Lightspeed Magazine - October 2016

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  Yeah, I totally agree with that sentiment.

  Thank you.

  Unfortunately, we’re out of time, so to wrap things up, are there any other books you’re working on or projects you want to mention?

  I can tell you that the next novel is going to be called Avengers of the Moon. It is going to be the first new Captain Future novel since 1946. I got the rights from Edmond Hamilton’s estate to reinvent this seminal space opera hero of the pulp era. I had a great deal of fun. It’s very much a different kind of book than Arkwright is. I’m trying to reinvent space opera. So it’s the first novel of a projected trilogy, and as always, I’ve got a number of short stories that are in various different anthologies that will be coming out over the next year.

  Great. We’ve been speaking with Allen Steele. His new book is called Arkwright. Allen, thank you so much for joining us.

  Thank you, David. It’s been a pleasure.

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  ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

  The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is produced by John Joseph Adams and hosted by: David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.

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  Author Spotlight: Karen Joy Fowler

  Robyn Lupo | 447 words

  You wrote “Game Night at the Fox and Goose” in the late ’80s. How do you think the story’s resonance has changed, if at all? It’s been a while, but can you tell us how it came together?

  As you say, it’s been awhile! I can hardly remember what I did yesterday. But I think I had a bunch of research left over from my novel Sarah Canary, research about cases of victim-blaming in rape and child molestation cases (in the 1870s, and yet that topic remains ever-green) as well as the story of Lydia Fair, the first woman sentenced to execution in the state of California.

  My feminist interests have moved since the days of writing that story from the binary, the story of men and women, into something more complicated and more accurately reflective of the many gender and sexual possibilities and histories. But I do think, with the Clinton campaign fully underway, we are already seeing a return to that simple old-fashioned misogyny, that was such a popular feature of my youth and has never gone away. Ask any woman on the Internet.

  Your work frequently engages with gender politics and you co-founded the James Tiptree Jr. award in the ’90s. What advice do you have for authors who want to engage with their personal and political struggles creatively?

  Challenge your own assumptions. Concoct the strongest case you can against the things you believe and engage with that case—no one is interested or moved or persuaded by the flattening of straw men.

  Alison’s story is pretty SF with some personal horror creeping in. When you’re digging into these sorts of themes, do you tend to read the same stuff you’re writing, or do you like to separate those rest/work headspaces?

  I don’t seek out similar work, but whatever I’m reading is suddenly strangely pertinent. So I can be writing about the genetic modification of potatoes and reading about the engineering of the Parisian sewers and there will be all sorts of useful and thought-provoking material for my potato piece in the Parisian history. Unlike some writers, I cannot write if I’m not reading and reading freely as opposed to doing research. The two activities absolutely depend on each other.

  What was your experience like editing Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016?

  It was great. John Joseph Adams had already done the hard lifting and all that remained for me was the enormous pleasure of reading so many wonderful stories.

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  ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

  Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

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  Author Spotlight: Jeremiah Tolbert

  Sandra Odell | 840 words

  “The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes” is a wonderful story with an intricate, solid world both in and out of d-space. Tell us about the inspiration behind the tale.

  A large inspiration for the story was the comic book Scott Pilgrim. I’d been wanting to try something similar, taking video game elements and projecting them onto the real world, but perhaps with tabletop RPG elements as well. As kids, we often talked about how great it would be if we could transport ourselves into a fantasy world to be our characters. It only took me thirty-plus years to get around to writing a story about what that might be like.

  One facet of the story I particularly enjoyed was the economic and social issues of entering d-space: how electronics will not work; why people delve; the views on ability, sexism, and prestige; the economy behind selling d-space loot for biological upgrades. Many people object to the mingling of genres, feeling that it “taints” a story. What are your thoughts on genre labels? Do you feel they continue to serve a purpose, or are labels meant to be marked out and written over?

  Genres are useful marketing labels. They’re shorthand to help publishers connect with readers. As a writer, I only find them useful when figuring out where I should send finished stories, to be honest. Most of my life, I’ve made next to no distinction between fantasy and science fiction genres, so it’s only natural to me to blend them as I like. I find mixing ingredients can sometimes result in something that feels fresher than if you stick to the tropes of just one. There are a million and one ways to go about writing an original story, but I continue to be obsessed with the art of the mash-up.

  Both Jimmy and Ivan are fully realized characters. Neither boy is particularly heroic, and I knew many kids like Jimmy in high school, eager to please yet uncertain how to fit in at first. As a writer, what would you say is the most important element of creating a believable character?

  Empathy for the characters. I feel like I’ve been and known both these characters at times in my life, and putting myself in their shoes seems like the first and most important step. They may not seem particular heroic, but ultimately, each one of them is the hero of their own stories, from their point of view.

  Where are you in this story? How much of Jeremiah Tolbert made it onto the page?

