Uncanny Magazine Issue 39

by Lynne M. Thomas

  UNCANNY MAGAZINE

  “Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff” by Uncanny Magazine

  About Our Cover Artist: Paul Lewin by Paul Lewin

  “The Uncanny Valley” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  “The Sin of America” by Catherynne M. Valente

  “The Perils of a Hologram Heart” by Dominica Phetteplace

  “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “The Book of the Kraken” by Carrie Vaughn

  “Eighteen Days of Barbareek” by Rati Mehrotra

  “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker

  “They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass” by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “Seduced by the Ruler’s Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade” by Sid Jain

  “Protector of Small Steps” by Marieke Nijkamp

  “Please Be Kind to the Singularity” by Jay Edidin

  “the most humane methods could involve a knife” by Tamara Jerée

  “lagahoo culture (Part II)” by Brandon O’Brien

  “Future Saints” by Terese Mason Pierre

  “Of Monsters I Loved” by Ali Trotta

  “Interview: Caroline M. Yoachim” by Tina Connolly

  “Interview: Sarah Pinsker” by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “Thank You, Patreon Supporters!” by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota

  Ebook generated by Clockpunk Studios.

  Copyright © 2021 by Uncanny Magazine.

  www.uncannymagazine.com

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

  Publishers/Editors–in–Chief: Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Managing Editor/Poetry Editor: Chimedum Ohaegbu

  Nonfiction Editor: Elsa Sjunneson

  Podcast Producers: Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky

  Podcast Readers: Joy Piedmont, Erika Ensign, Matt Peters, & Heath Miller

  Assistant Editor: Naomi Day

  Interviewers: Caroline M. Yoachim & Lynne M. Thomas

  Submissions Editors: Andrew Adams, Cislyn Smith, Coral Moore, Dolores Peters, Heather Clitheroe, Heather Leigh, Jay Wolf, Karlyn Meyer, Kay Taylor Rea, Liam Meilleur, Matt Peters, Piper Hale, Renee Christopher, Tazmania Hayward, Zoe Mitchell, C. E. McGill, Nhu Le, Rowan MacBean, Brahidaliz Martinez, Genevra Littlejohn, Sonia Sulaiman, Marissa Harwood

  Logo & Wordmark design: Katy Shuttleworth

  About Our Cover Artist: Paul Lewin

  I was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973. I moved to the U.S. with my family in 1977 and spent most of my younger years growing up in Miami FL. In 2004 I moved to Oakland, CA. Art has been a part of my life from as far back as I can remember. My father was my first artistic influence. From a very young age I would assist him in various creative projects. My father was a great storyteller. I loved listening to his stories of the old country in Jamaica while we worked. He also taught me a lot about ancient societies, science, and history. My childhood home was filled with paintings, sculptures, and artifacts of many different cultures from around the world. These works, along with my love of sci-fi and fantasy art, inspired a lot of my early creativity. Eventually I began creating my own stories. Pencil and paper were my medium of choice in those days. I was also into graffiti during my early years but I wasn’t very good at it. It did teach me about having flow and movement in my work. That would lead me into my next phase in 1994 when I picked up a paint brush for the first time and began painting.

  Today my art is inspired by Afro Caribbean/ African folklore, nature and sci-fi. I’m primarily focused on storytelling; a tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation, dating back to ancient Africa. My intent is to create alternate worlds, with various elements of African and Afro Caribbean culture. The subjects in my work represent the ancestors. Ancient ancestors, futuristic ancestors, interdimensional ancestors, and all the other beings that inhabit the spirit world. My creative process involves meditating on these concepts and allowing space for whatever comes up. I’ve always loved the theory of the artist as a conduit, transcribing visions onto a canvas. Or photographing dreams. I try to let each piece evolve on its own and not interfere too much. I’m not always sure of the meaning behind each painting, but I’m also not too concerned about that either. I’m more into the actual process of creating. I love getting lost in the details and watching an image come together from start to finish. One of my favorite memories as a kid was running home after school everyday to lock myself in my room for hours just drawing and creating. Not much has changed.

