I’m glad you asked, and not because these inspirations necessarily directly influenced this book, but because there’s so much speculative fiction I love, especially when I was younger and these books were so wonderfully, and necessarily, escapist for me. So, along with The Martian Chronicles, there is also Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, which was very popular in my house because my father was also a tattoo artist for a time. The John Carter Warlord of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs was huge. I read those books again and again, and I loved some of the more obscure Burroughs pulp fiction as well, for example The Mucker and Pellucidar. Later when I was in college I had the opportunity to take a science fiction class and got to read The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov for the first time, which just crushed me, and Dune, though I’m, not sure how I got so far not reading it, The Handmaiden’s Tale, which was so beautiful and horrible. I also think some of Vonnegut, who I consumed voraciously too, certainly qualifies, say Cat’s Cradle for example. Recently, someone was kind of enough to compare Orphans to How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, which I hadn’t read, but since have, and it was terrific, just so knowing and smart. A friend of mine, Peter Tieryas Liu, just had his novel Bald New World, come out, and I’m just into it, but it’s terrific as well. Beyond the literary though, I should definitely give a shout-out to The Twilight Zone, which I was obsessive about, Logan’s Run, Escape from New York, Star Wars, and Blade Runner, which just blew me away, and unlike some of these other loves of mine, certainly had a tonal impact on Orphans.
What’s next for this world and these people and you as a writer?
This is grandiose of me, possibly obnoxious, you be the judge, but I always saw Orphans as a trilogy of sorts, where the first book would be from the father’s perspective, the second from the mother’s, and the third from the son’s. And so I have started working on a sequel titled Foundlings written from Shalla’s point of view and right now it’s got a road trip vibe, and is feeling like a mash-up of the Wizard of Oz and the Odyssey, but with robots and clones and time travel. We’ll see. I also have a novel titled Ballad I’m working on about teenage girl drug dealer and alien abduction. And I’m thrilled to let you know that I just had an essay collection come out which I focused on fatherhood as viewed through the lens of Star Wars, NAS, Mad Men, Patrick Ewing, and Vanilla Ice, among other things. It’s titled Lost in Space, and I think that everyone may just want to buy it right now, well Lost in Space, and Orphans, both. Is that a selfish request?
About the Author
Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher. He is the Staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly and Booklifenow.com. He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC. He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006. Jones lives in Upstate South Carolina with his wife, daughter, and flying poodle.
Another Word:
Killing Rage
Daniel Abraham
I’m not telling anybody what they should do.
I’m guessing that since you’re here reading essays on Clarkesworld, you’re most likely a fan of genre fiction and maybe spend a little time on the Internet. Seems pretty safe as assumptions go. And because of that, you’re probably aware of the conflicts that have been troubling the online community of fans and professionals recently: Toni Weisskopf’s essay on fandom and John Scalzi’s response, Jonathan Ross hosting the Hugo Awards, Sean Fodera’s comments on Mary Robinette Kowal, Truesdale’s petition about the SFWA Bulletin, Wiscon’s disinvitation Elizabeth Moon, Racefail ‘09.
The list goes on, I am reliably informed, back through Silverberg’s famous insistence that James Tiptree Jr. couldn’t possibly be a woman, Ballard and Moorcock’s advancement of the New Wave, and pretty much everything Harlan Ellison’s ever done until it disappears in the mists of history sometime before 1930.
This, for better or worse, is the water we swim in now, and probably always was before. As with everything else in our culture, the Internet has made it weirder and faster and more immediate and more anonymous. We’ve had lots of calls for civility, and lots of responses that those calls for civility usually mean you’d like the other person to shut up and stop bothering you. We’ve had a lot of reasoned, careful commentary by thoughtful people, and a lot of public venting of spleen. We’ve had people who genuinely wanted to come to some deeper understanding and accord, and some who seem to like lighting conversations on fire just to watch them burn.
Science fiction and fantasy—more than any other genre—has a deep tradition of direct engagement of fans and writers. The narrative of fandom as community—almost as family—was around long before I came on the scene. Truth of the matter is, fandom can be a bruising place to be a professional and a fan. Maybe it’s worse now than it was before, maybe it’s only different. But it’s left me thinking about conflict, rage, rhetorical violence, my experience with them, and the decisions I’ve made about who I want to be publically and professionally.
I’m going to say this again: I’m not telling anybody what they should do. I’m not interested in dictating how folks act or speak, what they should believe or how they should believe it. Not that I don’t have opinions about that, but I’m not writing a sermon.
Right now, I’m just laying out part of what I think and how I got here, and what Marshall Rosenberg, bell hooks, and Marcus Aurelius have to do with it. If it’s useful to you, that’s great. If it’s not, you’ll maybe have another perspective on it. Or on me. That’s fine too.
