Nebula Awards Showcase 2017
Page 28
He was looking every moment more annoyed. “Yes,” he bit out, interrupting me, “I do recall the girl: neither horse-faced nor a slovenly mess, and I imagine would not be yammering at me this very minute: enough. You village girls are all tedious at the beginning, more or less, but you’re proving a truly remarkable paragon of incompetence.”
“Then you needn’t keep me!” I flared, angry and wounded—horse-faced stung.
“Much to my regret,” he said, “that’s where you’re wrong.”
He seized my hand by the wrist and whipped me around: he stood close behind me and stretched my arm out over the food on the table. “Lirintalem,” he said, a strange word that ran liquidly off his tongue and rang sharply in my ears. “Say it with me.”
“What?” I said; I’d never heard the word before. But he pressed closer against my back, put his mouth against my ear, and whispered, terrible, “Say it!”
I trembled, and wanting only for him to let me go said it with him, “Lirintalem,” while he held my hand out over the meal.
The air rippled over the food, horrible to see, like the whole world was a pond that he could throw pebbles in. When it smoothed again, the food was all changed. Where the baked eggs had been, a roast chicken; instead of the bowl of rabbit stew, a heap of tiny new spring beans, though it was seven months past their season; instead of the baked apple, a tartlet full of apples sliced paper-thin, studded with fat raisins and glazed over with honey.
He let go of me. I staggered with the loss of his support, clutching at the edge of the table, my lungs emptied as if someone had sat on my chest; I felt like I’d been squeezed for juice like a lemon. Stars prickled at the edge of my sight, and I leaned over half-fainting. I only distantly saw him looking down at the tray, an odd scowl on his face as though he was at once surprised and annoyed.
“What did you do to me?” I whispered, when I could breathe again.
“Stop whining,” he said dismissively. “It’s nothing more than a cantrip.” Whatever surprise he might have felt had vanished; he flicked his hand at the door as he seated himself at the table before his dinner. “All right, get out. I can see you’ll be wasting inordinate amounts of my time, but I’ve had enough for the day.”
I was glad to obey that, at least. I didn’t try to pick up the tray, only crept slowly out of the library, cradling my hand against my body. I was still stumbling-weak. It took me nearly half an hour to drag myself back up all the stairs to the top floor, and then I went into the little room and shut the door, dragged the dresser before it, and fell onto the bed. If the Dragon came to the door while I slept, I didn’t hear a thing.
RHYSLING AWARD WINNER
BEST LONG POEM
F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (sfpoetry.com) and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com), and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. An alumna of Viable Paradise, she previously won the Rhysling Award for the Short Poem in 2008.
