Asimov's SF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Does any of this sound familiar? Does it remind anyone of the current populist anger that calls for Congress to punish the evil bankers and corporate executives who stole all our money in the 2008 economic crash? One member of Parliament suggested that the company directors be tied in sacks and thrown into the Thames to drown. Others urged remedies nearly as drastic, especially when it was revealed that criminal acts really had been involved in the speculative mania: false entries on the company books, the sale of fictitious stock, the gift of shares to influential politicians and even the king's two mistresses, and so on. Ultimately no one was thrown into the river, but the investigation did end in severe fines for the company directors and the destruction of some political careers.

  Another consequence of the South Sea Company debacle was a parliamentary act dissolving nearly a hundred other shady corporations that had sprung up at the same time, mainly for the purpose of parting unwary investors from their money. Mackay gives us a long list of them. Some seem harmless enough, though unlikely to have produced huge profits:

  "40. For carrying on a woolen manufacture in the north of England.”

  "41. For importing walnut-trees from Virginia.”

  "81. For a sail and packing-cloth manufactory in Ireland.”

  But how about these—?

  "76. For extracting silver from lead."

  "36. For a wheel for perpetual motion.”

  "86. For the transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal.”

  And this one, my favorite of the whole lot:

  "17. For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is."

  Beautiful. Nobody to know what it is! Would you invest in a mystery company like that? Would I? Oh, no, not you! Not I! But on a balmy spring day in 1720 a long line of Londoners signed up for stock, putting down deposits of two pounds apiece in the expectation of receiving dividends of one hundred pounds a year. Between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon a thousand shares were sold. The enterprising promoter had pocketed two thousand pounds—a fortune—in just six hours. He packed up and left for France that evening, and was never heard from again.

  This seems not very different, I think, from the enthusiasm that briefly pushed the stock prices of Webvan, Boo.com, and Flooz. com to such lofty levels only about a decade ago in our own land, except that the founders of those companies actually thought they could be profitable. And very likely the next stock mania or the next Ponzi scheme is already taking form in the mind of some cunning sharpie. It does seem to keep on happening, despite the evidence of past ruinations. One can only fall back upon clichés when we consider mankind's history of falling for such things over and over again:

  The more things change, the more they remain the same, is the way the French journalist Alphonse Karr said it in 1849. Or, as an earlier observer of human folly, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, put it several thousand years before that:

  There is no new thing under the sun.

  Copyright © 2011 Robert Silverberg

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Department: ON THE NET: FANTASTIC

  by James Patrick Kelly

  fans

  When I was starting out as a writer, I never expected to have fans. Sure, I wanted to sell my stuff to Asimov's and Analog and F&SF someday. I wanted to publish novels and collections. But having fans, not so much. This was a curious lack of imagination on my part, because as a wannabe I was certainly a fan. I remember how awed I was when I first started going to cons and breathing the very same air as writers who had knocked my socks clean into the year 2284. Alas, I never met Theodore Sturgeon [physics .emory.edu/~weeks/ sturgeon] or Philip K. Dick [philipk dick.com] or Cordwainer Smith [cordwainer-smith.com] or Robert Heinlein [heinleinsociety.org], although I did manage to clap eyes on some of them across crowded hotel lobbies.

  But I have met some of the giants and I confess to having been reduced to a blithering fanboy when I first met Mr. Silverberg [majipoor.com] and Ms. LeGuin [ursulakleguin.com] and Mr. Malzberg [isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi? BarryN.Malzberg] and Ms. Wilhelm [katewilhelm.com]. I know the feeling of having my tongue cleave to the top of my mouth after stammering, “The Left Hand of Darkness changed the way I write,” or “I think Dying Inside is a masterpiece.” Because compliments like that, even though heartfelt, are conversation stoppers. How can a writer possibly reply? These days I am myself sometimes croggled when fans—lovely, tongue-tied folks—come up to me and say that this story was the best thing I have ever written or that one helped lift them through a bad patch. Where am I supposed to go with that?

  But I've gotten used to having fans—very much like having them, in fact. It's fanfic that I'm still puzzling over.

  * * * *

  fic

  Fanfics, don't you know, are stories written by fans in the worlds of their favorite TV series or movies or books. Although fanfic would seem to be a recent phenomenon, it is as old as fiction itself. Readers—or listeners, before stories were written—have been retelling tales since forever, often in the process “improving” them. Plots get revised, characters redeemed, settings remodeled. Sherlock Holmes in twenty-first century London? Done! [pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece /sherlock/series1.html] Frankenstein meets Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice? Nebula award! [www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/documents/Kessel-Pride AndPrometheus.pdf]Shakespeare [Shakespeare-online.com] wrote fanfic of Plutarch[livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/ plutarch.htm]. Milton [luminarium. org/sevenlit/milton] wrote Bible fanfic. Okay, so I'm being polemical here, but bear with me. In a 2009 io9 interview [io9.com/5406069]fanfic fan Michael Chabon [michaelchabon.com] explains that fanfic is “. . . not simple (or even complex) imitation; it's elaboration, infilling, transformation, a strategic redeployment of the tropes and figures of the source material/primary text.”