  The Uncanny Valley

  by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  The snow swirls outside of Caitlin’s Lurie Children’s Hospital window. From 20 floors up, we watch cars slip and slide, thankful we’re not traveling home in dangerous weather while also wanting to be anywhere but here. Caitlin is back in the hospital tonight after a mostly healthy 2020. The current kidney stone surgery didn’t go as well as we hoped and we’ll need a repeat in about three weeks; she’s battling pain and nausea. Earlier this week, we received the fabulous news that many of the stories we edited in this hospital made the Locus Recommended Reading List. And here we are, editing in a hospital room once again. Tomorrow we’ll be sent home until her next surgery. Hopefully in a few weeks’ time, Caitlin will be back to her normal self.

  Otherwise, the world is a much better place than it was a couple of months ago, but the pandemic rages on. Too many people are sick or dead. Fascism and white supremacy are being fought, but aren’t gone by any means. So much damage was done over the last few years—part of a long history of injustices. As we reach out to folks during Caitlin’s current hospitalization—and folks reach out to us—we are reminded that our community is full of kind and thoughtful people. People who come together and help one another. People who fight side by side to make the world a better and more equitable place.

  As always, we can’t do it without all of you.

  We hope that you will enjoy this issue of Uncanny Magazine. We often feel fairly helpless to fight the darkness of our world, but maybe this gorgeous and provocative art will add something good to the universe. We believe it does. Just like we believe you do, Space Unicorns. You are magnificent. Thank you.

  FABULOUS NEWS, SPACE UNICORNS! HAPPIEST OF DAYS!!! TWELVEUncanny Magazine stories are on the prestigious 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List! WE ARE SO THRILLED! Congratulations to all of the authors!

  Best Novelette:

  “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard

  “Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super” by A.T. Greenblatt

  Best Short Story:

  “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Rae Carson

  “Dresses Like White Elephants” by Meg Elison

  “The Sycamore and the Sybil” by Alix E. Harrow

  “50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know” by Ken Liu

  “The Ruby of the Summer King” by Mari Ness

  “The Nine Scents of Sorrow” by Jordan Taylor

  “Georgie in the Sun” by Natalia Theodoridou

  “Juvenilia” by Lavie Tidhar

  “High in the Clean Blue Air” by Emma Törzs

  “My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

  This means you can vote for these stories in the 2021 Locus Poll and Survey which determines the Locus Awards! Voting is FREE TO ALL! Along with these stories, Uncanny Magazine is also eligible for a Locus Award in the Best Magazine or Fanzine category, and Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
are eligible in the Best Editor – Pro or Fan category! Vote for the things you liked, and you can even write in things that didn’t make the 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List! YOUR VOTE ALWAYS COUNTS!

  Space Unicorns! It is time to announce the TOP STORY in our Uncanny Magazine 2020 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll!

  It is…*drumroll*

  “The Salt Witch” by Martha Wells!

  Congratulations, Martha! A SNAZZY CERTIFICATE is on the way!

  The rest of the Top Five are:

  2- “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” by Rae Carson

  3- Tie!

  “My Country Is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou

  “The Bottomless Martyr” by John Wiswell

  4- Tie!

  “The Sycamore and the Sybil” by Alix E. Harrow

  “Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher

  5- “Burn or The Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super” by A. T. Greenblatt

  Congratulations to everybody!

  Thank you to everybody who voted!

  We have some wonderful news, Space Unicorns! We’re adding a Podcast Reader!

  Starting with Uncanny Magazine Podcast #38B, the new Podcast Reader will be…

  Matt Peters!

  Matt Peters is a passionate Chicago-based voice talent. Having amassed hundreds of hours behind the mic through podcasting, Matt trained with Acting Studio Chicago to improve his skill set. Since then, he’s lent his voice to hosting events, ad campaigns, and audiobook narration. Matt is now a proud member of the Uncanny Magazine family and is excited to share some of our favorite stories with you.

