by John Klima
Table of Contents
A Brief History of Electric Velocipede by John Klima
Introduction by Shane Jones
Fling But a Stone by Mark Rich
Mrs. Janokowski Hits One Out of the Park by William Shunn
A Keeper by Alan DeNiro
Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive by Liz Williams
In the Frozen City by Chris Roberson
The Spigot by Heather Martin
A Taste for Flowers by Jay Caselberg
The Chiaroscurist by Hal Duncan
The Way He Does It by Jeffrey Ford
Milk and Apples by Catherynne M. Valente
Dr. Black and the Village of Stones by Brendan Connell
The Dogrog Phenomenom by Richard Howard
How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth by Rachel Swirsky
Recipe for Survival by Sandra McDonald
Wool and Silk and Wood by Shira Lipkin
The Oldest Man on Earth by Patrick O’Leary
Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle by Jonathan Wood
The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finley
The Bear Dresser’s Secret by Richard Bowes
The Lost Technique of Blackmail by Mark Teppo
When the Lamps are Lit by KJ Bishop
Daughters of Fortune by Cyril Simsa
∞° by Darin Bradley
Patience by E. Lily Yu
The Art Disease by Dennis Danvers
Heaven Under Earth by Aliette de Bodard
Cutting by Ken Liu
The Night We Drank Cold Wine by Megan Kurashige
A Faun’s Lament by Michael Constantine McConnell
Glass Boxes and Clockwork Gods by Damien Angelica Walters
The Irish Astronaut by Val Nolan
Melt by Cislyn Smith
The Beasts We Want to Be by Sam J. Miller
The Carnival Was Eaten, All Except the Clown by Caroline M. Yoachim
Acknowledgements
About the Contributors
About the Editor
The Best of Electric Velocipede
Edited by John Klima
The Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede ran for twelve years, publishing twenty-seven issues over the course of its run. The magazine was nominated four years in a row for a World Fantasy Award. Its stories appeared in Gardner Dozois’ and Jonathan Strahan’s year’s best anthologies and were also shortlisted for the Sturgeon and Tiptree Awards.
The Best of Electric Velocipede showcases a breathtaking thirty-four pieces of high quality work published during its run. If you’ve never read the magazine, you’re in for a treat. If you’re already a fan, you’ll find all your favorites and a lot of great writing that deserves a second look. With a foreword by editor John Klima and introduction by Shane Jones.
Stories and poetry by:
Mark Rich • William Shunn • Alan DeNiro • Liz Williams • Chris Roberson • Heather Martin • Jay Caselberg • Hal Duncan • Jeffrey Ford • Catherynne M. Valente • Brendan Connell • Richard Howard • Rachel Swirsky • Sandra McDonald • Shira Lipkin • Patrick O’Leary • Jonathan Wood • Toiya Kirsten Finley • Richard Bowes • Mark Teppo • KJ Bishop • Cyril Simsa • Darin C. Bradley • E. Lily Yu • Dennis Danvers • Aliette de Bodard • Ken Liu • Megan Kurashige • Michael Constantine McConnell • Damien Angelica Walters • Val Nolan • Cislyn Smith • Sam J. Miller • Caroline M. Yoachim
Praise for
The Best of Electric Velocipede:
Like a brilliant blended whisky selected from 12 years of prize-winning distillations, many flavors and tastes of story combine here to form an anthology that must be savored from the first to the last word.”
—Garth Nix, author of Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen
Electric Velocipede’s best-of has plenty of juice, plenty of meat, ample servings of intoxicating liquor—and it finishes off with a sinister sweetness. Read it if you want to sample some of the best work from new and established writers in the last twelve years.”
—Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels
John Klima’s indispensable Electric Velocipede was a personal inspiration for me and an inexhaustible source of literary delights: the best of this ’zine is very good stuff indeed.”
—Tim Pratt, author of Dead Reign
Electric Velocipede’s exceptional legacy of sharp storytelling collected here reminds how short stories hone many of our field’s top talents, and how many great voices were nurtured between this plucky magazine’s covers.”
—Tobias Buckell, author of Hurricane Fever
What a fabulous collection, in every sense of the word! Electric Velocipede was one of the most important ’zines of the early twenty-first century, and this collection shows why. I don’t know how it managed to publish so many of the best and most innovative writers in fantasy, but if you want to read stories that will tie your brain in knots and wring out your heart, here they are—eccentric, daring, real, and deeply true.”
—Theodora Goss, author of The Thorn and the Blossom
Other books edited
by John Klima
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories
Happily Ever After
Glitter & Mayhem
(with Lynne M Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas)
The Best of Electric Velocipede
A Fairwood Press Book
November 2014
Copyright © 2014 John Klima
Introduction Copyright © 2014 Shane Jones
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
www.fairwoodpress.com
Cover illustration & design by
Thom Davidsohn
Book design by
Patrick Swenson
ISBN13: 978-1-933846-47-7
First Fairwood Edition: November 2014
Printed in the United States of America
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
To Shai
Because you supported
this crazy bike ride
from start to finish
Copyrights
“Fling but a Stone” © 2002 by Mark Rich. Electric Velocipede #2.
