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.”
Cover art by Melissa Mathieu. Special thanks to Stuart Weiss.
“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.
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.
PICTURED: Google Translate, beta version, 1982
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.
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.
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.
The back cover of Another Life
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.
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.
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…
It’s pronounced “luh BLAHN”
Thank you for joining us! Tell us more about your book/ series/ short story work.
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.
Why do you write speculative fiction? / What is speculative to you?
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.
Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
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.
What is your favorite sci-fi, fantasy, or horror trope? / What is your favorite sci-fi subgenre?
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.
You say “surreal apotheosis” and the first thing that popped into my head was the format-breaking climax of The Stars My Destination.
What is your favorite speculative fiction book (besides yours)? / What is your favorite speculative short story?
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.
What is your favorite unusual speculative fiction story? / What is the most unusual story or book you’ve written?
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)
What is the world you long to see?
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.
How do queer yearning and woodworking steep into your work?
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.
Bonus question: Novels or short stories? Which do you prefer to read? Which do you prefer to write?
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/.
I went virtual. Again. So in between panels on branding and the state of 2022 short fiction, I changed Lyra’s diapers and discussed dinner plans with Melissa. For the awards, we put the Sprout to bed and gathered around Melissa’s iPad with glasses of wine on the couch in our pyjamas.
I not only sat on my first panel, I hosted my first panel. Unusual Short Story Formats was the highlight of my weekend
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.
Sacré Dieu, the time is upon us! It’s time for the Nebula Awards again! Yesterday, I shared with my patrons my predictions for the winners this year, and I’ll be going “off the verandah and into the field” to see how my predictions turn out. I’ll not only be in (virtual) attendance, I am moderatingthe panel on Unusual Short Story Formats! May 13, 10:30AM. With Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki, Carina Bissett, Ann LeBlanc, we’ll be discussing some of the beautiful, strange little ways short fiction can come out that novels simply won’t support, like single scenes where nothing happens and fictional forum threads.
And here’s where I’m going to be…
May 12
Sauúti: An Afro-centric universe
Prep Tips for Your Debut Indie Book Launch
The Queer Imagination: Using SFF to Explore LGBTQ+ Identities, Relationships, and Experiences
May 13
Beyond the 99¢ eBook: Producing Quality Indie SFF Novels
Unusual Short Story Formats
Writing and Publishing in English as Second Language
Navigating Short Story Markets
For The Love of Short Fiction 2022
Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SFF
May 14
Branding and Marketing: Finding That Return on Investment
This is a new feature I’ll be doing for the future – Philosophy (in a Teacup) – interviews with interesting and up-and-coming authors, especially (but not exclusively) interesting folks in short fiction. My first interview is with the always-experimental Ai Jiang (江艾)!
Ai Jiang (江艾)
Thank you for joining us! Tell us more about your book/ series/ short story work.
LINGHUN: A modern ghost story set in a town called HOME, where people go to buy haunted houses to live with the ghosts of their dead loved ones. [R. Jean Mathieu’s review]
I AM AI: A cyborg posed as an AI struggles to stay alive in a tech dominated city threatening to leave those like her behind.
Both timely and employing Ai Jiang’s useful playfulness with language.
SMOL TALES FROM BETWEEN WORLDS: Smol tales that will take you from world to world, genre to genre, featuring many of my less known works.
In terms of my short fiction work in general, I’d say I like to experiment with different genres and cross genre work (though this is similar to my long form as I move into more book-length projects). I tend towards more unconventional perspective use in writing and concept-driven stories. Many of my current long form works-in-progress draw on bit of experimental I had tested through my short stories.
Why do you write speculative fiction? / What is speculative to you?
I think speculative to me is not just having fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc, elements, but it is almost a philosophical musing about the self, the world, and humanity as a whole, as well as the political and social makeup of society—the ways in which things can be different from how it is now, the way our world might evolve or devolve, how humanity might look like if in a world outside of the one we know and understand, exploring our reality through a different lens.
What is your favorite sci-fi, fantasy, or horror trope? / What is your favorite subgenre?
I suppose “The Chosen One” is my favourite trope because I find chosen one stories quite inspirational. In terms of subgenre, I like dystopian fiction. Although bleak, I feel like it’s a genre that really gets us to interrogate humanity and our society and reflect upon it more thoughtfully.
What is your favorite speculative fiction book (besides Linghun)? / What is your favorite speculative short story?
Toni Morrison’s Beloved. My favourite speculative short story is “Flowers for Algernon” — Daniel Keyes.
Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
I suppose it might be cliché to say, but I find inspiration everywhere, in everything, and in everyone.
Bonus question: Novels or short stories? Which do you prefer to read? Which do you prefer to write?
Oh this is a tricky one, but I’d also like for novella to be a choice here!
Sacré OUAIS!
Ed. note
I like novels when it comes to broad, sweeping worlds and narratives but short stories for contained moments in time and within a character’s life. And of course, novellas for all the in-betweens, and for its succinct nature but ability to still experiment and create layered worlds within its word count limitations. If I’m tight on time, I like to read short stories, but when I have longer quiet moments, I enjoy novels. I’d say this is similar for writing, though as they say, novels are where the money is—but I have high hopes that novellas will quickly join its ranks.
And that’s our first Philosophy (in a Teacup)! Merci beaucoup, Ai Jiang, for kicking us off. LINGHUN and Smol Tales are available for sale now, I Am Ai is available for preorder.
Cambermann’s Painter: A Scientifiction– The story of a disruptor with a disruptive new technology that will disrupt art forever! …I speak of photography, of course! A flash that speaks to 2023 through 1823, if you’ve been following the AI news, you’ll bust a gut.
“You mean to say that contrivance painted this…this wonderful woman’s image?!” The bewhiskered mayor stuttered.
“No paint was involved whatsoever, nor painter!” Cambermann cried. “For too long have the painters of Paris rolled like butter in milk in their sumptuous garrets and Montmartre alehouses! This technology will destroy the gatekeeping of the likes of artistic guilds and this very Institute! The whole race of painters will disappear from the face of the Earth as every man can now instantly paint any scene before him!”
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