  You will probably remember Matt as Michi Trota’s co-host on Uncanny TV! Matt will be joining Erika Ensign and Joy Piedmont in our rotation of regular podcast readers. Matt’s debut is already live as he reads “Femme and Sundance” by Christopher Caldwell!

  Hugo Award nominations are now open! If you are an eligible member of CoNZealand or DisCon III, you should already have your membership and voting information so you can start nominating online!

  This year, Uncanny Magazine is still eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award. Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are also still eligible for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo Award. (Note: If you are nominating the Thomases in this category, please continue to nominate them together. They are a co-editing team.)

  You can see all of the eligible Uncanny Magazine stories and their appropriate categories here!

  And now the contents of Uncanny Magazine Issue 39! The phenomenal cover is Kianga by Paul Lewin. Our new fiction includes Catherynne M. Valente’s cathartic tale of sin and horrors “The Sin of America,” Dominica Phetteplace’s exploration of love, nostalgia, and future immortality “The Perils of a Hologram Heart,” Caroline M. Yoachim’s story of art, identity, and past immortality “Colors of the Immortal Palette,” Carrie Vaughn’s tale of ships and friendships “The Book of the Kraken,” Rati Mehrotra’s epic of war and sacrifice “Eighteen Days of Barbareek,” and Sarah Pinsker’s deep dive into a ballad and its origins “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather.” Our reprint is “They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass” by Alaya Dawn Johnson, originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, and also published in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s collection Reconstruction (Small Beer Press).

  Our provocative and compelling essays this issue include “Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes” by Tansy Rayner Roberts, “Seduced by the Ruler’s Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade” by Sid Jain, “Protector of Small Steps” by Marieke Nijkamp, and “Please Be Kind to the Singularity” by Jay Edidin. Our gorgeous and evocative poetry includes “the most humane methods could involve a knife” by Tamara Jerée, “lagahoo culture (Part II)” by Brandon O’Brien, “Future Saints” by Terese Mason Pierre, and “Of Monsters I Loved” by Ali Trotta. Finally, Tina Connolly interviews Caroline M. Yoachim and Caroline M. Yoachim interviews Sarah Pinsker about their stories.

  The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 39A features “The Sin of America” by Catherynne M. Valente, as read by Heath Miller, “lagahoo culture (Part II)” by Brandon O’Brien, as read by Matt Peters, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Catherynne M. Valente. The Uncanny Magazine Podcast 39B features “The Book of the Kraken” by Carrie Vaughn, as read by Joy Piedmont, “Of Monsters I Loved” by Ali Trotta, as read by Heath Miller, and Lynne M. Thomas interviewing Carrie Vaughn.

  As always, we are deeply grateful for your support of Uncanny Magazine. Shine on, Space Unicorns!

  © 2021 Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

  Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors-in-Chief for the four-time Hugo and Parsec Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

  Nine-time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013). She co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords (with Tara O’Shea) as well as Whedonistas (with Deborah Stanish) and Chicks Dig Comics (with Sigrid Ellis).

  Along with being a six-time Hugo Award-winner, Michael Damian Thomas was the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012-2013), co-edited the Hugo-finalist Queers Dig Time Lords (with Sigrid Ellis), and co-edited Glitter & Mayhem (with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas).

  Together, they solve mysteries.

  The Sin of America

  by Catherynne M. Valente

  Content Note: Child Death and Violence Against Women

  There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else.

  There’s a woman outside of Sheridan, sitting in the sun-yellow booth in the far back corner of the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe under a busted wagon wheel and a pair of wall-mounted commemorative plates. One’s from the moon landing. The other’s from old Barnum Brown discovering the first T-Rex skeleton up at Hell Creek.

  There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America.

  The woman sits quietly with her hands in her lap. Her hair slumps over her shoulder in a long fat braid the color of tarnished quarters, but she isn’t old. She isn’t young, either. Her name is Ruby-Rose Martineau and her parents run a butterfly farm just over the Montana line in a tight corner pocket of the Shoshone river. Mainly rare swallowtails: spicebrush, emerald peacock, Queen Alexandras. Some red lacewings and whatnot. You remember it. So do the other seven or eight customers seated carefully far from her, silent as buttes, pantomiming how hard they aren’t staring while staring for all they’re worth. You all grew up seeing the giant faded highway signs with Dale Martineau’s big Frenchy face grinning down the plains with a huge black trogonoptera trojana perched on the tip of his self-satisfied thumbs-up.

