IGMS #25, Letter From the Editor

Welcome to issue 25 of IGMS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delayed Publication

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

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

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor IGMS

Intergalactic Medicine Show #25

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

Nina.  Kiriki.  Hoffman.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

On TV: A Strange World

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

1) An alien world filled with danger.

2) Beautiful people with tortured pasts.

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

4) The absolute lack of dinosaurs.

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

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

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

It’s a delicious quandry to be in.

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

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

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

Under The Shield—Stephen Kotowych

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest of the story unfolded from there.

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

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

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

- Stephen Kotowych

Under the Shield—Stephen Kotowych

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rest of the story unfolded from there.

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

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

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

- Stephen Kotowych

What Happened At Blessing Creek- Naomi Kritzer

"Will the government make these Indians go west?"

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

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

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

--Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

I loved the Little House books as a kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT THESE PEOPLE NEED IS A HONKY

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

--Panel description at WisCon, 2007

MIGHTY WHITEY

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

--TVTropes.com

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

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

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

So what would a story about those people look like?

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

--Naomi Kritzer

Nick Greenwood wins Chesley Award for IGMS Cover

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

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

Follow the link for details!

-Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor IGMS

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

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

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

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

--Michael Banker

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

--Scott M. Roberts, IGMS

Old Flat Foot—Ross Willard

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

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

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

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

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

--Ross Willard

Whiteface—Jared Oliver Adams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Jared Oliver Adams

www.jaredoliveradams.com

IGMS - Issue 24 - August 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy.

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

Tangent Online Reviews IGMS #23

An overall positive review of the issue.

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

Gender and Science Fiction/Fantasy—More Numbers

…from DMS at GeekasChicas.com.

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

Link to the full article.

Side-Show Arcade: Mansions of Madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Scott M. Roberts

This is My Corporation, Eat—Lon Prater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lon Prater
Pensacola, Florida
Summer 2011

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

“It wasn’t interesting.”

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

“The ending was unsatisfying.”

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

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

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

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

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

The Hanged Poet—Jeff Lyman

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

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

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

--Jeff Lyman

The Trouble With Eating Clouds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IGMS Award Anthology TOC

For your consideration, the table of contents for the upcoming IGMS Award anthology:

“Trinity County, CA” by Peter S. Beagle

First appeared in IGMS issue #18

 

“Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain” by Von Carr

First appeared in IGMS issue #17

 

“The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived” by Keffy R. M. Kehrli

First appeared in IGMS issue #19

 

“The American” by Bruce Worden

First appeared in IGMS issue #20

 

“Silent as Dust” by James Maxey

First appeared in IGMS issue #7

 

“Horus Ascending” by Aliette deBodard

First appeared in IGMS issue #8

 

“End-of-the-World Pool” by Scott Roberts

First appeared in IGMS issue #12

 

“A Heretic by Degrees” – by Marie Brennan

First appeared in IGMS issue #10

 

“The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola” by Jason Sanford

First appeared in IGMS issue #20

 

“Beautiful Winter” by Eugie Foster

First appeared in IGMS issue #13

 

“Blood & Water” – by Alethea Kontis

First appeared in IGMS issue #9

 

“Mean-Spirited” – by Edmund R. Schubert

First appeared in IGMS issue #16

 

“Robot Sorcerer” – by Eric James Stone

First appeared in IGMS issue #10

 

“Aim For The Stars” – by Tom Pendergrass

First appeared in IGMS issue #15