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SHAPERS OF WORLDS
Science fiction and fantasy by authors featured on
the Aurora Award-winning podcast
The Worldshapers
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Published by
Shadowpaw Press
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
www.shadowpawpress.com
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Copyright © 2020 by Edward Willett
All rights reserved
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
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The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.
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Kickstarter Edition Printing September 2020
First Printing October 2020
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Print ISBN: 978-1-989398-06-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989398-08-1
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Edited by Edward Willett
Cover art by Tithi Luadthong
Interior design by Shadowpaw Press
Created with Vellum
Copyrights
“Vision Quest” copyright © 2020 by Edward Willett
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“Call to Arms” copyright © 2020 by Tanya Huff
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“The Tale of the Wicked” copyright © 2009 by John Scalzi
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“The Farships Fall to Nowhere” copyright © 2020 by John C. Wright
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“Evanescence” copyright © 2020 by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
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“Peel” copyright © 2004 by Julie E. Czerneda
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“The Knack of Flying” copyright © 2020 by Shelley Adina Bates
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“Ghost Colours” copyright © 2015 by Derek Künsken
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“One Million Lira” copyright © 2014 by Thoraiya Dyer
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“Pod Dreams of Tuckertown” copyright © 2007 by Gareth L. Powell
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“In Silent Streams, Where Once the Summer Shone” copyright © 2020 by Seanan McGuire
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“Welcome to the Legion of Six” copyright © 2019 by Fonda Lee
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“Good Intentions” copyright © 2020 by Christopher Ruocchio
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“Shhhh . . .” copyright © 1988 by David Brin
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“The Greatest of These Is Hope” copyright © 2020 by D. J. Butler
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“A Thing of Beauty” copyright © 2011 by Dr. Charles E. Gannon
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“Home is Where the Heart Is” copyright © 2020 by David Weber
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“Tricentennial” copyright © 1977 by Joe Haldeman
Contents
Introduction
By Edward Willett
Vision Quest
By Edward Willett
Call to Arms
By Tanya Huff
The Tale of the Wicked
By John Scalzi
The Farships Fall to Nowhere
By John C. Wright
Evanescence
By L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Peel
By Julie E. Czerneda
The Knack of Flying
By Shelley Adina
Ghost Colours
By Derek Künsken
One Million Lira
By Thoraiya Dyer
Pod Dreams of Tuckertown
By Gareth L. Powell
In Silent Streams, Where Once the Summer Shone
By Seanan McGuire
Welcome to the Legion of Six
By Fonda Lee
Good Intentions
By Christopher Ruocchio
“Shhhh . . .”
By David Brin
The Greatest of These Is Hope
By D.J. Butler
A Thing of Beauty
By Dr. Charles E. Gannon
Home Is Where the Heart Is
By David Weber
Tricentennial
By Joe Haldeman
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
By Edward Willett
Like most writers of science fiction and fantasy, I started out as a reader. In our public library in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, every science fiction and fantasy book bore a bright-yellow sticker on the spine, featuring a stylized atom with a rocketship for a nucleus. I methodically worked my way along the shelves until I’d read most of the books thus marked, which included, not just novels, but short-story collections, some by one author, many by multiple authors; some offering original fiction, others reprints.
Inspired (or possibly corrupted) by my reading, I tried my own hand at writing science fiction when I was eleven years old, producing my first complete short story: “Kastra Glazz, Hypership Test Pilot.” My course was clearly set: I’ve been writing science fiction and fantasy ever since.
But while I could imagine myself as a writer, it never once occurred to me I might one day be editing and publishing a short-story anthology myself. And even had that thought crossed my mind, I would never have dreamed that within such an anthology I might have stories by authors of the caliber collected herein. Had you told me when I was reading Forever War as a teenager, for example, that someday I would not only meet and interview Joe Haldeman but I’d be republishing a Hugo Award-winning story of his, I wouldn’t have believed it. Joe Haldeman and the other authors I read then seemed Olympians to me, forever out of my reach.
