Lightspeed Magazine Issue 31

by Ted Chiang

  I don’t remember us coming to blows. We’re both very similar guys, although Blake is much younger than I am, but we’re both a bit similar looking and we’re a bit … I wouldn’t say “pugnacious,” but we’re certainly not shy about bumping into people when we’re playing a sport. We both have a football background, even though we mostly play basketball now. I’m sure it would make a better story if I had tried to punch him out or something, but as I recall, it was no more than the usual sort of testosterone-fueled jostling and bumping.

  The way he told it is, he said, “Who do you think you are?” and you said, “I’m Tad Williams,” and he said, “You’re Tad Williams? You wrote The Dragonbone Chair? Oh my god, I love that book.”

  [laughs] Again, I don’t want to undercut Blake’s good story. The only thing I would not say is “I’m Tad Williams,” assuming somebody would know who that was. I’ve had an entire professional lifetime of finding out how few people actually do know what that name means or know anything about what I do for a living. So that’s kind of more like a good version of a story, but I don’t think I would actually say “I’m Tad Williams.” I think I might say, I don’t know, “I’m a writer.” That’s probably more how I would have phrased it. And then if he said, “Well, would I know you?” then I would have said, “Well, I’m Tad Williams. I write fantasy and science fiction,” and then we might have had that conversation.

  Are there any other new or upcoming projects you want to mention?

  I mentioned I’m doing the second Bobby Dollar book right now, and I’m pretty much finished with it. I’m doing a ton of short stories, including two that I just sent to John Joseph Adams in the last few months, one I just did for Gardner Dozois, and one I’m doing for an online magazine. So I seem to be in one of my patches where I’m doing a lot of short stories all at once, which is kind of fun because it’s a change of pace for me. Other than that, just the usual. People may get tired of hearing from me, but I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things that I want to write about.

  The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is hosted by:

  John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher 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) and Robot Uprisings (2013, Doubleday). He is also the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

  David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction, Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he’s contributed stories to several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He’s attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card’s Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.

  Artist Gallery

  Artist Spotlight: Luis Lasahido

  J. T. Glover

  Luis Lasahido lives and paints in Indonesia, where he works at Caravan Studio. He’s worked on projects in various media, including Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 and Drafted: 100 Days. Most of his art is created digitally, and it all started because he loved to draw …

  Can you discuss your process for deciding on the character and setting of “Paradox?”

  It comes from the meaning of the word “paradox” itself. Based on the definition I read in a dictionary, paradox is a self-contradictory statement or proposition that, when explained, may prove to be true. I thought about a small kid going to war, reflecting what’s happening in the world nowadays. This inspired me to draw an innocent little girl operating a war machine. [This month’s cover was previously the illustration for a Wacom competition based around the word “paradox.” –eds..]

  How much of a story do you imagine surrounding a work while you’re painting it? The subject of “Paradox” could almost be standing still, except for that glance to her left! Something is clearly happening outside of the frame.

  It’s a postwar situation, full of deaths, wrecks, and loss. The girl is looking at her surroundings, but she seems to be used to the overall condition of things.

  How much flexibility do you usually have with the creative briefs you’re given?

  It depends on the clients. There are many types of client; some of them may ask me to work strictly to the description and reference, and others are more flexible.

  Elsewhere you’ve talked about your love for movies and comics. Which do you think most influenced your art?

  I love both of them! But there are some things movies cannot do as well as comics, like the effect, expression, exaggerated form, and so on. Hence I spend my time more on comics, yet I still love both of them.

  Many of the scenes you paint are from a tilted or otherwise unusual perspective. How do you decide on the composition, or the viewpoint, of a particular work?

  When working on a project, let’s say an illustration, in the beginning I always look for appropriate references. Then I pick and use the best of each reference I’ve found, selecting for mood, composition, and perspective, and I assemble them into my illustration. It’s part of my learning process. As time goes by, I’m getting used to it, and I work automatically based on what I learned from the references.

  Do you set creative goals, either to increase the quality or the quantity of your work?

  Yes, absolutely. I think every artist has his or her creative goals. As an illustrator, I have my goals, too. I am a big fan of Craig Mullins’ art and I really want to be like him, making great works that inspire other artists and illustrators.

  Do you always work digitally, or do you use traditional media? How about for sketching?

  I use both. Sometimes I use traditional media for the sketch, but mostly I work digitally.

  Do your working methods differ between personal pieces and the work you do for clients?

  Of course. I can do more exploring in personal pieces, depending on my idea, and it can change anytime I want—the character, the style. Also, it has no deadline, so I can work freely on it. There are limitations with clients’ projects, they have descriptions and guidelines for what they want the illustration to look like, and there’s a time limit, too.

