Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49
Page 44
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Maria Romasco Moore
Jude Griffin
What was the seed for “The Great Loneliness”?
The story grew out of the smoking wreckage of a novel I wrote in my late teens called A Peculiar Geogony, which was about the earth deciding to, essentially, give birth. It was a truly awful novel and I never finished it, but a few tiny elements of it eventually became this story.
What was your thinking behind the font names?
In fairness, Perpetua is the also the name of a third-century Christian martyr and Kartika is the name of a month in the Hindu Calendar. But yes, they are also fonts and I guess it sort of reinforces the idea of the daughters being designed. Fonts are these embellished interpretations of the shapes which constitute our alphabet and the girls are embellished interpretations of the sequences which constitute our genome.
Alas, poor Frank. Would the narrator have been less lonely had plate tectonics not had their way with Frank?
I doubt it. In my experience, two people together in a room can be just as lonely as one. Maybe even more.
Whose works of science fiction destruction do you admire?
Rather than list the thousand and one writers whose eloquence and imagination constantly inspire and intimidate me, I’d like to jump genres a little and broadcast my fondness for the films of Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris, Stalker) and Shane Carruth (Primer, Upstream Color.) I would urge any lover of moody, evocative science fiction who has not already seen these to seek them out immediately!
Any projects you want to tell us about?
I recently finished up a series of interconnected flash fictions based on old photographs I’ve collected over the years, and I am currently working on a fantasy novel about a mapmaker and a drug addict who live in a building so big that even sunlight is delivered via plumbing.
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Eleanor Arnason
Jude Griffin
What was the spark for “Knapsack Poems”?
Reading The Narrow Road to the Far North by the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. It’s a combination travel journal and poetry collection. A wonderful book, except Basho describes finding an abandoned baby next to a river. He and his companion moralize over how sad this is, a mother has been forced to abandon her child; and then they go on, leaving the child by the river to die. My story is an attempt to retell Basho’s story with proper behavior and a good ending.
I loved the central conceit of the multiple-bodied selves, and it reads so well—was it as easy to write?
No. I have written several stories about the Goxhat—“Knapsack Poems;” “The Glutton,” which was published in Tales of the Unanticipated and reprinted in Apex; and two Lydia Duluth stories as yet unpublished. In every case, writing about the Goxhat made my head hurt, but they are so much fun I can’t stop.
How did you approach the poems: the structure, the wording? They feel haiku-ish.
Basho was a very great haiku poet, and my poems try for the feeling of haiku.
The story of a praise poem composed to save the poet’s life comes from a far different source: Egils saga Skallagrimssonar, which is a thirteenth-century Icelandic novel about Egil Skallagrimsson, a famous tenth-century Viking and skaldic poet. Skaldic poetry did not rhyme, but Egil’s poem for King Eirik Bloodyaxe does use rhymes. The result must have been spectacular in the tenth century, and it saved Egil’s life.
Much is familiar about how the genders are described in the story (for example, females are “warm and nurturing”)—did you consider non-classic depictions for gender?
I did not. Dealing with characters with multiple bodies of different sexes was as much as I could handle. As far as I can recall, I didn’t notice that the sexual traits are stereotypes. But you are right. They are.
What were some of the more interesting responses you got to this story?
I don’t remember any. When you say something is “interesting” in Minnesota, it means you don’t like it, but are too polite to say so. My impression is people mostly liked this story.
Any projects you want to tell us about?
I have a collection of fantasy stories based on Icelandic literature and folklore coming out this year. The title is The Hidden Folk, which is what Icelanders call elves.
There are three Lydia Duluth stories, two of them with Goxhat, which haven’t sold as yet. I want to sell them if possible, though they are pretty long, and then put together a collection of Lydia Duluth stories, including all the Goxhat stories. The working title is The Adventures of Lydia Duluth. Maybe I should add, Featuring the Goxhat.
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
Author Spotlight: Maureen McHugh
Jude Griffin
Are Janna and her people passive or pacifist?
I don’t think Janna’s people are particularly either. When I wrote “The Cost to Be Wise,” I was thinking a lot about things like the Prime Directive, you know, the rule in Star Trek that says don’t interfere in a culture. It seems rather patronizing to decide for some other culture what they can and cannot learn from you, what they can and cannot want. Who are we to decide that someone else can’t have Coca-Cola?
On the other hand, our own history shows that when cultures interact, the exchange is fraught. Colonialism, either by conquering Africa or by selling developing nations opium and McDonald’s, hasn’t been particularly kind either. I read about attempts to empower people to make their own decisions and resist commercial colonialism and I wondered if there was a way to do that. So I tried to write about it. Janna and her people chose not to have guns because they don’t have the infrastructure—mining, manufacturing, etc.—to supply themselves with ammunition and parts. If they need to get ammunition from someone else, that becomes a lever by which another culture has power over them.
