Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  From there? I work for an engineering school, and I was putting away archive copies of an exam for a biomedical engineering course. A student had been showing me his lab assignment the week before when he came in to borrow a stapler—something about advanced signal processing for better tumor detection—and I happened to leaf through the exam and looked at the course number. Then I pulled the course outline, and then I started looking at the prof’s webpage for his research and his lab, and I found a list of journal articles. Then I started reading. The best thing about working for engineers is that nobody seems to mind if you ask a question about circuits and biomedical implants while you’re waiting for the Keurig to finish brewing coffee. They just take it for granted.

  I skimmed through a bunch of textbooks on circuitry and neuromorphic VLSI systems that are being developed to mimic the nervous system. I was fascinated. I stumbled onto memristors when I was looking at a grad student thesis, and started trying to put it all together and understanding what I was reading. Thank goodness for the Google.

  Do you see this story as a warning in the world’s pursuit of technology? If so, what specific message do you want readers to leave with?

  I think it’s a bit late for warnings. We’re plunging ahead with new technology all the time, and I don’t know that you can always predict the outcome. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. I work with people who are developing and researching new tech to support the tech that hasn’t even been worked out yet. Talk about anticipatory … it takes an enormous amount of chutzpah for a scientist or an engineer to say “oh, hey, this process hasn’t been invented yet, but when it is, they’re going to need these materials in huge quantities, so I’ll just work on that now.” And I think that’s okay … we try to anticipate what’s coming, we plan for what we think might happen, but we’re remarkably adaptable, we humans, and when things go sideways, we deal with it.

  I think this story is more a reflection of the way we allow economics to use people, though: that we pay whether we realize it or not, and that sometimes means that we hurt each other and ourselves as we do it. Spencer isn’t really a warning. He just is. He’s already been chewed up and spit out by the “augmentation” that makes him a cyborg, and he’s paying a terrible price for the choices he made and the ones that were made for him. I guess the story is supposed to leave you with the message that we should do better. We can do better than this. We should do better. Technology doesn’t scare me. Economics does.

  You took a brief break from writing last year; did you find it easy to return to work, and was this a story from before your break or after? How did your Banff residency rejuvenate your writing?

  Getting back to work was a huge, scary effort, and this was the first major piece of fiction after a very long pause.

  I finished my master’s degree at the end of 2012—writing about the neoliberal projection of blame and victimhood in post 9/11 zombie narratives (hi, Dr. McCutcheon!) and needed a break. The break turned out to run longer than I thought, because I ended up having surgery in April and then a second major surgery in September that took me out of commission for several months. It felt like I spent most of last year having surgery or recovering from it. In the middle of that year, Calgary flooded—great swathes of the city were quite literally underwater, and we spent a nervous week with go bags packed because we live so close to the river, waiting for an evacuation notice and planning the route up to my friends’ house, where they had cots ready for us in the basement (hi, Kirk, Robyn, Matt, and Tamara!). My parents had been in a serious car accident the year before and ended up being called as witnesses for the prosecution late in the summer. We were all pretty worn out by everything. It was truly was an annus horribilis. There was no writing to be done.

  The first bits of writing I did were very tentative, and there are some incredibly shitty first drafts tucked away in a folder, never to see the light of day again. I’d seen a mention of the WDSF call, and thought I would give it a try. I was finally back at work, and I had started coming into the office early to sit and write—first half an hour, then an hour, then an hour and a half. I went back to the Banff Centre for the Arts in early February. I took the cyborg story with me and I worked on it day and night until it was ready to send in, just under the wire. And I got that sucker done and danced around my studio and did one of those embarrassing “YEAH!” fist pumps, only to realize that I’d been seen. Whoops.

  This story represents a triumphant return to writing after a truly awful year … and what a start!

  Being published in WDSF means so much to me. When I was a kid, I strayed into the science fiction and fantasy section and came out with A Fall of Moondust, and the librarian asked me if I didn’t want to read a Sweet Valley High book instead. I’m so glad I refused and went back to pick up the Ben Bova book I’d been eying, and then for the Anne McCaffrey. I feel like this is the start of my annus mirabilis.

  Do you plan to stay in this world and continue exploring the possibilities of machine enhancements to humans?

  Yes, absolutely. The Banff Centre has kindly agreed to put me up for two more residencies this year, and I so enjoyed writing “Cuts Both Ways” that I’ve had trouble moving on to a new project. I started outlining on the bus ride back to Calgary, and had pages of notes and ideas by the time we hit the city limits.

  I love the idea of a company having a stranglehold on fascinating new tech and the kinds of shady things they might do with it … and the things people might do to themselves to be a part of it. I’m fascinated by the idea of Distributed Arbitrage and the forecasting, and I know I’m not done with Spencer or Megan. I’m not sure what it’s going to look like, but I think I’ve got the beginnings of a novel in me. And at the end of the day, I want to hear that William Gibson read my book and liked it.

  Lee Hallison writes fiction in an old Seattle house where she lives with her patient spouse, an impatient teen, two lovable dogs, and the memories of several wonderful cats. She’s held many jobs—among them a bartender, a pastry chef, a tropical plant-waterer, a CPA, and a university lecturer. An East Coast transplant, she simply cannot fathom cherry blossoms in March.