  One section of your deviantART gallery is devoted to “Children Illustration.” Do you currently illustrate for the children’s market, or would you like to work in that area?

  Actually I’m not working for the children’s market right now, but I really look forward to working for it someday.

  What’s next for you? What would you like to work on next?

  I really love illustrating, especially fantasy. I hope to work one day on card illustrations for Magic: The Gathering and concept art for fantasy games like Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, and World of Warcraft.

  J. T. Glover has published fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in Dark Recesses and Underground Voices, among other venues. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, he currently resides in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and a not inconsiderable number of fur-bearing friends. By day he is an academic reference librarian specializing in the humanities.

  The Perfect Match

  Ken Liu

  Sai woke to the rousing first movement of Vivaldi’s violin concerto in C minor, �
�Il Sospetto.”

  He lay still for a minute, letting the music wash over him like a gentle Pacific breeze. The room brightened as the blinds gradually opened to the sunlight. Tilly had woken him right at the end of a light sleep cycle, the optimal time. He felt great: refreshed, optimistic, ready to jump out of bed.

  Which is what he did next. “Tilly, that’s an inspired choice for a wake-up song.”

  “Of course,” Tilly spoke from the camera/speaker in the nightstand. “Who knows your tastes and moods better than I?” The voice, though electronic, was affectionate and playful.

  Sai went into the shower.

  “Remember to wear the new shoes today,” Tilly now spoke to him from the camera/speaker in the ceiling.

  “Why?”

  “You have a date after work.”

  “Oh, the new girl. Shoot, what’s her name? I know you told me—”

  “I’ll bring you up to speed after work. I’m sure you’ll like her. The compatibility index is very high. I think you’ll be in love for at least six months.”

  Sai looked forward to the date. Tilly had also introduced him to his last girlfriend, and that relationship had been wonderful. The break up afterwards was awful, of course, but it helped that Tilly had guided him through it. He felt that he had matured emotionally, and after a month on his own, was ready to start a new relationship.

  But first he still had to get through the workday. “What do you recommend for breakfast this morning?”

  “You are scheduled to attend the kickoff meeting for the Davis case at eleven, which means you’ll get a lunch paid for by the firm. I suggest you go light on the breakfast, maybe just a banana.”

  Sai was excited. All the paralegals at Chapman Singh Stevens & Rios lived for client lunches, made by the firm’s own executive chef. “Do I have time to make my own coffee?”

  “You do. Traffic is light this morning. But I suggest you go to this new smoothie place along the way instead—I can get you a coupon code.”

  “But I really want coffee.”

  “Trust me, you’ll love the smoothie.”

  Sai smiled as he turned off the shower. “Okay, Tilly. You always know best.”

  Although it was another pleasant and sunny morning in Las Aldamas, California—68 degrees Fahrenheit—Sai’s neighbor Jenny was wearing a thick winter coat, ski goggles, and a long, dark scarf that covered her hair and the rest of her face.

  “I thought I told you I didn’t want that thing installed,” she said as he stepped out of his apartment. Her voice was garbled through some kind of electronic filter. In response to his questioning look, she gestured to the camera over Sai’s door.

  Talking to Jenny was like talking to one of his grandmother’s friends who refused to use Centillion email or get a ShareAll account because they were afraid of having “the computer” know “all their business”—except that as far as he could tell, Jenny was his age. She had grown up a digital native, but somehow had missed the ethos of sharing.

  “Jenny, I’m not going to argue with you. I have a right to install anything I want over my door. And I want Tilly to keep an eye on my door when I’m away. Apartment 308 was just burglarized last week.”

  “But your camera will record visitors to my place, too, because we share this hallway.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t want Tilly to have any of my social graph.”

  Sai rolled his eyes. “What do you have to hide?”

  “That’s not the point—”

  “Yeah, yeah, civil liberties, freedom, privacy, blah blah blah … ”

  Sai was sick of arguing with people like Jenny. He had made the same point countless times: Centillion is not some big scary government. It’s a private company, whose motto happens to be “Make things better!” Just because you want to live in the dark ages doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of ubiquitous computing.

  He dodged around her bulky frame to get to the stairs.

  “Tilly doesn’t just tell you what you want,” Jenny shouted. “She tells you what to think. Do you even know what you really want any more?”

  Sai paused for a moment.

  “Do you?” she pressed.

  What a ridiculous question. Just the kind of pseudo-intellectual anti-technology rant that people like her mistake for profundity.

  He kept on walking.

  “Freak,” he muttered, expecting Tilly to chime in from his phone earpiece with some joke to cheer him up.

  But Tilly said nothing.

