SF/F, sociology, some recipes. Updates every other Friday.
My apologies for the radio silence, folks. It’s been a rough couple of weeks.
Short version is: I’ve lost my day job.
We’re still in flux over here, but the rent will get paid this month and I’m trying to organize time to write while I’ve got it. Normal posting will be back next week.
If you’re so inclined, now would be a great time to Buy Me A Coffee or become a patron.
Once again available on Kindle (and for good this time), the story of a boy, his mother, and the spirit of the words, “The Diction-fairy.”
“Leave some blank pages under your pillow for the Diction-fairy.” Mom finally said, between the squeaky atonal noises of the tape machine.
I asked who the Diction-fairy was.
“She’ll take your pages and write on them.” Mom explained.
I asked what would happen if I wrote words on them first. Mom’s smile was tired, but real and full of magic.
“Then she’ll make your words better.”
I still remember the first time I left an essay under my pillow for the Diction-fairy. Eight year old me was desperate; stuck on Sunday night with two pages due on Monday and not even old enough to say the word ‘bullshit,’ much less practice it. Little did I know that this magical figure would come to shape my future and my faith in the power of words. As an adult, I left my manuscript under my pillow one last time, never expecting what would come…
For fans of Charles de Lint or Legends and Lattes, this is a cozy little story of a boy, his mother, and the spirit of the words.
Order your copy of “The Diction-fairy” today!
In 1999, I wrote to the President of the United States and the Premier of the Soviet Union to urge them towards peace, friendship, and space travel. I did so because they had a Chain Letter for Peace printed on page 136 of this book.
On page 51, there’s pictures of Skylab and an advert for a book called See Inside A Space Station if you send $9.02, postpaid, to Warwick Press at 730 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10019.
On page 106, they discuss “EXPLORING INNER SPACE” and the frontiers of the human mind. On the facing page is an “imaging exercise” or guided meditation.
On page 183, we learn about various cooperatives and sharing that may exist in the future: childcare sharing, worker-owned businesses, food co-ops, family businesses, job sharing.
On page 75, there’s a recipe for earthworm cookies that actually taste really good! And a comparison chart of various protein sources, with insects topping the list.
On page 36, living houses. Page 37, how to plant your own model “tree house.” Page 168, cooperative games. Page 170, computers as personal trainers. Page 140, bicycles breaking the speed limit. Page 206, gasohol. Page 156, the Space Shuttle. Page 129, a dead-on description of l33tsp34k.
Page 115 – the Education of a Lifelong Learner. Born, March 23, 1985. By now, she’s spent a year on a cooperative farm in China (sic), worked at a local TV station (sic) to produce a puppet show, learned advanced math, spelling and reading at home by computer, and completed her combined PhD-apprenticeship in architecture.
This book was written before I was born, but at age thirteen, I believed. From the settled, solid adobe house where we composted and sucked honeysuckle and brought government to the people through the wonder of television, this future wasn’t just probable – it was right around the corner.
This is a future that never was, never will be, turned out true, and should have been, all at once. It’s a hippie future, as evidenced by the green-spaced cities, the macrobiotic food, the absurd digressions into ESP, world citizenship, and wholism. It’s a dated future, by the focus on space travel, robots and computers without the glimmer of a doubt as to their ubiquity.
But it’s a sweet future.
In the page “All Kinds of Families,” we see divorcees, singles, and Heather Has Two Mommies. Some embrace a simple life and some move to space colonies. People play cooperative games, garden together, and do not study war any more. They ride their bikes through Bucky Fuller’s floating cities. There is not a trace of sarcasm, irony, or cynicism to be found anywhere in these pages. A lot of things are contradictory. And anything’s possible. Let’s find out what really happens!
And we, the readers, are encouraged to participate. Almost every page has a project, something to make or do, more books to read, whether it’s a recipe for worm cookies or a chain letter to Gorbachev, we’re supposed to use the book as a springboard. As a starting point.
God damn, did I ever.
From the vantage points of 2016, plenty of it is painful to read. Uri Geller was a fraud and the Space Shuttle’s long since been shunted off. There’s no Premier to write to, and the spectre of war is more diffuse and somehow darker. “Food for Everyone” talks about how one day, we might grow enough so no one is hungry.
We do. We have since I read the book. And people are still hungry.
