by Jo Walton
Praise for Starlings
“Jo Walton’s short writings have for decades been among the things that make the Internet worthwhile. She makes science fiction illuminate life. This collection lives up to its title: iridescent, dark, gregarious, talkative and ever ready to fly up.”
—Ken MacLeod, author of Newton’s Wake
“Stephen King once wrote that ‘a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger’—that is, sudden, pleasant, mysterious, dangerous, and exciting—and the collected short fiction of Jo Walton is exemplary of the principle.”
—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and Walkaway
“Walton’s diverse collection of stories and poems sparkles with originality and fun. The joy of this book will linger with me for a while.”
—Beth Cato, author of The Clockwork Dagger
“Exquisitely written feats of imagination, each one leaving an impression long after it’s done.”
—Kelley Armstrong, author of Rituals and Led Astray
“Starlings is a showcase of Jo Walton’s diverse talents—a collection too varied to be summed up in a few words. From fairytale fantasy to hard science fiction, from laugh-aloud play script to finely crafted poetry, with a writing experiment or two thrown in, Starlings should delight Walton’s existing fans and garner many new ones.”
—Juliet Marillier, author of Daughter of the Forest
“Jo Walton’s delightful collection, Starlings, runs the gamut from homemade fairy tales to hard-boiled cloned-Jesus detectives (just wait for the shaggy dog); to a play with figures out of Irish myth, and a talking dragon; to a selection of her fantastic poems. It’s the kind of collection you can glide through, often while laughing out loud.”
—Gregory Frost, author of Shadowbridge
“One of the things I love about Walton’s work is her range of human possibility, from laughter to horror, but above all a reveling in profligate beauty. This collection celebrates the best in the human spirit.”
—Sherwood Smith, author of Rebeland Revenant Eve
“This collection of fiction and poetry from Hugo- and Nebula-winner Walton (The Just City) showcases her trademark focus on genre and philosophical questions . . . Fans of the [short] form will have plenty to appreciate.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Reading this collection felt like watching a wizard at the cauldron having fun with new spells . . . I recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys fantasy, Jo Walton’s previous works, or wants to try shorter works before committing to longer ones.”
—Infinite Text
Praise for Necessity
“Brilliant, compelling, and, frankly, unputdownable.”
—NPR
“As before, Walton has done a superb job of world building and character development, giving readers a novel that both stimulates and satisfies.”
—Booklist, starred review
“There’s more substance here than in many actual philosophy books.”
—Romantic Times
Praise for Among Others
“A wonder and a joy.”
—New York Times
“Never deigning to transcend the genre to which it is clearly a love letter, this outstanding (and entirely teen-appropriate) tale draws its strength from a solid foundation of sense-of-wonder and what-if.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“There are the books you want to give all your friends, and there are the books you wish you could go back and give your younger self. And then there’s the rare book, like Jo Walton’s Among Others, that’s both.”
—io9.com
Praise for The King’s Peace
“The King’s Peace is the novel that The Mists of Avalon should have been.”
—Debra Doyle, author of School of Wizardry
“Walton writes with an authenticity that never loses heart, a rare combination in a genre where we are so often offered one or the other.”
—Robin Hobb, author of Assassin’s Apprentice
“There is not an ill-written sentence . . . Never lacks immediacy or loses its historical quality.”
