by Rich Larson
More so than plot, the thing that draws me to military science fiction is the cool technology. The hardware in this story is heavily influenced by the 2013 movie Riddick, which I watched while drunk enough to convince myself it was pretty good.
Meshed
My roommate got me hooked on NBA basketball during my year in Rhode Island. I’ve been a Timberwolves fan ever since, which has proven to be a pretty masochistic pursuit. Until this season. I hope.
Blending sci-fi and basketball didn’t occur to me for quite some time, but when it did, it seemed obvious. Writing “Meshed” was a ton of fun. I got a kick out of referencing then-rookie Giannis Antetokounmpo and then-YouTube sensation Thon Maker.
The climactic one-on-one is obviously inspired by He Got Game, but also by late nights playing on outdoor courts back in high school, and by Bruce Brooks’s The Moves Make the Man, a novel that got inside my head as a kid and never really left. “Meshed” was also the first story I got a film rights inquiry for. It came to nothing, of course, but it was a bit of a rite of passage.
The Ghost Ship Anastasia
This one is a mishmash of Dead Space, Alien, and that level in Halo 3 with all the sphincters. I managed to indulge both my artsy and my immature sides: there’s a “wayyy up there” Rick and Morty reference not long after an homage to Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou.
The first draft, written back in 2015, was a total mess. There was a lot of schlucking about through the ship’s innards while the protagonists bickered and offered various theories on what happened to the original crew—not very genre-savvy of them.
I sent my bad draft to the late, great Kit Reed, who rightly suggested major surgery. “Take out a few yards of intestine and work out the psychology” is some of the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten. Two summers later, while staying at my grandma’s, I finally sat down and wrote a new draft. The result is a hell of a lot smoother. Thanks, Kit.
Chronology of Heartbreak
This flash was inspired by an aborted romance.
Dreaming Drones
This story was definitely written in Edmonton, judging by the protagonist’s LRT journey, but it also draws on memories of Grande Prairie—my first job was at Superstore, where I spent quite a bit of time poling cardboard into the dry compactor. I don’t have a clear memory of writing “Dreaming Drones,” so it was a pleasant surprise when I stumbled across it.
I like the slow sleepwalking pace, and the slight twists on the typical story of a robot who wants to be human. These stories aren’t really about robots. I think they’re about the universal human experience of feeling different, feeling not quite accepted or not quite on the same wavelength as everyone else, and how subtly painful that can be.
Let’s Take This Viral
I banged out “Let’s Take This Viral” over the course of a weekend with a feeling of absolute freedom. Because it’s set on an artificial space station in the far future, I indulged one of my problematic writing habits, which is creating an avalanche of invented vocabulary and throwing the reader right into the thick of it. I love playing with language, and this was a perfect opportunity.
The characters in this story are both very resonant for me: the less-fun, less-adventurous friend seeking stability, and the hedonist driven by a need for salience. “Let’s Take This Viral” is essentially about the possible pitfalls of immortality, about everything becoming so recycled and so stagnant that the only change left is death. I’ve always been scared of dying, but just as scared of an afterlife—heaven or hell—that never ends.
The ending of this story is probably my favorite of any I’ve written thus far.
Brute
When I was a little kid I had a VHS called Spider-Man: The Venom Saga that compiled three episodes of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon into a full-length film. I remember watching it obsessively in my grandparents’ trailer until it became a sort of story archetype for me: the mysterious organism that grants power at a price, the initial thrill, the slow realization, the jealousy that turns deadly—it all got very deeply ingrained in my brain.
Years later, The Spectacular Spider-Man reignited my forgotten fascination and I decided to write “Brute.” The name of the titular organism comes from Til We Have Faces, a book by C.S. Lewis that is one of my all-time favorite works. I have a love for this story that others might not share. It’s tailored specifically to my childhood self. It goes into all those old places in my brain and flicks all the dusty switches.
Your Own Way Back
One of the best things about putting together this collection has been the chance to give readers a look at stories of mine that flew under the radar. “Your Own Way Back” was one of my first professional publications, but it’s also one of the most emotional pieces I’ve ever written.
The name of the main character, and his love for swimming, both come from the brilliant book Inventing Elliot by Graham Gardner. The central conceit comes from a dream I had, where a family was waiting with red balloons in a hospital where there was a machine that brought people back from the dead—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
I Went to the Asteroid to Bury You
Originally this poem was set on the Moon, but the physics didn’t match up right with the images I wanted so I had to switch over to an unnamed asteroid.
Capricorn
Like most of my stories, “Capricorn” is an amalgamation of works I’ve consumed in the past. In this case, it’s mostly a mash-up of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (futuristic prison, cryostorage, shivs, violence) and Breaking Bad (rogue chemists, mortal illness, drugs, violence).
