Lightspeed Magazine Issue 37

by L. Timmel Duchamp

  In the end, the bodyguards are still there: a pair of crows doing their best to be threatening. But they are only birds. Marisol has already moved on.

  Stories about starlets rarely end well—what made you choose to end “TBOMB” the way you did?

  The key part of every starlet tragedy is her all-consuming desire to please others—directors, lovers, audiences. Along the way, she loses her identity so completely that it becomes all but impossible for her to step back and address her own needs. There’s a risk of that happening to anyone of any gender whose life is geared toward the limelight, of course, but actors in particular specialize in filling a role controlled and designed by someone else.

  Broadly speaking, we’ve come to see this as tragic entertainment. “Starlet” itself is a diminutive and it evokes rather sad images: the poor broken country girl lost in the city, struggling to make it big, always misunderstood, always exploited.

  I wanted this quintessential starlet to walk away from the culture that locks her into that role, to break free of that cliché and find a path back to herself—even if it meant making lethal mistakes, and even if it took several lifetimes to accomplish.

  Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, photographer, and an expert in learning and knowledge management. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo, was a volunteer EMT and firefighter, accompanied journalists into combat in Central America, lived in a haunted village in Thailand, ran an international amphibian monitoring network, volunteers with the National Park Service habitat restoration program on the Boston Harbor Islands, reads slush for Nightmare and Lightspeed magazines, and is working on a novel that might be science fiction, might be fantasy. She cannot parallel park, lies about how far she runs in the morning, and still has her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans from high school. Folded. In a box.

  Author Spotlight: Ken Liu

  Christie Yant

  Ken, welcome back to Lightspeed! Your story “Mono no aware” first appeared in The Future Is Japanese, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, and has been widely celebrated. Can you tell us how this story came to be?

  Thank you! It’s great to be back in Lightspeed.

  This story began with my interest in narratives that don’t follow the supposed “rules” of storytelling. There’s a lot of advice out there for genre writers, often phrased as universal laws. For example: The hero of the story must actively work at solving a problem.

  I’m very skeptical of these kinds of absolutist pronouncements because I think often they just reflect the narrative conventions of particular times and particular places. A lot of folktales and fairytales, for instance, don’t follow this “rule.”

  And that led me to consider the meaning of “hero” and whether the concept is also fluid and context-dependent.

  How were you first introduced to the phrase and concept embodied in “Mono no aware?”

  Many of the Chinese and Japanese stories I read don’t follow the “rule” I describe above. Instead, they aim to create in the reader an appreciation for the wonders of experiencing life in the moment, fully aware of the impermanence of all things.

  To pick one example, the manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō contains many episodes that are simply descriptions of daily life in a post-apocalyptic landscape, with little in the way of what we in the West would recognize as “heroes” overcoming obstacles. Nonetheless, the reader learns to empathize with the characters and their calm acceptance of life in a world slowly falling into ruin.

  I can’t remember exactly when I first encountered the Japanese phrase “mono no aware,” but as soon as I learned about this sentiment—an empathy for the inevitable passing of all things—I had a phrase to describe the aesthetic of those Chinese and Japanese stories that I liked.

  I wanted to write a story that embodied this aesthetic and also redefined the concept of the Western hero.

  I should emphasize that it is inevitable that my interpretation of the concept and the portrayal of Japanese ideas in the story contain gaps and errors. No matter how much research is done, an outsider’s perspective can never substitute for an insider’s.

  To be respectful to the source culture, I used a narrative trick. I wrote the story from the perspective of a man who is not a true insider. Hiroto’s experience of life in Japan came to an end at the age of eight, and his knowledge of Japanese culture is thus largely secondhand and mediated. A lone survivor among a dominant culture very different from the culture of his childhood, he is fiercely protective of the legacy and memories of those he loved. Thus, he constructs a Japan in his mind that is necessarily distorted, idealized, incomplete, and yet, in an important sense, real to him.

  In this way, “Mono no aware” is also an immigration story: It is about the inevitable passing of the immigrant’s homeland from his memories as he integrates into his new home.

  Comparing the kanji character to the vessel with the solar sail seemed particularly inspired. Was that something that came to you after you already had the story fleshed out, or was it your starting point?

  That was my starting point, actually.

  The kanji for “umbrella,” , can be decomposed into a cover spread over a frame with multiple embedded copies of the kanji for “person,” . It thus seemed a perfect metaphor for the story’s generation ship, the shelter for the last remnants of the human race after unimaginable disaster. I had that image in mind before writing down the first word.

  The preservation of culture is a theme that comes up often in your work. How do art and life intersect for you in that respect? Are there specific things about your family’s heritage that you are making a point of passing on to your children?

