Part 3: Alien Worlds
Mother Ship
When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, I had a lot of weird nightmares that stemmed from the knowledge that newborns have very wobbly heads. In some of the dreams, I would pick up a baby and its head would fall off. There was even one where I accidentally ate a baby’s head. A full size baby head, in one bite! In the dream this was both completely possible and extremely distressing. For some reason, these nightmares prompted me to read up on anencephaly, which I really don’t recommend to pregnant women who are already distressed about baby heads.
Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind
My academic background is in Psychology, and this was a really fun story for me to write because I got to put in all kinds of details about brain anatomy. The lightning storms in the story were inspired by an article I read about the Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela.
Press Play to Watch It Die
I thought it would make for a nice balance to have an original fantasy story and an original science fiction story included in the collection. This is another story where the prompt that sparked the story was the title—this time the title came from S. B. Divya.
Ninety-Five Percent Safe
I like to play with names. In this story, I drew from species names—Opilio, the name of the colony world, is part of the scientific name for snow crabs, which seemed fitting for a planet in the Crab Nebula. Aureliads are named after Aurelia aurita, a species of jellyfish.
Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World
This story is another of my flashmash stories, with several interrelated stories mashed together into one longer piece. After I had the idea to write stories as series of flash, I made lists of things that might be well suited to the format—four seasons, five stages of grief, seven wonders of the world.
I decided to write a story with future wonders of the world, instead of ancient wonders. My initial plan was to have one character visit all seven wonders, and I came up with Mei. She was loosely inspired by Mei Kusakabe from Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbor Totoro, which I’d recently introduced to my toddler.
While my initial plan was to follow Mei through the whole story, I ended up doing something a little different. In the second section of the story, Mei becomes Prime. There are seven distinct sections in the story (one for each wonder), and only the prime numbered sections (2, 3, 5, and 7) are in Prime’s point of view.
“Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” was featured on io9 as part of the “Lightspeed Presents” series of fiction. The story was also selected for The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Neil Clarke.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am so fortunate to have an abundance of wonderful, supportive people in my life.
Thank you to Tina Connolly, who has read all my stories—even the ones not collected here—and wrote the amazing introduction for this book. There are not enough thank yous for everything she’s done for me over the years.
Many people have given me invaluable feedback on the stories in this collection. A huge thank you to Leslie Howle, Neile Graham, and my Clarion West class of 2006. I would not be the writer I am today if not for all of you, and I am grateful to be part of such an amazing group. Extra thanks to Tinatsu Wallace, for her insightful feedback both on stories and on the cover design for this collection.
I have had all the best writing groups. Thank you Writer’s Cramp, for taking me in when I knew nothing about writing. Thank you Horrific Miscue for helping me get through my Clarion withdrawal. Thank you to my Austin critique and Buffy-watching group, you were my favorite thing about Texas and I miss you. Huge thanks to my online writing group, Codex, through which I have met so many amazing writers and friends. In particular, I am grateful to S.B. Divya, John P. Murphy, Aidan Doyle, and A.T. Greenblatt for their critiques, and to Vylar Kaftan for the Weekend Warrior prompts that inspired many of the flash fiction stories included in this book.
I’m grateful to my friends and family, and especially Peter, for being amazingly supportive of my writing. Thank you to my parents for years of encouragement. Thanks, Valerie and Rachel, for giving me lots of ideas.
Thank you to the editors who selected my stories for their magazines and anthologies, and to Patrick Swenson for publishing this collection.
Last but not least, thank you to all my readers—it has been a privilege to share my stories with you.
PUBLICATION NOTES
“Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion” (Clarkesworld, Issue 95, August 2014) | “Betty and the Squelchy Saurus” (Fireside Magazine, Issue 28, October 2015) | “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death” (Lightspeed, Issue 66, November 2015) | “The Philosophy of Ships” (Interzone, Issue 243, Nov/Dec 2012) | “Temporary Friends” (Escape Pod, February 2015) | “A Million Oysters for Chiyoko” (Daily Science Fiction, January 21, 2015) | “Carla at the Off-Planet Tax Return Helpline” (Unidentified Funny Objects 3, ed. Alex Shvartsman, October 2014) | “Do Not Count the Withered Ones” (Daily Science Fiction, August 12, 2014) | “Pieces of My Body” (Daily Science Fiction, June 19, 2014) | “Everyone’s a Clown” (Unlikely Story, Issue 11.5, April 2015) | “Harmonies of Time” (Daily Science Fiction, January 1, 2013) | “Stone Wall Truth” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 2010) | “The Little Mermaid of Innsmouth” (Drabblecast, Episode 370, September 2015) | “On the Pages of a Sketchbook Universe” (original to the collection) | “Seasons Set in Skin” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 177, July 2015) | “The Carnival Was Eaten, All Except the Clown” (Electric Velocipede, Issue 27, Winter 2013) | “Paperclips and Memories and Things That Won’t Be Missed” (Apex Magazine, Issue 60, May 2014) | “Please Approve the Dissertation Research of Angtor” (Unidentified Funny Objects 4, ed. Alex Shvartsman, October 2015) | “Grass Girl” (Daily Science Fiction, September 25, 2015) | “One Last Night at the Carnival, Before the Stars Go Out” (Flash Fiction Online, April 2014) | “Honeybee” (Flash Fiction Online, September 2014) | “Elizabeth’s Pirate Army” (Fireside Magazine, Issue 8, December 2013) | “Mother Ship” (Lightspeed, Issue 23, April 2012) | “Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2015) | “Press Play to Watch It Die” (original to the collection) | “Ninety-Five Percent Safe” (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2015) | “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” (Lightspeed, Issue 64, September 2015)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caroline M. Yoachim lives in Seattle and loves cold cloudy weather. She is the author of over sixty published short stories, appearing in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed, among other places. Her work has been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies and translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Czech. Her novelette “Stone Wall Truth” was a Nebula finalist in 2011. For more about Caroline, you can check out her website at http://carolineyoachim.com
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