  Author Spotlight: N.K. Jemisin

  Laurel Amberdine

  I loved how you subverted the concept of alien parasites in “Walking Awake.” What inspired you to create the Masters the way you did?

  I think of the story as a response to Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, and to similar science fiction of the era. A lot of that fiction reflects the paranoia of privilege—fear of a more (theoretically) egalitarian political system like communism, fear of external threats because the straight white men of the time simply assumed they would continue to dominate women and people of color within their own societies, and so on. There’s also some apparent fear of the tables turning, because so much of this “privileged people’s science fiction” contains stalwart, iron-jawed, able-bodied fellows suddenly having to deal with (symbolic) weaponized rape, infected blankets, unwanted medical experimentation, and other things that stalwart, iron-jawed fellows have inflicted on people they considered less than human throughout recent history. But that’s the thing: We don’t need aliens to do things like that to each other. We’ve been doing it to each other for ages. So call “Walking Awake” the paranoia of the less-privileged, if you want.

  I noticed you kept the location of the story unspecified, and never showed who exactly created the parasites. Why was it important to keep the story universal?

  Partly because biological warfare and systematic dehumanization have occurred throughout human history, in various forms and in various places. But also just because, after so many generations of having their history carefully removed from them, humankind in the story no longer retains the old distinctions; those have been replaced by new distinctions. Granted, the fact that the Masters are basically GMOs does at least localize the origins of the problem to industrialized countries, or corporations originating in same, but by the point of the story, none of
that matters anymore.

  Sadie seems confident that the Masters rule the whole world, but is it possible there are any holdouts hidden anywhere?

  It’s certainly possible. We’re still discovering pockets of people who managed to avoid colonialism or contact with outsiders, like the Jarawa. The Masters are no more omnipotent as rulers of the Earth than human beings are.

  Your story explores themes of freedom and oppression, obedience and responsibility. What Sadie does at the end not only kills her, it will wipe out the only society she’s ever known—freedom comes at a huge price. Are these important ideas for you in your fiction?

  Yes. I wanted to depict a revolution—but this is, all in all, a relatively quick and bloodless revolution. A heavy price has already been paid by all the people taken over by the Masters at the point of takeover; they’re basically dead already. But I felt that Sadie also needed to risk something, pay something, if she was going to join this revolution.

  I know you’re working on a new science fiction trilogy. Can you share anything about that with our readers?

  Well, it’s sort of science fantasy. Basically, the story is set in a secondary world that suffers from frequent seismic extinction-level events—volcanic winters that last years, chemical changes that toxify whole swaths of land, things like that. These are called Fifth Seasons. In this world there are people called orogenes, who have the power to control seismic energy: They can stop volcanoes, start earthquakes, that sort of thing. But there’s a terrible price that must be paid for this power, which makes them a dire threat to everyone around them, and so orogenes are hunted down and enslaved whenever they appear. They’re feared even more than the long winters.

  The story follows a woman who’s been living an ordinary life in an ordinary small town, but who is secretly an orogene, and her children are, too. When her husband finds out, he reacts … badly. He murders one of their children, and kidnaps the other. She’s forced to hunt him down, but while she does this, another orogene has uncovered an ancient mystery of the world and used it to bring about the worst seismic event in history—one that will cause a Fifth Season that lasts centuries, which no one is prepared for.

  It’s a trilogy, and the first book is done; I’m at work on the second, now.

  You’re highly accomplished at destroying science fiction. Do you have any advice for ambitious, under-represented destructors out there?

  Thank you. My advice is just this: Write. Improve. Submit. Keep doing it, and before you know it, you’ll be destroying science fiction too!

  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 recently moved to San Francisco with her husband, and is enjoying its vastly superior weather. Between naps she’s working on polishing up a few science fiction and fantasy novels, and hopes to send them out into the world soon.

  Author Spotlight: Rhonda Eikamp

  Sandra Odell

  Your story not only pays homage to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, but to the style of Doctor Watson recounting each tale. Are you a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories? What sort of research did you do for this tale?

  I’d read all the original stories, although I’m not a big fan of the modern versions. When I set out to write a steampunk-robot tale, I wanted to say something about Victorian class attitudes, how they might thoughtlessly use something as marvellous as artificial intelligence as soldiers or household servants. The Holmes icon popped into my head. I knew right away I wanted to parallel the original stories. I re-read several of the stories for structure and to get a feel for Watson’s voice. Watson worked for me as the narrator, as it turned out, because I could put those unquestioning pompous attitudes into him. He’s trapped in them without even realizing it. In spite of talking about his friendship with Gearlock, in the end we see that Watson views him the same way the rest of society does, as a machine created to serve humans, something the good doctor can switch off with impunity if it stops working right. I didn’t do much research otherwise. Except for bees. The honey-extraction centrifuge is a real invention of the time, and we find out here that it was actually thought up by Gearlock.

