by Nina Allan
They waited in tormented patience as the fortune-teller creaked and crutched, with painful slowness, into the darkness.
Manimenesh, brusquely, threw out his red velvet sleeves and clapped for wine. “Give us a song, Khayali.”
The poet pulled the cowl of his cloak over his head. “My head rings with an awful silence,” he said. “I see all waymarks effaced, the joyous pleasances converted into barren wilderness. Jackals resort here, ghosts frolic, and demons sport; the gracious halls, and rich boudoirs, that once shone like the sun, now, overwhelmed by desolation, seem like the gaping moths of savage beasts!” He looked at the dancing-girls, his eyes brimming with tears. “I picture these maidens, lying beneath the dust, or dispersed to distant parts and far regions, scattered by the hand of exile, torn to pieces by the fingers of expatriation.”
Manimenesh smiled on him kindly. “My boy,” he said, “if others cannot hear your songs, or embrace these women, or drink this wine, the loss is not ours, but theirs. Let us, then, enjoy all three, and let those unborn do the regretting.”
“Your patron is wise,” said Ibn Watunan, patting the poet on the shoulder. “You see him here, favored by Allah with every luxury; and you saw that filthy madman, bedeviled by plague. That lunatic, who pretends to great wisdom, only croaks of ruin; while our industrious friend makes the world a better place, by fostering nobility and learning. Could God forsake a city like this, with all its charms, to bring about that fool’s disgusting prophecies?” He lifted his cup to Elfelilet, and drank deeply.
“But delightful Audoghast,” said the poet, weeping. “All our loveliness, lost to the sands.”
“The world is wide,” said Bagayoko, “and the years are long. It is not for us to claim immortality, not even if we are poets. But take comfort, my friend. Even if these walls and buildings crumble, there will always be a place like Audoghast, as long as men love profit! The mines are inexhaustible, and elephants thick as fleas. Mother Africa will always give us gold and ivory.”
“Always?” said the poet hopefully, dabbing at his eyes.
“Well, surely there are always slaves,” said Manimenesh, and smiled, and winked. The others laughed with him, and there was joy again.
© 1985 by Bruce Sterling.
Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Bruce Sterling is the author of many novels, including Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather, Distraction, Holy Fire, The Zenith Angle, The Caryatids, and, with William Gibson, The Difference Engine. He is the winner of three Locus Awards, two Hugos, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He is also the editor of the seminal cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades. Much of his short fiction, which has appeared in magazines such as F&SF and Omni, was recently collected in Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling.
Author Spotlight: Nina Allan
Moshe Siegel
In your novella, “Bellony,” freelance journalist Terri Goodall greets the resort town of Deal, noting at once the complacency permeating the residents and the inevitable “claustrophobia of stasis” that would eventually drive them elsewhere. Terri is herself familiar with this concept, having just quit her job and boyfriend, both. The reader is given a few details—displeasure with the scope of her position, in each case—yet not much more about the “why” of her abrupt and complete relocation. What do you think was the ultimate deciding factor behind Terri reshaping her life in such a bold (and risky) way?
That insidious knowledge that “this”—whatever “this” is—was not what she wanted, not what she set out for. Terri has the sense that she has allowed others to shape her life for her, rather than the other way around. She feels trapped between two rather dominating people—her boyfriend and her boss—who both think they know what’s best for her and are willing to see her forthright intelligence and creative talent only insofar as they can use it to enhance their own standing, or as it impacts directly upon themselves.
It’s a risk and a brave thing to take a leap from the known into the unknown—but Terri knows it has to be, and it has to be now, and that the only solution to her personal problems lies in herself, in her ability to act according to her own desires, not out of her perceived idea of what others want, need, or expect from her.
Allis Bennett’s (former) home plays a central role in this story, to the point of anthropomorphization: It shares secrets with Terri (feeling “subtly enchanted” once she becomes less a visitor, more a tenant) and is moved to restlessness along with Terri as the journalist uncovers revelations about the missing Allis Bennett. Is this sense unique to the particulars of “Bellony,” or do you, as one may suspect from reading this novella, have an abiding interest in mysterious old houses?
Abiding interest certainly—in fact I think it would be better described as a lifelong obsession! I love houses, both individually and as a concept. I have a particular passion for the architecture of the English terraced house, perhaps because it’s the ultimate micro-unit of British history. The landscape of this country is a patchwork of forward progress and temporal endurance. I always see my birth city of London as the supreme example of this, where a fourteenth century coaching inn can stand directly in the shadow of Europe’s tallest building, the Shard—and it can be okay. Somehow it all fits together; London is the most accommodating of cities and it can take anything. In the face of whatever befalls it, it retains its character.
