Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He has written for such places as Armchair General, io9, Kirkus Reviews, SF Signal, Tor.com and he can be found over at andrewliptak.wordpress.com and at @AndrewLiptak on Twitter.
Author Spotlight: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Robyn Lupo
How did “Purity Test” start for you?
It started from an invitation into an anthology that never got off the ground. I had never thought of writing about unicorns before, so I had to really work on this. I didn’t want to write the same old thing as everyone else. That’s always my goal in an anthology, to have the somewhat different story that somehow fits the guidelines.
Unicorns have been tamed now for a long time; removed from their roots as symbols of wild purity and made rather … cute. What made you think to reboot this, and are there other mythological creatures/characters/etc. you’d like to see rebooted?
If you look at the “originals” (and I put that in quotes because the original myths are usually lost in time), mythological creatures are rarely cute and cuddly. Even when they’re pretty, there’s some kind of bite to them. So I thought about doing a unicorn that both went with the myth and against it. That’s harder than it sounds. Unlike many other mythological creatures, cute unicorns have really invaded our psyche.
As for other creatures that need rebooting—that’s the cool thing about fantasy. We can always reimagine all of the myths. We can update them or revert to what we believe is the original myth. The key is to keep the story current, somehow, whatever that means.
You draw on the perception of the feminine mystique. Can you tell us more about this?
When I think about unicorns, I think about girls and horses. (Girls love horses.) Then I moved to the whole idea that a unicorn can identify a pure or virginal woman. Which led me to the idea that cultures throughout history and currently seem to be obsessed with sexually innocent women, often at the expense of those women. Whenever I think about things like that, I get a little angry. Generally, that anger shows up more in my Kris Nelscott mystery stories or the mystery short stories I write for the Dell Magazines. Rarely does it appear in my fantasy. But it did here—or you wouldn’t have asked the question.
Can you tell us more about how you saw the relationship (or lack thereof) between Micheline and her father?
Naw. I think this one stands on its own. I hope the reader catches exactly what that relationship is, without me spelling it out too much.
Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.
Author Spotlight: Matthew Kressel
Robyn Lupo
Can you tell us how this story arose for you?
The story formed from two different seeds. My girlfriend and I stayed at a bed and breakfast in New Paltz, New York, the day after hurricane Irene blew through the area. New Paltz got hit pretty bad, and entire farms and bridges had been washed away. That night we sat on the porch, drinking wine, watching the stars slowly turn. The place had a frog pond, just as in the story, and also as in the story, the moon wasn’t up, and due to the storm, all the dust had been washed from the air. The stars shone brighter than I have ever seen, and I swear you could read by the light of Jupiter rising above the trees. I was overcome with the sense of just how beautiful everything was, and how fragile our environment is.
The other seed has a somewhat more mundane explanation. I had watched a documentary of the dismantling of the old Yankee stadium and the construction of the new. And I thought, how could they tear down this place full of so much history, the literal House that Ruth Built? It was such a sin. To me, the new stadium was (and is) an antiseptic and plastic version of the original. The documentary captured my feelings not just about Yankee stadium but the way we take so many things for granted, and how some are happy with cheap plastic substitutes. I felt I had to write about this.
The bridging of the generations in the story seems both unexpected and appropriate. How did you hit this balance? Can you tell us more about how you see this relationship?
I struggle with a similar bridge in my own life, coming from a conservative Jewish background and being mostly secular in my adult life, yet feeling a strong connection to this immense history and culture. It’s impossible to be raised as a Jew and not have a sense of connection to the past, even if you are a non-believer. To me, Rachael in the story, though she is far removed from her grandfather’s life, remembers the natural beauty of Earth her grandfather showed her in her youth and she brings that into the present, but adds her own color and experience to it. It’s what I try to do with my own culture and history.
Do you think you’d be one of the holdouts? Do you see the holdouts as being a particular type of person?
I think part of me would like to fly around in Rachael’s lobber, touring all the orbitals and the new forests of New Earth. On the other hand, by that time in history, that type of space travel might be as old hat as driving a car today. I don’t know if I’d go to the extremes that Abner does, but I would be hesitant to leave humanity’s cradle to rot.
The holdouts are, to me, those people who see value not in superficial appearances, but in substance. Their Earth is old and dying. It’s not shiny and new like New Earth. But the holdouts have an emotional connection to their land, and to the Earth. Do we abandon an aged parent or grandparent because they are no longer healthy? The holdouts see Earth as their aged grandparent and therefore it’s unthinkable to leave her.
You’ve been a storyteller for some time now. Do you have any advice for the newbs? What’s an average day of writing like for you?