  After having children, a lot of things I used to take for granted—my Chinese literary heritage, my knowledge of East Asian history, my comfort with Chinese culture’s diversity and internal conflicts—suddenly took on a new light. For my children, these things will not come to them effortlessly, to be imbibed from the surrounding culture like air and sunlight. Instead, if I want them to benefit from any of it, I will have to make a conscious effort to teach them. How to do so effectively is a challenge with which every parent is no doubt familiar.

  What are you working on now, and what can your fans expect to see next from you?

  I have a few exciting things going on: I’m revising my novel (set in a fantasy world that my wife and I created together), working on a (still secret) translation project, and looking forward to having a couple more stories come out in Lightspeed later this year. I hope readers like them as much as I do.

  Christie Yant has published fiction in the magazines Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, Daily Science Fiction, Fireside, Shimmer, has been featured on io9 and Wired.com, and has been included in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Armored, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 Edition. In the past, she has served as a book reviewer for Audible.com, and she occasionally narrates for StarShipSofa and blogs at Inkpunks.com, a website for aspiring and newly-pro writers. She lives in a former Temperance colony on the central coast of California, where she sometimes gets to watch rocket launches with her husband and her two amazing daughters. Learn more at inkhaven.net.

  Author Spotlight: Paul Park

  Andrew Liptak

  Hi Paul! What can you tell us about how your story “Get A Grip” came about?

  Years ago I was visiting a friend of mine, an actor on the set of a movie called Batteries Not Included, which was being shot on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, before gentrification, so there were a lot of vacant lots. In one of them, the movie crew had assembled the fake facade of a townhouse, three stories high, build of plywood and painted gesso, and only a couple of feet thick. It was for exterior shots, and it had a very realistic stone stoop. Dennis and I were sitting out there one day, and this old lady came wandering down the sidewalk, and stopped in front of us and said, “I was born in this house. That was my father’s room, there on the second floor.”

  While reading thi
s story, I get the very real sense of “the world is not what it appears,” and I was reminded very much of Philip K. Dick and his stories. Was he an influence on your work?

  Yes—I love his stories where the whole nature of perceived reality turns out to be untrue. I’m also interested in meta-fiction, where there’s usually a rupture in the text, a place where the story is no longer what you thought you were reading. It’s a version of the same device, only one is inside the story, and the other is outside.

  Our protagonist essentially finds that the world that he knows and loves is constructed around him: Do you think that the modern world is constructed, at least in part, with our willingness to talk/post/tweet about our lives?

  When I was a kid, I had a hard time believing that other places, places I didn’t happen to be, were actually real—I guess I imagined that everyone in Paris, say, was standing around in suspended animation, waiting for me to show up. I mean, what would be the point of something I personally was unable to witness or be part of? Why would anybody bother? That’s an exaggeration of a fairly normal solipsism, especially among the young, and of course there’s a whole school of philosophy that justifies it. In our proudest moments, certainly we imagine the world is at least partially constructed by our perception of it, but at the same time, we imagine that gives us a kind of control. Of course the protagonist in the story doesn’t have any control; the world is constructed for the purpose of humiliating him.

  Do you think that “Pogo” ever gets a grip on his life?

  Never. He’s a total loser.

  Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He has written for such places as Armchair General, io9, Kirkus Reviews, SF Signal, Tor.com and he can be found over at www.andrewliptak.com and at @AndrewLiptak on Twitter.

  Author Spotlight: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

  Patrick J Stephens

  The opening of “Alive, Alive Oh” is very visceral. The possibility of tangible pain—blood red shores and acidic waters—leads to the internal pain of leaving one’s home, and intrinsic fears resulting from the birth of Megan—what inspired this type of opening?

  I wrote the first paragraph last. It was important to get the reader grounded quickly: This is genre, this is about women, this is not going to have a happy ending. I wanted to instil the reader with a sense of foreboding, because the narrator already knows what she’s about to tell you. She’s not withholding, she’s just telling it in order, but for that to work, she has to tell you what kind of story she’s telling. So that’s key in those first two sentences: This is off-world and dangerous and there’s no going home.

  As a German-American being raised between Los Angeles and Mannheim, what (if any) images served as the foundation for that which would be missed on the colony?

  Growing up in two places means that there’s always something missing. Homesickness was a confusing concept to me; I think because there was no place that was 100% home, there were always people and things that were in the other place. I first was able to explain this through food: California had corn dogs and burritos and popcorn. Germany had bratwurst and semmelknödel and Gummibears. I live in Spain but my partner and I have a flat in Swansea while he is doing business here. These days, I can get Gummibears and popcorn everywhere but I have a whole new list of interesting foods and shops and people that I can’t have all at once. Wherever I am, I’m giving something up.

  The colony is the worst of this, where all the things that make a home are gone. And food remains a useful shorthand for trying to explain those tangible effects of being someplace else. It’s an immediately recogniseable symptom of longing, which I understand better than homesickness. So it was an obvious focus for the story, in terms of illustrating what is left behind and what we miss.

