Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #11

by Apex Authors

  That oft-heard question gets a lot of undeserved mockery within the writing community. For a long while, until I wrote Fear, I was one of the writers who made fun of it. But as Fear really started to take shape, it finally dawned on me that that question—Where do you get your ideas?—is actually more astute than it's given credit for (okay, maybe it's astuteness is accidental, but I'm not going to nitpick); ideas do come from a place within the writer; they comes from what burns brightest in his or her burning core. So I decided, Fuck the nuts-and-bolts approach; if someone wants to know where the ideas for my stories “Union Dues” and “Duty” came from, then they were going to get the full, unfiltered answer; how the impulse to write the piece found its central image and how I, as the writer, drew upon my areas of experience to give each story what I hope is emotional honesty. I can't be blasé about explaining where an impulse/idea comes from—to me, that puts a lot of distance between the writer and the reader, and the act of one person reading the words of another is far too intimate and holy to take lightly. A reader has to know they're plunking down their hard-earned money for, and investing their time in, a writer whose work they can trust. Fear in a Handful of Dust was my attempt to convince readers that they can trust me.

  SS: Characters don't tend to fare well in your stories, emerging scarred mentally, emotionally or physically more often than not, why do you put them through so much grief?

  GB: Because, for me, the closer horror fiction—or any fiction—is to real life, the more immediate and identifiable its characters are to readers. And let's face it, no one emerges from a crisis unscarred, be it one in real-life or a character in a story. I am not a believer in the traditional “happy ending” in either fiction or life. Sure, things may work out, but there's often a heavy price to pay for ending up in a place of safety. I get a lot of shocked stares when I tell people that, in my eyes, In Silent Graves, Keepers, and Prodigal Blues all have happy endings—"happy” by my personal worldview definition of the word, which is basically, Death has been postponed, what misery that could have been avoided has been, and you have been given a reprieve; now you'd damned well need to make the best of what time you have left, unknown quantity that it is. Again: a cautionary tale; love one another or die, and wonder why there is any light at all.

  SS: Following on from this could you describe the writing process for you, in terms of a path from initial idea to execution, perhaps using Mr. Hands as a template without giving any major spoilers?

  GB: You just reminded me—Mr. Hands is another novel of mine that I think has a happy ending; two, actually. One is pretty obvious, the other you may have to think about.

  Most of my stories usually come to me in pieces, like finding sections of a jigsaw puzzle that aren't immediately recognizable as being parts of the same whole. But the one thing that is a constant is a central image; nearly all my stories have begun, in my head, with the appearance of a single image that is so compelling and enigmatic that I have to figure out what it means, where it came from, and who the person or persons in it are, how they came to be there at that place at that time.

  Mr. Hands was a bit easier because I wasn't starting from scratch. Alan Clark had asked me to try and write a story around his beautiful painting Fossil Hands. He had tried to come up with a story for the painting but didn't like any of them, and then a few of his friends had given it a shot but Alan still felt it wasn't right. So he asked me to give it a shot.

  I'm looking at this painting, and it occurs to me that this will have to be the central image of the story, only in this case, the central image carries with it the promise of something epic and complex and easily reduced to a one-sentence sound-byte synopsis. There was much, much more going on in that painting than the image itself suggested. So I look at this mountain climber, and I look at this thing he's come upon, and eventually I asked myself: Was this an accidental discovery? Did he just happen to come upon this thing? And the answer was a resounding no.

  Okay, so he didn't just happen to find this, this is something that he intentionally went in search of. Next question: why? Then I notice how the climber's free hand seemed to be reaching toward this thing, and that's when it dawned on me that I was wrong about the central image; it wasn't the moment depicted in the painting—that would be one of, if not the, final image. No, the central image of the story was hidden in the reason the mountain climber was reaching toward this horrible monster.

  Keep in mind, I'd never written a story with a “traditional” monster in it before, and having a monster in there for its own sake just wasn't good enough. There were two stories here—one that of the climber, the other, that of the monster itself. And that's where the novella “Mr. Hands” came from—searching for those missing connections.

