by Ted Chiang
Lightspeed Magazine
Issue 31, December 2012
Table of Contents
Editorial, December 2012
“Story of Your Life”—Ted Chiang (ebook-exclusive)
Cold Days—Jim Butcher (novel excerpt)
Interview: Junot Diaz
Interview: Tad Williams
Artist Gallery: Luis Lasahido
Artist Spotlight: Luis Lasahido
The Perfect Match—Ken Liu (SF)
Swanwatch—Yoon Ha Lee (SF)
Dreams in Dust—D. Thomas Minton (SF)
Lazaro y Antonio—Marta Randall (SF)
An Accounting—Brian Evenson (fantasy)
Family Teeth (Part 5): American Jackal—J.T. Petty (fantasy)
Catskin—Kelly Link (fantasy)
Family Teeth (Part 6): St. Polycarp’s Home For Happy Wanderers—Sarah Langan (fantasy)
Author Spotlight: Ted Chiang (ebook-exclusive)
Author Spotlight: Ken Liu
Author Spotlight: Yoon Ha Lee
Author Spotlight: D. Thomas Minton
Author Spotlight: Marta Randall
Author Spotlight: Brian Evenson
Author Spotlight: J.T. Petty
Author Spotlight: Kelly Link
Author Spotlight: Sarah Langan
Coming Attractions
© 2012, Lightspeed Magazine
Cover Art and artist gallery images by Luis Lasahido.
Ebook design by Neil Clarke.
www.lightspeedmagazine.com
Editorial, December 2012
John Joseph Adams
Welcome to issue thirty-one of Lightspeed!
As I write this editorial, I’m just back from the World Fantasy Convention, which was held in Toronto this year. As always, it was a wonderful time, catching up with old friends and colleagues and meeting new ones. We held some promotional events at the convention for Lightspeed and Nightmare, which were well attended, and we had three hundred copies of a Lightspeed/Nightmare sampler distributed amongst the membership, none of which seemed to end up on the “freebie/unwanted books” table afterward, which we took as a good sign. Alas, I did once again manage to not win the World Fantasy Award, but it really is truly an honor to be nominated.
Last month I told you about my new anthology, Epic: Legends of Fantasy. In case you missed that editorial, briefly: Epic is an anthology reprinting the best epic fantasy short fiction, featuring authors such as George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, and more. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com/epic.
This month, I have another new book out, or rather a new edition of one of my already published books. Night Shade Books has just released a new revised and expanded edition of my dystopian fiction anthology Brave New Worlds. This new edition contains three stories not included in the first edition, including “The Perfect Match” by Ken Liu, which appears as an original in this month’s issue of Lightspeed. To learn more about Brave New Worlds, visit johnjosephadams.com/brave-new-worlds.
And, finally—have you checked out our new sister-magazine Nightmare yet? If you enjoy horror and dark fantasy, we hope you’ll do so if you haven’t already. Our first issue featured four all-new stories by Laird Barron, Sarah Langan, Jonathan Maberry, and Genevieve Valentine; the November issue included original fiction by horror legend Ramsey Campbell and up-and-coming writer Desirina Boskovich, along with classic reprints by Joe Haldeman and Poppy Z. Brite. And the December issue has original fiction by bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson and new writer J.B. Park, along with reprints by Sarah Pinborough and Tananarive Due. Just visit www.nightmare-magazine.com, and either read it for free online, or buy one of our ebook editions—or subscribe!
Speaking of subscriptions … . You may have noticed that Lightspeed’s subscription price went up recently, from $1.99 an issue to $2.99 an issue (e.g., from $23.88 to $35.88 annually). We just wanted to briefly explain why.
As many of you know, Lightspeed has been available as a subscription via Amazon.com’s Periodicals program since late 2011. What you may not have known is that Amazon actually sets the price on those subscriptions. When Lightspeed first launched as an Amazon subscription, it was before the Lightspeed-Fantasy merger, at which point the issues were about 30,000-35,000 words long. At that time, we sold individual issues for $2.99 and Amazon priced Lightspeed at $1.99 a month for subscribers.
Post-merger, we doubled our amount of fiction content by merging Fantasy Magazine into Lightspeed, and then also added in the novella reprints to each ebook issue as well, taking each ebook issue to around 80,000-85,000 words total. We raised our cover price to $3.99, but Amazon kept our subscription price at $1.99 per issue; Amazon reviews periodicals pricing on their own schedule—regardless of what the publisher may prefer—so it wasn’t until the past couple of weeks that they reviewed the pricing for Lightspeed. After their review, they adjusted the subscription price up to $2.99, due, we assume, to the fact that each issue of the magazine is now much longer. Our individual issue price remains at $3.99 an issue, so subscribers will still be saving a dollar an issue by subscribing (or about 25% off the cover price).