“Mrs. Janokowski Hits One Out of the Park” © 2003 by William Shunn. Electric Velocipede #4.
“A Keeper” © 2004 by Alan DeNiro. Electric Velocipede #6.
“Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive” © 2004 by Liz Williams. Electric Velocipede #6.
“In the Frozen City” © 2004 by Chris Roberson. Electric Velocipede #7.
“The Spigot” © 2005 by Heather Martin. Electric Velocipede #8.
“A Taste for Flowers” © 2005 by Jay Caselberg. Electric Velocipede #9.
“The Chiaroscurist” © 2005 by Hal Duncan. Electric Velocipede #9.
“The Way He Does It” © 2006 by Jeffrey Ford. Electric Velocipede #10.
“Milk and Apples” © 2006 by Catherynne M. Valente. Electric Velocipede #11.
“Dr. Black and the Village of Stones” © 2007 by Brendan Connell. Electric Velocipede #12.
“The Dogrog Phenomenon” © 2007 by Richard Howard. Electric Velocipede #13.
“How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth” © 2007 by Rachel Swirsky. Electric Velocipede #13.
“Recipe for Survival” © 2008 by Sandra McDonald. Electric Velocip
ede #14.
“Wool and Silk and Wood” © 2008 by Shira Lipkin. Electric Velocipede #15/16.
“The Oldest Man on Earth” © 2008 by Patrick O’Leary. Electric Velocipede #15/16.
“Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle” © 2008 by Jonathan Wood. Electric Velocipede #15/16.
“The Death of Sugar Daddy” © 2009 by Toiya Kirsten Finley. Electric Velocipede #17/18.
“The Bear Dresser’s Secret” © 2009 by Richard Bowes. Electric Velocipede #17/18.
“The Lost Technique of Blackmail” © 2009 by Mark Teppo. Electric Velocipede #19.
“When the Lamps Are Lit” © 2009 by KJ Bishop. Electric Velocipede #19.
“Daughters of Fortune” © 2010 by Cyril Simsa. Electric Velocipede #20.
“∞°” © 2010 by Darin C. Bradley. Electric Velocipede #21/22.
“Patience” © 2010 by E. Lily Yu. Electric Velocipede #21/22.
“The Art Disease” © 2011 by Dennis Danvers. Electric Velocipede #23.
“Heaven Under Earth” © 2012 by Aliette de Bodard. Electric Velocipede #24.
“Cutting” © 2012 by Ken Liu. Electric Velocipede #24.
“The Night We Drank Cold Wine” © 2012 by Megan Kurashige. Electric Velocipede #25.
“A Faun’s Lament” © 2012 by Michael Constantine McConnell. Electric Velocipede #25.
“Glass Boxes and Clockwork Gods” © 2012 by Damien Angelica Walters. Electric Velocipede #25.
“The Irish Astronaut” © 2013 by Val Nolan. Electric Velocipede #26.
“Melt” © 2013 by Cislyn Smith. Electric Velocipede #26.
“The Beasts We Want to Be” © 2013 by Sam J. Miller. Electric Velocipede #27.
“The Carnival Was Eaten, All Except the Clown” © 2013 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Electric Velocipede #27.
A Brief History of Electric Velocipede
John Klima
Around the turn of the century I sat in a cramped convention room while Gavin Grant and Kelly Link exhorted to us that every single person in the room could start their own zine. Gavin and Kelly had been publishing Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet for a number of years and had recently founded Small Beer Press; they knew what they were talking about. They were making a cool zine that was unique, quirky, and full of great stories.
It wasn’t the first time I thought about starting a magazine, but it was the first time the idea stuck. I kept hearing Gavin’s voice, “Every single person in this room can start their own zine” over and over again. I had just left working in publishing full time and missed it terribly. And now I knew what to do about that.
In short order Alan DeNiro, Kristin Livdahl, and Christopher Barzak started Rabid Transit, Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe started their Say… series, William Smith started Trunk Stories, and Mark Rudolph started Full Unit Hookup.
And I started Electric Velocipede.
Other than the perennially fantastic and still in publication LCRW, Electric Velocipede had the longest run of all those involved. We ran for twelve years publishing twenty-seven issues in all.
We won the Hugo in 2009 for Best Fanzine. We were nominated four years in a row for a World Fantasy Award. We’ve had stories shortlisted for the Sturgeon Award and the Tiptree Award.
We had a great run. We survived this long because we got consistently great work from writers and artists. Nearly every issue started with an email to the issue’s contributors where I told them it was the best issue to date, and in general it was true. The last issue really cemented what I wanted Electric Velocipede to become over its twelve-year run.