One of the small thrills of writing is being able to establish an ultimate badass in any given universe. In this one, it’s the eponymous Capricorn, who hardly appears at all. I liked the idea of having a character hang over the whole story and influence its events without ever being physically present.
Edited
“Edited” is based off a very vivid dream I had in 2014, which birthed not only this story but also “Spiked” in Abyss & Apex and “Masked” in Asimov’s.
The dream was of three teenagers breaking into a parent’s summer rental, a sort of organic cabin made of coral, in order to party. There was a nervous energy to the proceedings, because one of the teens had changed, or had been changed, in some way, and the other two were unsure how to treat them.
In the dream it was unclear if they were recovering from an accident, if they had been modified by an outside force without their consent, or if they had done something surprising to themselves.
“Edited” shows one possibility.
Circuits
This is the most recent work in the collection—I wrote it in September 2017. It began gestating much earlier, however, jotted down in my idea repository as sentient trains crisscross a desert long after the collapse of civilization. The inspiration for this image comes, of course, from Mario Kart 64.
I was playing the drinking version of this game at a friend’s house, and the Kalimari Desert level struck me, for the first time, as a post-apocalyptic wasteland where sentient trains and roaming smart mines (those annoying little bombs on wheels) were the only survivors.
I’m hopeful that “Circuits” still has some of the fun factor of its originator, despite the bleak setting. My grandma liked it.
Razzibot
I was mulling over the concepts for quite a while before I wrote it, thinking about the hyper-self-awareness of Instagram and how the logical extreme of a selfie would be observing yourself in third person at all times. I had the chance to talk this concept over with my writer/lawyer friend Sandra while I was visiting her in Porto.
A few months later, I sent her “Razzibot,” which I had decided to set in her hometown. She corrected all the small Portuguese details I’d butchered and told me I was welcome to come back for natas anytime.
“Razzibot” is one of those stories people will ding for not having an essential speculative element, but I’ve
never really bought into that. I view science fiction as a collection of aesthetics, and I loved infusing the future aesthetic into one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to.
Datafall
I wrote this flash before I bothered learning what cloud computing actually entails.
Motherfucking Retroparty Freestyle
Like “Edited,” this one draws heavily on my high school experience. Everything from the physics class to the basement where our protagonists download Maestro 2.0 to the neighborhood of the house party will seem strangely familiar to any friends of mine from high school. I even forgot to change Dyl’s name, but he won’t mind.
The retroparty itself is based off the most memorable party of grade twelve. Someone stole the host’s Xbox; a girl refused to come out from under a parked car; a guy from Detroit brought a gun; the cops put a hole through the bathroom door trying to extract a couple reluctant to stop partying. I left wearing one of my shoes and one of someone else’s. It was a good night.
An Evening with Severyn Grimes
The core concept for this one comes from Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon series, while the mastermind-bodyguard duo is inspired by Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, which I devoured as a kid.
It took a long time for “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” to see daylight, due to the collapse of the ambitious magazine that originally bought the story. I actually wrote it back in 2013, while living in Edmonton and working at a small Liquor Depot. We didn’t do much business on the best days, and Sundays were positively glacial.
I remember I brought this freshly-finished story to work on my laptop and gave it to my co-worker Jordin to read. About thirty seconds in, he looked up at me, raised both eyebrows, and said “whoa.” He didn’t come out of the back office until he finished the whole thing.
Innumerable Glimmering Lights
Well, this is it. I remember two things about writing “Innumerable Glimmering Lights”: the endless gymnastics I had to do in order to avoid pronouns, and how organically the title drop arrived, as if it had been there all along. Aquatic aliens have always been one of my favorite varieties, and the characters’ overlong names take inspiration from K.A. Applegate’s Remnants series.
I also have one very clear memory linked to this story, and it’s from a conference weekend in Orlando. It was a beautiful warm night, and I was sitting on the edge of the pool with a friend, both of us dangling our legs in the water. The editor of Clockwork Phoenix 5, Mike Allen, showed up, introduced himself and handed me a copy to sign for a special edition. It was the first time I signed something I’d written, and I got this thought, like, yeah, this writer thing is really happening.
I hope it keeps happening for a long, long time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First off, I want to thank the excellent Cory Allyn and the whole team at Talos Press, without whom Tomorrow Factory would still be a pipedream. I’m also grateful to the wide variety of editors who loved these stories enough to publish them the first time around, and to the friends and family who read them in their earliest forms.