  Now because Cemetery Dance wanted this to be their first serialized novella, I was working with a definite word-count limit for each instalment. Rich Chizmar wanted something with cliff-hangers—this was a serial, after all, and what's a good serial without cliff-hangers? So once the novella was finished, I set about finding two strong stopping points, and it was published as 3-part serial. But in the process, I'd cut something like 15,000 words from it. When Alan Clark and I later collaborated on Escaping Purgatory, I restored those missing 15, 000 words. A few years later, while re-reading it on a whim, I realized that I still hadn't told the entire story, that the novella people are familiar with actually came in two-thirds of the way.

  And so I set about telling the story of everything that had happened leading up to the birth of Mr. Hands, and wound up adding over 50,000 words of new material (bringing the novel's grand total to just under 80k) that I now realize should have been there in the first place.

  Sometimes you get it right the first time. Sometimes it takes years before the story that was trying to be told actually emerges.

  SS: As a writer of some often wild fantasies do you ever worry that the reader just won't ‘get’ it?

  GB: Oh, hell, yes. I've lost count of how many hate e-mails I've gotten from readers who didn't understand the ending of Keepers, or gotten blasted by people on message boards who thought that the real story in Prodigal Blues was what took place in Grendel's house before the kids escaped. I've stopped both explaining these things or trying to justify them; sometimes people look for the story they want, rather than see the one I'm telling. I don't like it, either as a reader or a writer, when everything is tied up in a nice, neat, easy-to-understand little package, its lovely bow intact. As both a reader and a writer, I want stories that are going to make me have to think about things, both during the tale and after it's over.

  SS: You're heavily involved in online marketing, with podcasts, messageboards, rants etc, do you see a visible return for the effort? Does it make you more a part of the nebulous community that is often spoken about?

  GB: I do know that being more active on-line has raised my visibility with some readers who otherwise would not have noticed my work. I'm hoping that the newly-designed website and upcoming premiere of the podcast program will turn even more readers in the direction of my work.

  SS: Likewise you are heavily involved in the small press, how important is a small press presence to an up and coming horror writer's career?

  GB: It can be invaluable to a new writer, if he or she understands that the readers/collectors who buy small press books do not represent the majority of the book-buyers out there. I've seen way too many writers get very full of themselves after seeing a lot of success in the small press, and you have got to avoid thinking that as goes the small press, so goes the mass-market.

  What makes the small press experience invaluable to a new writer is that he or she will get a first-hand look into everything that goes into the production of a single book. They will also have the pleasure of seeing a version of their book that is infinitely more beautiful and well-crafted than anything they'll get from the mass-market. Yes, there are exceptions, few and far between, and this is in no way meant as a slam against mass-market packa
ging, but small presses such as CD, Subterranean, PS Publishing, Necessary Evil, Earthling. HW Press, Gauntlet, and many others, are concerned with offering readers a first-class physical production, complete with interior art, signatures, Smythe-sewn binding, slipcases, traycases—in short, they're offering not only a fine story for you to read, but also a book that can be, in itself, a work of art from just a production standpoint. That can get a new writer noticed very quickly.

  SS: Who influenced you most as a man, and as a writer—and why?

  GB: My parents. They showed me what genuinely constituted unselfish love, they always supported me in any of endeavours, they never failed to express their pride in my accomplishments, and they were always there. I learned about sacrifice from them, saw the toll a lifetime of hard labor took on each of them, and realized that, for them, their dreams were realized in the accomplishments of their children.

  SS: Desert Island Discs time—five books you would HAVE to have with you if you were being marooned for a year, no television, etc. What and why?

