. Usually, I'd just set it in Generic Fantasy Land (albeit doing my best to make it as interesting and original of a Generic Fantasy Land as possible). I'd marry myself to the concept and acquaint myself with the characters and off I'd go. But I have a bad habit of writing stories that are all imagination and no research, so this time I made myself research a culture to set it in. Specifically, I wanted to learn more about an Asian culture that wasn't Japan (I majored in Japanese and studied abroad there). I chose Korea and read up on their culture, history and, increasingly as the story developed, folklore.

Note that I consider this story to be inspired by Korean culture, not restricted to it. Mudang are women of Shamanism (or Muism) who hold rituals to communicate with spirits, but the details of the ritual and nature of the communication are my own. The spirit world itself is inspired partly by their folklore, largely by imagination. I like to use research as a starting point; my goal was never to construct a world true to history.

This was possibly the hardest story that I've ever written. It was stubborn, intractable, and fought me the whole way. I quit the first time midway through, eventually coming back to insert an unsatisfactory ending. Then I left it for quite a while before finally picking it back up again, axing a redundant character (there were originally three mudang), and completely rewriting the latter half of it. I’m very happy that after all of that, it was able to find a home.

--Michael T. Banker

The Temple’s Posthole—M.K. Hutchins

"The Temple's Posthole" is filled with things that make me happy: postholes, a cool family dynamic, and lots of Classic Maya-ish stuff.

My writing group was once waiting for someone to return to Skype. After an awkward silence, our illustrious leader asked if there was anything we wanted to talk about. Without hesitation, I answered "Postholes!"

Postholes are fascinating. Carefully excavated, they can show the shape of a structure long after the actual building has disappeared. Someone else in my writing group jumped in with her love of postholes and ruins. Our leader groaned. Awkward silences have, ever since, been traditionally filled with postholes -- largely because postholes are excellent, but partially as good-natured teasing.

During one of these awkward silences, someone joked about how one or all of us should write a posthole story. The idea lodged in my brain. I day-dreamed about a postholes magic system. I scribbled in notebooks. I outlined. And I wrote.

In those early brainstorming notes, Ayin didn't have a son -- she had a romantic interest to play the role of Lord Yuknoom's hostage. It was the first trope on the shelf, and it felt flat to me even as I scribbled. There are plenty of other important relationships in the course of human existence; romance just seems to get the most attention.

And so Tzi entered the picture instead. I haven't read much fantasy where the protagonist is a mom. Kids are hard to pack for on the road to Mordor. But I'm happy that I was able to place a mother-child relationship at the heart of this narrative -- I think Tzi made this a richer story than it otherwise could have been.

My love of postholes comes from my love of archaeology, and I knew I'd be setting this in a fantasy land drawing from the Classic Maya. This story, with its abundant magic, isn't anything near historical, but I hope I was able to capture some of the feel and flare of that time period anyway.

I focused on the Classic Maya and their glyphs in college, and I've long wanted to write a story that criticizes the mountains of media that depicts them as a bloodthirsty, incomprehensible civilization. These depictions seem especially unfair, given that the Roman Empire's particular brand of human sacrifice -- the gladiators -- are celebrated. Gladiators themselves are praised for their bravery, and the socio-political motivations behind the arena are explained, neatly and rationally, as bread and circuses.

The nations I've created are fictional, but I'm happy I was able to take something that is at first glance utterly alien, and reframe it into something human and comprehensible.

More Maya stuff: Kaloomte is actually a high-ranking title. If anyone reading the story is familiar with Classic Maya titles, I apologize for the blatant foreshadowing.

Last tidbit: My favorite part of this story is the line "sit in the lordship." I doubt anyone else will notice it, but it's a direct translation from a phrase the Maya used to write about ascensions.

--M.K. Hutchins

Winning Veronica’s Heart—Ian Creasey

"Winning Veronica's Heart" is my second appearance in IGMS, following "The Report of a Doubtful Creature" in the November 2009 issue.  It is, however, a very different style of story.

I've always been fascinated by the notion of parallel worlds.  As a child I read a lot of books by Andre Norton: she was my "gateway drug" into the SF genre.  Her novel The Crossroads of Time introduced me to the idea that there existed different versions of the Earth, where history had taken different paths; and with a suitable technological gizmo, you could travel between all these alternate worlds.

It's a well-worn trope, of course.  Authors are often drawn to gaudy, big-picture scenarios: Earths with radically different histories, based on different outcomes from major events such as the American Civil War, the extinction of the dinosaurs, etc.