—VOYA
Also by Jo Walton
Sulien series
The King’s Peace (2000)
The King’s Name (2001)
The Prize in the Game (2002)
Small Change series
Farthing (2006)
Ha’penny (2007)
Half a Crown (2008)
Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction (2009)
Just City/Thessaly series
The Just City (2015)
The Philosopher Kings (2015)
Necessity (2016)
Standalone Novels
Tooth and Claw (2003)
Lifelode (2009)
Among Others (2011)
My Real Children (2014)
Poor Relations (forthcoming)
Lent (forthcoming)
Collections
Muses and Lurkers (2009)
Sibyls & Spaceships (2009)
The Helix and the Hard Road (2013) with Joan Slonczewski
Chapbooks
Sleeper (2014)
A Burden Shared (2017)
Nonfiction
What Makes This Book So Great (2014)
An Informal History of the Hugos (2018)
STARLINGS
JO WALTON
Starlings
Copyright © 2018 by Jo Walton
This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Jo Walton
Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story
Tachyon Publications LLC
1459 18th Street #139
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.285.5615
www.tachyonpublications.com
[email protected]
Series Editor: Jacob Weisman
Project Editor: James DeMaiolo
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-056-8
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-057-5
First Edition: 2018
“Starlings” copyright © 2017 by Jo Walton. First appeared on Patreon: Jo Walton Is Creating Poetry, April 20, 2017. | “At the Bottom of the Garden” copyright © 2000 by Jo Walton. First published in Odyssey #7, November/ December 2000. | “Relentlessly Mundane” copyright © 2000 by Jo Walton. First published in Strange Horizons, October 23, 2000. | “Unreliable Witness” copyright © 2001 by Jo Walton. First published in Strange Horizons, January 15, 2001. | “On the Wall” copyright © 2001 by Jo Walton. First published in Strange Horizons, September 3, 2001. | “What Would Sam Spade Do?” copyright © 2006 by Jo Walton. First published in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2006. | “What Joseph Felt” copyright © 2004 by Jo Walton. First published on Jo Walton’s website. | “What a Piece of Work” copyright © 2004 by Jo Walton. First published in Subterranean, Issue #4. | “Three Twilight Tales” copyright © 2009 by Jo Walton. First published in Firebirds Soaring, edited by Sharon November (New York: Firebird-Penguin). | “Parable Lost” copyright © 2009 by Jo Walton. First published in Lone Star Stories #33, June 2009. | “Remember the Allosaur” copyright © 2007 by Jo Walton. First published in Lone Star Stories #28, August 2007. | “Tradition” copyright © 2007 by Jo Walton. First published in Lone Star Stories #21, June 2007. | “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” copyright © 2009 by Jo Walton. First published on Tor.com, February 6, 2009. | “The Panda Coin” copyright © 2011 by Jo Walton. First published in Eclipse 4, edited by Jonathan Strahan (San Francisco: Nig
ht Shade Books). | “Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens” copyright © 2011 by Jo Walton. First published on Jo Walton’s website. | “Turnover” copyright © 2013 by Jo Walton. First published as a Novacon chapbook (Nottingham, UK: Novacon Convention). | “Sleeper” copyright © 2014 by Jo Walton. First published on Tor.com, August 12, 2014. | “The Need to Stay the Same” copyright © 2015 by Jo Walton. First published in TFF-X: Ten Years of The Future Fire: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Djibril al-Ayad, Cécile Matthey, and Valeria Vitale (Futurefire.net Publishing). | “A Burden Shared” copyright © 2017 by Jo Walton. First published on Tor.com, April 19, 2017. | “Jane Austen to Cassandra” copyright © 2016 by Jo Walton. First published on Jo Walton’s website. | “Out of It” copyright © 2017 by Jo Walton. First published on Patreon: Jo Walton Is Creating Poetry, April 20, 2017. | “Three Shouts on a Hill” copyright © 2010 by Jo Walton. First published as a chapbook for Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (Minneapolis, MN). | Poetry copyright © 2006-2017 by Jo Walton. “Dragon’s Song,” “Not in This Town,” “The Death of Petrarch,” “Advice to Loki,” “Three Bears Norse,” “Machiavelli and Propsero,” “Cardenio,” “Pax in Forma Columba,” “Translated from the Original,” “Sleepless in New Orleans,” and “The Godzilla Sonnets” all appeared on Patreon: Jo Walton Is Creating Poetry or on Jo Walton’s website. “Hades and Persephone” copyright © 2014 by Jo Walton. First published on Tor.com, April 6, 2014. | “Ask to Embla” copyright © 2015 by Jo Walton. First published in Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok (Chicago, IL: Sassafras). | “Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem” copyright © 2015 by Jo Walton. First published on Huffington Post, May 6, 2015. | “Not a Bio for Wiscon: Jo Walton” copyright © 2013, 2016 by Jo Walton. First appeared for WisCon 37, reprinted in The Helix and the Hard Rose (Seattle, WA: Aqueduct Press).
CONTENTS
Starlings (A Poem)
Introduction
Fiction
Three Twilight Tales
Jane Austen to Cassandra
Unreliable Witness
On the Wall
The Panda Coin
Remember the Allosaur
Sleeper
Relentlessly Mundane
Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction
Joyful and Triumphant:
St. Zenobius and the Aliens
Turnover
At the Bottom of the Garden
Out of It
What a Piece of Work
Parable Lost
What Would Sam Spade Do?