So, the price increase is not something that was under our control, but we feel like it is a fair price for the magazine, and we hope you’ll agree and continue to subscribe. Rest assured, we’re not going to take this newfound income and spend it frivolously; indeed, we plan to take it and invest it back into Lightspeed, to make it the best magazine it can be.
With all that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:
We have a pair of connected fantasy stories by husband-and-wife creative duo J.T. Petty and Sarah Langan (“Family Teeth, Part 5: American Jackal” and “Family Teeth, Part 6: St. Polycarp’s Home for Happy Wanderers”), along with fantasy reprints by Brian Evenson (“An Accounting”) and Kelly Link (“Catskin”).
Plus, we have original science fiction by D. Thomas Minton (“Dreams in Dust”) and Ken Liu (“The Perfect Match”), and SF reprints by Yoon Ha Lee (“Swanwatch”) and Marta Randall (“Lazaro y Antonio”).
For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestseller Tad Williams and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz. Plus, we have an excerpt of the new Dresden Files novel, Cold Days, by Jim Butcher.
Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for the Culture Box Set, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of Iain M. Banks’s legendary Culture series and includes the first three novels in the series (Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, and Use of Weapons). You can find more from Orbit—including digital short fiction and monthly ebook deals—at www.orbitbooks.net.
It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And remember, there are several ways you can sign up to be notified of new Lightspeed content:
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Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publish
er and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Epic, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade), and Robot Uprisings (2013, Doubleday). He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
Story of Your Life
Ted Chiang
Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail. Your dad and I have just come back from an evening out, dinner and a show; it’s after midnight. We came out onto the patio to look at the full moon; then I told your dad I wanted to dance, so he humors me and now we’re slow-dancing, a pair of thirtysomethings swaying back and forth in the moonlight like kids. I don’t feel the night chill at all. And then your dad says, “Do you want to make a baby?”
Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue; when we move out you’ll still be too young to remember the house, but we’ll show you pictures of it, tell you stories about it. I’d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you’re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you’re ready to have children of your own, and we’ll never get that chance.
Telling it to you any earlier wouldn’t do any good; for most of your life you won’t sit still to hear such a romantic—you’d say sappy—story. I remember the scenario of your origin you’ll suggest when you’re twelve.
“The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn’t have to pay,” you’ll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the closet.
“That’s right,” I’ll say. “Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it.”
“If you weren’t my mother, this would be illegal,” you’ll say, seething as you unwind the power cord and plug it into the wall outlet.
That will be in the house on Belmont Street. I’ll live to see strangers occupy both houses: the one you’re conceived in and the one you grow up in. Your dad and I will sell the first a couple years after your arrival. I’ll sell the second shortly after your departure. By then Nelson and I will have moved into our farmhouse, and your dad will be living with what’s-her-name.
I know how this story ends; I think about it a lot. I also think a lot about how it began, just a few years ago, when ships appeared in orbit and artifacts appeared in meadows. The government said next to nothing about them, while the tabloids said every possible thing.
And then I got a phone call, a request for a meeting.
I spotted them waiting in the hallway, outside my office. They made an odd couple; one wore a military uniform and a crewcut, and carried an aluminum briefcase. He seemed to be assessing his surroundings with a critical eye. The other one was easily identifiable as an academic: full beard and mustache, wearing corduroy. He was browsing through the overlapping sheets stapled to a bulletin board nearby.
“Colonel Weber, I presume?” I shook hands with the soldier. “Louise Banks.”
“Dr. Banks. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” he said.
“Not at all; any excuse to avoid the faculty meeting.”
Colonel Weber indicated his companion. “This is Dr. Gary Donnelly, the physicist I mentioned when we spoke on the phone.”
“Call me Gary,” he said as we shook hands. “I’m anxious to hear what you have to say.”
We entered my office. I moved a couple of stacks of books off the second guest chair, and we all sat down. “You said you wanted me to listen to a recording. I presume this has something to do with the aliens?”
“All I can offer is the recording,” said Colonel Weber.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
Colonel Weber took a tape machine out of his briefcase and pressed play. The recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking the water out of its fur.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
I withheld my comparison to a wet dog. “What was the context in which this recording was made?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“It would help me interpret those sounds. Could you see the alien while it was speaking? Was it doing anything at the time?”
“The recording is all I can offer.”
“You won’t be giving anything away if you tell me that you’ve seen the aliens; the public’s assumed you have.”