Big thanks go out to James Patrick Kelly, a hell of a writer who writes a hell of an intro, and to two other mentors who passed too soon: Gardner Dozois and Kit Reed, both of whom gave me invaluable career advice and brought my work into the spotlight whenever they could.
Lastly, I want to thank all the readers who have supported my work and who helped determine, directly or indirectly, which stories made it into Tomorrow Factory. So long as you keep reading them, I’ll keep writing them, and there’s plenty left in the tank.
PUBLICATION CREDITS
“All That Robot Shit,” originally published as “All That Robot . . .” in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2016. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (Ed. Rich Horton, Prime Books). Winner of the 2017 Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Award for Best Short Story. Longlisted for the 2017 Sunburst Award for Best Short Story.
“Atrophy,” originally published in Descant (2014). Second Runner-up for the 2013 Dell Award.
“Every So Often,” originally published in Birdwell Magazine, 2011. Reprinted in Datafall: Collected Speculative Fiction (2012, self-published).
“Ghost Girl,” originally published in War Stories: New Military Science Fiction (2014, Ed. Jaym Gates, Andrew Liptak, Apex Publications). Republished in audio form by StarShipSofa (2017, narrated by Elie Hirschman). Translated into Italian by Future Fiction.
“The Sky Didn’t Load Today,” originally published in Daily Science Fiction, February 2015. Reprinted by The Fulcrum (2017).
“You Make Pattaya,” originally published in Interzone #267, November-December 2016. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017, Ed. Neil Clarke, Night Shade Books), and The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Eleven (2017, Ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris). Translated into Chinese by Science Fiction World, 2017, and Polish by Nowa Fantastyka, 2018.
“Extraction Request,” originally published in Clarkesworld #112, January 2016. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017, Ed. Neil Clarke, Night Shade Books). Translated into Chinese by Future Affairs Administration.
“Meshed,” originally published in Clarkesworld #101, February 2015. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1 (2016, Ed. Neil Clarke, Night Shade Books), The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016, Ed. Gardner Dozois, St. Martin’s Griffin), and The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 29 (2106, Ed. Gardner Dozois, Constable & Robinson). Translated into Polish by Nowa Fantastyka.
“The Ghost Ship Anastasia,” originally published in Clarkesworld #124, January 2017. Translated into Czech by XB-1.
“Chronology of Heartbreak,” originally published in Daily Science Fiction, October 2013.
“Dreaming Drones,” originally published in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, 2014.
“Let’s Take This Viral,” originally published in Lightspeed, March 2013. Reprinted in Great Jones Street. Translated into Italian by Future Fiction.
“Brute,” originally published in Apex, November 2014.
“Your Own Way Back,” originally published in Futuredaze: An Anthology of YA Science Fiction (2013, Ed. Erin Underwood, Hannah Strom-Martin, Underwords Press). Translated into Italian by Future Fiction.
“I Went to the Asteroid to Bury You,” originally published in Abyss & Apex, 2015.
“Capricorn,” originally published in Abyss & Apex, 2014.
“Edited,” originally published in Interzone #259, July/August 2015. Reprinted in Wilde Stories 2016: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (2106, Ed. Steve Berman, Lethe Press).
“Circuits,” original to this collection.
“Razzibot,” originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2018.
“Datafall,” originally published in poem form in Strange Horizons, November 2013. Revised and published in its current form in Datafall: Collected Speculative Fiction (2012, self-published).
“Motherfucking Retroparty Freestyle,” originally published as “M.F.ing Retroparty Freestyle” in Escape Pod #514, December 2015.
“An Evening with Severyn Grimes,” originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July-August 2017. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018, Ed. Gardner Dozois, St. Martin’s Griffin), The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 3 (2018, Ed. Neil Clarke, Night Shade Books), The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Twelve (2018, Ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris), and The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 10 (2018, Ed. Allan Kaster, Infinivox).
“Innumerable Glimmering Lights,” originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 5 (2016, Ed. Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium Books). Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017, Ed. Gardner Dozois, St. Martin’s Griffin) and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 (Ed. Rich Horton, Prime Books).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in the south of Spain, and now lives in Ottawa, Canada. Since he began writing in 2011, he’s sold over a hundred stories, the majority of them speculative fiction published in magazines like Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com.
His work also appears in numerous Year’s Best anthologies and has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish, Czech, French, and Italian. He was the most prolific author of short science fiction in 2015 and 2016, and possibly 2017 as well. Besides writing, he enjoys travelling, learning languages, playing soccer, watching basketball, shooting pool, and dancing salsa and kizomba.
His debut novel, Annex, was published by Orbit Books in July 2018. Tomorrow Factory is his debut collection. Find more at richwlarson.tumblr.com and support him via patreon.com/richlarson.