  Early on in the story, you make mention of the prohibition against the amalgamated altering the programming of another of their kind. This hints at a depth of worldbuilding that lends itself well to the story. How important is it to you to create a complete world for your stories, even if the reader only experiences a small taste of your creation?

  Every work of fiction creates a world, or should—that suspension of disbelief that means the reader accepts, for the duration of the story at least, that this happened somewhere, somewhen. Genre writing is a special case, because the reader knows from the start that the world of the story may not be the one he knows, so a telling detail here and there to build up that world is essential. It’s easier in short fiction to drop these hints that may never get fleshed out, as long as they’re consistent. But I let myself discover them as needed while I’m writing. It’s more fun that way. In the story, Germany is beginning to use the amalgamated as soldiers. I didn’t know that at first. I didn’t know our modern term “standby” comes from the Victorians having parked their amalgamated in closets all night.

  Gearlock has much in common with his fleshly counterpart, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock. If you could, what classic Sherlock Holmes case would you like to see Gearlock tackle? How do you think he would fare?

  None of the original cases. Sherlock solved those to everyone’s content. I’d like to see Gearlock take a stab at some of our modern mysteries, and I think he’d do well. I’d set him on the Kennedy assassination or have him decipher the Voynich manuscript.

  Gearlock also shares certain traits with the BBC’s modern interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, in particular the remarks of “You do not know what it is like, here within the closes of my head, Watson. This incessant … insipid buzzing of my thoughts. The ennui.” How do you feel these similarities to both versions of Sherlock Holmes will impact the reader? Is Gearlock more accessible because of them?

  I’m fascinated by the concept of AI and—if we ever do create sentient machines—where the line will be drawn between human and machine. I don’t think it will be human goodness that will set us apart from computer brains, but rather the dark side of human nature: our neuroses, our crimes of passion. The Turing test to prove you’re truly human wouldn’t be to do the right thing, but to do the wrong thing. Even if it’s not crime or a beastly act, but just doing the absurd, the unexpected. You can see this in the anti-computer tactics game players use to win against machines, especially in chess, strategically wrong moves to shake the computer up, get it “out of its book.”

  Gearlock wants to “get out of his book”; he feels the despair of a sentience that is locked out of being human, is baffled by their urges, even while being surrounded by them. We seem to tell this story a lot, characters that long to be human and imitate what they consider to be human, whether they’re from the inferior-or superior-to-human-intellect side of it, from Kafka’s ape in “A Report to an Academy” to HAL 9000 asking, “Will I dream?” Maybe because we’re fascinated by this dichotomy. It’s something we all understand—to err is to be human, but computers by definition should never err, so how could they ever achieve humanity? Maybe it’s comforting to think these failings of ours mean we can never be replaced by them. We’re attracted to the original Holmes, I think, not just because of his computer-like abilities, but because of his human failings: his moodiness, the drugs he turns to when his intellect makes him feel isolated. I wanted to show that ambiguity in Gearlock. If he can be this tormented, is he already human or not?

  As to the modern interpretations of Holmes, I’ve managed to avoid most of them, especially the Downey movies. Haven’t seen one yet. I caught a couple of episodes of the BBC resurrection here on German TV, but dubbed in German. I love the visual method they use to bring Holmes’s thoughts to life. He’s always
been a sort of black box otherwise. Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome in any language.

  What projects are in store for Rhonda Eikamp?

  More stories! I’ve yet to embrace the novel length (or be swallowed up by it, as the case may be). I have another steampunk story that takes a very different direction from this one in the upcoming Emby Press anthology Steampunk Monster Hunter: The Dark Monocle, and a story in the anthology Fae from World Weaver Press. I’m also very proud to be a part of The Journal of Unlikely Cartography put out by Unlikely Story.

  Sandra Odell is an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. She attended Clarion West in 2010. Her first collection of short stories was released from Hydra House Books in 2012. She is currently hard at work avoiding her first novel.

  Author Spotlight: Gabriella Stalker

  Lee Hallison

  Wendell’s change of perspective sends a clear message from the author. What about current culture triggered this story and made you ask, “what if?”

  One aspect of current culture that confuses me is the effort that some people put into displaying their wealth to others—by making sure they wear the right brands, keep up with the current trends, or own the most recent gadget. People are constantly being pressured into buying and spending, and being led to believe that owning things will make them happy. In the context of my story, a mall represents this particular kind of frivolity and materialism. There is actually both a church and a post-secondary institute in this galleria I visit regularly. It has always been very strange to me to see these two establishments, serious and sacred in their own ways, among the pretzel stands and designer handbag kiosks. That was definitely the seed for this story. It brought me to question how much of our daily lives could be consolidated into one building and how it might affect the functions of each institution.

  The concept of an arcology has always been fascinating to me, but I still thought that I’d never see residential space together with commercial space in my lifetime. Imagine my surprise when I discovered high-end condominiums attached to a grocery store in the neighborhood where I lived at the time I was writing “In the Image of Man.” The idea that the people living there were only an elevator ride away from a grocery store/dry cleaners/bank/pharmacy made me think of it as a stepping stone toward real-life arcologies. Writing this story certainly made me realize that I was not terribly optimistic about the idea.