  GB: I'm going to cheat with the first one: it would have to be Stephen King's The Dark Tower series (I consider all seven volumes to be a single book, so, yeah, it counts) because it's one of the most wondrous literary achievements I've seen in my lifetime, and I find something new to admire in the story every time I re-read it; my second book would have to Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, because it was the first novel to really, deeply move me, and experiencing her prose over and over again never gets old; the third would be The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury—and do you really need to ask why? Didn't think so; the fourth would be Dan Simmons’ The Terror, because it's the only novel I've ever read that made me feel cold in the middle of summer, plus it's brilliantly written and compelling and scary as hell; and the last would be a book about the plants, fauna, and geography of the particular island where I'm going to be stranded.

  SS: Do you have any particular advice you'd care to give to young writers embarking upon the path the young Braunbeck decided to tread?

  GB: Take the work seriously, but not yourself—never yourself, and don't be afraid to go too deep into those places in the human heart that most people would rather never be mentioned. Also, have a well-paying job outside of writing, or marry someone who does, and whose job offers great health insurance. And read outside the genre, goddamn it. Nothing can grow in a vacuum, least of all a story-teller's abilities if they have only a single point of reference.

  GB: What does the future hold for Gary Braunbeck?

  SS: Sadness, grief, loneliness, misery, emptiness, and a slow, agonizing, inconsequential, wretched death in some dirty little room in a shit-hole flophouse, my mind filled with endless regrets and my soul crippled by decades of self-loathing. But before that, lunch with chocolate pie for dessert, and Disc Three of The Adventures of Danger Mouse. Plus there are litter boxes to be changed. It's a rich existence, but someone has to live it.

  www.garybraunbeck.com www.stevensavile.com

  Stefani Nellen is a psychologist-turned-writer who lives in Pittsburgh and Groningen (the Netherlands) with her husband. Her short fiction appears or is forthcoming in VerbSap, Bound Off, Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, Cezanne's Carrot, Hiss Quarterly, FRiGG, and Grendel Song, among other places. She co-edits the Steel City Review.

  SPINNETJE

  By Stefani Nellen

  Milo waited until Terri fell asleep. He lifted his pillow, picked up a small metal box, and opened it. The metal spider inside rose onto its needle-thin legs as if it had expected him. Milo's heartbeat picked up. A film of sweat formed on his upper lip. He pushed the tip of his index finger under the spider's round body and as one, eight legs clutched his fingertip. The bot purred softly as it verified Milo's identity by analyzing a speck of skin. After a moment, its body pulsed red, twice. It let go of Milo's finger and stalked up to the back of his hand.

  Milo swallowed. His own breathing sounded loud to him. He held his hand next to Terri's ear. The earlap looked like an entrance to a cave, guarded by strands of hair.

  Milo had often watched Terri sleep, intrigued by the idea of her brain sitting inside her skull, a shimmering treasure forever hidden from him. He could probe her mind with words or try to read her gestures, but she could always retreat at will. And words were so blunt, so slow.

  In Milo's favorite fantasy, he crawled into Terri's ear and through the dark fuzzy spiral of her auditory canal until he breached, armed with a gentle diamond drill, the barrier separating him from his wife's pearl, her throbbing wet mind. Inside her brain, he would go around and marvel, record the distant surge of her bloodstream and the cackle of neurons, and perhaps he would catch a glimpse of ... of what? At this point, his fantasy usually stopped, and his practical mind took over. His inventor's mind.

  He would never be able to penetrate the tissue of her blood-brain barrier by himself. But perhaps this would.

  Spinnetje. Archaic Dutch for “Little Spider."

  Terri would hate the name.

  The spider jerked toward Terri's ear hole. Milo's hands shook. He had simulated Spinnetje's excursion into his wife's brain multiple times; he'd tested the material, the signal, every possible crisis; he'd tested the preconditions for a self-destruct; he'd ... He jerked back his hand. What was he thinking? This might kill her.

  Too late. The spider had darted into Terri's ear. Its legs quivered over the earlap and then dissolved into her flesh. Milo exhaled; Spinnetje had responded exactly as planned. Upon recognizing Terri's DNA, the nano units constituting the bot separated from each other and broke through Terri's skin. It looked as if the metal spider had melted into her ear. Driven by Milo's programming, they would make for Terri's brain without damaging any tissue. At least Milo was reasonably confident they wouldn't damage anything. He couldn't be sure, not on the basis of simulations.