But on a micro-level, the domestic residence, the house, is also a living, breathing example of this layering of history. Many millions of British homes—and I’m talking about ordinary homes lived in by ordinary families, not grand mansions—will have been consecutively lived in by tens of generations. There are bound to be ghosts! I honestly don’t know what I think about ghosts—I’m an agnostic on the subject—but I definitely have many times seemed to sense that mysterious residue of organic life a house carries within itself, the idea that houses tend to harbour the “vibrations,” if you like, of their past occupancies. I’ve “felt” both good houses and bad houses in my time, and I think such experiences are common to most people. Almost anyone you talk to will have a story to tell about a house they felt was watching them, or otherwise “haunted.” Every house has its mysteries; every house literally is a story in its own right.
There is a feeling of ambiguity in this story, blurring the lines between past/present, dreams/reality, truth/deception, and even in a physical context, the ’tween place of the coastline, neither entirely solid nor wholly unstable. Did this theme naturally arise from Terri’s mental state, unanchored from her normal life and adrift in Allis’s, or did you intentionally play with the concept of being caught between two states?
Definitely both! Terri’s changing personal circumstances naturally affect the way her story plays out—she’s just broken up with a partner and quit her job, so she’s able and willing to take advantage of these disruptions and head out into the unknown. Rather than be daunted by change, she’s determined to use it. But this brings with it the twin effect of becoming unanchored, as you put it, and when one is unanchored, one can sometimes drift a long way further out to sea than one intended.
Just as importantly, though, I am drawn naturally to narratives of this kind, and to characters who don’t use “normal life” or societal convention as an excuse for not doing what they want to do, for not pursuing their desires. Both Terri and Allis are ruthless in their own way—they both go for what they want, and I admire that.
Terri comes to think that the emotional burden of having made it out of WWII alive while her sister (blood relative, or no) did not is the underlying reason behind Allis Bennett’s solitary yet many-layered life. What drew you to explore the theme of survivor’s guilt?
I think anyone with any degree of empathy can suffer from survivor’s guilt at some time in their lives, and I don’t think you need to have been involved in a traumatic or world-defining event, either—you can f
eel survivor’s guilt simply by seeing a report of a car crash or a house fire on the news, and it doesn’t matter if the people who died or were harmed are related or even known to you or not. It’s simply a heightened awareness of another’s suffering, that instinctive human ability to ask “what if?” Sometimes empathy can be so strong though it’s a destructive force, ruining and warping the life of the person who feels too much of it, and who ends up blaming themselves, almost, for the whole weight of sorrow on the world. It’s a kind of opposite force to the crippling lack of empathy that results in the amorality that we see in serial killers, for example, or other sociopaths. Either of these extreme qualities can make an interesting subject for a story.
I chose the World War Two theme for “Bellony” because it gives a shape and texture to the events that is immediately recognisable, immediately important—it gets people thinking and asking questions. What if? WW2 is still an immensely powerful collective memory within the European consciousness, it’s still talked about, has films made about it, it’s still emotionally very resonant. I suppose it’s inevitable that if you’re a writer, you’re going to write about it, in some form, at some time. I’ve touched on WW2 several times before—in a story called “Feet of Clay,” which is directly about a Holocaust survivor and the effect her experiences have on her modern day family. There’s also a long novella called “The Gateway,” forthcoming in my new book Stardust, which is partly about the experiences of ordinary civilians in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power.
These subjects are very serious and sensitive, and I always feel a measure of caution when approaching them. Any writer has a duty, when writing about a subject she does not “own,” to listen to the voices of other people and writers who experienced these things at first hand.
Presumably the side door was papered-over after Allis Bennett’s disappearance. Do you have any speculation as to whether subsequent tenants had realized that, when using that door, the facts of their reality … shifted … and that the door had to be barred because of its enchantment? Or was it just the annoyingly-stuck outer lock that led to the door’s disuse? Were Allis and Terri special, in some way—or in need, even—for the door to give them a fresh start in a new reality?
I think the word “need” is crucial here, actually. In my own mind the door would only work for the right person—someone already alive to the necessity of change and the possibility of enchantment. Terri and Allis are spiritual twins in this way. For anyone without this kind of active imagination, I think the door might just be a door. I think there are some people who are naturally willing—naturally eager—to look into the spaces between what is commonly recognised as “reality” and that other, rather more slippery commodity, possibility. It is this eagerness, this yearning for possibility that characterises many, if not all, of my stories.
Do you have any other projects upcoming or in the works that you would like to share with us?
At this moment I’m working on the final draft of my first novel, What Happened to Maree. It has a science fictional feel to it, but like “Bellony,” it’s very much caught up in the idea of overlapping realities.
I have a collection out later this year with PS Publishing called Stardust, which explores the life and identity of a fictional horror movie actor named Ruby Castle. The book is in the form of six “episodes,” which take place at different times in Ruby’s past or future and across the whole spectrum of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Each of the episodes works individually as its own self-contained story, but I wrote each very much in the knowledge or foreknowledge of the others, and I think they gain a great deal from being read as a continuing narrative. They’re like the stories in my collection The Silver Wind in this way, although Stardust is very different in tone, its colours are darker.