I used to read a lot of books on writing, searching for some profound secret that all successful writers shared. And while perusing a bookstore, one book said, “Why are you reading this book? Why aren’t you writing?” That hit me pretty hard. I immediately put the book down and went home to write. There is no magic pill you can take, no shortcuts or tricks. There is nothing that will make you a better writer other than hard work. All else is commentary.
As far as my own writing goes, I have no “average” day at the keyboard. Some days I’m pulling teeth to get three paragraphs. Other days I look up from the screen and hours have passed. But I try to spend several hours every morning writing. I think it’s important to stick to a schedule.
Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.
Author Spotlight: Cherie Priest
Earnie Sotirokos
The story of “Addison Howell and the Clockroach” took three perspectives to get to the “complete” picture about what happened in Humptulips during the late 1800s. Why did you choose to present it this way?
Initially, this was a piece for The Thackeray T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities—wherein I was to take an artifact and treat it like a museum piece … and museum pieces go through many hands. I liked telling the story of an object through three of the people it affected; it seemed like a tidy (and entertaining) way to go about it.
The separate viewpoints both contradict and confirm each other. How can a narrative benefit by not always following a straight line?
I’m a big fan of leaving a little narrative wiggle room, and in this case, you can choose to believe whichever viewpoint you prefer. They’re all credible, after a fashion, and they all undermine one another just a tiny bit, which I enjoyed.
The power source for the clockroach appears to be lost to time. Do you think anything as significant as clean, alternative energy has slipped through our fingers from that time period?
I rather strongly doubt it. Perhaps it was paranormal, and it’s just as well that the technology is long lost.
Much of your fiction takes place in the Pacific Northwest. What makes this area of the US such a
compelling backdrop for you?
I lived there for six years, and I wrote this story while I lived there. I often prefer to write about places where I reside—or at the very least, places I’ve visited extensively. Also, I saw the word “Humptulips” on a map and it gave me the giggles.
What can we expect from you in the future?
More steampunk (most notably, next year’s Fiddlehead from Tor) … as well as a return to my gothic roots. I’m back in the southeast, so I predict more than a few ghost stories coming up in the next few years.
Earnie Sotirokos grew up in a household where Star Trek: The Next Generation marathons were only interrupted for baseball and football games. When he’s not writing copy for radio, playing video games, or reading slush, he enjoys penning fiction based on those influences. Follow him on Twitter @sotirokos.
Author Spotlight: Jonathan Olfert
Earnie Sotirokos
“Lifeline” takes a hard look at the social divide in the world you created. How did you come to address this issue through fiction?
I had a professor once who looked for a special kind of local soap in a gigantic Ghanaian market. The soap repelled mosquitos and thus prevented malaria. But the vendors only offered him the “good” soap—Dove, I think it was. Maybe Irish Spring. It was better because it was American, and the special local soap was nowhere to be found. Certain parts of Africa have grown and flourished, but in Ghana you can still find this kind of post-colonialism right beside one of the best-performing stock indexes in the world. It stuck in my craw that a whole culture could subordinate itself to mine for no reason. And if I had enough money to travel over there and live in the manner to which I’m accustomed, I would be upper-class by default. That makes me profoundly uncomfortable.
Explaining the elaborate process involved with putting together a chicken salad sandwich and getting a fresh glass of water helped depict what day-to-day life is like for Habiba. What made you choose food and drink to shine light on her situation?
I believe we’re defined by how much we consider the needs of those below us—our employees, our children, our obstacles. Selfishness is a matter of forethought. As a missionary in the best and worst parts of California, I spent a lot of time around people of widely different social classes. Most people treat food as a right, whether they’re talking about tilapia or a can of off-brand tuna—and the closer they get to the tilapia end of the spectrum, the more they feel they deserve it. When I do that, I’m ashamed; when I see other people do it, I’m furious.
The adoption of less fortunate children became very trendy on New Dakar. Do you think something like that could ever catch on in our culture?
There’s no doubt we see people as a commodity. It’s the covenant of Cain: Betray your brother, and profit from it. By the most reputable numbers, about fifteen thousand slaves enter the United States every year—some to pick fruit, some to be forcibly trafficked between brothels and sporting events, some to serve as unpaid domestic laborers. That’s a low-end estimate, and many of them are underage. I spent two years as an executive for a student activist group, coordinating efforts with other organizations, and I saw a single trend permeating the activist community. People contribute the absolute minimum amount of time, effort and money, unless someone else is watching. Mostly, it’s to make themselves feel better. Cleanse your conscience for the price of your pocket change, and get a bake sale muffin in the process. So yes, people really are that selfish when it comes to doing good—and yes, we’re that blind when it comes to children’s welfare. I just showed my Scout troop the Kenneth Branagh film Rabbit-Proof Fence. Go watch it, then ask whether people could act as I’ve portrayed.