However, if there are many parallel worlds, then some of them will be very similar to our own, having only recently diverged.  And it seems plausible to me that if the technology for travelling to parallel worlds is ever invented, then these similar worlds will be much easier to reach than the radically different ones (e.g. Earths where the dinosaurs survived), because they're "nearer".  After all, in the realm of space travel, it is much easier to land on the Moon than it is to reach distant stars and galaxies.

The key aspect of these nearby parallel worlds is that they contain different versions of ourselves.  In a world where the Roman Empire never fell, I would never have been born, so there is no "alternate" version of myself.  However, in a world which diverged twenty years ago, there is a version of me who shares the same childhood, but who made different decisions in adulthood.

What if you could travel to worlds inhabited by your alternate selves?  What if your friends and lovers also had different versions?

I'm a fan of standup comedy, and I enjoy the observational humour of comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld.  It struck me that meeting yourself, and interacting with yourself, might make a good topic for observational humour.

The differences between your parallel selves would typically lie in the realm of minutiae — details which are small, vivid, often absurd.  These are exactly the kind of details that a good comedian can turn into humour.

I decided to set myself the challenge of writing a story in the form of a standup comedian's monologue.  To do this, I had to come up with some appropriate patter, punch lines, and so forth.  That wasn't the problem.

The hard part was writing a monologue that also worked as a story with a plot.  In reality, a comedian's routine rarely consists of a coherent story-arc with a beginning, middle and end.  A comedian will usually discuss different topics and shift between them, but without a "plot" as such.  This is very different to readers' expectations of a story.  Readers, particularly in the SF/Fantasy genres, usually expect a forward-moving plot.

So to give some shape to the narrative, I decided to describe the progression of a romantic relationship, since that's a standard topic for standup comedians.  I should perhaps clarify that I don't personally endorse the approach to relationships described in the story.  There are elements of exaggeration and absurdity — it's intended as comedy, not a how-to manual.

The final draft of the story was a compromise between observational humour and a more plot-driven tale.  I hope it succeeds in capturing the merits of both approaches.  Nevertheless, I know that in other universes nearby, my alternate selves have written an infinite number of better versions....

--Ian Creasey

Hard-sell Stories

I can’t speak for the other assistant editors (and Edmund would telekinetically extract my voice box if I tried speaking for him), but there are some stories I’ve become extremely tired of recently:

Hospital Stories

So…I’ve spent a lot of time with loved ones in the hospital.  So much time, in fact, I know the perfume and deodorants that the various nurses and doctors use.  And when I smell it on the street, my subconscious triggers the emotions that I felt when I was there in the hospital—a soup of  heart-sickness, anxiety, exhaustion, and boredom.

Writers RARELY get hospitals right.  Even writers who are doctors or nurses rarely get hospitals right (from a patient or loved one’s perspective).  Not to say it hasn’t been done well, but I’m extremely discriminating when it comes to accepting stories that treat on ideas of sickness, treatment, and relationships with the diseased. 

(No—watching the execrable Robin Williams film ‘Patch Adams’ is NOT acceptable research for preparing to write a story set in a hospital.  Nor, alas is House, ER, or Grey’s Anatomy.  I’ll accept Scrubs but only because it’s funny.  Hilarity covers a multitude of sins.  Uh…research the hilarity, NOT the practices of the residents or doctors…)

Time Travel Stories

I’m going to say what I know everyone is thinking: there are no more unique time-travel stories.  Good stories remain to be told in this sub-genre, but if you’re banking on the originality of your idea to carry your story, just…don’t.  The concept of time travel is well-worn enough that I dare to say that it’s kind of tapped out.  (Prove me wrong.  PLEASE prove me wrong.)

Love Stories

Man, for a society obsessed with love and romance, I have to say, we’re not really very good at depicting it.  At least not in short story format.

I am biased.  You know what was a good love story?  Tara and Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  They didn’t fall in love immediately.  There were no star-struck moments of heady, desperate, you-were-made-for-me, LUUURRRVE.  It was a natural progression from friendship, to close friendship, to romance, to commitment. 

It took excellent writers MULTIPLE episodes over at least two seasons (by my recollection) to move them from friends to couple.

You know what was a terrible love story?  Willow and Kennedy from the last season of Buffy. 