  Just 100 miles to Bigwing Ranch, Home of the Ultimate Butterfly Experience!

  50 Miles! Tell Your Dad to Pull Over Cuz It’s Only $10!

  You’ve Almost Made It To the Best Day of Your Life! Just 25 Little Ol’ Miles To Go!

  Ruby-Rose got named for two perfect red things and she ran away from the Ultimate Butterfly Experience as soon as she could chain one dollar to the next. But the distances out west make it so hard to get far. Majored in dance at Colorado State. Ruined her feet before she was old enough to rent a car. Got married. Got unmarried. Had a baby born with only half a heart that died in her arms at 4:37 am one frost-cauled January morning. Did what broken dancers do: opened a school for ballet/modern over in Provo. Slept with one of the much-bescarved producers who descend like monarchs for Sundance every year, who never did hire her to choreograph his next flick but did saddle her with a kiddo who’s about five now and can say all the geological periods of the earth in order from the Precambrian to the Quaternary. Closed the school and everything else round about the big crash when people stopped caring whether little Kaylee could do a decent goddamned pas de chat for quite a good whack of time. Crested the wave of her generation as they crashed down back home in their childhood bedrooms with nothing, even though she’s been afraid to death of butterflies sinc
e she was big enough to say why she was crying all over her pretty new dress.

  Her name is Ruby-Rose Martineau and she is eating the sin of America.

  The waitress’s nametag says Emmeline. An old flatscreen drones out a soft ribbon of white noise over the big picture window. One of the yelly conservative news troughs Ruby-Rose hates. The chyron crawls silently across the primary-colored frame, projecting faintly on her skin: Independent Inquiry Determines Christopher Salazar Behind Hedge Fund Ponzi Scheme. A photo goes up over the name: a nice-looking man with a fresh haircut who looks far too young to get caught up in any of that sort of thing. The block black C in Christopher flutters faintly on Emmeline’s forehead. She’s an owl-eyed wisp of a thing, wearing a royal blue dress with Disney princess cap sleeves and a frilly white apron that’s got a big blue bison chomping blue prairie grass embroidered on it.

  This is the uniform designed by Linda Gage, who opened the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe in 1981 and got T-boned by the biggest horse-trailer you ever saw in 1982. Nothing left but hooves and hair and Linda and all her dear little plans smeared up and down I-90 for half a mile in each direction.

  Herb Gage’s kept it all like she wanted, down to the fancy -pe stapled on the back end of Shoppe, which he personally thought was about as stupid as whipped cream on steak and told her so at the time. But now? If God himself came down and told him to spell it right Herb Gage would tell the old man to get the fuck out. Linnie picked out those moon landing and T-Rex plates and nailed up their display stands herself. And the busted wagon wheels, the bluebell-patterned cushions on the extruded plastic booths, the interstate highway maps and her very own watercolors of the official bird and fish and flower of the Equality State, still with their original $15 price tags affixed, as Herb could more easily sell his own brain out of his skull than one lousy pastel western meadowlark in a plastic frame. It was Linnie who hung up all those felt NFL champion pennants in chronological order, starting with the Cleveland Browns in the year of her birth dangling over the revolving pie display case and terminating abruptly in the 1982 Washington Redskins, whose solemn mascot frowns down on the cash register. She insisted on crayons and paper tablecloths for the kiddies to draw on while they waited for their ice creams. Why, her deadbeat brother shot and stuffed that taxidermy elk-head with tie-dyed antlers himself. And it surely never was Herb who put up those black and white framed photos of all the famous people Linda Gage dreamed would one day visit and order up her World Famous Daily Deep-Fry Surprise and stretch their belts and tell her you just couldn’t get food like this back in LA, no sir, you could not.