  Jeremiah Tolbert first learned to play roleplaying games at the age of seven. I think most of where you find him this time around is in the worldbuilding, in the idea of dungeonspace itself. But there are pieces of me in each character. The most of me is in Jimmy, I suspect. That kind of eagerness and fanboy enthusiasm is something I had more of at his age than I do now. And I always felt just outside the loop of what was cool, like Jimmy.

  You are a writer, photographer, web designer, father, and self-proclaimed geek. How do these elements intersect? Does photography ever influence your writing? Are there geekish elements that come through in your web-design?

  Geekish elements come through in my web design primarily through the fact that ninety percent of my clients are science fiction and fantasy authors and publishers. I could pretty easily go build corporate websites and such for a lot more money, but it’s not as much fun. I enjoy working with the “industry” in any way I can, even if that means I’m just a twenty-first-century digital plumber to authors much better than myself.

  Photography is something that fatherhood has left me with little time for, but when I was more active, my interest there definitely blended with other ones. I had a steampunk photography project you can still find called Dr. Roundbottom, found at www.clockpunk.com/ . Although it hasn’t been updated in years, I still think of it fondly. I have other, similar ideas for projects that blend the interests, but I think my son will have to be older before I have the free time to experiment with them.

  Wh
at’s next for Jeremiah Tolbert? What can readers look forward to in the coming months?

  I have another half-dozen stories circulating and in progress. There are a couple of novels underway, but I don’t want to say too much about those just yet. “The West Topeka Triangle” will be coming out from either Nightmare or Lightspeed in the next year or so, I believe. I’m really hoping that audience connect with and enjoy dungeonspace as much as I do, because I have a seemingly endless supply of ideas for more stories about Flip and Domino and the whole gang as they delve into the mysteries of their worlds.

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  ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

  Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

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  Author Spotlight: Stephen S. Power

  Laurel Amberdine | 888 words

  A series of interviews about a sequence of movies is an unusual way to relate a story about the discovery of alien life. How did you decide on that structure?

  I like the challenge of writing stories in non-story formats, such as a legal vetting letter (bit.ly/2c66A4t) or a Buzzfeed listicle (forthcoming at Daily Science Fiction). One of my personal projects is creating a spec fic version of The New York Times Magazine. For instance, my story in AE, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is modeled on the “Diagnosis” column. I have another story on submission that’s structured like a feature piece. “Fade to Mars” is based on my friend Bruce Fretts’s interview with Andrew Jarecki after the finale of his HBO documentary The Jinx. I began writing the last interview first, then realized that I needed two previous interviews to set it up, thereby creating a lifelong interview that paralleled the lifelong movie in the story.

  I’ve read this story at least four times now for various purposes, and I only noticed in the most recent reading that you put yourself in as a character in the story! And there are only two characters, really … so I might just be oblivious. But in any case, that’s a surprising choice. What influenced it?

  Someone had to be the interviewer, so I figured, why not me? I love cameos, such as Vonnegut walking into his novels or, more prominently, Rob Reiner directing and playing the director in Spinal Tap. It certainly made things less complicated. I’m glad you didn’t notice story-me, though, because an interviewer should be invisible, like the never-named reporter in Citizen Kane. The story isn’t mine. It’s Brynne’s, although she and story-me did build up a rapport over the years. They try to meet at film festivals whenever they … Cannes.

  That’s awful.

  It’s Brynne’s joke, not mine. I just can’t resist using it.

  Do you have any familiarity with how movies are directed, or did you have to do research for the story?

  I’m fascinated by how movies are made. One of my favorite shows on YouTube, for instance, is Every Frame a Painting. For me, DVDs are all about the commentaries, much to the dismay of my family, for whom they are not, especially the thirty-six or so hours of commentary to The Lords of the Rings extended editions. And as a book editor, I’ve worked on several film books, such as Dan Auiler’s Hitchcock’s Notebooks. So a lot of the movie material came from me stitching together stuff I happened to know. I even threw in a few Easter eggs. Byrnne’s line, “Early on I decided to cut anything not about getting the tile home,” mimics Peter Jackson’s strategy of cutting everything from Tolkien that didn’t get the ring to Mordor.

  I figured the science would be much tougher to devise, but the Google kept shining on me. I can’t believe I found that story about Cernan filming the lunar module. And the rover cannon is based on technology developed in the ’60s. Oddly enough, in looking for the link to the source I used, I found a piece in Universe Today from April 2016, long after the story was written, about using a hydrogen cannon to launch payloads into orbit. So maybe I’m prescient. “Fade” also seems to have predicted Brexit.

  Could you tell us about your recently released novel, The Dragon Round?

  It’s The Count of Monte Cristo with a dragon. My hero, though, makes some choices that differ from Edmond Dantès’s.

  You wrote poetry previously—

  Yes, for fifteen years.

  So why shift to writing a novel?