100 REASONS TO HAVE SEX WITH AN ALIEN
F. J. BERGMANN
after 237 More Reasons to Have Sex, by Denise Duhamel and Sandy McIntosh
1. More than one tentacle.
2. With suckers.
3. I mistook the blaster in his pocket for happiness.
4. He asked me what a being like me was doing on a planet like this.
5. His ventral cluster was magnified in the curved side of my rocket.
6. His ventral cluster was like a bouquet of blue flowers.
7. I said, “For me?”
8. He felt like a cross between astrakhan and curly endive.
9. I thought I was shaking his hand.
10. He thought he was stroking my prehensile appendage.
11. We both thought it was a diplomatic formality.
12. We thought we were responsible for the fates of our respective worlds.
13. I felt lonely because the universe was expanding.
14. I felt small because the universe was so vast.
15. I felt reassured because his presence meant we were not alone, after all.
16. The gravity field caused genital engorgement.
17. The anti-grav generator caused dizziness.
18. The solar wavelength triggered hormone production.
19. The Coriolis effect made my senses swirl.
20. Lit only by Cherenkov radiation, I still cast a spell.
21. Such unusual sex toys!
22. Which he referred to as “probes.”
23. When he unfurled his wings to stretch, I thought it was a mating display.
24. I mistook his yawning for sexual arousal.
25. I mistook his indifference for sexual arousal.
26. I mistook his urgent need to micturate for sexual arousal.
27. He mistook my sneezing for sexual arousal.
28. He mistook my laughter for sexual arousal.
29. He mistook my sulking for sexual arousal.
30. He mistook my tattoos for a mating display.
31. My piercings were highly magnetic.
32. He thought my breasts were egg-sacs.
33. He said he didn’t have DNA, so I didn’t have to worry about pregnancy.
34. Parthenogenesis, on the other hand.
35. I had had it with humanity.
36. Not much else to do on an asteroid.
37. We were both too far from home.
38. The starlight was so ancient.
39. He said he’d let me fly his spaceship.
40. He said he’d let me play with his matter transmitter.
41. He said he’d let me play with his matter transmuter.
42. He said he’d let me play with his time machine.
43. He told me he was a divine messenger, and I believed him.
44. His silicon-based wings fanned my lust.
45. His pheromonal signature was intriguing.
46. His subvocal rumblings made me squirm rapturously.
47. His buzzing vocalizations gave me a migraine, so I closed my eyes.
48. Next thing I knew . . .
49. He didn’t have a name to remember.
50. He looked nothing like my father.
51. He looked nothing like my ex.
52. He looked nothing like anything I’d ever seen before.
53. I was ripe for mischief.
54. The bubbles in his creamy center turned me on.
55. His outer integument was my favorite color, periwinkle.
56. His outer integument had a fishnet-stocking pattern, and those things really turn me on.
57. Including the seam up the back.
58. And 9-inch stiletto heels.
59. His emanations smelled like roast pork and cinnamon.
60. I was hungry.
61. I just wanted irregular sex.
62. I’d never done it in free fall.
63. He read my mind and knew exactly what I wanted.
64. A myriad of moonlets intensified my longing.
65. We were trying to establish each other’s respective genders.
66. I told myself it was my duty as a Terran citizen.
67. I told myself it was my duty as a xenoanthropologist.
68. I told myself it was my duty as a xenolinguist.
69. I told myself it was the best available treatment for xenophobia.
70. We slowly climbed out of each other’s Uncanny Valley.
71. He said he wanted to serve me.
72. He said he wanted to eat me.
73. He said he liked my “Cthulhu for President” t-shirt.
74. I was hoping someone would pay big money for the videos of our encounter.
75. Someone on his home world.
76. He said he’d take me on a trip aboard his magic swirling ship.
77. Which had a really cool hood ornament.
78. He said he’d take me 2,000 light years from home.
79. He said he’d set the controls for the heart of the
sun.
80. He said his mother was a Space Lord.
81. He said he was a Time Lord.
82. He was way hotter than I expected.
83. I had a fetish for long striped scarves.
84. I had a fetish for the writhing of his ventral cluster.
85. And the plumes on his dorsal ridge.
86. His violet eyes turned me on. All fifteen of them.
87. He said he was a famous rock star on his planet.
88. He offered to let me make a plaster cast of his ventral cluster.
89. He said he was a famous artist on his planet.
90. He offered to show me his Rigelian-sandworm-excreta sculptures.
91. He said he was a famous poet on his planet.
92. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
93. He said he’d come all the way from Rigel just to hear me read my poetry.
94. He wanted me so much he put his space ship on autopilot.
95. He wanted me so much he didn’t notice when we overshot our destination.
96. The stimulating vibration as our vessel entered the atmosphere.
97. I thought the ship would blow up any minute and this would be my last chance.
98. It was my last chance.
99. Our vessel was about to crash.
The smoke of our burning intertwined and rose up toward the stars.
ABOUT THE RAY BRADBURY AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING DRAMATIC PRESENTATION
The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation is not a Nebula Award, but it follows Nebula nomination, voting, and award rules and guidelines, and it is given each year at the annual awards banquet. Founded in 2009, it replaces the earlier Nebula Award for Best Script. It was named in honor of science fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury, whose work appeared frequently in movies and on television.
The winner in 2016 was Mad Max: Fury Road, written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nick Lathouris.
A REMARKABLE WIN
MARK ASKWITH
Mark Askwith is a Canadian television producer and writer. From 1982–87 he was the manager of Toronto’s Silver Snail comic book store. He left to work with director Ron Mann on a documentary called Comic Book Confidential, and to collaborate with Dean Motter on The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, a graphic novel based on the ground-breaking television series. In 1989 he co-created the award-winning TV show Prisoners of Gravity, a show that featured interviews with writers and artists who worked in the field of speculative fiction. When PoG ended its five-year run, Askwith became the producer of Imprint, Canada’s flagship literary TV show. In 1997 he became a founding producer of a national Canadian television channel—SPACE—where he is the producer of special projects.
The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation was awarded to Mad Max: Fury Road, written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris. The category was very competitive this year, and the other nominees showcased the finest writing in animation (Inside Out), television (Jessica Jones), and feature films (Ex Machina, The Martian, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens).
Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth film in the Mad Max franchise, and it continues the story of a former policeman who now inhabits a bleak post-apocalyptic world. The film begins when Max is captured by an army of War Boys led by a despot called Immortan Joe. When one of Immortan Joe’s lieutenants, Imperator Furiosa, goes rogue, she drives away with his five wives, and thus begins a roughly two-hour chase through a windswept desert.
George Miller’s initial idea for the script was a simple one: could he write a film that was a continuous chase scene? Miller enlisted artist Brendan McCarthy to collaborate on the design and storyboards, and they broke down each sequence as if they were working on an animated movie. McCarthy called the document “a surreal fusion of graphic novel and Hollywood screenplay”—and this manuscript, with 3,500 panels of artwork, became the “Mad Max Bible.” Rumors began to circulate that there was no script, but Charlize Theron (Furiosa) stated “there was a script; it just wasn’t a conventional script, in the sense that we kind of know scripts with scene numbers. Initially it was just a storyboard, and we worked off that storyboard for almost three years. And then eventually, there was a kind of written version of the storyboard, which just felt like a written version of the storyboard, again not like a script.”