  Having Tilly around was like having the world’s best assistant:

  — “Hey Tilly, do you remember where I kept that Wyoming filing with the weird company name and the F merger from maybe six months ago?”

  — “Hey Tilly, can you get me a form for Section 131 Articles? Make sure it’s a form that associates working with Singh use.”

  — “Hey Tilly, memorize these pages. Assign them these tags: ‘Chapman,’ ‘favors buyer,’ ‘only use if associate is nice to me.’”

  For a while, Chapman Singh had resisted the idea of allowing employees to bring Tilly into the office, preferring their proprietary corporate AI system. But it proved too difficult to force employees to keep their personal calendars and recommendations rigidly separate from work ones, and once the partners started to violate the rules and use Tilly for work, IT had to support them.

  And Centillion had then pledged that they would encrypt all corporate-derived information in a secure manner and never use it for competitive purposes—only to give better recommendations to employees of Chapman Singh. After all, the mission statement of Centillion was to “arrange the world’s information to ennoble the human race,” and what could be more ennobling than making work more efficient, more productive, more pleasant?

  As Sai enjoyed his lunch, he felt very lucky. He couldn’t even imagine what drudgery work would have been like before Tilly came along.

  After work, Tilly guided Sai to the flower shop—of course Tilly had a coupon—and then, on the way to the restaurant, she filled Sai in on his date, Ellen: educational background, ShareAll profile, reviews by previous boyfriends/girlfriends, interests, likes, dislikes, and of course, pictures—dozens of photos recognized and gathered by Tilly from around the Net.

  Sai smiled. As usual, Tilly was right: Ellen was exactly his type.

  It was a truism that what a man wouldn’t tell his best friend, he’d happily search for on Centillion. Tilly knew all about what kind of women Sai found attractive, having observed the pictures and videos he perused late at night while engaging the Just-For-Me mode in his browser.

  And, of course, Tilly would know Ellen just as well as she knew him, so Sai knew that he would be exactly Ellen’s type, too.

  As predicted, it turned out they were into the same books, the same movies, the same music. They had compatible ideas about how hard one should work. They laughed at each other’s jokes. They fed off each other’s energy.

  Sai marveled at Tilly’s accomplishment. Four billion women on Earth, and Tilly seemed to have found the perfect match for him. It was just like hitting the “I Trust You” button on Centillion search back in the early days and how it knew just the right web page to take you to.

  Sai could feel himself falling in love, and he could tell that Ellen wanted to ask him to come home with her.

  Although everything had gone exceedingly well, if he was being completely honest with himself, it wasn’t quite as exciting and lovely as he had expected. Everything was indeed going smoothly, but maybe just a tad too smoothly. It was as if they already knew everything there was to know about each other. There were no surprises, no thrill of finding the truly new.

  In other words, the date was a bit boring.

  As Sai’s mind wandered, there was a lull in the conversation. They smiled at each other and just tried to enjoy the silence.

  In that moment, Tilly’s voice burst into his earpiece, “You might want to ask her if she likes contemporary Jap
anese desserts. I know just the place.”

  Sai realized that though he hadn’t been aware of it until just then, he did suddenly have a craving for something sweet and delicate.

  Tilly doesn’t just tell you what you want. She tells you what to think.

  Sai paused.

  Do you even know what you really want any more?

  He tried to sort out his feelings. Did Tilly just figure out what he hadn’t even known he wanted? Or did she put the thought into his head?

  Do you?

  The way Tilly filled in that lull … it was as if Tilly didn’t trust that he would be able to manage the date on his own, as if Tilly thought he wouldn’t know what to say or do if she didn’t jump in.

  Sai suddenly felt irritated. The moment had been ruined.

  I’m being treated like a child.

  “I know you’ll like it. I have a coupon.”

  “Tilly,” he said, “please stop monitoring and terminate auto-suggestions.”

  “Are you sure? Gaps in sharing can cause your profile to be incomplete—”

  “Yes, please cease.”

  With a beep, Tilly turned herself off.

  Ellen stared at him, eyes and mouth wide open in shock.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to talk to you alone, just the two of us.” Sai smiled. “It’s nice sometimes to just be ourselves, without Tilly, don’t you think?”

  Ellen looked confused. “But you know that the more Tilly knows, the more helpful she can be. Don’t you want to be sure we don’t make silly mistakes on a first date? We’re both busy, and Tilly—”

  “I know what Tilly can do. But—”

  Ellen held up a hand, silencing him. She tilted her head, listening to her headset.

  “I have the perfect idea,” Ellen said. “There’s this new club, and I know Tilly can get us a coupon.”

  Sai shook his head, annoyed. “Let’s try to think of something to do without Tilly. Would you please turn her off?”