  How long was it in writing “Alive, Alive Oh” before you came to the conclusion that the alien sea and that of Wales would feel the same? Was it the natural character progression, or was there something more intrinsic within the narrative about the dichotomy between “you can never go home again” and the idiom “home is where you make it”?

  It was a sudden spark. Originally, I was thinking about teenage rebellion on a colony and how that would manifest itself, when everything was so shut down and closed. You can’t go out drinking with your mates, you can’t buy rock-star posters to cover your bedroom wall, you can’t run away from home.

  Then I was walking along Swansea bay, which has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world. It was low tide and there was just this endless mud and seaweed, as far as the eye could see. It was cold out and there was no one on the beach but me. It felt otherworldly and I thought, this could be another planet, this could be what it is like. And when I tried to apply that to the story that I was creating, I found I could only do it from the adult viewpoint. I started recasting the story from the mother’s point of view and it became an altogether darker and more compelling story. I wrote the first notes of the story on the spot in my notebook and then rushed home to start drafting.

  So the link between the two beaches was in my head very early on but it didn’t become explicit until much later in the writing process.

  If you were in the situation, would you rather be like Megan, who had to hear about Wales from descriptions and would never experience Earth, or like her mother, who knew first-hand what her daughter was missing?

  Megan. When I started writing the concept of a colony from her point of view it was much more light-hearted and full of teenaged frustration and angst. Even though everything about the story changed, I’m not sure Megan’s story is that different. Her death is tragic but her life had value to her and she was a product of her environment. Megan’s mother tried to do her best for her husband and then her daughter and in the end she lost everything.

  You’ve written a wonderful article for the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) titled “Raising the Curtain,” which gives solid advice for writers and the need to market their books. Could you offer some guidance on marketing short fiction?

  Don’t sell yourself short. The best marketing for short fiction is to get the story published in prestigious magazines. I know a lot of short story writers who try to second-guess whether a magazine will take a story and whether it’s good enough. They end up self-rejecting rather than allowing the editor to decide. When I submitted “Alive, Alive Oh,” I had had eight form rejections from Lightspeed without a glimmer of interest in my writing. I enjoyed reading the magazine, but I was starting to convince myself that my stories were simply not a good match for Lightspeed. But that’s not my decision to make, that’s the editor’s decision—and I’m thrilled that in this case, JJA proved me wrong.

  Give readers a chance to find more of your work. Your author’s bio should not be the same as your query letter—it’s a different audience and serves a different purpose. Even if you have only a very basic website, invest in a single publications page with links to your stories—and then be sure to link to the website in your author’s bio. If I’ve enjoyed a story, I often like to find out more about the writer and with online magazines, it should be only a click away.

  Most of all, keep writing.

  Patrick J Stephens recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh and, after spending the entire year writing speculative fiction, came back with a Master’s in Social Science. His first collection (Aurichrome and Other Stories) can be found on Kindle and Nook.

  Author Spotlight: Theodora Goss

  Earnie Sotirokos

  “Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon” balances real life and fantastical elements. How did you know where to draw the line and still keep the story grounded?

  The truth is that I don’t think about that much when writing! I just know that I don’t want my fantasy to be ungrounded, so it’s a sort of balancing act, like in baking. You don’t want a recipe to be too sweet, or at least I don’t. So I add sour cherries to my brownies, which is something I learned to do in Budapest. I suppose it’s the Easte
rn European in me: I want my fantasy in contact with the real world. But I don’t think much about how I do it, just as I didn’t think much about how to create a recipe for sour cherry brownies. I did it by instinct and taste. (It’s actually a terrific recipe …) So Sylvania borders on real countries, and you can get there by train.

  Did you invent Sylvania and the moon world at the same time or were they independent ideas that happened to fuse together nicely?

  I think the basic idea of the story, with the hound asking for the princess, came to me first. I often think first in plot. Then the characters seemed to follow naturally, then the settings. Sylvania was a lot of fun to create. But it’s actually larger than this story: I’ve set several other stories there, and I’d like to write more about that country. It’s my way of exploring the history of Eastern Europe, a kind of fantastical thought experiment.

  I pictured Sirius as a massive, albino St. Bernard. What did he look like in your head?

  Well, he’s certainly large enough for Princess Lucinda to ride on! The funny thing is, when I started writing this story, I thought there was a fairy tale out there with a large white hound, and that I was writing a modern version of it, the way writers so often write modern versions of fairy tales. But I started looking for it, and couldn’t find it! If anyone out there knows of a fairy tale with a large white hound, let me know! In my mind, he looks rather like a wolfhound, but that’s because I used to have two large wolfhounds.

  Do you have a favorite “protip” you’d like to share with aspiring writers?

  Learn to use the past perfect tense? No, seriously, I’ve taught even MFA students who weren’t familiar with the past perfect. But the larger lesson is, grammar and punctuation are your tools. You need to learn to use them correctly and incorrectly-on-purpose. And the second use may be even more important than the first!