Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

by Mike Allen

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  Leah Bobet lives in Toronto, where she works in Canada’s oldest science fiction bookstore and has just completed a degree in linguistics. Her fiction has appeared recently in Strange Horizons, The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy, and On Spec, and her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling and Pushcart Prizes. She says, “‘Bell, Book, and Candle’ came from hearing a regular phrase, an ignorable phrase sidewise, and the way the world tilts at an angle when you realize it might have meant something different all along.” She is currently writing a novel about a girl with bee wings and a boy who grew up underground.

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  Michael J. DeLuca has the utmost respect for prophets. Sometimes he wishes he’d been one, but he was never quite crazy enough to make it happen. “I carried the ideas and images that compose this story around in my head for a very long time before anything came of it. When I saw that stark church in the desert, I was just a kid, and a very different person by the time I came across the angel. What finally brought it all together was the riff of a Bob Dylan song called ‘Wicked Messenger.’ If you’d heard that song with those things in your head, you’d have written this story too. Or so I’d like to think.”

  Michael asserts that fiction is a compromise. Read more of his compromises in Interfictions, or on his blog at michaeljdeluca.com.

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  Laird Barron’s work has appeared in places such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCIFICTION, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It has also been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence, was recently published by Night Shade. Mr. Barron is an expatriate Alaskan currently at large in Washington State. He confides, “The core horrific conceit of this piece originates from a nightmare as recounted by a relative who served in the Marine Corps and who apparently survived many a hedonistic adventure while abroad. The relative’s name is withheld to protect the guilty, of course.”

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  Ekaterina Sedia resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey, and shares these thoughts about the genesis of “There Is a Monster Under Helen’s Bed”: “This story was written as a reaction to an increasing number of foreign adoptions—and the realization that these are often complex and wrenching. I find the conflict between an adopter’s need to help and the adoptees’ frequent inability to recognize it especially heartbreaking.”

  Her second novel, The Secret History of Moscow, was published by Prime Books in November 2007. Her next one, The Alchemy of Stone, was published in June 2008. Her short stories have sold to Analog, Baen’s Universe, Dark Wisdom and Clarkesworld, as well as the Japanese Dreams and Magic in the Mirrorstone anthologies. Visit her at www.ekaterinasedia.com.

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  Cat Sparks is a writer, graphic designer, editor and photographer, with stories and artwork appearing in and on magazines, anthologies and book covers in Australia and abroad. She was born in Sydney, Australia, but relocated to Wollongong eight years ago. She has travelled through parts of Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, the South Pacific, Mexico and the lower states of North America. Her adventures so far have included: winning a trip to Paris in a Bulletin Magazine photography competition; being appointed official photographer for two NSW Premiers; working as dig photographer on three archaeological expeditions to Jordan, and winning seven DITMAR awards including one for Best New Talent in 2002.

  “I can’t be sure where ‘Palisade’ came from,” she says, “but I suspect it was influenced by the years I spent working as a government media monitor. Daytime talkback radio presented so much ugliness. At some point it occurred to me that whatever horrible things I could imagine, somewhere out there in the world were people doing them to each other. When I combined this thought with the promising advancements of science . . .”

  In 2004, she was both a prize winner in Writers of the Future and received the Aurealis Peter McNamara Conveners Award. In 2007 and 2008 she won the Aurealis Award for best SF short story and the Golden Aurealis Award for best Australian speculative fiction story of the year.

  Check her newest happenings at www.catsparks.net or http://catsparx.livejournal.com.

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  Born in 1947 in London, England, Tanith Lee is one of the leading fantasy authors working today. After working various jobs she became a full-time professional writer in 1975 and has written nearly 90 novels and collections, among them the best-selling Flat Earth Series and The Secret Books of Paradys, over 260 short stories, four radio plays broadcast by the BBC, and two episodes of the cult TV programme Blake’s 7. She has won the World Fantasy Award numerous times as well as the August Derleth Award.

  Tanith’s most recent books include the adult fantasy trilogy: Lionwolf, Cast A Bright Shadow, Here In Cold Hell and No Flame But Mine; the 3 YA novels: Piratica, Piratica 2 and Piratica 3; and Metallic Love, (the sequel to her adult SF novel The Silver Metal Lover.) And coming soon, two volumes of collected short stories, Tempting the Gods and Hunting the Shadows. She lives near the sea with writer, artist, husband John Kaiine and two black and white cats.

  Lee described the inspiration for “The Woman” thusly:

  “The spur to this story was the news that in modern China, and also in some areas of India, young men, particularly the less well-off, are having one heck of a time trying to locate wives—even girlfriends, due to various policies to restrict family sizes to one child only—and the general wish to bear/keep only males.