But I cannot condemn this book, or any part of it. A lot of that is nostalgia, and happy memories of the book that opened my mind to the possibilities of the future. But a lot of it…well, anyone who believes that sweetly, and that sincerely, in a future for everybody can’t be all bad. I mostly just want to give this book a hug, and tell it that we’re still working on a lot of stuff – but there’s no reason we can’t have Gerard O’Neill’s space colonies and lifelong learning and family co-ops…and even world citizens.
It’s worth the read – if only to remember what the future looked like when we knew wonder.
(Special treat: for fans of “Fire Marengo,” the Sophie is pictured in blazing glory on page 149.)
I picked up Sarena Ulibarri’s Another Life with great interest. Not only did she edit the Glass & Gardens anthologies (including debuting “Glâcehouse” by yours truly), but the description seemed to be marked ATTN: Roscoe.
Finding out who you were in a previous life sounds like fun until you’re forced to grapple with the darkness of the past.
Galacia Aguirre is Mediator of Otra Vida, a quasi-utopian city on the shores of a human-made lake in Death Valley. She resolves conflicts within their sustainable money-free society, and keeps the outside world from meddling in their affairs.
When a scientific method of uncovering past lives emerges, Galacia learns she’s the reincarnation of Thomas Ramsey, leader of the Planet B movement, who eschewed fixing climate change in favor of colonizing another planet.Learning her reincarnation result shakes the foundations of Galacia’s identity and her position as Mediator, threatening to undermine the good she’s done in this lifetime.
The back cover of Another Life
Fearing a backlash, she keeps the results secret while dealing with her political rival for Mediator, and outsiders who blame Otra Vida for bombings that Galacia is sure they had nothing to do with. But under the unforgiving sun of Death Valley, secrets have a way of coming to light.
Greening deserts! Rebuilding human society, better after the worst! Past life regression! Experimental social forms, vertical gardens, and rediverted waters! It’s pretty clear that Sarena and I both grew up reading the Kids’ Whole Future Catalog. And the sparse worldbuilding she does in this lean little novella is enough to clearly draw this solarpunk “ambiguous utopia” in stark lines.
Unlike LeGuin’s Anarres, though, the community is still small enough and Ulibarri focused enough to try and solve (some of) the structural issues in utopia. Over the course of the story, we touch on the emergence of class in the Founders and Inheritors, hero worship, bias (in the form of genetic fallacies like Galacia’s past life, and more broadly the community’s reliance on charlatanism), and even replicating old world systems while rejecting its values (something I notice in every counterculture and subculture).
And Galacia struggles with all of them on the side. “Cozy” became a dirty word, and solarpunk is supposed to be the coziest thing in science fiction, but I can’t think of a better word for the main conflict of Another Life. The bomb threats, massing polic- pardon, Protectors, and dramatic direct actions happen secondarily to the past-life regressions and election to a position with as little power as possible. At first, I struggled with the low stakes, but as I progressed, I realized it was on purpose, and that, bombs and police raids aside, these were the stakes of an ambiguous utopia. Legends and Lattes did nothing for me, but if that’s your speed, you’ll get into Another Life faster than I did.
But, whatever quibbles I have with the stakes or the plot, I do love the world. I’d love to sit down with Galacia and her old friends around the balcony feasts that bookend the story, toss some fishes Seattle-style in the tower, or just walk around the shore of the lake that was once Death Valley, watching the water come in because a few people said to themselves that the world could be better. The desert could be green.
I must respect that kind of idealism in science fiction, and I look forward to seeing more of it.
See you in another life.
That’s right, for the next five days, my best-selling story “Hull Down” is free on Amazon!
The room pulsed around him, its fetid breath almost palpable even through the helmet. The bodies of Commander Wu Suzhen and Major Sam Harris were woven into the wall, a superimposed lovers’ embrace developed in resin and red light. Their shapes were fuzzy; the inside of Matt’s helmet sticky with condensation like his hair was sticky with sweat. His inner ear couldn’t find north or down, his eyes stung and he could taste something salty, but whether blood, sweat or tears, he couldn’t tell. Why did you live?
Matt LeWald had no idea what he was getting himself into when he joined the Marines. He was expecting a few years of service, but instead found himself thrust into a mission gone horribly wrong. As the only survivor, he is left with questions that haunt him: why did he live when everyone else died?
If you enjoyed Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, you will be enthralled with this strange and haunting tale of first contact and redemption. The reviewers are calling it “not your Dad’s military SF.” Buy it now, read it over your lunch break, and think about it the rest of your life.