  Terri turned her head away from Milo's hand, her fists close to her lips, an embryonic posture. She appeared to be fast asleep.

  Milo needed no effort to stay awake. His heart pounded; he could have run around the block, cooked a five-course meal, and painted the apartment green. He gobbled down some leftover NutriJoy tart he found in his stay-at-home-lab. He played timed, five-dimensional Sudoku against his buddy Jake, who was online and awake as usual. Milo usually won, but not tonight.

  Five hours later, Milo went back to the room.

  Terri snored a soft melody. By now, Spinnetje's program should have sent a signal traveling through Terri's skull, penetrating the layers of neuronal tissue, until all of Spinnetje's particles gathered again inside her earlap, re-arranging into spider-shape.

  Milo waited. Nothing happened. He wiped his upper lip.

  Terri kept snoring. After three more snores, a metal sphere formed close to her ear hole, grew, and sprouted eight legs. Spinnetje was back. It obediently crawled up the ramp Milo made with his palm. He closed his fingers around it and felt its warmth. Terri's warmth. Exhausted, he inserted the bot into its box and fell asleep clutching it.

  * * * *

  As soon as Terri left the next morning, Milo went to the lab and locked the door behind him. The lab, a windowless dungeon smelling of dried food and socks, simmered in the heat of three large computers. Its state of organic disarray stood in marked contrast to the composition of sparkling surfaces and lemon scent in the rest of the apartment—thanks to Terri's regular summons of Housekeeping Services.

  Spinnetje wriggled its legs between Milo's fingers. With his free hand, Milo swept plastic bottles and plates from a keyboard and pounded in his password. The machines woke up. Small windows opened on the screens. Cursors blinked at the start of command lines. Pick me! Type here!

  Milo dropped Spinnetje into a box sitting in a nest of cable, and the bot inserted its legs into holes at the bottom. Milo closed the box, grabbed the nearest keyboard, and typed. Lines of code flew across the screens. Milo was surrounded by a concert of slow electronic crickets. The screens emptied except for one last, blinking line
:

  —experience built src =Spinnetje

  Milo's heartbeat thumped in his throat when he took Spinnetje out of its box. The spider seemed to look up at him eagerly.

  Virtual Experience, or Vex, the company employing Milo and Terri, wouldn't approve of the device, even though it used a variant of the technology Milo had developed for them. He imagined the reproaches—Frivolous—Why use a spider? A chip would have been perfectly adequate—It's too dangerous—and sat down on the fleece-covered cot behind the door.

  Sure, the simulations sold by Vex always required the user to be physically connected to the computer administering the simulation, but while the helmets and data gloves were clumsy, they gave people a sense of safety. Being connected to a computer made it possible to monitor the simulation and interrupt it in cases of overload or measurable discomfort.

  Spinnetje, on the other hand, was an autonomous creature composed of a horde of nanites that could crawl through brains like a crowd of over-eager tourists crawling through ruins. The spider recorded every piece of synaptic activity, maintaining context and tracking changes. It translated them into a format that could be understood by any brain willing to play host to the virtual experience it created—or so Milo hoped.

  He hadn't tried it before. But he imagined it liquefying, a flock of nanites flowing into his sulci and gyri, sowing sensations, orchestrating and reproducing the exact experience it had picked up. Milo could only hope that it would obey its programming, end its task on time, and lie next to his ear when he woke up.

  He tilted his palm. Spinnetje lengthened its legs on one side to remain stable.

  Of course, Vex simulations always dealt with one specific experience. No simulation lasted longer than half an hour and all of them were clearly defined in terms of place and time.

  Spaghetti Bolognese with real tomato sauce and meat. Target audience: people post-stomach reduction who missed the experience of gobbling down pasta.