Of course, in the story, that decision has devastating repercussions.
Was the viewpoint character always Janna? Did you ever consider Veronique as the protagonist?
It was always Janna. It’s true that Veronique is someone I knew I would understand better than I understood Janna. She’d have been a lot easier to write. (I read a lot about reindeer herding, for example. Janna knows a lot about animal husbandry. Veronique probably doesn’t.) Veronique is basically a college student doing study abroad.
I thought about doing multiple points of view but ended up just sticking with Janna.
You’ve said of your experience teaching at Clarion that you realized the next generation of writers are being shaped to a degree by your generation’s work: “You’re shaping them in the sense that often they react against you—you become a place from which to push off.” In what ways have you seen that manifest?
I don’t read widely in the genre—I read across a lot of genres and not widely in any of them, if you want to know the truth. There is a lot less sc
ience fiction at Clarion these days, a lot more fantasy. It feels as if there’s a lot of nostalgia in SF, things like James S.A. Corey’s space opera and Scalzi’s Redshirts. That’s not to say that they don’t say contemporary things, but they riff on genre conventions. At the same time there’s a lot of stuff that feels like a development of the things that interested me and my generation as well, like Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Did I really say that about the next generation of writers? It seems rather arrogant of me. (I suspect I did.)
How has the experience of living in China shaped your writing?
Living in China had a huge influence on this story, although there is nothing particularly Chinese about it. I remember I was in the then-Soviet Union (on a three-week AARP tour; I was thirty-one, but that’s another story), and we were in the country. People have these tiny little summer houses, about the size of garden sheds, dacha, and they’re painted bright colors and have garden plots. This one had window boxes full of bright red geraniums, and I thought, Wow, they have geraniums in Russia, too!
When I’ve traveled, so much has been different, but so much has been the same. So much is so human. To me, that’s part of what William Gibson means when he says that the street finds its own uses for technology. Give me a sonic screwdriver, and I’ll probably use it as a bottle opener. I might use it for other things, too. But I don’t want to forget that sometimes you need to open a bottle of beer.
Any new projects you want to tell us about?
I am desperate to write a novel again. Right now I am working like a crazy person just to pay the rent, but I am hoping that soon I’ll get a chance to start one. But I’m afraid to say anything more until I start it.
Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.
NONFICTION
edited by Wendy N. Wagner
Artists Spotlight
Galen Dara
Last year Julie Dillon was on the Hugo ballot for Best Professional Artist—the first woman in twenty-seven years to be nominated. This year I am honored to be one of three female artists nominated for that award, along with Julie Dillon and Fiona Staples. With John Harris, John Picacio, and Dan Dos Santos, we make a ballot equally split between the genders: the first time that has ever happened in this category. In fact, including Julie Dillon on last year’s ballot, only three women have ever been nominated for the Hugo in the Professional Artist category.
EVER.
Therefore it feels timely, and personally fitting, that this would be the summer Lightspeed dedicates an entire issue to the enormously talented and fantastically imaginative women working in the field of speculative fiction. The opportunity for me to invite other artists to be a part of the project was nothing short of breathtaking. Li Grabensetter with her beautiful handling of inks and watercolors, Elizabeth Leggett with her brilliant digital renderings, Christine Mitzuk’s rich painterly style, and Hillary Pearlman’s fantastical tinkering bring the fiction in this issue depth and texture. It was a pleasure to work with these gifted and passionate artists who are deeply involved in the speculative fiction community. My favorite part of working on this issue was sitting back and watching their amazing art come in. My second favorite part was getting to know these fantastic creators just a little bit better. I hope you enjoy this spotlight on why each of them does what they do. Which, apparently, is to destroy Science Fiction.
• • •
Li Grabenstetter
You’ve been involved in several projects lately, even creating a comic for the I Was a Teenage Anime collection. Tell us a little bit about that and what other things you are working on right now.
This has been a somewhat crazy year for me, involving a more-difficult-than-it-should-have-been move and my taking on a full-time day job in addition to my freelancing for the first time in a while. I did create a comic for Brandon B.’s biographical anthology I Was a Teenage Anime, but mostly it’s been personal work and low-key collaborations with friends other than that. Oh, and working on the layout and artwork for Politics & Prose bookstore’s literary magazine District Lines. WDSF is giving me an opportunity to hop back into the fantasy illustration game, which I’m definitely ready for.
Your educational background is in printmaking and bookbinding. How did that transition into illustrating, particularly illustrating in the speculative fiction field? Who are some of your favorite artists?