This story is a rewrite of a story I wrote when I was 11 or 12, the only one of the series of novelettes that seemed worth the effort. And boy, was it ever worth the effort. With Melissa’s gorgeous, hand-painted cover, I debuted it just before WorldCon in San Jose, and it shot to the top of my KU reads and sales. It’s been my most consistent earner ever since…despite the mid-story switch in subgenre.
And if you haven’t inhaled its svelte 7,800 words, here’s your chance – I’m offering it for free for five days.
Enjoy.
On this week’s Philosophy in a Teacup, I interview Ann LeBlanc, one of my colleagues from the Unusual Short Stories Panel at this year’s Nebulas. Between the wordwork and the queer yearning, she graciously agreed to answer a few questions…
My debut novella, THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTIES OF CHEESE, is coming out from Neon Hemlock in 2024. It’s about a cyberpunk cheese heist (in space!), which is very fun, but it’s also an exploration of what trans body politics will look like in a posthuman future (answer: complicated, with lots of queer drama, and an asteroid’s worth of cheese).
I’m also editing EMBODIED EXEGESIS, an anthology of cyberpunk stories written by transfem authors. It’s also coming out in 2024 from Neon Hemlock.
My short fiction is often about culinary adventures, queer yearning, the ephemerality of memory, and death. If you’re looking for weird stories with unusual POVs and bodies, I’ve got you covered. My cyber-mermaid time-loop story, 20,000 Last Meals on an Exploding Station, was included in We’re Here, the Best Queer Speculative Fiction of 2021.
For me, writing speculative fiction scratches the same itch as showing someone a cool rock or bug. Look at that! Isn’t it cool?
This is what makes a story speculative to me. The cool bug factor. Of course, literary speculative fiction likes to layer on things like themes and character arcs and exploration of the human condition (and I love those, and use them, they’re great!). But if there isn’t a cool bug at the center of the story, it’s not speculative to me.
I’d love to read more long-form stories that are just explorations of the cool bug. Omelas[tk] is an example of that type of story, and Timekeeper’s Symphony by Ken Liu in Clarkesworld is a recent example.
Literature is a conversation, so when I write, I am in a way responding to what the last person said. All of my stories are some form of “Yes, and…” or “No! But…”
I often find that ambitious but badly executed fiction is a great source of inspiration. If literature is a conversation, bad art makes me want to argue.
My frustration at the wasted potential of Altered Carbon inspired my upcoming novella, THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTIES OF CHEESE. Altered Carbon had so much cool worldbuilding, and yet all of its interesting ideas were shoved aside to make room for gritty-man noir action-wankery. Not to mention the author turned out to be a huge transphobe (how passé).
So I wrote the novella in part because I wanted to do something actually interesting with those cyberpunk concepts. And I made it very trans to spite Richard K Morgan (but also for my own pleasure).
Having read Altered Carbon in China in the early 2010s, all I could do was laugh at Richard K Morgan’s politics when I found out what they were. How he missed the trans undercurrent of his own book is beyond me.
I love a weird and/or surreal apotheosis. The sort of ending where things have gotten so out of hand and the walls of reality start to dissolve and everything gets very weird or surreal or meta.
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane is a great example of this, as is The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han by Maria Dong. I also loved the awesome and apotheotic ending of Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett (which also does really cool things with structure and prose).
You say “surreal apotheosis” and the first thing that popped into my head was the format-breaking climax of The Stars My Destination.
I could never ever pick a favorite, but recently I really enjoyed Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. It mixes together an absolutely delightful combination of ingredients: deals with the devil involving violins, donut-making refugee aliens, a transfem violinist protagonist, woodworking/luthiery, and some absolutely gorgeous writing about human food culture.
That would seem to have “ATTN: ANN LEBLANC” written all over it, yeah.
For short stories, all of Baffling Magazine’s latest issues have been absolutely incredible. So much cool inventive queer flash-fiction.
The Marriage Variations by Monique Laban in the Tiny Nightmares anthology uses the choose-your-own-adventure format to tell an incredibly inventive story about a cycle of abuse/trauma that cannot be escaped.
I wrote a story told through a series of out-of-order clay tablet fragments, annotated by an archeologist. The tablet author is a sort of eldritch horror who exists outside time and space, and so is experiencing multiple versions of the same event at the same time. I felt very pepe_silvia.jpg while drafting that one. It’s also got one of my favorite titles: Infinite Clay Tablet Memories Sung Into the Flesh of the World in Apparition Lit (which is a great magazine you should read)
We have the resources to make sure every human on the planet has a home, as well as plenty of food, clean water, and medical care. So much structural oppression is about denying people these things. I can’t cure the hatred in people’s hearts, or topple the whole unjust system by myself, but I can try to help people in my local community access food and shelter and medical care.
