What I wanted to show Tetley in the second half of this volume, in the new part of her life, at the start of her truly adult years rather than her childhood, was something bigger than herself, something with a longer perspective than she could possibly have growing up on a floating landfill. Something that would not just punish her for her past or use her for its own future, but beyond any concerns of her day-to-day life. And she finds two of them, one quite extraordinary, a link to both the past and the future, and one quite ordinary—the simple desire for people to escape, to not have to make hard decisions, to give up their will to someone who seems to know more, to slip difficulty and find ease, which can all too easily slide into a longing to be ruled. It’s a Fuckwit thing, but humans will always be Fuckwits, then no different than now. The oceans can erase our cities, but they cannot drown our existential malaise.
That shit’s waterproof.
Acknowledgments
THANKS MUST GO first and foremost to my editor Jonathan Strahan, without whose invitation to the Drowned Worlds anthology and encouragement to write more of Tetley’s world, this book would never have existed.
Thank you also to my agent, Howard Morhaim; my assistant, Chanie Beckman; my Patreon patrons, most particularly Sean Elliott; and everyone at Tordotcom Publishing who worked so hard to bring Garbagetown into your hands.
Thank you also to Laura Fitton, as well as Sue and Zoe, in whose lovely house by the sea I wrote the better part of all this. And also to my parents, Jeff and Kim Thomas, in whose “blue room” I wrote the original short story over a long-ago Christmas break.
Thank you as always to my husband, Heath Miller, and my son, Sebastian. This was the first significant piece of new fiction I wrote after the latter was born, and I was forgiven much absence and distraction to do so.
Finally, thank you, Tetley, who arrived in my head fully formed, entirely her own person, and who it has been my honor to get to know these last years. You are the most beloved girl in my town, dear thing. For surely this world is trash, but some of the trash does shine.
ALSO BY CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Labyrinth
Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams
The Grass-Cutting Sword
Under In The Mere
Palimpsest
Silently and Very Fast
Deathless
Six-Gun Snow White
Radiance
The Refrigerator Monologues
The Glass Town Game
Space Opera
Mass Effect: Annihilation
Minecraft: The End
FAIRYLAND
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
The Boy Who Lost Fairyland
The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home
THE ORPHAN’S TALES
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice
A DIRGE FOR PRESTER JOHN
The Habitation of the Blessed
The Folded World
SHORT FICTION COLLECTIONS
The Bread We Eat in Dreams
Myths of Origin
The Melancholy of Mechagirl
The Future Is Blue
About the Author
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE is the New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (and the four books that followed it). She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Sturgeon, Eugie Foster Memorial, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo Awards, as well as the Prix Imaginales. Valente has also been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.
Find her online at www.catherynnemvalente.com and on Twitter @catvalente, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part I: The Future Is Blue
1. Nihilist
2. The Terrible Power of Fuckwit Cake
3. Murdercunt
4. Goodnight Garbagetown
5. Brightbitch
6. Revlon Super Lustrous 919: Red Ruin
7. If God Turned Up for Supper
8. Citizens of Mutation Nation
9. Terrorwhore
10. We Are So Lucky
11. What You Came For
Part II: The Past Is Red
1. The All New 3D Monday Night Football Experience of Western Decadence
2. Deathslut
3. The 8th Best Daffodil
4. Sixty-Six Percent
5. The Best and the Worst
6. The King of What the Fuck
7. Wake Word
8. Emeralds in the Dark
9. Relief Is Just a Swallow Away
10. Time and Words
11. Toothpaste
12. The Beginning of Attachment
13. October
14. Living for Leg Day
15. Clap Four Times Fast
16. To Billy, with Kisses, Love Susan
17. Tankerville 2099
18. The Napoleon of Pill Hill
19. Let Us Play Grown-Ups
20. Remainders
21. Okay Again
22. Two Xs
23. Small and Alone Things
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Also by Catherynne M. Valente
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE PAST IS RED
Copyright © 2021 by Catherynne M. Valente
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Jonathan Strahan
A Tordotcom Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30113-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-30112-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250301123
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: 2021
The Past Is Red Page 13