  When artists borrow from other artists, we nod knowingly and call it influence. But when ordinary folks appropriate creative work for their particular use, those invested in the delivery of popular culture get defensive. They demean those who participate as inane, immature, unimaginative, and just a little out of control. This was especially true at the dawn of a fanfic revolution in the 1960s, when mass media began to present us with a variety of amazing source materials and improvements in mass communications made it possible for fans to spread their words far and wide. And in the beginning there were no fans more passionate than Trekkers. They had been promised a five year mission, but NBC gave them only three. The universe of Star Trek [startrek.com] practically begged for further exploration, so fans got busy. But some of the adventures that began to appear in smeary mimeographed ‘zines did not always stick to the Star Trek bible; fans from different subcultures explored strange new worlds that gave Gene Roddenberry fits. Perhaps the most notorious fanfic was Kirk/Spock [beyond dreamspress.com/history.htm], aka K/S, which gave rise to Slash [en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Slashfiction]. Slash fiction depicts fictional characters of the same sex in romantic or sexual situations. While all fanfic was not then nor is now slash, gender politics have made this a hot button topic, since it gives ammunition to those who would criticize all fanfic for twisting or even undermining the intentions of the original creators.

  But so what? Just how far do the rights of the original creators extend? And who will speak for them? The writers who scripted the series? The actors who delivered the lines? More likely it is the corporations that have earned huge profits from the properties. Because make no mistake, while there is surely fanfic of all stripes based on the works of J.K. Rowling [jkrowling.com] and Neil Gaiman [neilgaiman.com] and Rick Riordan [rickriordan.com], most fanfic is media related. Certainly there are serious legal issues swirling around fanfic. Some of it can be considered parody, but which? What is fair use? And since fanfic writers traditionally give their work away, what harm is actually being done? There are those who would answer it makes no difference that fanfic is free; it's a violation of copyright law. Yes, but Fanfiction.net [fanf
iction.net] is huge and it is but one of a number of fanfic sites. Who is going to chase down every fanfic writer in the world? What good would sanctions do? For more on these matters, check out the excellent discussion at the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse [chillingeffects.org/fanfic].

  * * * *

  writers

  Although I suppose I have a stake in the legal debate over fanfic, it doesn't much interest me. What does get my attention is the prejudice against fanfic, especially when I detect small-mindedness in my own artistic sensibility. Who am I to look down my nose at these writers when I published a fanfic novel back in the day?

  Anyone trying to understand fanfic and the reasons why it is so popular needs to consult the work of Henry Jenkins [henryjenkins.org], who calls his blog “Confessions of an Aca-Fan.” Henry has taken it as his “personal challenge to find a way to break cultural theory out of the academic bookstore ghetto and open up a larger space to talk about the media that matters to us from a consumer's point of view.” He has thought deeply about fanfic and his eye-opening 1988 essay Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten [web.mit.edu/course/21/ 21l.432/www/readings/star%20trek%20rerun.pdf] is must reading. Consider:

  “Fandom is a vehicle for marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a fashion that serves different interests.” Later he makes the point that fan writers and readers are almost all female: “For some women, trapped within low paying jobs or within the socially isolated sphere of homemaker, participation within a national, or international, network of fans grants a degree of dignity and respect otherwise lacking. For others, fandom offers a training ground for the development of professional skills and an outlet for creative impulses constrained by their workday lives.” And the attitudes of fanfic writers to their source materials foreshadow attitudes of the Google Generation: “. . . fan writers suggest the need to redefine the politics of reading, to view textual property not as the exclusive domain of textual producers but as open to repossession by textual consumers.”

  * * * *

  fanfic to pro

  I asked my friend Sandra McDonald [homepage.mac.com/samcdonald] to give me a quick tour of fanfic. Sandra is a well-established author; her Outback Stars trilogy was published by Tor and “The Monsters of Morgan Island” appeared in these pages in June of 2009. Her most recent book is a short story collection, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories. Like several other pros, Naomi Novick [temeraire.org] and Mer- cedes Lackey [mercedeslackey.com], for example, she has written fanfic under a pseudonym.

  That her fanfic production has dropped as her career as a published writer has progressed is not surprising. “I had written a novel but I was also writing fan fiction. You get an enormous amount of feedback and enthusiasm. For me it was a hobby that turned out to be really beneficial because people were helping me get better.” I wondered if most fanfic writers don't aspire to be published. “Fan fiction is about sharing your love of something. It's a hobby, a way to get your squee on. It has a built in community of readers who love the characters as much as you do. Some fan fiction writers want to be published novelists or short story writers. Some don't. They'll write a hundred thousand word story—but not for money. They don't want a book. They do it because they love the characters and they want to share them with other people who love the characters. It's a mistake to think that fanfic writers want to write ‘real’ fiction. Many of them are happy to never ever deal with editors, agents, publishers. That's not their goal.”