I’m very much in love with this idea of using different stories to tell a story, and one of the most inspiring things about speculative fiction is the way it invites a writer to play games with narrative form as well as overturning quotidian reality.
Moshe Siegel works as a slusher, proofreader, and interviewer at Lightspeed, interns at the pleasure of a Random House-published author, freelance edits hither and yon, and is a Publisher’s Assistant at Codhill Press. His overladen bookshelf and smug ereader glare at each other across his home office in upstate New York, and he isn’t quite sure what to think about it all. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.
Author Spotlight: Desirina Boskovich
Kevin McNeil
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process and what inspired “Deus Ex Arca?”
The idea for “Deus Ex Arca” popped into my head one afternoon when I was reading space opera. I started thinking … it’s a common narrative assumption that humans will one day obtain alien technology, either by discovering it in space, or capturing it in a war. Then, we’ll find a way to deploy that technology to our advantage, possibly with unforeseen consequences.
But such an idea seems awfully presumptuous. It assumes that aliens are so nearly like us, and so close to us in their arc of technological development, that their tools would represent only a small intuitive leap.
In reality, if alien civilizations do exist, their conceptual framework would most likely be utterly inscrutable to us; and if they have the technological prowess to reach earth in one piece, their technology is exponentially more advanced than ours. They would be working with different goals, different metaphors, different ergonomics. Their technology would seem like magic, and understanding it would require a total rewiring of the way we view the world. Their technology would most likely not even look like technology to us.
Just imagine a twelfth century farmer, who through some quirk in the space-time continuum, stumbles upon a working iPhone. How long might it take him to crack the password, fire up Safari, and start researching soil fertility? And just remember, the farmer actually has an edge in this situation, because he’s got a lot more in common with the iPhone’s creator: basic brain hardware, spatial reasoning skills, and number of fingers. A human who stumbles upon alien technology would not be assured these advantages.
So, I wanted to write a story that reflects the essential absurdity of humans interacting with alien technology, and illustrates the immense gap of consciousness between ourselves and an alien Other. With that idea came the image of the box: an artifact completely lacking in any kind of distinguishing physical characteristics. I wanted the box to defy rational or logical expectations; I wanted the box to be immune to the scientific method. Our impulse, naturally, would be to experiment with the box, trying to determine cause and effect. But the box breaks that concept. It resists and refuses any attempt at understanding.
(I should add the caveat here: none of this is meant as a criticism of stories where humans do successfully deploy alien technology. I love a good story, especially a good story set in space, and I don’t think realism should ever get in the way of telling one. I just wanted to try something different.)
I enjoyed the tone of this story, which ranged from the absurd (a soldier turning into a tuna sandwich) to the horrific (Jackson eating the tuna sandwich). Was this story particularly challenging to write? If so, how?
Actually, it was extremely easy. This was one of those stories that just happened. The first scene and the last scene were embedded in my initial idea for the story, unfolding in my mind in a very cinematic way. With the beginning and the ending in mind, I sketched out how to get from point A to point B, noting all the major events of the story, which at the time just seemed obvious. Then I sat at my desk and wrote the entire first draft in one sitting, probably six or seven hours, with a few breaks for snacks or tea. I wish writing could always be like that.
But regarding the range from the absurd to the horrific, I suppose one challenging aspect was continually resisting my own impulse to make the box act according to certain rules. Unconsciously, my writer brain kept attempting to create a pattern, to decipher the meaning behind
certain destructive incidents, and to fit the effects of the box into a coherent logical narrative. And I kept consciously pushing back against that instinct.
Likewise, as the coherent structure of the world is eroded by disintegration and decay, I wanted that effect to be mirrored in the text. Jackson experiences a gradual unraveling of meaning, and I wanted the reader to experience that, too. So as the story progresses, the characters become disoriented, the narration becomes fragmented, and the narrative becomes more illogical. But I did run into the limits of this technique in the final scene; perhaps language is not the best medium for representing beings that are beyond language.
This is the second story I’ve read of yours with a child as the main character (“Celadon,” Clarkesworld, January 2009). You’ve got a talent for creating innocent and believable adolescent characters. I found myself rooting for Jackson throughout the story, but one question I kept asking myself as I read your story was: Why did the box choose Jackson?
I have several answers to this question. On one level, the box chooses Jackson because he is the first to touch it; perhaps there is some kind of immediate pair bonding that becomes impossible to undo. On another level, the box chooses Jackson because the box is Jackson, and it is only returning to him, as it has done so many times before. On an entirely different level, the box only chooses Jackson in this iteration, or version, or worldline; perhaps there is a box for every human on earth.
I think I chose Jackson because he represents for me a kind of primal innocence. When the story begins, he is in that raw early stage of identity formation, where likes and dislikes are simple and unquestioned, actions are impulsive, and the ego is immaterial. Perhaps because of this he’s better equipped to deal with something so irrational. But he’s also completely vulnerable.
The ending to this story comes full circle, which left me satisfied, but with questions about the next “test.” Do you think humanity will ever figure out how to reverse engineer the box?