  “It occurs to me too certain feminists may quibble over the ethic of the story, (not that I care, everyone should have their own opinion). I’d just say on that, simply reverse all the gender roles. It works just the same, and the point stays constant.”

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  Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material—as she did for “A Mask of Flesh,” her contribution to this volume. “I once flexed my archaeologist muscles and did a silly amount of research into Mesoamerican history and culture for a role-playing game. If you ask me when I’m feeling noble, I’ll say that I think fantasy could and should explore a broader range of models than it does at present—but the truth is also that I wanted something to show for all that effort.” Her short stories have sold to more than a dozen venues. Her most recent novel, Midnight Never Come, is an Elizabethan faerie spy story that taught her why more people don’t write historical fantasy. So, being a sucker for punishment, she’s turning it into a whole series. Next up is the Great Fire of 1666, for the sequel And Ashes Lie.

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  Jennifer Crow lives near a waterfall in western New York, and listens to the stories the water tells. Her work has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues, most recently in the Desolate Places anthology from Hadley-Rille books. She tells us that “‘Seven Scenes’ grew out of a fascination with the ways in which different cultures handle death, change, and the sacred. It interests me how certain places or objects can become symbols for a person’s life, or even for an entire society. I’d like to go back to Harrai’s world someday, and find out what happened to the sacred mountain and its people.”

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  Vandana Singh is an Indian writer currently living near Boston, where she also teaches college physics. Her science fiction and fantasy have been published in numerous venues, including magazines like Strange Horizons and anthologies like Interfictions, and have also made a couple of appearances in Year’s Best collections. Her children’s fiction includes the ALA Notable book, Younguncle Comes to Town (Viking, 2006). She says “Oblivion: A Journey” came about because she wrote a random sentence, and followed it by another and another, not knowing where it was going, until it led her to some strange places in the far future. The story owes a great deal to both the epic Ramayan and the wonderful, lurid Indian comic books she read as a child. Somewhere in the blend are also memories of summer-time wanderings among Buddhist ruins in her home state of Bihar. For more a
bout Vandana, see her website at http://users.rcn.com/singhvan.

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  John C. Wright is a philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman and newspaper editor, who was only once hunted by the police. In 1984 he graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, home of the “Great Books” program. In 1987 he graduated from the College of William and Mary’s Law School (going from the third oldest to the second oldest school in continuous use in the United States), and was admitted to the practice of law in three jurisdictions (New York, May 1989; Maryland, December 1990; DC, January 1994). His law practice was unsuccessful enough to drive him into bankruptcy almost immediately. His stint as a newspaperman for the St. Mary’s Today was more rewarding spiritually, but, alas, also a failure financially. He presently works (more successfully) as a writer in Virginia, where he lives in fairy-tale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter and their three children: Orville, Wilbur and Just Wright.

  When his first novel The Golden Age was published, it was greeted by the comment from Publishers Weekly that Wright was “This fledgling Millennium’s most important new SF talent.” Since that comment was made only in the first month of 2001, it actually meant Wright was the most important new SF talent of the month. He has written fantasy novels, Last Guardian of Everness and Orphans of Chaos, and was greatly honored to pen the authorized sequel to Science Fiction grandmaster A.E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A, entitled Null-A Continuum. He has also written nonfiction articles for BenBella books, appearing in Star Wars on Trial, King Kong is Back, Finding Serenity, and Batman Unauthorized. He calls “Choosers of the Slain,” his contribution to this book, “a meditation on what it means to be selected by a futuristic version of a Valkyrie to receive the honors and plaudits of history. It is also a comment on the wish-fulfillment psychology that underpins all time-travel stories.”

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  C.S. MacCath’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction, PanGaia, newWitch, Murky Depths, Mythic Delirium and Goblin Fruit, among others. She says, “For me, ‘Akhila, Divided’ speaks to the idea that injustice and suffering often have far-reaching consequences and that some of these are the perpetuation of injustice and suffering. It also speaks to the idea that despite our best efforts, some wounds don’t heal, so we are well-advised to be careful with one another.” You can find her on the Internet at www.csmaccath.com.

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  Joanna Galbraith was born in Australia in 1972. She now lives in Switzerland with her partner, Damien, where she spends her time writing stories, teaching English and eating cheese fondue. Her stories have been published in The Writers Post Journal, Wanderings and on www.writelink.co.uk. She says the idea for “The Moon-Keeper’s Friend” first came to her while sitting on a broken-down bus in Ghana, West Africa. Unable to get off (as this would have involved climbing over an entire bus load of goats, chickens and women in spectacular Sunday garb) she passed the countless hours watching “Mohammed Topkapi’s Twenty-Four Hour Tea Service” through the cracks of the bus window. Housed in an adobe mud hut with a beautiful domed roof, painted ultramarine blue and adorned in small, yellow stars, it struck her as the sort of place that someone as foreign as herself (and perhaps even the moon) might feel at home in. She dedicates this story to Ambrose.