This anthology showcases the high-quality work we published over the years. If you’ve never read the magazine, you’re in for a treat. If you’re already a fan, you’ll still find a lot of great stuff in here that you’ve never read before.
We’ve had a great run. Enjoy yourself.
Introduction
by Shane Jones
Anthologies in my high school were these big clunky things, loaned each year to a new crop of uninterested students. You would look on the inside cover to see the previous students names, see if you knew someone who spent the school year with the anthology, and if you did, you felt closer to the stories inside. Some of the anthologies were so old a few students recognized their own parent’s names. This made them feel even older, outdated and irrelevant texts. The covers fell off a lot even though we wrapped them with paper bags.
I didn’t appreciate the anthology until college. I was an average student in high school and a terrible student in college. I’d go to class and write poems, and when I wasn’t in class getting assignments on what to read, I was in the library reading what I wanted to read. I skipped so many classes I failed classes. I really didn’t have an excuse for not being in class, not studying what I was assigned. I didn’t even have a part time job. I spent years hiding in the SUNY Buffalo library crammed into a tiny “reading cube,” and in a deeper more sinister aspect, hiding from my life.
The anthology—I forget the exact title; I think it was the Norton Series—contained all sorts of treasures, none of them assigned for the American Literature class I rarely attended. The stories were traditional flair—Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc—and this was a kind of training ground for later boundary pushing authors that would open my own writing up. Before, I mocked the anthology, but now I worshipped it. Even years later, working full-time at a bookstore where I could borrow any two books for a week (interesting side note: Borders Books & Music functioned as a library for employees!), I still went back to this anthology and would open to a random page. There was nostalgia at work here, but also endless discovery. I wish I knew where this anthology was—I misplaced it years ago—but I can still remember what the cover looked like, and the weight of the book, and how the thin pages felt—absurdly stacked with text—in my hands.
Electric Velocipede ran for twelve years and published twenty seven issues. This is no small accomplishment. I’m thirty four and I’ve been following small press literature since I was eighteen. I’ve seen journals cease publication after one issue. I’ve seen hundreds disappear. I’m guilty of this. After admiring a journal close in style to Electric Velocipede, I printed my own called American Standard in 2003. I’m not sure anyone knows this, and I’m not sure anyone remembers, except maybe the dozen authors I published. And even though I enjoyed the process (the printer got the colors all wrong and it ended up being puke green and neon pink, not like the colors I specified from a wine bottle I brought to the printer) it was so much work, required such tremendous energy, that I stopped after the first issue. So I can’t imagine twelve years, twenty seven issues, hundreds of thousands of words edited and printed. John Kilma should have a bronze statue of himself placed outside the SUNY Buffalo Rare Books room—the true center of small press history.
Why would anyone do such a job? I believe it comes down to belief on part of the publisher, editor, and the writers themselves. Everyone is doing this because they believe in the work at hand and that’s a beautiful and powerful thing. It is a matter of love. All the stories included in this anthology were sprouted from an intense need to create with no outside factors, no presumption of money or accolades or being taught or being, now, in an anthology like this.
It’s impossible to highlight all the stories in The Best of Electric Velocipede. But what I will say is that these stories as a whole are imaginative, well-crafted, sometimes experimental, sometimes disturbing, and always, worth your time. I’m glad it exists. I’m glad that people, all too often consumed with the wrong types of worship, wrote these stories, and now they are available in one place.
I really should plan a visit to my parent’s house and look for that American Literature anthology I loved so much. I’m feeling guilty about it as I type this. My hope is that you too will escape with this anthology like I did in college. Maybe flake on your daily responsibilities a little, maybe fail a few classes (no, don’t do that), maybe ignore your spouse and kids (no, don’t do t
hat), just run to a library or coffee shop or bar and hide with this big book of weird and forget everything outside of it, because you hold endless worlds right here.
Fling But a Stone
Mark Rich
Though thrilled to be in the Glass House, the fabulous restaurant hanging midway down the Glass Valley of New Dearborn and turning there slowly like an elaborate ornament on a crystal Christmas tree, he wondered why he, Hiram Daugherty, mere stringer, received so forceful an invitation to have breakfast with the highest of the high at the Daily?
First, last night, he snagged that elusive magazine, News to the World, after eleven months of trying, and felt a million miles high just running his eyes over its high-tech pages. Now he sat here with Courtnelle Basilprop herself.
“If you’re wondering,” said Basilprop, “why you’re here—”
“I am.”
She smiled, with a bit of steel behind the smile. She seemed about his height, a few inches short of six feet, with carefully straight, light brown hair in stark contrast to his haphazardly curling bird’s nest. She dressed in Corporate Calm, with none of the flash-panels so common these days on the lower streets. He wore his old-fashioned pale denim and white shirt—just what he happened to have on, when the summons arrived.
“It’s because of an unauthorized purchase,” she said.
“A purchase?”
“You bought a magazine last night.”
“Unauthorized, you say.”
“That’s right.”