Yearning is always an excellent starting seed for a story. The wanting and the not having and what happens as a result of that. So much of queerness is about yearning for something we don’t understand yet, and then when we do, yearning for something that cishet society reviles.
Queerness enters my work through body politics, transformations, the problem of queer legibility, the tension between the desires for assimilation vs liberation, and the way that queer histories are erased.
How can I choose? It’s like asking me if I prefer to eat or drink. I want to do both!
To use a different analogy, a short story is like a dagger, and a novel is like a spear. I will explain.
According to Yoon Ha Lee, the point of a short story is to assassinate the reader. (Go read this interview, it’s so good) The reader is my opponent. I distract them with something shiny in one hand, while my other hand is preparing to strike with a knife made of pure emotion. It’s all about quick maneuvers and flashy tricks.
A novel is like a hurled spear. It was Jo Walton, I think, that coined Spearpoint Theory.
A novel has enough length that I can set things up ahead of time (the long shaft of the spear), so that when the tiny element of the spearpoint hits the reader, even if it’s a single paragraph or sentence, it has enough weight behind it that it pierces their heart and emotionally guts them.
I find it interesting that many authors use the language of violence to describe their craft, but I don’t think there’s any profound meaning behind it. Any physical activity involving two (or more) people could probably be wrought into a metaphor. At some point, I’ll come up with a theory of writing involving communal meals.
The Transitive Properties of Cheese will be available in 2024, and Ann’s anthology Embodied Exegesis will be available next year as well. Find Ann LeBlanc at https://www.annleblanc.com/.
Well.
That was a series of birthdays.
And this is mainly an excuse to post pictures (but we have writing updates at the end!).
Lyra’s first birthday was of course on June 1, and we celebrated by getting her vaccinated.
It was fairly low-key, we sang her “Gens du Pays” and told her the story of her birth. As a sidebar, I can in fact now tell an anecdote in French. Friends, prepare for the same stories of China, but in a new language! 😀
The real party, of course, was the next day.
![The family at Lyra's birthday party (Yaya Kate, John, Nancy, Aunt Jessica, Steve, Stuart [back])](https://i0.wp.com/www.rjeanmathieu.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/party2.jpg?resize=640%2C480&ssl=1)
We did a combined birthday party at my in-laws, and everybody came, the whole family. I made our famous Mathieu burgers, with the secret recipe passed down from my great-grandfather Wilfrid “Frenchy” Mathieu, and my bro-frère grilled ‘em up.
Everyone approved, even Melissa’s grandparents (her mother’s mother came down from San Jose just for the party!). We also had two cakes, both from the Parisian café in Morro Bay, strawberry to smash for Lyra and chocolate for me, both with “BON ANNIVERSAIRE” on them. Lyra got Duplo, blocks…
…so many clothes, and my father’s childhood rocking chair.
We were so happy having a grand old time we forgot the candles.
And best of all, nobody died! We really did have a grand old time.
Then we went home and put Lyra to bed, because she’s never seen the like and wasn’t at all sure what to make of it.
On Monday, my birthday, we got up, and went to have eggs Florentine. Lyra beamed at everyone in the restaurant and flirted with the waitress. We then turned right around and headed into the wilds of south county to locate a disused train turned Greek diner.
We found it.
We ate.
And then I went to the ER.
No, there will be no pictures.
(This is why I wasn’t at work that day – but I wanted lunch first in case of a long ER wait)
After a procedure as painful as it was embarrassing (and with more embarrassing follow-up!) we went home and I played with Lyra while Melissa made up one of her incredible washoku Japanese meals – duck breast and gailaan first and foremost, to replace all the iron I’d lost.
Later, in bed, we told Lyra the story of my birth, as my mother was not there to relate it.
Now it’s back to hauling wood and chopping water. In the next year, I’m hoping to publish at least another dozen books, put out my first short story collection toward the end of the year, and sell Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …to the Future! to a traditional publisher. I’m working on a couple shorts now – a high fantasy in the India of the Buddha, a flash from after the end of the universe, and a new (third!) Doña Ana Lucía novelette. And, to celebrate my birthday, I’m putting my best-selling title on sale for free later this month.
But, next week, we have more Philosophy (in a Teacup) as I sit down once more with Ann LeBlanc.