Colonel Weber wasn’t budging. “Do you have any opinion about its linguistic properties?” he asked.
“Well, it’s clear that their vocal tract is substantially different from a human vocal tract. I assume that these aliens don’t look like humans?”
The colonel was about to say something noncommittal when Gary Donelly asked, “Can you make any guesses based on the tape?”
“Not really. It doesn’t sound like they’re using a larynx to make those sounds, but that doesn’t tell me what they look like.”
“Anything—is there anything else you can tell us?” asked Colonel Weber.
I could see he wasn’t accustomed to consulting a civilian. “Only that establishing communications is going to be really difficult because of the difference in anatomy. They’re almost certainly using sounds that the human vocal tract can’t reproduce, and maybe sounds that the human ear can’t distinguish.”
“You mean infra-or ultrasonic frequencies?” asked Gary Donelly.
“Not specifically. I just mean that the human auditory system isn’t an absolute acoustic instrument; it’s optimized to recognize the sounds that a human larynx makes. With an alien vocal system, all bets are off.” I shrugged. “Maybe we’ll be able to hear the difference between alien phonemes, given enough practice, but it’s possible our ears simply can’t recognize the distinctions they consider meaningful. In that case, we’d need a sound spectrograph to know what an alien is saying.”
Colonel Weber asked, “Suppose I gave you an hour’s worth of recordings; how long would it take you to determine if we need this sound spectrograph or not?”
“I couldn’t determine that with just a recording no matter how much time I had. I’d need to talk with the aliens directly.”
The colonel shook his head. “Not possible.”
I tried to break it to him gently. “That’s your call, of course. But the only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with a native speaker, and by that I mean asking questions, holding a conversation, that sort of thing. Without that, it’s simply not possible. So if you want to learn the aliens’ language, someone with training in field linguistics—whether it’s me or someone else—will have to talk with an alien. Recordings alone aren’t sufficient.”
Colonel Weber frowned. “You seem to be implying that no alien could have learned human languages by monitoring our broadcasts.”
“I doubt it. They’d need instructional material specifically designed to teach human languages to nonhumans. Either that, or interaction with a human. If they had either of those, they could learn a lot from TV, but otherwise, they wouldn’t have a starting point.”
The colonel clearly found this interesting; evidently his philosophy was, the less the aliens knew, the better. Gary Donnelly read the colonel’s expression too and rolled his eyes. I suppressed a smile.
Then Colonel Weber asked, “Suppose you were learning a new language by talking to its speakers; could you do it without teaching them English?”
“That would depend on how cooperative the native speakers were. They’d a
lmost certainly pick up bits and pieces while I’m learning their language, but it wouldn’t have to be much if they’re willing to teach. On the other hand, if they’d rather learn English than teach us their language, that would make things far more difficult.”
The colonel nodded. “I’ll get back to you on this matter.”
The request for that meeting was perhaps the second most momentous phone call in my life. The first, of course, will be the one from Mountain Rescue. At that point your dad and I will be speaking to each other maybe once a year, tops. After I get that phone call, though, the first thing I’ll do will be to call your father.
He and I will drive out together to perform the identification, a long silent car ride. I remember the morgue, all tile and stainless steel, the hum of refrigeration and smell of antiseptic. An orderly will pull the sheet back to reveal your face. Your face will look wrong somehow, but I’ll know it’s you.
“Yes, that’s her,” I’ll say. “She’s mine.”
You’ll be twenty-five then.
The MP checked my badge, made a notation on his clipboard, and opened the gate; I drove the off-road vehicle into the encampment, a small village of tents pitched by the Army in a farmer’s sun-scorched pasture. At the center of the encampment was one of the alien devices, nicknamed “looking glasses.”
According to the briefings I’d attended, there were nine of these in the United States, one hundred and twelve in the world. The looking glasses acted as two-way communication devices, presumably with the ships in orbit. No one knew why the aliens wouldn’t talk to us in person; fear of cooties, maybe. A team of scientists, including a physicist and a linguist, was assigned to each looking glass; Gary Donnelly and I were on this one.
Gary was waiting for me in the parking area. We navigated a circular maze of concrete barricades until we reached the large tent that covered the looking glass itself. In front of the tent was an equipment cart loaded with goodies borrowed from the school’s phonology lab; I had sent it ahead for inspection by the Army.
Also outside the tent were three tripod-mounted video cameras whose lenses peered, through windows in the fabric wall, into the main room. Everything Gary and I did would be reviewed by countless others, including military intelligence. In addition, we would each send daily reports, of which mine had to include estimates on how much English I thought the aliens could understand.