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  Deborah Biancotti lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Her first published story won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story. More recently, her work has appeared in the Years Best Australian SF & Fantasy and the Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror anthologies. She confesses, “‘The Tailor of Time’ came when I was post-operative, healing at home, and suddenly unable to tell night from day. It occurred to me then how hard I’d been working lately—working day to night, as the saying goes. I felt lonely, and a long way from my childhood, and so the idea of a Tailor who could stitch time together became attractive to my feverish imagination.” Keep an eye out for her upcoming work with Twelfth Planet and Gilgamesh Press. Deborah can be found online at http://deborahb.livejournal.com and http://deborahbiancotti.net.

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  Erin Hoffman is a writer, game designer, and wandering philomath. It is her solemn duty to protect the world from the machinations of two cantankerous parrots while paying the bills as a video game consultant and freelance essayist. Her nonfiction can be found primarily at The Escapist, and links to her fiction can be found at philomathgames.com and on the shared weblog Homeless Moon (homelessmoon.com).

  Erin tells us, “I’m very fascinated with the idea of taking modern trials—things we talk about now that would have been anathema or poorly understood in ‘romance’ eras frequently emulated by fantasy—in allegorical terms. ‘Root and Vein’ is about staying pliant, staying alive, after heartbreak, and how we learn from it, even when our every instinct is to shut down against pain; it’s kind of an anti-happily-ever-after, being about walking away from something that hurts you. It is also a reflection of my fascination with trees as living records of their experiences—abundant summers, harsh winters—as are we all, but trees display this on their very skins.”

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  Mike Allen writes, “As editor, I enjoy stories that experiment, that push the envelope, that dazzle with their daring, but I’m often personally frustrated when such stories end without feeling complete, without leaving any emotional crater for me to remember them by. At the same time, I find myself increasingly bored with the traditional competently-assembled Good Story Well Told. For better or for worse, I conceived of Clockwork Phoenix as a place where the two schools can mingle and achieve Happy Medium; where there is significance to both the tale that’s told and the style of the telling.

  “My previous anthology projects, Mythic and Mythic 2 (Mythic Delirium Books, 2006) contained some of this same strangeness, but those projects had constrictions on subject matter that I found somewhat limiting. Despite the whimsical introduction I’ve written just to go about things a little differently Clockwork Phoenix is not meant to signify a literal clockpunk mythology, but rather a place where unexpected things juxtapose.”

  He is also the long-time editor of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium and the co-editor of The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase (SFPA, 2005). Mike is himself a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry, and his newest poetry collection, The Journey to Kailash, has just come out in hardcover and trade paperback from Norilana Books. His website is www.descentintolight.com.

  AFTERWORD

  for the digital edition

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this electronic edition of Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness. My gratitude goes out to those who gave me the inspiration and tools to create it: Vera Nazarian, Charles M. Saplak, Rose Lemberg, Elizabeth Campbell, Michael DeLuca of Weightless Books and Erzebet YellowBoy Carr of Papaveria Press. And of course, my wife Anita, who guided the organization of these stories to emphasize their thematic links.

  For the sake of expediency, and historical preservation, the biographies of the authors and your humble editor have been left as they were when this book was first published in trade paperback by Vera Nazarian’s Norilana Books in July 2008. However, much has happened in three years’ time. All of these writers have continued to blaze their own paths. Some have become editors of important publications. Some acquired major book deals, published new novels, were nominated for or even won major awards. I encourage you to click the links embedded in their bios to see what each one is up to now.

  It occurred to me, too, that I should share a little about the bragging rights the Clockwork Phoenix crew of authors accumulated after this book came out. Vandana’s novelette was reprinted in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s The Year’s Best SF 14, while Deborah’s “Tailor of Time” was a finalist for the 2008 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story. Tanith’s and Laird’s short stories were included in the Locus Magazine 2008 Recommended Reading List, as was the anthology as a whole—and
Laird later used “Occultation” as the title story of his 2010 collection which won the Shirley Jackson Award. Editor Ellen Datlow included David’s “Old Foss” in her massive anthology of feline-based speculative fiction, Tails of Wonder & Imagination. Tales by John Grant, Cat Rambo, Leah, Laird, Kathy Sedia, Cat Sparks, Tanith, Marie, Vandana, John Wright and C.S. MacCath received honorable mentions from various “best of the year” anthologies, and all of the stories received critical praise from some corner or other, though some reviewers mused as to whether my strange art-for-art’s-sake anthology construction actually worked.