You don’t ever really reveal what the Lifeline between people is. Why did you choose to keep us guessing?
I was inspired by the classic Heinlein story “Life-Line,” in which a scientist invents a machine that can predict his time of death. He never explains how it works—how could he?—and it’s only important because of how people react to it. (Incidentally, my subconscious is really, really smart. Years and years after reading “Life-Line,” I remembered the story, but not the title or the author. The ripped-off title was a complete accident, so it’s good that our titles mean vastly different things. Ironic, really.) I felt it would distract from the idea that anyone in the world could be your best friend or your worst enemy. These connections exist; the Lifeline machine, however it works, just facilitates those connections. I was heavily inspired by a piece of Mormon folk theology that doesn’t translate well to technology. You know when you meet someone and they’re utterly familiar to you, even though there’s no way you could have met before? Mormons teach that we existed before we were born, and many believe that when you have that kind of instant recognition and connection with someone, you might have known them before mortality. This is why, in the story, Buddhists and Mormons have certain speculations about how the Lifeline machine works. The bottom line is that, for the purposes of this story, the people are what’s important, not the technology.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m featured in the upcoming Masked Mosaic anthology of superhero stories from Tyche Books, with a story about a supervillain on the Akwesasne First Nations reserve. I’ve written around 300,000 words of my novel, and pared it down to 150,000. I’m working on short stories about nanotech STIs and necromancers, so expect those themes at some point. I have only one real ambition: to treat speculative fiction as something that can heal and expand the soul, like Guy Gavriel Kay or Kage Baker. Basically, I want to write Earthsea. I’m not Le Guin and this isn’t 1968, but I’m trying to improve my skills to match that sort of ethos.
Earnie Sotirokos grew up in a household where Star Trek: The Next Generation marathons were only interrupted for baseball and football games. When he’s not writing copy for radio or reading slush, he enjoys penning fiction based on those influences. Follow him on Twitter @sotirokos.
Author Spotlight: Theodora Goss
Christie Yant
You explore the idea of poets and poetry as being something much larger in Elah Gal’s world than they are in ours. She actually orchestrates the events that she will eventually document. Where did this idea come from, and is it one that has greater meaning for you outside this story?
The idea really started with thinking about the “of Mars” books and what they would actually look like from a Martian perspective. After reading Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, it’s hard to take the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels seriously, although they’re still fun to read. But I thought about what would happen if those sorts of adventures, the human being on Mars adventures, were staged, were performance. I think there’s something Ursula Le Guinish about the idea: Le Guin, whom I read avidly as a teenager, taught me that the alien perspective may be nothing at all like our own. In this case, poetry is indeed more important for the aliens, although human societies have also had court poets. There was a time when if you went to war, you took your bard along to sing about it. Bards had magical powers, back then. And I do still believe that poetry is magic, that in a sense it makes the world: Stories create our perception of reality. So yes, I think there is a larger theme at work here, although I hope the story itself is simply fun as well.
You recently had a story published in Under the Moons of Mars, an anthology based on the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. When I started reading “Child-Empress of Mars” I was convinced I was reading a Barsoom story, it seemed to fit so well in that world, while being wholly original. Were you directly inspired by the work of Burroughs for this story, or do you think there’s a larger cultural or literary influence at play for both of you?
For this particular story, I was much more influenced by the IDEA of Burroughs’ Barsoom than the reality. I’m not really writing about his Mars here. I’m writing about the idea of the Mars adventure story, which he is certainly associated with—but there were many Mars adventure stories written. I think the larger influence for me woul
d actually be Bradbury and Le Guin, whom I mentioned above. They were essential to my experience of science fiction as I was growing up, and they critiqued, in their different ways, the hero-meets-bug-eyed-alien ethos. They taught me to assume that the aliens have a valid perspective, and a perspective that is perhaps more interesting, and more important to explore, than our own. In my own Barsoom story in “Under the Moons of Mars,” I took the Burroughs characters and plot line much more seriously, although even there I showed that John Carter doesn’t know everything that’s going on—in the mind of his own calot, even. I tried to show that peripheral characters have their own stories, which may be very different from what we assume is the main narrative.
The world-building in this story was so detailed—you created the flora, the fauna, the architecture. What was that process like for you? Was this a world you’d conceived already, or were the details created as you went?
I created the details as I went, and then I went back and revised, of course. But really if you look closely you’ll see that what I’ve done is given you a bunch of words—Martian words—and you have to figure out what you think they mean. So you’re really creating the world inside your head. I half-created it, and you create the other half. I asked so much of the readers here, and yet, isn’t that the fun of it? Being asked to do something like read parts of a story in an imaginary language and yet understanding it, being able to visualize it? At least, I think that’s fun. I hope readers think so too …
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 32 Page 27