Books. It’s always been about books. I wanted to illustrate, but I wanted to get at it from the very root, so I started with papermaking and bookbinding and traditional printmaking. It’s definitely given me a very particular insight into paper as a substrate and ink as a medium, and even when I work digitally I find the print aesthetic influencing me heavily. I even notice myself artificially imposing boxes into my compositions, which are definitely my mental standin for the edge of the intaglio plate/the line of gum arabic on a litho stone. I have a 100-year-old Baltimorean platen press, and working letterpress prints into my illustration work is definitely something I’ve been thinking about.
You can see some of my older work, high school/college, if you look at the earliest parts of my old deviantART gallery (www.teriathanin.deviantart.com).
What does your artistic process look like; how do you go from initial idea to final painting?
Stop me if I go too long on this! I like to start with a page of four to eight thumbnails for brainstorming purposes*. These will have value as well as basic concept and composition worked out, and sometimes color. Once I’ve settled on a direction to go, I generally do another set of one to three larger thumbnails, just to nail down the shapes in the piece and how they translate to a larger scale. Next I pencil the sketch straight onto the final paper, and ink it. Besides the initial thumbnails, inking is probably my favorite part of the process—it’s the most like printmaking in the sheer beautiful messiness. I use a chrome-nibbed dip pen (the Zebra Comic pen nib with the Tachikawa handle) and Dr. Martin’s Bombay India ink. Then it’s time to tape it down and paint it. I favor Yarka St. Petersburg paints, they lay down smoothly and look beautiful. This is probably the fastest part of my process, since I like a slightly sloppy look to my watercolors. I do some polishing at the end, but I like it to be obvious that I’ve worked with a physical medium.
I’ve actually been doing a little bit of digital work lately, and it varies whether I ink it by hand or digitally—I like the control I get with a computer, but I miss the hands-on portions of the process.
• • •
Elizabeth Leggett
You are primarily a digital artist, yet your illustrations have such a painterly quality. What is your process like? Where do you get your inspiration from and how do you go from first idea to final painting?
(My process? I have a joking response for this, a bit of a paraphrasing of a Robert Heinlein quote he used to describe writing. “Illustrating is simple. You just stare at the blank canvas till blood forms on your forehead!”)
Real Answer:
When I start an illustration, I spend a lot of time verbally shuffling through random ideas, colors, textures, and symbols that seem to fit the theme of what I want to create. Once the right images solidify, I decide on the palettes best suited to give them voice. It helps me a great deal to think of visual art as poetry, which I guess in a very real way it is.
I moved to digital art for purely practical reasons. I needed to find a method of quick edits and timely delivery. Using a tablet allows my hand to behave as if I am working on canvas without the time constraints of drying paint. I miss the tactile nature of physically painting very much, but meeting deadlines is a crucial part of this profession.
My husband an
d I travel a lot. Each new place has its own light, its own identity that is completely unique from anywhere else. This inspires me. I also get a great deal of inspiration from music. The right background soundtrack can really change the direction of an illustration in very powerful ways. Then there are books or the perfect conversation or the taste of a really sweet Spanish orange. Life is an inspiration!
You’ve recently completed creating an entire seventy-eight-card tarot deck! What was working on that like and how does it compare to other projects you’ve done?
The Portico Tarot Deck was created in a single year. I had not created a single illustration in well over two years and suddenly there was a flood of creative need. I had purchased a copy of Stephanie Law’s Shadowscape Tarot a number of years before. (If you have not seen it, please do yourself a favor and check it out. It is absolutely beautiful!) A very dear friend of mine knew I had her deck and the booklet that came with it and suggested that I illustrate The Fool as a direction for my creative need. I did it. The need had not passed. She suggested drawing a card randomly. The next was the Seven of Wands. Eventually, I started drawing three cards at a time. In the end, there were 107 illustrations created for the seventy-eight needed. Later it officially became The Portico Tarot Kickstarter. I am pretty proud of it!
Tell us a little about your journey as an artist: Where did you get your training and what specifically led you to working in the speculative fiction field? Who are some of the artists that inspire you?
I came into this field through tabletop roleplaying. At the time, I was the token girl at the table and while I waited for others to decide on their actions and make their rolls, I sketched their characters. I would have the Marvel Universe anatomy drawing book on one side and my player’s guide on the other. (A lot of my fighter drawings look a bit too much like Aquaman!) Because of that, I would say Jeff Easley’s work for Dungeons and Dragons and Jack Kirby’s Captain America were huge inspirations. Later, I discovered Michael Kaluta and Donato Giancola and and and … I love that I still feel like a groupie for so many artists. It is all about the joy, isn’t it?