  I’d always wanted to write a novel, but I’d never had a decent idea until one day at Wiley, where I was a senior editor. My colleague, Eric Nelson, and I were talking about a book his son, Asa, was reading, and he said, “Why would anyone write a book for kids without a dragon?” And I said, “Why would anyone write a book for anyone without a dragon in it? Wait …” Then I went back to my office and quickly outlined a series of six books, each of which would cover a pivotal moment in human-dragon interactions in the same way that each chapter of World War Z covers a pivotal moment in the zombie war . I showed this to Eric, who said, “So what’s in Book Two for someone who’s read Book One?” the second taking place long after the first. I realized I’d actually outlined a series of series, went back to my office and wrote a short outline to the sequel to The Dragon Round, which will be called The Dragon Tower.

  I should add that, at the time, Eric and I knew we’d be laid off in a few months because Wiley was selling our editorial line. Afterwards, Eric became my agent, and sold the book to S&S, which was only fitting because, without him, there would’ve been no book. And if I hadn’t been laid off, there might not have been a book either. I received a fantastic severance package, and given that The Dragon Round is about a ship captain screwed over by his company, Wiley thus provided both the impetus and the means for me to write it.

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  ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

  Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she writes science fiction and fantasy and works for Locus Magazine. Her YA fantasy novel Luminator is forthcoming from Reuts Publishing in 2017. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

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  Author Spotlight: Aliette de Bodard

  Christie Yant | 887 words

  Welcome back, Aliette! Can you tell us what inspired your lovely folkloric story “The Dragon’s Tears?”

  I had a book of Chinese fairytales I read from cover to cover incessantly when I was a child (that and the Vietnamese fairy tales book were probably the most well-thumbed items in the house!). One of the stories in that book was about a dragon who gifted a poor family with a magic pearl (the pearl that nearly all dragons have under their chins) that caused their jar of rice to always be full. Eventually word got out, and a rich man tried to steal the pearl from them, and the son of the family swallowed it rather than give it up. He meant to spit it out later, but swallowing it caused him to transform into a dragon, and leave the world of men (and his aged mother) behind. It’s a pretty thing because taking care of your parents when they’re old is a cardinal Confucian value, so having to leave an aged and sick mother is particularly heart-wrenching on that level. This made a huge impression on me, and I wrote “The Dragon’s Tears” partly as a homage to it, and also partly as a collage of the other tales in those books.

  I loved that the rider—who we later learn is Sorrow—lingers at Huan Ho’s door, but eventually moves on. Huan Ho had a charm against sorrow after all, in the form of hope. Is the theme of hope as a talisman against sorrow one that speaks to you personally, and have you explored it in your work before in different ways?

  To me, hope isn’t so much a talisman against sorrow as its dual expression—it’s what gets us through sorrow, but also what sharpens it and makes it almost unbearable, very much a double-edged sword. The idea of opposite things giving meaning to each other is definitely something I try to explore in my work. My novel The House of Shattered Wings is about finding beauty and hope
(but also sorrow) in the ruins of a Paris devastated by a magical war.

  Your story also explores the idea of sacrifice, and its relationship with transformation—cause, effect, or both. It made me reflect on how when we experience a major change in who we are, we are then drawn to others more like our new selves—as Huan Ho is, when he leaves to join the other dragons. Have you experienced or observed that kind of sacrifice/transformation relationship in life, personally or professionally?

  I think there’s always a balance to be struck between being with people like yourself, which is really comfortable and restful and can feel like coming home, and being with people who are not, because they can challenge you and open your mind to different possibilities lest you become complacent. After major changes, yeah, very often it happens that people don’t quite fit together the way they did, and sometimes that leads to relationships breaking off. But those that don’t break off—they end up very strong, in my experience.

  I wondered, as Huan Ho did, whether there might be other riders apart from the three he ultimately names in the story: Greed, Power, and Sorrow. Who might the others be?

  Ha, I think you could have a lot of them, but I didn’t really give it much thought. Lust, I think (in the sense of loving material things too much—there’s a Buddhist word for that but no proper translation I can think of that covers it. Attachment, maybe? but it doesn’t have that negative connotation in English. It’s a bit of a mix between Power and Vanity).

  We’re excited about your new standalone novel, The House of Binding Thorns, due out in April of 2017 from Roc/Gollancz. Can you tell our readers a little about it, and what’s next for you?

  The House of Binding Thorns is the standalone sequel to The House of Shattered Wings. It picks up a few months after the events of book one, which changed the balance of power in the devastated city of Paris, and follows characters from the first book (Madeleine and Philippe) as well as a bunch of new ones. It’s got a host of dragons in human forms, diplomatic intrigue, drug trafficking, kissing and stabbing (maybe not all in that order though!). And I think it’s a better book than the previous one, so if you liked that you should definitely try it (and if you didn’t like that it’s a bit of a different one as well, a more ensemble cast and a less claustrophobic setting, though it’s still full-on ruined Gothic Nineteenth Century!).