So there’s this guy, JB. He’s been a friend of mine since middle school, and has always been more spiritual and more religious—though that’s not quite the right word for him—and more engaged with justice than I am. Turns out that’s not actually a very high bar, but he clears it. His track record on recommending interesting, thought-provoking books is really good, and maybe a decade ago, maybe a little more than that, he pointed me toward an author named Marshall Rosenberg, and a book called Nonviolent Communication.
I can’t express clearly enough how much I dislike this book. Not the content—which I’ll get to in a minute—but the style. This is the most touchy-feely, Pollyanna, syrupy-sweet, Kumbaya-singing book I have ever pulled my self through by the eyelashes. It’s got amateur rhyming poetry in it about people and their hearts. I’m not this guy. My skin crawled when I read this, as it has every time I’ve reread it since. (This, turns out, is a lot.) Because wrapped in this chalky candy heart of a book is a manual for how to invite—even insist on—conflict, and see it through until it’s resolved.
It talks about withholding judgment, cultivating compassion, listening deeply (and how to include some error correction in that) all with the aim of having actual, meaningful communication happen. And the thing that was most revelatory to me in reading it was the analysis of how useful conflict happens in a range. We can avoid it by minimizing it—turning away, pretending there’s not a problem—or by escalating out of it, derailing it into name calling and judgments.
If you had to pick a single book that has had the most effect on my public persona, this one’s it. I grew up with insults and wit where other kids just hit each other. I have a very good toolbox when it comes to verbal violence—I’m kind of good at it. And we have a long and vibrant history of gadflies and bullies in our community. Engaging in that is tempting for me, not in the least because I’m pretty sure I could hold my own even in some pretty high weight classes. This is to say, I know I can escalate out of a conflict. I know I can tease people into a kind of semi-coherent rage. I’ve done it; we called it high school. And, from what I hear from my cohorts, part of college. It could have been my professional persona. But instead I got interested in this other set of tools, and this other way to have conflicts. Instead of being showy and witty and clever and outrageous, I got to dissect what the issues really are. It turns out that I lik
e that better.
Rosenberg—like pretty much everyone who’s been engaged with fandom in the last few years—had to talk about anger. Anger is the emotion most closely associated with violence. That’s true for me, and I’m guessing it’s true for you. And this is true to the point that the two often get confused. Expressions of anger often read like rhetorical violence, and criticisms of someone’s rhetorical style are easy to confuse with (or conflate with or use as) telling the writer that their emotions are wrong. Rosenberg is utterly against violence in how we talk to each other. But he’s strongly in favor of the complete, accurate, and uncompromising expression of anger.
I had to sit with that for a long time before I had any idea what he was talking about. It wasn’t an easy thing for me to parse, and I still struggle with it sometimes. The good news is, I have an example I can go back to.
When I picked up the book Killing Rage by Dr. bell hooks, I thought that the title would be an essay about how to, y’know, kill rage. Get rid of it. Boy-howdy, did I have that wrong. The essay Killing Rage is about living in a state of justified anger, and as a piece of writing, it’s a thing of beauty.
Full disclosure: I think bell hooks is one of the best thinkers we have about race, gender, violence, and punishment that we’ve got. That particular essay is a difficult, upsetting read. It’s more than a description of anger; it’s an expression of it. It gives the context for it, examples that explain and justify it, and a description of a bone-deep, powerful anger. She talks about the temptation to violence. She describes having violent, even murderous, fantasies.
And—here’s why I will never stop admiring her—she never escalates out of the conflict. She never becomes easy to discount or put down. She expresses, even evokes, pain in a way that demands the reader stand witness to it. And she envisions moving it “beyond fruitless scapegoating of any group, linking it instead to a passion for freedom and justice that illuminates, heals, and makes redemptive struggle possible.”
She gave me an example of the difference between anger and violence.
This also seems like the right moment to mention it again: I’m not telling anybody what they should do.
I’ve also adopted Marcus Aurelius as one of my intellectual bodyguards. Here’s this guy with the power of a god among men. He was the Emperor of the only superpower of his time. He was able to order anyone who offended him to die, able to order any woman he desired to his bed; a man in a position of almost no social restraint. Yet, when you read his meditations, it’s like you’re talking to someone who’s been working in tech support too long.
Begin each day by telling yourself “Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness; all of them due to the offender’s ignorance of what is good and what is evil.” Or, another of my favorites, “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”
I’ll go back to Marcus on the days where I need someone to remind me that people are just people—venal, selfish, immoral, mean-spirited, small—and that it isn’t my problem. I have control over who I am, and over what I do, and if I can get that shit under control, I’m actually doing pretty well. When it comes to being in this community of professionals and amateurs and fans, where we are hip deep in grievances both legitimate and bizarre, these three folks are my touchstones. They’re who I’ve chosen to cultivate.