Mad Max: Fury Road’s win is remarkable given how troubled the production of the film was. The film was to begin shooting in Australia in 2001, but after the events of September 11 the American dollar collapsed. In 2003 the film was set to film in the Australian desert, but the locations were ruined by rainfall. In 2009 the project had morphed into an R-rated animated film, to be released in 2012. After years of delays, principal photography began in the Namibian desert in 2012.
Mad Max: Fury Road was a critical success and was chosen by many publications as one of the top ten films of 2015. In fact, it ranks first on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes as the highest reviewed film of 2015. It was the second most nominated film with ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, and Best Picture, and it took home six awards.
The movie is an energetic whirlwind of action. The plot and dialogue are stripped to the bare minimum, but the visuals are so rich and evocative that the story becomes mythic. Fittingly, the film ends with a quote from Albert Camus: “Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves.”
ABOUT THE ANDRE NORTON AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy is an annual award presented by SFWA to the author of the best young-adult or middle-grade science fiction or fantasy book published in the United States in the preceding year.
The Andre Norton Award is not a Nebula Award, but it follows Nebula nomination, voting, and award rules and guidelines. It was founded in 2005 to honor popular science fiction and fantasy author and Grand Master Andre Norton.
ANDRE NORTON AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WINNER
EXCERPT FROM UPDRAFT
FRAN WILDE
Fran Wilde’s work includes the novels Updraft (Tor, 2015) and Cloudbound (Tor, 2016). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com and Nature. Her novella “The Jewel and Her Lapidary” came out from Tor.com in May 2016. She writes for publications including the Washington Post, SF Signal, and Clarkesworld.
FROM THE AUTHOR
I’d just finished work on an SF novel when I wrote a short story (the second or third) set in the world of Updraft. The original story set in that world was written as a response to a workshop challenge. This short story was about a winged knife fight in a wind tunnel . . . and I discovered (with help from my critique pals) that I had a lot more to say than would fit in a short story.
The first draft of Updraft took six weeks to write. The next draft, about six months.
Ch. 1. Densira
My mother selected her wings as early morning light reached through our balcony shutters. She moved between the shadows, calm and deliberate, while downtower neighbors slept behind their barricades. She pushed her arms into the woven harness. Turned her back to me so that I could cinch the straps tight against her shoulders.
When two bone horns sounded low and loud from Mondarath, the tower nearest ours, she stiffened. I paused as well, trying to see through the shutters’ holes. She urged me on while she trained her eyes on the sky.
“No time to hesitate, Kirit,” she said. She meant no time to be afraid.
On a morning like this, fear was a blue sky emptied of birds. It was the smell of cooking trapped in closed towers, of smoke looking for ways out. It was an ache in the back of the eyes from searching the distance, and a weight in the stomach as old as our city.
Today Ezarit Densira would fly into that empty sky—first to the east, then southwest.
I grabbed the buckle on her left shoulder, then put the full weight of my body into securing the strap. She g
runted softly in approval.
“Turn a little, so I can see the buckles better,” I said. She took two steps sideways. I could see through the shutters while I worked.
Across a gap of sky, Mondarath’s guards braved the morning. Their wings edged with glass and locked for fighting, they leapt from the tower. One shouted and pointed.
A predator moved there, nearly invisible—a shimmer among exploding gardens. Nets momentarily wrapped two thick, sky-colored tentacles. The skymouth shook free and disappeared. Wails built in its wake. Mondarath was under attack.
The guards dove to meet it, the sun dazzling their wings. The air roiled and sheared. Pieces of brown rope netting and red banners fell to the clouds far below. The guards drew their bows and gave chase, trying to kill what they could not see.
“Oh, Mondarath,” Ezarit whispered. “They never mind the signs.”
The besieged tower rose almost as tall as ours, sun-bleached white against the blue morning. Since Lith fell, Mondarath marked the city’s northern edge. Beyond its tiers, sky stretched uninterrupted to the horizon.
A squall broke hard against the tower, threatening a loose shutter. Then the balcony’s planters toppled and the circling guards scattered. One guard, the slowest, jerked to a halt in the air and flew, impossibly, backwards. His leg yanked high, flipping his body as it went, until he hung upside down in the air. He flailed for his quiver, spilling arrows, as the sky opened below him, red and wet and filled with glass teeth. The air blurred as slick, invisible limbs tore away his brown silk wings, then lowered what the monster wanted into its mouth.
By the time his scream reached us, the guard had disappeared from the sky.
My own mouth went dry as dust.
How to help them? My first duty was to my tower, Densira. To the Laws. But what if we were under attack? My mother in peril? What if no one would help then? My heart hammered questions. What would it be like to open our shutters, leap into the sky, and join this fight? To go against Laws?