Years went by. I had a few short stories of my own published and, eventually, novels. I even made it to a few science fiction conventions, something else that had seemed out of reach as a small-town prairie boy. I started meeting some of the Olympians. Sometimes, I was on panels with them, or I’d go out to dinner with them, or we’d have drinks in the bar. I realized they were not, in fact, unapproachable.
Fast-forward (through a whole bunch of writing and publishing adventures) to the summer of 2018, when the idea came to me to leverage my experience as an erstwhile newspaper reporter and radio and TV host, and the contacts I had made in the genre, to launch a new podcast, focusing on something I love to talk about: the creative process of crafting science fiction and fantasy.
I researched the making of podcasts, decided on a hosting service, set up a website, got the necessary software and equipment, and then reached out to possible guests—and was thrilled by how many fabulous autho
rs said, “Sure, I’ll talk to you.” That willingness spanned the writing-career spectrum from legends of the field and international bestsellers to folks who are just getting started, from writers for adults to writers for young adults and children, from hard SF writers to writers of epic fantasy. The Worldshapers podcast took off with a bang—and, of course, continues.
Fast-forward again. In April 2019, at the annual meeting of SaskBooks, the association of Saskatchewan publishers of which I’m a member by virtue of owning Shadowpaw Press, a guest speaker talked about her success at Kickstarting anthologies.
Hey, I thought. I know some authors . . .
And thus, this book was born. I spun my wheels a bit at first—I’d never tried a Kickstarter and the challenges seemed daunting, and, of course, I had other writing and publishing commitments. But I garnered great advice from my fellow DAW Books author Joshua Palmatier, who has successfully Kickstarted numerous anthologies through his company, Zombies Need Brains, LLC, and more great advice from my fellow Saskatchewan author Arthur Slade, who has successfully Kickstarted a graphic novel, and, of course, it’s not like there’s a shortage of advice online (too much, maybe, since some of it is contradictory). At any rate, in the end, I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, rolled up my metaphorical shirtsleeves, and set to it.
I reached out to my first-year guests (an arbitrary decision to keep the length manageable—but don’t worry; I totally plan to do a Volume II with the fabulous guests from the second year) and asked if they’d be interested in contributing either an original story or a reprint. Many were. (Those who couldn’t, due to other commitments, were still highly supportive of the idea.) Many of the contributors, in turn, were very generous in providing backers’ rewards. I built the campaign. It ran over the month of March 2020.
Wait. Something else happened in March 2020. I can’t quite put my finger on it . . . it’ll come to me . . .
Yes, I managed to launch my first-ever Kickstarter campaign concurrent with the start of the worldwide pandemic’s North American tour. Lockdowns, people out of work, fear of what the future would hold . . . not particularly conducive to shelling out money for a collection of science fiction and fantasy, I feared.
And yet . . . people did. I’d aimed for $13,500 Canadian and ended up at $15,700. The book was a go. The stories came in. And now they’re going out again—to you.
Compiling and editing this anthology has been a complete joy. Every author has been a delight to work with. I hope you’ll find the stories, both originals and reprints, as much a pleasure to read as I have.
This is not a themed anthology in the way many anthologies are, but it does have a theme. It’s right there in the title: Shapers of Worlds.
Like potters shaping bowls from clay, authors shape their stories using a myriad of malleable elements: their own experiences, their hopes and fears and loves and hates, and their knowledge of history and science and human nature, all richly glazed with imagination and fired in the kiln of literary talent.
Each story in this book is set in a unique world shaped by a master of the craft. All of them showcase the skill of their creators.
Welcome, traveller, to the realm of The Worldshapers.
Enter, and enjoy.
Edward Willett
Regina, Saskatchewan
August 2020
Vision Quest
By Edward Willett
She comes, as so many have before her, in the twilight of the solstice, as this system’s primary slips beneath the northwestern horizon for a brief respite before lighting the sky again in the early morning.
She comes on a mechanical conveyance with two wheels, which she drives with thrusts of her legs, her feet on pedals. Some have come on horseback. Most have been on foot.
She comes to the edge of the small, round depression in the vast plain where I reside, a hollow with a pond at its centre, surrounded by the vegetation her people call cottonwoods and willows. That pond, dark and still, never goes dry, no matter how sere the fields surrounding it, no matter if the skies turn black with topsoil born aloft by howling winds, as they have so many times since I came here.