  What's going on in fanfic today? “You have all these subgenres. You have domestic stories where your favorite characters settle down in suburbia. You have the male pregnancy stories, which some people get skeevy about. But what is important to many women? Pregnancies, babies, kids. They write stories about characters living happily ever after. They write pornography because there isn't a lot of women's pornography on the shelves of B&N. I think fan fiction is under appreciated because it's mostly written by women for women about women's concerns. And we know that women's writing in general is the subject of derision.”

  So is there fanfic based on her work? “I don't know of any,” she says. “I would be really excited if someone did write some, but I wouldn't read it. I want to keep a barrier between how I think of the characters and how other people interpret them.” She tells potential fans, “Have fun, do whatever you want, slash ‘em, burn ‘em, whatever you want. I'll just stay over here in my corner.”

  * * * *

  exit

  Alas, Sandra, there is no fanfic based on my stuff either—as far as I know. So it's easy for me to pontificate about how tolerant I would be if there were. I've come a long way in my attitude toward fanfic, but I don't know what I'd make of a story that really took my work to extremes. I probably wouldn't read it, although I'd be sorely tempted to peek. But since lots of my work is available under a Creative Commons license [creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/3.0], any fan with the will can have her way with my stories.

  So go ahead. Feel free to put me to the test!

  Copyright © 2011 James Patrick Kelly

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: THE COLD STEP BEYOND

  by Ian R. MacLeod

  Subterranean Press recently published Ian R. MacLeod's new short story collection Journeys. His latest novel Wake Up and Dream—which is a successor, but in no way a sequel to his Clarke- and Campbell-award winning Song of Time—will be out soon from PS Publishing. Of his new story the author says, “I'd long had the idea of someone like Warrior Bess, but I had to try her out in several different locations before I hit on the right one—which turned out to be the universe of the Ten Thousand and One Worlds that also features in my Asimov's Reader's Award winning novella ‘Breathmoss’ (May 2002).” Ian maintains a website at www.ianrmacleod.com.

  In a clearing in an unnamed forest in a remote part of the great Island City of Ghezirah, there moved a figure. Sometimes, it moved silently as it swirled a sword in flashing arcs. Sometimes, it made terrible cries. It was high noon in midsummer, and the trees and the greensward shimmered. The figure shimmered as well; it was hard to get a proper sense of the method of its motion. Sometimes, it was here. Sometimes, there. It seemed to skip beyond the places that lay between. Then, when the figure finally stopped moving and let the sword fall to its side and hung its head, it became clear that it was scarcely human, and that it was tired and hot.

  Bess of the Warrior Church sunk to a squat. The plates of her body armor—mottled greenish to blend with the landscape—were ribbonned with sweat. Her limbs ached. Her head throbbed in its enclosing weight of chitin and metal. She swept her gaze around the encircling sweep of forest, willing something to come. She had been here many weeks now; long enough for grass to have grown back in the seared space beneath the caleche that had brought her here, and for its landing gear and rusty undersides to become hazed in bloodflowers.

  She looked up across Ghezirah, arching away from her under Sabil's mirrored glare. There, off to the east and rising into the distance, hung the placid browns of the farm islands of Windfell. The other way flashed the greyblue seawall of the Floating Ocean. Somewhat closer, looming smudgy and indistinct over the forest, lay the fabled Isle of the Dead. But she knew she had no calling in any of those places. The intelligences of her church had directed her to this clearing. Yet until her foe arrived in whatever shape or form it might take, until the killing moment came, all she could do was practice. And wait.

  Yet something told her that, today, she was no longer alone. Her fingers retensed upon the hilt of her sword. She opened her mind and let her senses flow. Something was moving, small and quick, at the shadow edge of the forest. The movement was furtive, yet predatory. If Bess had still possessed hairs along the back of her spine, they would have crawled. She would also have shivered, had she not learned in her novitiate that
tension is part of the energy of killing, and thus must be entirely re-absorbed.

  Slowly, and seemingly more wearily than ever, Bess hauled her torso upright in a gleam of sweating plates. She even allowed herself to sway slightly. The weariness was genuine, and thus not difficult to fake. By then she was certain that she was being watched from the edge of the forest.

  The blade of her sword seemed to flash in the hairsbreadth of an instant before movement itself. It flashed again. Bess seemed to slide across the placid meadow in cubes and sideways protrusions. She was there. Then she wasn't. She was under the trees perhaps a full half second after she had first levered herself up from a squat. Three severed leaves were floating down in the wake of her sword's last arc, and the thing crouched before her was small and bipedal. It also looked to be young, and seemed most likely human, and probably female, although its sole piece of clothing was a dirty swatch wrapped around its hips. Not exactly the sort of foe Bess had been expecting to end her vigil; just some feral forest-rat. But it hadn't scurried off into the green dark at her arrival even now that the three leaves had settled to the ground. It was holding out, in something that resembled a threatening gesture, a small but antique lightgun. The gun was live. Bess could hear the battery's faint hum.

  “If you try to shoot that thing . . .” She said, putting all the power of command into her voice. “. . . you will die.” The sound boomed out.

  “And if I don't?” The little creature had flinched, but it was still wafting that lightgun. “I'll probably die anyway, won't I? You're a warrior—killing's all you're good for.”