I would like the field to be more civil, so I’m going to be civil, even when I think I’d be justified not to. I would like the conversations we have to be more compassionate, so I’m going to try to exercise compassion when I’m talking to folks, even when I think they’re full of shit. When I’m angry about something, I’ll try to express that completely and fully and while keeping my temper. When someone’s angry with me, I’ll try to listen past my defensiveness to what they’re saying, whether I agree with them or not. When I think someone is arguing with me in bad faith, I’m going to walk away.
I’d like our conflicts about ideology, politics, and religion to be less violent, so I’m trying to be less violent when I talk about them. On the days I can’t bring myself to that, I stay off the Internet.
I would like my field to respect the quality of work more than the skin tone or sexual preferences of the author who wrote it, so I try to celebrate good work by folks who I think deserve more attention than they’ve gotten. I try to tack against the parts of mainstream culture that I think are crap, and hopefully I get it right more than I screw it up.
I’m trying to become the change I want to see in the field; more professional, thoughtful, compassionate, non-violent, and open to conflict and change.
And part of that? I’m not telling anybody what they should do.
About the Author
Daniel Abraham is a writer of genre fiction with a dozen books in print and over thirty published short stories. His work has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Hugo Awards and has been awarded the International Horror Guild Award. He also writes as MLN Hanover and (with Ty Franck) as James S. A. Corey. He lives in the American Southwest.
Editor’s Desk:
Supporting our Favorites
Neil Clarke
The nomination period for the Hugo Awards came to a close at the end of March. As has become tradition in recent years, many fans and professionals took to blogs and social media to either direct attention to their eligible works, make a case for their favorites, or remind you to vote. Yes, I am among those guilty of doing so.
We at Clarkesworld have been fortunate enough to win three Hugo Awards and I’ve been nominated twice for Best Editor Short Form. Last year’s nominations and win were a very personal victory after a year highlighted by a heart attack and other medical issues. I can't possibly describe how much the show of support meant to me and I continue to hope the authors, artists and editors behind all of my favorite works are similarly celebrated someday. Unfortunately, that isn’t likely. There will always be someone or something that you fell should have been recognized, but wasn’t. It’s the nature of awards.
That’s where my mind went as I selected my nominations. In several cases, I agonized over who would get my top five votes. It simply wasn’t possible to nominate everyone I thought deserved recognition. And yes, sometimes there isn’t even a category (like anthology or magazine) to provide an opportunity to draw attention to a worthy project, but that’s a discussion for another day.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize that I already have a reasonable way to recognize everyone I want to, even those without a category. It’s even something that will help sales of their work, which sadly, isn’t always true of awards. I’m a bit embarrassed, because it’s an alternative I’ve suggested to people who wanted to support Clarkesworld: writing reviews at Amazon, Apple, B&N, etc. Your reviews of us have proved to me that they have value.
There are people for which this activity comes naturally. They can write up paragraphs and paragraphs about any book or story they have read. Fearless, they toss their words into the ether for all to see. Then there are people like me. I agonize over every word and have trouble clicking that save button. I think those of us in my group have been making things too difficult for ourselves. Why shouldn’t we be satisfied writing “I read a lot of anthologies and this was the best one I read in 2013” and leaving it at that?
Short and sweet reviews have their value. They open the door to discussion and give weight to the reviews of our more eloquent friends. They boost the profile of the author and their work, and when these reviews are on retailers’ site (Amazon, Apple, B&N, etc.), they have an actual impact on sales. Even adding to a pile of tens, hundreds, thousands, or more reviews has value because it isn’t just about quantity, but also how recently they’ve been reviewed.
I know why I haven’t been following my own advice. I was physically and verbally bullied as a child. I was also mocked for my taste in music and books for many years. We put up walls to protect ourselves and mine keep a lot of stuff private.
I like to think that I’m doing much better these days. I blog, have a decent social media presence, participate on panels of give talks, but that’s pretty much a construct I call “Work Neil” or “Con Neil.” I’m never entirely relaxed, except among family or a handful of friends.
Since the heart attack, I’ve tried to take more of a “life is too short” attitude towards things. I’m forty-seven. I think it’s long past time to get over this particular ingrained fear from my childhood. (It was either this one or fear of needles, which is a bit more complicated and painful.) Besides, this has the added benefit of helping people I respect.
This month, I will start posting reviews. I will take baby steps, starting with one-sentence reviews and working my way towards a whole paragraph. Since I want them to have successful careers where they actually make a living from their work (hey, it’s my goal, so I should be supporting others in their efforts to do the same), I will emphasize reviewing on retail sites over my own blog. I might even be brave enough to post something on Goodreads.
So, who will join me on this adventure?
About the Author
Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, owner of Wyrm Publishing and a two-time Hugo Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.
Cover Art: Wake
Peter Mohrbacher
About the Artist
Peter Mohrbacher is an independent illustrator and concept artist living in the Chicago area.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 91 Page 16