Tradition
What Joseph Felt
The Need to Stay the Same
A Burden Shared
Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)
Poems
Dragon’s Song
Not in This Town
Hades and Persephone
The Death of Petrarch
Advice to Loki
Ask to Embla
Three Bears Norse
Machiavelli and Prospero
Cardenio
Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem
Pax in Forma Columba
Translated from the Original
Sleepless in New Orleans
The Godzilla Sonnets
Not a Bio for Wiscon: Jo Walton
About the Author
This is for Alter Reiss,
who has this whole short story thing figured out
STARLINGS
From Stellar nurseries a pulse of light
From far away and long ago, the dawn
Reaches to us to teach how stars are born
Freshly fledged starlings as they first take flight.
Though we can never know or reach those bright
Beginning stars, we see them being torn
From nebulas and time, through skies forlorn,
A swirling flock that glimmer through our night.
We ask ourselves, ah, what strange birds are these?
Whose wings can beat a message from so far
As starlight through the branches of our trees.
Photons cross years to tell us “Here we are!”
Illuminating new realities,
A flock of starlings from a distant star.
INTRODUCTION
THE TRADITIONAL thing to say in the introduction to a short story collection is “Here are some stories, I hope you like them.” I can’t say that, for reasons I will now explain. For the longest time I didn’t know how to write short stories.
That didn’t stop me trying. I liked reading them, and I knew that they were often where the cutting edge of SF was. I had also read advice that said it was easier to sell short work than novels, and so starting writers should concentrate on them. This advice so didn’t work for me. I sold novels before I sold anything short, because novels came naturally and short fiction didn’t. Even when I sold some, they mostly weren’t short stories. For ages I felt a fraud, because my short stories were either extended jokes, poems with the line breaks taken out, experiments with form, or the first chapters of novels. Once you’re fairly successfully selling novels, anthologists and editors ask you for short stories, and I always had to say embarrassedly that I almost never wrote any.
I had published nine novels before I figured out short stories. In fact, I had written my Hugo and Nebula award–winning novel Among Others before I knew how to write short stories. So that career advice for writers isn’t necessarily the way it has to work. Funny, that.
When you’re writing a novel, you have a lot of space for things to happen and for the characters to show themselves and to generate plot for you. You don’t have to make it all up. There’s room for it to unfold slowly.
In a poem, you’re focused on words. It sounds ridiculous to say that the art of poetry is making words say what you want, because that’s everything, isn’t it, from conversation on out? But poetry is about words and images and technique. I’ve always written poetry. This is my first short story collection, but it’s my fourth poetry collection. When I was trying to write short stories at the beginning of my career, I was also writing poetry. I’d send them both out, and while they were both being rejected, they were being rejected in different ways. The short stories got form rejections, or at best “send us your next thing” rejections. The poetry got rejections that said it was great but not the kind of thing people could publish. This was a huge advantage, because it let me see that my short stuff wasn’t good enough yet, whereas my poetry would be if there was a market. There are markets now—there has been a speculative poetry renaissance this century, it’s wonderful. If I were starting off now, I’d have no problem selling those poems. But recognizing that the short stories weren’t good enough was very valuable. Being nearly good enough is a very difficult state for a writer. This is when people start believing in conspiracies and needing an in with publishers and sometimes give up and self-publish, even falling for scams.
What I need to write is what I call mode, which is hard to describe but nevertheless essential. It has to do with where I am standing with regard to the text and the reader, which affects everything else. Anything I want to write has its own mode, and if I have the mode—the voice, and that stance, then maybe I can write it. Without the mode, I have nothing. All the ideas in the world are worthless to me without it—and ideas are often the easy part. One thing with this is that I can sometimes borrow mode—I’ll look at the mode something else is written in and think what fun it would be to use it myself.
I did eventually figure out short stories while trying to help my friend Alter Reiss fix a story called “If the Stars . . .” that he eventually sold to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I read the beginning, the first few paragraphs, which were great, and I said, “I think this wants to be a novel, and maybe that’s why you’re having this issue.” He said no, it didn’t, and when I read the whole thing I saw that he was absolutely right. He then found a way to fix the issue and sold the story, but I kept on thinking about it. The end of that story wasn’t heavy enou
gh to hold down a novel. It was a terrific ending for a five-thousand-word short story, but it would have been too slight for a novel. And that’s the secret to short things, and what I needed to think about when thinking about the length something should be: the weight of the ending.
I’ve shared this revelation with a bunch of people since 2011, and some of them have said “Aha!” and some have said “Well duh” and most have said “Huh?” thus proving that as Kipling said “there are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.” Writers are different and write in different ways, and there is no off-the-peg writing advice that works for everyone.
Pleased with this insight, I went on to write, and sell, a couple of actual short stories. Er, that is, specifically, two. You’ll find them toward the end of this book. I continue to think of myself as a novelist and a poet and not really a short fiction writer at all.