This is the first installment of an occasional feature we’re calling “Earth-Adapted Recipes,” featuring our attempts to cook and eat dishes from various geeky sources – not just Dune, Redwall, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Some of them will even be from my own books! Hope you enjoy.
Recipe to be found in my newsletter and on Patreon.
We’ve instituted a new tradition around chez Mathieu – on Saturdays, your resident Shabbos goy (me) prepares lunch. This means that both my wife and daughter can rest on their holiest of holy days, and as a Quaker, I find cooking no less holy than anything else. Last Saturday, I looked around the contents of our fridge and freezer as Melissa asked, “so, what do you have in mind for that Trader Joe’s seafood mix?” It was already two weeks old and would need to be all-dressed to serve.
Then I said “…what if I served it ancient Roman style?”
I popped open a copy of Apicius and prepared a marinade (because at the end of the day, I still learned to cook out of a wok, marinade the meat in the cooking sauce, and add vegetables “in order”). I waited an hour, chopping vegetables and doing dishes in a desultory manner, turned on the flame, hoped for the best, and half an hour after “le feu vive!” I had a meal worthy of Augustus’ table on my own. Even Lyra loved it – though Lyra loves Papa’s cooking generally.
It doesn’t look like much (most European food didn’t before the Columbian Exchange), but it tasted amazing. It was sweet, peppery, rich, filling, and rustic. Bread and oleogarum and wine, and the beautiful, beautiful seafood stew.
Ingredients:
The fish marinade
The rest:
The sides:
Instructions
Two things have defined the 2023 Nebulas for me:
I took extensive notes on all the panels I attended (including effectively livetweeting the Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SF/F to my personal Discord) and came away bursting with ideas. I’m already enjoying the ongoing benefits of my attendance, catching up on the panels I wanted to see but missed (Latine SF and Queer Imagination first and foremost). You’ll be seeing some changes around here and in the newsletter based on the Branding and Marketing panel, and seeing more experimental flash and poetry out of me based on Unusual Short Story Formats.
We had a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation, from applying the forms of poetry to how close to hew to other types of writing when writing in that milieu. Whether it’s the wiki edits of “Wikihistory” or the forum posts of “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, we coined the term “neo-epistolary” to cover those short stories that come in the form of chat logs, court proceedings, even archaeological EIRs. A partial list of the stories that Ann LeBlanc, Carina Bissett, and I discussed is available here, including Nebula finalist Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki’s recommendations.
As mentioned, we put Lyra to bed and curled up on the couch together. Melissa wept at Robin McKinley’s speech, her age and grace, her insight and her pain. All of my predictions lost, and, frankly, they lost for all the right reasons. I voted for “Give Me English”, expected “Destiny Delayed,” but nodded over my wine glass when “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills won the short story Nebula. Because that was the right choice. Most of them were like that – and certainly all the ones I’d read. They were right, and it gives me hope for science fiction that we are able to discern which stories really are the best of the year.
(Also, Uncanny had a really good year at the Nebulas this year.)
And on Monday, I sat down, and started working on “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y el sanctuario de Asherah.” Because I didn’t get much chance to write with all the publishing work I did over the previous four days, and the writing is what it’s all about. Stay tuned to this frequency, there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff coming over the waves.
This is officially the 200th post on R. Jean Mathieu’s Innerspace! I can’t believe it any more than you can!
A final confrontation between Old China and New in the mad depths of the Cultural Revolution, come meet “The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin.“
The Old must go that the New may come.
So the Great Helmsman said.
We must eliminate the Four Olds.
So his generals and ministers said.
But there were more than four. There were so many more than four.
Bi Yadie’s grandmother had believed Lü Dongbin, wise leader of the Eight Immortals, was a saint, a being of compassion that would intercede when she begged hard enough. Bi Yadie knew better. Bi Yadie’s mother had believed Lü Dongbin was merely a story, told to delight the simple and the childish. But Bi Yadie knew better. He knew that Lü Dongbin was a capitalist-roader, an old-style feudalist of the worst kind.
The year is 1964. Bi Yadie, Group Leader of the Heaven-Earth Harmonization Task Force, has tracked the last of the Chinese gods, the Taoist Immortal Lü Dongbin to his mountain fastness. His mission is simple: to eliminate Lü Dongbin from the new Liberated Era of the People’s Republic of China.
But old legends do not die so easy. Lü Dongbin has prepared for this moment, and armed himself…with a cup of tea.
Buy “The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin” today!
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