Same show, same characters—completely different execution.  One was a such a tremendous success that we could kind of sympathize with Willow’s point in tracking down and executing the man who accidentally killed her partner.  (And her subsequent attempt to destroy the whole Earth because reality without Tara SUCKS.)  Sure.  Because their relationship had bones.  It was a product of time, energy, and consideration. 

The other?  Um…boring.  Inconsequential.  False.  Because the writers not only did not take their time building to a believable relationship, they worked contrary to Willow’s established character. 

(Also, I’ll be honest: I was kind of hoping for Oz to return.  I love me some Oz.)

Here’s where this tracks to short stories: there’s just not enough time for most writers to put characters’ romance into swing.  At least not from my point of view—as seen above, I’m kind of a traditionalist.  I do not believe that True Love is a product of sudden, sharp, mystical reactions between two individuals.  My suspension of disbelief just won’t reach that far (usually).  For it to be believable, the relationship has to have some progression.  There has to be some time devoted to getting to know one another, finding common interests, etc.

Love ain’t cheap.  The price needs to be figured into your story.

Easy-Peasy

Let it not be said that I don’t offer helpful suggestions for story themes. 

Here are some things I’m always delighted to see in the slush pile:

• Retellings of classic fairy tales (I like both dark and lighter versions)
• Humorous stories (Think Terry Pratchett rather than Douglas Adams)
• Military science fiction (Battles and skirmishes are especially welcome, along with well-characterized protagonists)
• Alternate histories (Example: I loved Stephen Kotowych’s Under the Shield)

--Scott M. Roberts

Assistant Editor, IGMS

The Postman & Always Here, by Ken Liu - IGMS

“The Postman” & “Always Here”

 Ken Liu

I used to only write very long stories. I didn’t know how to tell a story in under 5,000 words, much less 1,000. Someone told me that I had to learn to write shorter stories because they were easier to sell. So I resolved to learn the art of flash.

The advice turned out to be very useful, though not for the reason stated above. For a long time, I had much more trouble selling my shorter stories than longer ones because they were so much worse. Terrible really. But somehow practicing the very short form made my longer pieces better. (The way my writing mind works is often still a mystery to me.)

Eventually, I did get flash as a form (I’m thankful that my early attempts will never see the light of day). Both of my stories in Issue 31 began life as entries in the Shock Totem bi-monthly flash fiction contest. Entrants have a week to write a story based on a prompt (a photograph, a news article, etc.). Since the contests are geared towards dark fantasy and horror, my entries, which tend to be science fiction, don’t tend to do well. But as my purpose in entering these contests is to learn how to write flash fiction better, I’m very happy with the results.

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“The Postman”: This was inspired by Karl Bunker’s “Overtaken” in the Sep/Oct 2011 issue of F&SF. I enjoy participating in literary dialogs where authors write stories to respond to each other – that’s what a literary tradition is: authors talking to each other through stories in a common enterprise, much as scientists converse through papers in their common enterprise. (I consulted Karl ahead of time to be sure that he had no objections with me publishing this story, which picks up on his story’s theme and offers a variation.)

There’s a long history of anxiety that our creations (robots, AIs, post-humans, etc.) may surpass us someday, leaving us at their mercy as wards or little more than pets. There’s also a long tradition of science fiction about explorers on ancient space vessels obsoleted by those on faster, newer vessels before reaching their destinations. The two worries are related to each other as well as to the deep parental anxiety about being surpassed by their children without their children’s understanding or appreciation for their sacrifices.

“The Postman” doesn’t resolve this anxiety – most anxieties that have literary interest are unresolvable – but it offers a hopeful view of how parents will be seen by their children. Hope is separated only thinly from wishful thinking, but I always prefer to err on the side of hope.

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“Always Here”: I’ve been experimenting lately with writing stories that adopt the conventions of science fiction for fantasy and vice versa. This is one example.

I think of fantasy as literature that literalizes a metaphor. “Always Here” is a fantasy story told in the language of science fiction. As we grow older, many (most?) of us lose our sense of wonder, our openness to possibilities, our willingness to hear voices that are unexpected. This story makes that ossification of the mind literally true.

Yet the metaphor is not just a metaphor. There is some biological basis for the common belief that aging reduces our novelty-seeking behavior, makes us less open-minded, causes us to dwell on the past. Our free wills are only as free as their biological foundation.

After writing this, I often imagined what Anna would look like after emerging from the probe. And the truth is that every time I came up with a different answer. Somehow, that makes me happy.