She hesitates at the rim of the depression, dropping her transportation device to the ground beside her. She is young, of course, as the people of this world count youth. They are all young, those who come here, drawn to me when they are growing and changing, metamorphosing from child to adult as surely as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly: a process I have examined in detail during my long sojourn, a process that I, in my own way, am also undergoing. For I, too, am young, as my kind count youth, though ancient indeed to her and hers.
This land in which I sojourn is gripped in a gauntlet of frozen iron for almost half of every revolution around this world’s star. Temperatures plunge, water turns hard as stone, and howling winds drive snow in long, hissing snake-forms across the ground. During those short days and endless nights, it seems nothing will ever grow again . . . and yet, every spring, it does. Green shoots rise from black dirt, leaves burst from buds on trees, insects hatch, mammals emerge from the burrows that honeycomb the earth around my hollow . . .
. . . and young humans, like the one who has come to me now, emerge from their own childish cocoons, look at the world around them with wide, new, questioning eyes, and begin to spread their wings.
She steps down into the hollow, following the path that leads to the edge of the pond and the smooth, shining rock that stands there, the path so many have followed before.
In buckskin or homespun, blue jeans or shorts, barefoot or booted, sandaled or sneakered—all words I have learned from them—they have come.
They come for the same reason I came here, long before the first of them appeared . . . and they come because I call them.
She is by the pond now. She looks down into it. It is dark, as dark as space, as smooth as ice, though it is not frozen, does not freeze even in the dead of winter, for it is not water.
And then she turns to face the polished stone. She hesitates, but then, in response to my unspoken call, places her hands upon it . . .
. . . and I am her.
Jamie stared at the strange black stone. She’d never seen anything like it on the prairie. It looked more like the kind of pedestal she’d seen sculptures on at the art galleries in Regina and Saskatoon her mom used to take her to.
What’s something like that doing out here? she wondered. And then, What am I doing out here?
She hadn’t known this place existed until she’d crested the slope she had just descended. But she’d known what it was the moment she saw it: a prairie pothole, a shallow depression left behind ten thousand years ago as the glaciers covering Saskatchewan melted away. She’d learned about prairie potholes in Mr. Gregorash’s Grade 8 geography class, last school year. She and her friends had found it hilarious that the prairie surrounding their little town was just as full of potholes as the thinly paved secondary road that ran to the highway, thirty kilometres away.
There were tens of thousands of prairie potholes like this one, and she’d never given them much thought, except maybe for Swallow Hollow, where the older kids sneaked off for parties in the summer. She was too young to go out there . . .
. . . but not for much longer.
High school, she’d thought, staring down into the hollow, feeling a flutter in her chest. High school meant riding a bus over that bumpy, pothole-plagued road to the highway, and then another twenty kilometres to the next town, a bigger one than theirs (though not by much). High school meant strange kids she’d never met before, and more homework, and . . . and all kinds of things she wasn’t sure she was ready for.
Last night, she’d dreamed about it, and the dream had turned into a nightmare. She’d been in the high school cafeteria, and then suddenly she was naked and everyone was laughing at her, and she’d tried to run out, but all the doors were locked, and then all the other kids had turned into snarling coyotes, and they’d come leaping toward her, teeth bared . .
.
. . . and she’d woken up, gasping and crying, and she’d waited for Mom to come and give her a hug and make everything all right, like when she was little, but Mom hadn’t come, and then she’d remembered Mom would never come again, that cancer had made it so she’d never come again, and that Dad sat alone and drank in the dark before he went to bed, and then slept so hard he’d never hear her, even if she called out for him . . .
. . . and it was then, right then, in the midst of that middle-of-the-night fear and grief and longing, that she’d felt . . . a tug.
There’s a place, a voice seemed to whisper to her. A place you need to come to.
She’d gotten on her bike after lunch and ridden at least ten kilometres along the dusty grid road, the hot sun beating down on her shoulders, her route straight as an arrow except for the correction line just outside town. As she’d reached the abandoned Johnson farm, with its crumbling stone barn and tumbling-down house, the tug had come again. This way, it told her.
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